mahalo.

and after the previous post, i proceeded to get a lovely migraine. there’s nothing like being woken up in the middle of the night with the urgent need to either drill a hole in your brain or puke your guts out.

that’s all i did today. woke up around noon after going to bed at 5 last night (stayed up to get the skin looking the way i wanted), then got up to play with it some more. after i realized what a waste my day had been, i went and finally got a long-overdue haircut.

after i got home, i started watching my first ever episode of battlestar galactica. that show is great. from what i coudl tell from the first episode, it’s probably going to be my second most-anticipated tv show after 24. they are similar in many ways despite being two different genres. they’re both shot in a very serious, dramatic fashion, and the characters are often conflicted and have to deal with tough situations. as a sci-fi show it’s different from star trek because it is a much more ragged ship, and the show takes place during wartime. while star trek takes place during a time when the universe is for the most part, prosperous and at peace.

halfway through the first episode, i had to take off and go to bjs to meet up with sri, carl, allen and steph. had some nice happy food there and then satisfied my craving for a game of scrabble by playing at sri’s house with carl, allen and sri. i eked out a narrow victory at 147 against sri’s 140.

came home and finished battlestar galactica. good stuff.

updated with nice white background to accentuate the menu dropshadow and transparency added by tacking on YZShadow as well.

after much configuration and searching, my desktop has been mac-skinned:

i’m using a combination of windowblinds for the desktop theme, and ObjectDock for the Dock toolbar at the bottom of my screen. It was a toss up between windowblinds and stylexp for the desktop skinning, but in the end windowblinds won out because it doesn’t appear to be the resource hog that people claimed (it seemed like a lot of people on the forums were saying the words “resource hog” to sound smart and that was backed up by the people who sounded more technically inclined), and there are a lot more skins and customization available.

ObjectDock won over AquaDock and MobyDock. Again, the main issue was performance, and all three were about the same in that category, but ObjectDock just won out because it seems to have a larger community of developers. ObjectDock isn’t much of a resource hog when idle, but if you’re moving your mouse over the dock area a lot, it will really chew up your CPU. Memory-wise, both ObjectDock and WindowBlinds don’t use up too much at all.

We’ll see how long this amuses me for before I realize what a sad testament to the geek community I am.

The trackback spam is definitely dead. damn spammers.

my thursday hockey team lost in the semis tonight. oh well. the shirts don’t look all that hot this season anyways… my elbow and neck are kind of jacked from running into the goal. to think that in all my years of playing hockey, i’ve managed to avoid flying into the goal until now. oh well, it was bound to happen eventually.

in other hockey related news, we may have 8 skaters for my tuesday team next season! nice. i’ve also realized that kelly and i are the only players remaining from the house team that this team originated from. wow. this must be around the 8th season by now.

work has been interesting. this is the first time when i’ve actually had to lead a project. even though my entire team consists of me and one other guy… it’s still a new challenge. not are you only responsible for getting your work done, you’re also responsible for making sure that all the other pieces come together as well. and that’s really the harmony of it. how do you effectively manage your resources… who do you assign to what… how do you break down and partition a task to that there is the least amount of conflict, and then finally, how do you scope and give estimates on all that? it’s an interesting to think about. i can see now why it is possible for managers to be so busy without writing code now.

been working my butt off at work this week. i’m a huge programming n00b when it comes to specific technologies. but over the course of the week, i’ve learned how to interface with IM (toc), tomcat (java application server), how to retrieve web pages with java (first just figured out http, then http with get, then http with post, then http with cookies), how to use pattern matching to screenscrape webpage, also revisited threads in java. as an added bonus, i did a really simple SMS thing as well.

i’m totally fried. really hit the wall around 11.

this heavy rain sounds good. i hope it keeps up until i go to bed.

from slashdot from wired

Using HIV to attack melanoma
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,66579,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

this was just from my shower session today. i was thinking, “how is it that people botch up the bible so badly?” i think it came about because of what the carrie weaver character on ER said to her long-lost mother last thursday after revealing she was a lesbian: “if you are disappointed it should be with the limitations of your faith, not in the way i’ve lived my life.”

this doesn’t have to do specifically with homosexuality. this has to do with all statements that christians hold onto for dear life because they are more comfortable with the simple concept offered by an obscure passage rather than really evaluating the context of how it happened during the time in which it was spoken.

there are usually two main defenses:
1. you don’t need to be smart to read the bible. many of jesus’ disciples were not especially intelligent people. plus, it is said that we are to be as children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.
2. the bible is timeless and what is written in it applies the same way to the present day as it did in the past.

for the first defense, nothing that is said there means that you’re supposed to be stupid or simple-minded about it. yes, it doesn’t take a smart person or even a very educated one to be a good christian. but it isn’t because you aren’t supposed to investigate the bible closely, it’s because all it takes is a very simple attitude. one that aims to please god. when you read the bible an interpret it as you wish, finding passages that fit your own need, there is nothing god-led in that interpretation. it is instead all about self-affirmation. every time the bible is used strictly to condemn, or to shame, it angers me greatly. because if it is one thing that is clear in the new testament, it is that we are to love all of mankind as much as god loved us, which is a whole lot more than what we read about far-right christian groups today.

the second reason… how people can use that as a defense astounds me. yes… again, the attitude of servitude and love is timeless. but it the defense is applied so selectively. like, what about some of the really crazy things i read in the old testament. is that timeless? if you get in the vicinity of a woman on her period are you going to sit outside of the city walls for a week, or what not? should you go and walk on water as a test of faith? maybe the way to start testing christians is by throwing them off boats and see if they sink. because after all, we are justified by faith. and if not being able to walk on water shows a faltering faith, aren’t you no better than all the other sinners out there? we’ll just keep dragging you out of the water and pushing you overboard until you fix yourself. don’t worry child, just have faith.

during this period at work, i’ve also realized a change in how i perceive myself and the work i do, and i’m guessing that this probably applies to a lot of different fields.

in the very beginning, when you first start off, you’re really just hoping that you don’t screw up. you hope that when you get your first real assignment at your first real job, that you aren’t a complete failure that people start delegating grunt work to.

after you’ve built up a consistent track record of not screwing up. you start thinking, “hey, maybe i’m competent. that’s a nice feeling.” and rather than focusing on the fear of failure, you look forward to the next chance to prove that you are consistently able to put out good work. that you are versatile. that you can be placed on a variety of projects and while you may not be specialized and put out highest end code out there, you can definitely always put out solid work.

then finally, and this may be a good or bad thing, you become a miracle worker. not only do you build solid code, you are so good at it, you can do it really, really fast because it is practically second nature to you. you are a “go to” guy in emergencies, and people know that if you couldn’t do it, it’s likely that it just couldn’t have been done.

obviously, this a very broad view of things that doesn’t directly address things like, how much of a specialist you are, how good you are at learning new technology, leadership or management skills, vision… and so forth. this is purely from a production engineering standpoint. basically, when someone tells you to build something, how well do you build it.

it’s been really busy at work recently. on my part, i’ve been shuffled from one important item to another, before finishing the first important item and i got my first taste of what it must be like to be an politic-er.

the first project that i was working on was a fairly high visibility project which i consider myself very lucky to be able to work on. i had built the necessary framework and data model before i was pulled on to the new project. strangely enough, when i was told that i would be moving off it for a while, i was intially very protective of my work, and i secretly hoped that no one would be assigned to complete what i had started.

this was for two reasons. one, i thought that i had done a pretty decent job of spinning up what i had in the time constraint that i was under, and two, the high visibility aspect of it was appealing to me. being respected for doing important work well is important for reputation, and building up a good reputation is obviously a big factor in job security and career advancement.

but after thinking about it more, i realized that this is the kind of thing that hurts a company in a long run. given that there are two high priority projects and only one that i can work on, it would just be a waste to let that first project sit in the queue while i work on my new project? if there are engineering resources available, it would be best to utilize them and get the project done, rather than have both the resources and the project sit around idle.

additionally, it is important to be a team player. being recognized as someone who can write maintainable code and pass on knowledge to another engineer successfully is an important skill that not all engineers have. additionally, the feedback from the other engineer, taken in a constructive manner, is extremely important unless you intend to just always be right, all the time. fear of criticism will only stagnate personal growth. this is how you learn. and hey, if your code was great the first time around, and you’re really worried about your reputation, engineers are the kind of people who love to acknowledge and spread the word about a beautiful piece of work when they see it.

anyhow, i just had to sit back for a bit and evaluate that immediate reaction. i also recognize is that it depends on the workplace. it sounds like at some places, people are actually very political like that and will take credit for things whenever they have the chance. in that situation, it becomes difficult to function without some shameless self-promoting, so i am just grateful that for the time being, i’m definitely not in one of those environments.

This is a pretty technical discussion, but for those that are interested in web apps, it’s pretty a pretty interesting look at google maps
http://jgwebber.blogspot.com/2005/02/mapping-google.html