Thoughts from Panera Bread

Free WiFi is awesome. It allows you to get out of the house and do the exact same thing as always, but with scenery. Panera Bread has given me the opportunity today and I am grateful. Obviously I am a little busy these days if I am posting from here, so let me throw some quick shots out today.

Sports
I am about footballed out right now. Being in Dallas, the Cowboys occupy 75% of the airwaves this time of year at a minimum. This team has done its best to take my little interest and step on it. The high school feuds that exist or are trumped up by the talking heads have me wishing for sports talk in place of the tabloid gossip.

The Ranger's off season so far has been non-dramatic which makes me somewhat happy. We sold on the down tick with Gerald Laird. His five tool player status along with his experience merits more than a high school kid and a slow to mature AA player. I don't think the return was horrid, but it was underwhelming. So far they have yet to sign a blockbuster player. Thank Goodness! Kerry Wood and his permanent spot on the disabled list went for over 10 million a year. Thankfully we are not weighing down our future with such contracts. I don't care how good you are (Teixeira, CC, etc.), 6+ year contracts are nuts in this league. It guaranteed... results are anything but. I for one would love to see contracts have a consistent base league-wide based on experience and then having significant bonuses tied to performance. 55 home runs one year brings in 8 million extra, the slump the next year to 21 homers only brings in 2 million. How much drama could we eliminate with such a system. How much easier to keep franchise players that build a fan base. Most likely it is too simple to actually happen.

Church
I have a structural engineer teaching our Young Marrieds class at church this quarter. This bodes well for both my excitement and my comprehension. I have a subtle feeling that some us may have to be translators if he gets too technical, but I bet his lessons won't be hard to understand.

Cinema
Once again the holidays are here and movies that technical have not been released are being considered for yearly honors. Just sad. I wish they would have awards that require 100 million in sales to get be eligible. No more artsy films that are only released in 17 theaters. I am not saying that all of these films stink, but at least talk about films that people have heard of. Using my new eligibility rules from above, here are the best films of the year based upon the buzz generated by the common man:


Roundhouse to the Oscars
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Wall-E
Get Smart
Kung Fu Panda
Indiana Jones
High School Musical 3

Not the list that you will see anywhere near the Academy Awards, but certainly the list of movies that I have been hearing about.

New Laptop
I got a new laptop about a week ago. I am so pumped. The last computer purchase that I made was before I started college in the summer of 2000. I went with an Asus that I got off of NewEgg. It has an Intel Core2Duo P8600 processor, 4 Gigs of RAM, a 320 Gig Hard Drive, and a huge 1 Gig NVidia GeForce 9650 GT graphics card. The best games from my old system look like an Atari on an HD TV. Oh, and I got this since I started grad school this fall...

Heard While Making This Post
Weezer - Possibilities
The Calling - Wherever You Will Go
Jimmy Eat World - Sweetness

Practicality

I have been recently studying for the Java 1.5 certification exam. The book that I am using is over to the right of this page. It is over 800 pages, but I am making it through. It is also quite thorough and good for preparing for the exam. I know enough to pass the exam, but not enough to do it all perfect afterwards.

Therefore I am for the first time since college, seriously studying for a test. It is at this point that I realize several things. First and foremost, it is really hard to create a programming competency test. It is far too easy to say that you know a language or concept. Resumes are filled with supposed knowledge, but applying it to a job is entirely different. So after 3 years of applying my knowledge, I find it hard to translate that knowledge back to the academic realm. It is not that the information needed for the test is pointless, but the hypothetical situations that the test turns into 'gotchas' just drive me batty. Who on earth sets up a polymorphic tree with 17 levels and every access modifier in the book? I have not seen the situation arise in my line of work, and I write enterprise level software. At the same time, I don't know that if someone completed this certification they would be ready for real life work.

So today is my day to rant about the large gap between learning syntax and knowledge that can only be gained with experience. I certainly don't know a solution off the top of my head, but it seems near impossible to tell on paper is someone is worth a hill of beans in real life situations.

Hipster Cool Dude

I have long been wanting new gadgets. And I have also been fashionably late in buying those gadgets. I talk myself out of them saying that in 4 months I will be able to get something twice as good for half the price. I am usually right, but when you never buy it makes no sense. So after spending 3 and a half years drooling over MP3 players, I received this one for Christmas:



Boy am I in heaven. This thing lets me listen to the radio, view pictures, and listen to my music on the go. So now that I am ultra cool and all, I have the right to wear this thing around. I mean I have seen people with earbuds in for a long time and it is socially acceptable. So the first thing that I did after receiving the gift and putting the Weezer Blue album on it was of course go out in public. "Hey honey, can you go get a couple items from the grocery store," was my cue. I threaded the earbuds through the jacket, hit play, put the player in my pocket and was off. Of course I did not make it out the door without my wife hanging her head in shame. Am I off or is that not still cool? I told her it was, but I don't think she believes that I am on the cusp of a culteral revolution or anything.

Today's Media Demands

I found myself sucked in again this afternoon. I happened to check cnn.com for news and there was some. "Plane Hits Manhattan High-Rise" caught my attention fairly quickly. My immediate thought was "Oh crap, hope there aren't more on the way." I figured that they had found a way through with small planes or something.

I then fell into an all too familiar habit of alt-tabbing over and refreshing the page every 30 seconds and expecting new information each time. The story changed several times. Sometimes it was a helicopter, other times airplane, and other times the safer aircraft. So once I saw that it was contained, I switched over and assumed that any second now the name and motive of the pilot would emerge. It didn't for quite a while and the first sign that I saw was an announcement by Yankees skipper Joe Torre. That seemed quite odd to me.

I finally found out the details and that Cory Lidle had passed away. I guess it was engine trouble, we will find out soon enough.

I have since thought about my actions today and wondered what is wrong with me. I am addicted to knowing everything the second it happens. And not only that, I demand accuracy in the reporting and complain to no end when the media jumps the gun. I think I can see why they jump the gun now. It is to get my attention because I am demanding something... anything. I have the sneaking suspicion that too many Americans are this way. We demand to be informed correctly for no other reason than to be informed. It doesn't move us to action or anything, we just want to know. I at least need to stop jumping on the hype train as often as I do.

So the only appropriate response of mine today is to offer my deepest condolences to those who knew the people killed tragically today.

To Buy or Not 2by

. : Technology : .

So I have fever... and the only cure is a cool laptop. That's right, I have the 'buy a cool toy' itch. What is it i want, only a laptop / tablet pc. That is one that has a normal screen that flips around. Here are a couple examples:

Fujitsu:

Compaq:

So now all I need is the 1500 bucks to get one of these bad boys!

Eye Candy

. : Technology : .



Yah, you know you want this. Go buy it for only $7,500! I probably will never get this... but I would like a good set-up soon. What kind of extreme gadget are you looking for?

Video Game Re-Runs

. : Technology : .

Microsoft is giving XBox360 users the ability to download old games on the new system. The folks over at gamasutra have part of the release schedule:

• July 12 – Frogger


• July 19 – Cloning Clyde


• July 26 – Galaga


• August 2 – Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting


• August 9 – Pac-Man

I havn't been this excited about a Tiger Uppercut in a long time!

Take Me Out

. : Friday Free Day : .

... is a great song by Franz Ferdinand and a beast to play on Guitar Hero.

... to the ballgame tonight. Getting to see the Texas Rangers and the Minnesota Twins tonight from around row 20. Should be fun.

For Sports I have 2 thoughts.
1. It is a shame that Justin Verlander did not make it to the All Star game. He is pitching quite well and is dominating, especially for a rookie.

2. It is great to see Italy in the World Cup final. Roots for them to kick the socks off of the French.



For Technology I want to recommend Thinwire to you. It is very versatile web framework. It makes writing web application easy and makes them look more like desktop applications than online forms.

In Politics, check out this National Review paragraph on the 9th circuit appellate court getting smacked around by the Supreme Court for just plain stinking.

On the home front I got a request to talk about how on Earth I handle conflict resolution now that I am married. This is quite a good question and one that I am learning more and more about each day. Once you become married you have to learn to switch from a What do I want? to a What do we want? mentality. This is much easier said than done and takes time to develop (2 years is not nearly enough for me). You have to learn that you can't ignore problems. For instance, I can't avoid an argument by skipping out to play golf and come back to find it resolved. It will still be there and it will still be an issue until I/She/We figure something out. I have also found out that in order to not go completely batty, you have to learn that is ok to do things separately. As in, I don't have to go to scrapbooking nights if she doesn't have to go the Mavericks game. And if you can coordinate those on your own activities to occur at the same time, all the better. I am rambling now but feel free to send more specific questions.

Deep Space Travel

. : Technology : .

I think that space travel is quite fascinating. I guess you could say that it is my blood since I have a grandparent who was big in the industry. Ever since people latched on to Asimov's idea of hyperspatial travel, people in general just assumed that pretty soon we would be trouncing around the galaxy. Shows like Star Trek gave us the idea that jumping around our quadrant was an everyday occurrence. The Jetsons made us think that it would be right around the corner. Even the movie Blade Runner gave us the idea that after the year 2000, space travel would be the norm.

The reality however is that as fast as technology has accelerated, it has not been able to catch up with the special effects department of Hollywood. Getting to the moon and back is our best accomplishment to date for human travel. While this took a great amount of new ideas and new technology, it pales in comparison to science fiction. A fun but probably slightly outdated read can be found here.

What we do have is a lot less glamorous, but in my mind it is equally cool. The Gravitational Slingshot method was used to send the Cassini-Huygens probe to Saturn. I found the picture below on Wikipedia which demonstrates how we used the gravitational pull of the sun and several planets to accelerate our way out to Saturn.



This is the limit of our current technology. Even if we were able to travel at the speed of light (which we are nowhere near close to), it would take several years to get to another star. I think the learning curve on safe and ordinary space travel that has been dangled in front of us for years will be much slower than touted. However that does not mean that we should slow down or give up. There is enough to explore right here for now.