Swan Labs

I started work at a new company, Swan Labs, located in San Jose, CA yesterday.

They have a great product called Netcelera that really helps improve the network and networked application performance between remote and central offices, you should check it out.

I won't yet say a lot about what I'm going to be doing there, but the company has a lot of potential and I think these next few months are really going to be exciting!

The Midwest Voter

I was reading an article in the SF Chronicle this morning about understanding the Midwest and the way it voted and something about the article really resonated with me. I've noticed people in the Bay Area making blanket statements about that area of the country and doing just as bad a job stereotyping them as people here fear that the midwesterners stereotype us as a groups of ultra-liberals. I don't like stereotyping, and I don't think that you can really understand people from other places until you've been there and experienced it, and I don't feel that until you've been there that you earn the right to stereotype. It may not be because they are evangelical Christians or uber-conservatives that they voted for Bush, maybe some of them just wanted someone they felt they could trust and that they felt a connection with. Of course, I don't personally think that is a good enough reason to have voted for Bush, but my point isn't about who voted for who but the fact that I don't appreciate the blatant grouping and stereotyping that I notice people in the Bay Area often getting into. Read the SF Chronicle article!

United We Stand, Divided We Fall

I was reading an article at Boing Boing this morning and noticed an interesting picture posted by a reader named Jeff Culver showing a map that provided what I think is a better insight into how the country really voted rather than the extreme blue and red division we've become familiar with. Instead he blended the red and blue colors in the relative proporptions of Kerry/Bush votes in each state. You'll notice a much more purple and mixed country. Whether you support Bush, or are really pissed off right now about the election, we need to move forward and make the best out of what we have for these next 4 years. Turn any anger you have towards Bush into something positive and work towards some real change in our political system and remember, the country isn't just red and blue but many shades of purple!

More Bush

Well, we have 4 more years of the GW to look forward to. I don't feel like posting a lot about it, but here is a great link from Boing Boing with some quotes from various people about what this means to us. Here is an excerpt from it, there is more to read so check it out:

8:15am: Four more years of a nation led by criminals. I was making coffee with one eye on CNN when the news broke, and I called my dad, a man who's spent many years fighting for good things, sometimes at great personal cost.

"Get over it," he said, "The way you feel now is exactly how I felt when Nixon won a second term -- crushed. I just couldn't believe America was that stupid. But remember what happened to Nixon that term."

"Change comes from discontent," he said. "And right now, there's a lot of discontent."

I finish pouring my coffee, and agree when my dad says what we're faced with right now is considerably more frightening than Nixon. BB pal Jim Graham IMs a few minutes later: "Yeah, and Karl Rove makes Lee Atwater look like a choir boy."

Dan Gillmor sums up what the continuation of Bush's presidency means for America.
The Republicans have an even stronger congressional majority. They have shown how gladly ruthless they can be in using their power. Bush and his allies have never believed in compromise. They have even less incentive to govern from the middle now, even though the nation remains bitterly divided.
There's no secret about what's coming. We don't have that excuse this time.

Here comes more fiscal recklessness -- as we widen the chasm between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else, cementing a plutocracy into our national fiber, we'll pay our national bills on the Treasury Bill credit card for the next few years. Many economists expect a Brazil-like financial crisis to hit the U.S. before the end of the decade. If we muddle our way though the near term, we'll still have left our kids with the bill.

Here comes an expansion of the American empire abroad, a fueling of fear and loathing elsewhere on the globe. This is also unsustainable in the end. Empire breeds disrespect.

Our civil liberties will shrink drastically. This president and his top allies in Congress fully support just one amendment in the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. Say goodbye to abortion rights in most states. Roe v. Wade will fall after this president pushes three or four Scalia and Thomas legal clones onto the Supreme Court. Say hello, meanwhile, to a much more intrusive blending of church and state.

The environment? We'll be nostalgic for Ronald Reagan's time in office.

This is not sour grapes. This is reality.

I hope, but doubt, that the Democrats re-discover enough of their collective spine to block the most extreme moves. If they do it'll be a change for a party that stands for so little these days.

People say there are two Americas. I think there are at least three.

One is Bush's America: an amalgam of the extreme Christian "conservatives," corporate interests and the builders of the burgeoning national-security state.

Another is the Democratic "left": wedded to the old, discredited politics in a time that demands creative thinking.

I suspect there's a third America: members of an increasingly radical middle that will become more obvious in the next few years, tolerant of those who are different and aware that the big problems of our times are being ignored -- or made worse -- by those in power today.

That third America needs a candidate. Or, maybe, a new party.

Smartphones and the Audiovox SMT 5600

I just ordered the Audiovox SMT 5600 from AT&T Wireless last night after playing with it in a store in San Mateo for around 30 minutes.

I've been looking at phones for most of the last year in preparation for buying a new phone. I've had the same Nokia TDMA phone for the last 5 years with the same battery (which still works great) but I have been dying for a camera phone with voice recording capabilities. I had been waiting for Nokia because I really liked their older products and wanted to get the 6230 for a while now but after reading more about it I wasn't that impressed with what it offered and decided on a phone with even more.

I had been eyeing some of the new Sony Ericsson phones but they didn't quite have the combination of features I was looking for (The K700i didn't have expandable memory and I didn't really like the S700i flip out, not to mention that neither of them was yet offered by one of my carriers or had the 850Mhz band covered) . I wanted something small and in a candy bar form factor and that's where I ran into the Audiovox SMT 5600. I had read about it as the C500 in Europe offered through Orange, but I didn't realize that it was coming to the states as soon as it did until I ran into it at an AT&T wireless store yesterday.

The form factor and size is great. The 5-way navigation is a little different than other phones and takes a minute to get used to, but sort of acts a bit like a scroll wheel that you can't scroll very far which works out well for a Windows Mobile device.

I thought that the UI was reasonable but had a few usability issues that I hope get better and I hope that they release updated firmware for the device as time goes on as well.

Another thing that I wanted was quick access to the camera and voice recording both of which I plan on using a lot. This phone has a dedicated camera button and if you hold the volume up button down it switches automatically to voice note taking mode which is great.

I just ordered the phone and am expecting it in the mail soon so I may have more to write about once I actually use it for a real amount of time but I'm pretty excited about Pocket Outlook and some simple web browsing capabilities as well. I got the unlimited data plan for a year so that I can see what I think about using the web through the phone without worrying about bytes sent/received which I think could be a real money sink.

Anway, that's about it for now, now back to watching election results!!

Election Day 2004

Well, here it is, November 2nd, election day 2004. I went to the gym this morning and then voted in San Mateo at a new polling place. The voting was painless and took me all of about 5 minutes. I spent around 2 hours last night trying to sift through the propositions and people running in this election. Each time I vote I come to realize how sneaky the proposition writers are sometimes. The proposition often sounds great in the beginning and even some of the details are sound, but there is often a sneaky element or two that gets thrown in and makes me change my mind. I spent time reading the overviews of each proposition and then looking at the pros, cons, and rebuttals for the pros and cons on each. Definitely a tough one and I'm not even sure if I really voted for what I wanted in all cases, but I did my best. It was useful checking out smartvoter.org for some of the measures and candidates.

I've been trying to keep up with the news during the day today and have read endless articles about lawsuits, polling problems, the growing influence of blogs such as Daily Kos in policitics, all very interesting stuff. Anyway, not a ton to say other than I hope everything turns out well in this election. I think that I'll be watching the election results on Comedy Central tonight with John Stewart, someone I trust to give me the news or at least part of the news as straight as possible and with much more entertainment value.

Resumes

What exactly makes a good resume? Is it length? Is it formatting? Is it content? Is it all of those, some of those, or more?

My company is currently in the middle of a merger/aquisition and as a result I've been putting together my resume. I read numerous online articles about writing resumes, looked through several co-workers resumes, read some book in the store at Barnes & Noble about writing resumes, and had my resume reviewed by several co-workers, former employers, and multiple HR professionals.

I've found that there some commonalities between all resumes, and then a bit of a different focus for technical resumes versus management resumes, etc. I'm still not happy with my current resume, but I think that resumes are always a work in progress.

It's been 6 years and two companies since I needed to update my resume, so needless to say I've done a lot in that span of time and trying to highlight everything that I did to capture peoples attention without taking up too much space and making the resume overwhelming is a huge challenge. I don't have time to post about all of my discoveries right now, but I plan on going into what I've found soon, and I'd welcome any feedback as well.

Moving, and Fruit

We're trying to get settled into the house we are renting. It is a small 3 bedroom 2 bath, 1190 square foot house, but it is plenty. The main problem is all of the junk and things that I've accumulated over the years that I have to go through and sort out so that we can actually move in the house. This long three day weekend is going to mostly be dedicated to getting settled in our new place. I'm also going to try to improve the sprinkler system this weekend and see if I can get the front lawn completely watered and hook up an automatic sprinkler system so we don't have to worry about remembering to water anymore (and it's good for trips too). Our lawn and plants at the place were pretty dead but we are slowly bringing things back to life. We have quite a few fruit trees here and lately I've been "discovering" figs and have really started to like them since we have a few big trees. We actually have an orange tree, lemon tree, apple tree, pear tree, 2 fig trees (one Mission, the other some green fig variety), apricot tree, nectarine tree, and pineapple guava tree. Not everything is in season right now but we can't wait until this next spring!

Well, I guess that's about it for now. I'm actually waiting for Windows XP Service Pack 2 to install on my other computer and want to make sure everything works out before I go to bed so I thought I'd write a bit in here before going to sleep. I should get some photos posted up here sometime soon, and maybe move this blog to a different hosting site with more disk space and no advertisements.

L8r

The way we eat

I read an interesting article this morning in Harvard Magazine about the way we eat now and about the obesity problems affecting America and other civilized nations. I'm really interested in seeing the new documentary Super Size Me about a man who eats McDonalds for one month during which time his health deteriorates dramatically. Our nation has become extremely obese and sedentary, and I'm very curious to see how the latest Atkins diet craze pans out in the big picture of things. Anyway, you should read the Harvard article, a bit long, but very interesting.

American Idol psychology

Somehow I managed to get sucked into watching American Idol this season, and after watching last nights episode, I just had to post something. Last night La Toya London was voted off. La Toya was arguably the best singer, and definitely the most polished and consistent performer on the show. I have a few theories as to why she got voted off while Jasmine Trias, who definitely had a horrible performance stayed.

I think that the problem comes down to fundamental psychology, and the way that people are encouraged to vote or get riled up about an issue in general. Diana had a great performance and definitely deserved to stay as happened, and I think that people get excited about really good performances and will vote for their favorite and that person is likely to remain.

Jasmine however didn't perform well, but was so obviously in trouble with Simon saying that she was definitely going and that she better hope that every household in Hawaii had 5 phones because she was going to need all the help she could get. That set up a basic challenge, and people rose to the occasion to save someone that they loved.

Here's the real kicker. I believe that if Jasmine had performed well and received even mediocre votes (rather than horribly bad) from the judges then she would definitely have been voted off. My question then is do the judges and show people know this and tell Simon who to really rip if they are bad or does he just come up with it himself? I know that in an ideal world people would all vote (like the U.S. elections) and everyone would vote only one time for the person they thought was best, but that isn't how it works. Both Fantasia, and La Toya were great and should have gone on, but as La Toya said (which I think probably also lost her some votes) she was already a winner and would end up with a good record contract anyway, and I think that is true. She is the most polished and professional performer and will do just fine.

These votes definitely make for exciting television (if you can skip all of the boring group performances and delay tactics in the second show of each week) and should push next weeks American Idol viewership up. The real question then is whether or not the network is involved in some sort of scam to create controversy and get people watching or if all this is just how it works out.

Everyone thinks that the people who do really well will already get a lot of votes so they don't need to vote (don't make this mistake in the next election) but that isn't the case. Every vote counts, and everyone should vote, and vote for who they think the best candidate is. I of course say all of this and am the ultimate hypocrite and have never voted in an American Idol show although I have some excuse since I always watch it a few days later after recording it with my PVR. Jasmine will definitely be gone this week no matter how the other girls perform (unless they really suck and she is really good) and I think it is going to be a very very tough call between Jasmine and Diana unless one of them blows the final.

That's it, now back to my life!

New Blogger Interface

It seems like Blogger has dramatically changed their user interface. I think that it may have had a few bugs that hopefully are worked out now because I posted an update the other day that turned out blank and I just had to remove it. As I mentioned before I got a Google Gmail account a couple of weeks ago because of my blogging activity using the Google owned Blogger. I since received an invitation from Google to invite two other friends to get account there so I did. The next day I discovered that the Gmail accounts were selling on eBay for up to $200. So crazy! I should have kept my other one and sold it. I don't think that I would have though although I'm thinking that I would have liked to get another account for myself. Maybe I'll get another invite in a bit and can get a second account. Sometimes I like to keep different types of mail divided up.

Well, that's about it. Another beautiful Sunday from here in Santa Clara, CA.

GMail Beta

Tonight I got my gmail.com beta account and had a lot of fun testing out the various features. I think that the shortcut keys are awesome althought I'd like to see a few more and be able to use the arrow keys or configure my keys in some sort of advanced options tab. I also run my resolution at 1600x1200 and found it a little annoying that they fixed the message width at a maximum which doesn't take up all that much space. However, if done intentionally I can understand that they might have picked some number of characters that most users have for e-mail reading width and forced wrapping there, similar to how many people force code wrapping when programming at 80 characters. I think that 80 is a little narrow these days given the resolutions that people run at and the advancements in text editors. Sometimes just another 20 characters or so in a line of code can really make it more readable. But I digress.

Back to gmail. I thought that their message threading was a very intriguing feature but I haven't yet gotten used to it, we'll have to see if I do. I thought that their address auto-complete was awesome, and their spell check worked great, just like MSWord with the underlined misspellings and the drop-downs to fix them--very nice. I also found that they rejected an attachment that I sent which was a .url forward from someone at work. It seemed like a funny attachment to block (security reasons?) and I received the message "552 Illegal Attachmentservice" in return.

All in all, I thought that the Google mail service was great, super fast, clean, and easy to use. I'm sure once it is available to the public that people will be using it in droves. I think Yahoo is going to have some catching up to do. I do think that gmail needs a little more polish and I intend to bundle up my feedback after some more testing and send it to them--not that they probably don't already have enough, but the more the merrier I guess.

Well, that's it, just thought I'd post a quick note about gmail since I was excited to get my account tonight. Other than that not much going on. I played soccer for a few hours, grabbed some Jamba Juice on the way home, and finished off my dinner with a hard-boiled egg--I cooked 18 of them this weekend for breakfast, etc. this week.

That's it folks,

Nick

Time's a Flyin'

Again, the time is flying by, but as I sit here on a hot Sunday afternoon in Santa Clara, CA, I thought I'd post a quick update. My company Pivia recently updated its website and I think it looks great. They also started an online Blog of sorts to discuss issues in the industry, etc.

Recently I've been reading a few more blogs like Boing Boing and it's been a lot of fun. Of course, some of my daily reads like Slashdot or Plastic are always still favorites. I've been pretty busy lately at work. I've been itching to paint lately too but just haven't had the time. Once I move into a new place I'm hoping that there's enough space in the garage for me to set up a little painting area. I have some fun ideas that I've been working on.

Hey, I know that blogging and writing about your life online is all the rage these days, but does anyone have much experience with personal diaries kept electronically? I've played with them off and on before and written my own, but I've never really gotten that great of a feeling from the programs, something that's so simple with a handwritten diary, like adding little sketches, doodles, etc. I guess only a touchpad diary system might come close to providing that interaction. Anyone have any experience with something like that?

Well, I know, not the most exciting blog entry, but I have to run. I really hope to make this better in the coming months when I finally find a little time.

Getting Back in Gear

It's been a while since I posted any messages here. Blogging is one of those things that I think you can get really excited about and start writing for a week or two and then as it becomes less of a novel new thing and other time pressures, etc. set in you stop. I just wanted to put in a little update here although I can't promise any regular updates yet.

This weekend I went up to Orinda. We went over to Point Reyes National Park for a nature and wildflower hike. It's very beautiful there and I'd recommend it. The weather was beautiful although it got a little bit windy since it is right on the coast.

I've started playing a bit of soccer again at some pick up games during the week. The players are pretty good and I'm a bit out of shape but hopefully that will change. My knee is holding up pretty well although it always hurts a bit.

I guess that's about all for now, just writing something to get the juices flowing again. Maybe I'll touch on something more interesting the next time I get a chance to write in here!

Salsa

Today was a pretty good day. Our CEO let us out of work a little early both because we had some good sales news and to enjoy the three day weekend. I spent yesterday afternoon getting VMware workstation up and running on my Windows XP machine running a Mandrake Linux 9.1 virtual machine inside of it. I constantly have the need to run some Linux tools and do some Linux development, etc. at home but I also have a need to run Windows all of the time and don't have an extra computer to spare.

I had some problems getting the network interface up and running within VMware and Mandrake and after some internet searching found that this article from VMware that made me add the line "MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes" to my /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth[n] file where ifcfg-eth0 was my interface. Also, I read that Mandrake had some problems detecting the correct network card and I followed the directions here even though they were for Mandrake 7.2 to get things working. I'm actually not sure they did anything because I made both networking changes at the same time, and after selecting the network card the directions mentioned it seemed to find the same network card again after probing the interface. Maybe it helped, I'm not sure. I hope it helps you!

I just finished making some hot salsa from a recipe I got from a good friend of mine's Mom who's from Mexico. It's relatively simple to make although I screwed it up the first time pretty badly. Here's the hot salsa recipe:

Lupe's hot salsa recipe:

8 Jalapeno peppers
8 yellow chilis (they look like yellow jalapenos)
3 steak tomatoes (not hothouse if you can help it. steak tomatoes are just big tomatoes, you can also substitute some smaller vine ripened tomatoes, etc.)
2 cloves garlic
16 os tomato sauce

Blacken/roast the peppers and tomatoes in a skillet you don't mind charring a bit, or on a BBQ (I grilled mine on a gas BBQ). Make sure to cook them all whole (don't cut them up). Set them all aside. Now in a blender, blend the tomato sauce and the garlic until well blended. Remove the stems and add the yellow chilis, blend, then the jalapenos, blend, and lastly the tomatoes. You don't need to liquify the last three ingredients you can leave them a little chunky, just blend until they seem to have been chopped up and stop.

The first time I made this recipe I wasn't sure how to blacken the ingredients and I decided that I needed to cut them all up. Well, it made a bit of a mess and I didn't manage to blacken much of anything except for my skillet. Since they were chopped up, the tomatoes liquid kept boiling off and preventing everything else from getting blackened. The second time I made the salsa it was much better. It is pretty hot though so if you want it a bit milder try cutting down on the number of peppers.

Well, that's about it for now. I'm outta here.

Child Sports Stars

I just had a long conversation with an ex-coworker and friend of mine, Rys. We've hardly talked since Rys left Pivia last December but have had occasional e-mail correspondence and kept in touch. It was nice to talk and catch up on everything that has been happening in Rys' life. Rys is currently looking for a job and would be an excellent candidate for anyone looking for a serious backend C++ developer. You can find Rys' resume here.

As for me, life is good. I'm still recovering from my soccer tournament last weekend although I'm still pretty sore. Work is going well and I've been getting quite a bit done lately. We're getting ready to put out a new release and it is nice to be able to tidy up some loose ends and really polish the product up. I'm looking forward to the three day weekend although some of my Saturday and all of Sunday will be taken up helping a friend move up to San Francisco. I hate moving and am really happy that I haven't had to move for the past 5 years. However, that means that I've managed to accumulate a ton of junk that I'll have to get rid of when I move next year.

Oh, I was getting my haircut yesterday and they always have TV on there. I saw this amazing little 3 year old named Mark Walker on Live With Regis and Kelly that could shoot baskets on a full sized hoop like it was nothing. He was pretty amazing and Reebok has hired him and is setting aside money for him to go to college in return for using him in some ad campaigns. You should really want the video of him making 18 baskets in a row on an 8 foot hoop. Here is another link, and another to some articles on him as well.

Well, that's about it for now...

Pain and Family

Right now I am in an enormous amount of pain. I played in a 5 games soccer tournament this weekend and am not quite in the shape for all of that sprinting I guess. Every single leg muscle, butt muscle, stomach and back muscle that I have feel completely torn. It was quite an effot for me to even get off of my bed over to my desk where I'm writing this. This is definitely going to be a week of relaxing for me. As for our tournament performance, we ended up only winning one of those games but every game was really close and we were ahead towards the end of the game in two of them. In multiple games the other team scored a goal in the first few minutes, the last of which we were playing down 3 players some of which hadn't showed up or we were trying to pick up, and the others were still putting on their shoes but they started the game anyway. All in all it was a fun but painful weekend of soccer, on my muscles at least.

I also had my parents and siblings down visiting as I previously mentioned, and it was fun to have them at the soccer tournament as well. My little sister Brigitte played in the 3 games on Saturday (it's a coed team if I hadn't mentioned it before). I've never played on a team with her before and it was fun. She did a great job and was a solid defender that really helped out in the back. My family left this morning at around 7:00 for their 14 or so hour drive back up to the Seattle area. Pretty crazy drive and I'm sure a pretty tiring one. I'm glad I wasn't making the drive although it may not have hurt me as badly as the soccer game. I also think I'm going to lose a few toenails on my left foot from the game. I had a good collision with someone else's foot during the game while trying to make a cross. It jammed my toes and several toenails have started turning black. Well, that's about all for now folks, I need to get some sleep. Until next time!!

Family and Food

I just got back from a filling dinner at a local Indian restaurant in Santa Clara named Mayuri. It's one of our favorites and the owner knows us there. If you ever get a chance stop by and tell them that some friends from Santa Clara University that usually bring in big groups for birthdays sent you. My parents just drove down from the Seattle area with a stop in Ashland and a stop in San Francisco. I'm taking the day off tomorrow to spend some time with them. This is the first time the whole fam has been down here in over 5 years. We still haven't figured out what we're going to do yet, maybe hang out around here or maybe head to the beach. I'm getting tired and need to get to bed so that I can wake up a little earlier than usual to hang out the with fam. Goodnight!!

Growing Up

Another day another post. Let me see, maybe a little more information about me and my life. I grew up in Portland, OR and spent almost all of my life in a great little neighborhood known as Eastmoreland. I went to gradeschool at Holy Family, a local Catholic parish school, high school at Central Catholic, and finally left the wonderful state of Oregon to find fame and fortune in California. I'm not quite there yet but working on it!

A Bit About Me

Okay, now for a first real post with a little information about me. My name is Nick Woods and I am a software engineer currently employed at a company named Pivia located in Cupertino, CA. We have a great software product that helps speed up web sites, especially for users with bad network connections. I rent a house with three of my friends from Santa Clara University where I received BS in Computer Engineering. I've been seriously developing software for around 13 years and have done a little of everything from firmware and low level systems programming through networking, high level application development, UI design and development. In the little spare time I seem to have I manage to get in a little soccer and volleyball, hit the beach to surf, paint (mostly with oils and acrylics), hang out with friends, try to keep my room clean, and enjoy my life.