Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Voting Against my best interest

For some reason, this story from deep within my memory banks rose to the surface recently.  One semester at NMSU, I was in a Differential Equations class. This was a class that was mostly comprised of Physics Majors like my friend B-Gill, and Engineering Majors like myself.  There might have been a math major or two, although I don't think it was a requirement.

Anyway, the Prof decided to let the class decide how the final exam would focus: Physics problem heavy or Engineering problem heavy.  I think that meant that more questions would be Physics-oriented than straightforward Engineering problems.  

I was struggling with the Physics type problems but doing fine with the Engineering ones.  Most of the Physics students could go either way, including B-Gill.  When it came time to vote, I don't remember how close it was, if we were told at all, but B-Gill chose Physics.  

That our exam was Physics Heavy cost me an A.  Meanwhile, B-Gill, who had missed some exams because of sickness, had a chance to score an A for the semester just by getting an A on the last and most important test of the class.  

I don't know why this came up in my MindFeed upon waking up in the middle of the night as I often do.  I'm sure I displayed some disappointment at B-Gill for not casting a vote to help me out.  He was gonna get an A no matter what the questions were.  



The Polish Calculus

This beats any Chem Test
In the Spring Semester of my freshmen year at NMSU, I had a solid B going into my Chemistry Final Exam.  As long as I got a few questions right, I would get a grade of B for the semester.  To get an A, however, I would need to have scored 46 out of 50*.

It was a three-hour test and only the TA was there.  On the first pass, I answered all the easy, soft questions 101 exams are often peppered with.  On the next pass, I knocked out a few more tougher questions.  At about the 1-hour mark, I determined that I had comfortably answered 40 out of 50* questions correctly, give or take a question.  In other words, my B grade was secure.    

But I also realized that there was no way I was gonna get 8 more questions correct in the next two hours.  If I hadn't learned it by now, there wasn't gonna be a Finals Miracle.  I probably did my best to make educated guesses and then just picked random answers which might have given me 1-2 lucky guesses but still not getting my A.

I could have sat there for two more hours pretending to work on the problems and maybe, maybe I'd get one or two more, but I wasn't getting the eight I needed to get into the A zone. 

I turned in my paper and went back to my dorm room and loaded up my mom's car, allowing us to leave 2 hours earlier on the 7+ hour ride back to Chicago.  

People don't like to hear stories like this because they feel you are giving up or taking the easy way out.  What they fail to understand is that is how a Greedy Algorithm works.  You make the best decision/select the best choice based on the information/options you have at the moment.  You cannot hope something will change down the road or expect a last-minute miracle.  

* I'm going off very old memories about the exact point differences.  Suffice it to say, I was sufficiently out of range for an A that nothing less than a perfect test was gonna convert my B into an A.

Monday, February 26, 2024

Back to the Beginning

 On Friday I got a phone call from the agency that "represents" me on my contract gig at No-Name Software Company Adjacent Company.

They told me that No-Name Software Company Adjacent Company is not renewing my contract and that my last day would be Feb 26th.  

While I'm not terribly upset that it ended, I wish it had gone on longer so I could use the experience to make my resume and LinkedIn profile more stable.  Because I've worked a few short-term contract jobs, I get penalized because:

  • Recruiters want me to list every job to show I'm hireable;
  • But the tasks and responsibilities are so mundane that no one would be impressed enough to choose me over another No-Name Software SME candidate.  

It is no coincidence that my Manager (Mel) rescheduled and canceled my One-On-One with her.  She, and our boss, don't like conflict and are just trying to hold onto their Corporate America jobs until they can retire.  They are on borrowed time because the Corporation that acquired their smaller company is not making money off their product.

What does irritate me is that Mel tried to pin it on me.  They could have, and did, go with Budget cuts.  But she also tried to put it on me that I didn't Step Up and In enough.  I should have been more of a self-starter.  let's ignore the snafu of my start date, or starting just as everyone is going on vacation after a long year of consulting.  

Translation:  I didn't realize I was going to have to be responsible for your Onboarding and be expected to help you succeed.  

Could I have been more aggressive?  Sure, but what would that have really accomplished when a company -- and by extension a team -- is somewhat dysfunctional?  I did my best to walk the line between asserting myself and respecting other people's downtime.  


  I'm writing these entries as they happen and as I have time to jot things down but I may not publish until months from now (or ever). Note: This post was written when the events were still fresh.  I waited for a while to post this because I didn’t want to risk my job-hunting efforts.

Monday, February 12, 2024

2024 Bears Playoff Prediction: early, optimistic edition

Even the Experts don't get it right
Now that the Super Bowl is over, we can turn our thoughts to next season.  A lot depends on what the Bears do and I have a decision to make.

I believe the Bears should stick with Justin Fields.  My theory is that each play a coach calls has a certain percentage of success based on practice and live games.  I believe the coaches willfully have
been calling up plays with lower percentages when there was a danger of winning a game in 2022 and 2023.  

If the Bears pick a QB in the first round then they are resetting and it probably isn't worth buying the expensive YouTubeTV package to watch games down here.  It's especially wasteful because most games are at noon on Sundays and that is the middle of the day, so watching them is problematic.


Two games each NFC North opponent (3 -3 )

I'm optimistic here and say they split.  Yeah, Green Bay will probably continue to own and sweep the Bears, but I want to be positive.  The Bears improved in the second half last year, not as much as the 2022 Lions, but there was improvement.  Also, they blew 3 games with double-digit leads.  If they can not do that this year, they have a better record.  Heck, maybe it's their turn to win a few games when they are behind by double-digit leads.

NFC West: vs. Los Angeles Rams, Seattle Seahawks / at Arizona Cardinals, at SF 49ers (2 -2 )

I believe the Cardinals and Seahawks are trending up and the Rams and 49ers are going in the other direction.  As always, it depends on when they play each other.  In 2022, the Bears beat the 49ers early in the season, yet San Francisco went on to the NFC championship.  

The Cardinals looked better at the end of last year so don't expect another Miracle in the Desert.  

AFC South: vs. Tennessee Titans, Jacksonville Jaguars / at Houston Texans, at Indianapolis Colts (1 - 3)

I am being really optimistic here because it could easily be 0-4.  All of these teams are better than their records indicate, and Texan exceeded expectations by actually winning a playoff game with a rookie quarterback.  The Bears will be lucky to steal a win from one of these teams.

NFC South: vs Carolina Panthers,  AFC East: vs New England Patriots, NFC East: at Washington Commanders

(3 -0)

On paper, all three of these should be winnable games.  Two of the Three have new coaches so they can "afford" to lose games during their rebuilding season.  I would wager that the Panthers are done losing, especially if they don't get the number one draft pick for their effort.  The Commanders are now in rebuild mode and we'll see what they do with the draft.  The Patriots are gonna Patriot.  

Monday, January 29, 2024

Orange Shrimp with Fettuccine

Sometime in the 90s, someone gave me a cookbook with different pasta dishes.  This is one of the first grown-up dishes I used to make and it was my go-to for trying to impress a lady.  It took many iterations before I ever made it with all the correct ingredients.  



For one thing, Shrimp was usually expensive, though I was probably being cheap versus budget-conscious.  I’d wait for that big shrimp sale Jewel used to do twice a year.  



Also, a bottle of sesame oil seemed pricy for the little amount.  Again, more about my cheapness than actual reality.  But once I used it, I would never not make this dish without it.  

 


Finding snow peas was tough too  Jewel didn't have fresh ones so I had to find them in the frozen section.  I learned it was easier to use a can of mandarin oranges than peeling and sectioning 2 actual oranges.   



Anyway, I made it again for Friday dinner and even Natasha likes it.

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

How snow fall can snowball in a Mid-South city

Because of holidays and snow days, my kids have been out of school more days than they have been in school so far this year.


It's understandable why they didn't have school yesterday as the snow was finally melting.  Not having it today is a questionable decision.  I get that they had to make it based on how conditions looked at 8 pm last night.  They couldn't count on the snow and ice being melted by the time school buses needed to pick up kids (it mostly was).

But honestly, it is damn near impossible to work while my kids are home.  First, they seem to know when I'm on a call and they come into the kitchen area and make lots of noise.

Second, Boris is an eating machine and I have to keep him from raiding the fridge and eating all the food at once.  

It's a balmy 50 degrees right now which is good for melting the last remnants of the snowfall.  But it also means it's wet and muddy so playing outside is not an option.

The snow also affected garbage pickup.  It was already going to be a day late because of MLK Day.  For some reason here, a Monday holiday causes everything to shift one day whereas in Chicago it would be caught up by Thursday.  But the snow made it impossible for the trucks to do pickup so we skipped a week.  Apparently, there were problems yesterday and they are gonna try to catch up today.  

We have two garbage bins which average about 1.5 fullness unless we have family over.  But our recycle bin is almost full and I still have some boxes and our usual daily production to figure out.  I could run some over to my FIL since he only recycles cardboard boxes.

We now have Ice

 When we moved in here in August 2021, after purchasing the home from Nightingale's parents, we knew that the refrigerator ice maker was wonky.  It would occasionally overfreeze and you had to use a hair dryer to melt it.  MIL had actually bought a replacement part but never got around to installing it herself because of limited bandwidth.







We put up with it though it became progressively worse and we were defrosting it once a month.  I think I finally burned something out with the hairdryer because it just stopped working just before Christmas.  

I found a YouTube video that showed me exactly how to replace it and since the ice maker was already defrosted, I didn't have to try to work the clumsy interface.  

Anyway, we have ice now and I don't have to do the hair dryer thing, at least for the time being.