Blackle

Has anyone seen Blackle? I just came across this on a post from Seattle Metblogs, and I thought it was super cool!

What will Google think of next?

Nerdy Limerick #2

there once was a young man named Kyle
who wanted to read someone's file
so he logged in as root
and copied his loot
then typed rm star with a smile

So You Want More Engineers

I read this article a little while back in the Spectrum, and wanted to comment on it. It raises the question of how the U.S. can stay competitive in the global market if we're not producing enough scientists and engineers. I have said earlier on this blog that forcing people into engineering is ill-advised to say the least. However, this Spectrum article made me think some more about how we could go about encouraging math and science learning in a way that makes sense. The article says:

The report concludes that high-quality jobs are necessary for both individual and national prosperity and that advances in science and engineering are needed to create such jobs. ...

If we accept these conclusions, then we must ask how to get more engineers and how to make them more productive and innovative. The first question is one I’ve heard discussed endlessly through the years: Why aren’t there more of us engineers?

First of all, I have a quick answer for why there aren't more engineers. Engineers get paid way less than lawyers, doctors, and financial analysts. The pay for engineers isn't exactly crappy, but it's far from those more lucrative fields. If you're so smart, why wouldn't you go where the big bucks are? I'm not 100% sure of the root cause of this problem, but I suspect it has a little bit to do with the litigious nature of our culture. I optimistically hope that pay for engineers will be rising soon, as baby boomers retire and the shortage (especially in defense) gets more severe. (By the way, these boomers came of age during the space race, which I basically consider to be the 'glory days' of engineering).

That being said, I do have a few ideas that I think would help the educational system crank out more engineers.

1. more second-career teachers

When I graduated high school, I don't think I could have named more than 10 different jobs. Teacher, doctor, lawyer... I pretty much only knew the big ones. Maybe I wasn't exposed to a lot of adults while I was growing up, but I think many kids are in the same boat. They know what teachers are, they know what their parents do, they know stuff they see on tv, and that's about it.

I think second-career teachers could bring a lot to a classroom. Most of my high school teachers were extremely young - one of them was only 22. (Yes some of the girls flirted with him... he was essentially a frat boy who had just stopped fratting three months prior.) Don't get me wrong, young teachers can be great. I learned how to write proofs from a math teacher who was for sure under 30, and that was when I really started to love math. Then again, that same teacher told us that he almost became an engineer but thought it was too boring. So... I didn't exactly learn a lot about career options from my teachers.

I sometimes contemplate going into teaching myself (ok I'll admit it, having the summer off sounds fantastic!). I think if I did teach math, I'd be able to use a lot of applied examples in the class. For example, when I used to work on radar, integration was very important. Showing students how integration can help you find a target is a lot cooler than that tired old "filling a tank with water" problem.

If your math and science teachers had worked in laboratories, software companies, defense contractors, financial firms, etc., they could tell some stories and give you a feel for different careers. You'd have a better idea of how useful those math and science skills are, and what a broad range of careers are available to people who possess those skills.

How do you get more second-career teachers? Pay teachers more. And/or pay more based on experience, but count prior work in relevant fields as experience. (I don't really know enough about teacher pay scales to discuss this too much).

2. vocational school for coders

I do understand the argument that people should receive well-rounded educations. I was sometimes annoyed that I had to take classes like art history, but I appreciate that more and more as I get older. However, think back to when manufacturing was king. People could get fantastic, high-paying jobs as machinests without a 4 year degree. If you are skilled with a tool like C++ or Perl, you should be rewarded for that skill. Here's the reasons why I think a 2-3 year coding program would be a fantastic idea:

a) Two or three years of focusing on coding would mean much more coding time that you get in a typical undergrad program. You could tackle bigger issues, such as working on someone else's old code, or having a big project that lasts multiple terms. And could really emphasize good practices, such as commenting. The coders who can finish the program would be very good.

b) Good coders coming out of these schools would write good, clean code. Many coders will tell you that their least favorite part of the job is working on someone else's old code. While we may never be able to eliminate that distasteful task, if people wrote more elegant, clean, well-commented code it wouldn't be quite so bad.

c) I can think of at least 3 friends of mine who are smart and good coders but who couldn't make it through a 4-year degree. They either got bored by classes that didn't interest them, or they struggled with classes such as vector calculus. You do NOT need vector calc to be a coder. You only need some discrete math/linear algebra. (Unless you want to be a coder from mathworks or something).

d) When I studied abroad in Australia, I was way behind other students in my program. Why? Because after 3 years I had barely gotten into the technical classes, but over there they go straight into engineering. There's no messing around with general education classes, because they believe that they get that education in high school. If a country like Australia can kick our butts in engineering and math(s), just think what India and China must be doing.

3. tv show about coders

Ok this might seem a little bit silly. But even in this brave new age of blogs and youtube, television still reigns supreme over pop culture. If you are a kid watching a lot of tv, your top career choices are probably: cop, lawyer, doctor, supermodel, basketball player, etc. The stereotype of the nerdy engineer/coder is extremely pervasive on tv/movies/cartoons. At best, the engineer has a nice supporting role, like the guy who makes James Bond's watches or something.

I actually have this whole sit-com idea in my head, with the pilot episode completely planned out. Someday I'd love to actually write it down and send it to Hollywood! If they only had a show like Scrubs or Friends, where the main characters are engineers! Then people could see some positive examples of smart people who are normal, funny, go out and party, get dates, etc. Not all engineers are people like Screech. (Although it may be safe to say that most Screech-like people are engineers. One could say that the Screech condition is sufficient but not necessary.)

On the other hand, we can just wait till other countries get rich enough to star suing each other, and then as their engineers are flowing into the U.S., our lawyers will be exported around the world! Ah, the beauty of comparative advantage!

Nerdy Limerick #1

In honor of St. Patty's Day yesterday, I started composing a few nerdy limericks - further proof that I am turning into my father. (He loves puns/rhymie things, etc.) I'll be posting them periodically. (Or perhaps aperiodically.)

Limerick #1

If you need to format some text
and you're not quite sure what to do next
just use your head
and pipe it to sed
now there's no need to be vexed

Album of the Weekend

A few days ago I heard the song Babylon by Naked Rhythm on Pandora, and looked it up on Amazon. I ended up buying their whole album: Naked Rhythm - Frequency.

It's all really good stuff (if you're into middle-eastern-inspiried-ambient music). It's the PERFECT thing to work to, which is what I need right now since I'm spending most of my waking hours coding, working on a take-home final, and studying for my Econ final.

If I had to pick a favorite song, I think I'd pick Shisha. I basically judge music by what kind of cool stuff it makes me imagine when I listen to it. In this song, I'm a Russian spy (I'm always a Russian spy - they're sexy and dangerous!) smoking a hooka in a cool nightclub in Morocco. I see someone who wants to kill me, and I jump over the table and out the door. There's a big chase scene through the narrow passages of the medina. I do some cool parkour moves and manage to escape. Once I have lost my chaser, I walk into another swanky bar (still looking fabulous - not a hair out of place) and a dark handsome man (probably another spy) buys me a drink.

How did grad school kick my a** so bad?

Perling after Dark

It is 11:15pm. I am trying to debug 2 different perl programs - both of which I thought I was done with days ago. After finding several bugs today, I'm onto the 'super bug' phase, where I'm only finding bugs which have become resistant to all of my normal antibiotics (a.k.a. print statements). Even though I got a lot of sleep last night, looking at these bugs is making me so exhausted that I am about to give up and go to bed.

I was thinking recently about how I used to have a lot more patience with coding. As an undergrad, I'd compile something, see the list of errors, and jump in. Now when I see that list, I just sigh and stare at the screen for awhile.

I think as an undergrad I was willing to put a lot of time into my coding because I thought that I was getting better at it. I figured that after a couple years of suffering, I'd somehow magically become a good coder and it would all be easier. It turns out that this is not the case. At least, not for me. How did I get myself into this situation??? I'm 27 years old and I'm doing something that I'm not good at.

I know my self help book warned against blaming yourself for too much stuff, but the problem with coding is, when I find bugs I do have to blame myself, because 99% of the time they are there because I was too lazy to test the code thoroughly enough. And why am I too lazy? Because I don't like what I'm doing. It's a chicken and egg problem really. I'm not very good at coding, which makes me dislike it, which makes me worse at it.


The Hamster Wheel

I am afraid for myself, because my motivation level has been on the decline for about a year, and I don't know how I will function in society if I can't get it back. Without my motivation, I feel like I don't know who I am anymore. I feel like I have been running in this big hamster wheel for most of my life, and suddenly a year ago someone said, "Hey Amy, did you know that you're just running in place on a giant hamster wheel?"

At first I didn't quite believe them so I kept running. But the more I thought about it the slower I ran, because I realized that they were right. I kept trying to remember my original reasons for getting on the wheel and running, but it turns out I didn't have any. I was so young when I got on that I just did it without thinking. I wouldn't have expressed it in so many words, but I wanted to be a workaholic when I grew up. I defined myself by the work I did, and the harder I worked, the more important I felt.

Now I am walking on that wheel, and it's incredibly hard to turn it when you're going slow. Plus, my importance is still tied to the speed of that wheel, so I feel pretty crappy right now. And the crappier I feel, the heavier that wheel gets.

After I finish my master's, I am going to go on a giant road trip (which I have been meaning to write about, I'm pretty excited about it actually). Hopefully during that trip I can write my novel (it's true, I actually do want to write one - I'm so white!), ponder the meaning of life, and figure out what I am supposed to be doing. Otherwise, it's going to be a very long 40 years of print statements.

Lending Club Update #1

I haven't received my first payment from Lending Club yet, but I wanted to do a quick post on what has happened so far.

1. I found that about 2/3 of the money that I submit to loans actually ends up in a funded loan. Here were my numbers:

I originally submitted $1000 to be disbursed into 40 different loans. After a week or so, I could see that many of these loans were not getting funded, and those chunks of money were being credited back to my account. So, I added another $500. As of a few days ago, all of the loans are either funded or rejected, and I ended up with $1025 out in 41 different loans. This gives me an expected monthly payment of $34.61.

2. I got my first referral bonus, from my sister! $50 baby!! I put $5k into the account, so that's already a 1% return. Click here to use me as a referral!

3. I really think this could change our economy for the better. We'll see how it goes, but my prediction is that this type of lending will take off big time!

Engineering Skillz

Do you ever think about how you would market yourself if you suddenly became homeless? (I guess between Tucson and Seattle I'm always surrounded by a healthy homeless population... so it's just on my mind sometimes.)

Anyway, in grad school I often ask myself how useful is this stuff I am learning? I think the answer is 'not very', at least not in any applied sense. Here's the 5 best "homeless signs" I could come up with:

5. Will convolve discrete-time signals for food.

4. Unwieldy random process? Will provide simplifying assumptions to enable modeling as a Markov Chain.

3. Will train decision trees (or other linear classifiers) for food. Throw in a Mickey's and you can get yourself a non-linear classifier.

2. Will reduce dimension of large feature vectors for food. Results depend on eigenvalues.

1. Will project signal onto orthogonal basis function for food. (OK who am I kidding - I'd do this one for free!)

Eating Out and About: Wallingford, Eastlake, and Fremont

Wallingford

Ok I didn't actually go "out", per se. I had people over to my house on Thursday, where I cooked poutine. MMMM. It's very easy to make, and while not everyone likes it, it's at least a conversation piece.
It was also budget friendly. I ate the leftovers the next day and they were still good!

Ingredients: frozen fries from QFC, Beecher's cheese curds, from QFC, and no name poutine gravy, from Canada.

Eastlake

Last night we had a double data at Sitka and Spruce. I have been wanting to try this restaurant for a while, after reading about it in the Seattle Metropolitan.

It's a pretty fancy place. The menu is in chalk on a big board, and there are maybe 10 items on it. Same goes for the wine list. We sampled some exotic foods, including duck egg (pretty yum but not quite as good as a chicken egg in my opinion), pig belly, pig jowl, and turnips. (Are turnips exotic? Well, I don't think I'd had them before.) The pig belly was actually very good! I wasn't looking forward to it, because I thought it would be chewy like cow stomach, but I was wrong. It tasted like a tiny bit of deliciously-charred meat combined with a generous spoonful of butter. Basically it was 95% fat. But not chewy gross fat. Soft, silky fat. (Sorry vegetarians... it was just really good).

Other less exotic but also tasty foods were fish and steak. The fish came out with it's head still intact, bur our friendly waitress was kind enough to de-head it for us. Then, in case we hadn't had enough pig fat, we ordered coffee and two desserts to share. The coffee smelled amazing, and was served in a press! Cute.

I was as stuffed as a Christmas goose at the end of that dinner, but the boys were still a bit hungry, so we headed next door to Subway to try out their new pizzas. I can't comment since I didn't sample one, but it looked pretty decent.

I found S&S pretty similar to Elemantal@Gasworks in a lot of ways, and if I had to pick one I'd say that Elemental was a little better. We had gone to Elemental for my b-day, and I liked how they pair wines with each course for you. You sit there for 2-3 hours, being bombarded with new foods and wines. But S&S was awesome too, and I'd highly recommend it for a nice date.


Fremont

This morning we did what is rapidly becoming a weekend tradition for us: go to breakfast at the PCC. Most stuff in PCC is unaffordable, to put it mildly. But their breakfast hot case is delicious, and much cheaper than going to a real sit down place. (No tip, for one thing!) You can get a pretty hearty plate full of stuff for under $5. This morning I had yams, a piece of quiche, and some of their yummy, slightly spicy corn casserole dish.

Song of the Weekend

My favorite song of the moment:

Parliament - Flashlight

Listen to that song and tell me you do not feel groovy! Just try it!

Lending Club (My Retirement Plan)

A few weeks ago, I was reading a Business Week article, and it mentioned a peer-to-peer lending service, called The Lending Club. I was intrigued! It sounded like you could get a pretty good rate of return by lending money to people who were trying to consolidate their debt. Especially now when credit cards are raising their rates, it makes sense that people could benefit from such a system.

So, I checked out the site, and also searched around on the web a bit to see what I could find out. The bottom line for me is that, given a 'medium' risk level, I could make about 12-13% interest on my money. How fantastic is that?!? Visions of retirement started dancing in my head. If I went back to a 'real' engineering job and pumped all of my savings into that thing, I could "retire" in 7 years! I put retire in quotes because that would mean I'd be living off of the same amount of money I live off of now. It wouldn't exactly be a luxurious retirement, but I could supplement it by working part time at Dick's.

Anyway, here's my review of the my Lending Club experience so far.


PROS:

1. Great returns! The loan rates range 7.37 to 18.61%, depending on the credit-worthiness of the borrower, and associated risk level.

2. There are no fees to start lending. As a lending, you do pay a processing fee of 1% of all money paid by the borrower. So your effective return would range from 6.37 to 17.61%. As a borrower, you pay an initialization fee depending on your loan grade, and other fees for late or bounced payments.

3. The default rate is 0%, so far. The business only started in May of last year, so I am guessing that the default rate will go up slightly. As of right now, 0.65% of their loans are more than 30 days late, so I'd bet that some of those end up being defaults.

4. You can feel like you are helping people. The people borrowing money on this site wouldn't bother with it if they could get cheaper money through a credit card or bank. I think if this type of lending takes off it could help the economy quite a bit. For example, one of my loans that is currently in the funding stage right now is for a guy who wants to buy a 97 Miata. Apparently you can't get a used car loan for a car if it's more than 5 years old. Yet it seems like a pretty valid thing to buy, in my opinion. (Sure if it were me, I wouldn't buy it unless I could pay cash, but hey I'm an engineer. That's how we roll.)

5. If you sign up through a referral, you can get a $25 bonus (or $50 if you fund your account with at least $1000), and the person who referred you gets an identical bonus. You can use me as a referral and I'll use all that money to fund my giant road trip! (I'll probably be blogging about my giant road trip idea very soon).

CONS:

1. Starting out with the LC is a little bit of a slow process. You can't decide to put money into it and start seeing returns the next day. It's actually a three step process to start lending.

Step 1 - Verify your account. the LC makes a small (< $1) withdrawal from your checking account. You must tell them what that amount was to verify your bank account. For some reason, it took at least 3 days for that withdrawal to show up in my bank account.

Step 2 - Deposit the money. This took about 5 days to go through.

Step 3 - Get your money into the actual loans. When you put money into a loan, you are only partially funding it. (You can select individual loans yourself, or have the website do it based on a risk level which you provide them). I put in $1000, which was split into $25 chunks for 40 different loans. Then, I had to wait for those loans to either get completely funded or expire. They have a two-week waiting period, and at the end of the period if the loan isn't fully funded, the borrow can either chose to take the partial funding or cancel the loan.

2. It might take a little bit of work to get the exact risk level that you desire. When I put my $1000 into 40 loans, about a third of them didn't end up going through. This then skews my portfolio balance. For me it only changed my return by about half a percent, but it's just something you'd have to keep an eye on.

3. Your money is tied up for 3 years. All the loans are 36 month loans. There is no pre-payment penalty, and if the borrower does pre-pay then you just get your money back. But in general it's definitely not a liquid asset like a stock.

4. The loans are not asset backed. It's just like being a credit card company. If the people default, the LC sends them to collections, but that's all they can do. It'll of course hurt their credit rating (and LC only takes clients with a FICO score of 640 or above), but it is still risky.

But hey, if I'm gonna retire in 7 years, I will have to take a few risks! My first loan payment is due on March 27th. (A whole 80 cents). I'll let you know how it goes!

10 Favorite Drinks

10 on Tuesday

10. Mickey's! Mmmm 40 ounces of ice cold malt liquor. In a paper bag.

9. San Pelligrino.

8. Sparkling fruit juice. Most notably Izze, but it's easy to make your own too, just buy juice and club soda.

7. IPA. I like lots of beers, but my faves are pale ales.

6. Diet Coke. It's a very addictive drink.

5. Cherry limeade from Sonic!!

4. Dry Soda. Seattlites can buy from the source in Pioneer Square.

3. English Breakfast, with milk.

2. airforce Nutrisoda Focus. These airforce drinks used to be for sale in the hub but last time I looked I couldn't find it. I'm not sure if the 'focus' drink actually helped me focus, but it seemed to perk me up quite a bit.

1. Coffee! Of course.