Today’s jump into school was also a head-first jump into teaching my FIG students.  I was quite nervous, and there was no way for me to hide it from my students.  Nevertheless, I told them that I am not very good at public speaking, but would like to improve when opportunities arise for me to practice.  Thus, this creates a mutual relationship in which I am being taught too!  YAY!

The professors I encountered today have made a pretty good first impression on me because they were so laid back and have such an interesting sense of humor.  Hilarity ensued at M 340L when our professor had trouble with the blackboards in the room.  He was unable to get to the other blackboard and dropped and broke chalk left and right.  He eventually resorted to using the document camera and unveiled all the secrets he was to teach today.

I think this will be a great semester!  FIG and UT Solar Vehicles Team is going to own me!

Today, I was responsible for directing the flow of traffic into elevators and make sure people do not stuff them.  Although everything went smoothly, I did have to yell at a parent for using the emergency exit door.  Well… I really cannot blame her because it is really hard to understand that a door with a red sign that says “EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY” along with instructions on opening the door (meaning that you would have to try REAL hard to accidentally trigger the alarm) and beeps real loudly when the door is opened is not a door for routine exit of the building.  With that aside, when she tried to open it for the second time, I yelled at her and said that it was an emergency exit; and just to shame her, I turned to the people waiting for an elevator, I said, “I will NOT tolerate have another alarm here unless it’s a real emergency!”

Finally, GUADALUPE ST. IS NOT A DRAG RACING STRIP.  I think I will call APD and ask them to monitor this area closely.

Here is another interesting quote, this time from the childhood legend Dr. Seuss:

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
- Dr. Seuss

This somewhat reinforces the lesson that I learned yesterday about making friends.  There are risks to take, particularly standing the chance of stepping on someone’s toes by expressing your opinion or who you are.  Nevertheless, I believe that if someone is serious about negotiating communcation with you, then he/she will tolerate it.  This is especially true at UT because it is a diverse campus.  Everybody is bound to have differences in one way or another.  Getting your toes stepped on is a guarantee here, and the mark of maturity will come when you learn to tolerate rational arguments that disagree with your views.

I woke up at 5 in the morning today and drove to UT with my Dad in my Mom’s precious minivan.  Even with my driving, which is somewhat slow and safe, we reached there with time to spare.  I think I packed really well this time around because it only took three trips to get all my stuff into the room.  Still on my UT high, I proceeded to deliver my gifts to people and go to Leadership Week.

During the Mooov-In Team Leader orientation, the folks in charge had to break it to us that many people canceled on them and that we will have to take up the extra slack.  As they say, some people think that the world revolves around them and that they can cancel willy-nilly.

Leadership Week is turning out to be much more useful and worthwhile than what I have mostly seen in high school — I am not building a facade.  I feel like I am truly building a foundation that will help me and other succeed in the future.

While surfing on Digg today, I came across an article called “Proprietary Software Can Kill You.”  Basically, there has been an incident where doctors refused to pay the new, more-than-quadrupled tech support fee for some program that they use for their patients’ records; and they were consequently cut off from their patients’ records without some updated password.

While it is contractually correct for the vendor to disable the use of something the user did not pay for, it is ethically incorrect to hold the lives of many ransom over any amount of money.  It is the first fundamental canon of engineering ethics (which, to my irritation, not many people care about these days): to “hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.”  Is there really not a better way, like making records read-only when the contract expired?  Additionally, where do data formats come in?

A file can contain anything it pleases, and the only thing that could make sense out of its contents is the program that made this file.  Imagine a medical practice found a better, more affordable solution to keep its patients’ data.  Taking into consideration what I said and with no documentation on what the specifications of the file is, it will take a massive effort in order to port the data over to the new system.  Therefore, a vendor has even more reason to hold the data hostage: The prospect of having to re-enter information is simply daunting.

Therefore, I believe that the combination of contracts, proprietary data formats, and vendor-lock in is a deadly combination.  I swear to never be the person coding such an extreme, for the means between extremes (a compromise, if you will) is The Way to happiness.

Title changed per Cody Goodman‘s recommendation.

I have posted this in about five web sites.  Let’s see them get away with scamming people like us!

One Saturday night (7/8/2006), my parents saw the Sweep ‘n’ Mop commercial on TV. Initially, they thought that it was a good deal. I mean, for $10, you can get one of these lovely things. But wait! There’s more! You get another one of these mops for free and get free replacement heads for life! With that, they happily sent me to punch in an order for a set of the two mops and a set of 6 replacement heads. Now that I think about it, there were many red flags that we should have noticed. Here is a few:

1. The system asks for your credit card information upfront.
2. There is no way to revise or cancel the order once you have started it.

In any case, our order turned out like this:

• $10 – 2 mops
• $7.95 * 2 – Shipping for 2 mops
• $3.95 * 6 – Shipping for the set of 6 replacement heads

TOTAL: $49.60

After we figured out that something was not right, my parents had me cancel the order first thing in the morning (7/10). During the call, they claimed that they are unable to cancel the order because it has already been shipped out, and that I can obtain a refund by refusing the package. Their claim that the package has been shipped out is shady at best because they cannot provide me with a tracking number. Additionally, it was 8:30 in the morning when I made the call. The post office could not have opened that early and I know that no sane company would go and individually take each package to the post office as they come along.

The package came on 7/21. We refused the package as the postmaster tried to deliver the package, and she took it back.

Out of curiosity, I checked the delivery records and the credit card records today (8/6). It turns out that they billed me on 7/13, and started the delivery process on 7/18. If I remember correctly, they promised to not bill until they started the delivery process. The thing that infuriated me most was the credit they put to my account: $10.00. These scoundrels took $39.60 for “shipping!”

I have photos of the package we wrote “REFUSED” on it, a log of what happened, and printouts proving all their dishonesty. Even if we do not get our money back, this lesson is absolutely free to those willing to read. Go forth, be wiser, and save yourself from having to graduate from the School of Hard Knocks!

Update: After an hour or so on the phone, I have managed to get them to promise to refund most of our money.

In today’s Personalized Google page, I saw this quote:

“We need anything politically important rationed out like Pez: small, sweet, and coming out of a funny, plastic head.”
- Dennis Miller

I believe that this quote implies several things:

1. Changes must be small and incremental.  Rarely do sweeping, radical changes make it through the many branches of government.
2. For anything bad, there must be a nicer way to report what is going on.
3. There are some funny-looking politicians out there.  That is in the eye of the beholder.

It is a bit late, but I am pleased to report that Firefox has been downloaded for the 200 millionth time!  To give you a small basis for comparison, that is at least 1/10 the number of iTunes downloaded!  If you have not already done so, click on the link to the left, install it, take the five-minute challenge, and see what you are missing!

One day, my 10-year-old brother checked out a book from the library called A Book About Design: Complicated Doesn’t Make It Good.  I read it out of curiosity, and it reminded me of the importance of balance and simplicity.  I believe that is a crucial lesson that us engineers often need a reminder.  In our attempt to make life easier by automating tasks and put as much functionality into everything we build, we have unfortunately made things too complicated.  That is why buying the latest and greatest has been relinquished to the geeks.  One of my friends told me about some cars that are overly complicated, and I would like to use them as examples:

• A certain Lexus model does not have door handles.  In place of keys, a driver has a RFID keyfob.  Should that keyfob’s batteries die, one can pull out a key and stick it in some place under the rear bumper.  But what if the battery in the car is dead too?  Will hilarity ensue?  Who knows — the hood access switch is inside the car, and the doors are electric?
• A BMW does not have a dipstick to check oil levels.  Instead, it has a sensor of some sort.  Additionally, you will be unable to check the oil level until the engine has warmed up.

Despite the good intentions of those who designed these features, they are still counterproductive at best.  I find it ironic and silly to pay $50,000 upwards for a car that I will have to fix or repair frequently if not daily.  I welcome innovation, but nobody likes it when it gets too intrusive.  Therefore, transitions must be made slowly so that innovations have time to mature and eventually become the time-tested, tried-and-true classics.