To Infinity And Beyond

Yoshi is the Infinite Cat Project's 2007 Christmas Day cat:
http://www.infinitecat.com/infinite/cat-html/1501-1600/1522.html

Questionable Content

A web comic by Jeph Jacques that's been around forever which I just discovered: http://questionablecontent.net/cast.php

Friday Cat Blogging

Yoshi with The Infinite Cat Project in the background.

Yuki in the bathroom sink.

Yoshi

This evening we welcomed a second kitten into our home. Yoshi is a 10-week old marmalade tabby we adopted from Happy Tails. Yoshi is a polydactyl cat, which means he has more than the usual number of toes on both of his front paws due to a cat body type genetic mutation. The more than usual number of toes are harmless.

Our resident kitten, eight-month-old Yuki, hasn't fully accepted Yoshi yet. He growls and hisses, which is normal (according to the information sheet given to us).

UPDATE: All seems well--after watching our neighbor play with Yoshi for some time, Yuki's temperament seems to have transformed from defensive aggressiveness to playful. They chased each other all over the house, with Yoshi finally hiding under our bed to take a nap. Yoshi's playfulness seemed unphased by Yuki's hissing and growling, like a branch bending in the wind and then springing back. It seems obvious to us by his reaction that Yuki's never been in a home with other cats. His origin remains a mystery, but it's equally obvious that he was raised in a loving home.

UPDATE: Day Two--Yuki continues to hiss, one or two almost inaudible growls. Yuki wants to play--he lies on his back and looks at Yoshi.

UPDATE: Day Three--Yuki continues to hiss at times, then hides from Yoshi in a large box, in a drawer, or behind a curtain. We think he's overwhelmed with Yoshi's energy and needs some peace and safety to de-stress. This evening they played together and they're both sitting with us in the office sleeping.

Friday Cat Blogging

Yuki at six months
watching the move-in process
Cat Supervisor

By Joel Hodgson

Cruising the Flickr account of an ILM'er 90 minutes to the west who got a chance to see the worldwide premier of Cinematic Titanic and shoot pics of the cast party afterward, I found this image:



The hilarious bit about Joel's autograph on the book is that Mike Nelson wrote the book and seems to point to the words "By Joel Hodgson." I'm assuming Joel didn't write that--or did he?

California State Personnel Board Written Exam: Associate Programmer Analyst (Specialist)

This afternoon, on my way to the California State Personnel Board Testing Center to take the written exam for the Associate Programmer Analyst (Specialist) position, I watched ice fly off the top of a semi-trailer heading westward toward San Francisco. The sheets of ice, formed during transport through the snow-covered Sierra Nevada mountains, had melted in the warm Central Valley sunshine. Now, with every incline or bump, the sheets broke off, arced into the 65-mph winds, then dashed against the road, shattering into thousands of sparkling shards that rattled in my car's wheel wells as I drove over them. Vehicles in adjoining lanes cautiously passed the trailer as best they could.

I managed to avoid the ice and arrive early, parking at the Westfield Plaza East parking garage, eating a light lunch, reading a book to pass the time, and then walking to the Center. I waited outside with 20 other applicants as maintenance staff cleaned windows. At 12:00, a proctor unlocked the door and we filed in, taking our assigned computers (Dell Optiplex GX260's). At precisely 12:15, the proctor began reading the instructions for the exam. At 12:23, we began the three-hour computer-based, multiple-choice test.

The test consisted of 100 questions divided into three sections, each question paired with four multiple-choice answers. The software is a kiosk-style (menu-less) web browser window. The first section discussed IT questions; the second project management and database questions; the third logic and situational questions. You may check a box next to each question to indicate you'd like to review it after completing. At the end of the exam, the software generates links to these questions and those the candidate left blank. A candidate can submit the test for instant grading at any time.

Test topics included: PERT charts, Gantt charts, critical paths, flat files, primary & foreign keys, logic puzzles, algorithm-evaluation, situational questions, a customer-service question, number sequence puzzles, logical database views, batch processing, real-time processing, parallel processing, multitasking, transaction processing, transactions, records, tables, logical operators, relational operators, system development life cycle models (for example, waterfall, spiral), and so forth, and so forth.

Observations:

• The software provides a final grade--no answers, no statistics. You pass or you fail (70% cut-off).
• Don't be late--the proctor turned away one candidate who arrived at 12:30 due to parking problems.
• The proctor has no experience with the test material to clarify questions.
• Cameras record the candidates. No cheating.
• The proctor allowed me to keep a closed-container of water and a Clif Bar on the desk.
• No keyboard necessary--you're instructed to set it on top of the computer case
• You'll need the candidate ID number issued to you to log-in to the software.
• Overwhelmingly male population. Out of 20, perhaps 5 women.
• One tip: Spinners at the Westfield Plaza Mall near the Center offers parking validation if you buy a coffee.
• I finished in approximately two hours, and spent the remaining 60 minutes reviewing questions I failed to answer or marked for review. I then went through the entire test again one final time.
• The software presents a one-page candidate satisfaction survey at the end to obtain feedback prior to showing your grade.
• The exam software worked well--no bugs.

Opinions/reactions:

• A question on flat-files? Domo arigato Mr. Roboto! Take me back to the 80's.
• Coming from a computer science background I felt rusty on some of the business analyst terminology.
• The design of the web exam software seems like a throwback to the HTML of the mid-nineties. Solidly functional, but dated.
• I mis-interpreted the equality operator ('=') as the assignment operator and botched a question. x_x Too much reading of C code.
• I felt disappointment at not having the option to see which questions I missed--I'd appreciate more transparency. A few questions I had down to one of two choices and I'd like to know what the answers were. Especially the answers to the situational questions, which seem subjective. A call to the Exam Questions line (916-653-1705) revealed, It's a standard exam and we don't allow answer inspections for that.
• The URL http://www.spb.ca.gov/employment/eligible_list_disclosure.cfm on the printed results sheet given to me after the test doesn't work. The URL appears to be http://www.spb.ca.gov/jobs/exams/eligible_list_disclosure.htm.

The State ranks people based on their scores, and hires primarily out of the top three ranks.

To my surprise, I discovered that due to extra points given to veterans or career state employees. The percentages needed to reach the top two ranks are 110% and 105%! Third-rank is 100%, with each rank decreasing by 5%--fourth rank, 95%, fifth rank, 90%, and so forth. x_xI didn't achieve the perfect score necessary to reach third rank, but I'm quite content with the result I achieved.

It appears upon review that the printed results sheet given to me after the test contains a table which indicates rank one and two as 110% and 105%, but in reality rank one seems to be 95%+, rank two seems to be 90%+, and rank three 85%+.

Wishing you success on the exam.

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur

Another signature seen on comp.programming this evening:

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Translation: Anything in Latin sounds profound

1-800-DEV-NULL

E-mail signature seen on comp.programming:

How's my programming?
Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL

Friday Cat Blogging

Yuki's ears perk up
Birds sing sweetly from high above
Will they come to earth?

David Gustafson, Artist

David Gustafson, one of my former house-mates, has created a new web site to showcase his art:

http://davidgustafsonartist.com/

A long-time resident of Sacramento, California, David moved to Portland, Oregon in early 2007.

I felt a tinge of nostalgia seeing familiar objects in his new residence--a wall hanging, pottery, rugs, and a fern consistently on its last legs of life.

Wishing you success and peace, David.

DawnHustig.surname();

In the event that we get married in the future, Dawn and I have discussed what to do about surnames. Here's a solution that we came up which randomizes which surname to use:

char * DawnHustigSurname::getSurname(void)
{
  int coin_flip=rand()%2;
  int surnameSize=0;
  delete surname;
  if (coin_flip)
  {
    surnameSize=sizeof("Hustig");
    surname = new char[surnameSize+1];
    strncpy(surname,"Hustig",surnameSize);
    surname[surnameSize]="\0";
  }
  else
  {
    surnameSize=sizeof("Schultz");
    surname = new char[surnameSize+1];
    strncpy(surname,"Schultz",surnameSize);
    surname[surnameSize]="\0";
  }
  return surname;
}

Signature:
  DawnHustig.getSurname();

Silliness aside, the dilemma we face is that Hustig isn't a very common last name, so there's some desire on Dawn's part to retain it. No existing solutions that I've seen for retaining surnames seems to work once one takes into consideration what children will do when they marry. For example, it might put a child with surname Schultz-Hustig in a bind when they marry--which surname to retain? People seem to accept the existing system because it's good enough, even though it has flaws (in my opinion).

California Resident

Dawn submitted paperwork at American River College a few weeks back declaring resident status, and yesterday she signed up for Spring classes. Total charge for 14 credits? $250. :)