blah blah blah

Out of Communication

as I won't be bringing my computer with me to Seattle, ill be out of communication until friday night. Page or call me if its an emergency, otherwise ill get back to your email when i return friday night. Shudder Thats one thing I am not looking forward to, the aproximatly 400 emails that I will need to wade through.

Sex

The whole who in the room would you fuck question got brought up in class again today. No one actually answered the question directly although one student said

Well I would tell you who I would like to fuck, except for the fact that I have to return to this class

Interesting response. I sooo enjoy the discussions that we have. The sexual undertones could be cut with a knife.

32

About 32 hours from this post I'll be waiting at the Syracuse airport for my flight to seattle (via newark shudder). I can't wait for this trip. No real plans other than the 5 horus of interview while out in Seattle. I think Ill try to catch a concert of something though

News Flash

BREAKING NEWS: Massachusetts lawmakers have approved a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage but establish civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. The amendment, a defeat for both supporters of gay marriage and opponents of civil unions, will be taken up again in the next legislative session next year. If approved again, it will go before voters in 2006.

the above was recieved via pager this afternoon. Any way. im back to the apt to cook some dinner then its off to a movie. one comment before i leave: Holy Crap its a fucking amazing day out.

My weekend in a nutshell

How many EMTs does it take to start a generator?

Its aroud 610am and were thinking about goign to bed for the night

Couple of things happened this weekend

Friday was an uber productive day. I got more work accomplished Friday during the day and Friday night then I normally do in an entire week. OS is done with for a week or so; Gothic Theory has its essay finished; began to pack for Seattle; Jacket came in the mail…

About Saturday now. I got up really early again because of a friend in Europe paging me and forgetting about the time difference. So im up and doing nothing so I decide to go to SUA for the MCI presentation early. I get there and 5 minutes later a call comes in. Go to the call, RMMS shows up. An hour later we bring the rig back to SUA and walk in on the presentation that was in progress. 10 minutes later another call comes in (the presenter is looking a little pissed at us). During this call I learned why soooo many EMS personnel despise the StairChair. We ended up having to carry someone down 3 or 4 flights of stairs. By back is fine, but my shoulders are hurting a today (definitely going to need to do some more lifting when I go to the gym). 10 minutes after we return to the presentation, guess what? Another call comes in.

The night was quiet beyond belief until around 510am when a serious Priority1 call came in. The shift I was supposed to be covering only had one call when the one I randomly showed up for had 3…wtf?

Inappropriate

Ok my favorite professor just one-upped himself in the world of greatest (or stupidest) quotes. Were discussing Freud and how adults repress themselves so the following happened (this is the professor teaching ETS451 Gothic Theory)

CHThorne: So how many of you think that you are not repressed?

A lot of the class raises their hands (I didn’t raise mine)

CHThorne: Ok so we are now going to conduct an experiment. I want you all to answer me the following question starting with you (pointing to someone on the other side of the room). Who in this room would you like to FUCK (heavy emphasis on the word fuck, he said it really loudly). I’m serious answer the question.

The kid is turning bright red

CHThorne: I thought so. This is the perfect illustration of what Freud was talking about. Those of you who didn’t answer and that’s everyone, you are repressed otherwise you would have just blurted out the name of the person you want to fuck without thinking about the consequences.
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For reference his previous most inappropriate highlight (this has been discussed with students who have taken other courses with him) was when he was teaching a course on Milton and was going over a piece of literature titled “The Monk.” The class wasn’t getting the imagery of the broken masts during a battle between England and Spain when CHThorne said something along the following lines

“Oh come on people. You can’t tell me that not a single one of you gets the imagery here? Think for a second…Don’t make me take off my pants to help you understand what the author is talking about.”

For those of you

sometimes you just have to swear.

What's Your Favorite Swear Word? Link not safe for work (make sure you have your speakers on)

Seattle

Today was another first. I finally got to see the RuralMetro building. I’ve heard it referred to for a while, but never actually saw it. Me thinks I should have taken my camera with me when I went. Anyhow, the inside is a bit maze like, however there are a bunch of nice (looking) rooms in which the crews can relax (I think). There were 3 rigs idling outside the building and I’m going to assume that there were crews in each of them (probably sleeping though), so I don’t know if when they are between runs they have to stay in the rigs or not.

Seattle is looking more and more appealing. I was originally supposed to meet up with some relatives to get dinner, however that’s no longer going to happen because they decided to hop on a jet to the BVIs. Which leaves me with an extra day in Seattle. I don’t really know what I’m going to do with my time. Clubs, Museums and other things sound appealing. If you’ve got a suggestion on what to see/do drop me an email.

Heres a bunch of pictures I had sitting around my computer and finally got around to posting. You have the wonderful (albeit expensive) sushi resturant Ambrosia. A bunch of people sitting around in quarters the other night waiting for a call to come in (and filling out paperwork). Our wonderful rig A1 Car3 blocking most of the sidewalk in Armoury Square (Car3 being the group I'm in in SUA) and lastly why you shouldn't wear reflective clothing when having your picture taken

Nicole finally managed to hide the body (mostly)

Friday Five

If you...

1. ...owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve?
It would definitely be French cuisine. I’m not sure whether it would be more northern dishes or more from the south, so I’ll settle for a combination of both.

2. ...owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell?
the type that people would buy. Probably some type of store that would sell stuff for the kitchen (sort of like Williams Sonoma)

3. ...wrote a book, what genre would it be?
Adventure/Sci.Fi probably.

4. ...ran a school, what would you teach?
First off, if I ran a school I probably wouldn’t be teaching. I’ve know a bunch of school administrators and none of them eve had time to teach anything. However if I worked at a school I would like to teach literature or some sort of Comp.Sci class

5. ...recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it?
Probably something like Bond (not the movie)

This isn't suppossed to happen one or two days after the return from spring break :-(

the results of the previous night.

Trip Time

So my plans are finalized. I’m flying to Seattle/Redmond on the 31st, having my interview with Microsoft on the 1st and then flying back to sunny (yea right) Syracuse on the 2nd. You gotta love MSFT, they are paying for the plane, hotel, almost all of my food as well as paying for a rental car for me J I’m going to try to get in touch with some friends who live on Bainbridge Island and see if I can drag them to dinner on the first.

Now onto the weird thing; I didn’t realize until about 10 minutes ago that the 1st is actually April Fools day. This might make the interview a little bit more interesting than I though…although it might also turn it into one giant psych visit “We would like to offer you the job now….. Haaa haaa April Fools.”

I will definitly be bringing the camera with me, so expect pictures when I return (someone remind me to bring my camera when I leave)

Meet my family

In honor of the number of blog entries that I have been reading lately regarding names that have been given to various electronic devices, I give you the family that lives on my belt.

Meet Caesar. He is a year and a half old and likes anything

Francois just came into my life this afternoon. He is set to a loud annoying noise, and if you think you need to reach me paging Francois or calling his older sister are your best bets (leave a note here if you want the number)

Giselle is now 9 days old; her older brother was having difficulties ringing and is now a paperweight.

Yessss!

Travelers headed to France this year may want to revise their wish list of dining spots to visit. Three restaurants were awarded a coveted third star in the 2004 edition of the Michelin Red Guide to France, the gastronomic guidebook known for launching (and destroying) the careers of European chefs.

Only one of the three -- Les Loges de l'Aubergade in Puymirol, in southwest France, which is headed by Michel Trama -- is a first-time winner of Michelin's highest restaurant accolade. The other two restaurants -- L'Esperance and La Cote St.-Jacques, both in Burgundy -- regained their three-star status after losing it in 1999 and 2001, respectively. WineSpectator

Having been to L'Esperance in the past couple of years I can say that regaining its 3rd star is well deserved. I went for dinner and 5 1/2 hours later I ended up going back to where I was sleeping. We managed to get a tour of the kitchen (Amazing place) and the chef came out to talk to us when there wern't many people at the restaurant. If ever you are in France with someone and have a couple hundred bucks to blow on a meal I couldn't recomend this restaurant more highly.

You can look at the restaurant Here

Hrmmm.

I gotta say I find THIS article incredibly interesting.

Many military commanders have been slow to adapt IT for critical tasks because they sense the equipment is unreliable, said Col. Tim Gibson.

This is exactly why I'm specializing in Systems Assurance. Not necessairily for the military (which happens to sponser almost all of the research I find interesting) but because people have this idea that comptuers and electronics are in general unreliable. Anything we can do to increase the perception that the equipment will be able to preform to specifications all of the time would be a great step forward.

The whole process of changing the OSI model has the potential to create massive incompatabilities within the network, but if they do make changes to increase security and thruput those changes would most likly be worth the inconvenience.

If the link to the story above dosn't work (the server is getting bogged down), in the extended entry below is the complete article.
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On a separate note, HERE is the roll-call from yesterday's vote on Beacon Hill. I'm proud of the way my representative voted and absolutly ashamed at the way a family friend voted.

From:http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/25240-1.html
03/11/04

DARPA takes aim at IT sacred cows

By Joab Jackson
GCN Staff

ANAHEIM, Calif.—Now that the Defense Department is embracing network-driven warfare, it is taking a hard look at radically improving, or discarding altogether, some fundamental computer and network architectures.

Flaws in the basic building blocks of networking and computer science are hampering reliability, limiting flexibility and creating security vulnerabilities, program managers said this week at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s DARPATech conference.

Among the IT holy grails that DARPA wants to see revamped are the Internet Protocol, the seven-layer Open Systems Interconnection model—which defines how devices communicate on today’s networks—and the von Neumann architecture, the basic design style underpinning almost all computers built today.

Many military commanders have been slow to adapt IT for critical tasks because they sense the equipment is unreliable, said Col. Tim Gibson. He is a program manager for DARPA’s Advanced Technology Office, which is leading efforts to radically redefine computer architecture.

“You go to Wal-Mart and buy a telephone for less than $10 and you expect it to work,” Gibson said. Yet people usually do not expect the same of their computers. “We don’t expect computers to work, we expect them to have a problem.”

“If a commander expects a system to have a problem, then how could they rely upon it?” Gibson said.

Gibson cast some of the blame on the packet-based nature of Internet Protocol, which was not designed for foolproof delivery of messages. The protocol cannot guarantee delivery of e-mail, for instance.

“The packet network paradigm probably needs to change,” Gibson said. “I’m not advocating throwing out the Internet Protocol completely, but we must absolutely have some mechanism for assigning network capabilities to different users and that capability has to scale to large numbers of devices automatically. The commander wants to be able to send a message and have it delivered, completely, accurately and on time.”

Another limitation with the IP approach is the inability to dynamically build networks. The military wants to quickly set up ad hoc networks.

“Static networks are no good for tomorrow’s battlefield, because everything will move around all the time,” Gibson said. “What we need is dynamic scalability. Today’s networks are stationary and have a static infrastructure that provides service to static end-nodes. Moving the node outside its standard service area requires reconfiguring something. Moving infrastructure always means reconfiguring something.”

As a result, DARPA wants to fund development of new protocols or enhancements to the existing IP that will allow nodes, such as computers, to automatically sign on to networks in their vicinity.

Another aspects of the networking that DARPA wants to revise is the seven-layer OSI stack, long held as the basic foundation for building network protocols.

The OSI model was not designed for wireless communications devices, said Reggie Brothers, a DARPA program manager.

“The OSI model served us pretty well for the stable, predictable world of wireline communications,” Brothers said. “Mobile networks are nothing like that. They are unpredictable and highly variable. We need to think of different layers of the stack to relate to one another directly, like a mesh, instead of one level up to the next.”

The increased complexity of the network stack would let nodes enter a network quickly and without human intervention, Brothers said.

The von Neumann architecture will also come under scrutiny from DARPA.

“It is time to ask the harder questions about the ways of computer architecture we’ve been using for the past 30 years. Is it time to scrap the von Neumann architecture?” asked Anup Gosh, program officer for the Advanced Technology Office.

This architecture, which defines the basic essential parts of a computer as the processor, control unit, memory and input-output devices, has been used as the basis for design for nearly all computers built since the 1940s.

One of the limitations inherent in this approach is that when an application malfunctions, it can affect other programs, Gosh said. Program bugs also are vulnerabilities that can be used by adversaries to attack the entire system. What military networks need, Gosh said, is a way to isolate software programs at the hardware level.

Friday Five

1. What was the last song you heard?
The Coors "Rebel Heart"

2. What were the last two movies you saw?
I Am Sam
Black Hawk Down

3. What were the last three things you purchased?
A set of books from 1826
Lunch at the Concord Cheese Shop
Motorola T730 phone.

4. What four things do you need to do this weekend?
clean the car
put everything back in my wallet
finish shredding another 2000 pages of documents (ill post a picture)
return to syracuse

5. Who are the last five people you talked to?
Adam W.
Reid
Sarah
Christian
some random protester yesterday.

The number

The number of:

business cards in my wallet: 12
cards from Syracuse: 4
cards from BBN: 4
cards from government jobs: 3
cards from a Consul General: 1
credit cards: 3
certification cards: 4
licenses: 2 (and yes they are both legal ones)
cars I have driven in the past week: 4 (Jimmy, Yukon, Saab and a Volvo)

My world

Things that have happened recently in my life (and other random trivia)

OK, well spring break hasn’t exactly been what I expected it to be. There wasn’t all that much snow in NH so I couldn’t really go cross country skiing (it was almost hiking time) so I cam back to Concord on Monday morning.

Tuesday

Wed. I got to BBN at 930 in the morning and I finally finished my interviews around 130 (or so). I think they went pretty well, but who knows until you actually get an email or phone call from the hiring manager telling you the hopefully good news.

Thurs: I got up at 540 this morning because I needed to be in downtown Boston at 815 for my CPR for the professional rescuer course. The instructor ended up being a really cool guy, but the material (as expected) was a bit dry. We ended up finishing up early enough so that I was able to do a little shopping downtown before returning to concord.

For those of you who want a cool place to go (an are into literature and old books) you should really think about taking a stop at Brattle Bookshop. Focusing a lot of your time in the 3rd floor in their rare books collection. I spent a little more than an hour there searching for a going away gift for a dear friend of mine (I did eventually find a suitable book). When I left there was a HUGE gathering of people on the Boston Common (technically there were two groups but that’s beside the point).

I haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on in Massachusetts because I’ve been in Syracuse so I decided to investigate what the crowds we protesting. It turns out there was a huge vote today in the Massachusetts legislature about a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages. This is obviously a huge topic that generates passions on each side. I stayed there for a while and counted the number of police and EMS personnel that they had on hand and the number was a bit on the staggering level (I also found out where the Union Club was). I don’t see why we can’t all just get along in today’s world. The whole concept of marriage is archaic and has lost its meaning since the time when it was initially defined.

I personally really really hope that the legislature doesn’t pass the constitutional amendment tonight. (Yes I know that they can't pass the amendment themselves, but what I mean is I hope they don't give the voters the chance to voice their opinions). Yes that last sentence sounds bad, but the voters are voicing their opinions when they elect the senators and representatives so they get what they voted for. If you don't like your representative don't vote for him/her in the next reelection cycle

A Grand Mêlée

I would like to extend a big hearty thanks to Arts&Sciences for ruining my spring break. On my desk in front of me I have roughly 2000 pages of information that I need to read through. Its about Tenure and Promotion cases that I am reviewing. I’m quite sure that a number of the documents are superfluous and unnecessary. All that they really need to forward to the committee was the Form A, the minutes and any documents that were vital to the case. A&S decided to forward the ENTIRE SET OF FUCKING binders to us.

On a different note I found out that one of my best friends is moving to Williamstown Massachusetts. I can’t be happier for you. Expect me to drop by whenever im driving to and from Syracuse J

Serious topic now. The whole Gay marriage debate is beginning to worry me; not because I have serious feelings one way or the other, but because of the serious divide that it is causing in society. It might be an incredibly utopian view where every lives together in one big happy America (or world) and respects each other and where everyone has the same rights and privileges as everyone else. But we are moving so far away from my ideal world that were I to be offered a job overseas I would take it in a heart beat (provided it was in either France, UK, Germany, or Austria). All of this hatred that is being stirred up is just sitting on the proverbial stove waiting to boil over. This is what really worries me. At some point some religious, bible thumping fanatic is going to decide to put on a suit of dynamite in the morning or accessorize with a Ruger and then cause some serious damage. It’s the bystanders I’m worried about. There will probably be children killed if the above scenario takes place. Slaughtering innocents or bystanders is now way to have a discussion (see the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict for validation of that). If only people could get together and have a discussion without bringing in false or misleading information and arrive at a result that is amicable for all.

Failing that I think we should put everyone with strong feelings either way into a giant arena, give them knives, forks, farm implements and clubs and then have a grand mêlée. Last person standing gets to say what America’s position on the subject is (Note this would have been a good way to settle the uncertainty over the last election. “Gore vs. Bush: A Battle to the Death”…now carried live on PayPerView)

final thing. It looks like its going to be blue...now to pick out the shade :-)

All I can say

All I can say about this article is WOW!

The figures are interesting and disturbing at the same time. I think that if I get a few moments I'll try to find a copy of the Journal Article that this new story refers to.

various things

I know as someone with an economics background I’m supposed to worship Das Kapital as some sort of a second bible (or first if you are so inclined). However I’m reading it for the second time (I wasn’t particularly enamored with it the first time) and I still maintain that it is largely a giant flaming pile of horse shit.

Thanks should go out to the following people recently:
Reid for sending me a link to the next installments of Journal entries from LoTR. Here you all go

Meghan: For calling me a wacker the other night when I made a comment about a 10-100.

Volvo: For making a shitty car (thats less than a week old) that decided to drop the entire contents of the engine cooler all over my parents garage floor (They arn't mad at me for the time being...thanks volvo)