Monthly Archives: June 2004

techie

bringing out the inner geek

Leave a comment

one of the projects i’ve been tasked with is to figure out how to bypass some of the performance problems we’ve been having due to various factors, not excluding INTERNET LATENCY. basically, one of my projects uses external web services to access information. apparently, these one trusted internet web services are no longer as trusted as we would like them to be so i’ve been tasked with trying to better optimize the way in which we utilize these web services.

so this, of course, screams for some kind of caching mechanism. i have never been a fan of programming caches. i think the concept is great and i think that those people who love to eke out performance from their apps should be held up on a pedestal because i hate performance tuning. i was telling nelson the other day that i would never work at a job where i would be forced to write code as tightly as possible for performance reasons.

now i don’t write sloppy code, but i don’t sit around fumbling with assembly language bypassing every little JMP and INT’ing this or that to get what i want. man, that’s some serious pain, yo. that’s what nice high level languages are for. if i had my way, all of my code would look something like:

function bigProject(someVars) {
  doIt(someVars);
}

see….easy cheesy. someone should get on that and make it work. anyway, i hate optimizing code because now that you’ve got something that is working perfectly well you have to start doing crazy things with them. cache management, expiration, manual override, force update of the cache, indexing, ugh, who knows what else? they just aren’t fun things. i just like making things work. after that, the fun of the project sort of fades away.

i don’t know why i feel like this. i used to LOVE performance enhancement work. i used to sit and try and devise new and clever ways to get things to work faster and better. i guess i’ve been spoiled lately with all the cheap hardware that’s available for servers these days.

*sigh* i’m such a lazy programmer. i could never do work like [url=http://www.track15.com]dardy[/url] either. man, trying to get a response in nanoseconds is just crazy. the benchmarks i run make anything subsecond still GREAT!

maybe that’s what i should do…promote a slower pace of life because in this day and age we are all caught up in the rat race that maybe we need to wait every so often to gain a little perspective. it’ll be a code feature: reflection timeTM, i’ll call it. yeah, that sounds like a great idea!

ugh…back to writing the cache…

—–

entertainment

summerland

Leave a comment

lori loughlin is hot. i thought she was hot in full house as rebecca and i still think she’s still hot in the wb’s new show summerland. 40 years old now. wow. but she is strikingly attractive. i don’t know what else to say.

speaking of hot women, taylor cole playing the role of erika is also crazy attractive. crazy, man. just crazy.

but i was watching summerland last night and i have to say that i think i’m going to like the show. things seemed a little forced in the pilot, but i think that is mostly because they had to do so much setting up to get the show going. there were a lot of crisises and it was a little bit of an overload, but all in all i thought the acting was good and the writing well done. it definitely got me involved in the show.

there are two things about a show that will keep my attention. the first is very attractive people. this show is in no short supply of that. between lori, taylor, and all the girls in bathing suits in the background, there’s plenty of eye candy to be seen. the second is good writing, and this show seems to have it both. i’m pretty impressed and can’t wait for more episodes. it’s too bad that this appears to only be a summer show, i wouldn’t mind seeing it year round.

—–

photographic

thanh and tung’s wedding

Leave a comment

[url=/image.php?image=/images/2004/0601/CRW_6804.jpg&title=thanh+and+tung%27s+wedding][/url] i went to thanh and tung’s wedding this weekend in LA. this has been a long time coming and to see it come to fruition makes me so happy. right now, i believe that they are vacationing away in fiji! that is pretty cool, if i do say so myself. i’ve known thanh since my freshman year in college and through the years we’ve become good friends. she knows me…really knows me and the two of us have been through a lot. she’s seen the highest of my highs and the low of my lows. we’ve shared our sad tales and rejoiced in our happiest of times. when i first saw her at the banquet i was just breathless. my little girl has grown up! her and tung looked so happy and they have always looked so right for each other. it brings me such immense joy to see true love flourish and prosper.

they are the reason why i still believe in true love. they continue to reaffirm my belief in true love. Despite the experiences i’ve had when it comes to love, they are the reason that makes me believe that finding your true love is possible. They are the seed for my optimism and you can see their love just by being in their presence.

congratulations, thanh and tung. may this journey be filled with unabounded joy and happiness.

—–

general ramblings

how did we get here from there?

1 Comment

a year ago, i had just ordered a brand new volleyball. perhaps this is as good as a day to mark the beginnings of the new me. i never really thought about how different i’ve become until i had some recent conversations with a couple of people.

a year ago i went biking with jimmy, josh, warren, and nelson, i think. i thought that i was going to die. i was borrowing jimmy’s uber nice bike and still i was having so much trouble i thought for sure that i would die. surely.

a year ago my interest in volleyball was just beginning, but i didn’t have much of an interest to play more than one night a week.

a year ago the thought of exercising was ludicrous.

a year ago the thought of waking up at 5:30AM to get to work was unimaginable.

so much has changed since a year ago.

how did we get here from there?

general ramblings

biking at fremont older

Leave a comment

i went biking with [url=http://jimmy.ocliw.com]jimmy[/url] and nelson yesterday at fremont older. no pictures, though. i didn’t feel like bringing my camera with me, especially after i was told that this trail was harder than quicksilver…and quicksilver nearly killed me.

i actually thought that this trail wasn’t as bad as quicksilver, though. there were a few rough parts, but overall, i thought it was pretty cool. we biked along these rolling hills and then got to a single track part of the trail. that was pretty cool. i think that i do enjoy the single track tails more.

i am proud to say that i didn’t have to walk up any of the hills, though there was one where i was definitely tempted to get off my bike and walk up. after this ride, i think that i will definitely consider getting myself a new stem for my bike. i want to change my riding posture so it isn’t as relaxed as it is now and to be able to take hills a little bit more aggressively when going up them.

we ended up biking through rolling hills, under the shade of trees deep within the parks winding trails. the tail end of the trail brought us to a winery/farm. this was the same ranch that jen and i went horseback riding many a year ago. after we walked out bikes through the ranch, we came upon a road where we started to go downhill in speeds excess of 30 miles per hour. the maximum speed i biked at was 32.5 miles…the fastest i’ve ever gone yet. pretty crazy.

but this trail was fun and i’m actually looking forward to my next biking trip. biking by myself is a vastly different experience than biking with others and i think that i really do enjoy biking with other people. it’s a lot of fun. i’m still scouting out other locations. maybe i’ll go on another biking trip today. no volleyball this week, so i’ll have to find my exercise somewhere else, i suppose.

i was talking to a friend over the weekend and i was telling them about how i’m playing volleyball and biking and waking up early to go to work by 7 and they were shocked. they said they didn’t know who i was anymore, because the man i was a year ago was the complete opposite of all of these things. so true. so true. what in the world has happened?

—–

photographic

COBA photoshoot

Leave a comment

i’ve been pretty bad with posting pictures, so bear with me today.

some other weekend ago, i went to the COBA photoshoot at the stanford campus to take some pictures to compare the abilities of various cameras to produce large prints. i took out the trusty canon D30 and the canon 10D with me for comparison. it was the first time in a long, long time that i shot in RAW. RAW appears to be the format of choice amongst these photographers. me? i’m far too lazy to shoot in RAW and i hate how much hard drive space it consumes so i usually shoot in JPG. yeah, yeah, scoff at me if you wish, i don’t care. =P

[url=/image.php?image=/images/2004/0601/CRW_6480.jpg&title=COBA+stanford+shoot][/url]

this is one of the two shots that we set up for comparative printing. one of the things i noticed between the white balances of the D30 and the 10D is that when they are both set to automatic, the D30 appears to have far richer color saturation and is a little warmer overall. i was surprised to see how big of a difference there actually was between these two cameras.

[url=/image.php?image=/images/2004/0601/CRW_6482.jpg&title=COBA+stanford+shoot][/url] [url=/image.php?image=/images/2004/0601/CRW_6487.jpg&title=COBA+stanford+shoot][/url]

it’s kind of funny how long it takes to take a picture when you get a bunch of photographers at a scene. way too many cooks in the kitchen, if you ask me. i think our first shot took something like 30 minutes to take. do you do this? how do you do that? which setting to try for this or that can be rather complicated. for me it started to get way, way more complicated than i liked it to be so i took the picture and then started taking pictures of them.

RAW is kind of nice, i was able to save a picture that i wouldn’t have been able to if i shot in JPG, but man…what a pain in the butt.

[url=/image.php?image=/images/2004/0601/IMG_6503.jpg&title=COBA+stanford+shoot][/url]

of course after i left the group, i switched back to my normal shooting style and i took this picture. one of the things i really like at the stanford campus are the arches and columns in their hallways. definitely very pleasing to the eye, especially later in the day when they cast long, long shadows.

—–

photographic

shoreline biking and blading bonanza

1 Comment

[url=/image.php?image=/images/2004/0601/IMG_6409.jpg&title=at+shoreline][/url] [url=/image.php?image=/images/2004/0601/IMG_6411.jpg&title=at+shoreline][/url] [url=/image.php?image=/images/2004/0601/IMG_6415.jpg&title=at+shoreline][/url]

the other day, jimmy, mike, paul, leeya, and i went biking and blading at the shoreline. jimmy and i were biking away while mike, paul, and leeya were rollerblading through the park. jimmy somehow eluded my camera, though. we went along the shoreline trail for a while and eventually headed back from whence we came.

[url=/image.php?image=/images/2004/0601/IMG_6417.jpg&title=at+shoreline][/url] [url=/image.php?image=/images/2004/0601/IMG_6424.jpg&title=at+shoreline][/url]
there was this mystery trail that forked over to the left at one point. it looked like it just went on and on. i was curious to see where it would take us, but it seemed that everyone else opted for the paved trail. so instead of taking the road less travelled, i went down the paved road with the group. maybe next time i shall venture forth into the great unknown and see what awaits me. i thought it was pretty cool that there were these roads that just seemed to go off into the horizon, though. i haven’t seen roads like that since my road trip with paul across the country.