This first clip is a demonstration and the second clip is the inspiration:
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Tortellini
Alice and I like to play out the "Tortellini" sketch we saw on Sesame Street once. A little girl decides to teach her baby sister a new word, "tortellini", but the baby keeps saying "mama" until the end. I didn't think Robert cared much either way about this silly game, until yesterday. We were serving ravioli for dinner. I started singing, "Ravioli, ravioli, ravioli" and Robert chimed in, "Mama!" We all laughed and laughed and laughed. Now he does it every time. I think he's trying to learn the tortellini part, too, It's something like "mama-mee-mee, mama-meh-meh, MAMA!"
This first clip is a demonstration and the second clip is the inspiration:
This first clip is a demonstration and the second clip is the inspiration:
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
RE: RE: Bobby's Sunday Summary
I have to make a few minor corrections, just for accuracy sake.
1) The Hack Day project was not presented at the conference. It was just a happy coincidence that I was in CA when they wanted the winners present their hacks. On a less happy note I missed free ice cream at work here in Illinois. Oh well.
2) I did not use Hadoop to do my hack. I work on Hadoop at work all day. I was in CA for a conference about Hadoop, I started to do a hack on Hadoop, but it didn't really work out, so instead I did the hack that I did, and I used a different open source project, OpenCV. Which is a project to do all kinds of things with Computer Vision.
3) Not a correction just a link to the ethiopian restaurant. http://zenirestaurant.com/
4) And finally the comment from my manager was made in relation to something else, the fact that we want to try and scale up from 4000 machines to 15000 machines in our largest clusters. There was also a spin off company called Horton Works but that is diferent.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Pondering a Sale
What is the line between "it's just money" and "a penny saved is a penny earned"?
I was chatting with a friend this week about how we haven't sold our house as quickly as I'd like and we may need to devise a new strategy and reconsider our priorities, blah, blah, blah. Something she said in the conversation really ruffled my feathers and I need to figure out why. That's the point of this post. If that doesn't sound interesting to you, I won't be hurt if you choose to skip to the next blog in your reader now :)
In our conversation, I mentioned that another house in our neighborhood (nicer/larger than ours) was on the market for $20,000 less than our home. I was concerned that we may need to cut our price by $20,000 if we wanted to sell in this depressed market. She brushed off my comment with a shake of her head and replied, "It's just money."
Just money? Just money?! Yes! It's a whole pile of money! A powerful pile of money! A year's supply of money for our family of four. A down payment! My entire college education! An LDS mission for Alice AND Robert. Ugh. It hurts to imagine that much choice simply disappear.
And then I try to see it her way. I try to think of anything that could make me dismiss that enormous sum so casually. Yes, it's a pile of money, but what good does that money do us tied up in a house, chaining us to a less-than-adequate school and one toilet for our growing family? And then there's the unsettling thought that it's imaginary money...a perceived value of an item we bought 6 years ago that is no longer valued so high...maybe the $20,000 is already gone...we may never be able to sell this house again for what we bought it.
With her one comment, my friend suddenly forced me to put a price tag on my urgency to sell. I think that's why it's bothered me so much...how does one put a dollar sign on something like that? She obviously values her/my child's kindergarten experience more than her/my $20,000. I don't. Or do I? I don't know. Should I? I was uncomfortable with my friend's assessment for two reasons: 1) it exposed how nebulous my reasoning has always been for this move ("uh, it's just time") and 2) this is a friend I admire in several ways and I was a bit ashamed that I couldn't instantly dismiss the money for the educational future of my own child(ren) as she had done so decidedly and emphatically just then.
Thoughts on reason 1): If we were moving across the country next month for a new job, then I might be able to choke down a $20,000 hit compared to paying rent PLUS a mortgage indefinitely. But we're not moving far away, nor urgently. We're moving because we want to. That can't possibly be worth $20,000 right now. Or can it? If not $20,000, then how much? We DO have clear goals for this move, but the timing is quite flexible. We know we will want more space and good schools in the nearish future, but there's nothing pushing us that way except, um, my own deadline. If we move, great! If we don't move, there's still a whole bunch I really like about our current place, so I'm not terribly disappointed...yet.
Thoughts on reason 2): that's absurd, Suz! No need to compare myself with others, even to those friends that I admire. I move through life at a different wavelength from this friend. That's obvious in several ways, and that's part of the reason I appreciate our friendship. We don't always agree. The education of my children is important to me, absolutely, but is Kindergarten that critical? Not really. At Alice's age, I feel the home environment is still the most important factor in nurturing a love of learning. I shouldn't be scared of a school. If we do not sell in time, and Alice does go into Kindergarten here, then I can work with the school to make it a better place for every student, right? Not the end of the world.
Ugh. I've made it a matter of serious thought and prayer. At the moment, I feel that we're on the right track with our original plan. Come September, we will re-evaluate our options.
As ruffled as my feathers may get sometimes, I do eventually come to appreciate the insights of my friends. We have worked out several solutions to situations that I thought were impossible to define, much less make progress in. So please don't take this blog post as a criticism of my friend. She simply brought to my attention a few sub-issues that had been sub-bothering me for some time :) Now that I know they really do bother me, I can think about them more openly. Now you can ask me about them and we can chat about it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on placing a dollar value on intangibles...especially idealistic intangibles like "education."
I was chatting with a friend this week about how we haven't sold our house as quickly as I'd like and we may need to devise a new strategy and reconsider our priorities, blah, blah, blah. Something she said in the conversation really ruffled my feathers and I need to figure out why. That's the point of this post. If that doesn't sound interesting to you, I won't be hurt if you choose to skip to the next blog in your reader now :)
In our conversation, I mentioned that another house in our neighborhood (nicer/larger than ours) was on the market for $20,000 less than our home. I was concerned that we may need to cut our price by $20,000 if we wanted to sell in this depressed market. She brushed off my comment with a shake of her head and replied, "It's just money."
Just money? Just money?! Yes! It's a whole pile of money! A powerful pile of money! A year's supply of money for our family of four. A down payment! My entire college education! An LDS mission for Alice AND Robert. Ugh. It hurts to imagine that much choice simply disappear.
And then I try to see it her way. I try to think of anything that could make me dismiss that enormous sum so casually. Yes, it's a pile of money, but what good does that money do us tied up in a house, chaining us to a less-than-adequate school and one toilet for our growing family? And then there's the unsettling thought that it's imaginary money...a perceived value of an item we bought 6 years ago that is no longer valued so high...maybe the $20,000 is already gone...we may never be able to sell this house again for what we bought it.
With her one comment, my friend suddenly forced me to put a price tag on my urgency to sell. I think that's why it's bothered me so much...how does one put a dollar sign on something like that? She obviously values her/my child's kindergarten experience more than her/my $20,000. I don't. Or do I? I don't know. Should I? I was uncomfortable with my friend's assessment for two reasons: 1) it exposed how nebulous my reasoning has always been for this move ("uh, it's just time") and 2) this is a friend I admire in several ways and I was a bit ashamed that I couldn't instantly dismiss the money for the educational future of my own child(ren) as she had done so decidedly and emphatically just then.
Thoughts on reason 1): If we were moving across the country next month for a new job, then I might be able to choke down a $20,000 hit compared to paying rent PLUS a mortgage indefinitely. But we're not moving far away, nor urgently. We're moving because we want to. That can't possibly be worth $20,000 right now. Or can it? If not $20,000, then how much? We DO have clear goals for this move, but the timing is quite flexible. We know we will want more space and good schools in the nearish future, but there's nothing pushing us that way except, um, my own deadline. If we move, great! If we don't move, there's still a whole bunch I really like about our current place, so I'm not terribly disappointed...yet.
Thoughts on reason 2): that's absurd, Suz! No need to compare myself with others, even to those friends that I admire. I move through life at a different wavelength from this friend. That's obvious in several ways, and that's part of the reason I appreciate our friendship. We don't always agree. The education of my children is important to me, absolutely, but is Kindergarten that critical? Not really. At Alice's age, I feel the home environment is still the most important factor in nurturing a love of learning. I shouldn't be scared of a school. If we do not sell in time, and Alice does go into Kindergarten here, then I can work with the school to make it a better place for every student, right? Not the end of the world.
Ugh. I've made it a matter of serious thought and prayer. At the moment, I feel that we're on the right track with our original plan. Come September, we will re-evaluate our options.
As ruffled as my feathers may get sometimes, I do eventually come to appreciate the insights of my friends. We have worked out several solutions to situations that I thought were impossible to define, much less make progress in. So please don't take this blog post as a criticism of my friend. She simply brought to my attention a few sub-issues that had been sub-bothering me for some time :) Now that I know they really do bother me, I can think about them more openly. Now you can ask me about them and we can chat about it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on placing a dollar value on intangibles...especially idealistic intangibles like "education."
Re: Bobby's Sunday Summary
He has an entire week away from the family and only talks about the flights. (In his defense, he states, "That was the most memorable part!")
*sigh*
I cannot let that suffice! He hasn't told me much more, but here's what I know about Bobby's week in sunny San Jose.
It rained, which is very unusual for this time of year.
He presented his project from Yahoo's last Hack Day. Hack Day is a 24-hour period twice a year where Yahoo employees are allowed (and encouraged) to work on any pet projects that strike their fancy. If you complete a project well enough to submit it to the competition, you get a t-shirt. Projects are judged and awarded first, second, etc. and the winners present their projects in front of the whole company at their annual conference thingamajig. Bobby and his team happened to come up with a project that was so silly, so unique, that the judges made up a new award JUST FOR THEM. Bobby's team put together a program that will locate a face on any video and replace it with another. They used Hadoop to do it, which is the platform Yahoo has Bobby working on these. He really likes Hadoop. Anyway, Bobby and his team replaced everyone's faces in the live video with the face of Yahoo's founder, Dave Filo. They won an honorable mention as the "Least Monetizeable." He made a facetious case for the project's monetizeability (if they're making up awards, why not words, too?) and got a few laughs.
His presentation was at an event called "Demos and Drinks." He got a fluorescent green t-shirt for it which came in handy when he got home and realized he hadn't brought anything back specifically for Alice as he had promised. She's excited to use it as a smock.
Bobby and several friends visited an Ethiopian restaurant where they served a delicious feast atop a giant sourdough pancake.
One of his many meetings involved his team taking over for people who would now be part of a spin-off company that Yahoo just announced into being. The managers stated, "If this changes what you're doing next week, then we've failed. If this doesn't change what you're doing in six months, then we've failed." So...keep doing what you're doing but transition to something completely different soon. Hm.
That's everything I remember. You'll have to ask him for more details :)
*sigh*
I cannot let that suffice! He hasn't told me much more, but here's what I know about Bobby's week in sunny San Jose.
It rained, which is very unusual for this time of year.
He presented his project from Yahoo's last Hack Day. Hack Day is a 24-hour period twice a year where Yahoo employees are allowed (and encouraged) to work on any pet projects that strike their fancy. If you complete a project well enough to submit it to the competition, you get a t-shirt. Projects are judged and awarded first, second, etc. and the winners present their projects in front of the whole company at their annual conference thingamajig. Bobby and his team happened to come up with a project that was so silly, so unique, that the judges made up a new award JUST FOR THEM. Bobby's team put together a program that will locate a face on any video and replace it with another. They used Hadoop to do it, which is the platform Yahoo has Bobby working on these. He really likes Hadoop. Anyway, Bobby and his team replaced everyone's faces in the live video with the face of Yahoo's founder, Dave Filo. They won an honorable mention as the "Least Monetizeable." He made a facetious case for the project's monetizeability (if they're making up awards, why not words, too?) and got a few laughs.
His presentation was at an event called "Demos and Drinks." He got a fluorescent green t-shirt for it which came in handy when he got home and realized he hadn't brought anything back specifically for Alice as he had promised. She's excited to use it as a smock.
Bobby and several friends visited an Ethiopian restaurant where they served a delicious feast atop a giant sourdough pancake.
One of his many meetings involved his team taking over for people who would now be part of a spin-off company that Yahoo just announced into being. The managers stated, "If this changes what you're doing next week, then we've failed. If this doesn't change what you're doing in six months, then we've failed." So...keep doing what you're doing but transition to something completely different soon. Hm.
That's everything I remember. You'll have to ask him for more details :)
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Bobby's Sunday Summary
This week I was out of town in CA. Sorry Jon (My brother not brother-in-law) I didn't call the week was crazy and I didn't have much time at all to do anything besides work.
I left Monday morning at about 5 am. My flight took off at 6 am. Unfortunately there was a thunderstorm which made our flight a little late and we had to rearrange the other flight a little bit but we still got there. I was there with 5 other people from our office for the conference. We had meetings all day Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday was the conference and it lasted all day long. Thursday was more meetings and we had another meeting on Friday morning before our flight home.
Sadly our flight home had some mechanical issues and was canceled. We got the call early in the morning telling us that it was canceled and that we were al scheduled to fly out the next day. I spent half an hour on the phone getting things worked out. It turns out that it was worth it though. I ended up in first class for the flight home. I liked the warmed mixed nuts, free lunch, and all the soda I could drink, but I think the leg room is the really hard thing to give up.
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