Too Much To Learn

I am reading "The Ruby Programming Language" by David Flanagan and Yukibiro Matsumoto. My friend Ed seem enamored with Rails. My friend's 12 yo son, a future MIT media lab researcher, also like Rails. My friend at cafepress.com says Ruby is becoming popular there. So, I am learning Ruby and Rails.

I've decided that since I hate interviewing, that I'd just pick a few problems and code them in different languages. Maybe the same problem in the different languages.

So, if you wanna know how well I code, read the references on linked in, or look at my code.

So, maybe, I should shelve ruby for now and just code something in perl or php and get it published on sourceforge. If someone wants to see it run, I'll start an EC2 instance for them.

Hell, I'm halfway through the book now. Might as well finish it. Ruby is interesting. Reading a chained enumerator example can make your head spin. aRray.map{...}.inject{...}, holy convolution batman. What's wrong with a while loop?

Well I better finish that book and start coding.

I don't get facebook

I don't get facebook. I have a profile, I have about 30 friends. I joined a few groups and added a some applications. I joined mostly because I both my nephews are on it. I wanted to try and have a better connection with them.

The groups are no less useful than any other forum. One good post and 50 others that are a waste of time and energy to read.

The one app I use is the slayer app. Kind of pointless. Reminds me of when I had 8 computer running seti@home. Your rank goes up, but it is a non-social activity involving a bunch of other people. Do people plan times to be on facebook and attack each other. What do they do 10 minutes later they have used up all their attacks?

If they do, do they use the wall to interact? IM? IM conferencing?

Is there a real interactive activity on facebook? Something that brings the social into social networking?

How is it social networking when people are not interacting. This is purposeful phone tag. A chess game by mail.

Can someone comment and tell me how to become correctly involved in social networking so that it is social?

I tend to want the perfect item when I can arrange it. When I decide I want something, I conceive what I think to be the perfect one. A couple of years ago these hand cranked emergency radios started coming out. Or at least I started to notice them. I've been though the 89 earthquake. Bad snow storms. A couple overnight power outages. A radio does come in handy.

The strange thing about these radios are the frequency bands they include. Why would anyone buy a radio with the TV bands anymore? In less than 12 months, they will only receive white noise. Since these are emergency radios, why don't they all have the weather band? I finally found one manufacturer that puts the correct frequencies on the radio. The Kaito ka009.

It has AM, FM, shortwave, weather, air and TV. It can be powered by crank, solar, AA batteries and A/C adapter. It even comes in a water resistant pouch. It is still in the normal range for these radios, about $40. For $40, the weather and shortwave is a bit of a pain to tune. For that much, there is no fine tune knob.

But it is the first one I've found. They even have a model with cell phone adapters so the crank can be used to charge the cell phone.

This is a good product. The real test will come up when I really need the radio. Will it work after sitting on a shelf for some number of years? Will the NiCd batteries hold a charge? That will be the test.

One guys way to create play lists

I find creating playlists for my mp3 player a tedious task. I only do this a few times a year, but I spend 1-2 hours creating a play list. I hate being in the car or on a plane and find I screwed up and have to skip a song I chose.

My playlist creation method is as follows:

• Add all possible genres to the play list.
• Remove all artists you know does not fit the mood you are setting.
• Do a fast pass for songs you know you don't want.
• Listen to the songs you don't remember.
• Start cutting out songs that you don't want.
• Save this huge list as a checkpoint. At this point I might still have 500 songs in the list.
  
• Sort the list by song to check for multiple renditions of the same song. remove the version you don't want.
• Do some more weeding.
• Do a random sort of the list. Do this a couple of time until the top 30 or 40 songs look Copy these songs to a new list. This is a first pass of the list.
• manually add and subtract from this list. Repeat this step a couple of times.
• Keep the version f the list you like.
  

I know. This does take time. But I tend to only change the music on my MP3 player 2-3 times a year. Why not put a couple hours into creating a good playlist.

I need to find a new service, or a new way to find music for my mp3 player. I was using Yahoo music service. But they are killing the service. I never liked the yahoo music software. I was completely blown away when they tossed Music match for the horribly buggy embedded browser based application.

One of the features I loved about music match was it caused me to click links to discover new music. Something about the yahoo player does not do that for me.

Right now I really like jango.com. It provides opportunities to listen to music other than what I set as my preferences. They use tag clouds in an appropriate manor. The clouds can have you doing click throughs on artists you might now know. It is a site I think of as fun. I don't find many sites fun. I find many site useful, but not many are fun.

I had some really boring stuff to do at work, another issue entirely, so I was listening to jango. I was able to tune a "station" to Female Jazz Singers. I just kept rating each song that played and added 10 female vocalists. So It works. But this does not help me with my mp3 issue.

I recently tried napster and rhapsody. They fall short in their UI used to create playlists. Most of the time I listen to music when I am driving. So I want 2-3 hours of music in a playlist.

Back in the old days when you'd buy CDs, I'd buy 3-10 cds a few times a year. I have finally ripped most of them, about 60 left to go. I have found a great backup service that specializes in music, mp3tunes.com. Plus I have 3 copies. The primary drive, secondary. Plus a 3rd 2.5" USB portable I keep in my backpack. Now mp3tunes.com is a 4th. I have had so much bad luck with ripping my CD collection, that I feel all this is required. This current time is the 4th attempt.

I considered yahoo a money saver. For $120/year, I have access to a lot of music. For about 1/3 of what I used to spend in a year. Now, since I don't like the napster or rhapsody software, I'll probably just start buying music again. Jango has links to amazon if you want to buy a song. It is DRM free. I won't buy from iTunes because of DRM. I own a creative mp3 player, so iTunes is out anyway.

This is probably the best way to go. You can hear the full song on jango, then buy it if I really like it.

PTO is the Main Office Epidemic Culprit

When I first started working, there was real sick leave. You started with 10 days of sick leave out of the gate and then accrued your vacation hours over the year. Normally you'd have 10 days of each.

People would come into the office if they were a bit under the weather. But they never came in when really sick. After all you had the full 10 or more days each year.

Then During the Reagan era, sick leave went from a non-taxed to a taxed benefit. Companies started combining vacation and sick leave. After all, there was no reason to account for them separately anymore. Except that when you leave a company, you are paid for your outstanding vacation balance.

So, vacation and sick leave became PTO, Paid Time Off. In that process many companies started employees with 15 instead of 20 days, and it had to be accrued each month. So, that major flu you catch and beds you for a week, better not happen until you've been at the company for 6 months. You also better plan carefully. You have 15 days to be sick or take vacation. So don't get sick if you are taking the trip to India to see your family for the first time in 3 years.

Better yet, just sit in the office and be sick. Even if they send you home, that day still won't be a PTO day. You were in the office.

So, while sick, don't wash your hands. Do go to meeting with closed door and ventilation systems to infect everyone in the room. Do each lunch with everyone else. Let everyone join the germ party. And when your kids are sent home. Please bring them into the office for a day or two. They really do remember to wash their hand not not touch things.

Everyone gets sick. The Kleenex disappears from the supply cabinet faster than big post-its and the good pens. Who really counts how many many weeks are lost each winter and early spring to colds and flu's. All because of the very few hours we Americans are allowed to recover from disease by hour employers.

The reason this is OK is because when you get back, you are not contagious. But you do not fully recover for months because you are working an extra 10-15 hours a week to make up for that lost work. So you still put in the hours. Get it, you still have to make up those hours. But you were required to turn in PTO for that time you missed that you will have to make up anyway. If you have to put in for PTO, your deadline should all slide by that time. But it never does.

I am not advocating unions. I saw the bad side of unions when New York City construction went into the dumper in the late 70's. But I am advocating managers being more respectful of their employees. Do not ask for PTO if you know they will have to work the hours anyway. That is theft in my mind. That is my employer stealing time and money from me.