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November 5th, 2009
03:46 pm
I haven't made a real post in a while...still here, enjoying my job as a farmer's market bread seller, but looking for something on a higher pay scale. Figuring out whether I should go back to school within the next few years, if so how I'm going to get in and pay for it, and if not what my career plan is going to be. It feels good to have some direction. I'm becoming more convinced I'd like to work with plant sciences, probably applied, probably with crops and agriculture. I'm certainly in the right town for it!
Note about wedding dress stores: I would go into more of them if they all didn't want you to make an appointment and have someone dedicated to helping you the whole time. I could see that you need someone to help you put the dresses on, since they're pretty cumbersome, but I would prefer to browse without feeling like I have to make headway towards buying something or else I'm wasting a salesperson's time.
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November 4th, 2009
11:41 am
I really liked this comic...
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October 24th, 2009
12:02 am
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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October 21st, 2009
12:11 pm
So! I have two crazily work-intensive but awesome ideas I am currently working on. One is pursuing a career in botany, probably plant physiology in particular. The other is making my own wedding dress. Any crafty and/or planty people want to share their experiences?
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October 16th, 2009
11:36 am - Writer's Block: Nothing to fear but fear itself
I guess my greatest fears are extreme pain and untimely death. Mediocrity is a close third.
Speaking of fears, I read a magazine survey a while ago in which a substantial minority of women said they'd rather eat a live bug than be naked in a fully lit room with their romantic/sexual partner. I found that really sad and disturbing. (Just now I Googled "eat a live bug be naked" to try and find a link to it, and the results were funny and awesome.)
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October 5th, 2009
11:43 am
My biggest personal question right now is whether to continue with programming or start working toward a new career, and if a new one, what it should be. I'm hoping to get advice from as many people as possible, so please respond in the comments if you have any ideas or words of wisdom. : )
The things that really get me going in a job are a) feeling like I'm advancing science or technology in some beneficial way, b) intellectual stimulation, c) lots of social interaction, and d) being outside and/or having some amount of physical work. Obviously these don't match up very well and I probably won't end up with all of this in one job, which is fine, but I like knowing what the ideal is to start with. Oh, I forgot e) making enough money to pay the bills and generally get by. That's important.
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October 2nd, 2009
01:03 pm
I never make long journal entries anymore...they end up coming out like a series of Twitter entries, which I like better than actually using my Twitter account for some reason. Anyway!
Today, Dave and I have been engaged for two weeks. It feels longer, in a good way. We're already doing a little wedding planning, but anything serious will have to wait until we figure out a budget. He's starting school and getting busier, but won't be as hectic as last year.
Dave and I recently finished Neon Genesis Evangelion (the anime series), and it had good and bad points up to the end, which was pure awful. All the interesting things you expect to get explained in the final episodes not only don't get explained, nobody even mentions them. Goodbye, mystery monsters the entire plot revolved around. I won't say more in case anyone else was planning to watch the series, but be warned!
I have already made an exhaustive Internet search for a wedding dress, even though I'm not buying one anytime soon and would much rather buy in person than online. It's not so much shopping as ogling pretty pictures. I know I want something white that doesn't touch the ground even if I wear flats, but everything else is up in the air. I like lace. Suggestions and links are appreciated!
I've also been playing with electromagnets. The strongest one I made yesterday can barely lift its own weight (not even counting the battery in the weight of the magnet), and I'm trying to figure out why they are such wimps. I found one online that weighs 8 ounces, operates on four AA batteries and can lift almost 8 pounds, so I'm going to try and make a mini version of that same design.
Working with wires and batteries and stuff is satisfying in a different way than programming. With software, if I make something useful, I can distribute it instantly and make any number of copies with no effort, which is one of the things that attracts me to it. With hardware, I get to feel the weight in my hand, and the heat and buzz of the electric current. In both cases I spend time visualizing patterns I can't see, but with software the patterns are purely symbolic, and with hardware they are magnetic and electical fields that exist right in front of me; I just can't see them. Anyway, it's fun.
I think I've decided to be either a wolf or a bat for Halloween. Ooh, or a wolfbat! Best of both worlds.
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September 19th, 2009
11:12 pm
Big news! Dave and I are now engaged. Don't have time right now for a long post, but wanted to make the announcement for folks who I mostly keep up with through LiveJournal. We're thinking a fall wedding on the east coast, either next year or the year after. Woo hoo! I've been bouncing off the walls for a few days now...
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September 7th, 2009
10:55 am
One of the fun things about working at farmer's markets is that at the end when people are leaving, a lot of the stands will trade goods with each other. It's midway between a barter and gift economy - much of the time someone will bring something over without actually asking for anything, and then they might come over for some bread later or they might not want any, and I do the same thing. It feels very neighborly. Yesterday I got a dozen eggs and two really beautiful bunches of flowers, and the day before I got a pumpkin pie and a bag of vegetables.
I haven't posted a recipe recently, so here's some instructions for Farmer's Market Stew.
Ingredients:
1 big pile veggies you got for free the day before at the farmer's market
1 can beans, whatever kind go well with your current veggies (I use a lot of chili beans)
1 can diced tomatoes, only if there aren't any fresh tomatoes this time
spices, to taste
Set aside any vegetables that don't go well together. Chop the rest and put in a pot along with the beans and can of diced tomatoes, if necessary. Cover and cook on low for about 20 minutes. Drizzle with olive oil before eating. Serve with delicious bread you also got for free because it was a little squashed.
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August 26th, 2009
02:48 pm
Good things this week!
I am gainfully employed again. I sell bread part-time at farmer's markets in the Davis area and also work part-time at UPS. It's nice to have the money worries off my back, although neither job pays much and I'll have to budget more than I did at either of the full-time jobs. For right now, I'm kicking back and recovering from the crazy stress of job hunting, but soon it'll be time to figure out the best things to do to get back into the programming market. Thinking of taking the Java certification test.
I started a modified version of the South Beach diet (cutting out most sugar, white flour, and certain starchy foods) and lost eight pounds in about a week. I was pretty shocked, especially since I'm not being as strict as the official version of the diet, but my guess is some of that is actual weight loss and some is water loss or natural fluctuation or something. Twelve more to go.
My scale ran out of batteries today, so now when I stand on it, it just says "low". How's that for encouragement! : )
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August 19th, 2009
11:56 am
Well, I didn't get the job. I'm surprised, but it was never a sure thing. The final interview was a group of 30 people all being considered for 15 positions, who had been selected out of more than 300 applicants. So I don't feel that bad that I made it into the 10th percentile but not the 5th. Still, it sucks. There was one other job I'd been considered for and waiting to hear back from, but there were some red flags and I researched the company, and it turned out to be a scam. Back to the drawing board.
I did find temporary part-time work for a bakery, selling bread and cookies at farmer's markets. It's fun and well-rounded work, and I get a serious workout from lifting trays of bread and cookies. So, some moolah coming in for now!
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August 12th, 2009
02:08 pm
Things I am doing this week:
Being completely tied into knots about whether I'll get a particular job I interviewed for last week. Things went very well, but anything could happen, so I'm trying to not fixate on it too much.
Trying to resolve some of my personal programming projects into finished, usable forms, since they're all in various stages of not-done-ness right now. Most of them require some extra training or research on my part to complete, but it's all fun training and research.
Going to my first Scrabble Club meeting. They sound pretty hardcore. The leader has business cards printed just for Scrabble Club that have an index of all the legal two-letter words on the back, color-coded by which edition of the Scrabble Dictionary they first appear in. I hope I can hold my own. I've never even seen a Scrabble Dictionary.
Getting interested in genealogy again. A bit less than half my ancestors are from Calabria, the southern tip of Italy (the toe of the boot), and the rest are Swiss, Irish, English, and who knows what else. I started an account on a genealogy site, but no interesting matches have come up for my family names yet.
...ok, I'm not doing that great on not fixating on the job. I just checked my email and when I thought I had new mail, I got so excited my foot fell asleep. Seriously.
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August 5th, 2009
10:10 am
After watching all of Project Runway Season 4 in ten days while also learning about the mathematical structure of plants for the video game project, I really want to design a set of clothes with the shapes and patterns inspired by the Fibonacci sequence. I've broken out the paints and will try and figure out how to scan if I come up with anything cool. Of course one of my favorite contestants on that show was the guy who made clothes out of human hair, so I may not come up with anything wearable in normal society.
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August 1st, 2009
08:40 am
I've still been playing around with video game stuff in some of my spare time, and am close to being able to generate 3d game terrain using actual topographical data of the United States. Or anywhere else, but the U.S. government website has free data of excellent quality and most other places don't. I'm very impressed with the level of detail you can get - a resolution of 10 meters, with the tops of trees and buildings somehow removed by the satellites so you just get the ground.
If I do start working on a real game, I already know I want to use the landscape of central California, where I'm living now. Driving around through the hills and flatlands is very inspiring; I could take a walk on the actual land and then go work with it in the game. It has the requisite ocean, mountains, and desert (if I extend the map to western Nevada). For some reason every RPG-esque video game landscape must have those three things. I was thinking it would be a monster raising / breeding / battling game, since those are my favorites to play. Anyway, that's far in the future, and for now I'm just enjoying getting the land set up.
A setup with that much landmass (even if I have to cut it back somewhat for data storage reasons) will definitely require procedural generation for vegetation, which is another fun thing I'd like to do. Procedural generation in gaming means you write the rules for what goes where (with some randomness thrown in), and then the program does it for you. Variations among invidividual plants of the same species are done in the same way.
I have several things in life that are higher priority than this project, mostly family visiting, job hunting and setting up the apartment for a new housemate, but if I get anything interesting done I'll be sure to post it.
Here are some photos of the yellow hills that are my favorite landscape ever, and happen to be a half hour drive from my place. They're very peaceful and look like the perfect place for a picnic.( Read more... )
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July 24th, 2009
12:25 am - Writer's Block: Pick and Stick
Italian. Second choice Thai, third choice Mexican.
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July 16th, 2009
01:47 pm
I've been messing around with Project Darkstar, a framework for making online games in Java. If any of you have an interest in online game development, I'd highly recommend it - it automatically handles data saving, server crashes, multithreading, distributing the server over multiple machines, and people logging in.
After only a few hours of setup and tutorials, I now have my very own game server! It goes "boop". Well actually, it prints the word "boop" to a console screen once a second, which is much less annoying than actually going "boop".
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July 2nd, 2009
10:34 am
I found a really cool math site - it's a series of very intuitive, easy to understand articles on stuff from basic arithmetic through calculus. I never understood the point of e and ln (natural log) in calc. They were just symbols with their own special rules to occasionally complicate my homework, and I think I'd been using them for a while before I realized they had actual numerical values. I just breezed through a couple articles on them and have a much better understanding of why we use them. Working on imaginary numbers now.
Check out the site here. It also has programming and business sections.
(Haha, I'm writing from Dave's laptop and almost accidentally posted to his journal...)
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June 26th, 2009
10:46 am
I learned something interesting today: when deciding a prison sentence, a judge is expressly forbidden from considering the monetary cost of imprisoning the person for that length of time. I think I'd assumed this all along, but actually thinking about it raises some questions. For example, here in California it costs about $31,000 to keep someone in prison for a year. Three convictions for petty theft (items worth under $400) can land you 25 years in prison, costing a total of about $775,000 in tax money, for a series of thefts that totaled $1,200 maximum.
At that point, what is it we're buying with our public funds, that could be going to new roads, better schools, etc? The literal security of not having that person performing petty theft for the next 25 years? The opportunity to set an example so others are less likely to commit crimes? The satisfaction of knowing justice was served, whatever the cost?
As for that third one, I don't think it should be the government's obligation to make sure that when people do bad things, bad things happen to them back. It satisfies a very human desire for society to revenge itself upon an offender, but it doesn't actually make life better for the citizens.
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June 20th, 2009
12:53 pm
Death to pie charts!
From ProcessTrends.com:
( Read more... ) </div>
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June 19th, 2009
03:17 pm
My interview went very well. It was with an IT staffing company that had me in mind for one particular job, and also wanted to have my resume and such on hand for future opportunities. I talked a little too much on some questions, but overall it was great and I got a good vibe from the place. Let's see if it comes to anything.
I don't feel like hashing out the interview itself, so instead you will now hear more about my adventures shopping for interview clothes than you ever wanted to know. Dana's Shopping Epic behind the cut. : )
( Read more... )
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