nerdygirl

100 things, part five

rebecca — 2009-06-03T13:26:18-08:00

The human body fascinates me. It is really amazing how things can go wrong. My love of troubleshooting and problem solving occasionally make me wonder if I would enjoy a medical career (although I wouldn't like the stress level of a physician). Last night, I was reminded of this by a woman in my knitting group who recently got a pacemaker. She's very active, and noticed while hiking that her heart rate didn't go up when she exercised and she felt weak and a little dizzy. I never realized that your heart could just accidentally not accelerate, or that a pacemaker could be used to fill in only when necessary. Neat!
I'm in a knitting group. Right now, I'm in the process of knitting a sweater vest for Ransom. It's going to be awesome. Disclaimer: I know that sweater vests are considered by some lesser people to be dorky, and I have heard all about the sweater curse.
I'm not very superstitious, so things like sweater curses don't worry me too much. I usually think I'm pretty lucky, though.

What the future holds

rebecca — 2009-05-20T11:51:16-08:00

A few weeks ago, a freshman from a nearby high school came to the office for some job shadowing awesomeness. I was her shadowee, and we had a great time embedding stupid music in a web page and adding images of baby porcupines.

First, however, she had a packet to fill out for her class, so we sat down for a little Q&A session. The question I found most interesting was, "How do you think your job will change in the next 10 years?" Since I primarily develop web applications, I started thinking about the vast number of changes the Internet has gone through already, and it's staggering. These have been some pretty amazing decades from that standpoint.

The thought that has stuck with me is that the major changes will be in the devices that people use to access content. I think there's a subsection of people who only use the Internet for email and You Tube videos, and those people might not want to replace their computers if they can do everything they need on their cell phones. Or they might replace them with tablet PCs or something like the Amazon Kindle with a bit more functionality. Screen size is the major issue on cell phones, but I think some people will put up with that.

The other obvious changes will be to the hardware and programming languages we use, but I don't see that as being a major change. Or at least not a new change. We already change technologies all the time: we upgrade computers, install new frameworks, etc. So continuing to do so doesn't, in my opinion, constitute a real big change.

What are your thoughts? What's your job, and how do you think it will change in the next decade?

Favorite spring poem

rebecca — 2009-05-15T16:27:18-08:00

I do love this poem. I try to post this (or part of it) every year, but actually missed last year due to travel, fatigue, and dismal weather. Today, however, the puffs of rhododendron flowers were peeking through the window and it really did seem like spring.

A hastily taken, and not very good photo of the rhododendron out my front window.

"sweet spring is your time
is my time
is our time
for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love"

(all the merry little birds are
flying in the floating in the
very spirits singing in
are winging in the blossoming)

lovers go and lovers come
awandering, awondering
but any two are perfectly alone
there's nobody else alive.

(such a sky and such a sun
I never knew (and neither did you)
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)

not a tree can count his leaves
each herself by opening
but shining who by thousands mean
only one amazing thing

(secretly adoring shyly
tiny winging darting floating
merry in the blossoming
always joyful selves are singing)

"sweet spring is your time
is my time
is our time
for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love"

-- ee cummings

My heroes

rebecca — 2009-05-14T13:33:00-08:00

Dear friends,

Reading up on some blogs today, I was struck by how impressive my friends are, how much I look up to you.

You write intelligently about poetry, among other things. You play in bands. You study French existentialists. In France. You learn new things and share them with others. You explore your world. You are good at your job. You bounce messages off satellites, and I can check the weather at your house. You have excellent taste in music. You make the cutest wee snails in the world. You speak foreign languages. You choose rewarding careers over stupid jobs. You read good books. You race cars and motorcycles. You treat people with kindness. You swim with manatees. You cook and eat such wonderful food. In pursuing your own writing career, you open doors for others. You are awesome.

And all that is before we even get into your adventures in parenting, the grace with which you handle relationships, how much you rock at karaoke, and your sweet sweet moves on the dance floor. Before we mention that you weld, sew, knit, hammer, chisel, paint, photograph, write, create such wonderful things. Whether I thought up a link for you or not, you are lovely, and I'm so happy to know you.

Thank you,
Rebecca

This totally blows my mind

rebecca — 2009-05-08T10:27:12-08:00

Ransom showed this to me this yesterday.

The advantages of certain whaling captains

rebecca — 2009-04-14T11:31:26-08:00

Yes, I'm a slacker and am just now doing my taxes. I bet my dad still hasn't done his, though. To be fair, I attempted to use the IRS's free fillable forms and submit electronically over the weekend, but the forms sucked and my return was rejected because there was invalid data in "the field." One of the many, many fields I'd filled in.

So I'm redoing them today—not the best way to spend a day off, but I'm getting money back, so I might just use the rest of the day to spend it. I wasn't sure if I had to submit receipts for my charitable contributions, so I looked it up in the 1040 instructions, and came across this:

"Certain whaling captains may be able to deduct expenses paid in 2008 for Native Alaskan subsistence bowhead whale hunting activities."

It's funny, I almost always forget about whaling captains while I'm doing my taxes, and then bam! There they are right in the instruction booklet.

My brain is broke, but my chairs are pretty

rebecca — 2009-03-24T22:28:45-08:00

In the midst of a plethora of overtime at work, I did find some time to finish my chair project. Most things that aren't work have sort of slid right by me without sticking this week. My summary of the last two weeks is this: data migration SQL scripts are very hard, upholstering chair cushions is much easier and more pleasant, even if it is slightly fussy. I can't show you the SQL script (and trust me, you don't want to read through 1000 lines of SQL ever), but I can show you the chairs!

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