Archive for July, 2006

Family

Published
by
Nate
on July 29, 2006
in Hudson, MA
. 0 Comments

Three days of fun!

Friday: Kimball Farm

About half the company had an outing today to Kimball Farm for ice cream, mini golf, bumper boats and other random games.  It all officially started at noon, so a group of us went to the Horseshoe Pub for lunch before getting the free icecream at the farm.  I even got a lot of work done on one of my projects in the morning before leaving.  Unfortunately, the outing was mainly for the other buliding, so noone else in my department went.  All interns were invited, so I went.  In any case it was a lot of fun.  It was an extremely hot day, so the bumper boats were a welcome cooloff.

After I got home, we had a severe but brief thunderstorm, and I hung out at a friend’s house (it was Bik’s last day).

Saturday: Visit from Mom and Liz

For the past week, my mom and sister have been going around visiting colleges.  They got to two a day, covering a total of 10 colleges.  I didn’t visit anywhere close to that many colleges.  Anyways I was on the way home, so we met up and I showed them around Boston.  It was beautiful weather, even if it was a bit hot.  I had lobster roll from Quincy Marketplace, a fruit smoothie from Emack and Bolios and some delicious honey roasted nuts from a street vendor.  It all was good.  We got back pretty late and my mom and sis had to hit the road.

Yawn

Published
by
Nate
on July 27, 2006
in Hudson, MA
. 0 Comments

Been really busy at work.  I finally fixed a bug in my one program.  I really think the problem was not my fault- a component I was using was not closing database connections properly.  Using some clever inginuity I now have the website check any error that comes up, and if it is the one produced by the bug then the page just keeps refreshing automagically until the error is gone.  Its a dirty fix, but that error should never happen so I’m happy with it.

After fixing that problem, I was able to work on another smaller project.  Finished it in two days yay!  I just have to show it off to my mentor and be sure that it does everything needed.  It was kindof a convoluted program to write, because it is a test to see if tests passed.  Basically it connects to a database and gets a list of tests, then it gets a list of files associated with the tests.  Then it gets a list of keywords that are bad in every file, scanns the files for the keywords and flags any with the correct contents.  The flagged tests are then divided into departments, and emails are sent out with a list of all of the tests that failed in each department and log files are attached to the email.  Convoluted but kindof fun to make.

I still have two other projects 2 other bigger projects to work on.  One is a lot of expansion from a project created before (the customer liked what they saw and wanted more), and the other is just confusing.  I have to learn some SAS before I can figure out what it is about.  I’m about halfway through a book but I have been focusing on my other projects.

School hasn’t started yet but I have been motivated to work on some URCG stuff.  With my newfound knowledge of databases and website scripting languages, I got motivated to make a more intelligent survey to give us feedback for what movies to show.  After many hours of scripting, I developed a fully dynamic survey.  You can fill it out too- just look at http://sa.rochester.edu/urcg/survey/.  Every item is added on another page- no website editing required.  It is then automatically formatted properly and added to the main page.  Yay!  I spent a while yesterday trying to email people to publicize it.  Hope it all works out!
Aside from work things have been fun but pretty normal.  Frisbee Monday, BBQ Tuesday (Gilbert made shish-kabobs).  Went to see Clerks 2 yesterday (Wednesday) and then went to Applebees afterwards.  Applebees is now officially a good place to go during the week.  After 9pm Monday - Thursday, appetizers are half price!  We just had some appetizers and really good desserts (I had sizzling apple pie), and played euchre the whole time.  Ruined the cards but had a lot of fun.

Movies
Clerks 2.  Pretty good movie- I really enjoyed it.  I just saw Clerks (1) on Friday so I guess I was behind most people that saw it but I liked the new one more.  I seem to be in the minority with this view, but maybe that is just because the copy of Clerks I saw was horrible quality, and this was in a theater.  Also, this one wasn’t in black and white!  Anyways you should see this movie sometime.. you don’t need to see it in a theater, but watch it on DVD later.

Okay this isn’t a movie, but for the past two months I’ve been watching House.  Today I watched the last episode of the second season (that means I have to wait for something like three months before I can watch another episode).  Anyways, great TV show- I’m not much of a fan of medial shows, but House is such a great character it makes the show worthwhile.

World of Warcraft
Level 32.  My new offical goal is to get to level 40 before the end of summer.  I’m not going to kill myself to make this goal though.  No big deal either way.  I realize that it is more addicting than it is fun :).

Movies

Published
by
Nate
on July 23, 2006
in Hudson, MA
. 0 Comments

On Saturday went into Boston with Dan, Galen and Dustin and we saw “A Scanner Darkly.” The weather was pretty crappy but it was still fun to go into town.  We also walked around a bit and got some food from Quincy Marketplace- I got mexican food this time.  Every time I’ve been there I’ve had totally different types of food.

After we were done with Boston we played some cards (poker, euchre) ordered chinese food and watched Clerks.  It took us almost an hour to order the chiense food- we didn’t have a menu and were looking for a place that had a website.  Sure every chinese takeout place has about the same menu, but we wanted to just be sure.  We finally found a place with interesting items, figured out waht we wanted, and then foudn out they won’t deliver to us.  We finally just called a place close to us and guessed menu items.  That was probably my best chiense takeout ever.

Movies
Ocean’s Twelve.  Everyone really complained about this movie and it got horrible reviews.  I never quite understood it- people said that it was just like the first.  I, like most people, thought the first was good so I figured a copy would be fun.  After watching it I clearly understand the complaints.  They try to make it complicated like in Oceans 11 but only succeed in confusing the viewer.  Worse yet, the viewer doesn’t care what is happening in the movie.  The music also sucks.

A Scanner Darkly.  This was a pretty trippy movie.  It was also really interesting.  The way the animation was made in the movie relied on some pretty interesting computer technology, but kindof gave everything a jello effect to some degree.  Some things that just don’t move swayed around.  This affect was pathetic in Waking Life, which used an earlier version of the same technology.  In this movie the style fits.  I’d recommend seeing it… not really a happy movie but interesting.  Also the police suits are kickass.

Clerks.  Okay I have a lot of friends that love this movie.  I guess it was pretty funny but I’d say overall it was only okay.  Parts of the movie were just boring.  I’ll be seeing Clerks 2 and the animated series soon.