My second redbook was published on Wednesday. The book shows some of the ways that z/VM can be useful when testing and developing applications.
In other fun news, three of the original savages (Eli, Jason and I) will be reuniting in June to work on a z/VM basics textbook here in Poughkeepsie. If you’ve used z/VM before and found it painful, this will be the book for you.
A few months ago I had a follow-up appointment with my (still relatively new to me) doctor to get some test results as well as to get a new prescription for my allergy medications. Afterwards I left St. Francis feeling rather annoyed at the lack of bedside manner and common curtesy she displayed, to the point I considered canceling all my future appointments and switching to a new healthcare provider. My aggravation was renewed last week when I received a bill with a number of “overdue” charges, except I was never billed in the 8 months since my initial visit.
Yesterday NBC’s Today Show had a segment about firing your doctor if you’re unhappy with the care you’re receiving. While I have certainly considered that numerous times in the last few months, the only thing keeping me with my current provider is the fact that they have my medical records and the last time I requested complete records from a hospital, DHMC sent me the logs from when I was briefly receiving allergy shots and nothing else (very unhelpful).
Last night I was thinking about that problem and wondering if there was an open standard for electronic health records, so that I could easily find a new doctor and have them immediately know my completely medical history. This morning I came across a press release from IBM (my employer) from last month announcing that they had contributed a chunk of technology to the Eclipse Foundation for their Open Healthcare Framework project, which sounds like it will resolve this problem.
While I am still concerned about the privacy and security issues surrounding medical records and how they’re used, I’m also looking forward to the day when I might have the ability to change doctors on a whim when service is poor. Imagine how much healthcare service would have to improve if there was actually competition for customers like there are in other industries.
And don’t even get me started on the fact that my 10 minute visit with the doctor for her to glance at a sheet of test results she had never seen before and tell me “your numbers have improved” cost $160.
Stacy and I went to a tasting at The Villa Borghese Sunday night and it looks like that’s where we’ll be having our wedding ceremony and reception next year. In the last few weeks we’ve put together a preliminary guest list put togther, and think we have a photographer lined up. Now we just need to find a DJ or band.
On a different note, I’m pleasantly surprised by how many people I know from high school are now married, engaged, or going on for graduate degrees. I’m also surprised at how many people are now in the NY metro area. For the longest time it seemed like I was the only person from HHS in New York.
Posted a few photos I scanned the other day as well.
COSI Alumni Reunion 2006
I’ve been talking to various alumni over the course of the last week about having a reunion in the Poughkeepsie area this summer since there will be so many COSI people here. I’ve already been looking into parks in the area where we could have food, drinks, and games and come up with a list to investigate in the next couple of weeks. Your mission, valued reader, is to send me an email if you’re interested in attending this event along with any weekends between mid-May and mid-August that you are not available. From that I’ll try and identify the weekends that work for most everyone and also fit with park availability.
Wanted
A portable, near-instant-on device with the following capabilities:
So far I’ve looked at the various offerings from Palm, including the Treo 650, TX, and LifeDrive as well as the Nokia 770. I don’t particularly like the connectivity or phone app on the Treo, the TX is tempting (802.1x support for a $6 update), but I’ve always found Palm OS a little clunky, and the 770 sounds neat but I’ve heard it’s slow and don’t like the fact that you deal with software images instead of packages. Anyone know of any products that match those requirements?
And yes, for those that have not heard, I’m engaged.
As Mike pointed out, Wordpress 2 is out. I too upgraded this morning. And my Gallery 2 has been working for a while now. I kinda like the new WYSIWYG editor but hate the admin theme. 
Summary of the last 2 months, for those of you I haven’t talked to:
In short, 4Q05 was excellent and I can’t wait to see what the new year brings.
[title context]
Been a busy 4 weeks. After several companies contacted me out of the blue about jobs, I did some thinking and decided to not return to Clarkson for my MS. Informed of this, my manager at IBM extended my co-op an extra few weeks and then I ended up flying first to Maryland for job interviews and then to San Francisco this past weekend for more interviews with another company. Having traveled something like 6,500 miles in the course of three days (including driving home to Vermont from Poughkeepsie), I am now hanging around the house waiting for a few more offers to arrive before I make a decision.
I’ve put up a few pictures of my trip to California. Unfortunately I was unable to take photos of everything, like the bushman who I saw while walking from Fisherman’s Wharf to Ghirardelli Square. There are a bunch of photos from Union Square and the Stockton Apple Store as well.
If any of you happen to be in Vermont or New Hampshire in the next few weeks and would like to get together and do something, let me know ’cause my schedule is wide open.
Also, Death Cab’s new album, Plans is friggin’ amazing. Go buy it!
Random fact: approximate number of miles flown for job interviews so far in 2005: 13,000.
Awesome weekend (perhaps the best birthday yet). Drinking, cards, movies [1], wandering around Vanderbilt, and saw Theory of a Dead Man and Chevelle last night.
Thanks everyone.
Went and saw March of the Penguins last night at Upstate. Highly recommend going to see it if you have the opportunity. I’ll probably go see Joint Security Area tomorrow night there as well.
Picked up several new books this week: Joel Spolsky’s Best Software Writings, which has some awesome essays, as well as Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club and Kerouac’s On the Road, both of which I started reading today in Barnes & Noble. There are now somewhere around 15 books in the queue with about 6 in progress.
Site Update
I migrated to a new hosting provider this afternoon and while everything seems to be working now, there’s always the chance that I missed something. If you notice any problems, please send me an email.
Depending on when your local DNS server cached my record, it may take 12 - 48 hrs for it to get updated.
Points to whoever can determine the connection between the title and the items mentioned in this post. Mr. Dow is unfortunately, not eligible as I discussed it with him today.
A brief recap of the last 2 weeks…
Last Week
Tuesday: Hung out at Microbrew Night and ran into a bunch of people I haven’t really seen in the last couple years.
Wednesday: Flip Night and Pete Cook happened to be visiting.
Thursday: Originally supposed to be low-key (just watching movies and enjoying a drink or two) but quickly turned when Ed and I decided to have martinis. Needless to say, much hilarity ensued (as well as an aborted, sit-down game of beirut).
Friday: 8 of us drove to Lake Placid to enjoy some cigars and beer at the pub and brewery.
Saturday: Truly was low-key, as Ed, Alex (his girlfriend) and I went to Maxfield’s for only an hour.
This Week
Sunday: The big day. Luckily the ceremony only lasted 2.5 hrs and then I did a marathon packing session before driving from Potsdam to Poughkeepsie.
Monday: Drove home for a bunch of appointments.
Wednesday: Drove back to Pok. One thing Optimus, Eli and I learned is that when a dessert is already called the “Chocolate Chocolate Tower”, do not ask them to replace the raspberry sauce with chocolate sauce. Devastation ensued.
Today I took the train from Pok to Grand Central and caught a bus to JFK where I’m now waiting for a puddle jumper to Boston, where I get to take a cross-country flight to Seattle so I can interview with Microsoft tomorrow. Saturday morning I’m scheduled to fly back to JFK so hopefully I’ll be back in my bed by midnight.
Work, work, work. Well, preface that with “pretending”. At least for the last week or so. Didn’t have much in the way of coursework to do last week so I spent some time poking at COSI-related things. Ended up making a new auto-install CD ISO based on Gentoo 2004.3 (which has its pros and cons).
I also hopefully found a place to live in Poughkeepsie this summer. Now I just need to continue the search for something in Potsdam for the fall, although there’s still one pesky PhD program that hasn’t gotten back to me.
Yesterday my parents came up for the day to attend University Recogition Day. Turns out Mike and I ended up receiving the Miller/Davis service award, which I guess made sitting through the 2 hour ceremony worth it.
On a more technical note, what Mike meant to say was: gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/no_ubuntu_spatial true (note the correct spelling of “spatial” 
)
Also, for those of you using a Debian-based distro and are annoyed that netapplet doesn’t correctly switch from WEP-enabled to non-WEP-enabled access points, or the fact that it won’t force dhclient to get a new lease, see here.
Update: If you’re using Ubuntu and want a quieter start up, edit /etc/default/rcS and change VERBOSE=yes to VERBOSE=no. Next up? Patching dhclient to have a refresh leases option.
Update 2: I just noticed that my x86 box already had VERBOSE=no, so perhaps it’s only different on PPC machines. Or it could be because I installed Ubuntu on my laptop about 5 months before I installed it on my desktop.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
Buddhism for Beginners by Thubten Chodron
A Brief History Of Philosophy: From Socrates to Derrida by Derek Johnston
Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
