I’m still alive. It was not exactly the most pleasant experience I have ever had, but it is over now.

I needed to be there by 8:30am. I got there at a little after 7:00am. I am so paranoid. I sat in my car and watched people drop their movies off at the Blockbuster next door while I listened to NPR and read some last topics in my GRE prep book. Other (normal) people started showing up around 8:00am.

At 8:15, I went inside. After handing over my id, I was handed a sheet of paper with a paragraph I had to write out affirming I wouldn’t do anything bad. Highlighted above the blank space was DO NOT PRINT. Shit. I haven’t written cursive in years, and it showed. Oh well, at least that part wasn’t graded.

I now have some understanding what it might be like to be in a secure facility. I was instructed to leave everything (keys, wallets, phones, tissues, everything) in a locker outside the testing area. The woman behind the glass window then told me to come through the door and sit in the black chair to wait my turn to be “processed.” After the person in front of me was done, I got to move to the pink chair. There I got to have my information verified, my picture taken, and then I got to sign in.

The test area was behind yet another door. Every desk was monitored by video and shows up on a screen out in the room I was “processed” in. It was like being in an observation room. I got computer #1. The proctor signed me in and I went through the instruction section on how to use a mouse, click buttons, and scroll. Very enlightening

The essay section was first. 45 minutes to argue for or against a statement. I had two choices to pick from. The one I selected was:

The human mind will always be superior to machines because machines are only tools of human minds.

I choose to argue against that statement. I used up most of the 45 minutes writing, but I wasn’t rushed.

The next essay was 30 minutes to critique an argument. The question I got was:

The following is a recommendation from the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company.

“Many other companies have recently stated that having their employees take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course has greatly improved productivity. One graduate of the course was able to read a five-hundred-page report in only two hours; another graduate rose from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year. Obviously, the faster you can read, the more information you can absorb in a single workday. Moreover, Easy Read costs only $500 per employee - a small price to pay when you consider the benefits to Acme. Included in this fee is a three-week seminar in Spruce City and a lifelong subscription to the Easy Read newsletter. Clearly, Acme would benefit greatly by requiring all of our employees to take the Easy Read course.”

This was rather straightforward as well. I got a 10 minute break after this section.

Next were the multiple choice sections. I ended up getting 2 quantitative sections and 1 verbal section. 1 of the quantitative sections was an experimental section, although I don’t know which one that was. My feeling was that I had not done well on the quantitative section, but from looking at my scores, I was obviously mistaken.

Verbal: 600 Quantitative: 740

So, that is that. Now I get to wait and see if I get accepted to the grad progarm. Wish me luck.

You too can be an artist. No self-mutilation necessary.

Fish Garlic Monkey in Muted Yellow

“There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.”

Pablo Picasso

I’ve been in academic limbo for the last year and a half. I have been taking graduate CS courses, but I was not actually in the graduate program. That had been the plan, but I needed to take the GREs first. Initially I had wanted to take time to study and prepare before taking the GREs. Monday I realized that that was never going to happen.

So I have taken the plunge. I am scheduled to take the GREs on May 11th. That would be the day after my final exam for Software Engineering; I might as well get all the pain over with quickly. I have my application to grad school in my bag as I type this and will be dropping it off today (once I figure out where it needs to go). Last night was spent honing my answers to the fluffy questions that schools seem to want to know about. I even found 3 suckers kind individuals to write me recommendations.

A part of me is really wondering: “What the hell am I thinking?” I guess we shall see.

This weeks New York Times Magazine has an excelent article by Michael Ignatieff entitled Lesser Evils. I would highly recomend that anyone who cares about the current situations of civil liberties, the war on terror, and governmental control should read this and think about it.

This is the first article I have seen that seems to take a balanced approach to our current situation. He argues that it may be necessary to inflict the “lesser evils” for the “greater good.” I am not convinced of all of his arguments however I strongly agree with the argument he makes throughout the article regarding “transparency.”

No matter what the government is allowed to, the system must be designed to allow for transparency; this is the key to democracy. The people must be allowed to scrutinize the actions of their representatives in order to be informed. The media cannot shy away from things “in the name of national security.” It just doesn’t work that way. Secrecy is the cornerstone of governmental excesses.

Go read, comment.

You may notice a slight difference in the look of my journal. No, I haven’t changed my MT templates. To be honest, I has sick and tired of fighting with MT’s templates. Don’t get me wrong, I think MT is a good piece of software, but there are way too many templates to keep track of and keep in sync. It also has the downside of the whole “rebuilding” process.

So I have been off and on looking for a new solution. I found WordPress. It is PHP based and backed up by MySQL. The big departure from MT is that where MT generates static html pages, WordPress generates all the pages on the fly right from the database. And it only has one template I need to mess with. ::sigh:: It was able to import all my entries from MT, so I didn’t loose anything although the links did change.

Let me know what you think.

This past sunday was quite eventful! The TA for the class Elizabeth and I are taking this semester, Jennifer, mentioned to me that she was the “bus captain” for the William & Mary chapter of VOX’s trip to the March for Woman’s Lives in Washington DC. It sounded like a fun and important event, so Elizabeth and I decided to go. Read on for more.

Sunday morning at 5:30am we rolled out of bed and got ready to go. We arrived at PBK hall on campus around 6:40 to find a small group already congregating (most nursing coffees). Jennifer showed up a few minutes later and conscripted Elizabeth and I to hand out maps of the National Mall area. People filtered in over the next 15 minutes and we were ready to go.

Given that the event organizers were expecting upwards of 750,000 people, the plan was to take the bus to RF Stadium outside of DC and then take the metro in to the Mall. As we got close to RFK, I started noticing busses converging from all directions. It took us over half an hour to get from the entrance to the stadium to the actual parking lot. People had bussed in from across the country (I saw busses from Chicago and New York.)

Leaving the bus, we joined the throngs of people (pictures will be linked at the end) moving towards the Metro station. We passed numerous “purveyors of capitalism” selling every imaginable kind of t-shirts, buttons, and food just in the half mile to the Metro station. Among the marchers, the signs and excitement had already begun.

After shuffling down into the Metro station and getting to the L’Enfant station, we all pilled out and made our way back above ground. By this point, Jennifer, Elizabeth, and I had lost all but two other of our group. We headed towards the mall passing trucks passing out signs, buttons, beach balls, and weird tubey things you are supposed to make noise with. It was a zoo.

Each group that had registered for the event had a designated spot on the Mall. Jennifer found one of the “purple people” (volunteers who knew stuff) and found that we were supposed to head towards sections B3, C3, B4, or C4 which is where the VOX delegations were placed. Instead of trying to wade through the crowds, we walked down one of the street parallel to the Mall towards our spot.

Upon arriving back at the Mall, we saw exactly how much of a zoo this actually was. I have never seen so many people in one place at one time. It was amazing. It was a sea of pink signs waving and cheering at the barely heard speakers on stage. We waded in to our position looking for anyone we recognized; yeh right.

The March itself was supposed to start at noon. It may have; Jennifer was warned that it might take a while before the movement at the beginning of the group would be noticed by those further back. We were near the front of the group, so we got started marching around 12:30. “Moving” translated to walk “three steps, stop, repeat” for about the first half hour. By the time we made it out onto the streets, we started moving, only clumping up when we needed to turn.

The march itself was a very interesting event. I had never done anything like this before, so I didn’t know what to expect. The closest thing I can compare it to is to imagine a high school pep rally (albeit one with hundreds of thousands of people). There were chants, people just making noise, and signs shaking (especially when helicopters went overhead).

There were small contingents of counter-protestors spread along the march route. I found out afterwards that they were organized into “themes” by blocks. There was the mutilated fetus picture section, the religious section, the “I had an abortion and now I regret it” section, the cute baby picture section, and probably some others. The pro-lifers were outnumbered easily 100 to 1. Some of them yelled at us, marchers yelled at them, it was all good fun. (Actually I was amazed to find out after the fact that only 16 people got arrested the whole march. A group of pro-lifers who didn’t have a permit.)

It took maybe 2 hours to get back to the mall after walking the 1 mile march route. I looked back at the march starting point and could see that there were large numbers of people who hadn’t even started walking yet. Amazing. We found a place to sit and rested for a while.

The plan was to get back to the bus by 4:30. We started towards the Metro at about 3:15 or so hoping to get a jump on the crowds. Ha! We went to one of the farther Metro stations and actually got on the Metro easily and even got seats. When the subway arrived at the Metro station closest to the march, the platforms were packed. The poor train conductor kept having to reassure people that there were more trains coming.

After much walking, we made it back to the bus and found that we had about two thirds of our people back. Everyone made it back to the bus by about 5:30 and we got out of the stadium lot by 6:00 or so. We stopped for dinner on the way back and made it back to campus by 10:00.

What a trip. I am thrilled that I went; it was the best $25 I have spent in a while. Thanks to everyone who came, it was fun. Now the links and pictures!

• My photo pages
• Planned Parenthood
• American Civil Liberties Union

I am a digital packrat, especially when it comes to email. I keep everything. I currently have saved approximately 915MB from my personal account and 113MB from my work account. The problem that arises with this many messages is organization. Historically I have been a “sorter.” I try to break out all my messages into categories based on numerous categories; sender, topic, etc. Problems arise both when sorting (which category, what if the message relates to two?) and when looking for a message later.

In the past I have looked at programs that can be used to quickly search through large amounts of email (Zoe being one). The recent announcement and subsequent brouhaha about Google’s GMail has brought the topic to my mind again. Mail.app has relatively good searching and is capable of organizing messages into threads. All good options. The idea being that you don’t try to sort your messages beforehand, you let the computer generate the desired subset on the fly.

So I have decided to conduct an experiment. On my work account, I have undone all my organization and placed all my saved mail into one big folder (aptly named Saved). This will force me to make use of the search features in Mail.app. I may also explore some other tools that will let me quickly move through the thousands of messages I have saved.

The feature I would dearly love Apple to add are “Smart Mailboxes”. Like in iTunes and iPhoto, I would like to be able to create a “folder” that has criteria associated with it. So I could, for example, have a folder that would always contains all the messages I received from my boss; the view would update live based on all the messages I had received.

And I really hope I’m not wrong. If I am, resorting all those messages will be a bitch!

Two events have occurred recently that have me a bit worried:

Microsoft and Sun End Long Acrimony In Surprise Accord

Microsoft Settles InterTrust Patent Suit

Reasons why in the next section.

Both of these legal actions have been pending in the courts for many years; I believe the Sun case dates to before the US antitrust litigation. These cases were some of the few that looked like they might be able to rein in Microsoft after the antitrust litigation ended in the US without much effect at all. (One can hope the EU litigation will have more teeth.) Now they are both done and gone with all the parties happily clutching sums of money that probably dented Microsoft’s bank accounts very little.<p>

My worry that these two settlements happening within two weeks of each other indicate a shift in Microsoft's style. Or more accurately a return to the behavior that got them into trouble in the first place. It seems to me likely that Microsoft is attempting to clear their plate of active litigation rather suddenly. And the cynic in me wonders if the timing is such that the country and the Justice Department will be embroiled in the election cycle around the time people start calling foul again. This would allow them another period of time to stifle competition, "embrace and extend," and generally cause more trouble before they get slapped on the wrist again. So, what other reasons could there be behind these settlements? Was it chance they happened within two weeks of each other?

While helping Braz retrieve Emma’s new bed from Kris’s parents house today, we happened to begin talking about tools. I was relating my experiences building some small tables for our deck that will hold pots of vegetables and herbs. As part of the discussion I came to the realization that I had almost reached the point of having the proper tools for most any job I want to do.

It is an interesting realization. For many years I have enjoyed building things around the house (or apartment), but I would often find myself wanting to do something but not quite having quite the correct tool for the job. But for this latest project, I was properly equipped. For each task I was able to go the shelves and pull out exactly what I needed to do the job.

I even went so far as to create “stations” around the garage. Table saw in one corner, router in another corner, miter saw in yet another corner, and assembly area by the door.

I still see potential tasks for which the tools I currently have will be inadequate, but as my general rule is I am able to buy one new tool for every major project I tackle, I should be able to flesh out my collection.

Tool-nirvana, here I come!

Overall Safari 1.2 is a great thing. Unfortunately, there is one bug that has popped up that is visually annoying that shows up in the wishlist site I have developed. Hopefully, this entry (trackbacked to Surfin Safari) can help get it solved. If you are curious, click below for more.

To start, here is the simplified test page.

Here is a screenshot from Safari 1.2

Here is a screenshot from Camino 0.7

Basically the problem is that the horizontal rule under the floated image is set to “clear: right;” which should cause it to be below the image (as it is in Camino) as opposed to running into the bottom edge of the image (as it does in Safari 1.2).