|
|
 ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Friday, 3rd of December 2010 at 06:11:07 PM  This week, I acclimated – over 2 hours – an incredibly creepy specimen that seems as though it shouldn’t be alive. It happens to be one of the oldest extant things that lives in the oceans. You can read all about them on wikipedia – as you can with everything. This animal has these strange feet called cirri that look almost like little claws. These are attached to what I think you could call almost a body which then unfolds into the feathery arms. In my reading, the arms have small tube feet, as all echinoderms do, that sweep food into a central mucous track. This slowly flows to the central body where there is a mouth.
I am incredibly excited that this animal has acclimated well to my tank. I am working hard to make sure that it feeds well. As noted by the seller:
Maldivian Zebra Crinoid Feather Star. Crinoids are very challenging to maintain, and should only be purchased by the expert marine reef aquarist who can house the animal properly in a display with other NPS (Non-Photosynthetic) organisms.
I have a very mature tank with other NPS organizsm that are thriving, so I am thinking that this crinoid will be able to prosper.
I have been obsessed with it to the point of sitting next to the tank watching it fold and unfold with the day/night cycle. It tends to close up with the arms tucked into the center at with daylight and unfold in a sweeping way in the night time.
Right now it is sitting on one of my sponges in a very heavy water current spot, which happens to be int he lower left corner of the video on the aquaDRAMA camera. Take a look and see if you can observe it.
 ✡ Ellie wrote this entry on Wednesday, 1st of December 2010 at 12:04:53 PM Hi Dad,
Ellie here. Well I do miss you but I am having a great time. I had a blast last night with Harlow. G_Mom was on the phone with Kt and Harlow attacked me from under the coffee table…it was so much fun. I was barking at her and she was swatting me with her paws. I had to chase her in and out from under the table. We got so loud that Kt could hear us on the phone. G_Mom asked that we stop fooling around where she was on the phone. Apparently you, Adam and Kt used do that a lot. Anyway things are going well here. I have everybody back into my routine and we are back on the Wii Fit. Slobbie could stand to loose a few pounds.
Not sure if you heard but I got off my leash yesterday and did not run away. Instead I had to go and find G-Mom who as usual was yakking away with the neighbor. Boy was I annoyed that it was taking her so long. I am back sleeping on my rug. I am allowed to ball it up so I am comfortable, but I have to wait to get settled until Slobbie had taken a running leap to get on the bed. Again it is her weight!
So take care of yourself and do not worry about me. I have everyone under control, making sure I am happy and well taken care of. G_Mom is taking me to the vets right after work on Friday for my booster. If I am good I get a marrow -bone. We are also allowed to go with G_Mom in the car on Saturday, if we are good all this week. That means there will be a trip to Dunkin Doughnuts!
Love, Ellie
✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Friday, 26th of November 2010 at 09:30:37 PM Working without constraints is not really that much fun and while we all think, at times, that it would be easier if only we had X, Y, Z, having it all causes a whole host of other issues. Moreover, the tighter the parameters on a project the more fun it can be to solve the problems involved. Perhaps put another way, if it were easy anyone could do it!
Here are a few examples of the problem I am referring to:
I worked with a site that used 300,000$/month in hardware costs. This site showed photos and text with very little user customizable content. Moreover, this site was Amakized, preventing most image from being retrieved from the source as they were preloaded on the CDN. This added another 250,000$ a month. The revenue on the site was about half the costs. How does this happen? No constraints! The developers were not made to follow best practices, code review, and performance testing. Management failed the company and the developers in this case. Every time the site faced a performance issue the answer was to add more memory or another server. It wasn’t until I started to enforce in public code reviews that we discovered that the developers were loading the entire database multiple times into the memory of each server. If a single one of many potential and reasonable constraints had been placed on this project, it would have been in much better shape, taught the developers better skills, and saved the company money.
Another example I have experienced is a project on which I was the lead and we were trying to bring a social networking site to market. On the project unlimited consulting resources were at hand. We would joke that people would pop out of the walls at the mere mention of, “hey, I wish I had someone who could do…” This resulted in inconsistent code styles, a messy code base, incoherent UI, and a host of other issues. Again, if there had been any limits placed on the project, I could have mapped a more conservative and thoughtful use of the resources versus the project load.
Working in a company with a lot of technical debt, we have many constraints placed upon us. A finite set of servers with a finite set of resources and finite staff. This demands from us a more thoughtful project process. We have to be disciplined when developing and deploying because a 10,000$ overrun is incredibly consequential to our bottom line. By discipline, I mean how we write code, what servers we deploy on, what development frameworks we use, the processes we use, and how we plan for delivery.
Compounding this need for discipline and thoughtfulness is our technical debt. What does that mean on a day to day basis? At a high level some good percentage of the work we do needs to dig us out of technical debt while predominately delivering quality products to the business and customers. We have to do both at the same time until we are debt free.
Examples of this include: If you open a class and it needs refactoring to make it work better, and you can sneak that into the next build, please do so. If you are looking at a database and notice inconsistency in index, table names, or normalization, say something and see a fix through to production. Documentation is another big area – if you are working on something and had to struggle to figure out how it works, or are concerned with explaining how it works to future developers, please take a reasonable amount of time to document what you did; why you put files in a particular directory, used a particular strategy, or the details of the process you are modeling.
Constraints make life interesting, they help us do our job better, and they place on us a demand to be much more thoughtful in what we do.
✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Sunday, 7th of November 2010 at 05:27:48 AM My fourth tank is currently sitting in my living room waiting to be setup. This is another leap forward in the history of aduaDRAMA.
Background: The current tank suffered a rather bad leak last week. The overflow sprang an air leak, causing the tank to overflow as the pump continued to pump water out of the sump into the tank. The only piece of safety equipment I do not have is a pump shutdown. I have since bought one. This leak didn’t do any permanent damage as I was able to clean it up quickly. The issue is that my current tank is more than a little high maintenance. I would say it is like a lot of tank that grow up as the hobbiest figures things out. As I tend to travel a lot and ask friends to look after the fish, I cannot afford to have a major system failure. I just kept thinking, “what would have happened if I were in California?”
Plan of action: The local fish shop, Shark Aquariums, where I have purchased every tank I have had since living here, happened to have an Oceanic Tech Series tank and stand. I wanted the 70 gal, but they had the 90 gal. Twist my arm!
Since moving into this old factory, I have been thinking that the ultra thick concrete floors mean that I can have a large tank and not be worried about any structural issues.
This new tank has build in overflow and returns, not only making it look better, but removing many pieces of equipment from the system. Less equipment means less things to go wrong.
Shark had all the needed accessories – new water, sand, drain hoses, everything. They even gave me a lift home in their van to help me get the tank in my home.
At this time the tank is sitting on the stand awaiting “boot up”. I plan to drank some of the water out of the old tank into plastic tubs, catch all the livestock, migrate the remaining water and live rock, swap positions of the tank, install the sump from one tank to the other and then reacclimatize the livestock to the new tank. In the process using a new pump, but all the same equipment I have now. All of it is rated for above 100 gallons, so it should be fine.
The only new big purchase will be lighting. I have a 48″ BlueLine Aurora HQI/T5 Lighting System on order from Champion, where all my supplies and dry good have come from for years now. A side note on Champion Lighting and Supply: they offer good prices, have almost everything you could need, great customer service, and since they are located in PA, regular UPS comes almost always the next day. I rarely buy my supplies anywhere else. I cannot recommend them enough.
Once this is all setup, I will post some new photos & look for updates to the fish tank pages here soon!
 ✡ Slobbie wrote this entry on Tuesday, 26th of October 2010 at 03:21:41 PM Hi Ellie,
Happy Halloween! How are you? Cart and I really miss you and G_Mom often goes looking for you when she calls your name and you did not show up.
As I am sure you can imagine, everything has been cleaned and the house winterized. The only problem being it that it is 67 here today so we are bit warm. All of the winter curtains have been put up and the rug is down in the kitchen. The plants have been pulled up outside and your chain has been placed out front for the winter months. No more worries about skunks. There is no place for them to hide any more because the Morning Glories are gone! Don’t worry we have completely kept your schedule for when you return.
Cart and I got haircuts and baths. The mopping and vacuuming is down to every other day. Harlow is the scapegoat now for dust and animal hair on the floor. It has to be one of us and she takes it the best. She just walks away!
Can you email us the password for the Wii Fit? Cart and I are going nuts from boredom without you. Neither one of us can jump over the gate. Harlow does not know how to make it work! Cats are not always the brightest.
Say “HI” to Nathan for us. We can’t wait until you come home. We heard that we are going away for a week to spend with some chick named Millie that we met. She was a cute lab…however a bit frisky. After that visit when you all are in San Francisco, you are coming home! We should have snow by then.
Love, Slobbie and Cart (who cannot type)
✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Sunday, 10th of October 2010 at 08:08:18 PM I am now the proud owner of a fifth failed Smart Link Card. They just keep failing for no reason and there is only a 90 day replacement policy. The card seems to fail about 91-100 days in each case. When it does, I am on my way to work, cannot get on the PATH and end up having race around looking for help. Like I need more stress at 8am in the morning!?! When this does happen my only choice seems to be to go the all but the station I am in to get a replacement. There are exactly 13 stations in the PATH system. Why is it so hard to get 13 machines to dispense replacement cards?
Next issue: why after decades of existence has the PA NY NJ not negotiated regional cab rates? Standing on 23rd and 6th I have to hand over my second born to get to Hoboken, but by law the cab driver has to take me 20 miles to some remote location in Queens. In this time and in this region the lack of coordination of a basic service like cabs is a serious failure on the part of the PA NY NJ and they should be ashamed of not tackling this at all.
If no one is looking out for the lives of citizens who have to cross between NY and NJ daily what are we to do? How much harm is this inflicting on the local population? How much lost revenue to local businesses does this cost us? How about the cab drivers? They could use another way to make a few dollars.
Perhaps it is time for a little change in how the PA NY NJ gets direction. Actually, now that I think about it, who does give them direction?
✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Sunday, 26th of September 2010 at 11:00:51 AM Take a read of this article: Republicans Offer Their Agenda for Midterm Elections – NYTimes.com and then read some of primary documents.
Then sit back for a moment and recall the Republican The Contract On America [sic] from 1994 and then recall Newt Gingrich, the dirtbag who left his wife while she was in the hospital recoputertaing from cancer surgery, and let’s just say, “yeah we have seen this one before…”
✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Sunday, 26th of September 2010 at 10:33:02 AM
✡ Ellie wrote this entry on Wednesday, 22nd of September 2010 at 09:59:02 AM Hi Dad,
Ellie here.
Well most of my canine friends get groomed, but not me, I get BROOMED!
Not sure if this is a Maine cultural tradition but G_Mom sweeps me every day now and I love it. I have my very own broom. G_Mom even explained the difference between brooms to me. I cannot have a straw broom because the bristles are not sturdy enough, so I have to have a broom with plastic bristles.
Love it, Dad!
I even got in trouble today because I pretended that I had to go to the bathroom and rang the bell so G-Mom would take me outside and sweep me. Boy was she mad when she found out! My punishment is no treats today….so that means I just may have to poop on the floor to properly express my displeasure.
Of course Slobbie is angry because she does not have her own broom. Are you wondering yet Dad, just how this came about? Well you forgot to leave my furmin-a – thingy here when you left me off for this camp session, so G_Mom has tried everything and frankly this seems to be working the best for all involved. There is less fur on the floor in the house and I am pitifully happy with my sweepings!
These Mainers are resourceful! I know G_Mom is a Flatlander but she is starting to act more and more like them. She needs a vacation away from here.
So Dad you had better get me a good quality broom at home.
I am so looking forward to my 4:30 sweeping today!
Love, Ellie
✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Monday, 20th of September 2010 at 11:30:18 AM As many if you know, I have often said that if not the largest, but in the top 5 largest expansions of the scope and size of the Federal Government occurred in the 8 years of the Republican administration (I dare not speak his name, because he and his ilk as as un-American as they come).
As I sat and listened to the likes of Ron and Rand Paul I realized that, to my surprise, I tend to agree with them. In fact these are things that I have been saying for years.
- The government is too large, too involved in my life, and too messy
- The government will continue to grow until checked by some substantial external force, look how the Federal payroll is growing even in the worst recession ever. That is a true sign.
- I tend to think there is something to the anger at the Federal Reserve. Do some reading on the formation, it might make you cringe. I understand that without the Fed the odds are that our economy wouldn’t have been as dominating as it was, but that might have been a better state of affairs than the mess we have now.
- I tend to agree with them in context that if we had lean government than it should radically protect the freedom of speech, assembly, association, etc…
- I tend to agree that the GOP lost the way when it became the part of the right wing Christian nut and in fact this is when I stopped voting GOP.
- I tend to agree that the over spending of the Federal (and other) governments is seriously jeopardizing our future.
- I DISAGREE with most of Tea Party’s Anti-Choice stance, stance on the war on drugs, and various other choice reducing points of view. In fact, I see these are internal inconsistencies in the libertarianism inherent in Tea Party points of view. If you are a true Libertarian than you believe that the government has NO SAY in how you conduct your personal private life. This means that a true Libertarian gives ZERO mind to arguments over gay rights, woman’s reproductive choices, etc… as this is about liberty and the individual.
- Immigration is a disaster! But let us not miss that fact that people who come here illegally are criminals. People who come here legally do so by no easy feat of navigating paperwork. We should reward people for breaking the law? I am not so sure. Yes, I know this is complicated.
- Tax reform: we need to yank out the tax code and replace it with a ZERO loop hole flat tax system.
- Again, the Fed has kept interest rates so artificially low for so long, it has gutted the bond market. Why does this matter? Think about what would happen to you if you needed to get some quick cash. It might cost you 22% on your credit card. Why on earth should we allow the banks to have free money and through cabals keep that money free at the cost of our savings as individuals. Their are thieves and their accomplices are in the Fed.
My current thinking is that I hope a few of these people, the smarter ones that are not right wing Christina zealots, get into the House or Senate and help reshape the debate about what this country is about. Because, simply, I think they raise some good points.
LET ME BE CLEAR – I am not about to give them one dime, support them in any way, or even speak to one knowingly. However, the fact they are here, making waves, and encouraging debate, will in the end, be helpful. How American is that? I think it is pretty American.
✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Monday, 20th of September 2010 at 10:30:30 AM Following a trend of friends around me, I deactivated my account last week. I do not miss it, in fact I only ever used it because everyone else was, but in the end, I was annoyed by it. If you want to contact me and see my latest photos, well here I am! I honestly hope that I am starting a trend whereby people start to use anti-social media in a different manner, but for now. I am out.
Hi Nathan,
You have deactivated your Facebook account. You can reactivate your account at any time by logging into Facebook using your old login email and password. You will be able to use the site like you used to.
Thanks,
The Facebook Team
To reactivate, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php
✡ Ellie wrote this entry on Wednesday, 1st of September 2010 at 11:17:48 AM Dad this weather is unbelievable. There is a heat advisory out and we are not allowed to leave the air-conditioned room except for bathroom and food breaks. Now I hear G-Mom talking about some guy named Earl coming to visit. It is way too hot to entertain. All of the shades and blinds are pulled which is unusual here. You know how G_Mom loves light and hates shades and curtains.
Anyway I am eating up a storm. I am up to three cups a day but it has to have water in it and I think there is also a bit of olive oil in my food. I think that is for my coat, but I do not mind since most of it is all over the yarn and or being mopped up twice a day in the house.
Wow Dad, some days I can hear G_Mom cursing under her breath about my hair! Not much I can do about it. It is so hot here Mrs. “B” has even stopped singing. We asked her about it and she says it takes too much effort!
G-Mom does not know this but I sleep on the bed while she is gone during the day. I heard her asking Slobbie yesterday if I had been on the bed and Slobbie ignored her. Of course I had told Slobbie to keep quiet. However, all of the sheets were washed and the bed is now covered with a removable sheet. She may have figured out what I have been doing because I moved the pillows and forgot to put them back.
So I will let you know about Earl and how it goes. Have a great weekend and stay cool! Opps I forgot to tell you we are also on skunk watch,
This country living is exhausting!
Love, Ellie
✡ Ellie wrote this entry on Tuesday, 24th of August 2010 at 10:00:38 AM Well Dad last night I got to lounge in front of the wood stove! Two days ago I was in front of my fan. A cold northeast wind blew in and even I have to admit it was chilly. Of course G_MOM had just plucked out my entire coat, so I was a lot lighter than usual. Slobbie and Cart got baths on Sunday and I got plucked. This personal maintenance routine is really strict. She is talking about brushing my teeth, next.
G_Mom says I can take my fan home, when I leave, because it is much better than air conditioning for me. It does make me happier. Also Dad we are running low on DOG FOOD. I am up to three cups a day, plus my treats. I also get marrow bones three times a week.
I have to tell you about how strange Cart is. She has a real affection for the living room fern tree/plant thing. She loves to have the prickles on the fern rub her back. It really makes Slobbie mad. We take turns grooming each other but Cart just loves the prickly fern. A bit odd but there is nothing we have been able to do about it. G_mom of course yells and then cuts off the dead braches from the bottom of the fern after Cart kills them. I guess I am getting used to just how odd everybody is in Maine. Harlow greets G_Mom at the front door each time she comes home, and has no desire to go outside. Mrs. “B” get mad when we do not sit and stare at her so she starts screeching……and Cart is in love with a fern. Slobbie thinks she is Adam. She does not have to follow any of the rules and always gets what she wants…well maybe she is a bit like you. I am most like Katie because I am always happy and listen so very well.
Well you know just how much fun it is to fool people.
I miss you and love you.
Ellie
✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Sunday, 15th of August 2010 at 08:18:49 PM I really need to post more about my fish tank. It is one of my core hobbies and I spend more time thinking about it than I do writing. There is so much to share about how I have managed to make this thing work.
The most recent change is that I gave away my pseudochromis that has grown very large and was terrorizing everything in the tank. This included the shrimp and even my hand.
After this change I decided to continue to grow my anthias harem. So far there are 4 species in the tank and they tend to hang out in 3 clusters. I am not sure why the two different special are always together, but they seem to have made a harem together. My other 2 harems are doing very well.
The only other news worth sharing is that I decided to buy an ORA goniopora, which after a month has been doing very well. I am fearful of these corals, but these ORA are supposedly a good subtype that can do well in the aquarium. We shall see.
Everything else is the same. I am sitting here writing this and watching the cleaner shrimp tend to the anthias one at a time. Always a wonder…nature!
✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Sunday, 15th of August 2010 at 08:09:48 PM I have been thinking a bit about how you structure the start up of today. This also includes older companies looking to bring the best of the startup mentality onboard for rebirth. Maybe we can call this re-starting-up? There are a couple problems that I think are valid in my current position that have made me think hard about this.
The myth of off-shore being less expensive
This postion has been slowly eroding as wages and costs climb in India and other locations. More importantly is the quality of work. If, because of quality issues, you drop on customer at 1000$/month level the costs are rendered moot. This is a very likely position when you have issues in core code quality. To combat this you might decide to have an on-shore resource watching out for your best interest. This by the way is always a good idea no matter how you outsource. Just recall that the outsourcer is in the business of making money off of you. I wont go as far to say that an outsourcer will cut corners to your disadvantage, but they work for someone else besides you. Always keep this in mind. Therefore, if you were to have an in house code reviewer and PM the costs escalate quickly. It starts to look more and more like a model where you have a couple good, high quality, properly motivated individuals in house and outsource tactically in discrete testable units and demand of your internal people continuously reporting on the quality of the deliverable.
The cost of good quality people as leaders
This brings me to the core thought I keep arriving back to. You do not necessarily need the tradition junior, mid, senior, tech lead, etc… model. What you need is a few good high quality senior people to manage consultants in an ad hoc manner. This is true be they in house, near shore, off shore, etc… I saw this hold true at a couple startups that I was involved in and it worked very well. Plus costs are more dynamic and inline with revenues.
This means that the few people you do pick are even more critical in what you are willing to pay, the length of time it might take to recruit them, and retain people who otherwise might bubble off to other more lucrative industries. This may, for example, occur as the need for more stability arises from external forces, eg they have a family or a sick parent to take care of. Remember people leave positions for all kind of reasons, but in tech it seems to be money and stagnation.
I am not sure where I will go with this set of ideas, but I wanted to write them down before the week got away with me.
|
|
This week, I acclimated – over 2 hours – an incredibly creepy specimen that seems as though it shouldn’t be alive. It happens to be one of the oldest extant things that lives in the oceans. You can read all about them on wikipedia – as you can with everything. This animal has these strange feet called cirri that look almost like little claws. These are attached to what I think you could call almost a body which then unfolds into the feathery arms. In my reading, the arms have small tube feet, as all echinoderms do, that sweep food into a central mucous track. This slowly flows to the central body where there is a mouth.