Sunday, April 13, 2008

Trail Running with the Cascade Striders

Yesterday (Saturday) a couple of the parents of kids in the Cascade Striders running club / track team went on a trail run to celebrate the sunshine. First we did the standard (killer) dynamics with the kids for 30 minutes, then we took off along the greenbelt trails in Bellevue. We circled Phantom Lake (the hills were very steep) and then we went back to Sammamish High School. The mash-up maps claim we went about 6.25 miles but with all the elevation change it felt more like 7. It was a nice, bright sunshiny day and we pushed the pace.

There are lots of trails that follow the roads or run through the parks / farms and it is even possible to get down to the lakes.

We live in a great neighborhood for hiking / trail running. I wish the weather were always as nice as it was on Saturday.

Best Media Player for Windows Mobile

I finally found a media player that does what I want. It plays divx movies as well as the .avi, .mpg, .mp4, and other formats. The standard player (Windows Media Player) that comes with windows mobile did not work well on my older slower phone. I have to transcode the videos and even then it would often just freeze and not play the videos. I use DrDivx to transcode DVDs to .divx format. A 2-hour movie typically uses under 150 MB of space on the 2 GB card I now have in the phone. I shall be traveling again this month so I loaded some "guy" movies that the family does not want to see into the phone ("Sweeny Todd" and the latest "Rambo"). I plan to watch them in the airport lounges and on the plane. There is still a free version of this player -- TCPMP available for download.

Parker visits the Wyles


A co-worker who volunteers with a wonderful puppy training agency went to Hawaii to compete in the "lava man" triathalon. While she was gone and for a short time before / after her trip we took care of her golden retriever puppy named Parker.

Parker is a wonderful doggie.

He is very positive, happy, empathic, fun-loving, and playful.
Our Labrador retriever Maddie loves to play with Parker and they are both happy and tired after frolicking in the back yard.

Parker loves to play with Eitana. He chews on everything but his favorite chew toys are paper and jigsaw puzzle pieces. He was here for 10 days and will be leaving today. Everyone, especially Maddie will miss him when he goes home.

Monday, April 7, 2008

best ebook reader on windows mobile

I finally found a great etext reader for the books I read in my phone -- allreader v1.31. It has 16 bookmarks, automatically bookmarks your spot between reboots, auto-scrolling at an adjustable pace, great font support, screen rotation, etc. It reads all text formats including .lit, .pdb, .pdf, .txt, .htm, etc.

It is apparantly developed in Russian and the documentation is scarce; however it is a great program. It has no installer; you just drop the gh.exe on to the phone and you're good to go.

Now I need a decent movie viewer; windows media player won't play feature length videos, so I have retreated to the mobile divx player until I find a decent video player for my phone.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Sunday Kite flying

After repairing the oven, Gab was on a roll so she spent the day repairing the shower. She tore out the shoddy caulking, and some of the leaky cover-up from the leaky tile job. Then she patched, cemented, and re-sealed the tile, re-caulked the shower, and opened the tile drains. During this time the rest of the family was on our own for puppy doggie-sitting Parker, baby-sitting Eitana, Sunday school, cooking, cleaning, laundry, taking Maddie swimming, and shopping.

Eitana noticed that it was windy outside, so we went to fly her kite. She navigated it perfectly around the street lamps and trees and had it riding the breeze. She has natural talent at kite flying! I went to tie the kite off on the cyclone fence but I let go of the string and it flew away. It eventually snagged in a tree across the street from Woodridge Elementary school. Eitana was very upset. She did not want to leave the kite stuck in a tree. She got most of the way up the trunk of the tree where the kite snagged; then I convinced her to climb down.

We went home, ate lunch, gathered Yofiel and some of the teenagers (only Laura, Adinah, and Apple came), and set out to retrieve the kite. Eitana and I drove in the car so we were the first to arrive. I attached a string to a stone and eventually snared the spool and string that was stuck in the tree so I pulled it down. Pulling on the string elevated the kite from the neighbor’s yard up into the tree. Yofi and Laura were next to arrive (they jogged). They each tried without success to climb up the tree. Last to arrive were Apple and Adinah; they had, apparently strolled leisurely to the school. Apple went up the tree faster than he had walked to the school. He was 15 meters up when the owner of the house next door, who had not returned the kite after it landed in his yard, came out yelling that Apple had to come down immediately because if Apple fell, his corpse would land in this evil person’s yard. He was waving a pair of hedge sheers and looked very nasty. Apple eventually came down the tree. He said later that he was only 5 meters from the kite. Yofi and the teenagers stayed to play at the elementary school while Eitana and I drove to Home Depot to buy more quarter inch dowel rods -- two for a dollar -- to build another kite.

Gabriella took a break from grouting, sealing, caulking, cementing, ate, and helped us assemble another kite. We used two dowels, the rescued string, and a transparent garbage bag; it was much lighter than the one caught in the tree. It had superior flight characteristics as well.

While the teenagers finished the lunch dishes, we went to the International school (a

bigger field) to fly the new kite. Gab painted a face on the transparent body. It flew quite well in the mild breeze and Eitana did a great job keeping it aloft.

It flew mich higher, faster, and more stably than the kite made of newspapers. It had a higher angle of attack. Eitana was able to keep it aloft with much milder wind.

Eventually we headed home; Gab fried up a vegetable massala with Tofu that was spicy but fantastic. We had it on rice. Even the teenagers enjoyed it. They were so thankful cleaned up the dinner dishes, then headed out for some depressive time at another friend's house. They are having a great spring break so far but I worry that they don't have goals. Simeon spent a few hours outlining his goals for the rest of the vacation. He avoided everyone, eating asynchronously with the family.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

warm, intimate birthday party in Boston

# # #

Today we went to a really nice birthday party (family celebration) with my sister's friends, their kids, grandparents, my sister, and her kids. I discovered my younger niece is a child prodigy piano player and caught a few seconds on video. We watched a privately performed marionette (puppet) show that was knock-your-socks-off fantastic -- unbelievable in every respect from the art of the puppets and stage to the story line to the talent of the puppeteers. They had a pirate to help open the presents (which was silly and did not add much to the party). The lunch conversation was stimulating and I enjoyed meeting everyone. Now I must set off to catch my flight home.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

math night in Weston

Friday night 3/28/08 Weston had a cool “math” night gathering at a local elementary school.  I took my niece and her friends there.  We had a great time.  In addition to some interesting math puzzles, we learned how to cut shapes out of 3x5 cards.

 

They served Pizza, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, & water for $2 so we were well-fueled to solve math puzzles.

 

The theme was early 1960s rock-n-roll bands, songs, and trivia.  Each table had a song title.

 
IMAGE_124.jpg

IMAGE_127.jpg

 
IMAGE_125.jpg

                                                                                               

And my niece has some really cool friends

who are great at Math.  Izzy here is solving

the “estimate the number of drops in the

clown” puzzle.

 

 

 

 

IMAGE_128.jpgIMAGE_129.jpgIMAGE_130.jpgIMAGE_131.jpgIMAGE_132.jpg

 

Check out my “yellow submarine” design!  I used shallow angles and

Cross-spars to make it streamlined.

IMAGE_133.jpg

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Teaching in Cambridge 3: Microsoft's facility


The other side of the elevator on the first floor is under construction so it is basically a big, gutted, open space

















On the second floor, the Softricity people have a cool break room next to the cube farm that includes a pseudo-wall made from panels that turn on on a central vertical axis. They have white board surfaces on one side and carpet (accoustic dampening) on the other. People in the break froom who are eating do not bother the people in cubes on the other side and vice versa. When there is a big all-hands meeting and people crowd around the break room, the panels swing 90 degrees to enable everyone on to see / hear the speaker. It is quite the sate of the art from the 1980s. I don't like cube farms.


There is a nice stairway between the first and second floor so Microsoft people don't have to wait for the elevators to move between floors. Softricity is pushing to get their release out now and there are cases of red bull in the upstairs break rooms as well as late night meetings in the conference rooms.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Teaching in Cambridge part 2 -- Microsoft in Cambridge, MA

The well-equipped work-out room at the Marriott was quite crowded at 6:00am. I finished listening to _Spook_Country_ on the treadmill then hit the weights. The valet parking guy pointed at the Microsoft building down the street and told me it would be much faster to walk.

Microsoft really is two blocks away from the Marriott; despite my problems at the Marriott it is very convenient. Also, there are lots of small restaurants in the area with plenty of variety. Both the street outside, and the Microsoft building itself are undergoing major construction. In the building they are re-constructing the lobby, installing a fitness center, a Microsoft cafeteria, and more office space. The location (right next door to MIT) is fantastic so I anticipate explosive growth, especially for the Microsoft research team. The people in my class are all from the Softricity acquisition -- http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/softgrid/default.mspx.

They are about to ship their first major release since we acquired them so some of the people are getting called out of class to service emergencies. Softricity was in a low-rent neighborhood of South Boston; this new facility is a big step up for the employees. They are all in a large cube farm on the second floor; their labs are on the first floor with conference rooms. The first floor also includes a very sparsely (10%) populated cube farm, a reception area, and major construction.

The training room is not yet completed; the projector and sound system work but there is no podium machine, no white boards, no easels, and no supplies (paper, name tents, stickies, 3x5 cards). The podium faces away from the audience. The tables were arranged conference room style but I was here early enough to set them up as group tables. We were also "agile" in our use of stickies on the wall to stack rank challenges. We used printer paper for name tents and graph paper instead of laptops for wideband Delphi. I got the presenter's mouse to work with PowerPoint but it is a little flakey on Vista. The lunch time movie streamed too slowly over corpnet so I used the public Internet channel9.msdn.com for behind the code instead.

The students are remarkably mature and experienced, with deep wisdom (and typical developer cynicism) about quality, process, scheduling, and collaboration. It appears the commute is quite terrible for many of the employees; trains are unpredictable; driving is impossible. I do not miss the East coast.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Teaching in Cambridge part 1 -- the trip to Boston

Getting up at 0600 on a Sunday morning to catch the shared van ride service at 0615 was no fun. The flight was over-booked and I considered getting the free ticket to Hawaii but I would not have arrived in Boston on time to teach on Monday so that idea was nixed. I bought a bad, expensive breakfast after clearing security, and waited in the lounge. I started listening to _Spook_Country_ by William Gibson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spook_Country). The story and characters are great but personally I think the editor should have cut some of the boring descriptive prose where it does not develop the characters or move the story. It's a fun ride and I anticipate listening to the rest of the book on this trip.

I am, of course, using my Bluetooth stereo head phones and Windows Mobile phone as the mp3 player. I discovered that media player is smart enough to let you play games on the phone while it is streaming audio but media player pauses when a call comes in or an alert goes off. It just works. Kudos to the Mobile team. The head set and phone batteries held up the whole day -- long wait in the terminal, long cross-country flight, wait for the Avis bus, 10-minute Avis bus ride, etc. I was even able to call the concierge at the hotel (my printed directions were wrong and I forgot the GPS at home).

Parking is very expensive here at the Cambridge Marriott and the Internet costs $10 per day. I wanted to stay here because it is two blocks away from Microsoft (walking distance) and less expensive than the other hotels in the area. The view from the 20th floor is nice and the food is great. I may try to park at Microsoft. The rooms have a webtv device that is shockingly slow and user-hostile. And of course if you type in your own URLs it costs $10 so I backed out and watched tv instead.