The Stardancers!

I don't know if I told y'all, but Christine bamboozled me into playing Fantasy Football. And here is my logo for my team, the Stardancers! I stole it off the internet and then did some editing. :-)

Well, now I don't know what to tell you. Their clever marketing ploy (Fantasy Football) has worked, because I actually want to see the New Orleans / Cleveland game, because three of the players on my team are in that game! (2 on New Orleans, 1 on Cleveland.) On top of that, I am playing Jason, and one of HIS players is in the game too! Jason has Cleveland's quarterback, and I have one of Cleveland's running backs. So, let's hope for a high scoring game, where Cleveland scores all their points by running the ball.

Yesterday, Mike and I were talking about something, and I said "hey, what about those baseball tickets that Jason gave you?" Good thing I asked, because they are for tomorrow! So, we are going to the baseball game tomorrow.

My car has its first doctor appointment (oil change) tomorrow. I get the first 3 free at the dealership. I am supposed to get email reminders that the car is due for servicing, but I haven't gotten one yet, and the car has like 4300 miles on it. (The first one was supposed to happen at 3750). I guess, how are they supposed to know that I have been driving back and forth to Maine and New Hampshire?

My assessment of my job stands. I think it is a good fit. I have been given my first task, and I will soon embark on its implementation. At first, I thought it was going to be hard, because it was not at all obvious to me how the thing was going to fit into the existing structure of the program. But then, I found out that the hard part had already been done! Now, I just have to implement this similarity measure for Gaussian distributions, where the similarity measures have all been spelled out for me. No problem.

My wardrobe needs an upgrade

So, I have done my first week at BAE. My impression is that it is a good fit -- interesting problems and very nice people, with lots of potential upward mobility. They use very formal software development processes -- every step of the way must be documented in triplicate. It is a bit daunting, but I suppose that this is what you must do. Dress code is corporate casual. I can wear jeans, but t-shirts are "frowned upon." Time must be charged to various projects (or the overhead account) in 15 - 30 min. increments. I am going to be getting a security clearance so that I can handle classified stuff. I won't be able to talk much about what I am doing, since I don't want to let something out that shouldn't get out -- BAE proprietary, classified, etc.

Remember how I told all of you that I would be working at BAE, building bombs (ha ha)? Well, now that doesn't seem quite so funny. I feel a moral imperitive to participate in the political process. Here is my spiel on it: I wish no one had nuclear weapons. But, if someone has to have them, I really want "my side" to be the one that has them. I will be helping to build the tools of war. The only control I have over the way those tools are used is to vote, and make political contributions.

That was more of a downer than I meant, but I wanted to say it. Anyway.

So, I was put on two projects right off the bat. One of them, I haven't heard too much about. The other, I have a whole load of documentation to read. I was also put on a third project. Some dude is trying to get a project off the ground, and he asked my boss for someone who knew fourier transforms and Matlab. Everyone else was swamped, so, she put me on it. Yay Fourier transforms! After 24 hours, I went to the guy to tell him that I had made some good progress. He was on a phone call, and he told me to come in, and then sit down and listen in. They were talking about methods for figuring out the position of the hand and arms using accelerometers and acoustics and so on. I asked the guy if they had looked into the gesture recognition work -- there are lots of people in gesture recognition who want to know about the position and movement of arms and hands -- and then he told me to say it louder so the other person could hear. After that, I was like a full-fledged participant in the conversation, and afterwards, we talked about various modes of imaging that could contribute -- they had primarily been investigating other modes, but I had some thoughts about use of imaging that were good. So, I felt like I was able to contribute meaningfully after being on the project for 24 hours, and at work for 3 days. Yay!

We have got most of the big things down pat for the wedding. We have the venue, we have a minister, a dj, and a photographer, and a cake. The minister is Mary Wellemeyer, and she is associated with the Unitarian church in Manchester. The DJ is Shaun Yelle, the same DJ as at Christine's wedding. The photographers are Hinkley's Photography. The cake will (probably) be from the Breadbox Bakery in Windham. We are going for a tasting not next week, but the week after.

The photographers are a husband and wife pair -- just out of school by the looks of them. I think their pictures are very good -- as good and better than photographers charging more. I think they are talented, but relatively inexperienced, so they can't quite charge premium prices. Their wedding album format is kinda like a magazine with a hard cover. If they had told me ahead of time what I was getting, I think I would have been turned off, but after I saw it, I kinda liked it. I felt like it was something I would be willing to leave out for people to look at instead of hiding away in a bookcase. Their website is a little annoying. Too much flash. If you let it do its thing, then its okay. Just don't try to, like, control it. http://www.hinkleyphoto.com

Mike and I have had it with our cable/internet provider and we are going to go elsewhere. The cost is really through the roof, and sometimes the internet service cuts out, and sometimes the sound cuts out on the TV. We have been paying way too much for a while now. We are going to replace RCN cable and internet with a mixture of Verizon DSL, and DirectTV. That's the current plan at least.