Squash

In the past month, I've become a big fan of the game of squash . I got started when my manager, who is also just starting to play, invited me to play. I quickly got into the game. It is in some ways similar to racquetball, but I like it much better than racquetball. Racquetball is a game for vicious thugs and miscreants, and squash is for those with more refined sensibilities.

Last week I took a squash lesson and purchased a squash racquet and shoes . My manager and I are usually evenly matched, but this week I beat him 9-1. It may be time for me to start participating in the CMU squash ladder . :-)

Birthday Weekend

My friend Phil came to Pittsburgh for the weekend of my birthday, July 15-16. Some of the things we did:

• Went to the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix and Car Show .
• Saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2.
• Went kayaking on the Allegheny River.
• Ate at D's , Aiello's , and Five Guys .
• Played the improbably excellent battle mode of the Dreamcast version of San Francisco Rush 2049 .

I'm looking forward to visiting Phil, Angie, Tim, and the rest of the gang in Cleveland sometime before the end of the summer.

Jiu-Jitsu

I've been thinking for awhile of expanding my training program beyond weightlifting and cardio machines. It's not that there's anything wrong with that kind of training program, but I felt like it was time to do something which would combine a workout with learning new skills. Since I started regularly watching MMA matches, I've become increasingly interested in Brazilian jiu-jitsu , so I thought I might like to try it.

I searched online for places around Pittsburgh that offered classes, and found Steel City Martial Arts . I've now been taking classes for 3 weeks, and it's great, both as a workout and a discipline. After the first class I participated in, I was so sore that I could barely move, but my condition has improved with each class, and I've enjoyed learning the strategy behind the matches I've seen on TV. Sensei Achille and all of the students at Steel City have been very helpful and encouraging.

I posted a picture of myself wearing my new KF Fighter gi on Flickr.

Thrifting

The weekend before last, I had the opportunity to go "thrifting" for the first time. This involves going to a number of thrift stores back-to-back in search of new clothes. I wanted to find some new shirts and pants, since I'm always getting ribbed at work about how baggy my clothes are. (My clothes were baggy to begin with, and then I lost 40 pounds .)

My guides to the world of thrifting were Cathy and Peter, who are seasoned vets at the game, and have more fashion sense than I. We started off at Peter's house and headed over to Pamela's for breakfast. I had never been there before, so I was glad to go, since Pamela's is one of those places where you must eat at least once if you want to call yourself a true Pittsburgher.

Filled with delicious strawberry hotcakes, we made our way to the first thrift store on the circuit, the Red, White, and Blue Thrift Store . This place had tons of clothes. Alas, there were no dressing rooms, and I didn't feel comfortable buying pants without trying them on. Peter helped me find a nice Patagonia short-sleeved button down shirt, though.

The next stop was the Salvation Army thrift store on the South Side. I found a couple of button down shirts and a pair of yellow dress pants. Peter warned me that, due to their color, the yellow pants were a "limited use item", but they were only 50 cents, so I bought them anyway.

The final stop on our tour was the Goodwill thrift store on Carson Street. While we were there, Cathy threw a pair of blue jeans over the dressing room door and told me to try them on. I did, and Cathy said she liked the fit, so I decided to buy them. I didn't realize until I was out of the dressing room that they were actually women's jeans. I suppose it doesn't really matter, but I would have never tried them on if I had gone to the store alone, so I'm glad Cathy was there to pick them out.

All told, I got 4 short-sleeved button down shirts, a pair of dress pants, a pair of jeans, and 2 pairs of shorts for under $25. Since I'm pretty cheap when it comes to clothing, I remarked to Peter and Cathy that I might start buying all of my clothes at thrift stores, which elicited a horrified response. According to them, that would be taking things a bit too far. I'm afraid they may have unleashed a monster. :-)

Back from Japan

My friend Jason and I recently got back from a two week vacation in Japan. While we were there, we stayed with my friend Andrew , who lives in Osaka. We had a really great time, and I hope to write up a chronicle of the adventures we had. However, that will take some time, so for now you'll have to settle for a slideshow of 120 of the best pictures we took (culled from almost 1600 total photos):

Japan Vacation Slideshow (70 MB, requires Quicktime 7 )

Weekend with Mike

My friend Mike visited me this weekend. On Friday night, we went to the Pittsburgh Panthers basketball game at Petersen Events Center in Oakland. Pitt suffered a disappointing loss , but the game was still fun and exciting. Now I know what people are talking about when they mention the Oakland Zoo .

Speaking of zoos, on Saturday we went to the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium . Many of the animals were not out, due to the cold, but we still got to see leopards, lions, elephants, and monkeys, among other animals. And, of course, the aquarium was fully operational. The zoo was larger and nicer than I expected, and we didn't have to fight crowds, so I enjoyed it. After the zoo, we ate lunch at The Church Brew Works . Later in the day, we went to the Carnegie Science Center and saw Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D at the Omnimax theater.

It was great to see Mike again, and it gave me a reason to get out and see some parts of Pittsburgh I hadn't visited before. Hopefully he'll be able to visit again soon.

How to Lose Weight and Get in Shape

On the Tuesday after the Super Bowl last year, I started exercising regularly and monitoring my diet. Approximately one year later, I weigh 40 pounds less (I went from 197 lbs. to 157 lbs.) and I'm in much better shape (increased cardiovascular endurance and more muscle). I think this qualifies me to give advice on how to lose weight and get in shape. Not all of this will be applicable to or work for everyone, but it worked for me.

1. Burn more calories than you consume. If you want to lose weight, ignore stupid fad diets like Atkins, South Beach, or pretty much any other diet that has been promoted in the last 30 years. It's really simple: you lose weight by burning more calories than you consume. You can accomplish this by either burning more calories or consuming fewer calories. Most people will want to do some of both.

2. Be analytical. When you start out, you need to slow things down and think about everything you eat and how many calories you are consuming. You also need to keep track of how many calories you are burning. This is the only way you're going to know if you're burning more calories than you consume. You should also keep a log of your weight, as a check of your calculations. It doesn't matter how you keep track of this information. Use a piece of paper, or a spreadsheet, or whatever you like. I use a program called Calorie King that runs on my Treo, which makes this simple and lets me enter data no matter where I am.

3. Make it routine. Many people claim that motivation and willpower are a key part of losing weight and getting in shape. These people are wrong. The most important thing is routine. I didn't suddenly become super-motivated to lose weight one year ago. What happened is I moved to a new city and a new job, so I had no established routine. I used this opportunity to make going to the gym part of my daily routine. Now, I go to the gym after work out of habit.

   People like to spend a lot of time talking about the downsides of habit and routine, but they can just as easily be used to accomplish something great. I find it easier to form new routines when I change a bunch of things at once, so if you have been thinking of making changes to your schedule other than working out regularly, just make all of the changes at once, and within a few weeks going to the gym will be a habit and you won't have to think about it.

4. Drink lots of water. If you think you are hungry, drink a glass of water and wait a few minutes. If you are still hungry after that, then eat. It's very easy to confuse being thirsty/dehydrated and being hungry.

5. Live alone. This has dual benefits. First, you aren't obligated to eat on any sort of schedule. When you are hungry, you eat, and when you're not, you don't. Second, it means that you control all of the food coming into your household. You won't be tempted by foods that other people happen to be eating.

I'm probably forgetting a few things, but this is the core of my fitness program. It's pretty simple and mostly common sense. If this post becomes popular, then maybe I will get a fake Ph.D. and write a book that has phrases on the cover like, "Dr. Hunter's revolutionary weight loss program!" Until then, you can email me for free advice.

Carnegie Library RSS Feed Generator

Carnegie Library 's email notification system leaves much to be desired. It only notifies you after an item is overdue, giving you no chance to return the item on time. Also, when you request an item, you don't receive an email notification that the item is available until a few days after it is ready. However, your account information web page updates immediately after the item is ready.

To solve these problems, I've been working on a Carnegie Library RSS Feed Generator for the past few months. It works by screen-scraping your account information web page. By doing this, it can add entries to your feed a few days before a checked out item is due and immediately after a requested item is available.

This feed generator was mainly written for my personal use, but since some other people might also useful, I'm pleased to make it publicly available. If you decide to use it, please send me feedback and suggestions, so that I can improve it in the future.

(Sidenote: The feed generator was also an excuse to learn Ruby on Rails . Ruby and Rails are both fun to work with. As a desktop application developer, I used to loathe web apps due to the prevalence of spaghetti code. Rails makes it very easy to create a cleanly factored Model-View-Controller application, so I plan to use it for all of my future web development needs.)

A Farewell to Cable

I decided to drop down to basic cable last month. I decided that I was wasting too much time on frivolous TV watching, and that there was plenty of content available through Netflix for my video entertainment needs. I'll let other people serve as my filter for what is and isn't worth watching, and then I'll rent the DVDs of the shows worth watching. By doing this, I'm saving about $40/month on my cable bill + $10/month on my ReplayTV service. So I'm going to save about $600/year. Not bad.

I also cancelled my membership at the JCC . I don't need it anymore, because I can now use the fitness facilities at Carnegie Mellon (one of the perks of Apple moving into a building on CMU's campus). That's going to save me another $600/year.

Combined, I'll be saving about $1,200/year, or, as Mark Cuban likes to think about it , I'll be earning the equivalent of a 12% return on a $10,000 investment. That's pretty hard to beat.

3rd Birthday

Today's the 3rd birthday of this blog. This is post number 384.

I'd write more, but I'm too busy rocking out to Generic Crunk Rap .

One Year at Apple

Today marks one year since I started working at Apple. In that time, I helped ship iWork '06 . It's the first commercial software I've ever shipped. Seeing customers' faces light up as I demoed the product to them at Macworld Expo felt great. The people I work with are awesome and my job just plain rocks. Here's to another great year ahead.

Macworld Picture

My picture was in the San Francisco Examiner on Tuesday. The picture was taken on Monday, while I was picking up my Macworld badge at the Moscone Center. I don't know why the caption says I'm from Oregon - I told the photograhper I was from Pittsburgh, but she didn't write it down.

Cleveland Trip

I went up to Cleveland on Thursday to hang out with some friends from Case. Josh and I had lunch at Phnom Penh , then we drove over to Case and checked out the new dorms and the " binary walkway " that replaced Baker. We also visited Dave at his lab in Wickenden, where he showed me a mouse slicing machine .

After that I bummed around Cleveland Heights for awhile, then met Dave, Angie, Tim, Chris, Dana, and Phil for dinner at Tommy's . I had my standard "Big M" meat pie and Power Smoothie. After dinner we went to Chris and Dana's apartment in Ohio City (home of the West Side Market).

Pictures (and video!) are available on Flickr .

Pittsburgh Geek Night

I attended Pittsburgh Geek Night 44 last Thursday at The Church Brew Works . I spent most of my time talking to a guy about my age that works for Giant Eagle. He told me about their multi-terabyte database tables of transaction data, and what happens behind the scenes when I buy groceries and then immediately go to GetGo to buy gas with the discount I earned. It was an enjoyable way to spend an hour after work, so I'll probably go to Geek Night 45 on February 2.

Trip to Boston

Last weekend I took a trip to Boston for Startup School . I drove home on Thursday night and on Friday flew to Boston from Akron-Canton on AirTran, since it was significantly less expensive than any flight out of Pittsburgh. (Damn you, US Airways !) My flight was delayed for about an hour due to bad weather in Boston, so I ended up arriving just before Jason . I met up with Jason at the baggage claim, and we headed outside to get a shuttle to the hotel . It was raining, and would continue to rain continuously for the next 24 hours.

We met Josh at the hotel, dropped our bags off in our room, and immediately headed to Harvard Square via the T . Our destination was a reception at Y Combinator 's offices in Cambridge. We got lost in Harvard Square (a problem compounded by the cold, driving rain), but eventually made it to the reception. It was extremely crowded, which made me a little uncomfortable, but after a few minutes I settled in and met a number of interesting people. Among them: a student who interned at SigmaTel (maker of the chipset used in the iPod shuffle), the creator and owner of the successful site LibraryThing.com , one of the early players at Spyglass , and an employee of OpsWare (one of Marc Andreesen's erstwhile companies).

After the reception, we headed back to the T station (in the pouring rain), went back to the hotel, walked over to the pizza place next to the hotel to get some dinner (in the pouring rain), and finally got to bed around 2 AM.

We were up bright and early on Saturday in order to get to Harvard by 9 AM for Startup School. The speakers were, overall, very engaging and informative. I'm not going to discuss the content of the presentations here, since I think that warrants another complete post. I will note, however, that I really enjoyed the "psychic energy" of being around so many like-minded people.

After Startup School was over, I went out to dinner at John Harvard's with a large group (~20) of attendees. We had a good conversation during dinner, so we decided to continue with coffee and tea at Cafe Algiers . Amazingly enough, it had finally stopped raining during dinner, and we were able to walk to the cafe without getting wet.

On Sunday we slept in a little, then took the T to Central Square to have lunch with Josh's friend (and Case alum) Amy Chan . After that we headed to the Prudential Center to take a Duck Tour . Unfortunately, it was extremely windy on Sunday, so the ducks were not allowed on the water. We still got to take the land-based part of the tour, and we got half of our money refunded, but it was disappointing not to go out on the Charles River. After the tour, we were all really tired, so we went back to the hotel for a nap. When we woke up, I recommended Legal Seafoods for dinner. We hopped the T to Kendall Square and ate there. I had clam chowder, crab cakes, and shrimp, which were all really good. Sated, we headed back to the hotel to take it easy.

Monday morning, we checked out of the hotel and headed to Faneuil Hall/Quincy Marketplace for lunch. Josh, Jason, and I all had clam chowder in a bread bowl. (Whoever invented the bread bowl is a genius.) Jason had to get to the airport, so he left us after lunch, and Josh and I proceeded to hike around the Freedom Trail . After awhile we ventured off the trail, and our journey took us through Chinatown, Boston Common, and all the way over to Fenway Park. By that time we had walked 4-5 miles, and I had to get to the airport, so I left Josh and hightailed it back to the hotel to catch the shuttle.

My flight back to CAK was mostly uneventful. For the second consecutive time, I was selected for a complete screening at the airport security checkpoint, since 23 year-old males traveling alone are dangerous. My parents brought my car to me, and I drove straight home from Canton.

It was great to see Jason and Josh again, especially in the context of Startup School and exploring Boston. I like Boston, since I think it's big enough to give you the benefits of a New York City, without smelling like New York City. Hopefully I'll see Jason and Josh again soon, and hopefully it won't be too long before I get back to Boston.

(Note: I didn't take any photos, since I'm lazy, but you can see Josh's photos on Flickr .)

Startup School

I got accepted for Startup School , along with Jason and Josh . All three of us are going to go to Boston, October 14-17. I think it's going to be very informative, as well as a lot of fun. The school is on Saturday, so on Sunday we should have time for some sightseeing. We were thinking of taking a Boston Duck Tour . Anyone have other suggestions for things to do in Boston?

Shooting Trip

As you have probably deduced if you monitor the photos in the sidebar, I went shooting last week. A couple of coworkers and I had been planning a trip to the shooting range, and on Wednesday we finally went. I had never shot a handgun before, only a rifle in Boy Scouts, but fortunately one of my coworkers had extensive experience and demonstrated everything to me. I shot a Ruger .22 caliber, a SIG-Sauer 9mm, and a GLOCK .45 caliber . It was fun, and I'd do it again. It's a little expensive (since I needed to rent a gun and ear protection and buy ammo), but I can see myself doing it a couple of times a year.

Andrew's Visit

My friend Andrew visited Pittsburgh this weekend. He is living in Osaka as part of the JET Programme , but he got to come back to the U.S. for a month during summer break. He got to Pittsburgh on Thursday night, and I took him to Taqueria Mi Mexico for dinner and Rita's for desert. After that, we came back to my apartment and watched SmackDown! and played Bust-a-Move 4 .

On Friday, Andrew went to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History while I was at work, and saw the bog people . After work we went to dinner at Rose Tea Cafe. I got the Taiwanese chunk squid, which does not appear on the menu, but was revealed to me a few weeks ago by a coworker. Then we decided to meet Andrew's friend Katie from Oberlin to see a movie. We saw The Wedding Crashers, primarily based on strong reviews at Rotten Tomatoes. I thought it was hilarious (much better than the trailers made it out to be). Many comedies these days feel like each joke was tested on a focus group - this is not one of those comedies. After the movie we hit Eat'n Park for the midnight breakfast buffet. When we got back to my apartment I made the mistake of flipping on the TV and we ended up watching the last half of Who's Your Daddy? , which is a horrible movie. You have been warned.

On Saturday we joined Katie and her friend Tom (also from Oberlin) for lunch at The Church Brew Works . I had heard of the restaurant quite a few times, but had never been there, so I was pleased to go. I had an excellent pulled pork sandwich and the obligatory beer (pale ale). Next time I think I'll get the homemade ginger ale or birch beer instead. After lunch we came back to my apartment, after making a detour through the Allegheny County Cemetery for some sightseeing. I 0wn3d Andrew at Bust-a-Move 4, and then he went over to Katie's to eat dinner and spend the night.

Andrew spent Saturday night and most of Sunday at Katie's, but he did come back to my apartment on Sunday night to sleep, since Katie's family gets up early for work. It was really fun to hang out with Andrew and show him my 'hood in Pittsburgh. Hopefully I'll visit Osaka next year, and he can show me his 'hood too.

Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix

This weekend was the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix in Schenley Park. That's a 5 minute walk from my apartment, so I headed over to check it out. Not being a car junkie, I wasn't blown away, but it was still cool to see all the old (sorry, "vintage") racecars making hairpin turns in Schenley Park. Max speeds top out at around 100 mph.

You can see my photos of the event over on Flickr. You won't even have to look at any ads since, thanks to the largesse of Brett (my Extreme Blue roommate), I now have a Flickr Pro account.

The Tyranny of the Expense Account

My loyal readers may recall that a couple of weeks ago, I took a trip to Cupertino for work. For the business-related parts of the trip I was able to charge meals and other costs to an expense account. That's great, right? Expense accounts are gravy, aren't they? Well... no. Sure, it's nice to be able to stay in a nice hotel and eat nice meals without paying anything out of pocket, but expense accounts often lead to stupid purchasing behavior. This stupidity ends up hurting me when I'm engaged in personal travel, which is much more frequent (for me) than business travel.

Case in point: broadband Internet access. All major airports now have Wi-Fi available, and nearly all of them charge you at least $10 to use it. [1] This is stupid. First, if you are going to be charged for Wi-Fi, then it shouldn't be more than a couple bucks. Second, providing Wi-Fi is not that expensive, so airports should strongly consider free Wi-Fi, since it builds goodwill and makes people want to use your airport. So why is Wi-Fi $10? My hypothesis is: "because of expense accounts". Most companies will let you expense Wi-Fi. $10 isn't enough to worry about, and Internet access is genuinely useful. Thus, masses of business travelers pay the $10 for Wi-Fi, since they aren't spending their own money. This screws everyone who isn't on an expense account. Get rid of expense accounts and I bet airport Wi-Fi would drop to $2 or free pretty quickly.

The same is true for Wi-Fi in hotels and (probably) coffee shops. I've stayed in $40/night hotels with free Wi-Fi, but the $150/night Marriott I was at in San Jose charged $10/day as part of their "Wired for Business" package. Oooh, "Wired for Business"... sounds like something a serious businessman needs. Better expense that. And I bet that 70% of T-Mobile HotSpot subscriptions are subsidized by expense accounts.

So, yeah, it's nice to travel on an expense account, but I'm overall I'm ambivalent on them. Purchasing behavior might be a bit more rational if companies just gave travelers a certain amount of cash per day and let them keep what they didn't spend. I'm sure that wouldn't always work well, though. So, if you get to travel on an expense account, enjoy it, but try not to screw me too much. :-)

Notes

[1] Fortunately, PIT is an exception to the rule. Wi-Fi is free there.

Josh's Visit

Josh flew home from Raleigh for the week, and tonight he drove over to Pittsburgh to visit me. We had dinner at Rose Tea Cafe (colloquially known at the office as "Bubbles"). After dinner we walked next door to Rita's for dessert. I'd hadn't been to Rita's before, but I was eager to try it out since it seems to be an institution, and an extremely popular one at that. I had the gelati, which is a combination of their Italian ice and custard, and it was really tasty. Squirrel Hill has a ton of ice cream places (Coldstone, Baskin Robbins, Ben and Jerry's), but Rita's is my new favorite.

After dinner we went back to my apartment and talked for awhile, mainly about our super secret project. I talk to Josh quite a bit via IM and phone, but it was really nice to talk in person for the first time in 7 or 8 months.

California Trip

I was out in Cupertino last week, visiting Apple headquarters. I had meetings Monday through Wednesday, but fortunately I was able to fly out on Friday and spend the weekend visiting Jason . On Friday night Jason picked me up at SFO, then we drove into the city and had dinner at Firecracker , a nice Chinese restaurant recommended by one of Jason's coworkers. After that we headed back to Jason's apartment and I ogled Jason's roommate Andrew's big plasma TV. We ended up watching a 12 minute meatball eating competition in high definition .

Saturday morning Jason showed me his office at Apple, and then we walked to a place called BJ's (right in front of the main Apple campus) for lunch. After lunch we planned to visit the Computer History Museum . Andrew wanted to go too, so we stopped by the apartment to wait for him to get back from running the Double Dipsea Challenge . We managed to arrive at the museum in time for the final tour of the day. There were lots of interesting items in the museum's collection. Some of my favorites were the PDP-11, Cray 1, Apple Lisa, and IBM 7030 (a.k.a. " Stretch "). The exhibit on computer memories really put changes in computer technology in perspective. It's amazing that mercury delay lines even worked, and after seeing the memory from the MIT Whirlwind computer , I have a new appreciation for the phrase "dump core".

Saturday night we went to see Howl's Moving Castle in San Jose. It was a typical Miyazaki film, with a magical world and good integration of humor. The plot breaks down a bit near the end, but Miyaazaki's worlds are so fantastic that you are willing to forgive even large gaps in the story. After the movie we ate at a Mexican restaurant named El Burro that provided insanely large portions. Jason and I both had enough food for two full meals.

On Sunday we ate the second half of our El Burro meals, then played some Katamari Damacy while we waited for Jason's friend Ricci to come over. Once Ricci arrived, Jason, Andrew, and I all hopped in his car and went geocaching. This was my first time geocaching. It was a good way to get to see the area and get a little exercise. You can see some pictures of our trip here and here . Midway through our geocaching expedition we stopped at a Jamba Juice to get smoothies. I'm a big Jamba Juice fan, but unfortunately there aren't any locations near me, so that was great.

After geocaching, the four of us went to Dave and Buster's for dinner. They were running a promotion that included dinner and a $10 game card for $14. After dinner I played some Derby Owner's Club and Skee-Ball. Ricci and Andrew focused on getting tickets from the coin dropping games, and got enough to get a bunch of shot glasses. After that, Jason dropped me off at the San Jose Marriott, which is where I was staying for the rest of the week.

It was great to get to visit Jason (especially since I wasn't paying for the flights). Hopefully I'll have a chance to do it again soon.

(Jason also wrote an account of the weekend .)

The Awesome Power of Laziness

I've needed a few pieces of furniture since I moved into my apartment in January. Specifically, a table (suitable for use with secondary computer equipment), bookshelves, a coffee table, and a dresser. I hadn't bothered to get these items, since:

1. I'm lazy.
2. I'm cheap.
3. I'm a slob.
4. I don't have a vehicle capable of hauling large pieces of assembled furniture.

Today when I got back from the JCC, I saw a sign advertising free IKEA furniture in the mailroom. I ran up to my apartment and called the given number, hoping that I'd be the first to inquire. I was, and I ended up getting the following for free: 2 bookshelves (approx. 4 ft. tall) and 1 bookshelf (approx. 3 1/2 ft. tall), a 7 drawer dresser (approx. 5 ft. tall), and a table (approx. 5 ft. by 2 ft.). All of the stuff was in excellent condition, and the guy giving it away even helped me carry it down to my apartment! Apparently he had just gotten new furniture and wanted to get rid of this stuff fast. I definitely owe him one, so I told him to come get me if he needs a favor in the future.

Maybe later I'll take some pictures of the stuff I got, but see #1 above.

Hotel Wi-Fi

I went to a wedding this weekend. On Thursday night I stayed in a cheap Best Western . They had free Wi-Fi. On Friday and Saturday night I stayed in a fancy schmancy inn (don't worry, I wasn't paying). Even though this place was more than twice as expensive as the Best Western, they charged $10 a day for broadband. Also, a "day" was defined as "until 3pm", so if I wanted a connection from, say, 11pm Friday until 11pm Saturday, I would have had to pay $20. What's up with that?

Judging from the advertisements along the highway, free broadband at hotels has hit a tipping point . I think it's unlikely that I will ever book a room for myself that doesn't have free broadband.

Cleveland Trip

Jason visited Cleveland last weekend, so I drove over to hang out with him and the rest of the Case crew that's still in Cleveland. Here's a list of the things we did: ate at Tommy's (yum... meat pies), drank and got Taco Bell at 3am, saw Sin City (liked it a lot), ate at Luchita's (yum... mole), played cards, ate at Phnom Penh (best pad thai on the planet), got custard at Strickland's , played Puerto Rico .

I took a few pictures, which you can view on Flickr .

Squirrel Hill is Cool

I woke up this morning and need to accomplish the following:

1. Mail a letter
2. Go to the bank
3. Get a optical audio cable
4. Check used Xbox prices
5. Work out

I synced up with the On the Media podcast (so I would have something to listen to at the gym), then left my apartment. Here's what happened:

1. Walked up Murray Ave. to the post office and dropped my letter in the mailbox.
2. Crossed the street and got money out of the ATM at my bank.
3. Walked down Forbes Ave. to The Exchange. Used Xbox: $110.
4. Crossed the street to EB Games. Used Xbox: $130.
5. Walked up Forbes to Radio Shack. 3ft Monster cable: $40. 3ft Radio Shack brand cable: $15. Bought the Radio Shack cable.
6. Continued down Forbes to the JCC. Worked out on the elliptical trainer.
7. Walked back to my apartment.

Total miles driven to accomplish my tasks: 0.

GPS

After an annoying driving experience this weekend, which involved going 5 miles out of my way by missing a single turn, I decided to purchase a GPS unit for my Treo 600 . This unit was recommended to me by a coworker, who also has this unit and a Treo 600. I've wanted to have GPS in my car for awhile, but the standalone GPS units are too expensive for me to justify, since I don't do a lot of driving. With this GPS unit (and appropriate software on my Treo) I can get basic directions, as well as voice prompts (e.g. "turn left", "turn right") and automatic recalculation if I miss a turn. That should be a big help as I explore Pittsburgh.

Around Town

I recently found out that there is a local Cocoa programmer's group named CocoaHeads . They are having a meeting at CMU tomorrow, so I'm going to try to attend.

For a couple of weeks now, I've been wondering about the sign on the second floor of the building on the corner of Murray and Forbes reading "CyberConxion". I figured it was either an ISP or some lame Internet cafe. Well, it turns out that it's a video gaming center . I'm going to have to check it out, since I've been wanting to play Half-Life 2 on a pimped out machine. It might still end up being a lame Internet cafe, but at least it looks more promising than I initially thought.

Although Squirrel Hill has restaurants of many cuisines, there is no place to get Mexican food. Not even a faux-Mexican burrito joint. However, I did find out today that there is a Baja Fresh over in Oakland. That will have to suffice, since there aren't any Chipotles in Pittsburgh. You can find the Baja Fresh using the new Google Maps , which is awesome (except for some Safari incompatibilities).

Jewish Community Center

For the past week, I've been taking advantage of a free trial membership to the Jewish Community Center (JCC) in Squirrel Hill. (JCCs are similar to YMCAs.) Now I have to decide if I want to pay for a year-long membership. It's pretty expensive, but Apple will pay for part of it. Also, the location is great for me, since I can walk there on my way home from work. Even though it will end up being $50 out-of-pocket per month, I think I'm going to sign up. They have aerobic machines, a weight room, pool, gym, and racquetball courts. It is extremely lame that they charge you extra for group exercise classes (e.g., Spinning) when you've already paid $600+ per year. Oh well.

Pittsburgh Restaurant Micro-reviews

One of my co-workers put together a nice collection of one-line Pittsburgh restaurant reviews . Checking out the places on that list should keep me occupied for awhile. Here are my thoughts on the places I've tried so far:

Gullifty's - Overpriced, mediocre to average American food. This place has a reputation for great deserts, and while they were decent, they weren't special.

Zaw's - Dirt cheap, average to above average Chinese takeout. At lunchtime you can get an entree, rice, and soup for $4-5.

Rose Tea Garden - Really good Chinese food and good (although overpriced) bubble tea.

Kazansky's - A Squirrel Hill fixture. Good corned beef sandwiches and other deli fare.

Mineo's - Excellent pizza. Kind of like Mama Santa's or Valentino's in Cleveland, but more generous with the cheese and toppings.

Napoli Pizza - Reasonable pizza. Good place to grab a few slices on the way home from work.

Pizza Amier - Haven't had their pizza, but their gyros make a solid lunch.

Sree's - Good, cheap Indian. You can get lunch for $5, and it's enough for two meals.

Second Anniversary

Yesterday was the second anniversary of this blog. I've been busy learning the ropes at my new job, but you can expect to see more frequent postings in the coming week.

Also, due to some asshat spammers, trackbacks have been disabled on this blog.

Vonage

I decided to sign up for Vonage yesterday. I get poor mobile phone reception at my apartment, plus I needed to get a number with a local area code to operate the front door buzzer here. I didn't want to wait on Vonage to ship a phone adapter, so I went to Best Buy and bought a Linksys Vonage phone adapter (which is free after rebate when you sign up for Vonage). I hooked it up to my local network, plugged a phone in, and registered on Vonage's web site. 5 minutes later my phone was working.

So far I've been pleased with the service. I talked to Jason for about 15 minutes last night, and didn't notice any difference from a traditional landline in terms of voice quality and latency. Also, it's only $15/month for 500 minutes (more than I need) with every feature I know of (call waiting, voicemail, call forwarding, etc.).

Send me an email if you want my new phone number.

UPDATE: By the way, if anyone reading this decides to sign up for Vonage, let me know and I'll refer you. That will give you one free month of service, and give me 2 free months.

Steelers

The Pittsburgh Steelers play in the NFL playoffs at 4:30pm today. Being from Cleveland, I'm presented with a dilemma. Should I root for the Steelers or not? On one hand, it would be nice to have some excitement around town. On the other hand, they are the Steelers. Perhaps the best compromise is to root for the Steelers until they reach the Superbowl, then hope they are defeated in a heart-breaking loss. That oughta soften them up for the Browns next season. :-)

I'm Famous

Well, maybe this doesn't qualify as fame-worthy, but a story written about my Extreme Blue experience (along with the other Extreme Blue interns from Case) did appear on the Case homepage.

Netflix

I reactivated my Netflix account last night. You can see the movies I'm currently watching in the sidebar. If you have a Netflix account and want to be my Netflix Friend (so we can see each other's ratings), let me know.

Relocation

The movers from Graebel picked up all of my stuff from the house on Monday and delivered it to my apartment in Pittsburgh today. It was great to have other people do the heavy lifting, especially the furniture and TV. I'm having a bed delivered on Thursday, so I won't have to worry about moving that either. The only heavy item I'll have to move myself is my G5, since I didn't want to be without it for a few days.

Moving services are really great when they are being paid for by the company, but as nice as they are, I doubt I could bring myself to pay movers if I were moving on my own. Hopefully I won't have to move anywhere (without company support) for awhile.

Squirrel Hill Map

A guy advertising an apartment on Craigslist has created a cool map that shows the locations of the major shops and attractions in Squirrel Hill. My apartment is on Hobart Street, off of the left side of the map. Work is on Murray Avenue, off of the bottom end of the map.

The Wendover

I signed the lease for my apartment in Pittsburgh today. It's at The Wendover . Work is a 10 minute walk, as are shops, restaurants, banks, and movie theaters. Being able to walk to work will be great, since (1) I don't get enough exercise, (2) I dislike driving in heavy traffic, and (3) I'll be able to listen to podcasts.

I took some pictures of my apartment, but haven't transferred them to my computer yet. Next up: getting ready for the moving company's pickup on Monday morning.

UPDATE: I've posted photos of my apartment on Flickr .

Pittsburghese

Phil pointed out to me that Wikipedia has an entry on Pittsburgh English, also known as Pittsburgese . Apparently "yinz" is a Pittsburgh construct. The Wikipedia article pointed me to Pittsburghese.com, where there is an MP3 discussing Pittsburgh English.

Cavs Vs. Hawks

My whole family, along with David, Andrew, and Mike, went to the Cavs game at Gund Arena tonight. The Cavs beat the Hawks, 101-85. The Cavs were only ahead by 1 point going into the fourth quarter, but they dominated in the final 12 minutes to win big.

Our seats were in the upper deck, but they were still pretty good. As a bonus, Andrew, David and I stopped at White Castle on the way home.

Disclaimer

Now that I've announced that I'm going to work for Apple, I want to make sure that expectations for this blog are clear:

This is my personal blog. Things I say here are my thoughts and opinions, not those of Apple. Links I post here are items I found personally interesting, and do not necessarily represent Apple's interests. Please do not link to or quote this blog as as evidence of any action or future action on Apple's part, since nothing on this blog is written as part of my position at Apple.

To quote Eric Albert :

What, explicitly, does all of this mean? It means that if I say something here, it isn't Apple's viewpoint, nor is it the viewpoint of my team at Apple, nor does it mean that Apple is engaged in an internal debate on the issue, nor does it mean that I don't have a completely different perspective on the issue when I'm at work.

For further reading, I refer you to the disclaimers written by Eric Albert and Chuq von Rospach , which I agree with whole-heartedly.

Starting at Apple

Yes, in case you haven't already heard, I'm starting work at Apple on January 17th! I'm really excited. The team I'll be working with seems like a great group of people and, let's face it, I've always been a Mac geek.

I accepted the job back in November, but I didn't post about it until now for a couple of reasons: (1) I haven't had time to do much blogging lately, and (2) I wanted to have a disclaimer ready so that my comments on this blog are not misconstrued.

2004 In Review

I haven't posted in awhile, and hopefully posting frequency will pick up soon, but I want to recap 2004 before I forget.

• Had a good, fun spring semester. It was bittersweet, though, since Jason and many of my other friends graduated in May and dispersed throughout the country.
• Participated in IBM's excellent Extreme Blue internship program. The experience was amazing, and I met a bunch of really cool people.
• Did some part-time consulting work for a startup with a cool Mac application. This was the first time I'd done work for a startup, and I'm glad for the experience.
• Interviewed for a number of full-time jobs, and ended up accepting a position with Apple .
• Graduated with my B.S. in Computer Science from Case .

I'd say that it was a successful and exciting year.

School's Out for the Winter!

I just finished the last final exam of my undergraduate career. On January 14th I'll officially have my Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Case Western Reserve University. w00t.

Now I've just got to move out of my apartment, find an apartment in Pittsburgh, and start my new job on January 17th.

New 527 Organization

After seeing The Daily Show's report on starting a 527 organization earlier this week, Phil and I have decided that we are going to start our own 527. These organizations are supposedly not supposed to tell you to vote for any candidate, but we are going to push the limit by promoting not voting. Also, the name of our group will be No One, so that at the end of our ads it will say, "No One is responsible for the content of this ad."

What kind of 527 would you start?

Journey to Red Sox Nation

Sunday through Tuesday I took a trip to Boston to interview with the Lotus division of IBM Software Group . The flight to Boston (via Detroit) was uneventful. Upon arrival, I headed to Hertz to pick up my rental car. The girl behind the counter was about my age, and I started talking to her about the Red Sox (down 0-3 to the Yankees at this point). She called for my car, and I ended up getting an orange Ford Mustang convertible . That's probably the car I was scheduled for all along, but I like to think that I got it because she dug me.

I drove to my hotel in Westford, about 45 minutes from Boston, where Lotus is actually located. I was hungry, but I figured that something would be open in Westford, so I didn't stop to eat on the way. Well, it turns out that Westford actually isn't very big, and nothing was open at midnight except for the gas station. I got a hot dog and some chips at the gas station, and was treated to an adept display of profanity by the guy checking out in front of me, as he explained the plight of the Red Sox. (Something about f'ing Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui). Back at the hotel, I ate my food and saw the Red Sox win game 4.

Monday morning I had my interview at Lotus 's offices, which were only a couple of miles from the hotel. Spent about an hour interviewing with 2 developers, had lunch with a bunch of people on the team, and then talked with the hiring manager for about an hour. The building I was in was interesting; not your standard IBM cube farm. That's because it was formerly the home of Iris . However, the manager informed me that I would be working in the building next door should I receive and accept and offer, so asked for a tour of it. Unfortunately, it was a standard IBM cube farm. Sigh...

After the visit ended, I headed back to my hotel. I wanted to visit downtown Boston, and was hoping to meet up with Sean , one of my teammates from Extreme Blue this summer. I wanted to look up some things online, so I broke down and paid the hotel's $10 charge for 24 hours of broadband. Sean was on Skype , so I hit him up, and he said he'd give me a tour of MIT, and then we could go somewhere for dinner.

I drove into Boston and picked up the T (subway). After meeting Sean at the Kendall/MIT stop on the Red Line, he showed me the MIT Media Lab , the brand new Stata Center (home of CSAIL ), and Simmons Hall (a dorm with unusual architecture), as well as some of the bigger lecture halls and the main building (home of the dome ), with its " infinite corridor ". (See this for a brief account of some of the stuff I saw in the Stata Center.)

After the tour, we went to eat at Legal Seafoods in the Prudential Tower. Game 5 of the Red Sox vs. Yankees was on, and periodically the people near the bar (where there were some TVs) would erupt with cheers, and the wait staff would have to find out what happened and report back to the rest of the customers. The food was good, and Sean and I had a good conversation.

We headed back to Sean's fraternity house, which is only about a mile from Fenway Park. We watched the conclusion of the game on their HD projection TV. When the Red Sox won, the whole city erupted and people ran out into the streets to cheer. The frat house has a deck on the roof, so we went up there and watched everyone act like fools. We could hear the roar coming from Fenway Park. I headed back to the subway, crammed myself into a crowded car, and made it back to Westford.

I didn't have a whole lot of time on Tuesday before my flight, so I decided to head to Lowell, MA, which is the largest town near Westford, and was mentioned by IBMers as a possible place to live. It seemed like a pretty nice town. I drove through and around it, then I parked downtown and walked around for a bit. I ducked into a deli to grab lunch, and had the best corned beef sandwich ever. After that, I hopped back into my car and booked it to Logan . Upon the conclusion of my role in the security theatre at the airport, I flew back to Cleveland.

Upcoming Events

Tonight, Extreme Blue is having an information session in Thwing Meeting Room A. I'll be there to answer questions (and mooch some food).

Tomorrow morning I have an important phone call, then I'm going out for lunch with Extreme Blue alumni and IBMers.

Sunday through Tuesday I will be in Boston. I really need to get a haircut before I leave.

Wingwoman

Wow, maybe I'd be more successful with women if I paid $50/hour for a professional wingwoman to accompany me around town. I find the concept amusing, but I have no doubt that it's effective.

Badnarik to Debate or be Arrested

Michael Badnarik has announced that he will debate George Bush and John Kerry this evening... or he'll be arrested. More at Blognarik .

UPDATE: Michael Badnarik has been arrested. Latest updates are here . Nice use of audio blogging by the Badnarik campaign.

Recent ITConversations

This week I listened to three excellent ITConversations . (One of the nice things about having a 30 minute walk to campus is that it gives me a chance to listen to books and interviews.)

The first was Capturing the Upside with Clayton Christensen. He talks about his Law of Conservation of Modularity, which is about integration and where value lies. His comments on the upmarket disruptions, such as the demise of DEC are fascinating. His distinction between growth markets and growth business made a lot of sense to me. (Steel mini-mills are growth businesses, wireless communication is a growth market.)

Doug Kaye's interview with Joel Spolsky was interesting, especially since I've been reading Joel on Software for a couple of years. The interview is a whirlwind, but Joel's comments about listening to customers made me think. He pointed out that often customers don't really know what they want, and that very rarely will a customer suggest a breakthrough feature. I agree with Joel. It's important to treat customers with respect and to respond to their feedback, but you have to realize that not every feature request will really make sense. Sometimes when customers have a feature request, they are trying to fix a symptom, not a problem. There's no substitute for the overriding vision of an individual or small team.

Finally, I enjoyed Robert Lefkowitz's talk, The Semasiology of Open Source . Oddly enough, I was walking to my accounting class while he was saying that the open source community needs to focus on accounting just as much as it focuses on law. His talk is extremely well developed, and he raises interesting points about what really constitutes source. I won't spoil the ending.

News and Distraction

Philip Greenspun continues to write excellent blog entries. His latest is "Reading the news considered harmful" , in which he discusses the distraction of constantly reading the news. He's got a point. Do I really gain anything by reading the latest headlines multiple times per day, or would I get just as much benefit if I read the news once a week, or once a month? Reading the news as it happens doesn't usually inspire reflective thought or analysis of trends. It's easy to lose the forest for the trees. Furthermore, it distracts me from coding or doing homework.

I think I sometimes read the news as a cop out. I'll be working on a task on my computer, and hit a problem that requires some thought. It's at that point that I'm most tempted to think, "Let me check my feeds. I'll come back to this in a second." I think correcting this requires self-discipline and an awareness of habits. Next time it happens, I'm going to try to close my eyes and think, rather than reflexively clicking on NetNewsWire.

Crashing the Parties

Tonight PBS will be airing a documentary called Crashing the Parties . It's a look at four third party candidates: Michael Badnarik, David Cobb, Michael Peroutka, and Ralph Nader. As a Badnarik supporter, I'm excited that he'll be getting some publicity. Also, given Badnarik's ability to swing the election , this is a program that should be interesting for anyone following the presidential race.

Work/Study Environments and Productivity

My friend Josh has written a nice essay about finding a productive study environment. It's called "On the search for the ideal study environment" . I face the same problems as well. Being a student and sleeping, working, and playing in the same room can make it extremely difficult to switch modes from work to play to study. One idea that I've had lately is that I should buy a large whiteboard for my room. I think that writing a list of things to do on the whiteboard would be more effective than simply keeping a list in a text file on my computer, or on a pad of paper. For some reason, I think that the physical nature of writing things down on a whiteboard would motivate me to get things done. Perhaps I should make a run to OfficeMax tomorrow...

Pho Hoa

Chris, Angie, Tim and I went to Pho Hoa tonight. I had pho for the first time, and it was quite tasty. I also had bubble tea for the first time. It was unusual, but I liked it. There is another place near Pho Hoa called #1 Pho , so I'll have to try that out some weekend.

I still haven't been to Phnom Penh since I got back to Cleveland. That needs to be remedied.

Blogging Talk Photos

My talk on blogging went fairly well. There were about 15 people there, and we had plenty of pizza. :-) My friend Brendan took some photos of the event .

Hot Libertarian Bitch

Dell 2001FP

I decided to spend some of the money I earned over the summer on a new display. As sexy as the Apple displays are, it's impossible to beat the value of the Dell 2001FP , so that's what I ordered. 1600x1200 goodness, here I come...

Back to School

After a fun and challenging summer with IBM Extreme Blue, I'm back in Ohio for my final semester of university. Today my dad and I rented a U-Haul and took a load of stuff to the apartment I'm going to be living in. This will be my first time living off campus, and I'm pretty excited about it. The apartment is in a great location, very close to Coventry. Chris helped me unload, and then we had lunch at Chipotle, which is maybe 50 yards from the apartment. Tomorrow I'll move in for good.

Expect to see this blog updated more frequently in the coming weeks.

Commute

Thanks to some anti-globalization protester asshats, it took me an hour to drive the 3 miles to work this morning. All of the railroad crossings in RTP were closed . Apparently some geniuses decided that the best way to make their opinions known was to short circuit the railroad crossing gates.

I Have Returned

I'm in Durham. Got here about 7:30 last night. The apartment is nice. You can see some photos here . Having a furnished apartment is incredibly convenient.

Josh and I went out for dinner at Big Bowl last night. It was really great to talk with Josh, especially after being home for three weeks. I can only spend a short amount of time at home before I start to go insane. Believe me, there's no one in Alliance that I could go to dinner with and have a conversation about Refactoring . :-)

Tonight I think we're going to hit Pepper's Pizza .

Moving

The past few days have been devoted mainly to preparing to move and preparing for my summer internship. I'm moving down to North Carolina on Friday. It's about 9 hours of driving. Fortunately, IBM is providing a really nice furnished apartment, so I don't have to pack very much.

One question: does anyone know where to find good information on interstate highway construction projects? It seems like every state has their own page, and I don't want to sift through all that info. I just want to know if there's any construction on the I-77, I-74, or I-40 that I should worry about.

Treo 600

For a variety of reasons, I needed a new cell phone before moving down to North Carolina for the summer. I tried to restrain myself, but ended up getting a Treo 600 from Sprint. Case has a deal with Sprint that gives me a discount on my monthly bill, so that's how I justified switching to Sprint (from AT&T Wireless) and paying more for a phone than a normally would have.

So far I'm very pleased with both the Treo and Sprint. I get a good signal at home, unlike AT&T Wireless, which was always on roaming. Sprint was able to port my old number quickly (only took 2-3 hours). The PCS Vision network (Sprint's data service) seems pretty fast. With the Treo, I can get email, chat on AIM, read RSS feeds, and browse the web easily. And the Treo is just like any other Palm, so I can sync it with Address Book and iCal using Palm HotSync and iSync.

The only major downside to the Treo is the low-res screen (160x160). It can be a bit hard on the eyes, but I'm not planning to spend hours looking at it each day, so I guess it's OK. The camera is also pretty crappy, but I don't really care about that. The lack of Bluetooth is mildly annoying, but since you can sync via USB, the only reason I would really want Bluetooth is to use my phone as a remote control during presentations. The Treo has a SD card slot, but unfortunately none of the Bluetooth SD cards are compatible with the Treo.

I've only had the phone and service for a few days, but so far I give the Treo 600 and Sprint big thumbs up.

Mathematics of Marriage

After writing yesterday's essay, I was reminded of a book that I put on my Amazon.com Wishlist some time ago: The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models . I just checked the library catalog, and KSL has a copy of it, so I'll have to pick it up tomorrow.

Long Distance Relationships: An Analysis

Yesterday I somehow got into a discussion of long distance relationships (LDRs), and I offered my view that LDRs where you agree not to see other people are usually pointless. I wasn't satisfied with my argument, though, so I spent some time thinking about it last night, and I came up with this:

Let's view relationships as a market in which you are looking for another person to satisfy certain needs. Different people are able to satisfy those needs to different degrees, and of course you are looking for the person who best satisfies your needs.

Now let's consider two forms of LDRs: those in which you agree to not see other people, and those in which you don't