Wednesday/ go Mediterranean

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Yalla offers Mediterranean food. The food is great. The lemonade is STRONG and sweet .. maybe too sweet.

There’s a new Mediterranean fast- casual* restaurant close to where we work, and we went there for lunch this week.  You choose falafels or a kebab, and then they add rice or lentils.  They have some unusual side salads as well, such as eggplant and beet and kale.

*From Wikipedia : A fast-casual restaurant is a type of restaurant that does not offer full table service, but promises a higher quality of food with fewer frozen or processed ingredients than a fast-food restaurant.

 

Tuesday/ how to use less water

There are still no signs posted at the hotel here in Walnut Creek urging patrons to conserve water, given the on-going extreme drought in California that has recently – for the first time in the Golden State’s history – prompted a 25% mandatory cut in household water consumption.   Still, I am very sure residents are aware of it with all the media coverage.   Here is a diagram published in the local newspaper on Monday, offering suggestions for curbing water consumption at home.  Check out the figures for landscaping and outdoor use.  Get rid of that lawn!  And don’t wash the car every other day!

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Monday/ to San Francisco

It was a grey morning in Seattle, and a foggy one in San Francisco, and so we had to wait for an hour before we could take off.

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Several Eskimo faces on Alaska Airlines aircraft tails at Seattle-Tacoma airport’s D concourse this morning.

 

Sunday/ Hillary for President

Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for the 2016 presidential election only today, on Sunday (by publishing a video) ..  but this was known ahead of time, and was good enough to serve as pre-emptive fodder for a Saturday Night Live skit about it.  I think it is very funny. Husband ‘Bill Clinton’ makes a surprise appearance (of course). ‘Aren’t we such a fun, approachable dynasty?’ she asks at one point.  Check out the YouTube video here.

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‘Hillary, you will make a GREAT president, and I will make an EVEN GREATER First Dude!’ says ‘President Bill Clinton’ (played by Darrell Hammond).
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‘Citizens, you will elect me! I will be your leader!’ says Hillary (Kate McKinnon) in her first attempt at making a campaign video of herself.
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‘Now hold up your phone, and you can .. just look natural’, instructs ‘Mrs Clinton”s assistant.

 

Saturday/ the problem with wormholes

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An exact mathematical plot of a Lorentzian wormhole (Schwarzschild wormhole), featured on Wikipedia’s page for wormholes.

We watched ‘Interstellar’ on Saturday. It’s a 2014 science fiction-space travel movie that features Earth running out of food (think 1930s-type Dust Bowl scenes) and a group of scientists embarking on interstellar travel trying to save the human race.  The movie also features a giant wormhole.   Wormholes are fantastic science-fiction constructs, also called Einstein-Rosen bridges (postulated by Einstein and Rosen in 1935). Theoretically they allow accelerated travel from one point in the universe to another very many light years away.  There are many problems, though : even if wormholes exist for any measurable length of time, their dimensions are thought to be on the Planck scale (sub-atomic size) .. so by 35 orders of magnitude not large enough for humans and certainly not for large enough for spaceships.

Friday/ National Siblings Day

I see Friday April 10 was National Siblings Day (not nearly as recognized as Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, of course).  Still : three cheers to my three brothers!   Disney Studios tweeted a cute picture from the 1970 animated movie Aristocats, of the three kitten siblings in the movie.  (Psst .. search for Everybody Wants to Be a Cat on YouTube !).

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Here’s Toulouse, Marie and Berlioz in a scene from Disney’s 1970 movie Aristocats, a movie I have very, very fond memories of. The movie plays out in Paris. ‘You’re not a princess!’ says Toulouse to his sister.

 

Thursday/ let’s go

Thursdays at the project office go by quickly.   I have to jump at it when the project manager’s draft report comes out at noon, requesting our updates by 2 pm, because shortly after that, we make for the airport, and the workday is essentially done.

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Here’s the familiar, older part of the Bay Bridge as we approach downtown San Francisco on the way to San Francisco International airport. It’s nice to sit in the back and be a passenger! Usually I have to drive.

 

Wednesday/ the integration test challenge

So!  January, February and March of 2015 have come and are how gone.  It’s already April and the weeks are rushing by remorselessly as we approach the middle of the year – and our targeted system go-live date of late July.  We are preparing for the third of four cycles of integration testing*, and we’re now reaching the point where we jettison some of the unfinished parts of the design.   I have worked on many of these SAP implementation projects, and that is just the way it is.  Time to face reality for some parts of the solution.  Not going to make everything happen, not going to have perfectly cleaned up data.  We are rapidly running out of time.

*I see some software bloggers say that the ubiquitous term integration testing is actually very troublesome and hard to pin down – and that it really should be called high-value testing.  One can only select a very few typical scenarios to test in a limited time.  I think I agree with that.

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An extract from a blog post from ‘The Code Whisperer’, illustrating the complexity of testing modern software applications in an integrated way.

 

Tuesday/ fruit & nut

‘Land of the fruit and nuts*, that’sIMG_7452 sm California for you’, said a co-worker in his attempt at a little joke a long time ago.  So I remembered that as I bought this little chocolate bar at Wholefoods here in Walnut Creek (a town itself named after a nut) on Tuesday night.

*Fruit being an insult meant for gay people, and nuts one meant for hippies and crazy people.  So it’s pretty offensive! .. and I will not again let it slip by without saying so.

Monday/ Google’s self-driving car

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This is one of three Lexus RX450h vehicles that Google has made into a driverless car (others are Toyota Priuses and an Audi TT).

I made my usual run out to San Francisco on Monday morning. Check out the Google self-driving car that were in front of us as we left San Francisco airport, driving north on highway I-80 to San Francisco.  It’s full of gadgets, and it did have a driver in attendance, but his hands were not on the steering wheel.    The car made a lane change past a slow vehicle – automatically, I assume – signaling correctly each time before it changed lanes.

[From Wikipedia]  The software controlling the car is called Google Chauffeur. Google’s robotic cars are each fitted with about $150,000 in equipment.  That’s a 64-beam laser mounted on top, continuously generating a detailed 3D image of the car’s environment.

 

Sunday/ mouse trouble

My favorite – and fancy ($50) – Logitech wireless mouse IMG_7437 smhas inexplicably run into trouble with my new computer.  So now I’m packing the $10 wired mouse for my work week.  I’m a mouse guy : no touch screen or touch pad for me, thank you very much.  And check out the ‘mouse house’ that the scientists working at the CERN Hadron Collider has set up for old retired mice.  (The Large Hadron Collider is starting up again after two years).   Time to smash some particles again!

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Friday/ the light is too bright

Yes, it was Easter on Friday but I had long had my bi-annual eye check-up scheduled at the ophthalmologist .. and so off I went.   It’s a longish affair, since the assistant does a preliminary check, and then she put drops in to dilate the iris of my eye (which takes awhile), so that they can better peek inside (with a very bright light!).

So afterwards my eyes were very sensitive to light, and I had to keep the afternoon sunlight from flooding into the kitchen and bounce off the countertop !   And so all of this gives me an excuse to post the limerick about relativity and a lady named Bright that has reportedly been around since 1923 –

There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.

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My quick fix for stopping too much sunlight flooding into my kitchen where I was working at the kitchen counter top. (Yes, my kitchen windows are dirty, I know).

 

Thursday/ checking out Iran

Iran was in the news today with the announcement that a framework agreement about Iran’s nuclear program had been reached (details still to be worked out, due by June).  So I wanted to use Google Maps to check out the scenery in Tehran a little bit but alas – there is no detailed ‘Streetviews’ available.  The map is dotted with posted photographs, though. Check out the gorgeous pictures of professional photographer Omid Jafarnezhad, with this link here .. as well as these pictures of people in Iran in an article in the New York Times.

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Wednesday/ thunder and lightning

We’re not used to heavy weather – thunderstorms with lightning bolts here in the Pacific Northwest.  So tonight I thought a few times Whoah!  that was close!, as the night sky outside lit up several times with white light, and the sound of thunder followed a short time later.

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Here’s a picture from Highway 99 in the Seattle area sent in to King5 TV’s web site. (Yes, it’s OK to make a U-turn to get away from the storm, says the sign in the middle!).

 

Monday/ license plate renewal

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I’m legit for another year for motoring around with my trusty 1996 Toyota Camry : I just renewed the license plate tabs.  (It’s about $75).

Check out my mini-collection of old number plates. There is the WILLEM from Missouri the Show-me State, a regular plate from Texas the Lone Star State, and another ‘vanity plate’ from Washington the Evergreen State that says WILLSTL, short for Willem Seattle.

Sunday/ freedom or discrimination?

I have only been to Indiana a few times, many years ago.   I would fly into and out of Evansville in its far southwestern corner – to drive across the border to Weyerhauser Company’s paper mill in Henderson, Kentucky.   So after all this time, I just had to check out the map of Indiana again.   There is quite a media firestorm over the State Assembly there passing a ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Act’ that allows businesses to refuse service to customers based on their (the business’) religious beliefs.   Example : a florist can refuse to deliver flowers to a gay wedding.  (Yes, believe it or not : same-sex marriage has been legally recognized in Indiana since October 7, 2014).  Is this such a big deal?  Just go to another florist instead, if you are ‘Adam and Steve’.  Well, it’s bad for public relations and it paints the state as unwelcoming and intolerant.

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Saturday/ doing my taxes

I finally knuckled down on Saturday3-28-2015 3-10-13 PM and submitted my 2014 federal and state tax forms (due April 15th here in the USA).   It was the first time in many years that I had to get my hands dirty and do the work myself (without the help of H&R Block or my firm’s resources).

I selected TurboTax tax software to prepare and file the forms electronically.   The outcome : NO tax refund for me! I have to send in a check since I paid too little during the year.   It was a little unnerving to enter my Social Security Number and financial information on-line.  Identity theft and tax refund fraud have skyrocketed in recent years .. and the IRS is simply not equipped and staffed to handle all the thievery.  Come on, Congress !  Get some funds and help the IRS to put better processes, checks and systems in place !

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Tea Party
Yes, we know how you feel .. but please note:
1. It’s amendment;
2. So cut the US Defense Budget by 18%? I’m all for that.
3. Not so sure about doing away with Social Security and healthcare for everyone. You will grow old as well.
4. And finally – like it or not – as an American you own the payment of a little interest on the US $18 trillion national debt every year.

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Friday/ ‘business me’ and ‘personal me’

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Hello! I’m all business. May I set your SAP system up for you?

I finally have my new Lenovo T440s (my work computer) more or less set up.  My Firm is slowly migrating us to Google’s G-mail and other cloud-based services such as Google Drive for storage and Google Docs for office work.

It’s a massive undertaking for a Firm with 160,000 employees world-wide.  Since I already had a personal G-mail account, I now have two G-mail accounts with aliases for myself : the ‘business me’ and the ‘personal me’.  For each user I had to set up a separate Chrome browser profile as well. Mercifully, I could create two different desktop shortcuts and now Chrome knows which ‘me’ it is when I fire it up!  I don’t have to log in every time.   I have to believe some tech entrepreneur is going to make a killing soon by inventing a nifty way to do the elusive ‘single sign-on’ for people like me that log into dozens of different systems and applications every day for work.

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What’s with the faceless rainbow-colored mannequin heads? I think Google should leave those out. Much more interesting to be a ninja or a space alien, not?

 

Thursday/ another airplane tragedy

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This guy says of the co-pilot Andreas L. that he was a ‘neat young man’. He worked hard to achieve his childhood dream of becoming a pilot, and passed all the psychological tests.

So .. another airplane tragedy, that brings another mystery.

Why did the young Germanwings co-pilot deliberately crash the plane?  I checked out the website for the German magazine Der Spiegel today to see if their reporting offered anything new.   Nothing new, but the police will investigate computers and materials obtained from the pilot’s family.