Steakhouse
Once again, I find myself at the bar at The Outback steakhouse. Why is this weird? I’m a vegetarian and some kinda health / fitness freak. I assure you, it feels sorta weird. Why does it work? Well first off, Outback has a number of…
Consulting
We never failed to fail
I spent my day waiting for a system crash. We’ve got this serious, hardcore system lockup that happens sometimes with the customer of the moment. Naturally, it only happens when the system is flat-out running their most important computation. Naturally, it can reasonably said that…
Clouds
Here’s a Press release from one of the projects that I support. The NASA Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO), using its active lidar system, traced vertically through the layers of the atmosphere to find that the Australian bushfire smoke was lofting, or…
Nationally Known
One of the scientists that I’ve worked with for a few years just got elected to the National Academy of Sciences. I think that’s pretty sweet. Also, jwz just summed up in a sentence my core point in many, many technical arguments: Excuses for why…
Job Posting
My company is actually looking for two sorts of people. The first is that hourly type that I mentioned earlier. Yes, I would actually pay a generous wage for that, for the right person. The second is another “principal investigator,” kinda like me. Here’s the…
Tales from the Support Trenches
Good support call: Introduction, blah blah, Chris is one of our experts, blah blah. Question: Which port do I plug the wire into, one or two? Answer: Two Thanks! Bye! More involved support call: Introduction. System not working as expected. <…hour long diagnostic conversation…> Really?…
Train train train
Tried to work from home yesterday morning. No dice. The still-packed boxes kept calling out to me: Chris, unpack us, unpack us! Unpack us, you obsessive compulsive freak. You know you can’t rest until we’re unpacked… So I took the 9:50 train in. That sucked…