The Second Generation Prius

7 February 2010 :

While my car is getting some attention in the shop, my rental has been a second generation Toyota Prius. It’s an interesting car. It’s extremely practical; it has plenty of places to store stuff, and then a bunch more places beyond what’s necessary. It’s comfortable for four and has a nice rear storage area. That’s all stuff I knew before, but it’s important to emphasize — it’s quite possibly one of the most practical cars out there.

The thing is bouncy as hell, though. Maybe I’ve spent too much time in my Impreza, but it’s comically bouncy. Maybe it’s just a beater rental, but there’s a ton of spring and slow rebound, and I just hate the way that feels. For one, it makes the ride very amusement-park-ride-like; not great for the stomach. More importantly, however, the massive CG swings caused by the bounciness make the handling really shitty. This is exacerbated by the problem that the car responds to wind pretty severely. I still don’t believe that my brother’s Prius was picked up off the road and tossed into a ditch by wind, but I’lll buy that the car certainly gets knocked around a bit, and could lead to some pretty nasty behavior between the bouncing and gust behavior, if you’re not paying attention.

The cruise control has a fatal flaw, and that’s that there’s no indicator of when it’s activated. Really. Just one light, that’s all it would take, and it’s missing.

Because of the way the CVT works, there’s no way to gradually accelerate, such as when you want to inch along in reverse to parallel park; the second you’re off the break it starts aggressively, and the second you’re on it, it stops just as suddenly. I discovered that, in general, there are certain transient behavior regions where there’s no way for a smooth transition; this is one of them. Another is when you’re managing the starting and stopping of the engine at various driving times; the engine starting and stopping makes a not-subtle lurch in the car, and its engagement via the CVT when on pure battery at low speeds is extremely crude.

As such, I find the ability to use throttle precisely at low speeds all but impossible.

Braking behavior is similarly imprecise; the transients between the regenerative modes and discs being engaged are unpredictable. I think this car could cause people trouble in unsure road conditions.

And this brings us to the most irritating feature of the car. It has the absolute worst traction control system in the world. And, as far as I can tell, there’s no way to defeat it. Here’s what happens: You’re pulling out into traffic and suddenly one of your wheels slip. The car just completely turns off for about a second, and then decides to give it a go again.

I’m exaggerating, but the traction control cuts all throttle out for an arbitrarily long amount of time once traction is regained. It’s insane to the point of being dangerous. I cannot imagine driving the Prius in snow. It would be impossible.

The obvious solution is at least to provide a T/C defeat button, but I’m hoping that the third generation models are using a more sophisticated system that responds faster.

I'm an Octahedron, With Some Musings on Wolfra Alpha

1 February 2010 : whining

So I’m working on my 100th Project Euler problem. Out pops a Diophantine equation I don’t particularly want to solve. So, I toss it into Wolfram Alpha. I was thinking this was one of those taylor-made problems; whereas most of my queries result in lost results, this is a pretty straightforward request. Granted, I’m asking the Mathematica engine to take a leap and realize I want my equation treated as a Diophantine equation, and not a continuous equation, but I try my luck, punching in:

2b**2-2b-n**2+n=0

Gah. I do get a continuous plot (sort of expected this; I didn’t find the graphing part of graphing calculators useful 15 years ago, and I still don’t), and several alternative ways of writing it. I also get, lo and behold, a relatively straightforward solution in terms of n, and a horribly complicated solution in terms of b, even though Alpha recognizes that the solution set I’m looking for is in the set Z (integers).

Okay, no problem. I’ll just hint it a bit, and instruct Alpha that I’m working with a Diophantine equation, and I want a simple solution. So I search for “Diophantine” on Alpha, and it can’t find anything.

Really?

There’s a ton of shit about Diophantine equations on Wolfram’s own Math World. But for some reason, Alpha is not aware of this fact.

Sigh.

So I go through the Mathematica documentation, and get sidetracked with some toys to play with, like:

FindInstance[2b**2-2b-n**2+n=0,{b,n}]

Of course, Alpha is not just a free version of web Mathematica, so it just sort of throws up on this and suggests something else, which ultimately recursively leads me back to my original search result.

All I wanted was some generating functions, but that’s probably too much to ask.

Whatever, I’m immortal now, suck it.

Combinations

1 February 2010 : programming

Write a function that accepts a functor, a container of items, and a desired choice size. The code’s purpose is to produce all choices from the input and apply the functor to the selected subset.

Everybody with a computer science degree has been warned of the perils (or joys) of combinatorics and binomial coefficients. That said, I’m convinced (with zero data points) that very few people have ever actually implemented such a toy. With all the focus on implementing the clever and elegant algorithms, I think it might be a lost art actually implementing combinatoric brute-force algorithms.

I may be wrong.

Well, Shit.

27 January 2010 : whining

Haven’t had an accident since I got my driver’s license, I suppose I was due.

Why I Want an iPad

27 January 2010 : rambling

I’m quite confident I will be saying something said by a thousand other people today. I’m sure my opinions are not unique, original, or inspired. I want an iPad. It’s perfect for me.

The first question I had when I saw the iPhone was “can you use a keyboard with it?” I waited a while, and finally got an iPhone 3G. It was life-changing. I’m wearing, now, and constantly connected. I’d had phones with Internet before, this was something completely different. Browsing the web wasn’t a hassle, it was the norm. Apps are enabling, and it’s just the best phone I’ve ever used. It’s the best mobile computer I’ve used.

Unfortunately, the iPhone is not good enough if I’m on the road and want to hack on something (usually in a terminal). Or if I want to take some photos and post them on the Internet after some minimal editing. Or if I want to do extensive amounts of correspondence, writing, or other nonsense. In each of these cases, I find the iPhone to be either incapable or irritating. I can only bend my neck over staring at it for so long. The screen is small, my hands are large, and my eyes aren’t as good as they once were. I’m happy using my iPhone for an hour or two. It’s the ultimate tool I want to have with me all the time, but it’s not a general purpose computer.

On the other hand, I hate traveling with a laptop. They’re heavy, they take a lot of space (by the time you add a mouse, power strip, enough padding in your bag, etc), and they’re big. Netbooks aren’t compelling to me. They’re small, slow, and a compromise in at least one way, in every case. For one thing, I can’t stand the thought of a widescreen display with 600 vertical pixels! What a joke. I can’t read shit on that, especially with user interface junk in the way.

Mostly unrelated, the Kindle is somewhat interesting to me, but not compelling. My problem is I have more needs for a mobile device than a book reader, and a single-tasker isn’t going to make it into my bag.

What I want is something with a great web browser, good screen (1024×768 is less than I hoped for, unfortunately, but still better than many netbooks), Internet, the ability to transfer photos from a camera, and the ability to connect an external keyboard. A laptop is too much; I don’t need everything it offers and all of the hassle that comes with it. That I get extra apps, games, and book reading is nice, but not really my criteria.

The iPad is exactly what I want for a travel device that’s heftier and bigger than an iPhone, but not as competent as a laptop. It won’t replace my computer at home, where I still want a workstation and several TB of attached storage. It won’t replace my iPhone for casual and ubiquitous wearing. It won’t be with me all the time. When I want it, though, it’s the device for me. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t have any desire for the tablet initially. $30 a month for unlimited data, a decent screen, high portability, and a keyboard makes it a killer device.

I don’t know when I buy one; I don’t think I’ll be an early adopter, but I’ll be an adopter.

Incidentally, I think the MacBook Air is dead.

The Height of Absurdity

25 January 2010 : rambling

Here’s how I want my driver updates to work. I go to a site. I download a quick installer/unpacker, I hit an accept on a UAC dialog, and three seconds later my driver is silently updated. Instead, this is the complete fucking nonsense Creative throws at me:

With three levels of severity, classed Essential, Critical, and Recommended (the only product that falls into that category is the SoundFont bank manager), I don’t have a fucking clue what to do to just update my sound driver. It’s critical that I install a demo of some software. And a media manager.

The joke of it all is that I still can’t get proper DTS drivers for Windows.

Recruiters

25 January 2010 : whining

So I get a call, in the middle of the workday, from a recruiting firm. Blocked number, as always. They introduce themselves and their firm, and mention that I “worked with one of their colleagues” in the past. Kay. From memory, it played out roughly like this:

Me: “No, I’m happy where I am, thank you.”

Them: “Really, so you’re not looking?”

Me: “No, thanks.”

Them: Well, you’re still at UBS?

“Listen, if you can’t be bothered to do the minimal legwork to figure out where I’m working, I have no interest in working with you.”

“Well, I could find you, if I wanted to…”

And I hang up.

I’m not interested in cold calls from second-rate recruiters. Never mind that I’m at work, it’s during the work day. I really don’t appreciate being contacted during working hours for any reason.

About a minute later I get a call at work from the same recruiter.

“Aaron?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, this is the recruiter you just blew off. I guess I can find you. See, I found you. Good luck with your search. And your life, for that matter.”

He then hung up. Way to go, guy, you found me! You win! Five points!

He completely missed my point. It wasn’t that I was challenging him to find me. Or suggesting that it would be hard to find me. It was, in fact, the opposite. I’m trivial to find. It’s easy to get updated information on where I’m working and what I’m doing! You have to be pretty ineffective at your job as a recruiter if you aren’t searching the web for your cold calls ahead of time.

My point was that the minute of work it took to find me once he got blown off could have been spent finding a current resume for me and doing a quick check on who I am now. Before he called me. Then we could have had an intelligent conversation!

Instead, he made two things clear. First, it’s obvious that for this firm, I am just a line item in some database. Every six months the new junior recruiter needs to check off all the stale contacts, mine them for contacts, and see if they’re looking. For brownie points they can update the record with new contact information and employer data; obviously they haven’t done this, since I’ve been repeatedly pestered with stale information by this firm! Secondly, this recruiter made it clear that I’m not a priority. He made it very clear there would be no legwork done on my behalf, and that there’s an inability for his firm to professionally handle a situation when things get difficult.

Yes, I blew this recruiter off, but let’s get hypothetical. What if he called me a minute later on my work phone… Instead of behaving smug for having looked me up on Google, he could have apologized for not doing any legwork ahead of time, and indicated that he actually had some pretty exciting opportunities. He could tell me that he didn’t appreciate being hung up on. He could tell me I’m unprofessional. Or, he could lie and tell me he understood my frustration. He could pander to me and get me interested in what he’s selling. That’s his job!

The game is easy: Try to convert me to a sale! Get me to at least listen to what is being sold. You’re cold calling me, during working hours, on my private number. You better have something pretty nice, and if you don’t, you better be able to wrap a nice bow around it if you’re going to waste my time. Calling me and begging me for the contact information of my friends and not even knowing where I’m working is going to get you exactly nowhere.

I know the market is much better for jobs than it was. That said, I’m also positive that it’s still hard to find top talent. Maybe that’s not what this recruiter was looking for. I’ll never know; I’m sure I’m on the firm’s blacklist now. Good riddance. I’ve worked with exceptional recruiters before; they are different creatures. I got a form letter from a recruiter the other day that was carefully filled in. They mentioned where I went to school, where I’m working now, and celebrated my past experience. We’re talking about a form letter that probably took the recruiter thirty seconds to assemble, but it had a personal touch. It showed a bit of effort. That sort of attention to detail gives people pause and makes them take you a lot more seriously.

At Least I Can Do Some Things Well

22 January 2010 : photo

My rosettas are getting better.

Another Snowflake

6 January 2010 : photo

Oh, the joys of post-processing.

Snowflake

3 January 2010 : photo

My hand-held macro technique still sucks, and I was sloppy with both aperture and shooting angle, but I’m pleased with Canon’s new 100mm macro. The background is the fabric of the seat in my car.

Resolutions, 2010 Edition

3 January 2010 : rambling

Once again it’s a new year, and once again it’s time to set some goals that I’ll fail to achieve in the coming year. But, first, let’s take a look back on 2009’s goals:

I failed in every way possible in 2009 at achieving my resolutions.

It’s a terrible custom, but probably a good practice for me, just the same, so here goes. This year I’ll try to make my goals DUMB.

1. Complete 30 books. I’m in the process of reading about a dozen books now, and I haven’t finished a book over 100 pages in months. This is reprehensible. I don’t, at this point, care if we’re talking about mass market paperbacks or scientific literature. It’s about time I finish some books. Going by 2009’s rate of completion, I will die long before my “to read” shelf gets empty, and that’s more than depressing. I don’t care if I complete the books I’m reading, or not, but I need to finish 30 books this year. That’s the goals.
2. Finish a dozen video games. I have a lot of video games. I play very few to completion. It’s satisfying when I do. I want to finish a dozen games. It doesn’t matter if some of them are shorter indie games, and some are long and involved, but I want to achieve some stuff here and see the end of some games. My plan is to keep myself to under ten installed games on Steam, so that I can force myself to finish a game before installing another. Keeping my games running on my SSD helps with this, since the SSD is limited in space. Nobody remind me that I have a striped array of very fast magnetic disks that could also accommodate games.
3. Get to 200 pounds. This one’s pretty straight forward; I’d like to knock some weight off.
4. Find a way to take more pleasure in my current job, or change what I’m doing. Things are going “well enough” by any objective terms, but I need to find a way to take more satisfaction in what I’m doing, or change how I’m approaching my job. Hard to measure progress here and set a specific goal, but something has to budge.
5. Fix my ankle. Whether I work harder at PT or go under the knife, I need to be able to walk out of my apartment not wondering if this is the day I’ll blow my ankle out again.
6. Make material contributions to an open source project. This one has been nagging at me for a while. Other than some one-line fixes, I’ve yet to ever make a contribution to an open sore project. It will be good for me (I actually get to write some code), and it’s about time.
7. Become a Project Euler icosahedron. I’m not yet an octahedron, but I’m getting close. This is a bit of a stretch, but I need to do something to keep my brain from rotting, and this is filling that need temporarily.
8. Learn a new programming language. While I dabble in these things every year, I would like to become proficient in a new language this year. Optimally, I’d like to cover at least one procedural and one functional language, but we’ll see what happens. This doesn’t mean I can do hello world, but that I can write real-world code in one of these.
9. Take a dozen photographs I’m proud of. I’ve been taking a few more photos lately, but I’m still not happy with my work. I’m not limited by glass. I’m not limited by sensor resolution. I’m a little limited by technique, and a lot limited by creativity. I’d like to, at the end of the year, have a portfolio of twelve shots I made in 2010 that make me proud to be a photographer.

See you in a year.

A Cheap Induction Burner

2 December 2009 : gastronomy

I picked up a Max Burton 6000 Induction Cooktop. I want a Cooktek Apogee, I think, but this was enough to play a bit and see how things work.

I’m happy with it for boiling water. At 1800W, it successfully boils small pots of water 2-3 times as fast as my gas cooktop, and brings the water back to boiling much sooner after something is added to the water.

It’s pretty much shit for control otherwise. The cooktop has 10 power settings; the way the “power” works on the thing is the coil is either on, or off, and the power settings adjust the time between on and off. Even on a low setting, this means that very good pots (all clad) will scald milk on the bottom, even with a whisk. Heating of large cast iron or large clad pots also results in pretty severe hot spots where the “induction is happening.” I’ve played a lot with different settings and different pots and the result is the same — there’s no way to get gradual heat out of this cooktop, it’s full blast and then nothing, and expects the pan to cover the difference, and that’s not really a difference they can manage.

Similarly, there’s no way to hit a setting between power level 2 and 3, so precise simmer control is impossible. You’ll either keep your soups and sauces too cool, or you will boil them. Oh well.

So, the cooktop is good when you really want to blast a shit-ton of heat into a pan. I’ll probably use it for searing the fuck out of steaks in cast iron pans. It’s also really great for boiling water quickly (the primary reason I got it; pasta stalls my boil pots too much on my gas burners).

There’s no way that the folks at Alinea could be working on something that behaves like this, so I assume the Apogee units must behave differently. I’m glad I have this device, as it serves an important need that I had (boiling stuff), but my gas burners offer way more control for every other task. More when I get around to getting a real induction burner…

Being Harassed by the Takhar Group

1 December 2009 : whining

In September, I got a call from the Takhar Group, telling me I owed some money to Crafter’s Choice for a book club membership whose conditions I failed to satisfy. At the time, they gave me the account number and the phone number of the claimant. I called them, and they looked up the account. It had my name on it, and an address that looked suspiciously like (but not exactly like) the address where I grew up. This, of course, is somewhere I haven’t lived in a decade, and I certainly haven’t been ordering books on crafting to be sent there. The Crafter’s Choice book club folks agreed that this was obviously not me, and that I’m not responsible for the account, and closed it out with virtually no hassle at all. I did not hear from either company, though I did receive written confirmation from Crafter’s Choice that the matter was settled, and I can ignore further harassment about the issue.

Last week I started getting called, twice a day, but the Takhar group. They never leave a message, but when I picked up, it was “we’re a collection agency, you owe Crafter’s Choice money, we’re going to negatively impact your credit if you don’t deal with it.” Different account number, different amount, but same spiel as before. I inform my new friend in the Indian call center that I will contact Crafter’s Choice and deal with it. He said that he couldn’t give me any information on how to do that, as it would defeat the purpose of his business. We then argued for about fifteen minutes, during which he kept pressuring me to just pay the money to them, rather than try to deal with this myself. I should “be a good person” and “do right by myself” and “do the good thing” and so forth.

Yes. I would be a hell of a good person to donate money to a company for a debt I didn’t originate. I finally managed to crawl off the phone, and called Crafter’s Choice and said it was fraudulent, and without any questions at all they cleared it out and said I no longer owe anything.

This really weirds me out. The fact that it’s so trivial to cancel money I owe them makes this sound far more like a scam than anything legitimate. They confirmed with me that they would notify Takhar as before, and I would not be harassed about the matter further.

The next two business days I’m called by Takhar again, twice a day. I got another call today, and answered, and it was the same song and dance. I told them I’d contacted Crafter’s Choice and that the issue was resolved, and then I was pressured, incessantly, to pay the money to them, and do the right thing. I asked that they not contact me about this account again, as it’s been settled. The lady kept harassing me, telling me if it’s settled, I should just pay them. And if it’s settled, why haven’t they been notified? I should just pay them, and make it go away. This sort of ridiculous logic continued for ten minutes before I got fed up and told the girl (who had quite good English, unlike the previous agents), as impolitely as I could, to go fuck herself.

Isn’t there a name for something where you’re being harassed to pay them off so they stop harassing you?

Oh right, that word is extortion.

I’m sure the Takhar Group has a lot of legitimate debts it’s trying to collect. And I’m sure their Indian call center full of bullies harassing consumers on the line is effective at extorting money out of many people who do, in fact, owe money. But from my experience with them, I’m being harassed for a debt I don’t have (I dont, erm, craft, for one thing), didn’t originate, and for which I have put forth every effort I can to clear up (other than just paying them off).

Update on December 3rd

I keep getting called twice a day by Takhar, still. I contacted the book club service center again, and they indicated it was settled, but it might take as long as a week for them to report the information to Takhar, so I can expect that I’ll continue to be harassed for another week or so.

By law I can request that they stop harassing me. But I have to do so in writing, and there is no address available anywhere on the Takhar group’s website, nor will any agent at Takhar give me their address. So they make it really fucking hard to do this. Additionally, it’s pretty obvious that it will take at least a week for them to process any sort of mail in that regard, when I factor in the time it takes for me to send something like that in the mail. The system is broken.

Update on December 9th

Still getting called daily. Talked to the guy again, though the conversation went roughly like this:

Agent in India: “Hello, this is the Takh..”

Me: “Shut the fuck up and listen to me.”

Long story short.

The agent at the collection agency asked me to pay $70 and settle my debt. The agent at the collection agency agreed that I’d cleared the debt with Crafter’s Choice! That I owed nobody anything. That they had a record of this, and there was no reason for them to still be contacting me. But, since I was being belligerent, he was not going to make any note of this, and ensure that my credit gets wrecked. I was belligerent because I’ve been repeating myself to the collectors about this issue for a week now, and tired of them not doing things when I am polite. I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do as a consumer. Other than just pay them off.

I convinced him “to do the good thing,” but who knows if he actually will. We’ll see.

Update on December 11th

Still being harassed daily.

Update on December 16th

Last call was on the 12th. Talked to the most disinterested and bored agent ever. He kept saying he was calling from an agency in New York. Right. Maybe that’s where they’re headquartered. But anyway, he agreed I didn’t owe anything, and they shouldn’t be calling me, and thanked me for bringing it to his attention. Haven’t heard back since. Yet.

One Big Happy Family

29 November 2009 : rambling

All the kids, all together. Apparently I’m down to 6 piece of L glass, two other fifties, two bodies, and three flashes.

Thanksgiving Aftermath

27 November 2009 : gastronomy

So, thanksgiving was all from Cook’s Illustrated. The “main dish” was the slow-roasted turkey with gravy, which I left unmodified except for brining the turkey ahead of time.

It was some of the better white meat I’ve had (the dark meat didn’t do much for me) but it still really didn’t seem worth it to me versus, say, a duck. It did improve markedly with gravy, and to that end the gravy sourced from the drippings was amazing.

The kitchen carnage on day two; it looked about like this after the first day too:

Most of everything served up; I ran out of ramekins, so the gravy ended up in a silicone cupcake cup. Oh well.