blog [mike atlas]

I wrote this back in January 2003. I am reposting here for posterity since it’s one of the few expository writings I’ve ever done for fun.

Eating a grapefruit from scratch is a labor of love.

Since the outer skin is pretty tough to penetrate or manipulate, I put it the entire grapefruit in the microwave to soften it up a bit. Then I proceed to stab it with a butter knife to get a break in the skin to start peeling; I was getting nowhere with my fingernails.

After peeling the outer waxy skin, a subdermal layer sits which isn’t very appetizing to eat, so you have to peel this part off also before you can start eating. By now I have invested about nine minutes. Ten more minutes pass before I get the second skin off.

I hold the entire grapefruit in my two fists; it’s now at least fifteen percent smaller with the outer layers gone. Grasping it and pulling apart, I separate it into two. The two seams where I pulled it apart have torn off and revealed the dark, red, meaty looking pulp inside. I suck at these pieces, and a rush of juice flows in my mouth.

I want to be able to eat the rest like orange slices, so I carefully squeeze out the few seeds inside, and pick away at the rest of the inner skin folds. I chew on several of the slices, and set aside a couple for tomorrow’s enjoyment. I’ve spent a good half hour now and only consumed about half of a grapefruit. My hands are sticky and my stomach isn’t hungry anymore. I’ll have to go wash my mouth out now, since my tongue is stinging from the acidic juices.

BEEP — still unceasingly — still inevitably BEEP! I gasped and struggled at each BEEP. I shrunk convulsively at its every BEEP. My ears followed its outward or upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unmeaning despair; they closed themselves spasmodically at the sound, although death would have been a relief, oh, how unspeakable! I still quivered in every nerve to think how slight a beeping of the machinery would precipitate that keen, glistening madness upon my bosom. It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver — the frame to shrink. It was hope — the hope that triumphs on the server rack — that whispers to the death-condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition.

So I sent in a story to DailyWTF, and the editor (severely) dramaticized the story and even photoshopped the screenshot I sent in, but so what! The “WTF” part is true at least, even if the facts about it were warped. It’s probably better that the facts were warped anyways.

It’s a Little Funny

I had to teach a co-worker how to insert data from a comma separated value file to a PostgreSQL database table today, using Python as the scripting language. This utilizes the pyscopg2 database adapter for Python 2.4.

import psycopg2, sys

try:
	conn = psycopg2.connect("""dbname='mydatabase'
		user='mikeatlas'
		host='localhost'
		port='5432'
		password='apassword'""")
except:
	print "Unable to connect to the database"
try:
	myfile = open('mydata.csv', 'r')
	for line in myfile:
		splitlineArray = line.split(',')
	cur = conn.cursor()
	sqlStatement = """INSERT INTO myTable
			(col0,  col1,  col2,  col3,  col4)
			VALUES ('"""+splitlineArray[0]+""",
				'"""+splitlineArray[1]+"""',
				'"""+splitlineArray[2]+"""',
				'"""+splitlineArray[3]+"""',
				'"""+splitlineArray[4]+"""')"""
	cur.execute(sqlStatement)
except:
	print "Error looping file into database"
try:
	conn.commit()
except:
	conn.rollback()
	conn.close()
	print "Error with transaction"

Boss: Add spaces here, here and here.
Dilbert: Ok, done.
[a few days pass]
Boss: Change the color here and add color to that thing over there
Dilbert: Ok, done.
[a few days pass]
Boss: Add lines so I’m less confused about where each thing ends.
Dilbert: Ok, done.
[a few days pass]
Boss: This looks very messy and unprofessional. Can you do something to it to make it simpler and use only two colors?
Dilbert: !!!

True story :(

Apple’s headquarters are in Cupertino, CA. Is someone there checking my site out?

I have traffic in my logs from 204.11.104.xxx - Unwired Ltd (wireless broadband in California), as well as from 64.124.85.xxx (Cambpell, CA, which is the town next to Cupertino).

I’ve also seen traffic in my logs from IP addresses owned by customers of Basis Technology…

—–Original Message—–
From: Michael Atlas
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 1:52 PM
To: Carl Hoffman
Subject: Oops!

I think I called you “Marc” in passing, my apologies!

—–Original Message—–
From: Carl Hoffman
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 2:24 PM
To: Michael Atlas
Subject: RE: Oops!

Bill,

You should see how often I make the same mistake.

Carl

So I’ve been working my new coop job at Basis Technology for the last month or so.

Just a minute ago I was sitting in the office kitchen talking with the head of IT about how .NET developer salaries are currently skyrocketing. According to him, VB.NET yearlies are going for $60k. VB.NET? Gross. I would consider myself a mid-level C#.NET developer, which he quoted at $80k. How soon till I graduate? Jeez. Who knows, though, you have to wonder if those are inflated salaries or what. CNN even confirms it. It’s no wonder the international grad students at Northeastern don’t speak a sentence that doesn’t contain some sort of phrase containing “.NET” in it when talking about jobs. They know where the money is going!

And while I was having this conversation, someone else walked into the room and commented on the fact that I was chatting it up, “You are the most outgoing intern!”. The head of the IT replied “Well, that’s why he actually has a girlfriend!” Pretty funny. But this leads me to a bigger issue that I’ve been mulling over for a little while now.

I am extroverted. Maybe I wasn’t when I was younger and wasn’t the most popular kid in school, but these days I most definitely am. My personal friends have attested to this without a doubt. And I’m a minority at my current coop. Basis’ software does some pretty technical things in regards to linguistic and computational analysis. My supervisor correlated this with the high number of introverted-types of people working here - the more technical the software company, the more introverted the [developers] company is. I mean, I could go the whole day without speaking to anybody if I wanted to. I find myself initiating most “hellos” in passing, for example. People tend to look at the ground when walking around the office, and I know it’s not because they’re sad. Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that many here are of non-western nationalities, where eye contact is socially disrespectful.

It’s not that bad, though, but I wish my work area actually had the lights on. The nearby developers seem to enjoy 24/7 darkness. Not me. I might even be feeling the hints of seasonal depression from it? Okay, maybe not, but when it’s cloudy outside I might as well be in a room with no windows.

Everyone here is friendly, though, and I’ve been kept busy doing some engaging JSP database driven linguistic as well as business oriented web application projects. But I’ve already started to pick up on the fact that this may not be the kind of company I’d want to work in for the long run - I need to be working with more extroverted types. I don’t have a specialty niche (financial, linguistics, graphics, robotics, etc.) type of software I am focused in on (yet).

I think, after graduation, the first job I should seek should be with a software consulting company. I have a broad range of talents that can be applied for diverse projects and I’m extroverted and work well with people. I think I’d get the most out of my talents in that kind of environment.

But this is exactly what coop is all about - find out about yourself and about what kind of place you’d like to work at after college or grad school. I’m glad I’m able to figure it out now instead of going to a 4-year school and then be stuck in an entry level position for years at some company that turned out to not fit my personality and skills properly.

On the X-Googler blog, Doug shares a hilarious story about interviews on Halloween day:

Another Googler did, in fact, tell me once about answering interview questions as Sergey, attired in a full-size cow suit, absentmindedly stroked his rubber udder. In retrospect, a roller hockey getup seems fairly formal by Google standards.

I have released a college-weight wrestling boxscore infusion for the PHP-Fusion content management system. You can see it in action at the NECCWA website, as well as a version for high school weights on the e107 content management system at MassWrestling.

The source is released under the GPL and you can find more informaton on it at my CV.