I almost forgot: the Inner Drive demonstration site, Weather Now, got a significant upgrade this weekend, to version 3.6. I added two new features that are part of long-term plan of improvements. They don't sound like much, but they're pretty important bits that other features will depend on.
First, the lists of weather stations that appear on the home page are now generated dynamically from a database table. This means that I can change them, remove them, add them, or schedule them without having to make code changes. For example, during NFL Football season, you'll notice a list of home football games that changes every Tuesday at midnight Eastern time. In the past, to add a list like that, I'd have to make code and configuration changes. Now I don't.
Now the cool part, and how this is just a step towards a larger feature: In version 3.7 (coming out in January, I hope), you, dear user, will be able to create your own lists.
Second, I've added caching to the current weather reports. Before, every page view required multiple round-trips to the weather database. Now, any time the site retrieves current weather from the database, it stores the reports for some length of time. Any subsequent page requests will find the weather reports in the cache. This means the home page loads significantly (10x) faster on most views. The site gets about 11,000 page views every day, so this is non-trivial.
The cache right now has a fixed expiration time of 180 seconds, and I can change that through the standard application configuration tools. By "fixed" I mean the cache will discard all reports older than three minutes, forcing the application to refresh those reports from the database. This strikes a good balance between current data and application speed, I think, especially since the National Weather Service (whence comes the data) has new information at about that frequency. (You can read more about how caching works in the Inner Drive Extensible Architecture™ SDK.)
I think these are really cool changes, and I'm excited about how much it moves me down the roadmap. And the 3.7 update will be even cooler.
About five hours ago I finished everything required to earn my MBA. I still have one (option) follow-up lecture for one class, so I can't mark the whole thing "resolved and closed" in FogBugz yet. Thus the precise language: I'm done with all the requirements.
No more Saturday-morning CENTRA sessions. No more papers and exams lurking under the bed. No more residency calendar on my fridge (first attached there 18 months ago).
I feel like Robert Redford's character at the end of The Candidate: "What do we do now?" It's a little freaky.
Total damage, not counting the lecture Thursday and untimed activities like mulling over my assignments while doing something else: 1,437 hours. That's 9 months of full-time work, spread over 18. In other words, between July 2009 and today I spent about 20 hours per week doing something connected with my MBA.
In a wildly-tangential universe, I upgraded FogBugz here at Inner Drive Technology's World Headquarters yesterday. The new version (8.1) produces really cool charts, like this one:
The six big spikes correspond with the residencies that started each term. They drop off quickly because the residencies had immense workloads and short durations. This term, as you can see, had the largest workload of all, because we had four complete classes.
I'm very glad to be done. Parts of me haven't caught up to the reality yet. I'll feel completely through with the program two weeks from Thursday, when I see on the registrar's website that Duke has conferred my degree. Until then, I expect some continuing fogginess.
Ah, how lovely to be at the beach in Chicago tonight. Just look at it:
Oh, just kidding. That's actually Miami Beach at sunrise in January 2007. This is what Lake Michigan looked like this evening:
The video's resolution isn't high enough to show the snowflakes proceeding in a generally horizontal fashion to the south. Nor does it show my dog, who couldn't decide whether all that snow and water was freaky or fun. (He ultimately decided the water was freaky, the snow was fun, and getting toweled off feels great.)
Cartoon Copyright ©2010 Adam Zyglis. Licensed via politicalcartoons.com.
In Chicago, we get about 10 days a year like this against about 20 leave-work-early-it's-too-gorgeous-out days:
Current conditions at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters: 1°C, winds from the north at 46 km/h gusting to
57 km/h, with snow. Oh, it gets better, according to the National Weather Service:
Today: Snow and areas of blowing snow. Temperature falling to around -4°C by 5pm. Very windy, with a north wind between 45 and 65 km/h, with gusts as high as 90 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total daytime snow accumulation of 4 to 8 cm possible.
Tonight: Snow and areas of blowing snow before midnight, then areas of blowing snow and a slight chance of snow after midnight. Low around -12°C. Wind chill values as low as -22°C. Very windy, with a north northwest wind between 50 and 65 km/h, with gusts as high as 80 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New snow accumulation of less than one centimeter possible.
Again, though, I have to remind my fellow Chicagoans: for every day we get like this, we get two or three where you don't want to go back inside.
After 16 months, 16 classes, six countries (including North Carolina, which still seems a bit foreign), and 1435 hours of work, I'm down to my last assignment. It's a group paper, for which I've already done the bulk of my part, though the team has nominated me to assemble the final draft. It's due at 11 am Monday; expect to see something around then.
This will all make sense to me in a few weeks. Right now a part of my poor brain insists I have something to do that I'm not doing right now...while the rest of it, for the first time since July 2009, knows I really don't have anything hanging over me.
What a weird feeling.
James Fallows nails the dispiriting "business-as-usual" of Peter Orszag's new job:
[T]he decision of Peter Orszag, until recently the director of the Office of Management and Budget under Barack Obama, to join Citibank in a senior position [is both damaging and shocking. ]. Exactly how much it will pay is not clear, but informed guesses are several million dollars per year. Citibank, of course, was one of the institutions most notably dependent on federal help to survive in these past two years.
Damaging, in that it epitomizes and personalizes a criticism both left and right have had of the Obama Administration's "bailout" policy: that it's been too protective of the financial system's high-flying leaders, and too reluctant to hold any person or institution accountable. ...
Shocking, in the structural rather than personal corruption that it illustrates. I believe Orszag (whom I do not know at all) to be a faultlessly honest man, by the letter of the law. I am sorry for his judgment in taking this job, but I am implying nothing whatsoever "unethical" in a technical sense. But in the grander scheme, his move illustrates something that is just wrong.
When we notice similar patterns in other countries -- for instance, how many offspring and in-laws of senior Chinese Communist officials have become very, very rich -- we are quick to draw conclusions about structural injustices. Americans may not "notice" Orszag-like migrations, in the sense of devoting big news coverage to them. But these stories pile up in the background to create a broad American sense that politics is rigged, and opportunity too.
The whole piece is worth reading.
Yesterday, it took me longer to fly home (8½ hours) than it would have taken to drive (6 hours). This almost never happens; and throughout my flight cancellation and delay at Cincinnati's Terminal 2, I remained sanguine and peaceful. (Beer helped.)
Because no matter what flight delays I encountered, no matter what kind of snow blew all over the roads causing the taxi to crawl at a modest walking speed, no matter anything, at least I wasn't in Suburbistan, Ohio:
No, my life wasn't that bad anymore.
This was, I think, my last flight of 2010. And for those keeping score at home: this year I flew in or out of O'Hare 43 times. I'm not sure when I'll do that again, either.
I can't quite grasp that I'll finish my MBA sometime before next Tuesday. My Duke to-do list (I actually use FogBugz for school and for work) has had, over the past two years, 573 items on it. Today I've got just 7 active items, including "Confirm CCMBA degree is conferred" which is due on the 30th.
One paper left. One PowerPoint dreck. Er, deck. One case to read. Two classes.
I have no idea what I'm going to do without all that stress and bother, or with all the time I'll suddenly have. Oh, right: I'll moonlight to pay off my student loans. Forgot that...
