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.