Doug Orleans's Journal

Heading to Portland, OR this week

dougorleans@gmail.com — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 18:43:46 GMT

I'm flying out to Portland, OR today for RailsConf this week. The conference runs through Thursday but I'll be there until Sunday morning. Portlanders, let me know if you want to hang out! And/or let me know if there's anything cool going on (concerts, etc).

dougorleans@gmail.com — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 02:10:15 GMT

I'm trying out Android Letterpress clones, Spell Strike and Glibber. Anyone want to play me? I'm dougo on both. (Are there better ones?)

Posted via LjBeetle

Longevity

dougorleans@gmail.com — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 05:12:05 GMT

The oldest survivng copy of Euclid's Elements dates from the ninth century, a thousand years after it was written.

Posted via LjBeetle

Charles Schwab Is Clueless About Security

dougorleans@gmail.com — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 23:40:59 GMT

You know, Charles Schwab should not even have my plaintext password in their database, let alone print it on a piece of paper and send it to me through the mail! I feel like I should report this to someone, but whom? Better Business Bureau?

Quick trip to NYC

dougorleans@gmail.com — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 21:21:30 GMT

I'm going down to Manhattan tomorrow to see The Zombies—yes, that Zombies!—and I'm looking for hotel recommendations, preferably somewhere between Penn Station and the Highline Ballroom (Chelsea/Meatpacking district). It doesn't need to be super-cheap, just not unreasonable. And, air-conditioned and bedbugless!

Also, anyone want to go with me? Norah is visiting family in upstate NY so can't go.

My Tumblr

dougorleans@gmail.com — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 00:37:48 GMT

I've been putting off posting about my Tumblr because I was planning to write up a post about how Google shut down my blog but it may be a while before I get around to that post so in the meantime here's this post:

Hey, check out my Tumblr! That's where I share cool stuff that I run across on the net. Still reserving this LiveJournal for original content. (And, yes, you can put scare quotes around both of those words.)

New job

dougorleans@gmail.com — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:23:50 GMT

I got a new job! I'll be starting at PayPal Boston on June 4th. I'll be joining their web team, doing mostly Ruby on Rails and Javascript. The Boston office is basically Where.com, which PayPal bought last year, so it's still somewhat of a startup environment, but with the resources of a large company (PayPal is owned by eBay). They are doing some interesting things, and it seems like a great team. I'm pretty excited.

I have one more week working at my current company, MCNA Dental. There had been many ups and downs since I started working there in December, but eventually it became clear to me that the reasons to leave were starting to outweigh the reasons to stay, and I started accepting calls from recruiters. At first I was just looking around to see what my options were, and there were several false starts, but after a couple months of "stealth" job search, I was lucky enough to get a few offers. It was a tough choice, but in the end the PayPal Boston opportunity felt like the best move for me.

They say that it's easier to find a job when you have a job, and I can see some reasons for that, but personally I found it very stressful. The tech job market is pretty hot right now, so I probably could have been more open about the fact that I was looking (or just outright quit), but I wanted to play it safe, which basically everyone I asked advised me to. I'm not sure I would advise the same.

Dope rock

dougorleans@gmail.com — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:46:18 GMT

Lately I've been listening to music files on my computer sorted by album name. (No, I didn't start at A; I've been randomly skipping around from time to time.) This is essentially a random album shuffle, since album titles aren't particularly correlated with style or artist. But, over the last few days I've listened to:

Various Artists, Dope, Guns, 'n Fucking in the Streets (3CD compilation of '90s Amphetamine Reptile bands)
Sleep, Dopesmoker
Monster Magnet, Dopes to Infinity
Electric Wizard, Dopethrone

It's been a nice stretch of mega-heavy rock. Right now I'm listening to Curve's Doppelgänger, but next up is Hawkwind's Doremi Fasol Latido, which fits in nicely as well.

The walk to work; Art

dougorleans@gmail.com — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 07:20:19 GMT

I'm staying at a hotel that's a little less than a mile from work (on the northern outskirts of Fort Lauderdale), so I walk to the office most days. Here are some of the things I pass on the way, in order:

a Catholic church
a Microsoft office building
a large trailer park
a Jaguar dealership (I found a geocache near here)
an LA Fitness
a movie theater with 12 screens (dodecaplex?)
a Hooters
a seemingly defunct Mexican restaurant, with a large parking lot
the Xanadu Boutique For Sophisticated Adults

It's kind of a weird neighborhood.

Last weekend, I ended up randomly going to an open art studios event with some coworkers, and of course it made me think cthulhia would have loved it. I met and chatted with Sonia Baez-Hernandez, whose works I quite enjoyed, particularly Marine Passion and Enbodiment of Nails. At home, I rarely get out to open studios or other art events, but here it felt like a little taste of home.

Florida again

dougorleans@gmail.com — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:09:04 GMT

I'll be heading back to Fort Lauderdale for work this Sunday, for three weeks. Do I know anyone who will be in South Florida during that time (Feb 12–Mar 3)? (I doubt it, but I was wrong last time...)

Hello from Florida

dougorleans@gmail.com — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:12:26 GMT

I'm writing this from a hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Two weeks ago I would never have guessed that I'd be here now, but life is funny that way...

I had been nominally looking for a full-time job since October when I got back from my trip to Great Britain. I hadn't actually gotten around to applying for jobs; a few recruiter cold-calls had led to a few interviews last month, but nothing panned out. Then, the weekend before last, a friend and former co-worker, John Valente, got in touch asking if I was available for some work. Back in the summer, I had forwarded a job listing I saw on the Lisp Jobs blog to him, because I knew he was looking (and we had both done Lisp at our previous job, Gensym). Well, they (MCNA Dental) had ended up hiring him, and now they were looking for more Lisp programmers—in particular, ones who also had some Ruby experience. And since I did a Ruby contract in summer 2010, John figured I'd be a good candidate.

After some discussion, I agreed that I'd be a good candidate too. They were willing to have me work remotely from Boston; we discussed working on a full-time contract basis, but it seemed better for both parties to have me work as a salaried employee. But they wanted me to come down to their HQ in Fort Lauderdale ASAP so that I could meet the team (including someone who was visiting from Germany for a week) and participate in some planning meetings. So, on Friday I received and accepted an offer by email, I flew down on Monday afternoon (did you know JetBlue has four daily non-stop flights from Boston to Fort Lauderdale?), and yesterday I showed up in the office for my first day of work. I'll be here for a couple weeks, flying back to Boston on Christmas Eve.

After two days, I'm starting to get a handle on the job. It's a bit of a fixer-upper, in that they have a lot of old Ruby code written 6+ years ago by an outsource team, and a lot of new Lisp code that isn't yet ready to replace the Ruby app. So I'll mostly be helping to get the Ruby code modernized and cleaned up to be maintainable, and then at some point move over to the Lisp team to help finish building the replacement system. It's an internal web app for managing dental insurance claims and providers, so nothing particularly sexy, but it'll be fun to be writing Ruby and Lisp code anyway.

It's all still a little surreal, though, to suddenly be in Florida in December with a full-time job. This weekend I'm planning to get some well-earned relaxation by playing some disc golf and then cooling off with a dip in the ocean. Happy Holidays...

Avuncularity

dougorleans@gmail.com — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:42:49 GMT

My niece, Harper Marie Griest, was born yesterday morning. Apparently it was a short and uncomplicated labor, and mother and baby are healthy and happy. I think Danielle was hoping for 11/11/11, but this way Harper will have some cool Friday the 13th birthday parties to look forward to.

Further over the hill

dougorleans@gmail.com — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:50:54 GMT

I've been alive for 41 years now. It seems like both a long time and a short time. Time is funny that way.

My 42nd year is not off to a great start; I just realized that I somehow totally forgot to go to the Wooden Shjips & MV/EE concert last night, which I had been looking forward to for weeks. I even forgot to stay up to do the latest Theorem soon enough after midnight to get a lot of bonus points (though I still got 50 for solving it this morning). But I guess those were technically mistakes from my 41st year, so I have a clean slate for this year.

Do people who believe that life begins at conception celebrate the anniversary of their conception rather than their birth?

The importance of line breaks

dougorleans@gmail.com — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 04:13:09 GMT

On the T today, I saw this sign:

But, from where I was sitting, a crossbar was blocking out the "Supporting" line, so it looked like it was saying:

"Breastfeeding employees helps your bottom line."

UK trip photos

dougorleans@gmail.com — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 05:26:00 GMT

I finally finished uploading all the photos from my UK trip last month. I guess it's good that the auto-post to Facebook broke, because it would have gotten pretty spammy.

I don't have the energy to write up the whole trip, but the photo sets at least form a list of most of the places we visited. If you'd like me to say more about some particular part of the trip, let me know.

Canterbury
London
Oxford, Stratford, Warwick
Coventry, York
Durham and into Scotland
Edinburgh
St. Andrews
Loch Ness, Isle of Skye
Fort Augustus, Loch Lomond
Lake District
Wales
Chester, Abbey-Cwm-Hir
Cardiff, Bath
Glastonbury, Widecombe, Plymouth
Plymouth, Cornwall, Dartmoor
Stonehenge, Isle of Wight
Winchester, Windsor, London

John McCarthy

dougorleans@gmail.com — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:53:17 GMT

John McCarthy died on Monday. He coined the term "artificial intelligence", and created the programming language Lisp in 1958. The Stanford obituary has a good overview of his career; jwz's post has a nice little anecdote.

I had a very minor McCarthy encounter myself: I stood near him at a book reading at a bookstore in Palo Alto in the early '90s. I don't remember the author or book, but it was about how strong AI is impossible without embodiment. (It might have been Hubert Dreyfus, but I think it was someone younger/less established.) I don't remember if McCarthy had some question or comment, or if someone just pointed him out to me, but I remember later realizing that I had made some comment about Scheme to a friend while within earshot of the inventor of Lisp.

At some point I discovered his web pages about the sustainability of human progress, which are fascinating if sometimes seeming to veer into crackpottery. I hope Stanford keeps these pages up permanently, because I never made it all the way through their somewhat confusing organization, and I think McCarthy had continued to add to them until pretty recently.

One thing I was surprised to learn from his obituary is that he was married to Carolyn Talcott, whose name I know from programming language theory literature. In fact, she was on the PhD thesis committee of someone who was on my PhD thesis committee, so I guess, academically, she's my grandmother!

John McCarthy was also known as the Programming: You're Doing It Completely Wrong guy. Rest in peace.

Health wish

dougorleans@gmail.com — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 15:15:42 GMT

I never know what to say to someone who's sick. "Get well soon" sounds like a command, with an implied "...or else!" "I hope you feel better" sounds like it's an imposition to me and I'm impatient. I could just go with "take it easy", i.e. banal advice, but I feel like it should also involve something like "good luck" or "best wishes", an expression of semi-superstitious beneficence. "Gesundheit" does literally mean "health", but obviously that already has a more specific application. Any other ideas?

exchanging currency

dougorleans@gmail.com — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 22:11:33 GMT

Well, I'm back. More trip details to follow, but first I want to follow up on my tweet from Heathrow yesterday. I asked whether it was better to exchange my pound notes for dollars at Heathrow Airport in London, Logan Airport in Boston, or my local bank at home (Bank of America). The most common advice I got was to keep them for the next time I go back to the UK, but I have no plans to be back anytime soon, and pound notes do expire. Also, my uncle went kind of overboard buying pound notes, and gave me all his leftovers, so it was a not-inconsiderable amount of money to be sitting on indefinitely. So, I ended up checking the exchange rate on the Bank of America website, which was $1.48 per pound, while the Bureau de Change kiosk at Heathrow was showing a $1.42 rate, so I decided to wait until I got home. I went today, and got $1.47 (actually $1.474305), but that included the exchange fees, which may not have been included in the airport rate. Anyway, my conclusion for money-changing is: avoid exchange bureaus, and go straight to a bank. (They also deposit the money directly into your account, which may contribute to the better rate, but is also more convenient than having to make a separate transaction to deposit the cash.)

Hello from Bristol

dougorleans@gmail.com — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:35:39 GMT

Hi folks, I'm in a hotel in Bristol, England after two weeks on the road, from Canterbury up to Scotland then down through Wales. I'm way behind on uploading photos to Flickr, because my phone seems to have forgotten where it put a bunch of my London pics (but I'm pretty sure they're still there on the SD card). Meanwhile you can follow my Foursquare check-ins to see our route. I also copy some of them to Twitter but not more than one or two a day.

I can't always check-in at places when I don't have cell reception, such as yesterday at The Hall at Abbey-Cwm-Hir. Kind of a crazy place, but I enjoyed it.

Edit: Looks like you can only see my places on Foursquare if you have an account, and even then you only see the five most recent check-ins. How annoying! I'll try to post the full list here when I get back.

UK trip

dougorleans@gmail.com — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 16:26:10 GMT

I'm leaving for the UK tonight. My Uncle David is taking me on a bus tour through England, Scotland, and Wales. I'll probably be uploading pictures to Flickr (which will then get auto-posted to Facebook). And let me know if you want a postcard!

I'll be back on Oct 2nd. Try not to burn the country down while I'm gone...

No more anonymous comments

dougorleans@gmail.com — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 17:09:55 GMT

Sorry, there's too much spam here lately, so I turned off anonymous commenting. If you don't want to get a LiveJournal account to comment here, please use OpenID commenting (e.g. with a Google or Yahoo account).

Roller coaster weekend

dougorleans@gmail.com — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:59:06 GMT

Apparently my previous post worked: I suddenly have a girlfriend. Her name is Julie, and she's pretty awesome. And, miraculously, she seems to think I'm pretty awesome too. Thanks, talking_sock, for setting us up on that blind date!

On Memorial Day weekend, we took a road trip around New England to ride some roller coasters: two each in Canobie Lake Park, Palace Playland, and Funtown Splashtown USA. Our favorite was Excalibur at Funtown, a large wooden coaster. We got to the park a little after 11am on Memorial Day, and there was no line at all—we ended up riding it three times.

We also managed to squeeze in a night of camping in the White Mountains (with campfire-grilled sausages and s'mores), a game of disc golf on a ski slope, a moose spotting (!), cotton candy, skee-ball, and a late-night wade in the ocean. Fun weekend!

dougorleans@gmail.com — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 04:24:42 GMT

I need a girlfriend.

Fill in the blanks

dougorleans@gmail.com — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 01:20:51 GMT

The essence of ________ is ________.

Posted via LjBeetle

Setting up a web site

dougorleans@gmail.com — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:12:47 GMT

My sister wants to set up a web site for her interior design business. What's the best/simplest/cheapest way to do that? First, she wants a domain name; what's a good registrar? (I've never owned a domain name myself.) Her site will be pretty simple, probably just a few static pages, with a bunch of photos that she will add to/replace over time. Some sort of site-maker service would be fine, I think, like Google Sites, or even just Blogger or WordPress maybe? Any other ideas?