Steve's Blog

Fifty Years Later

2010-03-07T11:15:07

September 15, 1958

It was unseasonably cool for September; breezy, with the sky alternating between patches of blue and torrents of rain.

My husband was returning, finally and for what I must only hope is the last time, from his naval service. He had enlisted young, right at the end of the second great war, and as a result he was able to receive his discharge before the growing threat of Vietnam spilled onto the American conscious.

I selected a petite flower dress, and a hat, from the small closet of my motel room. These weren’t the most appropriate clothes for the weather, but weather be damned, I wasn’t going to meet my husband in a heavy overcoat. Prudence, perhaps, dictated as well that I select an umbrella to avoid being caught in a shower.

The hands on the table clock swept closer and closer to 1. I would meet him, his grizzled face, his strong muscles, his take-charge attitude, all of him; at the bus station here in town. It would be an easy walk, and as I finished dressing, I could hardly contain my excitement.

“Maytown,” he wrote, “one in the afternoon. That’s when the bus is due to arrive. If I could see your face when I step off that bus, I would be the happiest man alive.”

That’s why I was here, in Maytown, in a motel.

The sundress fit me well, swishing to and fro as I meandered down the motel hallway. I could hear the sounds of last of the lunch crowd in the restaurant.

“What a beautiful dress,” an elderly lady remarked to me as I passed.

“Thank you,” I smiled, “I’m going to meet my husband.”

“Coming home from the war?” she asked.

“Oh yes, I’m so excited!”

Her wizened old face and distant eyes still held enough life to crack a smile. Perhaps she was remembering herself at a younger age, perhaps she once went in a flower print dress to meet her husband.

The motel reception desk was empty; perhaps a guest was being shown to their room. No matter. A vacuum salesman, dressed in a crisp blue uniform, carried one of the new mechanical cleaning devices across the room. In a motel this size, cleaning is surely expensive; the vacuum salesman had come to the right place. Some of my friends had told me they were planned to purchase a vacuum cleaner; prices had come down. Maybe one day I would own one too.

“That’s a nice looking vacuum,” I commented, still riding on my cloud.

“Thank you, ma'am,” he smiled.

I could see the undecided September weather through the front windows. I opened my umbrella and stepped outside.

It was cool, not cold, not as cold as I expected. The bus station was nearby, and I began to walk, trot almost, excited and giddy.

Cars picked their way up and down the street, carefully avoiding large puddles and poor souls running across the road to get out of the rain. I could see the bus station, the sign and a poster advertising the bus' services. At this moment, I was assaulted.

A young woman, not much younger than myself, grabbed my arm aggressively. “Maybelle, get inside!” she yelled.

How she knew my name, I have no idea. I’ve certainly never met or seen her before in my life. “Get your hands off me!” I cried. I fumbled with the umbrella, and it fell into a puddle. A small bit of water splashed onto my dress. Suddenly I felt very cold.

My attacker wore a strange outfit, an outfit that reminded me of the mental asylum not too many miles away. I’ve heard, well, to be delicate, that sometimes the body makes up in strength what it lacks in other areas. Perhaps she was recently released; or escaped. Who has ever heard of one young lady assaulting another, in broad daylight, near the bus station? I have never heard of such a thing.

She didn’t back down. “Maybelle, come with me,” she yelled again, and began to drag me. She’s very strong, and I have trouble holding my balance.

“My husband,” I call out in despair, “I’m going to meet my husband! He’s coming on the bus! Let go of me!”

Then I see it. The bus is here. My husband will save me from this wench. The bus rolls to a stop, slowly, easing gently into the station. “Davey!” I cry out at the top of my lungs as the doors open. “Help!”

I’m too far away now to see Davey, my husband, get off the bus. In desperation, I hit my attacker. I know it’s not lady-like, but I had to do something. It doesn’t help, she’s too strong. Suddenly, emerging from the motel, another lady, dressed like the first. Together they tear me away, back through the doors, and hallways, down, down, down.

Davey...

September 15, 2008

It was unseasonably cool for September; breezy, with the sky alternating between patches of blue and torrents of rain.

Rhonda shook her head. “Good luck,” she said sarcastically.

I raised my eyebrows. The day was looking very busy all ready. One of the caregivers had called in sick, the nurse was on the phone with a doctor, in some kind of screaming match, and residents were demanding all sorts of medication and care. Maytown Nursing Home was not a place to work if you couldn’t handle action.

“I’m going to take these down west hall,” I called out to the nurse, motioned at some requested medications, “and then I’m come back and help you!”

She gave me the thumbs up, never breaking her stride with the doctor on the phone.

I walked to the end of the hall first, visiting several residents and giving out medications. Halfway down the hall, a resident named Ellen was limping down the hall with her walker. “Did you see Maybelle today?” her voice cracked, “She looks so lovely.”

“I haven’t seen Maybelle today, Ellen,” I replied quickly, “But I will go and say hello to her in a few minutes.” Maybelle was a fun older lady only in her seventies, which was a bit young compared to some of our residents. But she wasn’t aging well, and doctors had determined that she was coming down with dementia.

“Ok, then,” Ellen continued slowly toward her room.

Maybelle’s room was actually behind me now. I continued dispensing the rest of the requested medication, and then returned down to Maybelle’s room. Ellen was gone, presumably back in her room. I knocked on Maybelle’s door.

“Maybelle!” I called out.

Silence. I popped the door open and glanced around. It was quickly obvious that Maybelle was not in the room. Could she be at the nurses' station?

I skipped back down to the nurses station. Empty. I could hear the nurse rummaging in a back room, probably looking for some lost medication. The janitor, dressed in his crisp blue uniform, was vacuuming nearby. The noise of the vacuum made it impossible to talk to the nurse from here. I stepped into the back room.

“The doctor claims she was never prescribed Xanax,” she exploded, “But I’ve got three boxes right here. Why would the pharmacy have sent it if the doctor hadn’t prescribed it?”

“Sorry,” I interrupted, “Have you seen Maybelle? She’s not in her room and she’s not at the nurses station.”

“Well then go look for her!” the nurse snapped at me.

I backed out quickly. The janitor nodded to me; he was now headed for the east hall, vacuuming away.

I walked quickly toward the kitchen, thinking she might be going for a snack. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash. A dress. Maybelle. She was out in the rain.

“Maybelle’s outside!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, and, not waiting to see if anyone heard me, I ran out after her. I crossed the parking lot in record time; Maybelle in her old flower print dress and tattered umbrella, was headed for the city bus stop on the busy street.

“Maybelle, get inside!” I yelled as I caught up with her, grabbing her arm.

“Get your hands off me!” Maybelle responded. Her eyes were hollow, empty like a broken glass. I held her with care, feeling her fragile skin flex beneath my fingers. She stumbled and dropped her umbrella; it splashed into a puddle. I could see confusion clouding her vision. We had know for several months that Maybelle was developing dementia, but it had never resulted in an escape attempt before. I had to get her back inside quickly, before the cold and wet gave her pneumonia, or worse.

“Maybelle, come with me,” I said forcefully, and began to maneuver Maybelle back toward the nursing home. She resisted, and I struggled to move her without hurting her. I couldn’t let her stay outside and I certainly couldn’t let her get to the street. She could be hit by a car.

“My husband,” Maybelle called out, like a wounded animal, “I’m going to meet my husband! He’s coming on the bus! Let go of me!”

The bus. Sure enough, moments later, the bus pulled in. Several teenagers got off, but no husband. “Davey!” she calls out to them.

The nurse, finally realizing there was a serious situation, came out to help me. Together we manage to get a sobbing, incoherent Maybelle back to her room and into her chair. She’s cold, so I change her clothes and cover her with a blanket.

“We have to call the state,” the nurse says outside her door.

“I suppose her husband died some time ago,” I muse, having only known her as a widow since she arrived.

The nurse looks away. “It’s very sad,” she says, “her husband was a naval soldier; he was killed at the end of the World War 2. Ironically, it was an accidentally death. He got hit on the head by some machinery on the boat, fell off, and drowned. They were married right before he went off to duty, and she never got to see him return. She never re-married, and has no children or any other living relatives that I know of.”

I look down, and nod.

“I’ll call the state. We’ll have to arrange a transfer.”

ITiCSE paper

2010-03-06T12:55:06

My ITiCSE 2010 paper was accepted. Of the five reviewers, two gave it the highest rating possible (all 5’s); one gave it one 4 and the rest 5s, and the other two were more cautious.

Excerpts:

The troubling statement(s) I found are the statistical inference that is presented in the Abstract and in Section 3. The phrase is “40% aggregate increase in class completion”: there needs to be some indication of the number of students that are in the class. If the class size is 10, this increase is entirely meaningless. If the class size is 100, then this may be significant. Providing some measure of this statistic is required for this paper to be accepted.

This was a major issue I had in writing the paper – the class sizes are somewhat small, and perhaps not enough for statistical significance. Therefore, I carefully avoided any language in the paper which might incorrectly claim significance. Of course, a statistically strong result is preferable!

Lots of us probably use debuggers to show program traces, this takes the idea a step further. I think this adds some extra functionality to a common pedagogical approach.

a curious one:

The tool (I used it online) reminds me of “programmed instruction” tools (i.e. you will learn my way, no shortcuts because you know something already), for example: “the student must select the division operator first”. I dislike these approaches, however I may never have been the typical first year CS student. I would have to agree with the students who did not “enjoy” using it.

I found this review curious for two reasons:

1. Regardless of what short-cuts you may apply, the computer has one specific approach that it uses. Students have a hard time understanding that the computer DOES NOT infer “what they mean” or make reasonable choices for them – it does exactly what they say. “My way” here is, as much as possible, “the computer’s way”.

2. Studies have shown that this “consistency” is a significant factor in predicting student success; in fact, the whole foundation of my approach is based on the idea that the students' will succeed more if they have a better mental model of the way the computer is working.

Next step is to preform some revisions and prepare the paper for final publication.

One Six Right

2010-02-28T10:24:24

I watched the documentary One Six Right last night on hulu. It’s free (with commercials). The movie is outwardly about the history of the Van Nuys Airport in California; but really it’s intended to be general aviation propaganda: a movie that pilots can show to non-pilots to demonstrate the value of smaller airports, especially as noise complaints and land values increase.

As a historical documentary, the movie is enjoyable. As a propaganda piece, I think it falls flat.

First, the movie extensively interviews the older generation who grew up when aviation was first becoming mainstream. This is beneficial for the history aspect, but not for the propaganda aspect. The “public fascination” with aviation described by these older gentlemen no longer exists, and it’s use as an argument in favor of airports (that the runway is the “main st” of a community) seems strangely dated. Very few younger pilots are interviewed, implying that general aviation is either (a) a concept whose time has come and gone, or (b) only for the rich and retired.

Second, the movie describes the economic benefits of airports. Keep in mind the Van Nuys is the busiest general aviation airport in the country. Even so, the reality is that the airport is “plagued with budget deficits”. The airport’s own economic impact report paints the rosy picture that “Annually, the airport contributes more than $1.3 billion to the Southern California economy, supports over 12,300 jobs and generates an earnings impact of $707 million.” Ok, that sounds good. But what about the land the airport sits on?

I went on zillow and looked at recent sales in the Van Nuys area. I subtracted $100,000 from single family home prices (actual sales price, not asking price) to account for the value of the building; then I divided by the lot square footage to find an estimated land price. I averaged about $30 per square foot for the land.

According to the Van Nuys Airport Master Plan, the airport sits on 730 acres of land. That’s over 31,000,000 square feet. A little quick math shows that the land has a value of nearly $1 billion dollars. That’s one whole year of economic impact right there. The land could be replaced by over 4,000 single family homes, creating a wealth of construction jobs and bringing in additional tax revenue.

Would the revenue of new construction sustain above the current airport production rates? Doubtful; but keep in mind we’re talking about the country’s busiest GA airport... Outerville Regional Airport doesn’t stand a chance at these sorts of calculations.

Third, the movie claims that without small airports and small airplanes, the flight training link to commercial airlines and cargo will be broken. However, many airline pilots get their initial training in the military. Most foreign countries have very limited or no public general aviation; and yet they are still able to train and staff their commercial airlines. Military flight training has been and will continue to be the key. The pilot who trains as a civilian is unlikely to ever become an airline pilot.

The real problem for airports isn’t advocacy, if only because the advocacy is almost always a lie. In most cases (Van Nuys and other very busy GA airports excepted), the community would derive greater benefit if they bulldozed the airport and developed it into homes and offices. I’m a pilot, I love flying and I love airports. I don’t want that statement to be true, but it is true.

The problem is barrier of entry, something the movie downplays. In the historical aspect, one older aviator was talking about how he rented an airplane for $3.50/hour. The movie also showed a restaurant menu from that time (talking about the airport’s services), which had food prices between $1 and $2 a plate. If we adjust forward, today, a sit-down meal is about $10 a plate. Multiply by the same factor, and you come out with $35 an hour as the price we would expect a plane rental to be. But it’s not. Try $100 an hour at the low end, and rising. Two factors are contributing to this dramatic rise in cost: The cost of a new airplane, and the cost of insurance. (Fuel prices, adjusted for inflation, are similar)

It used to be that anyone could own an airplane. Piper Cubs, back when they were first made, sold for $1,000 to $2,000 new. This was in 1940. Using the inflation calculator, I find that equals $30,000 in today’s money. Try to buy a brand new airplane today for $30,000. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

How much does that airplane cost new today? Good news, new Cubs are for sale, manufactured here in the US of A. The price tags? Starting at over $100,000. A more conventional new small airplane today (from the Cessna lineage) will cost between $200,000 and $500,000.

If you can rent or buy an airplane, what does it take to become a pilot? It used to be a simple course; there were a few instruments and airspace was limited and simple. Today, complex instruments and complex airspace span the country.

For example, the other day I was out flying with Lisa. We were departing Olympia and runway 35 was in use. I received the instruction: “Taxi Echo, Delta, Charlie, Foxtrot to Runway 35”. For your convenience, here is a diagram of the route (in red):

Ignoring the blue lines I added, as a pilot, the rule is that a taxi instruction allows you to cross any runway except the runway assigned, unless instructed to hold short. No hold short instruction was given, so where I am required to stop? Just looking at the picture, the answer looks like “no where” until I get to the very end. But that’s not true.

“Crossing” a runway means not to literally cross it, but to enter its active area, which is defined by hold short lines on the taxi ways. I have drawn, in blue, the position of the hold short lines on Bravo, Delta, and Charlie. Therefore, the instruction actually requires me to delay making the turn from Delta onto Charlie until further clearance is received.

Failure to do so would constitute a runway incursion and could result in a suspension of my certificate. Lovely.

This is the kind of thing that student pilot’s today have to deal with. This increased complexity of equipment and rules directly translates in more training, which means more cost. These increased costs drive people away from aviation simply because it’s not an affordable hobby. Solving this problem is the key to restoring vitality to our airports.

The sport pilot rules and light-sport airplanes are trying to help, but it’s not enough. Even the cheapest LSAs are generally starting at $100,000. The cheapest LSA I’ve ever found for sale new was $60,000. We need good quality, usable aircraft starting at $30,000, and pilot training that doesn’t require 100 hours, effectively, to become certified. I have no idea how to make this happen, I suspect it’s not plausible. I suspect that general aviation, the really general, the small planes and individual pilots and owners, are a dying breed. But that’s just me being cynical. I hope I’m wrong.

BBQ

2010-02-25T18:28:21

Lisa and I fired up the BBQ tonight and made Boca burgers. MM bbq.

I’ve been working on a programming project and plagued by a confusing problem... I’m rendering data and I expect it to look, graphically, almost exactly like prerendered versions from the same source.. But they look different, in some cases radically. I kept trying more and more obscure solutions, involving pages of complex math... But no success.

Finally I discovered that I was using unequal x and y scale values, causing a distortion. It was easily fixed with one line of code. Ahh, debugging.

In other news, a detailed analysis of the thunderstorm Air France crash from last year. Although some are pointing out there are errors in the article.

Overheard on campus (one guy talking to another): "Going to school while having a relationship sucks. They’re always like: pay attention to me!"

Astoria and Kelso

2010-02-20T19:33:09

photos

We had the plane scheduled for this afternoon and were debating several possibilities. We decided to fly over the hills to Astoria, and then up the Columbia to Kelso, and then back to Olympia. That would be about 1.5 hours in the air and we’d get back around when it got dark.

Because we wouldn’t be back late enough to renew night currency, I figured instead it would be a good opportunity to work with flight plans and flight following, both of which I haven’t been using on the recent trips as they have been shorter in distance or out of radar service areas.

I filed a flight plan from Olympia to Kelso via Astoria on V-187. After takeoff we opened the plan and then when we got to Astoria, I radio’d in to give a position report. I have heard of giving position reports but never tried it. Pretty easy.

Enroute to Astoria I had planed for 4,500 but as the hills approached I felt it was too low so we increased to 6,500, which felt like a good altitude. The sunlight directly in my eyes making distance judgments very hard was a contributing factor.

We descended over Astoria for a few minutes and enjoyed the sights, and then continued up toward Kelso with the sun setting behind us.

We then proceeded up the Columbia river at 2,500 with the hills bracketing us in. It’s a cozy, adventuresome feeling and you can see a lot that’s going on in the river. As Kelso approached I closed the flight plan. The sun was setting, so I climbed to 4,500, and raised Seattle Center for flight following. We flight followed as dusk turned to darkness and very quickly were descending (as in, we were approaching Olympia and performed a controlled arrival descent).

The controller handed me off to Olympia tower, and with a firmer thud than I would have liked (but not excessive), we returned. A fun, pretty and successful flight.

The sunset photos cannot capture the richness of the various colors. Watching the sun set in the haze over the Columbia river was breathtaking and beautiful.

Video of the sunny day:

Hiring Panel

2010-02-19T17:49:31

Hmm... Went to UW-T today for a hiring panel. We heard from four people, and reading between the lines didn’t paint a rosy picture.

Here’s the short, short version.

Person 1: We outsource almost all our coding overseas.
Person 2: Skills and abilities don’t influence hiring decisions, we just hire people that are friends of the managers.
Person 3: We hire programmers as temps for short term projects only. No “lifers”.
Person 4: Our demand and hiring of coders is low and decreasing. We plan to hire architects and managers.

Now to be fair this was just reading the negative bits. Lots of good information and advice too. The main advice points were things I already recommend, basically communication skills, teamwork skills, and a portfolio. There was also discussion on how to evaluate code quality and a pull between weak objective evaluation and strong subjective evaluation.

Obstacles

2010-02-17T22:13:56

I loaded the FAA airport database into SQL and, to test it out, ran a query to find out what the most common posted approach obstacles are. Here are the results verbatim:

TREES 3420
TREE 1623
ROAD 1263
POLE 403
PLINE 359
FENCE 339
BRUSH 155
BLDG 151
HILL 149
RR 103
GND 94
ANT 82
TOWER 58
CROPS 46
BERM 28
SIGN 20
POLES 17
OTHER 15
BOAT 15
TANK 13
STACK 10
HWY 8
TWR 6
MTN 6
PLINES 5
ACFT 5
POST 5
DIKE 4
RIDGE 4
STREET 4
BRDG 3
* 3
SILO 3
TREES-L 2
LEVEE 2
BRIDGE 2
SHIP 2
GROUND 2
TERRAIN 2
TRAIL 2
HGR 2
HILLS 2
VENT 1
LGT POLE 1
ELEV 1
PLINE POLE 1
TREES/ROAD 1
CRANE 1
VENT PIPE 1
BUSH 1
BANK 1
POLE HILL 1
PIER 1
LIGHT 1
DEER STAND 1
WINDCONE 1
SPRINKLER 1
DAM 1
TREES ROAD 1
WALL 1
BLDGS 1
LT STD 1
SPKLR 1
TREES/BRUSH 1
TOWER-L 1
DUNE 1
PLINE TREE 1
METHANE PIP 1
TREES HILL 1

Days and Dinners

2010-02-16T20:56:14

Long days, lots of meetings. Our subcommittee came up with a good plan for certain kinds of small programs, but it was rejected. So back to the drawing board.

Today at lunch a lady was singing about how far women’s lib has come, about how women don’t have to stay in the home anymore. For her next song, she bemoaned how one person’s salary could no longer support a family. She didn’t seem to note any connection between those two.

Lisa made a nice dinner for us and I’m thoroughly stuffed.

On a discussion about nuclear power, someone wrote: “Nuclear power is like flying in an airplane: it used to be dangerous, and there are prominent examples of people dying . . . but it’s actually safe and sensible.”

This seems the best analogy I’ve heard about how nuclear power has improved.

Valentine’s Day Photo

Steve (mailto:steven777400@myrealbox.com) — 2010-02-14T09:20:59

What to do

2010-02-09T21:39:38

In less than a month I’ll receive notification of whether or not my paper was accepted to iticse 2010 in Turkey. The pricing on airfare and hotel is quite expensive, about $2000/person. And that’s just the fly there, stay inside, fly home cost. Actually, it would be more than that because the conference is in Ankara which is a connection from Istanbul, which is the destination I priced.

Comparatively, for $1200/person the same amount of time could be spent in the Bahamas, and for $900/person the same amount of time could be spent in Costa Rica.

Vacations aside, $1200/person could mean a brand new computer for both of us (we both need it), or some other interesting improvement.

Conclusion: I hope the paper gets accepted, but if it does, I still don’t think we’ll go to Turkey. I’ll pay the registration to get it in the official proceedings, but I don’t think I’ll be attending. Sorry conference people.