Nutrition Facts

It is important to teach your children how to budget money. I have a college-age daughter and a college-age son that have different ideas of what that means. They are polar opposites. My son can save money, while my daughter can't. In an effort to help my daughter, I have tried to lead by example. She has $40 that she can spend each week on food. As I am in California during the week, I thought I could show her how easy it is to do.

I leave my house in Utah on Monday mornings at O-Dark-Thirty and catch a plane to the Bay Area. When I arrive, I hit the ATM and get $40 for cash. I use that cash during the week to buy food as well as transportation to and from the airport. Generally I go shopping on Monday night and try to cook all my own meals. Sometimes that works well and other times am running from work to another activity and have to resort to a meal-on-the-go.

I really do try to eat healthy, but sometimes I find myself at the McDonalds drive-thru ordering a couple McDoubles (two patties of beef with two slices of cheese on a hamburger bun). At a buck each, it is a very economical meal. Especially if you leave out the fries and soda. When I get tired of cheap hamburgers, there is always Taco Bell with their 89 cent tacos among a plethora of other fast-food choices. This begs the question of how healthy fast food really is. Here is a list of restaurants with links to their nutritional data:

Arby's
Burger King
Carls Jr.
Dairy Queen
Five Guys Burgers & Fries
Hardees
In-N-Out Burger
Jack in the Box
Little Caesars Pizza
McDonalds
Pizza Hut
Subway
Taco Bell
Togo's
Wendy's
White Castle

After compiling this list, I can see why obesity is such a problem in the United States. Even if you are eating "healthy" sandwiches at Subway, you have to leave off the mayonnaise and cheese and who does that? Nutritionally bankrupt food is really cheap and costs less than healthy food. No wonder we are so fat as a country.

Staying Current

It is important to stay current with the technologies you use on a daily basis. This is especially true of the ones you use at work. As I am a database guy that works mostly in PostgreSQL, I make sure that the PostgreSQL website is always present in one of my browser tabs. I also make sure to read all of the entries from Planet PostgreSQL.

Normally I can just skim over the postings. Today was different. There was a great story from Josh Berkus about racing to create a database with a billion tables. While that would be a database administrator's nightmare, it was interesting to see the results. Josh didn't succeed in getting to a billion tables as the machine crashed before then due to operating system limitations. It did make it to the 4 million table mark. I would be interested to see how many tables could be created on a system with fewer limits, but would have to slash my wrists if I ever got put in charge of a database with over a million tables.

The second interesting posting of the day was from Robert Haas at EnterpriseDB. While I used to work at EDB, Robert came after I left and so I don't know him other than from his blog. He talked about some of the performance optimizations the PostgreSQL developers are thinking of adding to version 9.2. I have to say I am impressed if they actually are able to make them work. Some of the projects for which I am responsible, require extreme database speed. Anything the developers can do to make it faster, make me happy.

Not everyone is a big fan of databases and so I don't suggest that you immediately go out and read up on PostgreSQL. However I can recommend that you find quality websites relating to the technology you use at your job and read them daily. It doesn't take much time and will help you keep on top of any new features that you might just need.

Solving Two Problems at Once

I had two goals when I started my work day: Upgrade a commercial software product and create a very complicated report. I will be able to get both done, but it has not been easy.

I started working on the software update first. It didn't take long to run into a problem and I knew I would. We have a complicated environment at work and one of the pieces of software we use didn't take this into account. That means we have to make some minor tweaks and modifications with the help of the product's technical support department. I got as far as I could and then put a call into support.

Since I was in a waiting pattern, I started collecting data for my complicated report. It would be nice if I could write a bunch of code and let the report run on its own. Unfortunately I have to gather the data for each month of a 3-year period by hand. Each month requires an increasing amount of computer time to run. While the first month only took 2 minutes, the last month is taking closer to 20.

At about the 6th month mark, I got a call back from technical support and we worked for a while installing the latest version of their product. Naturally there were times where the technical support engineer and I were waiting on the computer and so I would go back to my report and get data for another month or two. Eventually we got everything working. The only problem was that the upgrade required me to go back and set up all our user information again. At least I was able to hang up the phone and do that on my own while I continued working on my report.

When I started the day, the software update was my main focus. When I was waiting, I switched my focus to the complex report. Once I could continue with the update, I changed focus again. This cycle repeated itself throughout the day until the update was completed. Now I am working solely on the report. When you think about your computer doing multiple things at the same time, that is exactly the process it uses to switch between tasks. Now if I could only find something else to do while I wait for these final months of the report to complete, I'll be a happy camper.

Computer at the Dentist

Last week I broke a crown. I hate to admit that one of my teeth is covered in a porcelain shell, but it is true. I guess all that candy I ate as a child eventually caught up to me.

I immediately called a friend that is a dentist as I was out of town and needed to know if I had to take care of it soon or if it could wait until I saw my regular dentist in Utah. As the exposed tooth wasn't that sensitive, I was fine. Yesterday I met with my dentist and the crown replacement was a modern miracle.

In the past, crowns were a two-visit process. First they put in a temporary crown and you had to be careful how you ate for three weeks while the permanent crown was being fabricated from an impression they took of the original tooth. When the new crown came in, it was back to the dentist for another day of drooling because of a numb mouth.

This time, the dentist removed my busted up old crown and then took a picture of the remaining tooth. He used a 3-D computer program to design a new crown to fit over the tooth. There was a bit of shaping to make sure it fit between the adjacent teeth. Once the tooth was designed, he electronically sent the specifications to the lab (conveniently located in his basement). The lab machined a new crown out of a block of porcelain and it was ready 10 minutes later. I then had the new crown gently placed in my mouth to make sure it was a perfect fit. There was a bit of fine tuning the dentist was able to do with his drill and then it was sent back to the lab for polishing. 20 minutes later, the new crown was cemented in my mouth and I was good to go.

The whole process took a total of about 2 hours. Most of that time, the dentist was working with other patients. It killed part of my morning but was well worth the wait. I don't have to go back and that has me singing praises. After all, who likes to visit the dentist?

The Last Lecture

Last night I was feeling a little frustrated with the computer and so I decided to search for “Funniest YouTube Videos”. I find that watching funny videos is a great way to get myself laughing and feeling good. There were the usual videos that appeared and then I stumbled upon Time Magazine’s list of YouTube’s 50 Best Videos. Naturally there was some duplication of things I had seen earlier, but it was a long list and so I started going through them.

One video that stood out on the list was “Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture.” I had read about how this university professor had been diagnosed with cancer and was shortly going to die. Until now, I have resisted watching the video because I didn’t want to be reminded of my own mortality and mistakenly thought that would be very apparent. Boy was I wrong. The title of the lecture is something along the lines of how to accomplish your childhood dreams. Randy does a great job of outlining his own childhood dreams and then how he went about making them reality. He then talks about the satisfaction of helping others achieve their childhood dreams.

I would have to say that it was a great lecture. While I only watched part of the other videos on Time Magazine’s list, I watched all one hour and sixteen minutes of Randy’s. While I have managed to live out some of my own childhood dreams I definitely learned a lot. I even forwarded the link to my own nineteen-year-old son who is preparing to move to Romania for the next two years. Hopefully he appreciates the sage advice.

The Game of Mafia

My Scouts love to play a game called "Mafia" when we are sitting around the campfire. It is a guessing game where innocent players try to figure out who the mafia members are before getting eliminated from the game. When you are gathered around the campfire, a narrator has everyone close their eyes and he assigns you as mafia or innocent. There is generally a ratio of 5 innocents for every mafia. Once the players are assigned, everyone closes their eyes again and only the mafia open them. They then quietly decide who to eliminate using hand gestures and signals. The narrator then has everyone open their eyes, says who has been eliminated, and then allows the group to discuss who they think is mafia. Once a consensus is reached, that person is eliminated from the game.

In an effort to get people from the various groups in our department to talk to each other, we are playing mafia at work. It is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it. It takes a bit longer in the office because the mafia gets one vote per day as does the public. That means only two people get eliminated from the game each day. With over 30 players, that makes for several weeks of play time. All voting is done via e-mail and we have a score board in the cafeteria.

It is interesting to see players come up with elaborate algorithms and spreadsheets to try and deduce the bad guys. Coworkers will ask each other if they are mafia and then gauge if the other person is lying. I have to admit, I find myself talking with people I have only passed in the hallway. The goal of the game is working. If you find yourself at a job where nobody knows anyone else, see if you can't start up a game of mafia.