Greg and Kat's blog

So, I was just driving home from Kelly and Paul’s place along Hastings. There was one car driving in the manner we all know: the guy that thinks “if I change lanes 8 times per block, I might get a few car lengths ahead.” This is a particular driving annoyance of mine: it creates potentially dangerous situations with little payoff, and close lane changes can easily cause traffic waves in heavier traffic.

So, I watched this guy fly across two lanes from the 3rd to 1st lane (with no pause in between lanes, of course). Then halfway back to the 2nd lane before realizing that the car in front was changing lanes and quickly cranking back. This left him in the curb lane to do the little zip past traffic at the light.

Hmmm… isn’t that car beside him at the light an unmarked police car? Yes, it is. I wonder if he knows that.

After the light, it became clear that he saw it too: suddenly the speed limit was limiting. I LOLed, figuring the guy was probably shitting himself.

All of my psychic abilities were dedicated to one thought: “You saw it too! Pull the bastard over!”

About a block later, the lights came on. It was awesome. I actually thought about pulling over I was laughing so hard.

I’m sure the guy was past the bar for “erratic driving” and probably got to do a field sobriety test. Huzzah, VPD!

Okay, so I just bought a new mouse. My old one was giving me double-clicks on the middle button when clearly inappropriate, and the battery charger wasn’t working, forcing me to change batteries every couple of weeks.

Since I didn’t want to fight with batteries any more, and my mouse doesn’t really move out of its one square foot area, I decided to go with a corded mouse. Most mice are cordless. I was left with the cheap mice, and a few high-end corded “gamer” mice. I eventually decided on a $23 Logitech mouse.

While I was looking around, I saw this for $70 in London Drugs:

Here are the claims made on the box. It’s like a case-study in marketing bullshit.

• “6400+ frames per second”. Okay, mice don’t have “frames”. I’m willing to assume they meant “samples per second”. 6400 times per second, the mouse checks to see how much it has moved. They couldn’t have said “6400 updates” or something like that?
• “5.8 megapixels per second”. WTF? Mice have megapixels? I can’t even imagine what that could mean. Are they using “pixel” to mean “position” or something?
• “40 inches per second, high speed motion detection”. I can’t seem to move my $23 mouse fast enough that it misses out. Maybe 16 year olds have somehow managed to develop freakishly strong forearm muscles that lead to phenomenal mouse speeds?
• “7 buttons, independently programmable”. I’m all for programmable buttons, but what would it mean for buttons to be “dependently programmable”?

As I mentioned previously, I’m trying to get some student data for a side project. The data is housed in SIMS (Student Information Management System), which is pretty much the internal group that does goSFU.

This led me to spending a chunk of the day learning about SIMS, both the system and the group that manages it.

First, remember that we paid tens of millions for the whole SIMS/goSFU/Peoplesoft thing. That doesn’t count the productivity lost across the University to the horrible interface. Admittedly, a lot of what we paid for was a level of certainty that there would be no catastrophic failure. When we wake up tomorrow, there will still be a record that I work there, and the students in my courses will still be registered.

The SIMS team is apparently either swamped with necessary customizations or paralysed by the complexity of the task before them. I was told today about a two and a half year wait by a staff member to get a simple minor customization.

What tipped me over the edge tonight was a document I received titled “SIMS Reporting Database Tables–Field Descriptions”. The reporting database is most, but not all of the student-related data in the system. This document is a list of fields in each table (with a sentence or so about each one).

It is 154 pages long. One hundred and fifty-four.

And, it obviously wasn’t even included in the millions we paid Peoplesoft. It is information compiled by SFU staff. It contains useful snippets like:

• “Not sure what field represents or if field is used. Most values are (blank) with a few exceptions”
• “Some dollar figure, no idea???”
• “A level between 1-5. Not sure which end of the range is the high end.”
• “A flag . ‘Y’, ‘N’ — All ‘N’ so not used?”

I don’t want to knock the poor employee(s) that wrote those things: they did the best they could with what they had to work with. But, if you were selling a database-backed system that was customizable and cost millions of dollars, wouldn’t you throw in some documentation?

As I was looking into the new Facebook application interface, I found myself thinking “what could I do with this that would be cool?” I figure a good Facebook application should contain information that people want to share with their friends and would help them connect with others.

What I quickly realized: students want to know what courses their friends are in, and what friends are in their courses. Thus the “SFU Courses” application was born.

My plan (and it’s still a plan) is to get nightly data from goSFU and push it to Facebook so students (who have added the application and authorized the data release) can have something like this in their profile, automatically updated when they register/drop courses:

Step 2 would be to display a list of people (who have added the application) who are in a particular course. I want to get the basic course list working first.

I know Facebook has a “Courses” section in the profile already, but nobody bothers updating it because it must be done manually. This would eliminate all of the upkeep, and just automatically display the current and registration semesters.

I have started working with it, and I’m starting to understand the Facebook API. Publishing regularly-updating data is a bit of a hassle, but it will work out.

I’m still working on getting the goSFU data. I have permission from the Director of Records and Registration to do it. We’re now working on doing the technical part: actually getting the right data to me every night. That is being slowed by what I will call “interdepartmental politics”.

I’m hoping the whole thing will be working by mid-July for the fall course registration period.

As most of you know, I just spent 5 days in North Carolina.

The only course I’m teaching this semester is a three-hour block on Thursday nights. I took a red-eye out on Thursday, and came back today. This was part of the reason I wanted an evening course for the summer, and it worked out pretty well.

Kat and I spent the weekend in Wilmington, NC with Lisa and Brian. For those who don’t know (that includes me a week ago), Wilmington is on the Atlantic, near the South Carolina border. We spent Saturday on nearby Topsail beach. Major thing I learned: I don’t get beaches. “So, I’m just supposed to sit here, slowly getting skin cancer? No really… what are we going to do?” Maybe I’m a little more Type A than I thought.

I did learn an excellent group-vacation strategy: I refused to make any decisions. “Where should we go for dinner? I don’t care: you decide.” “When should we leave for home? Whenever.”

It was awesome. My input would have lengthened the discussion and contributed very little. I just blissfully followed along and enjoyed myself. I chose my own meals from the menu, but that’s about it.

Other than that, the trip was pretty uneventful. Air Canada successfully got me there and back. That might qualify as a notable event by this point. Canada Customs didn’t believe my $0.00 declaration, but they relented when I explained I go regularly and didn’t have anything else to bring back.

Oh, and I really like frozen custard and am annoyed I can’t get it in Vancouver. And being able to update your Facebook status by text message is a nice, lightweight, realtime travel blog.

Facebook: not just for stalking anymore. It’s amazing the things you can learn while bumping around Facebook.

One of the things I recently learned was that the feather duster is the preferred implement for Chinese child whoopin’. (Apparently you hold the feathery-end and whop them with the stick part. The more you know.)

So having come across that new stereotype, I had to go hunting for others. Sure enough, I started to notice a trend among the many photos I had seen.

Here’s my new stereotype: Asian people take a lot of pictures of women standing beside flowers. [Most of the links below are to Facebook pictures, so your enjoyment of this post may be impaired by not being in the SFU network, or not having a Facebook account at all if you’re a complete loser, Eugene.]

Let’s start with some clear examples of the genre. We have Nicola in Hawaii and Jessica, a former 120 student, went to a tulip festival. That last one might be too easy to count.

I’m not sure that this one of Eunice can be included, she’s not much of a good-Asian-girl, but there are flowers in the background. Check.

Daniela, while not Asian herself, was in Thailand for her flowers-and-tree picture, so I’m counting it.

Suyoko inherited her obsession with the garden from her father (the Japanese half). There are also thousands of pictures of him with various plants hidden away somewhere.

On the family side, I have a picture of Pam in the back yard and one of their Ama. I’m sure I have seen a Kat-with-flowers picture, but can’t locate it at the moment. Kat’s experience is “we don’t want to waste the film on just the flowers… go stand beside the flowers so we can get a picture of them.”

Finally, just to show that it’s not an exclusively-Asian phenomenon, here’s Sara and some kind of flowering tree.

So, I took the plunge and moved my hosting from my computer behind a cable modem to a Dreamhost account. At US$8/mo (if you pay for 2 years) it’s pretty damned cheap for a full-featured hosting account.

If any of you notice any problems with this blog or the gallery, let me know. Everything should be faster (unless you’re in my house, then it will be slower) too.

By the way, if you want a Dreamhost account and follow this link to Dreamhost (or enter the promo code GREGBAKER01), you’ll use my promo code and get $40 off any hosting package. (I get stuff too, so I’m not being totally altruistic here.)

My new computer is up and running! Huzzah!

Hardware geekyness

Core 2 Duo E6600 (dual core 2.4GHz, 4MB L2), 2 × 400GB SATA2 drives, 2GB memory (Kingston low-latency DDR2). I went with an Intel D975XBX motherboard, after returning a faulty ASUS P5W DH Deluxe (and hearing that Jen returned two before the third one worked).

It’s really quiet, which was one of the goals. I’m a big fan of the Antec Sonata 2 case I got (already having owned an original Sonata). For example, the hard disks are mounted on little rubber spacers to damp vibration. The Antec case fans (one included, one I added) are huge and can be turned down so they run slow (and quiet).

The video card I got, the Asus EN7600GT met my three hard requirements: dual-DVI-out (if I get a second display), no fans (less noise), and an Nvidia chip (better Linux drivers). It’s not blazingly fast, but I don’t need a lot of 3D.

Software geekyness

Having been a long-time Debian user, I decided to try Ubuntu Linux this time around. I’ve got to say: it’s sliky-smooth and delicious. It’s got all the good parts of Debian, with a bunch more goodness rolled in. (Okay, the installation took a while, but that’s because I was trying to be clever and trick the installer into doing something it didn’t want to do. That was silly.)

I installed Beryl for some shiny desktop eye-candy. I’m sure I’ll get bored and turn off some parts eventually, but it’s pretty cool. If you’re interested, there are plenty of Beryl screencasts on Youtube (but none compelling enough that I wanted to link to that one).

So…

I’m using the new computer as my desktop now. The server stuff (this blog, my gallery, etc.) is still on the old computer. So, if the site is down for a bit over the next few days, it’s because I’m doing the switch over (inelegantly).

Hmmm… maybe this is the time to put the server stuff on a Dreamhost account. I have been meaning to do that. US$8 per month is pretty cheap, and the upstream on my cable modem isn’t all-that.

I believe I have mentioned my landlady before, but I’ll recap. I live in the downstairs apartment; she lives upstairs. She’s an old Chinese woman whose English is, at best, vaguely understandable. Her husband is dead and the kids have moved out, so she likes having somebody else living in the house.

Tonight, her computer did something unexpected and she asked if I could help her. I went upstairs and clicked “okay” in a dialog box. Then, she was feeling a little chatty, so I talked with her for a while.

Part way through the conversation, she was talking about her son growing up. Keep in mind that I only understand about every third word she says at the best of times. I still have no idea what she said, but what I heard was “The… uh… penis… up, down, up down, up down… he.. ah… hurt himself”. Again, that probably wasn’t what she said, but it’s what I got.

Has anybody else ever tried to keep a straight face with an old Chinese woman after she’s just brought up her son’s spontaneous erection injury? It’s about as difficult as you’d think.

The other choice quote was about some relative (didn’t catch which one–maybe a son in-law?): “in the mind… he a little bit slow.”

And, of course, her catch phrase: “I’m a little bit scared”. Bless her heart, she’s a little bit scared of everything: going outside, being in the house alone, going to China, having her granddaughters stay with her, … . The pronunciation (which I know because I’ve heard her say it probably 20 times) is something like “I a liddle beet scaaed.”

She’s really quite sweet. If she feels better about having me live downstairs, I’m kind of happy about that. Just as long as I don’t have to talk about her son’s penis again.

I have seen several of these on Facebook. “You know you go to UBC when…” “You know you’re from BC when…” “You know you’re Indian when…”

I can’t find an SFU one. So, I’m taking suggestions.

You know you go to SFU (Burnaby) when…

• you know how to get between any two points on campus on a rainy day without getting wet.
• you know that “a rainy day” is synonymous with “a day”.
• the people at Renaissance know your drink order before you say it.
• Parminder at Renaissance knows you by name.
• you longer wonder where floors 1-6 are.
• you can actually find the first floor in the AQ.
• you have even been stuck on the hill because of 1 inch of snow.
• you notice when people you don’t even know are studying in the wrong place, because they usually study over there [points].
• you have an opinion about the CFS… a STRONG opinion.
• heading for the bus stop, you look at your watch: if it’s 20 after, you kill ten minutes to wait out the bus rush.
• you have found yourself unable to remember significant parts of a Pub Night (or GIC Social).
• you have used a cafeteria tray to slide down the slopes near the gym after it snowed.
• “Purple Library Guy” doesn’t make you think of a lame superhero.
• … you know Purple Library Guy’s story.
• you can talk about “the Clan” without thinking about white hoods and torches.
• you are surprised when you meet your TA and they speak English.
• you ever decided not to take a course so you wouldn’t have to come to campus on Tuesdays.
• you know every takeout place that delivers to campus.
• you know several people that ride up the hill but would never do it yourself–that’s crazy.
• you have had an argument on the various merits of study locations on campus.
• you’d go to your prof’s office hours, if you could only find their office.
• you can walk from the Skytrain to the 145 stop with your eyes closed.
• it would never occur to you to ask “which one” when somebody refers to a “pub”.
• it’s going to take you seven years to finish your undergrad, but you’re okay with that.
• you have “gone swimming” in the pond in the AQ. Once. Never again.
• you have spent five minutes looking for your car in the parking lot before realizing you’re on the wrong level.

Okay, I’m out. Please add more in comments. More for inspiration.