I’m currently reading up on FDA regulations related to clinical studies and the requirements related to computerized data collection and analysis (this is for both my Business Administration class and for Morlok Technologies. I must say, anything in which the government has a hand is as boring as saw dust. What amazes me the most is their raw use of outline formatting. Legislation is especially bad. *Blehk*
I’ve moved to a different desk at Kim Labs recently, which is right next to the newly installed refrigerator. Anyone who knows anything about me should realize that this probably isn’t a good situation. Literally, without removing my headphones, I can reach the door to the ‘fridge and pull out a soda. The Pepsi bottling company has never been so pleased. I’ve been keeping it stocked in true Morlok style. Any who have visited the Minnesota Morlok house can attest to the ‘fridge downstairs that’s traditionally kept overflowing with drinks.
I’ve taken it upon myself to keep this ‘fridge stocked with plenty of diet pop to my liking. It’s not that I’m incosiderate of non-diet drinkers, it’s just I’m not going to make multiple trips to my car to haul additional cases of soda, and I can’t really carry more than 3 24-packs at once. Anyway, this afternoon I was unpacking some Diet Dr. Pepper into the refrigerator, and half way through the 24-pack, the design on the can changed. Apparently their going to a new logo for the soda, and I happened to receive the 24-pack in which that transition occurred (OK, I recognize that it could be spread over lots of 24 packs, but still). I was pretty impressed (with the multiple logos in one box, not the logo itself, it’s kinda whatever).
While I’m on the topic of soda in the work place, I’d really like to get a few things off my chest. When you’re at work, pop should be free. No two ways about it. I’m probably in the 98th percentile in terms of pop drinkers, and I only go through about 5-6 cans a day. When you think about it, even with a conservative estimate of $0.30 per can, that’s less than $2 a day to give your employee free soda. That’s $500 a year. In the scheme of things, that really not important when it allows your workers to just a grab a drink when they want and get back to work, rather than having to worry about making change with the payment bag, as done here at Kim Labs. Plus, the free soda really shows that you’re willing to take care of some of the little annoyances in life to make working just a little nicer for your people. When I have employees, the soda’s on me.
In an exciting game late Wednesday night, the individuals were able to come away with a victory to advance to the championship game May 3rd against the Ice Dogs. Three periods were not enough to decide a victor, and the game remained tied through overtime. The Individuals were able to win 2-1 in the final shootout thanks to the outstanding play of their goalie Jeremy Danney.
After a couple hours of debugging, I located the culprit! I inserted some inter-thread signaling to force execution to follow a particular order until I got a deadlock, and then tracked down the bug. Now I just have to go back and get rid of all those print statements Shoe and Dusty had me put in… You know life is getting bad when your blog is being used as a place of communion for your friends across state boarders to get together to give you crap.
So I was doing a little testing this afternoon on some Serial communication auto-configuration logic I had written for work, and things that I had previously thought were working kept failing. This stuff is asynchronous six ways to Sunday, so I reverted back to the tried and true method of debugging — print statements. Unfortunately, the delay caused by the IO corrects the problem I had been witnessing. The next few days are sure to be fun as I try to figure out what kind of race condition I’m looking at. Good times.
Individuals jumped back into the winning column yesterday by defeating Med-Law 10-1. The conclusion to regular season left the individuals 2-1, 2nd place in the league. Thanks to extensive ESPN coverage of the game, video is available for those of you who weren’t able to make it out to the rink (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16). Next week: semi-final action.
Full coverage is available on our website here.
I have a lot of catching up to do. Individuals lost last week 10-1 against the Ice Dogs. They had one guy who could go around almost anyone on our team. They beat their previous opponent (the team we play next) 9-1, so hopefully that means we’re up for a pretty even game this coming Wednesday.
Who is the man behind the mystery? The following is a look into the many faces of Brian Schuweiler. Or as he said when seeing this “Damn, I’m photogenic.”
Warning: may scare small children.
In the never ending soap opera that is ACM, the following email, apparently spam, appeared on the mailing list today:
Hi everyone. I’m a casting director in Los Angeles
and I will be in Chicago next week, casting for season
three of “Beauty and the Geek”.
I’m emailing as many college students as possible
because I need to find smart guys, ages 21-29 who
would want to team up with a gorgeous girl and compete
for a substantial cash prize.
Please don’t let the term “geek” fool you, it’s really
about intelligent men who aren’t that confident around
hot girls and think something like this would be fun.
The show will film for a few weeks this summer in Los
Angeles and if you haven’t seen it, it’s a very
good-natured, funny show.
The open casting call will be Saturday, April 15th,
The Rock Bottom Brewery, 1 W. Grand Ave. at State St.
from 12pm-5pm. If you know anyone you think would be
interested, feel free to send them this email as well.
Thanks!
Kamala
True to form, the intruder was immediately punished. Clausen promptly flamed the woman for all her mistakes in life.
Ms Fritzler,
I will give you props: http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/~cclausen/props.jpg for
the text-only email without any type of HTML garbage in it, however if
you intend to capture the computer “geek” from UIUC, please consider
these tips:
1) DO NOT use an @yahoo.com or other free email service. Your address
looks like lots of other SPAM that we all receive on a daily basis.
2) I don’t watch tv and totally thought this was some kind of huge joke
until I asked a few people if it was a real tv show. Please provide a
link to a credible website that lists said show. Maybe IMDB or tv.com
or the show’s official website.
3) Pick a better email subject. I realize that “University of Illinois”
is VERY specific to you, it however conveys no information what so ever
to the recipient of the email as almost every single email we receive
has something to do with the “University of Illinois.” An example would
be “chance to be on Beauty and the Geek - UIUC.” That way we have some
idea what the message is about BEFORE we even open it, and you have some
idea when we reply knowing that there is a -UIUC in there.
4) Please don’t CC that many people in the same email. Several of the
email alias you emailed get redirected to mailing lists and are
automatically set to discard any message that is sent to more than 10
addresses. If you must send to everyone at once, BCC them so that the
mailing list software doesn’t know how many people it went to and so
that recipients don’t reply-all to a HUGE number of people.
5) This message does in no way infer that I am indeed a geek. I can
assure you that I am not. I’ve failed out of school. Twice. Just
ignore that fact that I use 1st person pronouns to refer to us geeks.
6) Why film in Los Angeles? Thats the home of “beauty.” You should
film in the geek home in some dark computer lab, not in some fancy house
set in the bright sun. Us geeks HATE direct sunlight and need to stay
out of the sun’s harmful rays in loud, musty, dank, dark computer labs.
7) Us geeks don’t need women. We “make” our own:
http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/gallery/SameerDress/aaj (I’m on the left,
Sameer, the ACM secretary, is on the right.) Yes, I am wearing a pink
shirt. And yes, sameer is in a dress (with matching shoes!)
Solicitation via email is not something geeks look upon as a good
thing. I’d suggest you change your recruiting to instead contact the
leader of various student organizations. In the case of ACM@UIUC, that
would be acm@uiuc.edu, not EVERY address on our contact page. The chair
person can then forward the email to our various membership lists as he
sees fit. (The chair himeself is in no way, shape, or form a geek of
anykind.)
9) The people at OTCR are NOT geeks at all. They are business
wanna-be’s. Stay FAR away from them.
10) I can assure you that nearly all women end up hating me after about
20 minutes of conversation. The question is, are you now one of them as
well?
—–
I am curious as to how you determined that ACM@UIUC would be a good
group to email? What made you think that there were intelligent people
here?
—–
Are you the same as this person:
http://mymovies.imdb.com/name/nm1449871/?
CDC
Now at this point one, after Clausen flames someone, of three things usually happen:
But today was not a normal day. Instead, the following reply came:
You are the best! this email is great. I love it. I
now have to go back and re-do all of my work and
follow your advice.
Are you by any chance 21-29? you’re very funny. My
casting associate and I laughed out loud about not
filming in LA but rather in some dank, dark
basement…..
I don’t have a choice on the yahoo email. we work
freelance so that’s all I have. I should probably get
my domain name so I can look more legit, right? and
yes, that link to imdb.com was me - very impressive!!
And thus, by being his somewhat abusive self, Clausen received a personal invitation to audition for a nationally known TV show. Everyone is ACM is trying to get him to agree. If you’d like to follow the entire thread, you can do so here
