July 18, 2009

A Big Waste of Time and Money

Filed under: Peeves — Adam @ 2:17 pm

Every day on the way home from work, I see between two and four cops on the side of the road, waiting to catch speeders. They almost never do — five days a week for the past twenty plus weeks and I’ve seen maybe two handfuls of people being pulled over. These two to four are typically sheriff’s deputies. The only person I ever saw being pulled over in the act of speeding (as opposed to passing the cop with the blue lights on and the ticket pen out) was pulled over by a Mississippi Highway Patrol.

The problem I have with what they’re doing is:
1. Speeding isn’t nearly as dangerous as the people I see texting and talking on the cellphone while driving. I saw a girl (dark blue, two-door recent-ish Honda Civic, custom plates said “Trino”) texting going over seventy miles an hour either Friday or Thursday of this week. She had BOTH HANDS firmly on her phone.
2. For them to stop someone, they would have to be going faster enough than the flow of traffic to warrant breaking into said flow from a dead stop and accelerating to go faster than the perp in order to catch them. I don’t want to be near them when this decision is made (but anyone going that fast needs to be stopped — and a $300 ticket isn’t enough stopping power for me).
3. These cops are getting paid to sit on the side of the interstate, and I know all crime hasn’t been eliminated from the coastal counties.

Mostly it’s the last two, but I’m really all in favor of banning texting while you are the motherfucking driver of a vehicle. I wasn’t, until I started seeing it more often — and two 16 year olds girls in two years died when they hit a schoolbus because they were texting. Seriously, they were so into it they missed a schoolbus.

I don’t care if you’re the motherfucking samurai prince of Dalaam: nothing you have to say is more important than my life. And I don’t want to have to slam my breaks to let Boss Hog pull out onto the interstate to chase a kid with fart pipes and a Mitsubishi struggling to hit 90mph.

July 15, 2009

The State of Computer Science Education

Filed under: Geek Stuff, Personal — Adam @ 6:03 pm

Now that I’ve been working at a real job with real responsibilities for a little over six months, I have some comments on my education and what I think it should have had and all that good mess.

When I started work at the lab, I had finished all of my computer science education at USM. I only needed 11 hours of credits after that, in any subject matter. I chose some random classes to allow me to spend more time with Bendy and I chose easy classes to let me spend more time at work. It’s a good thing I did.

Because I didn’t learn jack.

Honestly, I learned more in the first month I was at the Lab than I did in a year and a half at USM. I taught myself Perl in the first week — and I’m not trying to pat myself on the back. I just needed to know it. Perl and bash scripting were my first priority, and I learned them quickly. I’ve learned more about C in the months since than I did at both USM and Bendy’s school. The main thing I learned while a student was PHP, and I taught that to myself for a project in the senior capstone. The only other languages I learned well I haven’t used — assembly (for the Motorola 68K) and Java. What I learned of Java was basically an extension of my knowledge of C/C++.

I took five of what I considered to be “programming” classes — Programming with C I and II, Data Structures, Assembly (wasn’t called that), and Java. The way I see it, Data Structures was mostly the third in a series with the first two programming classes. It was also one of the best of the five. If I had to rank them for what they taught me, it would be: Data Structures, Assembly, Programming w/C I, then II, and finally Java.

I think every computer science program should emphasis programming at least to some extent, and I think these five classes are a good example, but I’d expand it thus:

Programming I, II, and III would cover up to the end of a good data structures class, and Programming IV would cover algorithms. These would all be in C/C++. Building them together would give more of a grasp of programming.

Assembly would follow a Boolean Algebra/Discrete Math sort of computer logic class. These could be taken concurrently with the above. Java would come in the form of two classes and be “Advanced Programming with Java” or something. This combination would expose the student to three languages, and that’s a good foundation. Hopefully somewhere along the way someone would mention scripting languages (Perl, bash, Python).

I also took a databases class. It was mostly useless and I had to teach myself because the teacher was obsessed with the visual representation of a database and the logic but never really got down to the actual, y’know, use of the code. That’s only slightly important after all. I think everyone should be exposed to that, as well, and possibly a bit of web programming (PHP, Javascript).

Then comes the more theoretical classes — Operating Systems, Programming Languages, Language Theory, Automata. I wouldn’t so much change these classes from what I took as make them more effective. Programming Languages was a disappointing class but it struck me as pretty important. This adds to the knowledge background above. Automata, at least the class I took, was hard and boring at times but looking back one of the more educational classes I had. But again, it’s mostly theory, unless I develop and Operating System or a Programming Language.

Most of the rest of the classes I took were math (Calculus, Stats) or electives (Artificial Intelligence, Ethics) and those I wouldn’t change,but I would have preferred more suitable electives being offered.

Regardless, my point is, I don’t feel like a CS degree necessarily prepared me for the work force. I’ve looked at the classes for a masters and a doctorate in the field and they don’t look like they’d help all that much either. Other than making the classes teach more I don’t know how I’d fix it. I really would have appreciated a better foundation in the science and less theory, though.

At least I didn’t get a liberal arts McDegree though.

July 11, 2009

Goodbye, Shifty.

Filed under: Heroes — Adam @ 8:26 am

A true hero is gone. “Shifty” Powers, member of the 101st Screaming Eagles, passed into the next on June 17th. Pasting the e-mail below as a way of “forwarding” it:

We’re hearing a lot today about big splashy memorial services.

I want a nationwide memorial service for Darrell “Shifty” Powers.

Shifty volunteered for the airborne in WWII and served with Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101st Airborne Infantry. If you’ve seen Band of Brothers on HBO or the History Channel, you know Shifty. His character appears in all 10 episodes, and Shifty himself is interviewed in several of them.

I met Shifty in the Philadelphia airport several years ago. I didn’t know who he was at the time. I just saw an elderly gentleman having trouble reading his ticket. I offered to help, assured him that he was at the right gate, and noticed the “Screaming Eagle”, the symbol of the 101st Airborne, on his hat.

Making conversation, I asked him if he’d been in the 101st Airborne or if his son was serving. He said quietly that he had been in the 101st. I thanked him for his service, then asked him when he served, and how many jumps he made.

Quietly and humbly, he said “Well, I guess I signed up in 1941 or so, and was in until sometime in 1945 . . . ” at which point my heart skipped.

At that point, again, very humbly, he said “I made the 5 training jumps at Toccoa, and then jumped into Normandy . . . . do you know where Normandy is?” At this point my heart stopped.

I told him yes, I know exactly where Normandy was, and I know what D-Day was. At that point he said “I also made a second jump into Holland, into Arnhem.” I was standing with a genuine war hero . . . . and then I realized that it was June, just after the anniversary of D-Day.

I asked Shifty if he was on his way back from France, and he said “Yes. And it’s real sad because these days so few of the guys are left, and those that are, lots of them can’t make the trip.” My heart was in my throat and I didn’t know what to say.

I helped Shifty get onto the plane and then realized he was back in Coach, while I was in First Class. I sent the flight attendant back to get him and said that I wanted to switch seats. When Shifty came forward, I got up out of the seat and told him I wanted him to have it, that I’d take his in coach.

He said “No, son, you enjoy that seat. Just knowing that there are still some who remember what we did and still care is enough to make an old man very happy.” His eyes were filling up as he said it. And mine are brimming up now as I write this.

Shifty died on June 17 after fighting cancer.

There was no parade.

No big event in Staples Center.

No wall to wall back to back 24×7 news coverage.

No weeping fans on television.

And that’s not right.

Let’s give Shifty his own Memorial Service, online, in our own quiet way. Please forward this email to everyone you know. Especially to the veterans.

Rest in peace, Shifty.

“A nation without heroes is nothing.”
Roberto Clemente

Link from Smallest Minority and Hell in a Handbasket, two of my favorite blogs.

July 9, 2009

Not a hate crime my ass.

Filed under: Imbeciles and Kooks, Peeves — Adam @ 5:59 pm

This is a bunch of shit. I’m sorry, what? Not a hate crime?

If a dozen white kids jumped a black man yelling “it’s a white world” we’d never hear the end of how racially motivated the hate crime was.

July 2, 2009

Stay Away from the University of Phoenix.

Filed under: Imbeciles and Kooks — Adam @ 7:39 pm

Bendy is an English teacher with a Masters Degree.

She’s teaching a class for the University of Phoenix online. And a lot of their grammar stuff is just wrong — not the students, but the school and their grammar writers.

Also, their internet interface is fucking retarded for no reason other than to keep to their image. It bogs down my computer (I am a computer geek, this is no small feat). I’ve used two different interfaces and if a school expected me to use that I’d demand my money back.

It frustrated Bendy. She helped design the online class stuff for our entire state. And they have rules simply for the sake of rules, things that make no sense.

Finally, they give grades for effort, which is just bullshit. I’m sorry, but trying really hard doesn’t hold up in the real world.

School should be like fucking. It’s not the amount of effort you put into getting your degree (or getting someone off) but the amount of actual fucking accomplishment — ie, actually getting her to the “Oh Face” as opposed to just wearing down your mattress springs.