Stunned.

This blog often focuses on linking to news stories and discussing the insanity that is occurring around us. This one takes it to a whole new level. CNN is reporting "Alumna sues college because she hasn't found a job".

Honestly, I'm not even sure where to begin with this one. But let's start here: Trina Thompson, any company that knows how to use Google should never, ever hire you now. You have proven to the world that you are an idiot. If I were looking to hire someone and came across this in their history I'd drop them faster than a mangy rat.

In my opinion, this sense of entitlement is one of the biggest problems facing our country right now. So many people seem to live under the idea that if their neighbor has something then they're entitled to have it to, regardless of any factor. Jim has a new big TV, well if he can have one then I can too, I still have a couple of credit cards that aren't maxed out, I'll pick one up on my way home from work.... I went to college and managed to not fail out, someone has to give me a job now; we'll just ignore the fact that US unemployment is at its highest in 20+ years. I woke up this morning and took a shower, why isn't someone handing me a medal and asking me to run their company?

She feels that her college is required to find her a job, because she paid them for her education. Trina seems to be suffering massive confusion over the meaning of "education", mainly in that it does not mean "guaranteed job placement services". Trina feels that she is obviously the best candidate for the jobs she's tried applying to so the failure of these companies to hire her must be the fault of her school's somehow. What with her stunningly impressive 2.7 GPA and "solid attendance record" how could she not be hired?

From the CNN report it would seem that her stance is something along the lines of "What does it matter what I did or did not learn? I paid the school money for four years, now they have to find me a job, and they haven't plopped a job offer in my lap yet, so my unemployment is their fault."

She suggests that their career placement services favor students with better GPAs. Hmmm..... perhaps companies just prefer to hire people with a higher GPA because it's one indication that perhaps they are more competent in the field?

I just find this situation insane. How can she possibly believe that this will go well for her in any way, shape, or form? She's going to lose the case, of course, and she's put a big "I'm a pain in the butt" sign on her for the entire world to see.

EFY is not Reform Camp

From the Daily Universe Police Beat on June 9, 2009:

June 3: An EFY counselor thought he could smell marijuana in Gates Hall around 11 p.m. He found three EFY participants smoking marijuana in the stairwell. Police said the juveniles will be charged.

Mine is Better

My spam is better than yours, mine is 1337!

Awkward

The moving company is supposed to be getting in contact with me today. So I'm waiting for a call from S&M Moving Systems.... I can only guess which end of that expression we'll end up on by the time this move is over...

Sorry for the absence

Hi all, sorry for the long absence. It's been almost a full month since my last post.

Let's see, what is there to update you all on. The Heartless Siren and I are still getting married, so that's good. Wedding plans have been coming along. We have some test announcements coming from the printing company within the next few days, so we'll be getting those out really soon. Waldorf and Sauron put it together for us, it looks awesome.

My thesis is coming along. The data is getting close to finished, so I'll be working on the actual text of the thesis now. I am happy to say that the results seem to indicate that my work performs better than random guessing. Honestly, that's all I was hoping for. My work is in a very young field doing something that has yet to be done well using a very specific technique which has never before been applied to this field. So, getting better-than-random results is actually quite awesome. Now someone else can pick up my work and improve upon it.

We're still working on finding a place to live when we move in July. I need to call the complexes and see if they know their availability yet. I'd like to get that sorted out sooner rather than later so that we can arrange things with the moving company.

I've spent my nights this past week creating a registry website using the Django web framework built on Python. Let me just say Django/Python allows you to get an incredible amount of work done in very little time. The site looks amazing, is fully XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.1 compliant, and only needs 2 little CSS hacks to make it work in Internet Explorer.

We were using Ourregistry.com myregistry.com, but they require guests to give them an email address in order to view your registry. And harvesting email addresses from my friends and family is not OK. So, now they don't get our pageviews at all. And, I can easily turn my system into a competing product (it's already 90% there). The moral of the story is: Don't annoy a nerd with silly things when you're a website, they just might make their own to spite you.

Sorry, but since including a link here would give away our identities so blatantly I'll forgo. I would guess that with some clever Googling a smart researcher could probably find my identity and the website. So, I leave that task to the reader.

Not a Bomb

KSL is reporting a short blurb about a "Man accused of setting off mall bomb". I thought this would have made bigger news, someone setting off a bomb at the Provo Towne Centre Mall. But, upon reading the article, it turns out to be a stupid choice of words and rather the over reaction by police. The moron filled a water bottle with liquid nitrogen (so they claim, probably more likely to be dry ice, where would he get liquid nitrogren? you actually can't just walk into the Chemistry department and buy it willy-nilly).

A water bottled filled with something cold. That's apparently considered an "explosive device", gimme a friggin' break. We did that kind of stuff all the time when I was a kid. We didn't use dry ice, but an expanding chemical reaction from food heaters found in MREs. Guess someone better retroactively charge me with several counts of making an explosive device. The main difference being that we popped them in our yard and not in a public location filled with people.

The kid is obviously a moron to pop a bottle like that in a public location, but he probably should have been charged with criminal mischief and/or disturbing the peace. But no, we'd rather make it sound like he's a "terrorist" trying to blow people up. Being charged with "making an explosive device" is the same kind of charge you get if you make pipe bombs in your basement. I would consider this to be a wholly lesser offense.

Now I have a question though. The article says the police and fire department responded because the device set off the fire alarms. Why would it set off a fire alarm? It's just a loud noise. Are the alarms sensitive to sudden pressure changes? or have the alarms actually be redesigned to include microphones that trigger for loud sudden blasts, much like gunfire would produce? Hmmm...

Engagement Update

Hey all, seems that it has been awhile since I've posted anything here.

The Not-quite-as-heartless-as-previously-supposed Siren and I are currently in California looking for a place to live. I've accepted a job with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and will begin in July after we get married. Since I have a Spring term course, this week (between semesters) was really the only chance we'd get to come out and look at places and let TNQAHAPSS see California (she's never been before).

LLNL is providing some nice relocation benefits, including paying for this trip (reimbursed after I start work), unfortunately since we're not married yet only my expenses would be covered. So we drove out rather than flying. They'll pay my mileage for driving here and back, and it really doesn't cost anymore to have a second person in the car. Chloe (my Honda Civic) is holding up well on the trip (though needs the bugs cleaned off the front end). The first tank of gas from Provo to Winnemucca, NV got 39+ mpg, and the second tank, from Winnemucca to Sunnyvale, got 42+ mpg.

We spent Monday looking at the two places that got the best reviews on apartmentratings.com. We got applications from them, filled them out and dropped them off on Tuesday. Neither place knows if they'll actually have any openings in July, but they took the applications, will process them, and put us on the waiting list. When they found out I'd be working for LLNL they were much more eager to accommodate our situation. It would seem that these Managers have understood that if your tenants can pass an FBI background check and are able to obtain a Top Secret level security clearance that they probably won't give you any trouble. So we're hoping that one or the other place will have an opening and let us know toward the end of May.

If neither has any spots, well... it gets trickier. All the other complexes that have reviews do not get great marks from the reviewers. We may end up renting a house or something. Our plan is to rent something for about 6 months, while we search for a house to buy. In those 6 months we'll be able to put together a down payment, research the area, become part of the LLNL credit union, and go through the entire process without getting stressed about needing a place to live quickly. There are quite a few foreclosures in the area which we will be able to pickup for cheap. The area we're looking at is called Mountain House, and has foreclosures listing in the low 200,000's which sold 4 years ago for 600,000+.

Hopefully we'll pick up something for "cheap" now, thing will recover, and in the future when we are re-evaluating our life situation we might be able to sell at a considerable profit if desired.


Oh, the wedding will be June 23. We're getting married in the Boston Temple. YAY!

That Old Saying...

So, you know that old saying, "The family that prays together, stays together"? There's another, lesser known saying along the lines of, "The family that runs a prostitution ring together, goes to jail together."[ksl.com]

LINDON -- Police have busted a Utah County prostitution ring, complete with the names of more than 1,000 clients. The investigation began last month when a man went to the house for a legitimate massage and was offered much more.

...

Detectives are reviewing an extensive client list that goes back to 2007. The list details dates, sexual acts performed and fees paid by each client -- some of whom, police say, are prominent people.

Note: If you're going to keep a detailed ledger of your illegal activities, at least have the decency to encrypt it, or follow the mafia's example and use code words. Friggin' amateur criminals.

Whoops

I was checking my old hotmail account today and when I log out it takes me to the MSN home page. I found it rather humorous that the main image on the screen was linking to this:


Microsoft prominently running an article about what free software you can use to replace expensive Microsoft software. HA!

Getting Married!

This news just in:

Curious Physics Minor and The Heartless Siren to Wed!
Details are sketchy, but this engagement has been confirmed by multiple sources. Here are our exclusive pictures of the ring:

Teachers' Unions

In the comments on that previous post about Teachers' Unions, Katya raised a point I'd like to give further justice than just a reply in the comments:

Do you think there's anything about teachers' unions that makes them particularly bad? Maybe the quality of a teacher is harder to measure . . . or it's easier to blame shortcomings on the students.

There are, of course, some unique challenges with determining the quality of a teacher. Their success will have some correlation with the success of the students they teach, however exactly what, or how strong, that correlation is would be difficult to determine. What bugs me is the Union's stance against merit based incentives of any kind. Their opinion seems to be "There's no perfect way of doing it, so we won't allow any merit based incentives". If you buy into this type of reasoning, then there's really no reason to ever do anything. You'll rarely, if ever, be able to do something perfectly. This is true of some very important things. Like voting: The Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem (in association with Arrow's Impossibility Theorem) proves that no voting system is fair. So, by the logic of the Union, we shouldn't bother with voting either, because we can't do it perfectly.

Obviously, such an approach to life is rather limiting. In pretty much every aspect of our lives we accept solutions which are less than optimal simply because perfect solutions are either impossible to find or the necessary effort required to find them outweighs the usefulness of having them.

But, how do you measure the quality of a teacher? Any such measurement will need to include a subjective evaluation from students, other teachers, and administrators. So you'll need a way of dealing with the subjectivity of these evaluations and prevent them from turning into political games and popularity contests. I'm not exactly sure how you go about doing this. I'm sure there are lots of people that work in subjective survey taking that have some good ideas on the matter though. All such evaluations would be anonymous, of course, to prevent retaliation and gaming the system.

Part of this, I think, could be to include "down-the-road" evaluations. Have students fill out a very simple evaluation of how good they think the teacher was a year after having had them. (In very controlled systems like public education I wouldn't think this would be too hard to organize). Then you can get some larger picture perspective from students, who otherwise might be bitter about a final grade or something.

You can't grade performance simply on students' grades. That would further increase the amount of GPA bloat already existing. Creating an outside exam creates the same problem we already have with standardized testing: teaching to the test. But you can include that as some part of the overall metric.

The most important thing, in my opinion, is to be sure that merit based incentives take a longer window than 1 year into account. A teacher may have a bad year, a bad group of students, or some other issue that comes up. However, if you take a 5 year span and see that student/peer/supervisor evaluations are consistently low, and student performance is consistently low, then you can probably start making a pretty good guess about the overall quality of that teacher. During those 5 years they can be encouraged to improve their teaching. If, however, they consistently show, during a 5 year span, that they just aren't cutting it, it's time to cut them loose.

This gives teachers plenty of time to get their act together, have a bad year, deal with a bad group of students, whatever, while still allowing school systems to reward teachers who consistently receive good evaluations.

If we really want to improve public education in this country the best thing we can do is remove the cruft from the teaching staff. I think we can all look back on our public education and remember teachers who were excellent as well as teachers that just sucked. Knowing that those excellent teachers will not be rewarded for their quality is frustrating and saddening.

Stupid People want to Continue to be Stupid

KSL is reporting a blurb entitled: Not everyone happy about no texting-while-driving bill.

Some say they don't want all their driving time to be a waste. "You know, the text can wait. But it's just like, for me, pulling over would be just ridiculous," one man said.

It rather boggles my mind that it is even necessary to pass laws prevent typing up text messages while driving. Making phone calls while driving is one thing, if you let the call take precedence over the driving you will probably end up in an accident, however you at least still have your eyes available to watch the road, and hand(s) to do stuff. But texting? You are necessarily removing your eyes from the road and distracting your brain and fine motor skills to type out a stupid message, and using one or both your hands to do it! Getting caught doing this should already cause you to get your license suspended for reckless driving.

And apparently there are people who believe their text message is so important that it absolutely cannot wait until they reach their destination. Who do these people think they are exactly?

Several months ago some friends and I were driving up to Salt Lake City. We were in the car pool lane and came up along a car that was swerving back and forth about half a car's width into the lanes on either side of it. We saw the girl driving it looking down at a cell phone held in her lap, using both hands to mess with it. We laid on the horn which startled her into looking up and correcting her steering into a single lane. Once she noticed we weren't a cop she promptly looked back down and began swerving again. [sigh] Stupid people. We should've called UHP, but didn't have the number. So frakkin' dangerous. GET OFF THE ROAD!

Change. A little anyways.

CNN is reporting: U.S. reverses policy, drops 'enemy combatant' term. The big defense of the Bush Administration about indefinite detainment and arbitrary treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay was that the prisoners were "enemy combatants" and therefore not subject to the Geneva Convention nor to U.S. criminal law.

This convenient classification meant (according to the Bush Administration) that the prisoners actually had no rights or privileges of any kind and could be held with or without evidence and didn't have to be allowed to speak to an attorney or allowed a trial. From a country that claims to stand for freedom, justice, and the rule of law, this whole treatment seemed rather hypocritical to me. I wrote about it several times on my blogs.

I'm pleased to see that something is changing. These people should either be tried for their crimes or released. There is no middle ground. If they're prisoners of war, then well, honestly, you have problems with that designation because what war are they prisoners of? Iraq? We've claimed that the war in Iraq was "Mission Accomplished" therefore the prisoners should be released. Is it the "war on terror"? Because that's something that's impossible to end and designating prisoners as a prisoner of war in a war which cannot end (because it's not a real war) is really rather unfair.

So, here's to promoting the rule of law again (at least some parts of it).

These days, unions often suck.

First, don't get me wrong, unions had a very important place in forcing employers to provide safe and healthy work environments to employees. They were a critical part of the Industrial Revolution era of things. However, it sure seems like they've lived long past their original usefulness. It seems to me that oftentimes now unions are more an agent of stagnation and rot than good change. My impetus for writing this short post today comes from this article (which will be changing as the news conference in currently in progress): Obama urges special rewards for best teachers. The teachers' union has long opposed merit pay/bonuses for teachers. Why? Just WHY? Oh, you mean if we reward teachers for being good at teaching then the bad teachers might feel inferior somehow? Good! Having been through 12 years of public education I would be more than happy to put pressure on the crappy teachers to encourage them to either improve or find a new job. But, from my discussions with actual teachers, it seems that the teachers' union mainly exists to ensure that firing any teacher is difficult, and that no teacher gets rewarded in any substantial way for being better than others.

I've had an interest in possibly teaching at a high school level, however it is the nonsense included in things like the teachers' union that makes me think twice. I'd prefer to work in a field which rewards me for being good at what I do.

How many interviews does it take to get a job?

Though cousin to the more popular "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Toosie Roll pop?" my question is probably more important.

I just completed my sixth, yes 6th interview with Lawrence Livermore National Labs. I've been told that I can probably expect a job offer, but anything official must come through HR, so I can't take that to mean I will be offered a job.

I think that is actually the last of the interviews though. To summarize them:

1 Preliminary screening interview after the Career Fair in January
3 On-site interviews in Livermore, California last week
1 Position placement phone interview last week after returning to Provo
1 Position placement phone interview today

These last two phone interviews are very good signs that I will be offered a job, but there's still the possibility of it not happening.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it appears that CPM will probably need to decide in the coming weeks if he'd like to live in California and work for LLNL for the next stage of his life.

What do you all think?

Life Update

I realize that I have not been updating this blog very actively. Mainly it's because most of the things that I've been blogging about fit more aptly on my real-identity blog. So it has been getting a lot of updates.

But, I'll fill you in on some things that have been happening. I've been spending time working on the Board. The future of the Board lies in in the Django-Python web framework. If you happen to know it, or have any interest in learning Python/Django let me know, we can also use an extra coder.

As I will be finishing school in the coming months I've been looking for job opportunities. I've been off interviewing at places and sending out applications and resumes. I may be getting some offers in soon and I'll then have to decide what I want to do with the next stage of my life.

I also have the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Spring Research Conference coming up, and I need to finish revising the paper I had accepted into the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks. Hand in hand with all of that is collecting data for my Master's thesis work and trying to get something useful to happen with my program. Having realized that some of my data was bad, my hopes have risen for the results of the next batch of processing.

That's the bulk of what's been happening in my life without getting in to too many details.

Hold on, what?

Troopers release driver after seizing thousands in cash on I-80

So, apparently, the Highway Patrol can confiscate all of your money because, "I believe that the money was going to California to purchase narcotics." And then, "The driver will now have to prove his story in court if he wants to get it back."

I may be new to the law enforcement thing, but I was under the impression that transporting a large amount of money was not illegal in and of itself. Even if you have a criminal record, and even if a drug dog says the money smells like drugs, it seems a bit unfair to take "nearly $200,000 in cash" away from someone and then make them go to court to prove that they weren't going to use it to buy drugs.

And even if they did intend to buy drugs with it, how does that make it illegal to have the money? If you suspect someone is going to buy drugs you can just take away their money and tell them "prove you weren't going to buy drugs"? How do you prove you weren't going to do something exactly?

I don't think I can agree with this type of preemptive, based-on-suspicion law enforcement.

St. Valentine's Day

Those that know me probably also know that I've been fighting off a really strong infection of mononucleosis over the last 3+ weeks. I've had mono at least twice before, but this time was the worst of the three. Not only did it make me rather tired, but it also decided to make my tonsils and throat swell up to the point that I could hardly swallow my own spit. Thanks to a visit to the Student Health Center I was able to get a prescription of prednisone which, when combined with ibuprofen, was able to bring the swelling under control. So, I've spent the last 3 weeks tired and on steroids in order to be able to function. I had grown tired of this arrangement by about day 4.

I woke up on Saturday morning and my throat didn't hurt! There was still a small amount of swelling, but I could swallow and I felt like I had energy! I was really excited about this. Since the Heartless Siren has been recovering from her surgery and I was dealing with mono it was looking like Valentine's Day was going to be a bit underwhelming this year.

It still wasn't incredibly exciting, since I had had no energy to plan anything out ahead of time. I promised to cook dinner, figuring that would expend all my energy reserves. I also needed to do laundry. So the day started by me going shopping to buy ingredients for dinner. Then I swung by Campus Craft and Floral to pick up the roses I had ordered. I got to Heartless Siren's house and presented her with the flowers and then snuck off to the kitchen for a few minutes to put ingredients away for later. I also opened up a couple of boxes of Conversation Hearts and removed the white ones (HS thinks they're gross, but loves the other colors). After putting the meat in the fridge marinating I gave HS the bowl of conversation hearts and we headed back to my house so I could do laundry while we caught up on TV shows we had missed during January.

After enjoying episodes of Chuck, 30 Rock, and The Office my laundry was done and now it was time to head back to HS's house for dinner. I sent her to the living room to listen to music and read while I cooked dinner: New York cut steaks marinated for 6 hours in Italian dressing, garlic mashed potatoes, broccoli, freshly baked French bread rolls, 2 candles, and for dessert, hot-out-of-the-oven brownie pudding. I will congratulate myself on having all the food finish with perfect timing to put it on the table, and it tasted incredible, I was quite pleased.

Then I read a few chapters of Harry Potter to HS, and once my throat was dried out we watched Enchanted. Despite our recovering from surgery/illness it was a very nice day overall.

My New Toy, or N810 Unboxing

Now that The Heartless Siren is out of the hospital and recovering I have things to post about on this blog that I haven't already posted in my personal blog. Since I spent 2 of the last 5 weeks with The Heartless Siren in the hospital I didn't have much to say about anything, and the week before that was spent taking care of her at home, and the past 2 weeks have been spent being sick with Mono and taking care of her at home again.

During those 2 weeks I found a really good deal on a new toy that I decided I needed. The Nokia N810 Internet Tablet (4 different links there). I was able to get it shipped for $210.

Here are some of the highlights about why I wanted it:
- 800x480 resolution screen with automatic brightness adjust according to ambient light
- Full web browser with Javascript and Flash 9 support (based on Mozilla)
- Open Source architecture with lots of completely free applications available and active development community
- Built off of Debian Linux = rock solid stable performance
- Includes a Xterm with download of OpenSSH (Now I can login to my servers and fix problem from almost anywhere!)
- Wireless G Network, GPS, Mic, Camera, Expandable Memory, VOIP
- This one I don't use yet, but probably when I get a new phone and plan: Bluetooth phone tethering for internet access via phone from anywhere
- Small: the device is the size of an index card and about a centimeter thick


Now, like any good nerd I documented the unboxing:







After some theme customizing, let's find The Board:





I got the N810 on Thursday and so far have very few (and very minor) complaints:

1. The main thing is that some of the built-in functionality (chat, email) I've replaced with community applications which are better designed with better options, and (thus far) I haven't found a good way of either removing the built-in apps or remapping their quick-link buttons to the 3rd party apps.
2. The bundled GPS software (Wayfinder) wants you to buy a subscription with them in order to get on-the-fly Routing and turn-by-turn navigation: 1-month: ~$14, 12-month: ~$110, 36-month: ~$120. Now, if you get the 3-year then it's like $3.33 a month, not too bad for updates on maps and lots of types of points-of-interest, but still. No navigation out-of-the-box (you do get a 7-day trial)? Sadly the really nice free app Maemo-mapper does not currently support on-the-fly routing (you can download routes into it, but can't calculate new ones on-the-fly, w/o internet connection, the above mentioned Bluetooth phone link could make this a non-issue).
3. The included car cradle is not ready-to-go, you still need to buy a mount either for your dashboard, cupholder, or windshield.

Other than those 3 minor annoyance I absolutely love it. Now I just need to go drive around and play with the GPS sometime. The bundled Wayfinder's most serious flaw, in my opinion, is address entering: In order to look up the address say: 551 N 200 W, Provo, UT You have to enter the Street field as: N 200 W, then the House Number field as 551, and then the city as Provo, and state Utah. Why can't I just type "551 N 200 W, Provo, UT"?! Maemo-mapper allows me to enter addresses in this manner. And it took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to get addresses in Utah to work properly because of that silliness. But that gripe is squarely directed at Wayfinder.

Cereal

So... I browse through Snide Remarks every so often. I stumbled upon this hilarity today:
From Muckoo For Mocoa Muffs

Fruity Cheerios are little rings in several different colors. They look suspiciously familiar. The front of the box makes this declarative statement: "25% less sugar than the leading fruity cereal." And I'm thinking: Oh, SNAP, Froot Loops! They totally just called you out! What a passive-aggressive slogan! It's like, "We're not naming any names here, but, um, we have 25 percent less sugar than a certain other fruity cereal we could mention. We're just sayin'." And the people at Kellogg's are like, "B****es did NOT just diss us!" And General Mills is all, "Don't be hatin', we just keepin' it real," and Kellogg's is like, "Whateva. Maybe if you put MORE sugar if yo nasty-a** fruity cereal, people might be BUYIN' it," and then Post is totally on the floor laughing, and General Mills is like, "Whatchoo laughin' at, Fruity Pebbles? Ain't you got some Flintstones to go be watchin'?," and then Quaker Oats pulls out a gun.

In other news, Winter semester has begun. woo. Feel my lackluster enthusiasm there? Yah, me too. 6 more months and I'll be done though.