10 Reasons to Love a Downturn
Ted Murphy wrote an excellent post on 10 reasons to love a downturn.
I especially like “Spend time with your family and friends. Enjoy each other and create a support network to get through to better financial times.” What a great perspective.
Thanks Ted!
Busy Weekend
Meaghs’ mom and sister were in town for the weekend to attend the Portland Bridal Show. They stayed with us on Friday and Saturday night and then attended the show most of Saturday prior to a shopping spree at the Lloyd Center mall.
They spent most of Friday shopping at Washington Square mall and both Meaghan and Mandy managed to find shoes for the wedding. Woohoo! I didn’t get to see much of them that night. I’m starting a new project for my employer and working on the planning and legal stuff for that. Then I had beers planned with Mark for after work. I came home a couple of pints for the better! Fortunately we were still able to share dinner and a few glasses of wine before turning in for the night. It was nice to get the chance to catch up. I could tell that Meaghs had a blast shopping with them both; so nice for her to get some girl time to spend checking out all of the stores!
I spent most of Saturday reading about the Apache web server and researching Ruby on Rails. I decided to take a look at how the open source world lives. Then on Saturday evening I joined Relentless on a very successful raid through Zul’Aman; I even got a new dagger!
All in all, a pretty cool (if busy) weekend!
Alter Egos?
I’m curious to see how many people out there have alter egos online. This alternate identity could take many different forms. Perhaps you have a second or third blog that is kept private or under an assumed identity. It could be contributing to a forum using a pseudo-anonymous name instead of posting as yourself and linking back to your site. I run a couple of blogs to separate my technical posting from personal posting in an attempt to better target those audiences. Participate in this anonymous poll and lets find out how many of us have multiple identities online:
Portland Tech Twitter
@janetleejohnson pointed me at the Portland Tech Twitter list on AboutUs this morning. It’s basically a wiki page listing of tech tweeps in PDX. Very cool idea and a great index for new people I might be interested in following. Adding yourself to the list is faily easy too. There are some great instructions here. For those wondering how to format the information, here is what I added to include myself in the list:
:[http://www.twitter.com/stuartthompson @stuartthompson] – [[Stuart Thompson]]
::Software architect, consultant for Microsoft-based enterprise solutions. [http://stuartthompson.wordpress.com Blog] | [http://stuartthompsontech.wordpress.com Tech Blog]
The first part :[http://www.twitter.com/stuartthompson @stuartthompson] – [[Stuart Thompson]] includes a link to my twitter profile but is displayed as my name.
The second part ::Software architect, consultant for Microsoft-based enterprise solutions. includes a brief description of who I am.
The third part [http://stuartthompson.wordpress.com Blog] | [http://stuartthompsontech.wordpress.com Tech Blog] includes links to both this blog and my tech blog.
You can use the template above to include your own information by just tweaking the relevant parts. Note that the colons are important. They are part of the formatting syntax for the wiki.
Dinner and drinks for 1.2 billion dollars
Wow:
http://blameitonthevoices.blogspot.com/2008/10/zimbabwe-dinner-tab.html
You have to wonder where this will end. I feel really bad for the people of Zimbabwe. They people there are powerless to stop the financial crisis happening around them.
Thanks to @geoffrey_mcgill and the re-tweet from @shanselman for the link.
Two-year anniversary
Tonight marks the two-year anniversary of Meaghan and I being together. It was on this day two years ago that we enjoyed a lovely meal at a local French restaurant before heading to a cocktail bar for midnight bellinis. Meaghan and I fell in love on that first date and have been together ever since. It’s been a wonderful twenty-four months and I look forward to us spending the rest of our lives together.
To many more like this!
Abomidable spelling
I was reading the news this morning when I came across this article on the Discovery channel site: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/20/yeti-footprints-nepal.html
It never ceases to amaze me the typographical errors that pass editing on mainstream websites. Doesn’t the Discovery channel provide a service to educate others, particularly younger children? In the modern online publishing world there are a whole host of utilities and services at your fingertips that are designed directly to avoid this type of error. Even as I typed the word abomidable into WordPress, it underlined it with a little red squiggly. I tried to contact them about the error lest the abomidation continue but I was unable to post a comment on the entry and could find neither sight nor sound of a contact form or email address.
It's simply abomidable!
High Astromancer Solarian
On our second Relentless raid into The Eye we managed to not only one-shot Void Reaver, but also one-shotted High Astromancer Solarian on what was only our guild’s third attempt. Pictures to follow tonight when I can get them uploaded from my desktop machine at home.
After killing Astromancer we took a peek at Kael’thas. We were able to kill his four advisors but the weapons in phase 2 simply tore us apart. It’s a complicated fight and one that will take quite a bit of practice but for now it was great to make more progress into the tier 5 raids. Congratulations Relentless on another guild first kill!
Palin Bingo!
Now you can play too! Create your own card at http://www.palinbingo.com/
Moved to Skype
Meaghan and I chat with my folks over the internet about once a month. For the last year we’ve put up with the bugged and flawed experience of MSN Messenger, working around audio delay, dropped calls, and frozen video problems. This morning we switched over to Skype and what a difference! We’ve been aware of Skype for a while. I’ve been using it on and off since I was in college. However, we’d stuck by the principle that if it isn’t broken then don’t fix it. MSN Messenger finally qualified as “broken enough” to switch.
The Skype call quality is superb, the video degrades and upgrades as the connection quality comes in and out but I’d much prefer a graceful degradation to a dropped call. Even over the wireless network, the connection quality was amazing. I was able to give my parents a tour of our house by connecting on our laptop and just wandering around.
Good to see my folks- great to see and hear them clearly!
Percent means out of 100
I was browsing the NFL website today, checking out the games for tomorrow. The Steelers are playing the Bengals, which as a predominantly Steelers household should be a good game for us. However, looking over the stats for the Steelers I ran across an example of a pet peeve of mine.
There is a little table showing their standing in the AFC North that shows their wins, losses, and win %. The Steelers have won 4, lost 1, but show a win % of 0.800. I don’t think that’s really what they mean. A value of 0.8% is a pretty small number of games to have won. What they really mean is 80%, but instead they’ve mixed up two different mathematical concepts.
The value 0.8 is the multiplier used to calculate how many games they’ve won out of the total number of games they’ve played. i.e. 5 games played * 0.8 = 4 games won. That is not the same thing as 0.8% which is what the table actually cites. If they’d won 0.8% of 5 games, then they would only have 0.04 of a game; or about 2 minutes and 24 seconds of game time. I know they’ve won more than that!
Pedantic? Yes. However, this pet peeve of mine crops up in more than just NFL statistics. Consistency and precision are key when it comes to defining concepts, especially mathematical concepts. Saying that the steelers have a 0.8% win record is a highly inaccurate statement.
Why is it important?
Consider for a moment that a fast food vendor put out an advert for:
Cheeseburgers: 0.99¢
Is that really what they mean? Each cheeseburger costs less than a penny? If so then surely people would walk up with a dollar bill, buy 100 cheeseburgers and then set up a food cart right next door selling them for a dollar a piece. Legally the advertisement would have to stand. People are purchasing the cheeseburgers for the advertised price of 0.99¢. What they really mean is either 99¢ OR $0.99 but you can’t mix the two together.
The NFL folks probably figured that 80 wasn’t an informative number for most people in that table. However, the number 0.800 as win ratio multiplier probably felt confusing too, so instead they just mixed their definitions to get the best of both worlds. While most people who read this will probably think “Oh let it go you pedantic git”, I think it is fundamental that we retain precision when describing quantities.
Percent means “out of 100″
Per – cent. Cent is a latin rooted word for 100. It’s where we get words like centurion, century, and centimeter. Per means “for each” or “for every”. Therefore percent means per hundred. Eighty percent means that per hundred games the Steelers have won eighty. If five games have been played then an 80% win rate dictates that 4 have been won so far. 100/80 == 5/4.
Does it really matter?
When the Hubble telescope was first launched there was a problem discovered with it’s mirror; it had been cut to the wrong shape. It was off by less than a millimeter but it was a lack of correctness in the terms and definitions used that led to the $1.5 billion problem.
If I was to place a bet on the Steelers to win tomorrow, and the odds for the bet were calculated based upon the Steelers having 0.8% chance to win (i.e. a very small chance to win indeed) then I could make a lot of money! The bookie would give me great odds on such a long-shot when in reality I know that the Steelers have a very good chance of crushing the Bengals. What if your bank calculated their odds with fuzzy math too? That wouldn’t work very well at all. ;)
Feeling in a great mood
It’s Friday morning, I’m getting ready to go into the morning standup meeting for our project, and I’m in a really great mood. My parents just got back from visiting Menorca, a beautiful little island off the southern coast of Spain. The Warcraft patch 3.x is live and we’re less than a month away from the release of the Wrath of the Lich King. We had a shaky start to our Zul’Aman run last night but then ended up scoring a guild first kill on both Jan’alai and Hex Lord Malacrass. Our project at work is going very well. We’re way ahead of schedule and QA is finding only a handful of tiny issues for us to fix. Next week will mark the two-year anniversary our first date together, when I met the girl of my dreams and my life forever changed for the better. I’m listening to one of my favorite albums of all time: Queen’s Sheer Heart Attack (there simply isn’t a bad song on the entire album and it still feels like cutting edge material today). We have a busy social schedule for October and now even parts of November. All in all, life is good.
Does it really matter?
I was talking with a friend of mine after writing my last blog post. We talked about the presidential race, the current economic crisis, and the banks in Iceland, among a smattering of other popular topics of current interest. My friend, when presented with a verbal painting of potentially impending doom, responded “Does it really matter?” I think this speaks truthfully to the apathy partially responsible for our current plight.
Presidents come and go. Political and economic policy sails in and out and the majority of people are none the wiser. “Yeah, that was a bad policy or a bad time, but we’ll come through it, everything will be ok.” Now I’m not proferring that the end of the world is currently rolling up our driveways, but I have to take a stance of “Yes, it does fucking matter! It affects billions of people on a daily basis.” It makes me wonder if the last twenty years have been altogether too shielded from harm. We’ve never truly seen consequences for our actions or for our apathy.
Most people look at global warming with an “oh yeah, is that still going on?” sort of attitude. The economic crisis is “scary” and everyone “knows someone” who is having problems with their mortgage payments or retirement plans. However, the overarching response I seem to get from people on these topics is a look of general boredom and an expression similar to the vocalized phrase of my friend: “Does it really matter?”
Well, to the people in Iceland right now: it matters.
To the people in California leaving everything in their homes for a “trash out” team to throw into a dumpster: it matters.
More subtly, for all of us who might suffer under another ignorant and uneducated administration: it matters.
I am sick to death with the apathy, opinions of entitlement, and complete lack of self-responsibility that I have observed over the last decade. The world does not revolve on a wheel made of gold. Sooner or later, no matter how many government bailouts and social blinders we employ, the consequences of our apathy and greed are going to affect us all. The worst part of it all is that most people agree on a foolproof method for determining when it matters:
as soon as it starts affecting you.
Free/Busy Information Added
I added a link to our public free/busy information calendar to the sidebar. This link does not expose event information, however if you are planning events with us it should be useful to see the times when Meaghan and I are available. This page uses the Google Calendar service to retrieve the event data. Check it out when you get a chance and let me know what you think.
I’m still deciding upon a final calendaring and organization solution. I’ve been using my TMobile MDA to organize my calendar for the last couple of years. It integrates with the Exchange server at SoftSource (my employer), which means all of my work meetings are automatically synchronized. However, I’m finding that I’d prefer a little more control over my own calendar without reliance upon the “email server at work”. If I were to change employers then retrieving all of that information could be difficult. Furthermore, I’ve never really felt comfortable putting my personal appointments on my work calendar. I’m giving the Google calendar application a good test as it seems the most promising so far. Easy to update and very easy to sychronize with using the iCal format. I’ll give it another six months to see how well it meets our needs.
Twas the night before patch day
‘Twas the night before patch day, and all through the realm,
Not an item was dropping, not even a helm;
The toons were all resting, asleep in their beds,
with visions of new talents filling their heads.
From two in the morning, till two in the aft,
the Blizzard employees installed their new patch.
They worked and they toiled through bugs and through lags,
trying to roll out the content they had.
But the servers, like beasts, would boot and then fail,
the mobs all evading in Stranglethorn Vale;
and just as the night seemed to proffer despair,
the Azeroth they knew came alive with new flair:
A harbor in Stormwind,
new routes by the sea.
More items to craft,
and a new loading screen!
There was only one job that was yet to be done,
to make it all right when the players did come.
The Blizz guy updated the greeting with glee:
“Happy Patchday to all, please welcome patch three.”
Lunchtime walk
I don’t take a lunchtime break because I prefer to work the 7:00am – 3:00am shift and get a good chunk of my afternoon to enjoy the sun or take care of weekday errands. The traffic is much lighter, I spend less in gas because I’m not stuck in stop n’ go and I get a nice chunk of afternoon back. However, I do still take one of my 15 minute break periods to fit in a lunchtime walk and clear my head a little. Over the last few months I’ve been increasing the length of my walk as I get more familiar with it and of course get a little faster at the route.
This is my current route. I’ve added three blocks since I first started doing it and I already feel a little fitter as a result. I’ve still got a long way to go in terms of getting back in shape, but the daily walks have been helping a ton. I’m hoping that I can enjoy the route for another couple of months before the really cold weather kicks in. I’ll still take my walks, they just won’t quite be the same without the sun shining and the birds singing. Speaking of which, I’m going to head out and take one right now.
Relentless’ Guild First Kill of Void Reaver
We had a spectacular success this weekend in The Eye. In only our second attempt on Void Reaver we took him down smoothly. The Void Reaver fight is basically a big game of dodgeball. All 25 of your raiders spread out around the circumference of a large circular room. Throughout the fight, Void Reaver will hurl balls of arcane energy at a couple of raiders at once. Fortunately he aims at your feet, so if a ball of arcane energy is heading in your direction you move out to the edge of the room, let it land, and then get back in. Other than that it’s a fairly simply tank and spank.
Click for larger image
Congratulations to all of Relentless! This is great progression and was a wonderful night both for loot and, more importantly, for fun. We had two good shots on High Astromancer Solarian but eventually just ran out of time. We’ll be back next Sunday to progress further, this time with Meaghan leading us into battle.
Kaliyah, Agizett, and Vaelorna (me) all got their T5 shoulder tokens, which turn into Mantle of the Corruptor for me and the Rift Stalker Mantle for both Giz and Kali. The T5 shoulders are definitely an upgrade over my Merciless Gladiator’s Dreadweave Mantle for raiding, plus it’s just so cool to have the real thing instead of the wellfare arena reward alternative.
Until next week…enjoy your time Solarian. Relentless are coming for you!
FreeCreditReport.com
We’ve all seen the advertisement….”shoulda gone to FREEEE credit report dot coowmmm” with the happy hippy college grad playing his banjo in a themed restaurant and then his beater car. The principles offered in the commercial of monitoring your credit actually constitute very sound advice. I monitor my credit, dispute and file inaccuracies in my report, and try to keep on top of the state of my finances. It’s a wise thing to do. It was coming up time for me to perform another credit report review and so I thought I’d give freecreditreport.com a shot. It typically ends up costing me about $40 to get all three reports, but considering I only do this about twice a year that’s really not too bad.
As far as freecreditreport.com go, they are an Experian powered portal proferring a “credit monitoring service”. This can be loosely translated to “report summary”. The dashboard provides a quick view of the same data that is contained in my Experian report, as well as a couple of less than useful graphs that “track my credit score” and show “alerts” on my report. To be fair, I was able to get my Experian report for free, use the freecreditreport.com account to sign into Experian and then file a few disputes about typographical errors on my report. Nothing huge, just missing apartment numbers on addresses etc… These things are fairly typical errors on a credit report but it doesn’t hurt to get the disputes filed and clean it up.
How to make sure your FREE credit report is actually FREE
If you are considering using freecreditreport.com then there are just a couple of things you should know:
- You will need to enter credit card information in order to get your free report.
- Your credit card will not be billed until 9 days after you sign up
- After 9 days you will be charged $14.95 monthly for their service
- In order to cancel you should call 1-877-481-6826
How to get the most out of it
To get the most out of your free credit report, here is what I advise that you do. First go to freecreditreport.com and sign up for a free account. You will need to enter your username, password, address, social security number, answer a security question, and supply a credit card or debit card number. This will create your free account. After you have satisfactorily used the report, be sure to call them at 1-877-481-6826 and cancel your account. There is no option on the website to do this. When you call they will try to sell you other services and distract you from the cancellation request. Just persist and after about 30 seconds they should accept that you just want to cancel. Be sure to persist here. You will receive an email a few minutes later confirming that your subscription has been cancelled. You can now continue to browse your free report for the next 9 days.
Flickr Photostream
I’ve been making a few updates to the layout of the blog recently. One of the things I added was a Flickr photostream preview in the right-hand sidebar. It will show the 3 most recent additions to my photostream. I’ve only recently moved to flickr, having mostly uploaded pictures to my blog in the past and then to Facebook over the last couple of months. However, it seems that many of my friends are using Flickr so this morning I decided to starting using it more actively. I upgraded to a pro account and started uploading some of the photos from our trip to England. If you’re on flickr and want to add me, my profile name is stuart.thompson. You should be able to search for me and add from there (or you could just click through one of the photos in the photostream preview on the right).
See you there!
RSS Feed
Did you know this blog has a feed? It’s located at: http://stuartthompson.wordpress.com/feed
Vacation to England – Part I
Posts from our trip to England are coming soon I promise! I’ve been consumed by importing the posts that were corrupted during my failed upgrade to SubText 2.0 and have as such been procrastinating over starting publication of our photographs and stories from England. I’ll get on that tonight and then more this weekend.
For now, here are a couple of photographs from Manchester airport taken after we had just landed.
Our flight had arrived a little early, so we actually beat my parents to the airport. After twelve hours in a tin can, Meaghan was ready for a cup of coffee. We had a little bit of fun paying for it as England have converted to Chip & Pin for payments (basically a bank card now has a small chip on it that is scanned by a device, which is then paired with your pin). This meant that my “old sk00l” VISA card with magnetic stripe confused the hell out of the girls working at the coffee counter. After a few minutes of head-scratching they were able to find an option in the EFT terminal that allowed me to “swipe” and then sign.
Meaghan and I were both fairly hungry after our flight and it was still early enough in the day to head over to the Ladybower Inn before we had to get back to Doncaster for the night. I was looking forward to a pint of John Smiths and the food there was great. Just what the doctor ordered.
More pictures to come tonight and this weekend.
About
Welcome to the personal blog and homepage of
Stuart Thompson and Meaghan Brown.
The opinions and views expressed here do not in any way reflect those of our employers, although they sometimes reflect the opinion that kitties are more intelligent and cunning than they appear!
© 2006-2008 Stuart Thompson. All rights reserved.
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