Why again?

Please tell me why are we back to this:

Americans: U.S. Transit Attack Inevitable

New York police to warn public on suicide bombers

Don't we have enough terrorism in the world?

And on another laughable story (very sad, but it's better to laugh than to cry): the shuttle launch is delayed AGAIN. NASA, the great space agency of the world, just can't find good electronics any more! Oh, well... They have until the end of this month to figure something out! If hurricanes don't get in the way, I'm hopeful that they will make it.

But why go to space, people usually ask? Don't we have enough problems in our own world to deal with? We surely do! But this doesn't mean that we shouldn't develop this kind of technology. There are a lot of things that come with this development. In the computer and electronics world, we gain, for instance, much more robust components, because the electromagnetic radiation out in the space is very harsh.

A lot of numeric methods were developed to deal with the complicated gravitation and orbit calculations that are required to operate space systems. And without the space movement, we wouldn't have a very well developed satellite technology, and I can't imagine what would be worldwide communication without satellites.

Anyway, I should really be having dinner and heading to bed. I just got home from the gym (and then I stopped by the grocery store to buy breakfast for tomorrow). I need a shower too!

Still at work

Yes, I keep on doing it! And today I'm still going to go to the gym, something I haven't done since Saturday, since the day I think I overdid a little and got hurt. But today I'm feeling almost 100%, so I'll try to exercise a little, knowing that I should take it easy not to get hurt again. It was not fun to almost not be able to get out of bed on Tuesday. Interesting though that I felt alright on Sunday, but then Monday came and things started to get worse. Tuesday was the worst day! Then on Wednesday I was already almost 80%.

Not much else to report, though. I'm a little confused on when I will schedule my big Ph.D. party in Brazil. I have people with completely contradictory schedules that I just don't know how to accomodate. But I'll figure something out! Maybe I'll do it one day before I come back here, so that I won't sleep and will be able to sleep on the plane coming back.

Alright, back to work here, hoping that I'll be able to catch the bus soon.

Interesting article about blogging

Yes, I'm still at work here tonight. I said (to myself) that I wasn't going to do this any more, but I'm so close to the end of it... Anyway, that's not what I'm here about. I "semi-" read this article about blogging:

Bloggers Need Not Apply

It is about the actual dangers of blogging when you are looking for a job. Usually blogs show the extreme of people, it is sometimes used as an escape valve on your normal day. And this is not what a potential employer wants to know! How do you explode, what do you like to do with your "extreme" free time. One might say that this actually shows what the person is about, but I would claim that everybody has their weaknesses, and this only puts a huge magnifying glass on these weaknesses. Not very healthy at all!

Anyway, let me get back to work here, or else I will miss the last bus of the evening (I know, I still have about 2 1/2 hours for that...)

Ah... Working on Saturdays...

That's what I was doing until about 20 minutes ago. I just got home from my office! Yes, I know it's past 2 am, but that's what I have to do. There is always more work than you expect, always things you took for granted that they worked that suddenly stop working. Lots of fun, but we are moving forward. I see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I'm not sure it's only a day away. But let's see!

What else can I tell? Well, I am alive and ready to receive my furniture tomorrow. One more piece, leaving only one left to go. Now the only thing that is left is one more bookshelf. I'm not sure where to put it yet, but I really need more space for books. I won't worry about this right now, but soon I'll have to.

Alright, let me try to turn my brain off and sleep a little.

Join the military - replacements needed

That's what I read this morning in front of my bus stop. When I looked more closely, I realized it was all over town! A flyer with the above mentioned phrase, a war-like picture and the number of dead people in each side of the war. It had also a website for you to check:

http://replacementsneeded.tripod.com/

Ah... Living on a political world! So political that on 4th of July, when the US National Anthem started playing, maybe only 1/5 of the people actually stood up for it. Very scary! And think that I was in Woodinville that is not a very liberal area of Seattle Metro.

Anyway, today I found out that more Brazilians are dominating my area of town. I met a Brazilian couple at the gym tonight! Haven't talked to them too much, thought. I was a little tired and they were too! Maybe some other time.

Finally a scheduled trip to Brazil

Oh... Brazil... Friends, parties, relaxing without having to think about cleaning my apartment or going to work. That's what is coming up soon! Today I finally set the dates: I'll be arriving on a Friday, August 12, having my sister's engagement party on the 13th, family father's day on the 14th, visa interview on the 15th and then starts the plans for my big Ph.D. bash! If you live in Brazil, be ready to be invited for this big event! It should happen probably on the 20th (if I get a 100% confirmation with my sister that she is not postponing her party to the 20th) and if my friends still remember me, it should have as many people as I can invite. It is going to be hard to come back (something that will happen on the 27th), but that's life. We keep on living and when you least notice things turned around again.

Now I just have to start planning on the gifts I'm taking to Brazil and bag size...

Good literature...

I have realized that it's been some time that I don't read good literature and this is pretty sad. I've been reading very interesting stories, exciting ideas, but no deep writing... This changed when I decided to go back to a book I have been trying to finish for a long time: "The best 100 Brazilian Short Stories of the Century" (in Portuguese, of course). It is refreshing to read psychological master pieces written by amazing writers, such as Lygia Fagundes Telles.

It is actually interesting to see that Brazilian literature is fundamentally very different from American literature when it comes to complex short stories. I have researched in this area of the American literature and their goal is completely different. While Brazilian good literature is dense and contains very complex structure of ideas, the American literature is much more towards evoking thought through much more direct discourse.

Now that I've finally finished reading this very heavy tome of amazing stories, I have decided that I should go and continue my research into the realm of short stories and see if I can find any parallels in other cultures.

Well, besides that, I'm back from San Francisco, worked yesterday until 10 pm, had my personal training session today where I almost fainted (don't ask me why - I think I'm a little bit less in shape than I thought) and now I'm trying to clean my apartment a little to prepare for work. There are a lot of things I have to do and a lot of work that has to get done.

JavaOne

I've been having fun in JavaOne. I have gone around, talked to a lot of interesting people, listened to some good talks (although most were, in the end, quite useless), and got to remember a little of San Francisco (well, last time I was here was about 14 years ago!). The only bad thing so far is that I just couldn't find any good candidates (that was one of my primary objectives here). It's not that there are no good people around, but every potentially good person I talked to, either lives and works in another country or likes their jobs and didn't really find interesting what I had to offer (they were impressed, but not really their area of interest).

Anyway, I still have an evening and two days ahead of me to keep meeting people. I think I already gave out about 20 business cards (but no flashlights - didn't quite fit any of the conversations). As strange as it might seem, they gave us a whole 2h30min of break between the last afternoon session and the evening session. Bad thing is that I'm not hungry at all! Oh, and the evening sessions go all the way to 11:30 pm.

The conference model is very interesting. They have a keynote speaker in the morning and then 1 hours sessions throughout the day (about 6-10 happening at the same time). In the evening they have what they call the Birds-of-Feather sessions that are more informal and focus on specific experiences. Yesterday I went to two of them and they weren't that great.

My general experience so far is that POJO is the keyword (Plain Old Java Objects). And XML sadly is becoming the middleware of choice for everything. Web services is what everybody is betting on. 1 second delay parsing and processing XML is just considered "negligible time" (I heard people saying this today but on the context of Spring object initialization). It is scary where the thecnology is getting, but exciting at the same time.

Ok, done with my technical rant. Time to decide what else I can do without having internet access on my work laptop and not being hungry at all.

To San Francisco I go...

In 5 minutes I should be starting the process of leaving my apartment on my way for a 6-day trip to San Francisco! Staying away for some days feels great, but it is also a little scary (I can't ignore the fact that I have a lot of work to do and I won't be able to do this work while I'm there).

Not much time to write much else... And it's not that I have much to write, anyway. I just heard yesterday another proof that Israel, especially Jerusalem, has this powerful, almost magical influence on people. I'll be monitoring how much time its effect lasts.

I wished I had a better one

One more weekend is gone and I wished it was a more productive one. I did some work, but I don't feel like I've accomplished anything. I have received some of my furniture (and that's an interesting story that I'll tell later), and did visit some fitness centers. I have talked with my "health advisor" last week and he said that I should force myself to do some exercise by joining a club. Initially, all the clubs that I've looked around here were very "nice" and expensive. They offered towels, shampoo, soap... The one I visited today required you to bring your own towels and everything else, but it was about 1/3 of the price. I think I can buy many towels with the price difference!

Anyway, now for the more interesting story: the furniture. Well, I bought some furniture some weeks ago and they were going to deliver it today. So far so good, right? Well, so they tried to call me since wednesday to confirm the delivery and I was only able to have some time and call them back on Friday. When I got to the automated service they mentioned that I had two deliveries outstanding: one for the June 19th and the other for July 27th!!! I tried to talk with the service representative on Friday, but they left me waiting for 10 minutes and I gave up.

So, yesterday I called the salesperson that sold me all the furniture to understand what was going on. She was shocked and asked me to call her again on Friday, because she was taking the early week off and would only be able to get an answer from her manager on Thursday. Very sad. But there is one good thing: Now with my new headboard and rails, I don't have to use those hideous bedskirts any more. I don't know who invented those, but they are just terrible. Makes making the bed much harder and changing the sheets even harder (because if you want to change the bedskirt to match the new sheets, you have to remove the whole mattress and then put it back up). Sometimes there are reasons to be happy.

Another sad point of the day: I had a concert to go today. I left about 10 minutes later than I planned... But the problem is that I got even more trafic than I thought and I arrived by the concert hall already 15 minutes late. I still had to park and walk in... So, as it was a free concert I decided that I should just go back home and get back to work on my 3-computer-ed office - I feel like a geek!

Happiness brings pain...

The worst type of sadness is the one caused by a happy moment. One that you see everybody around you jumping up in excitement while all you want to do is to go a dark corner and stay there alone for some time. The interesting thing is that this happened to me quite often lately. I could go through all the cases, but I'll only mention the latest: yesterday my elder syster got engaged!

Isn't this great? A sister that many times said that she would never get married seems to have found her love and now, after about 2 years together, is engaged! What makes all this sad? That should be very evident: I never met the guy. I talked to him on the phone once for 10 seconds when I wanted to talk with my sister (he kept trying to be nice to me and I bluntly interrupted him asking to talk with my syster). It is scarry that I'm becoming this other person, distant from what is happening with my family. Yesterday I wished I could drop everything I have here and move back to Brazil...

I wished I had a lighter note to end this... Maybe "MY SISTER IS ENGAGED!"

SIFF

Sometimes Seattle is able to impress me still. Today I went for my first movie in the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF). It was a movie called "Man About Dog", an Irish comedy about three friends that decide that they want to win money on Grayhound racing. It was interesting, sometimes funny, but what impressed me is that the director was there at the movie theater for a Q&A afterwards.

If you are a member of the SIFF, they have movie previews all year round when they invite the directors of these movies to later talk about the movie. It involves a lot of money! And very interested audience...

I wouldn't say I'm too sad that I have only gone to this single movie in the almost 4 weeks of the festival (the largest of its kind in the US), though. It's not that I'm that into the whole international movie scene (or any movie scene - I haven't even watched Episode III yet), but I'm just interested in the culture that this brings, the awareness that a country is not alone in anything that they do.

Oh, just as an aside, before the movie they showed a short film called "The Carpenter & his Clumsy Wife"... A movie that was a little gross, lots of dark comedy, blood... Ultimately disturbing, I was glad it was just a 10-minute short movie!

Friendship

Sometimes I just don't understand what is going on around me. Yes, I do tend to disappear and not send email, but this doesn't mean I don't care about my friends. I might complain about things that is a little difficult for other people to understand, I might be living in a different reality, but this doesn't make me less of a person, less of a friend.

There is no easy way to explain who I am and what is important to me (they are mostly interrelated). I have this strange tendency of never knowing what to say to people. I like to listen, I like to read, I like to know how people are doing; but I can't say I am a big fan of actually being there for everybody. I'm changing that, though. I think I have to give up on being myself a little and try to be a nicer person for a change.

Surreal morning

I'm always a little worried when I have those mornings where things are just a little off of the normal that they seem wrong. Today I timed myself perfectly to get to the bus stop at the same time as the bus, but it was about 4 minutes early! Because right now they cut the number of buses that stop at my bus stop by half, I would have to wait for about 25 minutes for the next bus, so I decided to walk to another bus stop (about 10 minutes away) where I had more options.

Getting there I looked at the times of the buses: 8:01, 8:10, 8:20... I looked at my watch: 8:08 so I felt alright, I just had to wait for 2 minutes. That's what I thought! The bus arrived at 8:15! And it was half full and at that stop it is usually only about 1/4 full. I got a bad seat and waited.

Next stop I recognize somebody entering the bus as one of the usual riders. The interesting thing is that he was getting the bus about 3 stops after what he usually gets. Next stop the same thing happened with another person.

Then it arrived at my stop and usually only a few people leave but this time there were masses of people leaving the bus at that stop.

As I said, it's not that something huge happened this morning, but when you are used to certain things and they are a little off, it just seems very strange! Little sleep does help to make things even stranger too... Anyway, long day ahead!

A proud workaholic I am

I know this is not news for most people, but yesterday I again felt that I'm proud of being a workaholic. I was at work at 8:15 in the morning and I left work at 10:40 in the evening. When I arrived, nobody of my group was there. When I left, I was also alone... But I felt like I was doing something important. I was actually trying to decrease the amount of work other people have to do and this makes me proud of myself.

Very interesting this fact... I spent some minutes thinking about it while in the bus going home last evening: I like to work in order to make other people work less. I should receive a prize for it! :-)

Anyway, not much else to say, unfortunately. I could go in length about Apple switching to Intel chips or that more Laptops were sold than Desktops (I helped that I guess) or even the continuing skyrocket rise of Google, but I guess I'll just retire and try to start my day around here.

I hope everybody is feeling great there and excited about their lives.

Silence

I know I have been silent for some time now. It's just that it's better to be silent than to say something useless sometimes.

A few things to report today, though. First and foremost, on Sunday I started the day having a tough issue with my computer. I have Linux installed and Windows 98 as my chatting machine. However, I wanted to make some updates, but Windows 98 is not really supported by Microsoft any more. So, after a long discussion and many blue screens on my Windows 98, I decided to sell my soul and install Windows XP instead.

So far so good, right? Not really! I've installed it but forgot to turn on my firewall before starting the installation. Result: my computer was compromised even before I actually started it. Lots of fun! I turned on the firewall and installed everything again. This time it worked! I installed all the service packs and it seemed to work fine... Right?

Not really... Suddenly I get a message saying that I'm running out of disk space! Mind you that I only installed Windows XP, the service packs, and browse the internet for a little while. The partition that I had for windows was pretty small, 4GB, but it was 4GB anyway! It should fit more than just windows and its service packs!!! That's just ridiculous!

So, after all these fights (and of course losing my dual boot in the process, so I couldn't even log on to my Linux) I decided to do the unthinkable: I bought a PowerBook G4! Crazy, huh? Well, I'm having fun! It's just very cool and neat looking. I'm on my couch right now typing this with it on my lap.

But I spent even more money on Sunday. I bought the furniture that was left: a coffee table, two end tables and a bedroom set.

Now that I'm poor, I think I should eat something. It was a tough day at work.. And I'm going to have some tough weeks ahead!

My trip

Checkout my trip below:



Total: about 1100 miles (1770 km)

Pictures coming soon! I didn't take that many good pictures because the weather wasn't that great and also we drove too much to really stop and take pictures. But it was great anyway. There are some very great things to see in Oregon if you like nature. Very interesting beaches, wonderful mountains with an assortment of lakes and waterfalls.

Ready for a roadtrip

I'm getting ready for my second actual roadtrip since I have arrived in the US. The first one took me to St. Louis and it was fun. Now I'm heading to Oregon, starting by the coast, passing by where they filmed "The Goonies" and then moving inland to the wineries and the mountains. The only problem is that it is a pretty big holiday right now and lots of things are going on. This means: probably it won't be that easy to find a hotel for a reasonable price. But it also means that there will be a lot of things to do! I should be passing by Eugene, where the Oregon Bach Festival is taking place, maybe Crater Lake...

The reason for the rain

Today I found out why the weather is so rainy here in Seattle (although I don't think it's that bad - Sao Paulo isn't much better in this sense): when the sky is blue it is just breathtaking - if it was this way all year long nobody would work! Today out of my office window I could see the Olympic Mountains with their snowy peaks behind a wonderful blue sky and the Puget Sound. When driving back home (yes, I had my car today, because I took it this morning for an oil change), just facing me was Mt. Rainier, a big cone of ice in the middle of nothing else. I was happy there were no trafic accidents because of people admiring the view.

Besides all this, not much is going on. I'm getting ready for a long weekend, when I'll do a road trip to Oregon, probably starting at the coast, passing through the wineries, then the mountains and coming back... Pretty cool!

Overhelping the internet

The internet as being a cheap medium to present your ideas, became also a cheap place to get people's ideas. Everywhere you go you are asked many questions about if you like the content, what would you make to change it, are you an expert to fix it? It is interesting, but after some time I started to think it is a little too confusing. Reading the news is not only like reading the news, but you are encouraged to rate the article you've read. On the Amazon side, buying something is not only like just buying it, but you feel like you should rate it to help other people decide.

It all comes back to cost. Some people think it's a win-win situation, just like reality TV, where you get some random people and put them through something odd. You don't have to pay actors, you don't have to write scripts, you don't have to do anything; and even with all this cheapness, people still like to watch the programs.

However, I'm personally tired of it. I was tired of reality TV since its inception, but now I'm tired of internet feedback. I am tired of people delegating to others the pain of doing things and then making the money out of it. I think there is a limit to how you should waste people's time online, and I think that we have passed this limit.

Thus, I'm starting a campaign right now of: do not waste your time posting feedbacks on commercial websites. If they want quality, let them pay for it!

PS: A blog is not a commercial website. You can still post comments here and I won't make money out of them.

Sunshine

No, it's raining here... The title does not reflect the weather in Seattle right now, but it is a lead-in to an interesting article I glanced through today: Scientists Say Sunshine May Prevent Cancer. Basically what they found out is that Vitamin D, the one that is supposed to make your bones stronger, also may help on preventing and fighting cancer. But what is the interesting part in all this? Is that if you use sunscreen you block most of the production of Vitamin D. Their theory then is that it might be better to have skin cancer that kills way less people than the other cancers that Vitamin D can help cure, like colon cancer.

Who knows what might actually happen with all this, but it will be an interesting study. I feel for the sunscreen companies that right now are preparing to publish long studies on how dangerous skin cancer is...

Oh, no! I saw lightning!

Only going and living in many places in the world that you will start to understand things that seem very normal to you might be not that normal. This week I learned one more thing: thunderstorms! There was one here on Thursday. A tiny one, actually, but there was lightning. And I saw people deeply concerned and genuinely scared of it! It was very strange!

I lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, most of my life, as most of you know. And we have thunderstorms all the time there. Then I moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA for almost 4 years and thunderstorms are pretty common there too (some really big ones too!). Then I moved here to Seattle and, although they say it rains a lot (yes, it does rain around here, but it's far from what I would consider "a lot"), it seems like it's very rare to have a thunderstorm. And when they get one it seems like the world is going to end.

And this same effect is seen on my Californian friends, so it seem like California is another place that doesn't see thunderstorms that often.

This reminded me of a number that I heard a while ago: Brazil is the country with the most lightning activity in the world, and the place where most people die because of lightning. When living in Oklahoma I saw evidence that these numbers might be wrong, but now I see that this is something that only happens in the midwest and the numbers start to make sense again.

Anyway, besides fighting with lightning, I haven't done much... Just worked a lot. This week I was so tired that on Friday I got home and at 8 pm I was sleeping on my bed! Hopefully next week it will be better!

Yes, I know I'm a bad blogger

Here I am again to talk about nothing at all. Lately I just have been working and solving many fire drills around here. Besides that life pretty much does not exist. The only thing I think I have to talk about is how I hate Murphy's Law. Yesterday I decided that I was too tired and I should leave at around 9:10 pm. So I started wrapping things up and left a little later than I should have left, something like 2 minutes after the time that I would need to get the bus. But I wasn't too worried, because the bus is usually 5 minutes late anyway.

However, as Murphy would have predicted, the bus was 1 minute early yesterday and I missed it! I then went back to my office and this time I planned to get to the stop at least 5 minutes early. What happened? The bus was 10 minutes late and I waited 15 minutes in the bus stop for it.

But, hey, I got some exercise and some work done! :-)

Tonight I don't think I'll last much longer here. But I will go home and study for my training tomorrow.

It was my birthday

Yes, Monday was my birthday and I'm realizing that I'm getting more and more alone in this world. It's not that nobody called me or sent me emails, it's just that I've realized that I've been ignoring my friends for too long. I said I planned to email them more often, but it's not happening as much as I wanted. Most of the reason is that I just haven't had much private time lately. And this is slowly killing me, but bound to change soon.

Maybe that's why when I opened my gold box (in Amazon - yes, they bought it back!), I received the following book suggestions:

Final Gifts : Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying

Who Dies? : An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying

Sacred Passage : How to Provide Fearless, Compassionate Care for the Dying
Invisible Acts of Power : Personal Choices That Create Miracles

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: The Spiritual Classic & International Bestseller; Revised and Updated Edition

Handbook for Mortals: Guidance for People Facing Serious Illness

Very creepy...

Anyway, thank you for everybody that wished me a happy birthday. I am going to be replying to your emails personally during the next days.

Family

Well, during Mother's day it is difficult to think of anything besides family. I just called home and my whole family is there having a great barbecue, while I'm here home alone. But one more thing made me think of family this weekend. I went to a Bar-Mitzvah yesterday. There are very few things in the Jewish life that is more powerful as a family event than a Bar Mitzvah. Maybe one of them is a wedding, but it is a little debatable. Wedding means that someone is leaving the house and starting a new house.

Maybe the Bris could be more family-oriented... I don't know, I don't remember ever going to any.

One of the conversations yesterday made me remember what is still my professional dream: a paperless world. I know I have bothered my readers with this view of the world already in the past, but yesterday someone mentioned that she wanted to change her office to a paperless office (she is a lawyer) and I was amazed with myself when I said that there are some things you can do, but there are things that you just can't yet. I started with the discussion of how it is still complicated to deal with current technology, but there are a couple of things that could be done, like scanning documents to PDF. PDF is a pretty stable technology, although Adobe keeps adding new features to it, mostly related to digital signatures and security.

What I think is still missing? An easy way to distribute and organize this information. Things should be as easy as "hand me the paper" or else it won't work. Sure email is faster than normal internal mail, but a lot of business is still done face-to-face and this technology is still lagging.

But I'm optimistic. I think that most companies are actually realizing this problem and working towards solutions. Integration is a challenge, but that's why I still have to go and open my own company to do this! :-)

Oh, before I forget, I have to talk about the most stupid thing I've seen done by a well-known company in a long time: Google's Web Accelerator. C|Net has a good article about it. Some people claim it is a good idea, it is a bold move by Google to have one of the most precious pieces of information that Google is still missing to improve search relevancy: click through information. Google is betting that they can deal with the bandwidth necessary for it. But beyond these interesting details, the idea is ridiculous. Websites are moving towards more and more personalization, if Google decides to be a proxy of all this information, personalization is dead. Web ads are also dead, because Google would cache them and they would be, for the advertiser, as if it was clicked only once. And this doesn't even get into the whole thing of the crawler deleting information or serving private information to other people.

If this can be fixed? Well, only Google will tell. I don't think so, but maybe they just don't care about it. Powerful companies that have the motto of "Do no good" end up just making people accept it and learn how to deal with it. Maybe it's the new Kirkland office that is making Google have some Microsoft-like ideas.

Tiger

It's sad to see that this blog is becoming a weekly thing, instead of anything more constant. It may not be sad to you, my dear rare reader, but it feels sad to me, because I do still go to my Firefox and open all the blogs I have bookmarked at once every day. My blog is the first to appear just for me to check if anybody left me a comment, but I always see the same last post and 0 comments. As most of you know, I dread "sameness"...

Anyway, now for business: yesterday I passed by a Mac store and saw the new Tiger. My impression from a person that does not use a Mac and didn't have that much time to play around with it: it is really nice looking. Spotlight is very cool, and their videoconferencing is also very nice. If you want more information about these features, this is a very good (and a little biased) article.

What else did I do yesterday? I walked a lot and saw more nice things about Seattle. It is a very nice looking city. Things tend to be a little hidden, but there are lots of things going on all the time!

Last week, besides working, I was asked to provide a finer table of one of my articles. It is nice to see people really paying attention to what I did during my research years. Surely it was a little sad that they asked for something that wasn't really related to the mainline of my research, but what can I do if I can't find time to finish my ultimate paper?

Alright, time to get back to cleaning here. Bad thing about walking too much yesterday is that I didn't have time to do much else. Oh, yes, I watched The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy! They really made deep modifications to the original plot in the book, but it was nice. Many fun parts were still there! A must for anybody that likes funny geeky movies (well, the book is much better, of course, but I don't expect people to have much time to read anymore - they are too bothered by ringing cell phones!)!

Emails and IQ

This is an interesting article that appeared at The Guardian (a very well-known British newspaper): Emails 'pose threat to IQ'. It talks about a study made that points that the constant lack of focus that you get currently because of the amount of assynchronous information you receive is very alarming. It is an interesting point! But I'm not completely sure how to deal with something like this, though... How to make emails, cell phones, etc. less intrusive in our concentration? Sure you can turn them off, but the problem is that our society is getting more and more towards creating devices that are always on, and always reachable. We want to be found, we want to be interrupted!

One good thing about this article: I can blame on something for feeling more and more stupid!

A Passover post

It's Passover again... Actually the first Passover I have here in Seattle. But I can't say it's an exciting perspective. Tonight I have the first seder at the house of a former mayor of Medina (the town where Bill Gates live, where 2-bedroom houses cost about 1.5 million dollars - yes, this place). But the rest of the week will be just taking food to work, because eastern asian food is not very Passover-friendly (too much corn starch everywhere).

Lately I have been going through this very introspective time in my life (again), where I'm having lost of thought, most of them work-related. I wished I could just forget the world for a couple of months and try to get these thoughts out of my mind before they consume me to death. The good thing is that so far I haven't lost nights of sleep because of them. Only had dreams about it.

Anyway, I'll shoot one of the ideas here just to get away from being "abstract": Imagine simulating the behavior of elements in a database to extract relations. This behavior is very simple (and, thus, hopefully scalable): send a message to an element that has semething to do with you. Then you can just analyze the patterns in these messages and extract the overall relations. Instead of creating a hugely connected graph, you can just see the log traces of a graph that doesn't actually exist and this requires much less memory and can be very powerful by changing the definition of "having somthing to do with you".

I could throw some math here right now, but this would be very cumbersome and nobody would actually be interested in it.

Now my only problem is to find time to get it done.

Earthquake in the world of online publishing

As most people already know, today Adobe bought Macromedia. What does that mean? Well, there are a number of things, but I think that most are good:

- Less competition in the field, less innovation
- More integration between important technologies, such as Freehand, Photoshop and Flash
- Cheaper packages for small companies that needed Photoshop for image editing and Dreamweaver for making webpages for example
- Better interfaces (there was a big lawsuit fight going on about Flash using some UI features that were patented by Adobe)

But when are we going to see any changes? Well, packaging is not too hard to change, so I would expect this to happen reasonably soon (in a year). Integration is always a headache. I wouldn't expect to see anything in this direction for the next 2 years. But I'm hopeful! I think that graphic publishing in general needs some sort of reality check.

Ideas.. Ideas... Ideas...

I don't know what happened to me yesterday evening, after watching Mendelssohn's "Elijah" and really missing being part of a choir, my brain entered this idea mode with thousands of things I want to try. Most of them are work-related, though. I can't stop. I wasn't able to sleep very well last night, I don't even feel hungry or tired (by the way, I haven't had dinner last night). It's been a LONG time I haven't felt this way. Last time it was the beginning of my research, when I had very similar ideas, actually. This time I won't be scared of the size of what I want to do, and that's what I'm doing today! My manager asked if I wanted to take the day off and I will... Off from normal work, but I just can't ignore all these new ideas in my mind. So, off to work I go!

The healthy Seattle

It is very interesting to see the psychological profile of Seattle. People here are a little strange in the sense of trying to prove something about their health. Not even getting into the big hype about "organic food" that is happening everywhere (btw: what is "inorganic food?"), but a good part of my co-workers are vegetarian, many people I meet around are vegetarian or vegan, I was asked last week by a co-worker if I ever thought of fasting for a week or so to "cleanse my body"... It is not crazy, it is just off the charts on the "normality" rate. And today I even heard of another person that used his mouse on his left hand, although he was right-handed, because he wanted to "train himself" to be left-handed too. All this "testing your body" type of thing just makes me amazed!

Of course this effect can also be bad. I think I never had so many friends around here that are big drug "enjoyers" or were a lot in the past. I won't say they are "users" and not even close to addicts, but it is just strange. There are still a lot of things I have to get use to while living here. But now I'll just go for a walk.

Resuscitating this blog

I don't quite know why, but I've decided that I do like to blog. Maybe it's because I have grown to be a terrible email writer, maybe it's just because I don't like the synchronous nature of other types of communication (sure I can write emails any time I want, but if someone hasn't had time to answer yet, I feel bad about writing another one), or maybe it's just that I feel that all blogs I read are dying and I don't like the feeling of it.

Anyway, here I am back to the world of blogging. I have been thinking of what I would change that might make my blog more readable, but I still have no good idea (besides working on the layout, but this will still be postponed to a time I have more inspiration - and maybe better software for image editing).

Where to start? Too many things happened since my last post... I went back to Stillwater, defended my Ph.D., came back a Doctor of Philosophy (no, I can't write "official" presciptions - not even to book on philosophy) and now work has been keeping me busy. Maybe I can rant about the Oklahoma Tax system!

Well, in the US you have to pay (in some states, including Oklahoma, but not including Washington) state tax. When it comes to the tax period you have to file all the tax return forms hoping to get part of this tax back. Anyway, I lived in Oklahoma for 9 1/2 months, right? And the amount I've made in OK was about 1/3 of what I've made in the whole year (as expected). The problem is how the OK tax is calculated: it is a part of what you make regardless of where you make it! So, as I've gone up a couple of tax buckets since I moved, I suddenly had to pay $250 in taxes to OK out of the money I've made in Washington!!! What actually happened is that because I went up in the tax bucket, the amount they were deducting from my salary in OK was too little. Oh, and for you to have a feel of how much I went up in buckets, the amount deducted from my salary was about $500.

That's life! Next year I hope I don't have to go through it any more! Hopefully my money this year will help the economy in Oklahoma (although when I was there I talked to a plumber that claimed that OK has enough oil to supply all the US demand for oil for 50 years! One of two things: either he has no idea of how much oil the US uses, or he likes conspiracy theories about hidden treasures).

This blog is dead

Today I have been thinking and discussing with myself, in between work and cleaning, what I should do about this blog. I found out that I just don't have motivation to write here any more. I don't have anything to say and this makes me feel bad! Thus, in order to keep people still excited about what the Internet can offer, I'm retiring this source of waste of time. I'll probably go back to writing for my own, who knows even composing... I'll go back to writing emails to my friends (something I just haven't been doing...). Until something proves me wrong, I'm retiring from being a blogger. It was fun while it lasted. I did write some posts that I feel happy to look back to, especially in my old blog. But this blog has never gone anywhere, so maybe I shoudln't have even tried to move it somewhere.

Goodbye

A weekend of different paces

This weekend wasn't a bad one, it was just very different. Yesterday I spent the whole day with my girlfriend. We went out for breakfast, went shopping for furniture for my apartment (but didn't find anything interesting) then in the evening, we went for a concert with Collective Soul. The opening band was called Low Millions and was interesting. Big U2 influence, nothing really new, but not too bad. But when we got to Collective Soul... It's not that they are a bad band, it is just that the person that was setting the balance simply disappeared with the vocals. It was hard to follow songs that I didn't know and couldn't hear the vocals. We ended up even leaving the concert early! Good that we didn't pay for it (she has a friend that works in the place where the concert was and was able to let us in for free). Then we ate at a vegan restaurant. Very interesting food!

Anyway, today was a complete change of pace. I spent the day cleaning and working. I'm still waiting for my advisor's comments to arrive, so I couldn't work on my dissertation. But I had lots of things to do for my "bills-paying" work and a ton of cleaning and laundry to do.

Alright, time to go!

News from my advisor

I finally got a call from my advisor (actually 2, I missed his call yesterday and only realized it today when he called me again). It seems like my dissertation is going the right way. He has a couple of things for me to correct and add, but is hopeful that I can schedule my defense for next month. That means that thare shouldn't be that many things to do! It is exciting! This weekend should still be ok, because I probably won't received his comments until early next week, but I'll have busy evenings next week.

Besides that, I can only say that I'm back to the "busy" stage. I've started dating again! Part of me was saying to let me wait until my defense, but it just happened. I shouldn't say much more about it right now, because it's just the beginning of everything, but we have been enjoying ourselves for now. She's been keeping me away from work as much as she can (she works too, and in the evenings sometimes) and we have been even cooking together, and watching some Food Network (that was yesterday - I think the first time we actually stayed in front of a TV with it on). Sure she made me watch "Wimbledon", but sometimes it is hard to run away from these things. It is actually difficult for me to rate chick flicks, because they all seem the same to me. Here is the basic plot:

They see each other, fall in love, there is something that happens that makes them have to stay away, usually related to family, they can't stand being away from each other and they break the rules, get together and everything works well!

How to rate it? Predictable? SURE. Bad? Well... Everything I say can be used against me, so I'll just stop here. Let's just say that I watched the whole movie, and she fell asleep in the middle of it.

Ok, back to work here. My day hasn't been too productive. After the call from my advisor, I just couldn't concentrate any more. But I'll get back to it. After my 11 am meeting.

Strange news about next shuttle flight

Can somebody actually explain this to me: NASA bumps return to flight. The strange thing is that this article claims that they changed the date because they had worries about "lighting conditions". Do they have some type of Egyptian Sun God device to which the light has to align perfectly or else they can't have a launch? It's only 3 days of difference, it's not that the sun will be on a very different position!

Oh, well... NASA people like to do strange calculations for everything! We just hope one team didn't use the English measurements while the other used metric.

After another very interesting Friday evening

Yesterday evening was another very interesting one. I was invited to have dinner at a Rabbi's place. Arriving there I found out that he organizes these dinners almost every Friday (when he is around) and invites as many people as he can fit in his house. The conclusion is that I met many different and interesting people. I've even met a medical doctor that has been to Brazil multiple times. He was even invited to work there at the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein. He started mentioning all the family he has there and some names even rang the bell as people that I might have met. Small world!

Not only that, I met a Brazilian guy that works at Microsoft right now. He was a little tired (he is one of those people that work 12+ hours a day - and imagine that, he is from Rio de Janeiro!), but we still had a very good conversation.

All of the people there were older than I was (well, except the Rabbi's kids). It is interesting to see how many things in common I can find when I go to these events. Especially when there is a Brazilian Jew around! I guess now I have new possibilities for Friday events, and a whole new group of people to get to know.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is that sometimes human nature is sad. Creating excuses in order to hide evident facts just doesn't get you anywhere. But it is not a person's fault, it is the way we operate. If it is because of culture or if it is genetic we will never know. I'm betting on a little of both, because of the wide-spread nature of this problem. It is that our brain needs negative reinforcement to learn or un-learn. Synapses have to be made stronger and weaker. And that's what our memory is all about. We can be made to believe whatever we want, as long as we know how to lie to ourselves.

A busy week behind me

This week was interestingly busy. It started with me not feeling too good (I got a very quick cold that just made me feel not too great for a day or so) evolving into big changes at my area at Amazon (re-org) and culminating on me being invited for dinner tonight at a Rabbi's place. Of course he won't be very happy to know that I'll drive there and drive back home, but I think he will live.

Just a little bit more on the re-org, basically my direct manager changed (my current manager became my manager's manager - I guess I can say I was demoted) and lots of things moved around. My project didn't change at all, and I think it was a good change (with some small disagreements, though). Like all changes, for some time people get a little confused with what they have to do now, but it'll settle soon.

I don't know what else to talk about. My life is changing in some subtle (and some not-too-subtle) ways, but I'm still trying to understand the change before I can really discuss it. I think it is a good change!

As for a link, maybe people should have a quick look into Yub.com. The concept is interestin: combining product and local reviews with social networks for you to get to know people that buy like you and get some idea of who is behind reviews. However, the good things, in my opinion, end there. The main problem with it is who joins the network. Social networks are dead... Most of the people that join these things are young, teenagers. What can they review in depth? Sure there have to be some interesting reviews, but most of them are around "Oh, man, this is soooo coool!"

The user interface is a little too busy, but there are good things about it. Oh, well, take a look and get your own impressions of it.

Ah, I should also send another link: Israeli-Palestinian Cease-Fire. I surely have to put a disclaimer here that this is a link to The Onion, if you know what I mean...

Valentine's day yearly rant

Valentine's day is a very strange day in the American calendar. I'm getting to the conclusion that Americans are just too jealous of each other, so there can't be any holidays that people give gifts to one person only. They have to extend the gift giving to everybody else, like co-workers, children, teachers. It is actually a big day at elementary schools (and even after that)!

The whole concept behind this date is wrong. The amount of pressure that it puts on a relationship (Will he get the right flowers? Good chocolate? Reservations on that expensive restaurant?) is just unreal and unhealthy. The psychological benefits from a common day of "love-giving" is also not that important. It can only go wrong!

I'm an advocate of the "every day is a good day to be romantic". I think romance has to be spontaneous and should have a set date for it. Restaurants and chocolate companies wouldn't know how to focus their work anymore, though. But that's a minor detail.

Alright, I'm falling asleep while writing this. I didn't realize it was already almost 2 a.m. Let me go to bed.

Just as an update, I actually went on a date technically yesterday. It was alright, but I'm not sure I'll get a second one. My boring inner self was not very impressive. But who knows?

Old patterns die hard

I'm starting to see some old patterns creeping in my life. I thought I learned, but it seems like I didn't. The problem is that, in a way, although most people around me have similar patterns, it seems like I'm the only one bothered by them. I think I care too much about these kinds of things, so maybe I should just stop caring.

Yesterday I went to the happy hour with my office mates. We had a good time talking, eating and drinking at a brewery just west of where we work called Pyramid. The beer tasted like beer, in other words, terrible! :-) One of the things that I was taught yesterday about Seattle is that I have to treat it as a small town. You will find people you know almost everywhere you go when you start to know more people. Actually I'm starting to notice that little by little. It's not Stillwater-small, where after a couple of weeks you can't really go anywhere public and expect not to be recognized, but I recognized at least 3 people last time I went to watch a concert!

Oh, talking about concerts, now I'm an official supporter of the Seattle Symphony. Not a huge supporter that my name will appear in all programs, but I will be invited for the founder's lounge, to a special concert, and a type of dinner sometime. It is exciting! I just hope I didn't choose a date that will conflict with my defense.

Well, time to go back to work here. It is time for major cleaning in my apartment! My allergies are starting to bother me, so I have to do what I can to control them. I'm not sure it's my apartment, but it's the only thing I can really control.

Here are two apparently unrelated articles that I found interesting during my morning sweep through the news:

Free Expression Can Be Costly When Bloggers Bad-Mouth Jobs. It talks about people being fired because they mentioned something that was against the company's image. It is sad how important this concept of image is for a company. Sure they try to prevent people from lying saying bad things about the company that could make investors run away for no reason. But, at the same time, isn't firing a person going to do more harm than not? It is as if you admit that this person was leaking information about the dark side of the company. At least they didn't kill her!

My point of view is that people have to be careful with what they post about work. Especially when it could be secret information of a product that will come out soon and knowing it early could warn the competitors; or the investors. But just discussing problems you have with some internal company policy should actually trigger discussion inside the company. Saying: "I read you don't like our way of doing things, so you are fired!" does not solve any problems. Oh, well...

Now for the next piece of news: Crime-Friendly Neighborhoods. This article talks about some modifications in some neighborhoods that remove the isolation that it had through the need of cars and ended up bringing criminals in. A friend of mine mentioned that this is one of the reasons why public transportation is terrible in many parts of California. People are afraid that if they put buses going to the rich areas, this would attract criminals to these rich areas.

It is the same idea of adding levels of security to your house or car, or even to a web site. They are not unbreakable, but they make the criminals decide that it is easier to go elsewhere. As human beings are naturally lazy, it works. But does this solve anything? It just creates a larger rift between the two groups that acts as a capacitor, letting charges accumulate. Think of a small capacitor exploding: just a small popping sound and the smell of something burning, not too bad. Now think of those huge mC capacitors, 40 cm of diameter or more... You don't want to be around when they do explode.

No... Not working 12+ hours a day any more... yea, right

After I finished my dissertation I saw that easily I was going to lock myself in the office for longer periods of time, because I don't have a reason to go back home any more. So I made a promise to myself: I'm not going to stay in the office for more than 10 hours!

Well, I guess that today I broke my promise. I had to work on some stuff and when I finished I looked at the watch and saw: oh, it's 8:45 pm... I arrived in the office today at what? 7:45... 13 hours? And thinking that my bus just left, so I'll have to wait until 9:20 to get the next one. Grrr... Hateful Michel!

But at least I got some work done. And I did it faster than I though I was going to. I thought that what I had to do was going to take 4 hours and it took me 3. Neat! The only thing is that now I have to go back to the hard work.

By the way, I realize that I can't form good phrases any more. I think I'm a little tired (and hungry). Just 20 more minutes and I can leave to get the bus... 20 more minutes.

Still learning things from other sources

Today I was going through my usual sweep through online news when I find this: Amazon invests in blogging site. Strange move... I'll try to investigate more about it. But of course I won't be able to post or tell anybody outside work what it is about, but this post is just to let people think.

Besides that, it was a pretty hard day at work today. In the afternoon I was interrupted to talk about an idea that I just thought it was reasonably stupid. But the person that had this idea insisted so much in it, even took me out to eat (dessert) to discuss it! I don't know why, one of my weaknesses is that things that I find are stupid bother me. It makes my mind go crazy trying to understand why that person gave this idea, and what this person isn't seeing that I'm seeing that is making me think it is stupid. The result of it: I just couldn't do any work any more. So I came home. At 7:15 pm I was home, imagine that!!! And what am I doing? Reading the news and... working. At least it is quiet here.

A depressing morning

I think I shouldn't ever chat with my parents in the morning. Lately they have been sending me through endless guilt trips because I'm not home. For instance, this morning my mother said that my sister asked her to say hi to me, because she can't chat with me any more or else she starts crying. She can't listen to classical music or R.E.M. (my favorite band) without crying. It is just hard sometimes...

Sometimes news arrive the wrong way

I was reading the news before going to sleep (I have to wake up early in the morning, because I have a chat with my parents very early) when I suddenly saw this article: Amazon searches for big office digs. I don't work at the PacMed building, but it's a very nice building! Wonderful view of Seattle! Pretty slow and strange elevators... But it is fun to always arrive in Seattle and see it looking back at me.

Anyway, time to go to sleep here. Not much else to talk about. I finally cooked today, actually! I'm impressed! But, of course, my evening was gone with all the cooking and cleaning up afterwards. At the same time, it's not that I have a lot to do in the evenings now!

Google maps

I have to blog this, although I'm sure the web is being infested by this news in all blogs: check out the new Google Maps. Google again showing that they know how to use JavaScript! If I was MapQuest or Yahoo Maps, I would be worried, really worried!

And now the next thing is to wait for them to combine this information with satellite pictures (they bought a company that does this not too long ago).

Starting to feel like I'll have a life in Seattle

After sending my dissertation out to my advisor, I went out to watch the end of the Super Bowl party and then went to a meeting with the Jewish young adults group. And I don't know... It felt strangely different. I wasn't talking to people thinking that I should be at home working on my dissertation and it was awesome! The only bad thing is that we were at a brewery that closed pretty early and nobody had the energy to do anything else. But, hey, maybe I'll have good days ahead! The only thing that worries me a little is that right now I'll have the tendency of staying until very late at work. I don't have a research waiting for me at home any more (at least until my advisor sends me correction requests). It's a scary thought, but I do need to get some work done!

It's out

Finally, after working for a good while on this, my dissertation is finally out to my advisor. Yes, it's not 100% complete. I need to work on the table of contents, table of figures, etc. (it's word, shouldn't take that long, right? Wrong! But I'll work on this). I also have to write the aknowledgements, and vita. But, besides this bureaucratic things, it's out! Now I don't know what to do! maybe I should go and join the Super Bowl party that is going on at my apartment complex's office.

This is an interesting article: Hide Your IPod, Here Comes Bill about how many people at Microsoft have IPods, although MS has their own options for MP3 players. The cool part of it is that they mention "Bellevue Square Apple Store" and Bellevue Square is the mall that is about 3 blocks from my place! And I'm not one of the people that buy the 400 IPods a day! Amazing!

Exhausted

I'm almost there. I actually was there, but then I decided to remove a whole section to start all over again. It's not supposed to be a long section, but an important one. The only reason why I haven't finished everything yet and I'm ready to start partying is that I'm exhausted! My brain stopped functioning!

And it's not entirely because of my dissertation, but also (and specially) because I got a phone call from one of the managers from work and he started asking me lots of work-related questions, to try to understand what I was doing, what other people in my team were doing, and why. Almost 1 1/2 hours later I was done and he was happy enough with my answers (I hope). But my brain decided that working on my dissertation since 7 am plus a 1 1/2 hour work-related phone discussion (have I mentioned that I HATE phones?), and 30 minutes of clarinet playing (do you believe in that? It was actually interrupted by the phone call - I thought it was my upstairs neighbors pleading me to stop playing)... Oh, I also had an hour chat with my parents and my grandmother (that's why I started getting the "conspiracy" that I mentioned before - although my mother mentioned more than once that I will probably never go back home, and that made me really sad). How come I was able to almost finish my dissertation then?

Now I'm trying to figure out what I want to have for dinner. I still don't have food at home and don't quite feel like grocery shopping and cooking. The first thing that comes to my mind on a Saturday when this happens is "pizza!", but this went through my mind last Thursday already and I can't eat the same thing only after two days... Or can I?

And the conspiracy starts to unfold...

Today I found some new details about the conspiracy that my parents are planning... Although they claim there is no real conspiracy: my younger sister (and my mother too) are looking for a boyfriend for one of my sisters best friend. You do the rest of the math!

Changing subject, my dissertation is coming, but I'm a little worried now. I have implemented something and when I was writing it down I suddenly had a great idea of how to make it more efficient! Now I don't know if I should go back and try it, or just add it to the "future improvements"... Actually even part of me is saying to write it down as if I did it! This last part is confusing me a little! Why am I thinking of cheating on my dissertation? It's something I should be proud of in the future and not ashamed that I actually didn't implement everything I claimed I did (although I can't say that my last and most efficient version of the software works with all the nice procedures that I've built before, but that's a minor detail! All of them used to work!).

Oh, well, time to get back to it. I can even start to imagine finishing it today! I'm so close!

I found an article about GMail's increase in the number of people you can invite: Google's GMail Goes Global. Nothing groundbreaking in it, either. I'm still looking for analysis of what this might mean. Doing that on my 5 minute breaks of working on my dissertation. It is getting there. I'm in chapter 6 out of 8! (yes, well, most of the changes happened in chapters 6 and 7 anyway... but that's a minor detail!)

Gmail's explosion of invites

I don't know exactly when this happened, but today I was checking my gmail and suddenly I have 50 invites left! And I do have two gmail accounts, meaning that I can invite up to 100 people! That pretty much means that there is only one thing that gmail does not allow: people have to have an email address to get a gmail address! This is the way you send invites, you give the email address of your friend and then this person receives in invitation. What is the reason behind Google forcing people to have another email address? Do they want to always keep track of who their competitors are based on where people send invites to? Or who they are smashing? With so many invites available, why don't they just open the floodgates? Afraid that people will have hundreds of gmail accounts to use as their backup system? Oh, well... Just thought I had to drop this note before going back to work on my dissertation here. It's getting there, but isn't quite there yet.

Some people might be thinking: "You work at Amazon, so why don't you comment on the huge drop in the stock price that happened today?" I don't think there is much to comment about that, though. Amazon is going through dangerous ways. It is positioned in a market that requires lots of investment, and lots of risk. The point that bothers investors is that Amazon likes to take risks and invest all the money it gets on strange projects that may or may not give returns in the medium and long term. An example? The A9 Yellow Pages. Lots of money was invested in going around 10 cities in the US to take pictures of pretty much all streets and then make them available online. What is the profit from that? Brand placement as a source of innovation! You go to A9, find the business you are looking for, then it throws you to Amazon to see the pictures. Now you are at Amazon and you may decide to look around and buy something! This may happen and probably does. But is it enough to justify the investment? Who knows? The only thing that people know is that Wall Street is not happy, and nobody likes to see an unhappy Wall Street.

It is an interesting environment to be in a company that just received "bad news." People lose a little excitement, start to get a little worried about their future. But, for me, I wasn't shaken by the news. I knew it was coming, because I can add 2+2 and see how much investment is happening at Amazon. Even the project I'm involved right now is a risky investment. We haven't delivered anything so far! Lots of really bright people (yes, I know I'm an outlier there... But they always have to have an anchor to drag them back, right? This thought make me feel good in the morning, so I'll stick to it) working on a really hard problem, both technically and politically. It's fun to be there!

Recognition to the ones that might not deserve it

In the same frame of mind of the now famous Ig Nobel, I cam across another interesting contest: The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. In this contest, they recognize the worst phrases in literature. I'll give an example: The winner for the 2004 prize on Children's Literature was:

Jack planted the magic beans and in one night a giant beanstalk grew all the way from the earth up to the clouds--which sounds like a lie, but it can be done with genetic engineering, and although a few people are against eating gene-engineered foods like those beans it's a high-paying career to think about for when you grow up.

Frances Grimble
San Francisco, CA

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Neat, huh? Don't you just feel like looking for a child to whom you can read this story?

Follow-up from yesterday's post

So, after getting depressed with yesterday's article that I've posted here, I get this one: Britain Pushes U.S. on Warming. I'm waiting for action, but I'll probably just hear how great the elections were in Iraq. We are still doomed!

The web, bringing scary news

This is one of the most depressing articles I've read in a long time: Home PCs Predict Hotter Earth. According to these new predictions, if people (I'm not pointing fingers at anybody in particular) don't stop making silly decisions to hide their own inability to govern, we are going to fry in the near future. Fry and drown! Isn't this really cool?

Going hiking around Seattle

Yes, finally I did go hiking! Got all my pseudo-gear (I don't have any hiking-specific things, like my friend had, such as a water bottle with a hose from which you could drink without having to stop and get your water bottle and then put it back inside your bag, and really water-proof hiking boots - and that's what I missed most, it was very muddy there) and there we went, to the Tiger Mountain!

It is a very closeby place, only about 10 (13 km) from my apartment. The hike started with lots of mud and a very steep climb of something like 700 meters! My legs were dying when we reached a plateau, but then it became easier. We were following a map trying to go around this mountain. But then we had a Twilight Zone experience: imagine this, we start a hike facing nortwest, only take right turns and when you realize we end up a mile west of where we started. It just didn't make any sense at all! But after walking for about 3 hours, we decided that we should go home. We went for lunch and then he dropped me at home (he was driving).

In the evening I decided to go out with another friend for dinner. My plan was just go enjoy the evening with a nice talk, but then I found out that I was suddenly on a date! We had good conversation, but this "date" thing just made the evening weird.

But it didn't end this way! Sunday I spent most of the day working on my research until around 5 pm when she called me again and asked if I didn't want to go out again. Me, the "yes guy", fell for that again. And there I went for a second meeting that was treated as a second date. I felt like everything was getting more and more complicated. We had just a great time talking, but the idea that it was supposed to be a "date" was still akward.

Well, but this wasn't everything either! Just 30 minutes ago I came online and she was here. We started talking and then suddenly she mentioned how much she was starting to miss me and it just went down from there. Crying here and there, and I was just thinking: "oh, my research... Oh, my hunger... oh, my work!"

But I had to finish this post before going and doing all this. I think I'm retiring my MSN messenger. It is not that I don't like her (I have to make this clear, because this is not an anonymous blog), it is just that I need to finish my Ph.D. soon! And there are just too many things that I need to focus on right now... I'm just in the wrong mindset! And, hey, I just met her!

I'll start today's post with an interesting article I found on Reason: Free Kurdistan! It talks about something that appears from time to time in the mind of people: why should Iraq be unified? Isn't unification dictatorial and can potentially lead to more blodshed? It's interesting to think about that. What do I think? I think that it is all wrong, anyway, so why not just accept it and go on with what you have? Go and have a unified Iraq and see what this will take you! When the poor US soldiers will be able to be sent back home? Not anytime soon...

After this prelude, it's time for a little summary of my week. First I have to say that nothing really exciting happened. I worked on both my research and... on my work. Actually there is one potentially exciting thing: tomorrow I'm going hiking with a friend from work. He has been trying to plan this for a while, but finally we decided to go for it. Surely the weather won't be great, but what to expect from Seattle during the winter? It is going to be fun anyway, I'm sure!

I actually got bad news: my most important paper of all I've sent was rejected. And it wasn't a very "mild" rejection, but a "rewrite everything" type of rejection. Made me a little sad.

Oh, and on my way back from work today (yes, around 10 pm), I had some strange ideas of things I should add to my dissertation. Statistical analysis about network growth being the basis for the creation of normalization techniques. It would probably work, but I don't know if I want to go through the whole math. I don't know if it is worth it... I would have to make so many assumptions that it wouldn't be that useful. I'll think a little bit more about this!

Time to go. I still have to have dinner here. And then go to buy some supplies for tomorrow.

The benefits of having poor memory

Not being able to memorize most things are most always a big problem that I have to live with every day. However, from time to time I have to enjoy some of the benefits. One of the most important benefits is that when I read something I wrote some time ago I get impressed with my past ability to write! I do get a little depressed by thinking that if I think I wrote well in the past, it means that I write badly right now.

Anyway, more specifically I was working on my dissertation and I was impressed with how readable I think it is. There are very few things that I would really change, and this makes me excited! I do have to change one chapter and add a new one (and to correct the introduction and conclusion to match this change), but the rest of the dissertation is pretty good, in my humble opinion (remember that it seems like to me as if I wasn't the one that wrote it - I know the content, but the words just seem alien).

A day I was glad I work at Amazon

Today it was one of the days I was really happy I work here. Why? Because I had the opportunity of seeing and getting a free autographed book from Alton Brown! You might be thinking: who is Alton Brown? Before you actually click on the link, I'll tell you that he is the hero of nerds that like to cook! His objective in life is to try to understand what happens when you cook and put it in very simple terms to appeal to the non-experts.

If you've watched at least some of his shows you know his jokes, right? Well, life he is a real comedian, making fun of Rachael Ray and Emeril (who doesn't, right? Even on the cooking presentation I saw on Saturday, the chef made fun of Emeril's "BAM"). It was great! A very healthy way of investing 1 hour of my day.

I have many things to say about it, but I have to run now. I'm trying to get home early so that I can work on my research.

Build it and they will come

Especially if you build something on the internet, somebody will always find it. Today I had the experience of somebody finding my profile on JDate (although I did remove it from all searches for some reason I don't quite remember) and coming to me and asking "how is it doing?"

What do you answer to a question like this? "Oh, it's doing great! I'm having a couple of dates every evening, but still looking for my soul mate!"? I actually went for the reality: "Well, it's not going, but I never put my profile there with any hope that it would get me anywhere" To tell you the truth (and this I didn't tell that girl), I'm not even looking right now. Yes, I am looking for friends to take me away from my apartment, but nobody to take me away from finishing my Ph.D. I have lots of things to do and work is already taking more time than I really wanted.

But I did have a nice evening. It was a Tu B'shvat seder... I haven't had a seder for this holiday since my Bar Mitzvah days (a LONG time ago). And actually back then you don't quite get all the symbolism in a holiday. This one is full of kabalististic stuff, with groups of 4 and doing things in progression of getting closer to G'd. It was really interesting. Lots of fruit!

Then I went out with some of the people to a bar by the university. I was first worried that I was going to see all these college students, but it was pretty empty and quiet. Nice place to sit and talk (and to hear that somebody found my profile on JDate). Actually yesterday was nice too! I went for a Shabbat dinner and then we also went out to a bar to talk. This bar was a little noisier and strange. The dècor didn't make any sense! Mirrors, tables with flowers on them, selling beer and pies, with hard rock being played. In the back they had a pool table (the place was small, so the back wasn't that far away from the front).

The only problem with yesterday is that it ended up getting so late that I had no bus to get back home (actually there was one that I could get at 2 am, but it was still 1 am only). The good thing is that somebody did give me a ride back home, so I didn't have to worry too much.

Today was cleaning and working on my research. Tomorrow is going to be the same thing. But now I think I'm going to bed.

I forgot one thing that people that read my post might have been thinking: if you don't like the way things are done here, especially politics, why are you here? The answer is very simple: the hope is in the fact that the world is not only made of politics (as some people might think... Maybe politics and family). You will never find a place in which everything is perfect, but this doesn't mean that you can't criticize! Only people with very little aspirations in life don't criticize and just go away, learn to live with it, or worse, join the crowd.

President Bush's inauguration joke

This morning, when I was having breakfast, I turned on the TV to check the weather. As there was nothing really exciting happening in the weather, I switched to CNN. And what did I get? The whole President Bush Inauguration thing. A joke! People discussing how proud they were to be American, and what a wonderful time they were going through. It was just so hypocritical, nearing complete senselessness. What were these people talking about? A president that was able to divide the country but get a little bit over 50% of it? And not only that, the other half felt ashamed that this president won. It is not only that they were sad that who they thought was better lost, like happens in a sports event, they were actually depressed with the fact that the other half chose to reelect Mr. Bush. These are not great times, these are times that you should stop and think of what went wrong. These are times to be ashamed of.

I'm sure right now some of the very few people that actually read my blog are thinking: "what are you talking about, you don't even vote!" And this makes me way more depressed about it. It doesn't mean that I don't see what is around me. It doesn't mean that I didn't feel the state of mourning that this city was in the day after the elections.

I'm not being political here trying to say that the American people elected the wrong guy, I'm just criticizing the people that thought that this was a victory and that the day today was a celebration of freedom and patriotism. There are people dying around the world. Poverty, lack of education, abuse of power and chaos just grow. Much more important than that, new ideas, cure for diseases, and the human understanding is growing every minute. And people are celebrating the little show of a person that is continuing to be the president? Feeling that it is great that a senator from Arkansas is walking around the stage to talk with another senator from Indiana? Where are people's sense of reality?

I keep tying to convince myself that education would solve all of it. But what is education if not only the imposition of a set of "truths"? For the eye of the show makers, I'm worse than them all.

Yesterday I had a long discussion with one of my co-workers about why he thinks that the patriot act is wrong. Why shouldn't they be allowed to check all the books that you are getting from the library? He likes his "liberties" and doesn't want to trade them from an immaterial concept of security from "terrorists". I don't care about security, but I don't think that the government doing anything with my library records actually takes away any of my liberties. They are not restricting the places I go or the books I read. They are actually spending money for nothing useful. Looking at people's library records doesn't tell you anything. If you are an actual terrorist, you will find ways of getting books anyway. Internet, Xerox machines at the libraries, friends, false identities... They will be mining for a needle (one day that the person was a little lazy) in the haystack. The amount of noise in large datasets such as these makes analysis impossible. What can you do, then? Find a person that seems suspicious and then run checks. And this you can do anyway with warrants, so they just simply decreased the bureaucracy...

Anyway, it seems like I left the topic. But I actually didn't. The bottom line I wanted to get using these two examples is that it is too easy to make people focus on tractable things. Building a show, asking for permission to look into people's library records or flight history. But this misses the problem, thus missing the solution. The world needs less money and attention spent on consequences and more work devoted on sources. It may be painful, scary, but it's the only way to go. Make the inauguration ceremony as just the previous president giving the key to the White House to the new president. If the president didn't change, just don't do anything. Make fighting terrorism the analysis of its roots. Empower people that make a difference, and not the people that squash the differences.

Leaving in a lighter note, today I was asked if it wouldn't be better if I left where I'm working right now and just opened a startup. Less politics...

Good news

I just got a piece of good news: my first paper related to my research was finally accepted to be published on a journal! That will be my 3rd journal publication, but the first on my research. Minor detail that it is on a part of my research that I'm not really proud of, but, as I said, it's just a minor detail. I'm waiting for my first paper to be accepted, that's where the core of my research lies... So I'll keep on waiting.

I wished I had a silent camera...

Today in the bus ride back home I really wished I had a silent camera to take pictures of some strange people that were riding in the same bus as I was.

First, ahead of me there was a person with a huge 70's afro hair and big earphones that were getting to his ears from under his afro in the back. He was listening to rap music loud enough for me to hear!

Then, on my right I had a guy that was wearing jeans full of patches and a security pin just pinned on the tigh, an inside out shirt and wearing yellow swim goggles. Oh, and he also wore those gloves that have open fingers, but a sort of cap that you can pull onto your fingers to heat them. Very strange.

And behind me there was a guy that was wearing jeans, a shirt and tie and carrying a camping backpack (those ones with metal to keep it straight).

Just out of this world... But I really liked it! I enjoy going around and seeing people being themselves, strange, but themselves. Last weekend, during a very strange talk with one of the "survivors" from the karaoke, she mentioned: "The sexiest thing that there is is a confident man". Oh, she had a boyfriend, so don't start having ideas of what she meant by it! But that's exactly what I saw today: men that were confident on their strange way of dressing and seeing reality. I didn't quite think they were any close to being sexy. That's a good thing!

The 3 finger approach to eating a muffin

I've never understood why would a person use their fingers to pick up a piece of a muffin to eat it, instead of holding the paper and taking bites out of it directly. The second option does not make your hand dirty and potentially generates less crumbs, that usually are the result of moving the piece of muffin from the paper on the table to your mouth.

Anyway, I just have been trying to post more often with more "philosophical/technological" discussions than just what is my day about. Hope this makes this blog more interesting.

Sure I still need to find time to make it look nicer, but I'll get there eventually.

Strange OCR technology

I've been going through some research on learning vocabulary and I've found nothing really interesting except one strange page. Somebody decided to put online an essay written in the 17th century by an early linguist analyzing ontology and how each language produces it. It is a very interesting text, but the most interesting about it is the apparent OCR technology that was used. See it for yourself.

It does strange tranlation of numbers like "2" into "To"... "4" into "For"... And also sometimes changes the text. Have a look and try to imagine what can be behind the technology. I'm almost thinking it is a speech recognition software with someone dictating it...

Just a little tired... and very disappointed

Yesterday was a very strange day. And unfortunately I can't say it was a good type of strange.

I had two main goals for the day: finish cleaning my apartment and finish my last analysis before going back to only writing my dissertation and finish my weekly house cleaning.

Well, I can say that I didn't get either accomplished. I did wake up early and got to work. Half way into the analysis, I decided that maybe it would be better if I simplified it and wrote everything in another language. Then I took a long time trying to decide if I was going to try to learn Ruby or remember Python. In the middle of all this discussion I decided to go to Barnes and Noble and buy a Ruby book. When I got there I found out that they didn't have any!!! So... I ended up buying other things and going back home. In the end I decided to go for Python again. But it was already 3 pm and I hadn't had lunch! So I went to the kitchend and decided on what I was going to make for a lunch/dinner. Chicken and rosemary dumplings and a barley pilaf. It was really good, but I finished everything (shopping for the ingredients, cooking, eating and cleaning up) and it was already 8 pm, the time I wanted to go to the JConnect Jews and Brews, a get-together for Jewish young adults.

There was a much smaller crowd yesterday than the last one I went to, but I had a good time (in the beginning, at least). Then, after they kicked us out of the place, at around 1:30 am, one of the people I was talking to decided to invite the "survivors" (5 people) to his apartment to continue the conversation. So there we went!

The conversation started interesting, but quickly, with the help of a couple of glasses of wine, it suddenly turned strange. They started talking about their trips to Amsterdam (3 of them had been there) and all the drugs they took when they were there. I was utterly disgusted, and disappointed at where the conversation was going. At 3:30 am we decided to disband and go to our places. I went to sleep at around 4 am and woke up at 6:30. Lots of sleep! But I'm fine, a little "groggy", but that makes life fun.

Now it's time to work. I'm not sure what to work on, though...

A strange day...

That's all I can say about yesterday.

On Thrusday the manager of my group presented part of our vision to the president of the company. The problem is that the president didn't like it. After a very tough 2 1/2 hour discussion (of which I didn't participate - only big shots were there), they've concluded that we have to redo our vision. Yesterday morning I got the debriefing of this meeting and then everything became strange. I didn't know what I had to do any more, I've lost idea of what my priorities were and nobody could help me with that. So, in the end, I ended up just having discussions with everybody about what the meeting meant (hearing some very pressimistic views of it) and then I went for a Shabbat evening service and dinner at the Hillel. It was nice, I met nice people and had interesting conversations. I've even met an Argentinian that knows some Brazilians, so there is a chance that I'll finally meet some part of the Brazilian community here in Seattle.

Today has been a little lazy. I've paid some bills, browsed the internet, cleaned, walked to lunch at an Indian place closeby (not before I spent about 15 minutes looking for my house keys that I had previously put inside my pocket - but that's a minor detail) and now I'm ready to work on my research again. There are a number of things that I want to get done today, so I should get to them.

There is one thing that is worrying me, actually: my lack of inspiration to write, that is probably related to my lack of things that I'm learning and think are of interest to other people. Yes, it is true that almost half of my day I'm at work and there are too many things at work that would give me trouble if I wrote them here. The rest of the time half of it I'm asleep, 1/4 of it I'm cooking/eating and then I'm left with only 1/8 of my day, 3 hours. 1 of these hours I spend in the bus going from home to work and back. Nothing really important usually happens in the bus, besides me reading a book and sometimes some strange people that decide to be talkative and interrupt my reading (not that it bothers me, but is something I would never do to anybody else). Then I'm left with 2 hours that are spent reading emails, working a little on my research and, sometimes, reading a little more of my book.

Yes, I'm not doing anything really exciting... I have to figure out how to change that!

Sometimes it's hard to answer this question when you sometimes forget who you are and where you are. Sometimes actions require retaliation, but most of the times an offensive response is the last thing that you should look for. I'm usually a peaceful person, although the world around me keeps shooting me bullets trying to make me react, I guess. But I just move about and let the rain fall somewhere else.

Sorry for the delay to write all this. I've been trying to post this since earlier this week, but I just can't get any free time to finish it. I write a phrase then stop to work on other things. Right now I decided that I need to just finish it and post it, even if it expresses much less than I would like to. Sometimes not writing much tells more than spending hours discussing nothingness and its importance to life.

A day of cleaning, reading, watching movies and eating...

Oh, and I worked too!

This is my day. It actually started with me finally finishing "Fallen Dragon" by Peter F. Hamilton. It is an interesting book, but I can't say it's great. Like most comments about the book, all the flashback moments are a little tiring and don't add too much to the story itself. The main line of the story, a resistance movement against a corporation that makes money by going to colonies and forcing these colonies to give them products from their factories aided by a highly advanced alien race, is not that inspired either. Sure there are some memorable philosophical discussions about technology and the reason corporations exist, but they don't go too far. A shame, but again, not too bad.

Then I cleaned my apartment. Not everything, but I vacuumed and did laundry. Now I just need to finish cleaning the bathrooms (oh joy! But tomorrow's joy). Then I worked on my research and on some stuff for Amazon. Last evening I left when my server wasn't working and I decided that I should make it work. Well, it worked, but not as well as I wanted, so I'll have lots of things to do on Monday about it.

Later I went for dinner. As I had lunch at home and I didn't have many other options, to celebrate the fact that I actually worked, I decided to treat myself to a nice restaurant. So I went to a place called "Café Juanita", an Italian restaurant. Well, for you to understand how much I was treating myself, they even had a Vallet at the door (not too common around here). The food was great! I had a penne pasta cooked on parchment paper with pine nuts, peppers and cheese. Wine and dessert (a chocolate trufle with red wine poached pears and a anise candided something (I'm not sure what it was)). Very good, but I'm still too full.

I came home and decided that I was too full to work, so I got the movie that I rented yesterday and put in the DVD player: Manchurian Candidate. Yes, it's little old, but there are too many movies that I haven't had time to watch. Unfortunately it was a very disappointing movie. Oh, the corporation wants to control the US through politics. Add to that a touch of "crazy people sometimes are not that crazy" and "soldiers are important" and there you have the movie. Nothing to learn from it.

Well, if I compare to the movie I watched yesterday (that I rented with this one), "Pandora Machine", it's a tough call. As I knew Pandora Machine was going to be bad, I think it was actually a little better than my expectations. But I heard some good things about Manchurian Candidate, so it was much below my expectations. If I compare both side by side it becomes much more difficult to tell. Sure "Pandora Machine" probably had the budget of about 2 minutes of the Manchurian Candidate, but if you compare storylines, both are very bad. "Pandora Machine" is about the world in the future when some very strange murders are going on and the privatized police is trying to find out what is going on.

Almost the whole movie is shown through the eyes of the security cameras that are spread around the whole city, so they are very strange camera angles with lots of glitches and things like that. Interesting, but annoying. Then it takes some very bizarre turns, in which the partner of the main policeman suddenly is found to be an android that is becoming sentient, but has to be destroyed or else it will destroy the whole human race (she was the "Pandora Machine"). The strange thing is that she has no role whatsoever in anything until she starts to become dizzy and faint (signs of sentience). At the same time, the killer is another sentient machine that is in love with the main character and saves him from time to time. And they have met before when he was serving the army in a war many years before. No sense whatsoever.

Oh, well, see, I do things! I try to keep myself busy!

The empty apartment

That's how my apartment feels like right now. It actually feels more like the messy empty apartment... Waking up and going to a living room that doesn't have a bed any more, having breakfast without having to worry about having everybody awake, it feels a little strange. A little sad. But I'm sure this weird feeling will disappear pretty quickly.

Onto a lighter subject: Blockbuster here decided to make a bold move and end late fees. This seems like a strange thing, especially because when you rent something you still get "due dates". I was confused on how it actually worked, so I asked the person at the cashier and he explained the catch: there are no "real" late fees. If you don't return the movie by the date you were supposed to, you get a 7-day grace period. On the 8th day they consider as if you bought the movie, so they charge you the movie price (something like $20). If you return the movie within 30 days, they credit your account again with the movie price, minus a "restock fee" (to charge you for buying the movie back from you). After 30 days you can't return it any more.

Officially now there are actually no late fees, but there are catches to everything. It looks like, right now, that the only great difference is that they effectively increased all rental periods by 7 days. However, they say that they will note in your account if you return it by the due date and this might be used later for some kind of promotion, who knows? Anyway, I'm not a big movie renter anyway. I just thought it was an interesting move.

What I'm really interested in knowing more about, actually, is the on-demand TV that I have. I can "ask for a movie" for about the same price as renting it. The selection is limited, but who knows what will happen when people get used to this technology. Cable suddenly will become pretty expensive to have!

Getting ready...

It's the last evening my parents will be here, so starting tomorrow my apartment will become huge again. Huge and empty... My life will become easier, though. Easier and lonelier. But there are good things to it. I can have my "social life" again, I can work on my research again, I can just do nothing if I want to. I'm not complaining about my family's visit. It was great! I learned things about Seattle that I wouldn't for a long time being alone. I went skiing, I have a TV, a printer, and two more pijamas (I think my family thinks the only thing I do is to sleep).

Anyway, I have to go to sleep now. I have a very long day ahead... Driving to the airport, running to get to a meeting at 9:30 am and another at 10 am, then working everything I just wasn't able to work, because I had to get back home early. This seems kind of wrong, but when you say you are getting a lot done, but you don't sometimes it's necessary to "break the healthy rules". Just for a short while, I promise.

New year, new activities

Wow, I haven't posted anything since last year.... What a terrible blogger I am! :-)

Anyway, my new year has been interesting so far. Yesterday I went skiing for the first time in my life. And it was actually fun! I didn't fall (although I did almost fall a couple of times) and I was starting to get confortable with it. However it was tiring. You have to wear a boot that forces you always to kind of squat all the time, and this boot and the skis are heavy. Interestingly, I am not all sore today!

Sure it required a 2 hour drive to the ski station (we went to a place called Crystal Mountain) and US$40 per person for rental, pass to the easy slope and a 2-hour class... It also required clothes that I didn't have, so I did suffer a little because I was wearing jeans, no ski glasses, and no ski gloves. But I survived and I'm happy that I did something new in this new year! Oh, and my car got to know what snow is...

I'm not sure what we are doing today yet, but hopefully it will continue to be something new.