09.21.06
Posted in Art at 10:51 am by ducky
I am working on painting a jacket; I painted several tshirts along the way this summer. Mostly they were just vehicles for me to experiment on, but I gave one to a friend:
The picture above is of the front. It looks slightly odd because the shoulder is flattened so you can see the two glyphs on the top of the shoulder.
Reading left-to-right, top to bottom, the shirt has Mayan, Dulkw’ahke (southwestern Canadian First Nations), Latin, Arabic, Cuneiform (Akkadian, IIRC). At the bottom is a symbol that might mean “sheep” in what might have been the precursor to writing.
On the back, you can see Cyrillic, a tiny little Vai (Liberian) symbol, Telugu or Kannada (Indian scripts), Mongolian, and Chinese.
NB: Updated on 15 Oct 2006, on request, to note the characters. If you are interested in writing systems, I highly recomment omniglot.com and ancientscripts.com.
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Posted in Canadian life, University life at 9:55 am by ducky
I’ve been negligent in telling what ultimately happened with the Green College residence contract conflict.
The University came back with a new contract. There are still some egregious clasuses regulating (perfectly legal) behavior, but during the meeting, the administrators repeated over and over again that they had no intention of enforcing the rules to ridiculous extremes. They said that those clauses were intended for egregious behavior. For example, the prohibition against rules against any noise audible outside the room is not intended to be used to keep me from saying, “Who’s there?”, but to keep people from blaring 200 decibal opera at 3 AM.
I suspect that it is hard to write contracts to clearly prohibit egregious behavior while also allowing reasonable behavior, and they didn’t want to work that hard.
Jim and I had to think really hard about whether we wanted to sign or not. We ultimately did, attaching a statement that said (basically) that we were signing in reliance upon the statements of the administrators that the rules would be enforced reasonably. The fundamental reason we felt okay signing was that people closer to the negotiations than us said that the administration recognized that we were quite capable of causing pain (in the form of bad publicity) for them if they were unreasonable about the contract.
Most of the residents who were holding out also signed. I know of two students and one spouse who could not bring themselves to sign, and will be moving out in a few days. At least 57 residents attached the “in reliance” clause to their contracts. This includes people who did so retroactively — people who were not part of “the holdouts”. I don’t know if their statements will have any legal weight, but it sure was a nice show of support.
One postscript: a professor I spoke to seemed to be under the impression that the police were present at some point. I think he must be a child of the sixties, where police were everywhere and disputes were violent. Or perhaps he was thinking of the APEC97 protests. I was only here for a few days during the contract dispute, but I have not heard *anything* about police. While I wasn’t here, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some raised voices in the town hall meeting with the Principal about the contract, but I also have the impression that the negotiations with other university administrators were entirely calm and civil.
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08.28.06
Posted in Canadian life, University life at 11:09 pm by ducky
Today I and at least 21 of my fellow residents received eviction notices from our dorm.
“Dorm” isn’t exactly the right word for it, but “residential academic community” is a mouthful. The University of British Columbia’s Green College is supposed to be more than just a place to live, with a strong academic component and strong self-governance. It also has the reputation for having better food: the ten meals per week are provided by the Green College Dining Society, a non-profit owned and run by the residents.
At least, that’s how it is supposed to work. On 28 July, after being repeatedly assured by the Principal that there would be “no substantive changes”, we were all given a new contract and told to sign in two business days. In addition to switching from being month-to-month to term-based, the new contract has a number of onerous terms. Many of them would not be legal if they were in a private landlord’s contract, but UBC has a blanket exemption from the BC Tenancy Act.
The new contract:
- Has a clause that the administration can change the terms of the contract at will with a week’s notice. (That’s not a contract, that’s an oath of fealty!)
- Has a long list of prohibited behaviors that are grounds for behavior, which if enforced, would mean that everybody could be evicted. Prohibited behaviors include but are not limited to:
- Any noise that is audible from outside the room. Walking around, moving chairs, and calling, “Who’s there?” would all thus be grounds for eviction.
- Having a party on any day at any time except for Friday and Saturday night, or without prior notice to the Resident Advisor. Parties are defined as alcohol, seven or more people, noise. (The contract does not specify if there is an AND or an OR joining those clauses!) This means that if seven people go down to the TV room to watch a hockey game on Sunday afternoon, they cheer their team, and one person has a beer, it is a violation worthy of eviction.
- Open (which apparently means, as in the US, unsealed) liquor containers in the hallways. Thus to bring a half-empty bottle of wine from one room to another would be an eviction-worthy violation. (I guess they would rather we finish it off.)
- If evicted, you still have to pay your rent.
- Says that we have to adhere to documents that do not exist.
- Has a cancel-with-no-penalty date that is two weeks before we got the contract.
- Gives the administration the right to enter our rooms with no notice for almost any reason.
- Gives the administration the right to make us change rooms whenever they feel like it, with minimal notice.
- Says that if the administration changes the meal plan, then we have to sign up for the new meal plan at whatever cost and whatever level of service they switch to. This gives them a way to dissolve that pesky student-run Green College Dining Society and further erode self-governance.
- Says that if there is a catastrophe such that our rooms are unlivable, we still have to pay rent and meal plan. (This was also in the previous contract, but with a month-to-month lease, there was a much lower financial risk.)
- Researchers who lose their eligibility (i.e. turn in their thesis) have only three days to move out, and must pay a penalty of 25% of the semester’s cost for doing so. (This makes short-term stays, e.g. for visiting research scholars, difficult.)
- Explicitly promises nothing except for a mattress pad and internet access.
- Drinking games are not permitted. Shared-container alcohol (like a punchbowl) is not permitted at parties.
- Acting as a host to someone who has been evicted is itself an evictable offense.
In addition, it limits which rooms couples with one partner being a non-student can live in, thus effectively limiting the number of non-student partners. This is an end run around the student-run Membership Committee.
I have the impression that many of these clauses are ones that they have no intention of enforcing. (In fact, the Principal has already issued contracts to two couples with non-student partners who do NOT live in one of the two couples rooms.) This seems strange to me: if you do not plan to enforce the rules, you shouldn’t write them into the contract. Maybe they think that writing the rules into the contract means that they are covered in the case of liability, but I would think that if it is patently obvious that they cannot enforce the rules as written, then I would think that a jury could be persuaded that the rules effectively did not exist.
We have tried reasoning with the acting Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies (who has traditionally overseen Green College), Housing, and Legal. While the Dean seems sympathetic, Housing and Legal are resolute: “The University does not negotiate contracts.” (Um. Didn’t they just negotiate contracts with the Teaching Assistant’s Union?)
I am puzzled by the university’s response — it seems to me like the university is dangerously under-reacting. Apparently, the University is exempt from the BC Tenancy Act because they need to be able to discriminate against non-students, which is prohibited by the Tenancy Act. However, they really seem to be abusing their exemption. It seems to me that this would leave them vulnerable to the assertion that they should not get a blanket exemption, but rather only exemptions from specific, targeted clauses.
Mostly, however, I am sad. Green College seemed like such a bright, shiny place when we applied. From talking to alumni, it sounds like it used to be a really neat institution. But while I am really impressed by my fellow residents, the institution seems to be sliding into greyness.
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08.27.06
Posted in Technology trends at 11:29 pm by ducky
I blogged before that I thought Google should bundle mail and calendar together and offer it as a stand-alone product. As I noted before, Google had started to offer mail as a hosted application; now they are offering mail, calendar, IM, and Web page design/hosting as a hosted application.
Apparently it’s not necessary for it to be a hosted application for it to be an interesting value proposition, but I think even more businesses would be interested if they could get the machines behind their firewalls.
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07.04.06
Posted in Canadian life at 9:02 am by ducky
This weekend, Jim and I found ourselves in a piano bar in the “New York, New York” casino in Las Vegas. The two piano players were working the crowd pretty hard, not playing any songs in full unless they got paid. The going rate seemed to be about $20 per song early on, increasing as the night went on.
At one point, someone requested err bought “Proud to be an American”, and the lead player stirred the crowd up:
Piano player #1: Who here is American?
Crowd: screams
Piano player #1: Who’s proud to be an American?
Crowd: screams
Piano player #1: Everybody else, well I guess you’re unintelligible.
I didn’t understand what he said, but it sounded lightly derogatory. I thought that was a shame, that it might make the non-Americans uncomfortable.
I was thus very happy and proud of my husband when he filled out a request card (accompanied by the requisite $20) that said, “Please play O, Canada in honor of Canada Day.” I thought that was a nice gesture to our friends up north who have been so nice to us.
When the request percolated to the top of the pile, however, the lead player played it to the crowd as an affront to the United States. I was stunned. He then made some deragatory comments about Canada’s military, implying, “You better not insult the U.S. because the U.S. could go kick Canada’s ass any day.”
The lead player quickly got someone to pay up $40 to play The Star-Spangled Banner. Player #2 played “good cop”, and got Player #1 to agree to play O, Canada if Canada would pony up $41.
We didn’t bite. Partly because I had a suspicion that the price for O, Canada would get raised indefinitely, but mostly because this was never intended to be a competition! Jim got the request card and wrote, “This is an American game” and we left. (I thought he should have taken his $20 back, but he didn’t.)
I wonder if they understood his comment. They probably took it as meaning, “This game is rigged in favor of Americans, so I can’t win, so I won’t bother trying to compete.” Instead, what he meant was, “Competing like this is something Americans do. Canadians do not value one-upmanship.”
As we left, they were singing God Bless America. I think from now until forever, when I hear people say, “God bless America”, in my head, I’m going to hear them saying, “God bless America, but fuck every other country.”
I thought about writing a disappointed letter to the casino management, but Jim pointed out that the piano players were just playing to the crowd — that they simply reflected the sentiments of the crowd.
P.S. I later realized that incident in the bar revealed not one, but two ugly things. Not only does American patriotism exclude any respect for other countries, but in America, everything is for sale.
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06.29.06
Posted in Technology trends at 9:32 pm by ducky
I have been a summer intern at Google for a month now, so I feel somewhat obliged to talk about what that’s like.
Secrecy
Much of what I could talk about I, well, can’t talk about. Google is extremely paranoid about loose lips. If you go searching around for what employees say about Google, you’ll hear a lot about the food. While the food is really good and a great benefit, part of why you hear about that so much is that it is a completely safe topic of conversation.
Google is almost as close-mouthed at Interval Research Corporation, partly for similar reasons. In both cases, there was a sense that protecting intellectual property was so important that it trumped almost everything.
I am certain that secrecy hurt Interval, and suspect that it’s not as important as Google thinks it is. At Interval, it was extremely hard to recruit people, and that was partly due to absolutely nobody knowing what we did. At Google, while everybody seems to think that the ideas are important, the longer I’m there, the more I think that its bigger competency is in execution. Sure, Google people have good ideas… but ideas are no good if you can’t put them into practice.
Most research-y type companies make their money on low-volume but very expensive products. They fund their research by putting a big markup on their products. Google, on the other hand, is the epitome of high-volume, low cost products. They fund their research by pumping out a huge volume of product.
The other part of why Google is so secretive is legitimate: it’s that everybody is watching very very closely. Anything a Googler says might end up on the cover of the New York Times tomorrow. This definitely constrains me. There is a Google Maps mailing list, for example, that I pay some attention to. There are questions that I know how to answer, and want to answer, but I’m nervous that the people will think I speak for Google. If I say “There are currently seven froomblents”, will people interpret that to be a veiled admission that Google intends to change the number of froomblents they provide? (No, don’t go look it up. I searched for a word that had no Google search results, specifically so people wouldn’t start imputing meaning to that nonsense phrase.)
Personality
Google tries really hard to hire only the best and the brightest. I knew that before I started, and it made me a bit nervous. I once worked for a different company that worked hard at hiring only the best and the brightest, and they had horrible conflicts. Everybody there was used to being a superstar; everyone was used to always being more right than the people around them, and getting their own way. This meant they fought all the time.
I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at Google at how nice everybody is, and how there really aren’t big fights about technical direction, focus, implementation, or turf. Maybe I just happen to be in a particularly sweet group, but I don’t think so. I think Googlers are genuinely humble and nice.
That might be the Stanford influence: everyone at Stanford knows someone who is better than them at something. One of my Stanford classmates once said that he had three International Math Olympiad finalists in his calculus section. My husband tells of how in his Music Theory class, there was someone who was a varsity football player and a dancer and played violin. (“And was good looking. It wasn’t fair.”)
I suspect that more of it is that they worry about people being smart and pleasant to work with.
There’s more, but I can’t think of anything more right now that I am allowed to talk about.
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05.27.06
Posted in Technology trends, Too Much Information at 10:29 am by ducky
Google is famous for its perks, and rightfully so. They have the best perks of any place I’ve ever worked, even better than SGI in its heyday. It seems like Google really wants to eliminate anything that might distract people from doing great things.
It’s also possible that they just want to be nice to their employees, and I found an argument for that: heated toilet seats.
While I haven’t done a rigorous statistical analysis to determine distribution, almost all of the toilets at the Googleplex that I have sampled are high-tech megafunction toilets: the kind that can spray your privates clean and then blow them dry.
The first time I walked into a stall, I rolled my eyes at how over-the-top the toilet was. I mean, how necessary is it to have megafunction toilets?
Then I sat down and discovered the seat was heated, and to my surprise, I found that I had a very visceral response. It was comforting. I suspect that the seat is set to body temperature, and I bet that I have very strong associations of comfort attached to body heat on my butt. I wanted to just sit on that nice warm seat for hours. This argues against the perks being there to improve productivity.
I haven’t tried the toilets’ wash and dry cycle yet — I’m afraid to. After all, I do need to get some work done.
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05.25.06
Posted in Random thoughts at 9:08 pm by ducky
I have such a sense of liberation! I have no homework tonight that I should be working on!
I guess I’ve been kind of busy for the past three years — first Jim was in school, then I was taking prerequisites, then we were moving, then I was looking after my mother, then I was studying studying studying, then we were moving, then I was getting settled at my summer job… and now I have no homework! It’s wonderful!
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05.22.06
Posted in Technology trends at 6:38 am by ducky
I forgot to mention last night — of course it would be great to allow people to share to-do items, in much the same way that people can share calendars with Gmail. For example, it would be great to be able to put “buy new laptop for Ducky” on my husband’s to-do list.
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05.21.06
Posted in Technology trends at 8:44 pm by ducky
Last term, I wrote a to-do list manager in Scheme for a class project. I have been frustrated with all the to-do list managers out in the world, so I finally wrote my own.
(OSAF‘s Chandler might have some of the features that I want, but it’s heavierweight than I need and isn’t really ready for prime time yet.)
The problem with most electronic to-do list managers is that they accumulate way too much stuff. I write down all the things I need to do, and then I am overwhelmed by the volume of tasks. Tasks that aren’t important or urgent or that I can’t work on right now end up getting in the way of seeing what I need to do right now.
I want to record that I need to take the car in for servicing in about three months, but I don’t want to see it until about three months from now. I want to write down that I need to paint the house, buy paint, buy rollers, and move furniture, but I don’t need to see the “move furniture” task until after I’ve bought the paint and rollers.
In my to-do list manager, tasks are presented in a hierarchical structure, and I gave myself three different methods for hiding things:
- Hide completed tasks
- Hide supertasks (i.e. those that I can’t start on until some other task is finished)
- Hide deferred tasks (until some later date (specified on a per-task basis))
(I of course also have the option to show completed tasks, show deferred tasks, or show supertasks.)
If I hide completed, deferred, and supertasks, then what is left are the things that I can work on right now.
Note that there is no option to mark supertasks “done”. My Scheme version also doesn’t let you defer tasks with dependencies, but I haven’t decided if I am going to keep that or not.
I had thought that it would be nice to have separate importance and urgency fields, as those really are different things. Answering a ringing phone is very urgent but probably not very important (voicemail will pick it up); writing a will is very important but (hopefully!) not very urgent.
It turned out, however, that I didn’t really miss having distinct urgency and importance fields; if an item wasn’t urgent, I just deferred it. Presto, out of sight, out of mind.
One thing that I hadn’t originally planned on, but which I did and liked, was to change the color of tasks based on how important they were rated. Very important tasks were deep blue, and as the tasks got less important, they got more and more washed out (less saturatated).
My Scheme version has a text box on the main page for quickly creating new tasks, but there was a cruical flaw: no way to specify which task was the parent task. I thought about showing an arbitrary number next to each task in the list of tasks, and using that to specify the parent, but that didn’t seem appropriate. Really what you need to be able to do is drag-and-drop tasks to different places in the list.
One thing that I thought of doing but didn’t get around to was to be able to expand/collapse branches of the tree. Thus if I just don’t feel like working on upgrading the family IT infrastructure today, I can collapse that task (and all its subtasks) down to one line.
I’ve started porting my to-do list manager, making it an AJAX application so that I can host it on my site at Dreamhost, but I’m not going to finish before I start at Google, alas.
Someday I’d like to integrate it with a calendar. (The Google calendar has an API; maybe I could connect to the calendar.) Someday I’d like to add optional at-location and with-person fields, so that I could ask what tasks I can do at e.g. the hardware store (like “buy paint”), or with e.g. Jim. But that will probably have to wait until after the summer is over.
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