Ping, pong, ping

Back & forth & back & forth I go, twixt Berkeley and Southern Cal. Earning a few simoleons working for a money manager behind the Orange Curtain. Not a bad gig - the commute is just over three hours, door-to-door, Monday morning and Thursday evening. Fridays off! Three day weekends every week! Woohoo!

I found* a nice little (very little) cottage 6 blocks from the beach which I have yet to see (beach, not cottage). My colleagues there are the usual quant finance crew of Russians, Chinese and Indians, plus the occasional European and American. The view from the quant dungeon is fabulous - from the 6th floor looking out across the channel to Catalina.

Nice, as long as it lasts... I'm not loving spending so much time away from home, and everyone here pretends to miss me, but they also want me to be working. It makes everyone feel a bit more secure.

* Thanks, Craig Newmark!

Marin Headlands

Perfectly clear, warm, a very slight breeze. An absolutely stunning view of the Golden Gate, bridge and city. It's always fun showing off that view to visiting friends. Quote from a New York City 13-year-old: "That's not such a big bridge."

Networking down the house

When we remodeled in 2005, I had the electrician install CAT5 cabling connecting the downstairs and upstairs to the water heater closet, and also one phone line to the same spot. My idea was to put the wireless router in there, because it's central and higher than where the computer sits. I wanted the electrician to connect everything up (put in jacks) but he said "I'm not a network guy" and left the ends dangling, which is how it sat ever since.

Now, 4 years later, we started having too many wireless connection problems probably because all our neighbors now also have routers, so I decided it was time to finish the job. Task 1 was to terminate the cables. Rather than put in a jack, I decided to just add connectors to the two cables I needed - one ethernet, one phone. I had to open up the jack at the other end of the ethernet line to check which of two possible cable configs the electrician had used. That done, it only took two tries to wire the other end - I did it mirror reversed the first time. Thank you ACE Hardware cheapo crimping tool. You worked just great!

Task 2 was to get the phone line working. We have 2 lines into the house. The electrician had only wired the first one into most of the connections, including the one to the water heater closet, but our DSL is on the second. So, under the house I went to where the junction box connects to the house cabling, armed with wire strippers, headlamp and a walkie-talkie, with Anna at the other end looking at an ohmmeter to tell me when I'd found the right cable. It didn't work because I'd turned the meter off, which Anna cleverly noticed. But with that resolved, we figured out the right cable, and I connected the second line and wired the jack so that would feed into the DSL modem. Thanks again, crimping tool!

All done! A nice strong signal throughout the house now.

Best misspelling of my name ever

To Sony Customer Service, I am now Juan Chtuweete. That's my hispanic / plains-Indian ancestry.

Customer service

Every time I try to get help with a problem that starts with the basic functionality of some website (e.g., a bank, credit card or insurance website) I seem to have to go through several iterations with the people on the other end before they appear to be willing to actually read my question. Their response process looks like it's designed to dispose of questions by sending out boilerplate answers based on keyword recognition - never mind the actual semantics of the question.

My latest example: Now that both kids have bank accounts, I'd like to arrange to automatically transfer their allowances from my account to theirs. We use Bank of America, which has a facility for automatic periodic transfers. But - for some mysterious reason - not to other B of A accounts. You can do automatic periodic transfers to third-party banks, but not to another account at B of A. At least that's how the web site is set up.

Just to be absolutely sure that this was a hard & fast constraint, and not just some perverse safety feature, I asked: "Message text: Is it possible to set up regularly scheduled transfers to
another Bank of America account? The website only allows for one-time immediate transfers. Thank you." The reply: "We understand you are interested in creating a recurring transfer to
another Bank of America account. The Transfer Funds screen allows you to
set up a recurring transfer plan which makes your transfers
automatically at intervals that you choose." followed by the boilerplate instructions on using this screen. No reference to my question about the limitation. So I replied "When I follow these directions I see this message: "Transfers to another Bank of America customer can only be made on a one time immediate
basis." All the other options are disabled. I am asking whether there's a way to set up periodic transfers, since
the web site doesn't allow it." This time the reply was just awesome in its thickheadedness: "Please be informed that transfers to other Bank of America customers can only be made on a one-time, immediate basis. We recommend you to set up recurring transfers." followed by the same boilerplate. Am I hallucinating, or does the second sentence completely ignore the first?

UPDATE - Round 3, more obliviousness: "We apologize for the confusion you may have experienced regarding the transfers. Please be advised that you are able to make recurring transfers to your daughters's account with Bank of America." followed by the same instructions that don't work.

Poker

Is it wrong to play poker for money in a hold'em tournament with your kids? OK, how about this: is it wrong to put your 11 year old daughter all-in with a set of 9s against her pocket kings?

Afternoon on the bay

Sailing around Angel Island: sunny, nice breezes with the occasional 25mph gusts and a little bit of spray. The GG bridge towers poking through the fog, which stopped just at the edge of the bay. Saw a couple of small dolphins and some sea lions. And a monster catamaran. Lots of fun. Thanks Chris!

Yosemite high sierra camps

What could be better than hiking in the wilderness to a remote campsite by a waterfall? Only having the remote campsite equipped with beds, a dining hall and cheerful staff serving excellent food. (But way too much.)

We missed the high camp lottery this year, but were still able to find spots almost matching what we had wanted. May Lake camp is a short hike in from the trailhead, across the lake from Mt. Hoffman. Glen Aulin is an 8+ mile march downhill from there to the Tuolumne river. We had a one day layover at Glen Aulin and used it to hike down to Water Wheel falls. We didn't make it there, out of an abundance of caution about how the hike back would be for the girls, but the earlier falls - California and LeConte were pretty nice anyway.

OpenDNS, Firefox and the Google Toolbar

I use OpenDNS for DNS lookup, because it seems to be faster than whatever AT&T is providing for my DSL connection. One of the ways OpenDNS gets paid for the service is by redirecting browser address bar searches to their own search engine (which I believe is actually Yahoo). This is annoying, so I tried changing it back to Google (using the about:config keyword in the address bar). But every time I overrode it (in Firefox) I'd find it changed back to "about:neterror?e=query&u=", which leads to OpenDNS.

Turns out the problem was some code run by Google Toolbar when Firefox starts up. GT tells Firefox to run toolbar.js (in the profiles subdirectory extensions/{3112ca9c-de6d-4884-a869-9855de68056c}/lib/), which checks the preferences value of keyword.URL and changes it if it was modified. This is surprisingly unfriendly behavior for Google, not to mention counterproductive because of how it interacts with OpenDNS.

The solution I found was to create a mozilla.cfg file in the Firefox application directory:
//
lockPref("keyword.URL", "http://www.google.com/search?q=");

Then I also modified the file all.js in the greprefs subdirectory (not safe, I know). First I changed
pref("general.config.obscure_value", 0); // for MCD .cfg files
replacing the "13" that was there before (because I can't see the point to this ROT13 mumbo-jumbo), and adding
pref("general.config.filename", "mozilla.cfg");
so that the locked preference gets loaded.

Finally, I get google search from the address bar.

Uighurs

How did we become such a nation of cowardly shits that the idea of admitting and resettling a handful of members of an oppressed ethnic group, whom we mistakenly imprisoned for five years in harsh conditions, causes such a ruckus. I have to think that the recent studies on the connection between right wing politics and brains wired for fearfulness are on to something.

Chemistry

Why on earth do they teach chemistry in high school? Biology I get: it's everywhere we look and it's fascinating - all this from such simple origins. Physics too (natch). What could be more interesting than learning about how the universe and everything in it work? All those weird forces - the ones we take for granted intuitively, like the resistance of a solid object or the pull of gravity, and the more mysterious ones, like magnetism. And it's all essential for understanding technology as engineering rather than magic.

But what's the deal with chemistry? Couldn't they just spend two weeks talking about acids & bases and be done with it? What's the point to learning about stoichiometry, solubility constants (whose unmotivated definition is pretty strange), electronegativity, cations and all that other arcana? It really seems like a bunch of obscure and pointless stuff for anyone not planning on a career in chemistry. Yeah, OK, it's pretty important for doing biology. But really, anyone going on in biology is going to have to learn all this stuff over again in college, because it's being taught at such a low level in HS. It just doesn't seem important to creating a "well rounded citizen" able to function and contribute in society.

I really get the feeling that it's there for historical reasons. Kind of like the year-long course in geometry in the math sequence.

Here at the end

Not much else to say...

Back roads of Hadley

Between Leverett and Northampton is Hadley, mostly flat farm country along the eastern floodplain of the Connecticut river. The straightest and widest road through Hadley is route 9, but since the late '60s it's gradually been filled in with a successions of malls and traffic lights. So the fastest route is not along the 4 lane roads. The fast route from Leverett to Northampton is along North Amherst back roads to route 47, then through the Hadley farms, dropping into route 9 right at the Coolidge Bridge. It's very dark at night, and there's one bend in the road that I managed to miss last nght. I ended up on a dirt road through the corn, right on the banks of the Connecticut. It felt very remote, even though I was just a few hundred yards from the bright lights.

Death

Watching my mother die is more difficult than I had imagined, even accounting for the fact that I expected it to be more difficult than I imagined. I get rushes of emotion at random times, talking to nurses, doctors and social workers. It's completely uncontrollable when it happens.

Why do we cry? A quick google search is unenlightening. The top hit is a page of pseudo-scientific BS about how tears rid the body of some hormone and mineral that make us depressed. My suspicion is that it's a social thing - a cue to whoever we're with that we need comfort and gentle handling. Like Ekman's micro-expressions, only macro.

Death is ugly, even when it's peaceful. My mother is really dying of starvation now. She stopped eating a while ago, and just sips water through a straw. Her eyes are closed most of the time, though she's half awake.

I watched a close friend die of cancer last year loaded to the gills with morphine at the end. The current practice of pain management is clearly the humane thing to do, but the narcotics involved leave the patient confused, if not comatose, robbing the family and friends of contact during the last stages. I haven't seen this aspect of end-stage treatment mentioned in all the discussions about palliative care. Maybe it shouldn't be - it's a little selfish to want someone to be alert and uncomfortable rather than peaceful and asleep. But I can't help it. I want contact.

PS...
I think an unspoken aspect of the use of heavy doses of narcotics is their side effect of suppressing the breathing reflex. In an already weakened body, this can't help but hasten things along. Not that that's a bad thing... I hope when my time comes I'll get the heavy dose of morphine too. Or maybe just a pillow over the face. It would be more merciful than what I'm witnessing at the moment.

Or maybe I'm wrong about all of this: the dying person would be just as sleepy, confused and disconnected without the narcotics, but also in pain.

Free for the summer

Contract work comes to an end next week, so it looks like I'm free for the summer again. It was great last time - strolling to Monterey market, cooking, having coffee on Solano, walking in the hills... Life as it was meant to be lived. (Aside from the minor matter of tracking down my next gig.)

Taking the Physics CSET

I've been thinking of moving on to a "next" career. This would be my third, if grad school and a brief postdoc count. My thought: high school physics teacher. I still read Physics Today as soon as it arrives, and whenever I find a good survey article on arxiv.org I read it. It's still a subject that animates me... Sam's newfound interest in physics helped to get me thinking in this direction too. (My last career, as a strategist and researcher for a hedge fund, turns out to have been spectacularly mis-timed, aside from misjudging the character of the person who hired me.) The timing of this one is probably questionable as well - the California propositions that would keep funding for schools from diving off a cliff look set to go down in flames next week, and the Governator promises deep cuts in pretty much everything as a result.

Anyway, one of the many hoops the state makes you jump through before you can be considered qualified to earn a pathetically small salary teaching the next generation is a "subject matter test" to certify your competency in the field you want to teach. (This is the least of the hoops - the bigger ones include a year or so of coursework and internship time.) So on Saturday I took the Physics CSET.

This consisted of 50 multiple choice questions plus 3 "structured response" questions where you have to write out your answer (and some poor shlub has to grade it). Most of the questions were pretty simple material that anyone who got a passing grade in college freshman mechanics and E&M could have answered (though some of the questions had distractors, like giving the mass of a pendulum bob in a problem to calculate the length of the wire required to get a specified period). Two questions jumped out at me, though - one E&M problem where I'm practically certain none of the offered answers were correct: they all had the wrong sign - and one on, of all things, the strong interaction!

I have no idea why this was in there - my first thought was that there must be some generality in the state standard about being able to describe the "four forces", but I couldn't find anything like that in the curriculum on the state website. The question basically asked which of four metaphoric descriptions was the best description of how the strong force works. Three of them were:
* It's like wet sand where the water makes the sand grains stick together
* It's like a series of filters with openings of different sizes [I have no clue what this is supposed to mean]
* It's like two people on a skating ring tossing a bowling ball back and forth
I can't remember the fourth. I think they were after the third - at least that's what I marked - but the first probably makes about as much sense, and none of them really are useful as metaphors (compared to, say, the metaphor of electric and magnetic "lines of force" which is so useful that people tend to think of them as real). The third one is something you sometimes hear in discussions of how forces arise from "virtual particles" (another metaphor), but it has the problem that it's very hard to understand how two opposite charges passing virtual photons back & forth can get pulled towards each other. The normal intuition from this picture would be that the momentum transfer will push them apart. There's a long discussion on the usenet Physics FAQ about this, but it's not at all straightforward. The whole point of metaphors in physics is to clarify for our intuitions the key features of the phenomenon. This one gets it exactly wrong.

One more oddity from the test. You can take more than one at the same sitting. But you get the same total time for one, two or three tests - up to five hours. I imagine that this is supposed to be "more than enough" even for three. I had writer's cramp after just the one. Then again, as the Firstborn never tires of reminding me, I'm old.

Update: I passed. But I'll never know if the bowling ball metaphor was what they were after...