Life on Og Maciel's Journal

Why Christmas Music Gets Me Every Time

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I know it may sound weird to start talking about Christmas when Halloween hasn’t even come up yet. But last night, while my oldest daughter was making dinner, she put on a Christmas station on Pandora—and just like that, I was transported straight into my first Christmas memory.

I must have been maybe five or six. And when I say I “remember” it, I’m not 100% sure if it’s a real memory or something I pieced together from old photos—but it feels real. Someone dressed as Santa Claus came to our house. To this day I don’t know if it was my dad, a friend of his, or someone my parents hired—but “Santa” showed up. And to my absolute shock, I got a G.I. Joe dressed in full camouflage, plus a yellow helicopter and a Jeep with some kind of weapon mounted in the back. This was the early 80s, so getting war-themed toys was totally normal. That’s the first Christmas I can truly recall.

My Origin Story: Baptism by Fire

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Hannah Gibbs on Unsplash

When I walked into Synaptic Pharmaceuticals for my first official software developer job interview, I had never written a line of professional code. I had no GitHub profile (it didn’t even exist yet), no computer science degree, and just a vague idea of what a design pattern was.

But I had something far more dangerous: momentum and an unlimited supply of hubris.

A few weeks earlier, I had built a working software system from scratch in a pharmaceutical lab despite having zero formal training. If I could do that, what couldn’t I do?

The Great Couch Debate (and Why My Office Survived)

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Grovemade on Unsplash

Over the weekend, my wife and I were talking about how good it would be to finally replace our old, beat-up couch in the living room. I don’t even remember where we originally got it—I just know we hated it from the very first day we assembled it. It’s too small, the back cushions are too soft, and if you lean back for more than twenty minutes, you end up pressed against the hard frame and needing a chiropractor. Most of the time we double up the cushions to make it usable, which also means there’s now a silent competition in our house: whoever grabs the extra cushion gets an additional twenty minutes of comfort.

Writing a Book: Check!

Thu, 23 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Growing up my dad used to tell me that there are three important milestones on a man’s life (though I feel that the same could be said about any gender):

Plant a tree
Have a child
Write a book

Through my life, I have planted quite a few trees, including a lemon and papaya tree I used to treat as my imaginary friends :)

I have also had the highest honor to be the father to three amazing girls!

Software Quality Engineering: Tales From The Trenches

Tue, 14 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

First of all, I have to say that I absolutely love being a Quality Engineer, something that I have been doing for a living for the last 11 years of my life! During these 11 years, I have had the pleasure (yes, pleasure!) of being tossed around, torn to pieces and thrown at a lot of scary and difficult situations in the world of software testing!

Armed only with a strong desire to learn and excel at my profession, I have seen, heard and gone through a multitude of experiences, challenges, and opportunities. Have I ever been scared shitless or doubted my decision to become a Quality Engineer? Heck yeah! Have I ever felt like the dumbest person in the companies I have worked on? The answer to that question is a resounding “yes!” Have I ever cried? You can bet your bottom dollar I have!

The Gift

Sun, 12 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

It was June 8th,1974 and on a warm evening in the territory of Amapá, now a state in the northern part of Brazil, a baby boy was born. Other than being a couple of months premature, the one thing that made this birth a bit more interesting than any premature birth was the fact that this baby had its hands and feet completely bent inwards, almost fused into his arms and legs.

Books

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 12:07:00 +0000

Woke up this morning and, as usual, sat down to read the Books section of The New York Times while drinking my coffee. This has become sort of a 'tradition' for me and because of it I have been able to learn about many interesting books, some of which I would not have found out on my own. I also 'blame' this activity to turning my nightstand into a mini-library on its own.

The End For Pylyglot

Sat, 12 Jul 2014 11:20:00 +0000

Background

It was around 2005 when I started doing translations for Free and Open-Source Software. Back then I was warmly welcomed to the Ubuntu family and quickly learned all there was to know about using their Rosetta online tool to translate and/or review existing translations for the Brazilian Portuguese language. I spent so much time doing it, even during working hours, that eventually I sort of "made a name for myself" and made my way up to the upper layers of the Ubuntu Community echelon.

Twenty Three Years

Wed, 28 May 2014 18:32:00 +0000

My parents were eagerly awaiting our arrival on an early Spring morning, and when our plane finally landed after the almost 10 1/2 hours flight and we made our way to the luggage claim area, the reunion was filled with a lot of hugging, laughter and a huge sigh of relief. For someone who had spent most of their entire lives in a small and sleepy town in the East coast of Brazil, waking up and finding yourself at JFK Airport was nothing short of a major event! I had never seen so many people of so many different races and speaking so many different dialects in my entire life, all 16 years of them! Everywhere I looked, everything was so different from what I was used to… even signs (so many of them) were in a different language! Eventually we grabbed our luggage and made our way to the parking lot looking for our car.

Running On Empty

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post has been sitting in my Drafts folder for a while now, as I wasn’t sure when the right time would be to publish it. It is basically my personal reflection on the last 5 years I have worked doing translations for free and open source software (FOSS) and a few lessons I learned along the way. It is also a rant against those who took my labor for granted. Hopefully this quick summary will help you decide whether you want to continue reading the rest of the post or not.

Good Debian Server Setup HOWTO

Fri, 03 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year OSNews published my article titled "Installing Debian Linux For The Faint Of Heart." Today I came across another article dealing with the same subject. Now, I know people have hammered these types of articles to death in the net but this one sounded worth the risk of mentioning. For one thing, it covers hardening your bare-bones Debian server which, IMHO should be worth looking at no matter what.

Cyber Archeologists Will Google Dig

Thu, 02 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Having read this yesterday on how Google has become such a major presence in our life style, today’s article in the NY Times showed me yet another facet to living in the 21st century. I can only imagine future archeologists performing “cyber-digs” in order to study civilizations from our time. Why travel to Egypt if you can uncover everything there is to know about the pyramids from the confort of your house using Google search and maps???

Picasa 2: Cool UI

Tue, 31 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I needed to do some image editing the other day and didn’t feel like installing anything “big and complicated” like Photoshop or PSP. Google’s Picasa software came to mind and I quickly downloaded it on my laptop. I misy tell you that I’m very impressed with user interface. Not as much with the features (which by the way are just enough for your daily crop-resize-remove red eye needs) but the looks of it! It has this Mac OS X-ish feel to it and it just plainly looks cool! I want my next application to look like that… very sexy and pleasing to the eyes… I find myself leaving it running so I can look at it from time to time! Hehehe I also like the fact that it automatically detects any new picture I save to my computer and makes an entry for it in the application. For those who don’t spend as much time in front of a computer as I do, this should be the ideal situation for when you plug in a digital camera to a pc. No matter how or when a new picture is stored into your computer, you can always see it in Picasa.

The Little Penguin Wine

Tue, 31 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Almost forgot… The other day I went to the public booze market and saw this little fellow:

Didn’t have a chance to taste it but if it is as good as some of the other Australian wines I’ve had and robust like Linux, then it should be great! =)

There And Back Again

Tue, 31 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

After driving approximately 1,014 miles over this Memorial Day weekend, I’m finally back home from Chapel Hill. Had a blast visiting my sister together with my wife and daughter. My older sister and uncle also tagged along to supposedly help out with the driving. Went to sleep at 1am on Thursday and got up at 4am!!! Managed to get there by 3pm and was completely overwhelmed by a feeling of peace. It felt like I was on a different planet all together. A planet where everybody slowed down to smell the flowers!!! There was so much nature and so little visible technology that I didn’t mind being cut out from the rest of the world for those 3 days. I woke up early every day and tried to make the best out of it. Besides relaxing and watching my daughter acting so happy all the time, I also managed to go to an open market (where I bought the best, juiciest peaches I have ever eaten in my life) Saturday morning and visit the Sarah P. Duke Gardens! One word: AWSOME!!! I had never seen such a beatiful place in my life either! Sunday we barbecued and big time pigged out while watching to some cool country music and drowning ourselves with some Belgina beer!

Living In A Movie

Mon, 23 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Kinda scary when you can relate your job to a movie:

BOB SLYDELL Y’see, what we’re trying to do here, we’re just trying to get a feel for how people spend their day. So, if you would, would you just walk us through a typical day for you? PETER Yeah. BOB SLYDELL Great. PETER Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late. I use the side door, that way Lumbergh can’t see me. Uh, and after that, I just sorta space out for about an hour. BOB PORTER Space out? PETER Yeah. I just stare at my desk but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too. I’d probably, say, in a given week, I probably do about fifteen minutes of real, actual work.

About To Get Rough

Thu, 19 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Today all consultants working for my current employer received the email below (contents changed to protect the innocents):

As the old-timers among you know, I periodically ask the IT consultants the gross annual or hourly pay you receive from your respective consultant firm. This information helps us determine the salary range and level of equity among the consultants of each work type/skill set; check that the consultant firm margins are somewhat reasonable, etc. Please return e-mail (to me only) the following info:

It's A Wireless World After All

Mon, 16 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Incredible! Here I am waiting outside my wife’s doctor’s office, bored out of my mind when I decide to check if anyone had left me an open Wi-Fi AP. Much to my surprise, I found 8 completely available and am bored no more! =)

What Does It Mean???

Mon, 16 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

What does it mean when your direct supervisor keeps asking you to do some of his tasks and you know for a fact there’s no promotion involved? I guess my biggest “beef” is the type of stuff he asks me to write about:

What is .NET and what advantages does it offer?
What are the advantages of using Microsoft Visual Source Safe (VSS)?
What are the requirements for working on the code library we just purchased and have no documentation on???
What is ADO.NET and how can we use it?

This wouldn’t bother me as much but I was told (by my recruiter) I was joining a team of talented .NET developers when I took this job!!!

Where Do We Get These People?

Mon, 16 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

While typing my last post I was interrupted by a so-called “.Net Developer who just earned his PMP.” He’s been “featured” here before for asking “very intelligent questions.” =) This time he told me he had just bundled some application and given to a DBA to run it when they received an error message: Oracle[blah blah blah].dll not found!!!

"So this program you wrote is trying to connect to an Oracle database?", I asked. “Yes”. “And what technology are you using to connect?” “Huh???” “Are you using ODP.NET?” “HUH???” “Are you using Oracle Data Provider for .NET?” “Yes.” “Does the client also have it OR have you included it with your application?” “HUH???”

Away From My Desk

Wed, 11 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Starting today I will be stuck attending some training class for work. These “classes” start at 9am and end at 4:30pm, all through Friday! Hopefully I’ll get a chance to grab a cup of coffee in the next 5 minutes. Managed to update this blog to WordPress 1.5.1. Since this was a bux-fixing release, don’t expect to find anything changed here.

As a side note, am looking forward to some WoW playing time with Vinny tonight! Go, Ghost Force, Go!

Trying Out Perforce

Wed, 11 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Tonight I want to take a quick break from playing WoW and install Perforce SCM System at home:

The Perforce SCM System features comprehensive software configuration management capabilities built around a scalable client/server architecture. Requiring only TCP/IP, developers can access the Perforce Server through a variety of Perforce clients (GUIs for several platforms, Web, or Command-Line). Perforce can be deployed quickly and easily, and requires minimal administration, even for large or distributed sites.

A Hazy Shade Of Freedom

Tue, 10 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

After battling for a few days with a certain free (as in non-proxy-ed) wifi AP, I experienced approximately 5 minutes of unlimited freedom right after lunch. My friend Kelvin and I had spent a good chunk of our morning trying to figure out why the connection was dropping all the time but to no avail. I did some “googling” around and saw that some people have been complaining about the same problem but for me this only happens at this certain AP. At home the connection is rock solid! I got the suspicion that the problem is that the AP is now using WEP authentication but some other type (maybe Cisco’s LEAP?) that keeps fluctuating the WEP keys. That could explain why I sometimes get the connection and then it just drops! Anyhow, for 5 minutes today I experienced sheer joy when I was able to get a signal and listen to my favorite internet radio station… I need to spend some more time trying to figure out the solution to this mystery.

Close Call

Tue, 03 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Not in a blogging mood today… Got home last night at 9:30pm(!!!) and checked my messages: 1 new message! An old girl-friend crying and mumbbling about her sister (also an old good friend) having an accident… broken up telephone number to call back (she must have called from a cell phone… had to rewind message 2 times… Call number and a guy answers… After introductions (“Hi, I’m an old friend of such and such…”) learn that the sister had apparently “thrown herself out the window of her second floor apartment.” Find out which hospital she is and try to call… “Vising hours are over!” Shortly after a friend of the girl calls me and tells me a bit more info… Terrible accident due to alcohol… Fell off the fire exit ladder… broke 3rd vertebrae… just had surgery… removed a rib and used to to replace vertebrae(????)… Today I didn’t go to work and went early to the hospital. Spent 3 1/2 hours with my friend, trying to cheer her up and just plainly keep her company. Later in the morning an aunt showed up and stayed untill I left.

Beware of Crabs When Fishing

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Last night I decided to work on my plan of racking up World of Warcraft hours in order to beef up my character but since my friend Vinny was busy with his own quests, I decided to try my newly learned skill: fishing! As stupid as this may sound, I never thought that fishing in a game could be so… relaxing! I switched my character’s sword for a fishing pole and spent a good 15 minutes casting the line and watching the bobber. There was nobody around and I completely lost track of time… Soon enough I had 4 mackerels in my bag. That’s when I noticed some “clipping” sounds and my vital signal decreasing: a couple of crab-looking creatures came from behind me and started attacking me! It took me several seconds to realize what had just happened and even then my brain was still in fishing mode. I attempted to fend the creatures off with the fishing pole (I completely forgot to switch back to my sword) but ended up minced to pieces. The good thing was that I was able to return to the same spot, kill the evil creatures and am planning on using my also new skill of cooking to eat my mackerels! I wonder if they’ll spoil and start to smell???

Using Audioscrobbler

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Read some posts of people talking about Audioscrobbler today and decided to see what the noise was all about.

Audioscrobbler builds a profile of your musical taste using a plugin for your media player (Winamp, iTunes, XMMS, foobar2000, etc..). Plugins send the name of every song you play to the Audioscrobbler server, which updates your musical profile with the new song. Every person with a plugin has their own page on this site which shows their listening statistics. The system automatically matches you to people with a similar music taste, and generates personalised recommendations.

Game Night

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Last night was my weekly night to play games with my friend Vinny. I have been playing Enemy Territory every Wednesday night since last Summer with a few cancellations here and there. Earlier this year Vinny convinced me to try World of Warcraft, a very addictive online multiplayer game. I was hooked from the start but not being able to “dedicate” to more than a couple of hours a week I eventually lost interest. I guess a big factor for my lack of interest was the fact that the people I knew online just kept racking up levels and moved on to different realms and tougher quests, while I was still stuck at level 4!

Lynx Browser on Windows

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

So I’m a geek!

Got Visitors? Hire a Chef!

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Interesting...

"But the best thing was the chef Nat had hired for the week, who cooked delicious crepes every morning. He even cooked, after seeing there was a Spanish guy in the crowd, some Spanish omelettes."

Once again I have solid proof that there are better ways of “team building” than what I’ve experienced so far in my short career as a developer. It used to be that the IT group of any organization ruled, getting a lot of respect and perks along the way. Not so anymore... at least around here... More and more our sub-divisions (i.e. Operations, Developers, DB Admin, etc) are growing apart and there’s just too much “statics” in the sole communication channel. Even within sub-divisions there’s not much appreciation by our superiors... “You want a 17-inch monitor because you think your 13-inch is straining your eyes??? Go back to your cubicle and write 25,000 lines of code for that!” The sad thing is that after a while you get used to it... Almost as if numb to it all.

Benjamin Mako Hill

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

It’s official!!! I have arranged for Benjamin Mako Hill, Debian and Ubuntu Linux package maintaner/contributer, to attend our next Northern New Jersey Meetup meeting this Monday 11th, 2005! I have asked him to talk about Ubuntu Linux and also his involvement with Debian. This should be a very interesting meeting for everyone and I urge everyone to show up! Make sure to reserve your spot so I have a good idea of how many people will be present. Right now I am thinking of meeting at the front of the store (Panera Bread, Route 4 West Paramus, NJ @ 7pm) where there are some couches and lots of plugs! If the number of people reserving increases, I’ll try to reserve the conference room!

Google Satellite

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Amazing upgrade to the already amazing Google Maps site. Don’t really know when it was implemented but you can now switch from the map view to a real satellite view, down to the street level! I can only imagine the day you’ll be able to have a live feed of traffic conditions via satellite on your web browser of choice!

Let Me Introduce You To My Little Friend

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I was really bad over this weekend… I not only had a cup of (gasp!) Star Bucks coffee but I also managed to convince my wife that we deserved a new flat LCD monitor to replace our existing 17-inch. We finally settled (well, actually I settled for it… she wasn’t too thrilled about it… hehe) for a 20.1-inch Sony model. Its UXGA 1600 x 1200 resolution is amazing!!! I have so much space on my screen now… I also managed to update the driver for my G-Force 5200 card adding the final touch to a great system. What can I say? I sometimes spoil myself! :)

Bigger GMail

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’m really loving this “war” between Google and Yahoo, battling to see who attracts more users. I think we, the “middle man,” will only gain in the end. Today Google announced they’re increasing everyone’s gmail account to a whopping 2GB!!! Also, they’ve added the ability to write emails using rich text features, such as: Bold, Italics, Underline, Select a special font, Font Size, Font Color, Background Color, Remove Formatting, Hyperlink Text, Numbered List, Bulleted List, Indent Less, Indent More, Quote Text, Left Align, Center Align, Right Align.

El Robot

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

My sister had told me about this when she called to wish us a happy Easter. She was very excited about it and thought I’d feel the same. For those of you who don’t read any “geek news” or avoid any conversations that don’t relate to music videos or movies: Wired magazine published an article in this month’s issue about “How four underdogs from the mean streets of Phoenix took on the best from M.I.T. in the national underwater bot championship." The nature of the contest is obscured and relegated to white-noise background and the real meat of the article is to describe how these 4 illegal high school immigrants were able to compete against and beat teams from some of the best colleges in the nation. M.I.T.’s team must have been the most famous participant for their name appears at least a dozen times in the article. The contest itself comprised of maneauvering an aquatic robot through an underwater (duhh) obstacle course as well as perform certain tasks. Having managed only $800 of cash for support, these 4 kids had to improvise and choose very carefully the building blocks for their bot: ::wikipedia("pvc","PVC"):: pipes and tampons were some of the items in their arsenal. The whole story reminds me of when I went to high school and had to take one of those standardized tests (was it the ::wikipedia("psat","PSAT")::?) required to graduate. While following the oral instructions to fill out the first page of the test, one teacher walking around the "immigrant section" of the library (we, immigrants, had been segregated to this section of the library, away from the "Americans") noticed that we all had finished filling out the tests and were waaaay ahead of everybody else. He was so astonished that he said to a guy sitting next to me: “I don’t care what they say about you… I think you’re all very smart!” To this day I still wonder what “they" thought of "us”!!!

Saving The World, One Plugin AT A Time

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Today I added the Dynamic Text Replace plugin for WordPress to my blog. I’m a bit lazy when it comes to writing and hate when I cannot do something by using the keyboard only. Or when I have to type the same thing over and over. That is why I chose to use this plugin. Dynamic Text Replace “allows you to easily pre-define text replacement template strings and allow for text to be passed in.” In lame terms, if I want to link something I’ve written about (a word for instance) to a reference site (a dictionary with the definition to said word), all I have to do is use the proper short syntax and the plugin will dynamically enter all the necessary html tags and render it to the viewer. It has definitely helped me speed up my blog writing and elliminates the use of the mouse.

The Crystal Ship

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Just as promised, here’s my screenie of netapplet and gnome-blog running on my laptop!

Open Source Alliance - March 24th, 2005

Mon, 28 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I completely forgot to mention about this last Thursday’s first Open Source Alliance meeting at Paramus' Panera Bread. I arrived earlier than everybody else despite the really bad traffic on Route 4 West. The place was really crowded and I couldn’t set up my laptop at the “usual” place by the conference room. I ended up going to the couch by the front entrance. Armed with a hot cup of coffee I proceeded to get boot my laptop and get some internet going… About 15 minutes later I realized something fishy was going on with the free wifi for I just could not get a working IP assigned. I also realized that nobody had shown up yet. Another 10 minutes went by and I just completely gave up on the wifi and took a walk to the back of Panera to see if anybody was there… I started to wonder if the meeting had been set to meet at a different Panera Bread, the one on 17 North. Luckly there were 4 guys already there with their laptops. I quickly grabbed my stuff and joined them for a very short meeting. Without the wifi access and having only 20+ minutes left we didn’t really get much accomplished. Steve (Open Source Alliance’s organizer), Murph (Slashdot’s organizer) and I (for those who don’t know, I’m the organizer for the Northern NJ Linux group) talked a bit about the unification of our groups and it was decided that starting next month, all individual meetings will be scheduled to coincide on the same date/venue. April 11th will be the last un-unified Linux meeting of the year and I’m planning to have a live install of Ubuntu. Hope to have a good turn out.

Red Storm On The Horizon

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

What a week this has been… and it’s only Monday!!! After putting up with a lot of infantile abuse from my upper management things seem to be heading South. I used to feel that the entire organization was plotting against me and wondered if it was just me. But now, I have definite confirmation that my sanity is still somewhat intact! My new co-worker (and I think she was also hired to be my supervisor) has been experiencing all the abuse herself for a few weeks now and seems to be in the brink of walking out of here! I had somewhat managed to contain my frustrations and turned myself into “one of them” (as I call most of the employess around here who act like complete zombies) so as to avoid getting an ulcer. I even managed to enjoy my days as long as I had my MP3 collection and a good set of headphones at hand. All my zen-like concentration has now been flushed down the drain, thanks to the latest paranoia from upper management: military-like schedules, no flexibility what-so-ever! Now, I drive 1.5 hours each way to work every day, passing through the George Washington bridge, F.D.R., and Triborogh bridge. Assuming that traffic is standard or even controllable is very naive. Assuming you can garantee someone you’ll arrive day in, day out at the same time is also naive. Even when I leave 1 hour earlier I still can not make such claim. Well, the latest paranoia revolves around their demand that we, lowly consultants, be here on time and not a single minute later or else… The else part was not explained yet. I have been “pretty good” these last few months, managing to arrive if not before 8:30am at least no later than 8:50am. I have also stayed after 5:00pm to make up for any missed time. Obviously they don’t have to be flexible with me (or anyone else) and someone could even tell me “tough luck” as has my manager told me today. But is it really unreasonable to be 5-10 minutes flexible? Is it really worth the trouble of making your employees feel like slaves? So much for wanting to be part of a team!

Ubuntu Help Guy

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Lately I have found myself hanging out at #ubuntu on irc.freenode.org, mostly listening and lending a helping hand whenver I can. It sort of reminds me of what I think Open Source and Community really means! I have personally gotten insulted in the past by some pretty lame IRC users who assume that everyone is an idiot and who can’t say anything helpfull but repeat “rtfm” to every enquire. But I will not go off on a tangent here and rant about all those “newbie basher” loosers out there. Somehow, the people at #ubuntu seem to have a different mentality and more willing to help even if the questions seem to be “too basic.” I think this is why I remotely connected to my box during lunch today and spent a good 30 minutes talking to some of the users. I really enjoy the feeling of being able to teach someone something new. I not only content myself with giving the answer but also try to provide more information so that the user can learn a bit more and understand why the given solution works. That sort of “teach a man how to fish” kind of thing. I also try to validate what I know by asking some of the veterans for their input as well. So far I’m really enjoying “hanging out” with the Ubuntu guys and am looking forward to helping and learning with this growing community.

Linux Meetup - March 14, 2005

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This past Monday I hosted the monthly Northern New Jersey Linux Meetup at Panera Bread. It is the 7th meeting I have organized ever since taken over the group back in September 2004. I managed to get there earlier than usual and took advantage of the extra time to write down some ideas I had for a new pet project of mine and get some good coffee. One hour later some of the frequent attendees arrived. One cool thing we managed to do in relatively little time was to perform a new install on someone’s laptop. The distro of choice was Ubuntu Warty and the entire process took less than 20 minutes. The only thing we didn’t manage to setup was the USB wireless adapter but that can be fixed once the laptop is plugged to a network and the appropriate drivers are installed. I only wish more people had attended the meeting to see this… One item we discussed was the possibility of combining our meetings with that of other Meetup groups from Northern NJ. It seems that the turn out for the Slashdot, MySQL, and PHP groups is not that great and we thought that by adding 1 or 2 people from each group to a common group would allow us to attract a bigger audience and boost the organizer’s motivation. The organizer for the Slashdot group told me nobody showed up for his last 2 meetings and he ended up sitting there all by himself. He’s very disappointed and understandably is considering droping the reins of the group. Hang in there buddy… I can completely relate to it… Well, now we have to get in touch with the other organizers and see if they want to join forces and form the new “Geek Alliance of New Jersey.”

Petri Dish Children

Fri, 11 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

My daughter is very ill. Actually, she’s been ill for a few days now with very high fever and coughing coupled with a persistent runny nose. I had to take Wednesday off from work so I could bring her to her doctor but it turned out to be a complete waste of time. He even performed an on-site strep throat test to see if that was the problem but the results were inconclusive. In the end I heard the same diagnose he had given us in all our past trips to his office: it could be a throat infection or an ear infection. Having gone through 3 different doctors and a couple of trips to 2 different E.R.s during my daughter’s first 3 years I shouldn’t be surprised with the diagnose… Noir should I be surprised with the solution either. It is always the same mantra that sounds more like a voodoo chant, repeated over and over until you can’t help but go into the hypnotic trance that seems to have taken control over all parents in the nation. It goes a little bit like this (with voodoo drums beating frenetically in the background): … take Amoxicillin… take Amoxicillin… It amazes me how U.S. doctors can prescribe one type of antibiotic for every single type of ailment aflicting children nowadays. If you child has a runny nose? Amoxicillin! Coughing? Amoxicillin! Ingrown hair? Amoxicillin! Bad breath? Amoxicillin! You see, Amoxicillin is what I call a “catch all” type of antibiotic. It is described as

The Saga Continues

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

My personal quest of gathering as much information as possible on the requirements to enroll into a PhD program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill continued last Friday. I was up and early for my appointments at the Department of Computer Science considering I went to sleep really late the previous night. It was my sister’s birthday so I took her out to the movies and a late dinner. I was supposed to meet a professor and then the chair of the department but due to some slight technical problem (my sister had set up the meetings for 9:30 & 10am but told me 10 & 11am), I ended up talking to the chair first. He had a pretty impressive office and I couldn’t help but admire all the computer books that adorned the many bookshelves around the room. From the very start he told me how competitive the administration process was and all the ubber requirements needed to be considered for their PhD program. Apparently they have the second best computer graphics program in the nation and competition is fierce. We spent about 20 minutes where I was presented with layer upon layer of “possible” obstacles that would make my application “less desirable” than applications from undergrads with a Computer Science degree/background. Also, my 7-8 years of working experience don’t really count much unless I had done some research work. One way I could improve my chances would be to move to Chapel Hill at least 1 year before applying for their PhD program and take some undergrad classes to give me the necessary background I lack, but that idea is pretty much out of question when you have a small family that depends on you. In case you’re wondering what the requirements are: 90+ percentile of your general GRE scores and GPA of 3.5+. Feeling the weight of all the mentioned obstacles on my way and hating myself for not continuing my education when I had a better shot at it, I shook his hand and walked to my other appointment. To my surprise the professor was much, much upbeat then the chair (and I guess he has to be tough… he’s the chair) and the entire 30 minute meeting went really well. I mean, the obstacles are there but he sort of put a better spin on the “you can do anything you want if you work hard enough” idea… After that I decided to buy an UNC baseball hat and sit outside an on-campus coffee house just outside the bookstore for some deserved dose of caffeine and morphine, where I also had the opportunity to observe all the students running to and from their classes. I had forgotten how it felt to be in school, with the constant schedules and homeworks and different people populating every minute of your day. Nearby some girls were participating on some kind of cheering contest… The weather helped too and it felt like one of those early Spring days. Around 1:30pm I left for my last meeting of the day at the Department of Genetics. Got lost for a while driving through the huge campus thanks to my sister’s driving instincts (thanks Magellan) but managed to make there on time and in one piece. Once again the meeting was “hosted” by the chair and right away it became obvious that it would be almost that impossible for me to enroll into the program. I was told that my lack of actual lab experience for the last 8 years put me at the bottom of the list of applicants, all certainly either fresh out of undergrad school or at least with some years of hands-on experience. It wasn’t the best way to end my day and it felt as if I was annoyingly trying to find a “loop-hole” in the administration process. However, I didn’t let this spoil my spirit and took the whole experience as something that will give me even more desire to succeed! Took another 30 minutes to gather some brochures about the Nurse program they offer for my wife and headed back home. Stopped at Mama Dips for some authentic Southern ribs and fried chicken on our way and had to be helped off the car due to all the food I ate. Spent the remaining of the day slowly digesting the ribs and chicken while watching 2 foreign movies. Saturday morning after a quick shower and breakfast I was on a plane headed back home. I now have a load of brochures and catalogs to go through and will have to make some decisions fairly soon…

Tar Heel Dreaming

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Arrived here in North Carolina last night at the Raleigh-Durham airport. My younger sister was waiting for me and as soon as we picked up my luggage we headed to her apartment in Chapel Hill. Woke up early today and went to my first (and only) meeting with the chair of the School of Information and Library Science at UNC. My sister had set up the meeting for me and I must admit I wasn’t too sure if I wanted to spend the time to talk to someone from a department that had the word “library” in it. Turns out the “information” part plays a major role in their program, albeit you could still pursue a career in the library science field if you want to. After asking the standard questions about the program, deadlines, and financial aid I was advised to take a few minutes and speak to one of the professors involved in the program who was very involved with bioinformatics and genomics. The 10-minute meeting was ok but I felt that he wasn’t very interested in talking to me and was just trying to get me to leave. I quickly gave him a rundown of my interests and as he gave me some information a name came up: Catherine Blake. I figured I’d spend another 10 minutes and get some feedback from her and hope she’d be a bit more social. Man, what a difference!!! She was absolutely amazing, taking the time to not only answer my questions but also extract some information from me so she could point me to the right direction. She seemed to be just as passionate about her work (apparently she’s huge in text mining and medical informatics) and we ended up talking for at least a great 30 minutes. Tomorrow I have 3 more meetings scheduled with different folks from the computer science and genetics departments but I must tell you; she has definitely tipped the scale in favor of her department. About 5 minutes after we left her office, as my sister and I are walking toward where my sister works, Catherine caught up with us to give us some more incite about the financial aid process that she thought would be beneficial to me. Icing in the cake! After a huge lunch at the local hang-out place we went back home and spent the rest of the day talking and fixing her laptop. Around 7pm we went to see “Sideways” which definitely deserves a post of its own. Great movie!!!

Going To The Country

Wed, 02 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

The day I fly to North Carolina has finally arrived. I’m extremelly excited about this trip for it could be the kick in ass I need to get back on track with my goals. I’ll be staying at my younger sister’s apartment which I believe is near the UNC's Chapel Hill campus. She's already scheduled 4 interviews with the chairs of 4 different departments and I have just emailed her to try to get me 2 more. I can already feel my brain itching with all the ideas that are coming up to the surface after having spent almost 8 years in the back burner. I guess the itch turned into a major rash the day I drove past the MIT campus while visiting Vinny 2 weeks ago. I joked that if you could tune in your brain to listen to the “brain waves” being transmitted near the campus you’d see how much information was being generated. More than ever I’m convinced that I belong in the academic and research worlds and am wasting away working as a “mercenary coder.” I have this gut feeling that this trip could be the one that will change my life for the best!

Tar Heel Wanna Be

Mon, 28 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This Wednesday I embark on what may be the most important trip of my life: I’ll be visiting and interviewing with the chairs of several different departments at the North Carolina Univertsity with the objective of gathering information for my possible come back to the academic world. It’s been almost 8 years since I graduated from Pace University and my plans of earning a PhD/MD diploma have taken a major detour. From lab technician at BD Pharmaceuticals, BioInformatics Programmer at Synaptics Pharmaceutical (now part of Lundbeck Pharmaceuticals), and now VB.NET Programmer for the School Construction Authority of NYC, I have often felt like a fish out of the water. Computer programming has been a hobby of mine since I was given a Sinclair ZX when I was 9 but being a scientist is what really gets my blood flowing. I’m hoping that somewhere along this trip something will click and help me get back in track with my dream of doing something that will help those people all around the world who unfortunately were born with some type of disability and cannot fully enjoy a “normal” life. I strongly believe that everyone is here for a reason and I want to do my best so that the meaning of my being here is to make someone else’s life better! Hopefully I will be able to acchieve my goal as a Tar Heel!