Progress

My paper is nearly finished, I just have to write one last section, the conclusion, and then my first draft is done.  It is due to my bosses next Tuesday so I will have plenty of time to review and edit it before sending it to them.  I want to polish it up as much as possible because I know they are going to review and make changes as well, but I hope it is polished enough that they won't have to spend a lot of time editing.

Once my paper is edited and polished I will start writing up my presentation for the conference.  There will be lots of practicing because essentially it will be timed and I have to make sure I can keep it to 15 minutes.  It may not sound like much, but I have to make sure to hit that right time.  One practice will be at our monthly staff meeting, which will help because some of them will ask questions and it will give me an idea of what to be ready for at the conference.  I have this fear that I am going to present and I'll be asked some really difficult question or be critiqued by an audience member on some of the methodology presented.  Once I write the presentation and present the paper in a few practice runs, I'll get over it.  TB might have to suffer with at least one practice run at home.

I got a packet the other day from the Baltimore Ravens.  I am now number 2928 on the waiting list to become a permanent season ticket holder (AKA PSL's).  It is a start, considering the list is limited to 3000 and was full last year.  This is one place where the crappy economy could work in my favor because if people decide to give up their PSL's, then people at the top of the list will be offered PSL's, and if they decline them or even take themselves off the waiting list because they can't afford PSL's in the future, then it just means I get to move up faster than I would in years past.  Here's hoping I become a holder in the future.

While we're on the subject, my new Ravens license plates arrived, so I'll be sporting those as soon as I can get to the MVA to drop off the old ones.  It figures that they arrive the week I already had my AWS day, so it will be about two weeks before I can do it.  Oh well, that's how life goes.

As for my car, I love it when a simple act of maintenance turns out to be more than I expected.  I went in for an oil change and tune-up the other day and decided to get the fuel system cleaned out since I don't think it had ever really been done by a mechanic except maybe during one of the major servicing intervals.  Well that thing brought out an underlying issue that I had a misfiring spark plug, so there went some extra cash to get those replaced as well.  I just have to remember to look at it as preventative maintenance and pushing back the day that I need a new car.  Besides, with the misfiring spark plug I would have failed my emissions test a few months from now when they plugged into my car's computer to check it, then I would be in the shop getting it fixed anyway.

I noticed the other day that the Midas I used to go to is gone now, I wonder what's up with that.  Did they end up driving away a bunch of customers or what?  I know after how much cash I dropped at that place I didn't feel like going back there.  I'm just hoping this new place works out better.

2007 IBUC Pictures

IBUC 2007 Logo, originally uploaded by theblackdog2071.

My pictures from the 2007 IBUC are up on Flickr. It features mostly social events, including tours of the Chesapeake Bay and US Naval Academy.

Catching up

Thursday and Friday were a ton of fun. Thursday was the day of the mystery social event, and it turned out it was a trip to the US Naval Academy, a two hour boat tour of the Chesapeake Bay and Severn River, then dinner at Phillips. We had our choice of entrees, and I decided to have the crabcake and shrimp, always a classic around here. It was good, but that's what I would expect from a place like Phillips. There was also free beer, so no complaints from me!

Friday was the last day of the conference. As per my usual routine, yes, I wore my Baltimore Ravens jersey since it is Purple Friday after all. The last presentations went well, and I took away a lot of information that I can use. I talked with one of my bosses during the afternoon and we discussed where to take things next in the department. Next May we will finally put into production the survey I have been working on since day one of my career, and that means that we will have finally moved all of our surveys from DOS to Windows, or from PAPI only to CAPI (or CATI). Since we should not have to devote so much energy into making sure these surveys work (unless a sponsor wants a major revision done), we can start looking into building some tools to help automate our programming and testing processes. I saw some amazing tools that the University of Michigan has come up with, and if the powers that be let them, I'm going to obtain the source for one of them to see if we can modify it for our own purposes. It was a good talk with my boss, and I'm thinking it means some opportunities down the line for me.

So for the final big event, a number of us went out sailing on the Chesapeake bay. I have some amazing pictures from it, and once I get them uploaded from Flickr, I'll be sharing them here. It was fun, and I wonder now what it would take to learn to sail, there was something comfortable about being out on the water. I'll have to look into it.

We got back to shore and had dinner at Pusser's Caribbean Grille. The food was good, and on par for what you would get for seafood. I had the Tilapia Chesapeake for dinner, so basically it was a fillet of Tilapia wrapped around a mixture of crabmeat. I drove home from there, planning to head out to DC and the nightlife, but on my way home I started to feel a bit sleepy, so I decided to bag it and head in.

Saturday morning was my fun run with the DC Front Runners. I did much better than last week because I was able to run over 2.5 miles before I had to slow down, and that was only because my ankles stiffened up and finally screamed ¡No Mas! I did have an odd thing happen though, my left foot went numb towards the end of the run. I have never had that happen before in all my years of running. After I pulled off my shoe and sock I was fine. The next time I go I had better make sure to check and see how tight my laces are, because I suspect those were the culprit. Went to Starbucks as usual, then it was off to Best Cellars where I picked up a merlot from Chile to try. It was only $8 and I'll be curious to see how good it turns out to be. I grabbed lunch at Zorba's Cafe. I had never been there before, though I had always passed by it. I'm glad I went in there, they have excellent Gyros, and it's the kind of place where they take the meat off of a big chunk of it roasting on a spit. It was also a great price, so I'll have to keep it in mind the next time I'm down at Dupont Circle and I don't have much cash. I went home, then went on a walk with Kris, came back, went back into DC for drinks with some people from the morning run, then home for bed.

Sunday started out as the usual kind of Sunday, went to church, came home, did the weekly deep cleaning of the house. Then it was off to Blobs Park for beer, food, and dancing. While Blobs Park looks like it can use an update, they do serve good and authentic German food, and they have great beer. There was also a honey liqueur that I tried with the other folks, and it was like drinking pure honey with a little kick. I must find a bottle for the house, I bet it would make a great flavoring. So I would recommend going there since admission is only $5, and you can get a pretty good meal for only $7-$8. The only complaint I have was service was a bit slow, but considering there were only two waitresses for a rather large hall, I can understand why. The woman who served us was helpful when she did get to us, so we did give her a good tip.

Monday was just a usual Monday, today was more of the usual stuff at work. Tonight I went over and worked out to an exercise tape at church, so that's another thing I can consider making routine.

The rest of this week is shaping up to be busy. Tomorrow night I am going to go listen to the Bishop of the Diocese of Washington talk about the recent House of Bishops Statement that came out. I'll tell you folks that the media does have it all wrong with the way they're reporting the statement. Nothing has really changed from the current position, and that's not a bad thing because the church could have given in to the demands of a few voices of folks who have no power who are trying to dictate what the entire church should do, but instead they decided to stand against it. I have already heard my rector's comments on the statement, I'll be curious to see what the Bishop has to say.

Thursday night I have a date down in DC, we'll see where that goes. Beyond that, nothing necessarily planned for the rest of this week. That's not a bad thing at all.

A Nice Break in Routine

This week I have been attending the International Blaise Users Conference in Annapolis, MD. There have been presentations on the new version of Blaise that is coming out in a few weeks, including a new way to program a stand-alone survey that won't require our software. It involves a lot of XML work, so it's a good thing I took some training on it. There's other enhancements they have made to the existing language that I would like to try out because it looks like one of them will be useful in a survey that I work on. I also have plans to test another survey in the new version of Blaise.

There have also been a variety of papers and demonstrations presented at the conference, everything from programming tips and tricks, to tools that could enhance some features of Blaise. I'm in talks with someone from U of M to obtain a tool they're using for error reporting and "playback" (have the tool use the keystroke log to go through every keystroke in the survey up to a certain point) to see if it can be modified for our own usage.

There's been a number of social events as well, so it's meant lots of networking; if I ever decide I want to move to another country, I might have a shot at finding a job as a Blaise programmer. There's folks here from Canada, the Netherlands, the UK, France, South Korea, Finland, Australia, and elsewhere. Last night I went off to a haunted pub crawl where we had a tour guide lead us to known haunted spots in Annapolis such as the Maryland Inn, St. Anne's Church, the State House, and the Sly Fox pub, and at each place we would hear stories of tragedies that had struck someone and sightings of spirits that had occurred. While it wasn't scary, it was entertaining, and who knows, maybe when I bring up my pictures on my computer I'll discover an extra subject in the photos.

Today is another tour of places in Annapolis, tomorrow a few of us are going sailing on the Chesapeake Bay in the early evening. After that, it will be a nice weekend, then it's back to the old grind Monday morning. Already I have some work cut out for me because of course no one calls me with problems except when I'm out of the office!

I am so back on the dietary change Saturday, I've been a bit bad this week, though I have kept some form of discipline for myself.