A New Type of Experiment

My good friend Ping Zhang came home from China wih a new bride and a present for Natasha and I. It was a Shibajie Mahua manufactured by Guifaxiang in Ping's home town outside of Shanghai. It comes in four flavors as shown below:


Purple is traditional, Blue is Chinese Pepper, Yellow is Hard Nut, and Red is Haw. Yes. I said Haw. That is the only time I have seen that word used without being preceded by the words Hee or Yee.

So I had an idea to make a blog post out of it. Not so much copying, but rather paying homage to Steve Don't Eat It. And what's better is that Natasha agreed to join me.

The first we tried was Traditional. This makes sense because it was before they got "creative" with the recipe... Whatever the hell that might be. It's basically like dried spaghetti made with peanuts instead of flour wrapped around some stuff that resembles graham cracker crumbs mixed with syrup and dried. All of this combined looks like a piece of poo, as seen to the right.

I don't know if it was the look or the smell, but Natasha took approximately 3 molecules of it for our experiment. I have to say that the Traditional and the Chinese Pepper were pretty good but very different. Hard Nut lived up to the name and was outrageously hard to chew, but tasted pretty good. Haw tasted like it is basically the same as Traditional except that it has already been eaten and then regurgiatated.

I think I would eat them again, but I'm not sure they would actually be sold anywhere in the US. Natasha is safe.

An Odd Race Report

I won an age group today at the first 5K of the season for the Northshore. It was the Great Wake Up Race in Abita Springs. (1/2 mile from the brewery.) More than 150 participants showed up for the run. My time was 23:20, which is one of my slower times, but since the race didn't start until 9:00, it was probably hotter than 80 degrees and very humid. Everyone was rolling back their expectations by at least 1:00.

So that's the summary of the morning's results. But I heard something shocking and hard to accept on the way home. You see, I beat my Dad for the second (or third, I can't remember) consecutive 5K. And I don't mean finish at the same time. I was ahead from the bell. That led him to say the following statement:

I guess the days of me beating you in races is over.

I guess I should have seen it coming, but that's an odd feeling. I've been either catching up to or running with my Dad for 9 years. The thing is, I'm not getting any younger, he's getting older. I was feeling a little scared and sad when that hit me. In a second, time was rushing very fast. I know that he will beat me again in a race. He's just too dedicated and too fast. But at one moment, I realized he is a grandfather just like my grandfather was. The best way I can say it is that it is still a little odd.

At What Point is Diebold Wrong?

Diebold Election Systems is a subsidiary of Diebold, Incorporated. Diebold is known for making many ATMs, vaults, and even most of the tubes and whatnot at your local bank drive-through. Diebold Election Systems is known for making the worlds most unreliable and unsecure voting systems.

So why do I care? Well this would make an excellent case study for the application of software engineering. The vast majority of systems are requirements driven. Just imagine how the project starts... We need a system that ____. You would think that the requirements for a voting machine would... uh... you know... let people vote. Of course it isn't that simple but you have to imagine reliability and security are among the top requirements of the system.

Since these systems have been used, it has been said that one person cracked a Diebold system in less than two hours using a hotel key and a laptop. Diebold had to pay a huge sum to California for selling them machines that were faulty. In one case here in Louisiana, a politician who lost her election went to the warehouse where the machines are kept and found that some machines were actually wired wrong. She would press the button by her name and the opponent's name would light up as if she voted for her opponent.

"How can this happen?" isn't even the most interesting question in this case. The most interesting question is: "Why is this continuing to happen?"

Despite the loads of past problems... despite the multitude of sites that outline how to easily hack the machines... despite all of that, Diebold continues to back its product. Diebold continues to say that the machines should not give receipts to voters or even keep a paper tally in addition to the electronic tally. At what point is Diebold wrong?

I'm Published

A month or so ago, I mentioned how busy I was and that I couldn't really say what it was that was keeping me busy. That's because I didn't want to inject any part of what I was working on into the public domain. Even now I'm limited in what I can say. What I can say is this:

After a year in the program, a paper I helped with has been published!

(Image © iasted.org)

Title: "Ontology-Based Error Detection in Software Design: A Case Study"
Authors: Allyson Hoss, Doris L. Carver, and John W. Burris

This paper will be presented by its primary author (Allyson) at the 10th IASTED Conference on Software Engineering and Applications and appear in the conference proceedings. The main thing this means for me is that I will be listed as a published author in most of the online citation databases.

My contribution was writing practical UML diagrams for the case study. They also had to be flawless in their design. One misuse of a relationship could have caused the paper to be rejected. I also helped review the paper for clarity and correctness.

Thanks for letting me brag.

I'm Going Crazy

Seriously... I am one brain cell away from being able to hide my own Easter eggs this spring.

R.I.P. Crocodile Hunter

According to FoxNews.com, Steve Irwin was killed today while filming a nature documentary. A sting ray hit Irwin in the heart with its poisonous barb. I salute you, Mr. Irwin. You left this world doing what you love and while you were here did wonders for conservationist movement. You helped me remember how amazing God's creation is and why it should be protected. My prayers will be with your family.

To see Steve Irwin in his funniest television appearance, go here. Also, did you know that he was afraid of parrots?

This Post is Sans Serif

Until recently, I had no idea what "sans serif" meant. I realize that his could very well be yet another case of me being an overly ignorant person, but I like to think that when I find things out that I probably should have known, I should share.

Well serifs are little edges added to the ends of the letters. The most obvious example of a serif is in the capital letter "E" in the photo to the right. Sans, of course, mean without.

The font on the left is Times New Roman, the most widely used font serif. The font on the right is Verdana, one of the most common web fonts that is also a font sans serif.

I hope someone found that as enlightening as I did. And if you are reading this post before 6:00, why the heck aren't you watcing the Tech game? We're holding on...