The Big Sendoff
Thursday was my big sendoff. It was a blast. We didn’t get home until around midnight. The in-the-office event was very nice and included “brent quotes”, pictures, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a couple very nice parting gifts, and some very kind words. Then we went to Harvey’s to enjoy libations and the company of friends old and new. It was great to see people I hadn’t seen in quite some time. From there we made our way to Brit’s for some lawn bowling. Even though we were beaten by the other team, I really enjoyed the game. It takes a lot more strategy than boccie ball since the balls are not round. It was fun. Then finally we made our way to a bar outside of the Target center (given the 6 vodka cranberries I consumed, I can’t quite remember which bar we were at). Since everyone had switched to drinking water, we figured that it was probably time to head home. I want to thank everyone who was involved in planning the event. I really enjoyed myself. It was a perfect sendoff.
Second To Last Day At Work
Today is my second to last day at work. I am very sad to be leaving. I work with an amazing bunch of people. We have some fun planned this afternoon and evening; I get to enjoy the company of co-workers past and present. I am really looking forward to a fun night. We are starting with a send-off at the office, then we are moving down to Harvey’s, and then are going to Brit’s for some lawn bowling. Should be a blast. Wow, it’s amazing how fast the last seven+ years have gone.
The World Is Too Interesting
As of late I have found that the world is far too interesting of a place. I have a couple of really interesting projects at work and an endless number of pet projects at home. I’m sure once the brain-bending starts at med school I will be overwhelmed with the project possibilities provided by the medical school info fire hose. Hopefully I can make some good headway on the work stuff and get a couple of my home projects finished before school starts. I guess I will also have to become more picky about what I decide to work on as hobbies. The next phase of the wiper experiment will probably have to wait till next summer. 
Gallery Improvements
I am working on getting the gallery spiffed up. It should be fairly functional soon (and hopefully bug-free). There isn’t a lot up there yet but I hope to have many of my 8000+ photos up there shortly. I am also planning on adding paging, printing (to shutterfly, ophoto, etc.), better thumbnails, and EXIF info. More to come…
Happy Easter!
Hope everyone had a great easter. Here are the photos that I took: Link If you would like to get the high-res originals, just sign up for a free account and I will add you as a contact. You can order prints directly from the viewing page or download a copy of the original.
The U of M Is Official
I just heard from back from Mayo and they don’t want me. I am very surprised that I got as far as I did in the interview process. I figured I would go right around their revolving door. I appreciate them taking as close of a look at me as they did.
While Mayo is a great school with a lot of opportunities, I think the U is going to be a much better fit for me. Not only is it in the town that I was born and raised, it has the style and goals that align perfectly with my own.
Go Gophers!!
Windshield Wiper Weirdness
I own a 2000 Nissan Xterra. I just turned 100k miles on it and I still love it as a vehicle. It is a lot of fun to drive and has not given me much of any trouble. I plan on driving it for at least another 50k miles. There is one main feature that drives me nuts though. This is the variable windshield wiper setting. For some reason, Nissan decided to use a strange algorithm when choosing what values to use for each preset on the variable wiper control. The problem seems to be in the fact that there is such a jump between what we will call position 2 and 3. This can be seen when the wipe rate (wipes/min) is plotted for each setting:
The thing that appears when all of the speed settings are plotted together, is that the change in rate is neither linear nor logarithmic. It is more of a hybrid. This is not a problem on its own but when we look at there the transition occurs, we get a loss of sensitivity right at the spot where we need it (between 2 and 3). It is also interesting if we look at the wipe separation and the wipe duration.
We see that there is a very large change in wipe separation between 2 and 3. We also see that there is no change in wipe duration between 2 and 3. It seems that this change in wipe separation is what is most noticeable (and irritating) to me as a user.
One fix would be to add one more value (between 2 and 3) to the variable selector and to place it at 6 or so (I’m not too picky). Another solution would be to move settings 3, 2, and 1 (wrt separation) so that they have more of a logarithmic curve (without slowing setting 3 too much). Either way I’d be happy to have a setting that would be just right in mist or light snow conditions and a more logical transition between each setting.
Congrats to the Aguileras!
A big congrats to the Aguileras on their newest edition, Eva. Kate and I are very happy for you guys. We wish you good health and lots of sleep.
Skiing At Copper
Kate and I went on a great trip to Copper 
Mountain in Colorado. It was a blast. We flew out on Saturday March 11th, skied two days, and returned on Tuesday March 14th. Since it was a spring break week, and since we booked the trip at the last minute, we couldn’t get a room at Copper. Instead we stayed at a Holiday Inn in Frisco (about 7 miles from Copper). The room was fairly nice and the hot tub was great after a long day of skiing. The best part was that it was close to Copper and to the town of Breckenridge. I’ve never skiied at Brek but I do really enjoy the food and shops that they have. It is a great spot for apres ski. Kate and I ate at a great little Chinese place; it now stands as the second best Chinese food I’ve ever eaten. The 
skiing at Copper was pretty good. It was a little chilly but we got about a foot of new snow on top of an 80 inch base. I was skiing on a set of Salomon 1080 Foils and a set of Nordica Beast 12s. They were both fantastic. The only problem was that I had quite a bit of pinching on the outside of my feet. I went to a place called SureFoot Boot Fitting and had my boots custom fit. They used a computer, a CNC machine, and heat to make my boots fit like bedroom slippers. It was expenisve but my boots finally fit like they are supposed to. Copper continues to one of my favorite places to ski. The woods were heaven with perfect powder. Since it was spring break, the green runs were quite busy but the blacks and double blacks were pretty empty and a ton of fun. I wish I had made it there earlier in the year but who knows, maybe I’ll make it out one more time for some great late-season skiing.
Everyone Should Code
In order for business and science to really move forward, we need to find ways to get all smart people to learn how to code. Knowing how to write software should not be limited to just developers and engineers. We need people in niche areas to understand computing and be able to identify problems than can easily be solved with the proper application of software. This is one of the main reasons for my decision to leave my job as a software engineer (which I do really enjoy) to pursue a life of medicine. I feel that my background in software can be combined with a medical education and a love for serving others to make me a very unique physician. We need doctors capable of revolution not just evolution.
It is nice to see the software field finally recognizing this. At PDC this year, Don Box talked about this very thing. He said one of his goals as an architect at Microsoft is to make it easier for smart people (in other fields) to push computers to solve their problems.
Since there will always be code involved in programming (at least for a very long time), it seems the best way to make progress on training and understanding is by getting kids involved at a young age. There are some really great sites out there to learn about different languages. Since I am mostly a Msft developer, I am most familiar with easy ways to learn c#. There are a couple of great sites put out by Microsoft such as Coding4Fun and Video Game Development. By combining those sites with the free Express editions of Visual Studio, we get a very powerful, inexpensive learning opportunity for both ourselves and our children.
