Chris Dwan

Author: cdwan

  • I am a lucky guy

    I decided to have a little adventure out here in San Jose, so I hopped on the train this afternoon heading for San Francisco. Along the way, I leafed through one of those free publications that litter every city in the country these days, and saw that the House Jacks were playing at a little theatre called the Little Fox in Redwood City. Redwood City was only a couple of stops away at that point, so I ended up going to the show. It was really good. Also explored a marshland park nearby and saw a snowy egret and a HUGE bird of prey.

    My talk at the conference went well, although only five people showed up. 🙂 The six of us had a good time, I thought.

  • Pull ups, by God…

    Just wanted to mention that I ripped off 32 pull ups at the gym today. Sets of 5, alternating between close grip, wide grip, behind the neck, and chin ups. Around 20, I started thinking “what the hell? All this working out is paying off?”

    Rock on, Navy Seals.

  • Stuff, stuff, stuff

    The packing saga continues. The realtor told us that our house might fetch additional coinage were it not so burdened with all of our crap. “You’re interesting people, and people will remember how neat all your hobbies are, but nothing about the house.” Right. Hide the hobbies. I have to say, in her defense, that the rooms are a *lot* larger without the bookshelves lining the walls, the piles of robotics and computer stuff stacked in the corners, and all of that. We’re going to look downright stylish right about at the moment that the movers arrive.

    Getting our house down to its current level of slick emptiness required only one 5′ x 10′ temporary storage shed, and the judicious use of the storage area in the basement. I’m actually sort of pleased with how things look… though God help help me should I have to figure out any hard math, obscure functions, or make reference to any of my textbooks.

    It occurs to me that, if I can live without those things for three months, I might be able to do it for longer. Sort of like the vegetarian thing: It starts out as a curiosity — can I modify my diet in this way? It ends up as a new and simpler way of living.

    Nah, just kidding. I want my books and other crap back. Give me my piles. Can’t have the house neat, we’d have people over every weekend, and I’d never get my robot arm of death completed.

    Job situation is looking up, but in informal “stay in touch” sort of ways. Still need a solid commitment.

  • Gardening

    Got my garden in today. Realistically, this means that it’s going to be a rough year for everything except the radishes. According to conventional wisdom, it’s *way* too early to be putting in lettuce in Minnesota, and only a little too early for the rest of it. Radishes are tough, love frosts, and will happily grow anyplace sunny with good drainage that’s less sandy than an outright beach. The brutal calculus of the impending move to Rhode Island forces my hand. If I want any sort of a crop out of plants that require 60 days before harvest, I have to start now.

    Also a bunch of yard work in support of the first impression of potential buyers of the house. It’s remarkable how much of an improvement we can make just by raking and dumping a truckload of cedar mulch on the beds. We went from being a little behind the curve to looking well manicured and ready to rock with a half day of fun in the sun and a little sweat over the edging tool. For price performance on yard tune-ups, you really can’t beat edging. Even a totally overgrown and patchy lawn with really razor crisp edges looks well cared for and downright british.

    Yard work and gardening brings back some of my very earliest memories. I remember planting onions in parallel rows with my mother, her showing my the proper spacing by measuring if out with my small hand-widths. Some of these memories are in the third person, clearly built after the fact from pictures and stories I’ve been told…but some of them I believe to be actual recollections.

    Of course, now it’s my little garden, my very own yard. My parents are angling toward retirement, and I’m the one wondering how it is that I’ve gotten so busy with a career that I have to not grow tomatoes this year. I would just abandon them to some new owner of this soil who probably won’t care. If I’m lucky, prospective buyers won’t regard the garden as an unsightly bare patch, devoid of grass. At best, it’ll be a selling point that there is lots of space to park cars during the state fair.

    I feel a good rant about the fundamental transience of all human activity coming on, so I should probably go. Besides, It’s time to pack more of my life into boxes.

    Still need a job. 🙂

  • Airport

    Sitting at the Milwaukee airport again. The impression I have is still overwhelmingly positive, within the bounds of possibility for an airport. I had thought that the combination of Midwest Express airlines and stopping in Milwaukee would make for a gritty and uncomfortable trip. Both have well exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations.

    Midwest has first place sized seats throughout the entire cabin. There are only four seats in each row, which provides immeasurable comfort. Instead of sitting shoulders hunched and elbows in for several hours, I was able to relax and slump to my full width. I can only imagine how people who are not quite as ordinary sized as I must feel.

    Milwaukee provides all the amenities one might want from an airport. It’s clean, the airport music is turned low, as is the volume on the TVs. Still, it has that unique blandness of a place between. No matter how many kiosks the city council erects telling of the unique features of here-ville, airports will always be depressing and soulless pause spots within cultured life. At best, they are vanilla. Familiar, unthreatening, and the same everywhere.

  • Bowling…

    Just bowled 154. \/\/00+! I R0

  • Conference Done…

    Draining day of conferencing and being presentable. Hopefully the attendees had fun. I learned a lot, but got the impression that it went right over or past most of the heads in the room. Quick talk-down of the organizers afterwards revealed that we all pretty much had the same impression: The $400 fee had created an audience that was a little warped from the mouthy freedom that pervades the bioclusters list.

    In any event, back now to the serious task of finding myself a job. Got leads. More needed. Somebody’s got to have a niche that only I can fill…just have to find them.

  • Sore

    Climbing was good today. I successfully led a 5.9, and toproped a (possibly overrated) 5.10b which was all balance and almost no strength. Took a decent lead fall too, after making it over an undercling, but failing to successfully clip in at the top. The weak point remains my mass. Dropping 10 pounds would would make me jump to 5.11’s, I’m pretty sure.

    Made a perfunctory stab at some yard work. Cleaned the dog craps off the lawn. Note that I don’t own a dog, these are little presents left by my fellow citizens. Raked the remaining leaves up, and put in crabgrass preventer and “filler” seed. Got to have the place looking nice so it’ll fetch a nice price.

    Rented a “mini storage” unit to hold excess stuff so our house will look bigger. The lease form is very similar to that for an apartment, except that you’re not allowed to sleep there (or set up meth labs, or any other stuff of that nature). My boxes of books looked small and sad as I left them in storage. Don’t worry, books. I’ll be back for you. Please don’t mildew.

    Now, back to work on that pesky presentation for Boston.

  • Metaphor

    I’ve decided that most of the great teachers were *not* speaking in metaphor. Take the buddhist admonition that “Attachment is the source of suffering.” This may have some higher level meanings about spirituality, but at the moment it seems pretty accurate when related to the process of moving my household. The more crap I want to pick up and move intact and organized from here to Rhode Island, the more suffering I will experience. If I had nothing, I could leave tomorrow and it would be painless.

    I also don’t think that Jesus had any sneaky meanings with the whole “love one another” thing, or that there are any complex caveats of original intent WRT the bill of rights. Sometimes things really are that simple.

    Can’t move until tomorrow, because it’s time to go to a birthday party for a friend. German restaurant with strolling accordion players. Last year I consumed the “meter of sausage.” I have the certificate to prove it. Since then, I’ve become vegetarian. I hope the salads are tasty.

    After that, off to Boston to try to find a job. Anybody want to hire me? I program computers, climb rocks, brew beer, and I try to be a nice guy to boot. Better yet, anyone want to take me on as a PhD student? I’ll be the best student *ever*. I promise. Meet me at the BioClusters workshop at Bio IT World on Tuesday.

  • Vague

    Slept too much, got up too early. Was productive earlier this morning, but now…blah.

    Hit a really hairy bit in the code. Everything is centered around this idea that you’ve got one and only one instance of the database, and it’s coherent or not as a unit. Moving object piecemeal between two instances (our pipeline and our production instance) is just not what the software was designed for. No desire to work on the slides for my talks. Maybe bail early, ride home (in the *stunning* weather) and take a quick nap. Then…ROBOTS!