Roblog

Balloon room- Today!

2012-01-20T15:00:04Z

I have been reluctant to post anything about my project today to spoil the surprise, but now I can reveal it. I took the day off from work today to spend it filling my daughters' room with balloons for their 10th birthday. There is a grand story behind this to describe all the planning that went into it, but I'm too busy actually blowing up 500 balloons to relate that right now. I'll post various pictures on Facebook throughout the day if you want to follow along. I'll tell the whole story here shortly.

My First iPhone App

2011-09-23T12:54:50Z

I guess it was inevitable - about 1 year after I got my iPhone, I am close to having my first iPhone app on the App Store. I just submitted it for review this morning, and I should have the results of that review in about 7 days. If all goes well, Anyone will be able to download it to their iPhones. It's a good app to have as my first one. It's a very simple app that is a companion to the Southwest Houston School Choice Forum that my wife runs each fall. It will list some basic information about each of the schools that are attending the forum, and use the iPhone mojo to be able to interact with that data (e.g. get a map of the school's location, save the designated contact to the address book, call the contact). If you want a preview, you can see the "support" page I setup for it as part of the details I submitted with the app at: http://www.robreid.com/SWHSCF/ Perhaps I will reflect on my experience for creating the app sometime soon. It was at times difficult and maddeningly frustrating, but also rewarding. I still haven't gotten over the programmer's thrill of getting something developed and running like you had designed! I expect that thrill will drive me to continue this hobby for a while anyway.

Attack of the Blue Blob

2010-08-19T02:31:09Z

====== Facebook users, go to http://www.robreid.com/weblog/ for a more legible version ====== I think I might be in trouble. We'll see how much in trouble I am when my wife returns from Dallas. Accenture has a recognition program in which you can be given points for doing a good job. These points can be redeemed from a large online catalog of products - 1,000s of products ranging up to 5,000 points or more (1 point generally equals $1). I had about 200 points to spend recently. None of the really high-ticket items are things I have to have, so I generally spend them fairly soon after I get them, rather than waiting for my points to build up to a certain level. I also try to select something that I wouldn't normally spend my own money on. That means I get things I really don't need, and sometimes it works out (Wii Lego Star Wars, ice cream maker) other times, it doesn't (Sharper Image wearable air conditioner). So I selected a "bean bag" this time to replace the ones that the girls had and had recently used them up, beyond my ability to repair them with duct tape. This is a demin-covered one, and filled with foam, instead of little styrofoam beans, so it should last longer. It cost me 110 points, but I knew the high-quality bean bags were more expensive. It wasn't until later that I realized it might not be a good fit for our home - literally. This bean bag is listed at 4' by 4' by 2'. That is probably about 4 times as large as our previous bean bags. And at that size, it really doesn't fit anywhere. OK, it fits in our living room between the couches and in front of the TV (where it is now), but it fills up that whole space, making it not usable for anything else. It would fit in the girls' room, but then we literally could not walk to the head of their bed. There is no room for it in the guest room or the master bedroom. I might fit in the office, but again it would render a huge chunk of it unusable for anything else. I suspect we'll make it work - maybe keeping it in the office until we want to use it in the living room. It's big enough for both girls to use at the same time, and I am quite comfortable on it, but it may end up being to cumbersome to actually keep. At least I didn't spend any real money on it.

No place to call Home

2010-07-26T12:59:07Z

=== Facebook users, go to http://www.robreid.com/weblog/ for a more legible version === I happened to visit the new Accenture office last week. I was hosting a non-client-related conference call, so I used that as an excuse to go over there. It's a neat space that was designed using some new office ideas with a lot of shared, open areas with little-to-no spaces dedicated to specific individuals. I always enjoy my visits there to wander around and admire the new furnishings and modern style, but I also often run into people I know, which is a nice perk. After my conference call, as I wandered the "halls" I passed a former lead of mine, Laura, whom I respect a great deal. She was feeling very cold and was heading to the coffee area to get a warm drink. I didn't keep her long, since she was obviously uncomfortable and she's always very busy. The implications of that innocuous encounter didn't sink in for me until a while later. I walked there that day from my client's building where I work, several blocks from the Accenture office. I have an assigned office there, which was designed for one person, that I share with two other people. It has a nice floor-to-ceiling window (partially obscured by the cubicle furniture placed in there). My desk faces away from the window. It is faux-wood-grain cubicle furniture, with one above-desk shelf, an above-desk cabinet, two below-desk drawers, and a slide-out shelf for desk accessories. Even though most of my documents are electronic, I use all my storage space for something. I have my paper recycling piles on my shelf (along with my Galilean thermometer), and I keep a few manuals in the cabinet. My file drawers hold some random electronic gear, my emergency umbrella, cans and bottles to recycle, salt, pepper, and some random utensils. My slide-out compartment has my pens, change, post-it notes, scissors, paper clips, a swiss-army knife, band-aids, and several kinds of medicine. My desktop itself, besides being where my computer, monitor, keyboard, and phone are placed, also has my hand lotion, tape dispenser, two coasters, and several of my personal decorations: a lava lamp, a colorful puzzle/toy, and a stress ball. I also have some animal magnets adorning the window above my desk (that leads to the hallway), a small metal sculpture taped to my window, and googly eyes on my phone. I also have a few items on the bulletin board panels just above my desk space: pictures of my daughters and a map of the tunnel system of Houston. There are a larger file drawers in the hallway, too. I have commandeered two drawers right outside my office for my drinks (I keep caffeine-free Pepsi and bottled water in there) and paper files that I rarely need but want to hang onto. People like the lava lamp and the animal magnets the best. Some have just come in my office to comment on them, even people who don't know me! These little touches also make my space feel like mine. Not to mention I can keep things here from day to day (electronic doohickeys, pens and post-it notes, an umbrella, medicine) so I can use them when/if I need them. There is a coffee area on my floor, which my office is geographically farthest from on the floor. It is pretty typical. I don't drink coffee, and only have tea on occasion, but I use the refrigerator regularly and snack machines once in a while. They stopped supplying caffeine-free black tea a few months back, so Donna got me some at the grocery store, which I now also keep in my desk drawer along with my mug I use for the tea. The next day that something that had been percolating just below my conscious thought about my encounter with Laura came to me. I used to keep a jacket at my desk for when I was cold. My current office isn't cold, so I don't have one there. But I could, because it's my own space that no one else uses. Laura could not. She was cold because she didn't have a jacket at her desk, because her desk isn't really hers. The new Accenture office is clean, visually interesting, and full of modern functionality. It is based on the premise, however, that most of the occupants are transient and don't need a desk there every day. It is similar to the "hoteling" concept, where you show up each day and reserve a space for that day. Although there are a few enclosed offices, people are expected to use the open areas unless they are in a sensitive call. So without a space dedicated to yourself, you have to bring everything with you each day. If you think you might get cold, you'd need to bring a jacket. If you think it might rain, bring an umbrella. Do you have some files you need access to, bring those. What about your preferred drinks or special tea? Cart them in each day. If you might have a tummy ache, make sure you bring medicine for that. And what about the various personal items that makes work less antiseptic and more comfortable? All of that would have to be lugged in each day. I can't argue with the rational, economic reasons for this arrangement. Many times, when I went to visit Laura in the old office (where she did have a dedicated office), her office was empty. She might have been on a trip, perhaps she was at a meeting, or maybe even working from home that day. The amount of space that was unutilized at any given time in that old office was substantial. In some areas, it was hard to find anyone occupying a desk. I suspect the majority of the people who work at the new office don't work there full time. They have meetings with clients, off-site meetings to go to, working at remote locations for a week or two at a time, or working from home. Paying for office space that is left empty for a large amount of time must be unjustifiable. But how large is the cost to employee efficiency, productivity, or morale? Surely that was part of what Accenture thought about when preparing the new space, but I wonder if this was actually studied or measured. Was this impact accepted as not being great enough to justify the (presumably) large cost savings by being able to use a smaller office space? Perhaps I am thinking too old-style. Certainly, there are many of my colleagues who do business anywhere they happen to be. For these people, a dedicated desk at the home office doesn't make much sense. I see the importance of my company keeping up with the modern and young employees' style of working, so I am willing to accept this new office paradigm. But I don't think I'd like it that much. I'd probably be lugging most of my stuff in each day (well, not my lava lamp), so that I could personalize the space where I happened to be that day. I also have a nagging sensation that there may be something more at stake than even a slight dip in productivity or employee morale. I wonder if people would feel less connected to their group or company under this arrangement. I know my sense of team has kept me going during those times when the work was too onerous, frustrating, or unceasing to bear otherwise. Would I feel more like a commodity and less like a team member if I was sitting at a different place each day, and therefore less likely to stick with my company or team through the really difficult times? I'm not sure. I think I'd probably be able to go with the flow. I'd probably find out several benefits to the new arrangement. Maybe I'd feel more connected to my company overall and energized, being among lots of other work and people each day. Perhaps the flexibility to work anywhere in the office at any given time would be a wonderful option. And certainly the new technology embedded in the office space (teleconference facilities, electronic whiteboards, software phones) would be enjoyable to use. For now, though, it doesn't affect me directly. I still have my desk at the client that I show up at every day and is populated with all the things that help me feel settled. Someday, when my work arrangements change, I may appreciate the flexibility the new office provides. For now, though, I'm happy with my three-to-an-office space because it's mine.

Opaads

2010-06-21T12:33:41Z

I saw an odd little oval sticker on the floor of the powder room today. It was a clear sticker, and I could tell it was lying on the floor backwards: It looked like it spelled "opaads". I picked it up and turned it over: Yep. "opaads". But that's a weird name for a product. What kind of product is an "opaad"? But then I realized that it was still upside-down: Ah, OK. Mystery solved, I went back to eating my breakfast.

Our Temporary Aviary

2010-04-28T01:24:16Z

===== Facebook users, go to my blog at http://www.robreid.com/weblog/ for a more legible version of this entry ===== Most years, birds nest at the top of our chimney. The sound carries well down the chimney, and it's very pleasant to be able to hear the starlings or mockingbirds from our living room. Yesterday, however, instead of remote twittering, I heard a bird growing louder and louder in the chimney. I knew immediately that a bird had fallen, or flown, all the way down into our fireplace! ]]> Foxy and I went over to investigate. It was dark in the fireplace, and neither of us could see, or hear, the bird down there. I figured the bird had flown back up the chimney. About 10 minutes later, the bird, which had apparently not flown back up the chimney, came bursting out of the fireplace into my living room. It flew madly around the ceiling, ran into the back door window, fell to the ground (still flapping), and flew off toward the front of the house, being mildly chased by Foxy the whole time. It ignored the back door, which we had opened right after it smacked into it. As I approached the front door, I saw it hanging from the trim around the front door. It was hanging by its claws, so that at a glance it looked like a bat. I had to look carefully to see its bird head to notice it was a starling. It was not moving as it hung there, certainly terrified. Being right at the front door, I could open it, and perhaps it would have the sense to fly out. But much of its body was hanging over the top of the front door, so opening the door might push it off of the door trim it was hanging on. I approached the door and slowly began to open it. The door was open a good 6 inches before the bird took off again, flying away from the door and back into the living room. It zoomed about the ceiling for a while, and then headed for the kitchen. It stopped, however, at the wall above the doorway leading to the laundry room. I have no idea how it stayed there. It looked like it was glued to the wall: its wings fully extended and completely still, not hanging onto anything but the wall itself. I grabbed the largest Tupperware container and a lid, and placed the translucent container fully over the bird on the wall. It didn't move. I tried sliding the Tupperware container across the bird, hoping to scrape it off the wall, but was worried I would injure it if I pressed too forcefully. After what seemed like 30 seconds of trying to gently scrape the bird off of the wall with the piece of Tupperware, it detached from the wall and started flapping its wings inside the container. I quickly put the lid on it (which was one size too small for the container, so I just held the lid across the opening) and quickly took the bird out the front door. As soon as I lifted the lid, the bird zoomed away, apparently uninjured. I have not yet figured out what I have to do to keep that from happening again. Do I need to examine the flue? Could I put some screening near the top of the chimney? I'm not sure what the right remedy is. Perhaps I just need to keep a large Tupperware container handy.

My brain knows more than I do

2010-03-08T04:01:34Z

I was doing some menial task at work on Friday - data entry, essentially - when I went to enter the name of "Cain, Nicole". It was supposed to resolve into an email address as part of the process. I moved on and went back to check my work, and realized I it hadn't resolved into a proper email address. I had typed in the wrong name: "Cain, Valerie". It took me a minute to recognize where this came from - Valerie was someone I had worked with in 1995. I would not have come up with her name if you asked me, but there it was, and I had typed it. It brought back a flood of the names of people that I had worked with back then, people who I had not thought of in years. I spent a few minutes trying to satisfy my curiosity about some of them. Many were on LInkedIn. So now I'm considering adding them to my network on LinkedIn to see if I might be able to meet them again. They were the group where I had my first "real" job after college, so there is a fondness I have for that job and the people that worked there. I'm not sure what I'd say to them, but it feels like it would be "neat" to say hi. But I have not yet made the plunge yet of connecting with them. We'll see if I do before our next trip back to the north east this summer, where I would have the opportunity to see them.

Donna's Font

2009-10-27T12:48:08Z

----- Facebook users should go to my actual blog to see a more legible version of this note -----

This weekend I completed the first pass at designing a font based on my wife’s printing. I turned out pretty well for not spending any clean-up time on it yet, but there are a few things I still need to fix:

The letter spacing is not refined
There are no braces characters
There are no accented characters (except for the n-tilde)
I may need to tweak the relative line thicknesses (so that all the characters looks like they were drawn with the same pen)

I also haven’t yet decided if I will go through the trouble of creating kerning pairs; if I can figure out how to do it in Fontforge, I probably will.

Even in its current state, Donna’s font is much more usable than the font I created based on my daughters’ 4-year-old printing, since it has all characters represented on a keyboard (except for those braces). It seems a little small, so I may need to tweak that, too.

Umbrella past warranty

2009-10-27T00:28:03Z

----- Facebook users should go to my actual blog to see a more legible version of this note ----- My favorite umbrella has been a large, black golf umbrella. It is big enough to cover me in the rain even if the wind is blowing a bit. Even after the tab that keeps it closed fell out, I just used the Velcro strap to wrap around it to keep it closed. Recently, one end cap snapped off of the rib (so that the fabric wasn’t taut right there), but it was still perfectly functional. This past week, however, I had to put “large umbrella” on my birthday list because it broke in a new way. At first, I didn’t realize it had a new flaw when I grasped it tightly in a rain storm last week while walking from my car to my building downtown. I quickly realized something was amiss, though, when I felt water dripping onto my head even though it was completely under the umbrella. Looking up I noticed my umbrella now had a sunroof! The “wind cap” that is the extra disk of fabric that sits on the very top of the umbrella and overlaps the larger umbrella fabric had separated from the main umbrella fabric and was happily flapping in the breeze. This left an opening right in the middle of the umbrella, rendering it somewhat less useful as a rain repellent. I tried to spin the umbrella around so that the wind would blow that flap of fabric down instead of up, but the swirling wind around the buildings downtown made this impossible. I tried gluing the cap back onto the umbrella, but it did not hold. It really needed to be sewn to repair it properly, but given my lack of sewing skills and its other signs of age, I didn’t bother to try that repair. So for the next month or two, I’ll be using my emergency backup umbrella I keep at my desk at work: a Houston Astros umbrella I got at a game this past year. It’s actually a fairly decent umbrella for being free, but it’s not nearly the size of the umbrella its replacing.

A few new pictures

2009-10-26T12:12:08Z

I posted a few new pictures to my picture catalog yesterday. Enjoy!

Write like a 4 year old

2009-09-26T14:52:36Z

------ Facebook users should go to my actual blog to see a more legible version of this note ------ I just finished a fun project. Using the free FontForge program, I meticulously traced some letters I had my daughters draw when they were 4 years old. I had imagined creating a font based on their writing back then, but did not complete the project. Recently, for some reason, I got the urge to complete them - so I did! Elena4yo.ttf Amanda4yo.ttf As fonts, these are both rather incomplete. The lower case letters are identical to the upper case letters, and there are no numbers, punctuation, or symbols. I did artificially create a period and comma for both, but that's it. Although this is all consistent with how they wrote at the time, it makes actually using the font a little less practical. Next, I'm going to see if Donna wants me to create a font based on her writing, and when the girls turn 8, I'll do another font based on their writing.

The most hated 11-year-old in Calculus

2009-09-19T19:06:28Z

actual blog to see a more legible version of this note ---- I was always a high achiever academically in school, and my favorite subject was math. I got into a “fast math” program that taught Algebra I and II in middle school. I loved it, and I now wish I remembered the long-hand way to compute square roots I learned in that class. The next year, as a freshman in high school, I took geometry (typical for a 9th grader) and pre-calculus (decidedly not typical). The end result was that by the time I was a sophomore in high school, I had run out of math classes to take at my high school (pre-calc was as far as my small school went). The solution we came up with was for me to take evening math classes as a local college.]]> Now, I need to set the stage here a little bit. First off, I was small for my age and looked very young. As a 10th grader, I looked more like an 11-year-old than the 15-year-old I was. I was also not yet old enough to drive, so my mom had to drop me off and pick me up for the classes. I was also very engaged in my classes (well, except maybe history and English). I had not yet learned that adults tend to only participate if they have to, and don’t offer any answers that they think might be wrong. I didn’t mind speaking up in class and asking the teacher questions about our work. Finally, this being an evening class at a small, local college, everyone else in the class was taking it because it was a requirement to get their degree. Generally, these were engineers (from DuPont) working towards their masters degree in their chosen field. Assuredly, none of them had the passion for the subject I did. So one evening, as the class was wrapping up, the teacher was going over our homework assignments for the next class. One of the problems had to do with the slopes of tangent lines on a parabolic curve. The teacher happened to mention that parabolic mirrors are very useful in the real word, because incoming light rays would all be reflected back to a single point (the focus). I thought this was really cool, and I asked about that in class. I don’t recall exactly what I said, or the subsequent discussion the teacher and I had (while the rest of the class remained silent), but the end result was that the teacher added to our homework: we were to prove that parabolic curves actually do focus parallel light rays to one point. This sounded like a fun challenge to me. I couldn’t wait to get started on it. But even I realized that adding to the homework assignment would not be universally celebrated. Indeed, I was the only student who thought this was a good idea. The class was dismissed and I went to my mom's car, as she was waiting for me in the parking lot. Since then, as I think about that event as an adult, I imagine what those other classmates must have told their spouses and families when they returned from class that evening. Surely having a little kid in their Calculus class, showing frequent exuberance for the subject, was a curiosity or maybe even an amusing addition to the class. But the evening I added an analytical assignment to their homework, I doubt I was quite as entertaining. My wife is taking evening classes towards her doctorate now, and so I am acutely aware of how precious her time is. I don’t recall receiving any direct animosity from my classmates that evening, which I’m sure was a testament to their good nature. So to all my classmates I burdened with an additional assignment, I apologize. I hope the personal time I cost you was balanced by the pleasurable satisfaction you felt upon solving an interesting math problem. But probably not.

My favorite doctor's note

2009-08-09T03:32:02Z

Almost 2 years ago, I had a bad car wreck that totaled my Saturn Ion. Amazingly, I had no serious injuries, save for some severe dizziness a few days later. It was so bad that I went to the doctor that day. The diagnosis was there was nothing permanently damaged, but that if I wanted an MRI, the doctor would be willing to order that procedure. I said that as long as it got better, an MRI seemed unnecessary to me. That's where I thought we left it, but a week or so later, I got the following letter in the mail. I ignored the letter, but have found it quite amusing ever since. Forgetting to have an MRI of your brain seems like evidence right there that you really need the MRI of your brain. I wonder what the person who filled out that note thought my state of mind was, and if they thought the note was going to be helpful.

Trapped in the Waste Management Smoking Patio

2009-08-05T00:11:08Z

http://www.robreid.com/weblog/. It is much more readable there. --- Today I’ll tell you the tale about when I got trapped in the Waste Management Smoking Patio. I call it “Trapped in the Waste Management Smoking Patio”]]> I ate lunch on my own today and decided to venture down into the tunnels as I often do. I found a seating area at which to eat my dumplings – a place in the Lamar tunnel I’ve eaten at before. There is a opening in the ceiling into the lobby of the building above, and I could hear the programmable piano playing as it often does. All the times I had eaten there, I had never known what building it was. Since I was alone for lunch today, I decided to find out. There was an elevator right there next to the eating area, so I walked over and pressed the button. I noticed the small sign that said “card access required”, but I figured that was for after hours. If it wasn’t, the elevator wouldn’t work for me, right? After waiting a little for the elevator, its doors opened. I walked into the empty elevator and pressed “1” for the main floor. The elevator didn’t move at first, but I didn’t think much of it since many elevators connected to the tunnels are very slow. After about 4 seconds it started its ascent. As I exited the elevator on the first floor, I passed someone entering the elevator. I was actually a little concerned at this point. The small delay before the elevator moved for me combined with the fact that someone on the first floor was waiting for the elevator made me suspect that it was card access only. I only got up to the first floor because she called the elevator to her. So I quickly looked around and saw my building out the windows. I could exit the building and then figure out which one I had been in. As I left the building I saw the little “card access required for re-entry” by the door again. I didn’t pay it any mind, since I wouldn’t need to re-enter. I would just head for the safety of my building. Just outside the building there were several large raised beds with bushes, trees, and flowers in them. There were small gaps between them where I could easily walk through. There were some patio tables and chairs in this area, too, with some people eating lunch, and some people having a smoke break. I headed for the nearest gap between the building and a large raised bed. There was a small gate spanning the gap between the building and the bed. It was about 3 feet tall, but no obvious way to open it. Hm. I walked around – casually – to another gap to find my way blocked again by a similar gate. The final gap I saw had, predictably, another gate. Now I realized my full predicament. I had inadvertently gained access to the building and walked out into the outdoor smoking area, which was not designed for egress but not so secured that they could leave the card readers off of the reentry doors. I was trapped. I could easily climb over the low gates, but I’d prefer not to have to explain to some security guard why I was clambering out of the smoking area without any valid reason to be in the building in the first place. I decided I’d have to get back into the building. Yes, I was going to gain access to the building again, just so I can exit it properly. I sat down – casually – and fiddled with my leftover eggroll as I observed the area. There were three doors back into the building. I saw everyone badge in as they re-entered the building. The middle door closed very, very slowly. I could see people walking toward the nearest door from down the hall before they came out. I was starting to smell of smoke. So I now had my plan: if anyone used the middle door, I would walk to it and re-enter the building before it closed. If anyone left the smoking area through another door, I would – casually – follow them as far behind as I felt comfortable and still be able to catch the door before it closed. It seemed like there was about one person exiting or entering every minute or so, and it wasn’t long before someone at a table near me was packing up. I watched her approach the nearest door (not the slow middle door), so I got up and followed her. Casually. I grabbed the door before it closed and walked back into the building. I can now see that I’m on the other side of the secure electronic turnstiles. All the elevators are on this side of the turnstiles. I briefly entertained the idea of taking one to some random floor, but instead I head toward the turnstiles. I walk right through them and out the main door, to freedom. I could now see what building I was eating under and subsequently trapped outside of. It was the Waste Management building. That was a lot of effort to go through to satisfy my curiosity, but at least I can say it has been satisfied.

Rediscovering iTunes Radio

2009-07-18T04:09:15Z

A few months ago, I was moved at work from sharing a conference room (which afforded a certain amount of privacy) to what is called a “trading bench”. This is basically one step down from cubicles, in that I’m sitting at a long desk with people on either side of me. I have some desk space and a low (3’) wall facing me. Although I can do my work OK, I have no space to personalize and little-to-no privacy. To block out some nearby conversations, I’ve started occasionally using my headphones. I’d been bringing in my CD collection, a few at a time, to rip onto my work computer so that I can listen to music when I need to block out the background chatter. For whatever reason, I stumbled upon the iTunes Radio Stations, which are a large listing of streaming audio from various internet sites. This is really nice, since I can listen to and discover new songs in categories of my choosing. I tend not to listen to NPR at work, since that actually distracts me from what I’m supposed to be doing, but I do listen to pop music, guitar instrumentals, and a SomaFM station called Lush which is what I’ve been listening to a lot recently. It seems to be the right balance between being entertaining and ignorable.