Brian's World

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My internet is going terribly slow.. and by internet, I’m referring to a distributed file access system.  I’m not sure why there is so little bandwidth tonight.  Maybe they broke some of the ethernet when they were building ECAV.  Or better yet, they’ve diverted some of my bandwidth to EMPAC, the new arts complex that will be opening in a few weeks here at RPI.

The beginning of this week was pretty busy between projects and homework assignments.  I completed my IED assignment, which was a shuttle arrival prediction system.  I think its pretty neat, but I’m a biased source of this information.  Ideally I’ll be opening the source up to others at some point (which includes an asterisk AGI / PHP implementation [complete with swift getting data]).  The goal of the project wasn’t to actually make all these neat implementations, but rather to make the system to generate the data.  How the actual minutes/second data is handled is something else.

This week also included a photo shoot with the Concerto team.  It took much longer than I would have liked to get the whole thing done.  Some people were too busy talking and looking elsewhere which I found somewhat embarassing.  Here we all are, a bunch of young adults, and we have difficulty quietly looking at a camera lense and smiling at the same time.  In defense of everyone who had trouble focusing their shifty vision, the camera lense was pretty large and I did have trouble identifying its center.  It probably isn’t a great idea to blurt out my girlfriends name when I’m getting my picture taken.  I will likely blush because thats what I do when I’m put on the spot.  I really wish I could control my blushing more, it happened today in PD1 when the instructor and I had a discussion about last spring’s town meeting with Dr. Jackson.  I just hope my face doesn’t look too terrible in whatever picture is chosen for whatever.

I’ve been sending email for quite some time, several years to be exact.  I don’t have the exact date of my first email, but it was very long ago.  Usually when I send email where the message contains question marks I get a response.  Sometimes I don’t even have to include the actual question marks and I can still get a response… and there are those time the rhetorical email get responded to.  For the past few weeks I’ve been on this stint where emails with or without question marks just flow in one direction out of my mailbox.  I can’t recall a longer period of time where my email hasn’t been getting much of any response for the ones I’m really looking for input on.  What will happen is pretty simple, I’ll start moving forward with stuff and then, when I’m just about to finish the implementation, everyone will start asking questions.  Not stupid questions, but questions that I would have liked to address when the email talking about my plan was sent out.

I’ve come to two possible conclusions.  Neither of them is very likely.

1.  Gmail is attaching a no-reply header of sorts, indicating to people that a response is unnecessary.  In GMail’s web interface, the reply box doesn’t even show up.  In “Mail” for those os x users, Apple applies a slight fading to the reply button so it doesn’t get as much of your attention.  While they still allow you to send a message, they’ve designed the interface so that you very easily skip over the reply button when you’re looking at your options.

2. My inbox looks at a new message when it arrives, and if it sees its in response to an email I send that didn’t merit a response, it bounces that email back to the sender, with a kind, “You didn’t have to respond to this message.  Next time use GMail, we’ll automatically prevent you from replying in the future.”

I look forward to GMail loosing its beta tag this year.

In the future, I am going to write some blogs about websites and how terrible some of them are.

Goodnight moon.

Present Boredum

Right now I find myself extremely bored. I’ve been sitting at my desk for over 1 hour and 7 minutes (its 10:07pm) doing very little.  Yes, I upgraded my blog software and cleaned some permissions on a server but I haven’t really done anything substantial.  There are many things on my todo list, but none of them seem extra pressing or motivating right now.  If I was to be excited about any one thing right now I would probably be doing it, but nothing comes to mind really.

This weekend was pretty much the same thing.  I convinced myself to be motivated enough to produce a newsfeed for Concerto and some statistics, but I’m feeling like that’s as far as I should go for right now.  I try to put forth the extra effort and all to do things that aren’t easy, but I don’t find myself frequently receiving any direct or indirect benefit or response from them.  Yes, this Concerto thing is cool and all, but I have trouble pinpointing what I can say its done for me, Brian.  Its not everyday I look at a task and evaluate what effects its having on me, but a task that’s taken up more than a year of my life requires such an analysis.  As a Boy Scout, I could see the effects of community service after doing it;  the trail was cleaner or the road less trash covered.

I came to this realization today in Technical Writing when I was preparing a “Professional Webpage,” which is essentially a web version of a resume.  I had written Concerto down as a project and I was trying to think of a phrase or two to describe my involvement.  I certainly cannot call myself the leader, nor would I call myself “lead developer”.  I thought about saying “guy who comes up with the ideas no one likes” but decided that probably wouldn’t make sense on a professional web presence.  I don’t design the user interfaces, nor do I have anything at all to do with the hardware.  I haven’t made any sales pitches to people, my code isn’t directly responsible for displaying content on 12+ screens.  I write the database abstraction layer most of the time, but even then I find myself feeling less and less positive about that.  I’m rarely approached with a positive comment and most of what I do doesn’t merit one.  You wouldn’t tell someone that the 10th time they did something was super.. I mean its the 10th time.. nothing new.  I do get feedback when others think I’m doing something wrong, which makes sense of course.  I should receive that feedback to improve when appropriate, but improving seems to be what I always need to do.  I feel like this chunk will be negative viewed by members of the team who frequent my blog and that’s not my intention.  I hold no sour feelings at the moment, nor am I trying to express them.  If that’s the feeling you got out of this then I encourage you to read it again.

0 other items happened this weekend.  I sat in my room and did nothing.  Its rare I find myself desiring some or any form of social interaction but I do say that I can only amuse myself so long with the resources I currently have at college.  I’m sure I’ve discussed this before, but the people that say that college is the time of their lives are certainly experiencing a different college than I am.  I found high school to be very satisfying and have yet to find anything to come close to it.  I can’t say I enjoy the freedoms college bring that are commonly appreciated by students.  Choosing when to go to bed has never been an issue for me, nor has the notion of choosing what I want to do in a given day.  Having the freedom of knowing that mom won’t knock on my door if I have the lights on at 1:00am is a non-issue; I’m not up at that hour under my own will.  I thought at one point I had discovered a body that might be able to fill the void left by high school, but as time progressed the clusters’ dynamic shifted from an atmosphere that I felt did fill the void to one that I felt simply shifted it around slightly.  I could also be just expressing some frustration with the overuse of certain phrases and words that are quick to build on my nerves.

Of course it hasn’t helped that dearest Katie has been busy as a beaver.  I expected her first few weeks to be time-intense, but not as intense as they have been.  Over the past 4 I don’t think I’ve successfully said more than 25 words on the phone today without her needing to go or expressing some concern on time constraints.  I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but its not something I was as prepared for as I should have been.  I have a fairly set schedule, when I’m free or not is easy to tell; I look forward to the coming weeks where Katie’s schedule will settle down too.

I guess I will go to bed.  My motivations have risen none, and I guess the sleep can help “recharge” me.  For what I do not know.

Good night moon.

Theory in the round

Most who know me know that I apply some type of analysis to nearly every behavior I exhibit.  Balance is one of the most common ideas I apply when evaluating my options.  Its critical to balance all the possible outcomes and side effects, putting the objective on the sideline.  Its very rare that I’ll unconditionally be on board with any idea, I generally have a hesitation or two but I take time to balance that with the possible gains or loses the idea presents.

I’ve never really enjoyed it when people just say yes nearly instantaneously.  I can understand sometimes you happen to be in agreement where both parties were thinking the same thing, but what if both parties are wrong?  I would be extremely cautious when evaluating a concept that you and someone else appear to be on the exact same page on.  How did you both end up on that page?  Unless they are you’re clone or something, they likely share a distinct opinion and set of ifluential factors.  Which one of you left something out of the equation?  Who didn’t consider option number 2?

There are some decisions and thought processes that don’t always require such in depth analysis.  You agree?  Maybe you thought yes.  That would have been incorrect to think.  Way to go ignoring my previous statements.  Every decision is not independent.  You can do everything in your power to cage one block of activity into a seperate domain but the fact that you’re involved with it and have thought about it changes your state forever.  You can never return to the point or orgin before the independent tangent was launched.  I don’t remember is a popular excuse for two possible things.  First, it may mean that you weren’t pleased with the publically distributable outcome.  Secondly, you may think you’ve forgotten.  Just because you can’t replay the moment in your head you have not steered clear of the side effects.  For all you know the things you’ve “forgotten” may be shaping where you stand today.  They will likely shape where you stand tomorrow.

Personally I an extremely uncomfortable knowing, or not knowing, what may be influencing my thought process.  If I recognize it I can control it, if I don’t recognize it I’m left to apply general guidlines to a certain broad area I feel uncontrollable factors may lay.

My name is Brian M and I enjoy data.