02.15.03
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:12 pm by Andrew Kuklewicz
So Matt J, a friend of his I don’t know, and I are all going for a day of snowboarding. De-lite-full.
I must say I need a bit of a break, though my intern wife wins in that catehgory, its been 2 weeks of 80+ hours a piece, and no end in sight. Well, actually April is the end in sight, but its awfully hazy at the moment. Haven’t even read a page of a book, or turned on my PS2 in weeks, in spite of acquiiring new and interesting volumes and games. ho hum, even as I write this, my other computer beside me is chewing through some code gen and compilation for work, perhaps I should give it some more attention.
Got a b-day present of Mr.Show DVDs from my bro. As a non-HBO watcher, this is but one of the delights I apparently have missed. Perhaps when I retire it’ll fill some time to catch up on the Sopranos, 6 feet under, and sex and the city.
On another note, very interesting article about Prof. Peter Singer and more importantly one of his critics is to be found in the NY Times magazine. I don’t like Singer answers, I respect his approach, but mostly I am disturbed that I battle with liking the purity of his views, but also disliking that he cannot see the damage that their acceptance could cause in our obviously impure world. Similar to my stance on the death penalty - its a weaker argument against the death penalty when its proponants start with “Assume you know without a doubt the person is guilty…” - which is fine for logical debate, but a poor assumption when translating your conclusions to policy.
Anyway, judge for yourself.
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02.03.03
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:31 am by Andrew Kuklewicz
TISD closed
I remember one rare Texas winter when it looked like we would have actual snow. This happened once every few winters, but only rarely enough to cause a “snow day”. It only took a bit of snow to cause a panic, I wasn’t asking for much. So I remember one fine pre-dawn in the first week of February, waiting by the radio praying to hear school was closed on my birthday. It was a natural - 1st week of Feb is always a misery. My parents even tell me my dad had to shovel the driveway so he could get the car out to drive my mom to the hospital the day I was born. Surely if anyone could get a TX style “white” birthday, it was me. Inevitabily though, in all my 13 years of public school in Texas, it never happened.
Why do I mention (at length) this small, selfish, and childish desire long left unsatisfied and half-forgotten? My b-day is this week, and the entire Tyler Independent School District is closed … so they can search for toxic debris from the Columbia craft and crew. Damn. Be careful what you wish for: even years later I feel guilty, and I imagine this day off will be a guilty pleasure. A bitter holiday for the kids of East TX, and an impromptu memorial day for fallen heroes.
Anyway, I’m starting to wax all sentimental and crap. National distasters do that to me I guess. I’ll stop.
My bro passed on the following apropos stanza:
Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps a race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet —
We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the friendly skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.
— Robert A. Heinlein
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02.02.03
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:18 pm by Andrew Kuklewicz
new (to me) feature
just added the shout outs so folks can comment on posts.
cool.
stolen from matt jans’ site.
enjoy.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 4:27 pm by Andrew Kuklewicz
Tyler, Texas 75703
Perhaps the best thing I ever did is leave my hometown.
Now, a few months ago if you were not familiar with this fine town in East Texas, I would not be shocked. Waco people know. Dallas people think they know. But Tyler?
Then a few weeks ago came the NYTimes front-page series on the iron and steel plant in Tyler, and how callous, greedy and dehumanizing are its practices. For the record, I worked in the Tyler Pipe factory a few days, and I could not believe people worked there any longer than that. And I only worked a few night shifts - and not at all the hardest of the work there. Probably its just another sign of how soft my life has been, but while I was somewhat aghast the people around me seemed pleased pink to be working there - probably because they had no other choice for beating a MickeyD’s salary.
Now here comes the Columbia disaster. Look, the commentary has hit the points that first come to my mind as well as yours. It is terrible, and worse that we are desensitized to the dangers of space travel so only disasters transgress into our TV and radio habits. But the personal point I have to make here is that once again the NYTimes had footage from Tyler - this time the debris streaked skies above. And there in the news I see the names of towns and counties I last saw when I would travel by school bus between them for high school debate and academic decathalon competitions. Rusk is not a town that ever makes the news, even in Texas. I mean, they aren’t even that good at football. Now there are some faux non-accented american english newscasters on CNN trying to pronounce Palestine as if they were natives. Kinda like the old jokes about the rampant overly ‘correct’ accents used for all non-english names by the same news readers - except now they are trying to talk like the 60-year-old retired patroleom workers from Green Acres Baptist Church.
It is shocking to see such disasters, but uncanny to see such things against the backdrop of my childhood and adolescence. It’s as if they happened in neverland or epcot - don’t these places only exist in the recesses of my memory? How did they end up on the front-page and Dan Rather’s lips? Such is the power of disaster - space travel is interesting again, and Rusk is famous.
-A
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Posted in Uncategorized at 3:51 pm by Andrew Kuklewicz
Homework again.
So I made it to my first class (5 minutes late, but that is what work and a med emergency on the T will do for ya).
The professor (freedman) is fine; knows his stuff, seems to care, and teaches the same class during the day - so it is not some night school hack pressed into service. This is a real, wizened, tenured, full professor. How do you like that?
And not to be exceedingly arrogant, but compared with the folks sitting around me I felt like I will have no trouble with this class. Now, maybe not everyone has this pathology of wondering if they are in tyhe top of their class, but old habits die hard, and being back at a 1 piece chair/desk in a drop ceiling aquare tiled classroom has me reverting not back to college, but high school attitudes.
I came in late, having missed the first class, not having done the homework (as It didn’t know what it was - I had called the prof to find out what I had missed, but he had not actually told me the homework assignment). Given these relative handicaps, I still ended up picking up on what we were doing enough that by the break my neighbors were asking me for help. Granted, the young lady to my left simply needed help reading what passes for writing that our prof does no the blackboard, but still, as someone who doesn’t need to write backwards to keep my notes private, I find I have an edge here. It is worth mentioning that the prof’s writing is great when he writes equations and numbers, no matter the complexity or rapidity, but when he tries to write an english sentance, make sure you listen to what he is saying while he writes so you will have some crib to work from in deciphering. The fellow to my left, who noticed me on the T coming in late together from our jobs downtown, did actually comment on needing help with inductive proofs, but I am not such an egg that I offered to help, especially as the prof was doing just that 4 feet away. It’s probably not fair to say that this guy noticed me on the T, really what he noticed was my new fly sony clie nx70c pda. Probably similar to the staring I did when I first saw one in person in an intern’s hand. First I lusted, then I resented him affording one, then I plotted to be casually nice to him to I could play with it. Finally, to make the seperation easier, I told myself it wasn’t worth it, which was convincing just long enough to get me to pay attention to something else. But I digress.
I am seriously enjoying the work. It is light, and generally interesting - discreet math is nice because everything can be related to some real life situation. I can’t count the number of times I have found myself putting books in order on a shelf, or how often I have pulled colored marbles out of a bag. Course if I could count those things, I wouldn’t be taking this class. But seriously, I get the relevance to programming, I am not annoyed by having to take this pre req.
One of the guys that works next to me doing GUI programming is a Math Phd. I mentioned to him one of the problems classified under ‘later’ by my prof when he presented it without solution. The next morning, this guy could hardly say hello before telling me the problem had bothered him so much the night before he had sat down and solved it. I guess these things become compulsive if you feed the addiction all the way to a doctorate.
On another note, I need to go snowboarding. It was too much fun last year to let work and general life eclipse such a perfect escape from this dreary season.
Perhaps it is also that my birthday is next week, and as I spent this weekend cleaning, taking out trash, washing dishes, cooking, doing homework, and watching CNN (more on that), I am feeling a bit like an adult, and I don’t like it.
Maybe a freezing cold bike ride will work that out of my system. And I could pick up a few groceries.
-A
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