worst new years gift, ever

Found out on Saturday the employer sent a wonderfully vague re-organization announcement on early-AM Friday.

I could have a job. I could be laid off. I could be asked to move to Manhatten to join that team.

Or, it might just reflect the management structure of the software development work at the company. Which would also suck, because my (immediate) boss is great.

Thank goodness we exercised some restraint this Christmas in terms of gifts for ourselves and family. We also transferred our credit card debt onto a 0% APR card a couple months ago... we were planning on paying it off over the next year, but now it might just get minimum payments until the job thing settles.

I'm not too worried. There are a ton of jobs in the Salt Lake area (according to monster and dice), and the company that bought my old employer's simulation business is doing very well and has positions. There are also a ton of cool sounding start-ups down in Utah county... the wife has put the kibosh on moving down there, but Draper/Bluffdale might be doable.

I'm mostly frustrated. I hadn't planned on staying at [employer's name withheld] for more than another year... but it would have been nice to leave on my terms rather than theirs. It would have also been nice if they'd done the layoff at a time when more than 5 people were actually in the office, and sending such an vague-but-ominous e-mail announcement.

Update: The job is safe. The vague e-mail implied the development positions would be cut/moved, but in fact none of the development positions at our location was involved. Our software architect was laid off, however... probably due to butting heads with the new CTO. The rest of the layoffs were spread across the groups.

worst christmas gift, ever

Pink Eye.

more lame books reviews!

I made a second pass through Steven Erikson's 6 Malazan books (~4000 pages). Definitely held up on the re-read. Found lots of foreshadowing I'd missed the first time. Reading them one after the other also allowed me to catch some references I'd missed the first time. Lots of fun. Sometimes gory. Sometimes very funny. Highly recommended.

Just finished S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire. I love good post-apocalyptic fiction. It was pretty good, but the premise made me want to throw the book across the room a few times. I can see all electronic devices being knocked out at once... But gunpowder? And steam engines? It seemed like the author just wanted an excuse to get people into chain mail whacking each other with swords as soon as possible. The way the skilled characters found each other seemed way too easy (blacksmiths, horse trainers, ex-soldiers).

It was a good read. But I found myself bored or frustrated every-other-chapter when the author would focus on the Wiccan/ex-SCA characters. I don't think its just that they're Wiccan -- I'd be just as annoyed at a book with Christian characters that constantly hit me over the head with their faith.

dangerous denver animals

We took a fun road-trip to Denver and back. My wife's best friend was getting married, and I had a friend we hadn't seen in a few years... Off to Denver! For touristy stuff!

Saw the Botanical Gardens. The Aquarium. The Zoo. The Natural History museum. Lots of fun.

But, beware the sneaky zebras at the zoo:
I think he was setting me up for the following shark attack at the Aquarium. Thanks to my wife's quick thinking, blinding it with the flash, I was able to escape.
Doesn't seem safe to me. I'm so writing a letter.

more notes on things I've read and/or put in my mouth

"World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War" by Max Brooks - Awesome. Very fun, what-if zombie apocalypse story told through a bunch of first-person narratives of the survivors.

And, the soft-tofu soup at Myung-Ga Tofu House & Korean BBQ is tastey. And comes out BOILING in a stone pot. BOILING! Did I mention it is BOILING! And you crack a raw egg into it? The only thing that could make it better is if it was on fire and/or exploded.

In other news, the lovely wife turned into Betty Crocker last week. Made around 2-5 dozen of 6 varieties of cookies. She said it was to try out recipies for the holidays. I'm thinking it was just to mess with me. But, co-workers and friends enjoyed the plates of cookies we delivered.

snot, books, movies

Finally getting over the cold I've had for the past week... And after days of bad TV, finally received the stuff I'd ordered from Amazon.

My brother-in-law got me hooked on Tim Powers. Finished On Stranger Tides, and Three Days to Never this weekend. On Stranger Tides had pirates and voodoo. Awesome. But, I think I liked his latest, Three Days to Never, even more. Very suspenseful and kept me guessing about what was going on (in a good way... with enough bread-crumbs to make guessing fun rather than annoying). Still trying to decide if I liked how it ended or not.

Finishing the last book now. Nightwatch, by Sergei Lukyanenko. Lots of fun too. Trying to decide if I'll pick up the DVD too.

Also in the package, one of my favoriate movies: Safe Men. A couple of untalented lounge-singers mistaken for safe-crackers by a low-level mobster 'Veal Chop' (Paul Giamatti) with the Rhode Island Jewish Mafia. Great cast: Sam Rockwell, Steve Zahn, Harvey Fierstein, Peter Dinklage, Mark Ruffalo... Fake asses. Exploding pants. Awesome.

"Ah, slurry seal, my old nemesis..."

This morning I received further evidence I am a spaz.

The city is slurry-sealing a couple streets in our neighborhood today, including the one our house is on. Our house is at about the mid-point of the section of roads they're doing.

I get the bright idea to park across the street from my house, thinking "Well, they'll start at one end of the work area and make their way to the other... If I leave at 8am, I shouldn't have any trouble."

I walk out the door and see that they do the sealer end-to-end in stripes the entire length of the road. If I don't want to get my shiney-shoes all tarry (our CEO is visiting today), I'm going to have to walk to the end of the road and around the block to get to my car that's across the street from my house.

I get about halfway around.

I realize, "I don't have my car keys."

I walk home. I realize, "I don't have my house keys."

The lovely wife is in the shower, she can't hear the doorbell or me calling from my phone.

Stuck on the porch for 15 minutes. Feeling like an idiot is a great way to start the day.

SCIENCE! WHAT HAST THOU WROUGHT?!

Cancer Therapy with Radioactive Scorpion Venom

It seems obvious that this will increase the rate at which supervillians are generated.

more IronPython + MarkLogic experimenting

I've been playing more with IronPython. Specifically, experimenting with using it along with the MarkLogic's XCC API.

Pretty ugly, but working re-implementation of the sample code to run queries.

# Re-implementation of SimpleQueryRunner.cs XCC example
# using IronPython

import clr
clr.AddReferenceToFile("MarklogicXcc.dll")

import Marklogic.Xcc
import System
import os
import sys

def execute(session,query):
  """Generator that yields result strings from
  execution of the query"""
  req = session.NewAdhocQuery(query)
  for res in session.SubmitRequest(req).AsStrings():
      yield res
  return

def main():
  if len(sys.argv) != 3:
      print usage()
      sys.exit(2)

  query = "'Hello world'"
  try:
      f = open(sys.argv[2])
      query = f.read()
      f.close()

      cs = Marklogic.Xcc.ContentSourceFactory.NewContentSource(
              System.Uri(sys.argv[1]))
      session = cs.NewSession()

      for result in execute(session,query):
          print result

  except EnvironmentError,e:
      sys.stderr.write("*** Error: %s\n"%e)
      sys.exit(1)
  except Exception,e:
      #ugh, looks like exceptions from XCC are Exception
       sys.stderr.write("*** Error: %s\n"%e)
      sys.exit(1)

def usage():
  return "usage: \n  SimpleQueryRunner.py xcc://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/MLDATABASE <queryfile>"

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

Figuring out more ways I might infiltrate my workplace with Python makes me happy happy. Beer also makes me happy. Mmm... Murphy's Stout.

MarkLogic XCC + IronPython = Sweet!

At work we're using MarkLogic to store and transform our XML content. You use XQuery to access the data, which has been pretty fun to learn. While looking at the release notes for MarkLogic 3.1-2, I saw that they've released the .NET version of their new XCC API for connecting with the server.

I've meant to start playing with IronPython for a while. And I've also meant to start learning C#/.NET stuff. So, I thought I'd try running the MarkLogic XCC.Net examples via IronPthon.

And, it works! Woohoo! Not that it does much yet...

import clr
clr.AddReferenceToFile("MarklogicXcc.dll")

import Marklogic.Xcc

import System

import os

doc = 'hamlet.xml'

#replace connection info and marklogic db name 
contentSource = 'xcc://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/MLDBNAME'

print "Loading document ..."
Marklogic.Xcc.Examples.ContentLoader.Main(
 System.Array[System.String](
     [contentSource ,doc]
     )
 )

print "Fetching document ..."
Marklogic.Xcc.Examples.ContentFetcher.Main(
 System.Array[System.String](
     [contentSource,os.path.abspath(doc).replace('\\','/'),'-o','hamlet_fetched.xml']
     )
 )
print "Done."

Our collection of XSLT/XQuery/Java applications is a pain to deploy and do quick interactive testing against. Hopefully being able to script it with IronPython -- and maybe provide a nice interface with Windows Forms -- will allow quicker turnaround times.

SCons presentation

Will be giving a presentation on SCons to the Utah Python Users Group later this week.

Here's a link to the presentation. And examples. Many of the examples are from the unit tests or User's Guide.

Update:

• Here's a version of the presentation you don't need PowerPoint to view.

Update 2006/07/14:

• Here's the final version of the presentation nd examples in a single Zip file.
  

'prince of nothing', meh

Over vacation, I read the Prince of Nothing trilogy by R. Scott Bakker. Meh. It was OK, but didn't knock my socks off.

As is evident from my other lame book reviews, I'm a very shallow reader. I pay attention to the dialogue and plot, but most literary subtext sails right over my head. One of the main characters is sort of kung-fu jesus, and manipulates the others by his philosophical ramblings. I don't have the patience to read and re-read his dialogue to parse the ultimate meaning.

If I want Kung Fu Jesus, I'll re-read Lamb by Christopher Moore.

*&@!#&$! dish network

We took a week off for my wife's family reunion, and expected TiVo to continue making us its obedient servants. Oh, how we adore the TiVo.

The TiVo controls one of our Dish Network receivers via IR. Sometimes (1-2 times a month), the message gets garbled and the channel is switched to the wrong channel. Annoying, but usually not too bad. But, if the channel is accidentally switched to a channel to which we don't subscribe, the Dish Network receiver pops up an error message that you must leave via pressing the up/down channel button. TiVo sees a signal coming through and happily records it.

Guess who had ~20 hours of the same damn error message recorded when they got back from vacation? Craptastic!

will never become a taste sensation

Gin + Fufu Berry Jones Soda

Blech.

band names, squid news

Band names I annoy my wife by proposing:

• Stick -- One-man Styx tribute band
• Ventricle -- One-man Heart tribute band.

Also, last night I discovered that while I like watching both octopus and squid swim... move... squirt... whatever... in the ocean, I prefer eating squid

I've always been suspicious

will I learn my lesson?

Once again, it's release time. And, again I'm in the middle of it all. And, everyone is taking vacation. Time to post nonsensical ramblings, incomplete thoughts, and bad grammar. I'm feeling very burnt out.

Why don't I realize that work will never be finished? And, that it's OK to leave work after putting in _only_ a 8 hour day... particularly when we are supposed to work 7.5 hour days.

I hate leaving in the middle of something. I thought my speedy internet connection would mean I'd be able to work more from home... but it's still hard to interrupt myself when I'm focused on something. But, it is good at making geeks jealous.

Liz has been working a lot of late shifts, so I feel less urgency than usual to go home at a decent time.
Last couple weeks have all been ~60 hours. Co-Worker #1 has been out on vacation or traveling, so there's no one to pester me to go home.

important net neutrality news

Ninjas endorse net neautrality:


No net neutrality could prevent the search for Spock!

excellent use of benny hill music

http://stevenf.com/downloads/sophie-vs-roomba.mov

Utopia article in IEEE spectrum. Squid. Book.

To make certain people jealous, here's a cool article in IEEE Spectrum about Utopia.

I've been remiss updating my boring list of things I've put in my mouth and un-insightful book reviews. I know that's what my vast readership has come to expect.

Best thing I've put in my mouth: Seaweed and Smoked Squid Salad at Go Sushi. Mmm, translucent crunchiness.

Lastest book read: 'The Bonehunters' by Steven Erickson. Because I'm waaaaaay to impatient, I ordered it from Canada. It was very good.