I've been going through a solid reading kick as a way to fill my extra time since I'm no longer working for Mangia on a regular basis. This reading kick is also to try to get as much reading done before the semester starts; during which I will not have time for leisure reading.

I've been reading the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. I bought the first book (Foundation) to read on the plane to Europe back in May. In the last week I've read the next several books: "Foundation and Empire", "Second Foundation", and I just finished "Foundation's Edge", and I will start "Foundation and Earth" tomorrow. But that's not the topic of this post, though I have enjoyed reading those.

Between "Second Foundation" and "Foundation's Edge" I read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". It was a rather enjoyable read. Actually, now that I'm trying to write this blog entry, I don't really know what to say about it. I liked it, I thought it was an interesting read. I would recommend it to anyone that enjoys pondering philosophical topics. It certainly isn't about Zen or motorcycle maintenance. The subtitle is "An Inquiry into Values", which I guess is at least more accurate than the main title.

The author touches upon several subjects, but one of the first things he discusses is how some people have an aversion to technology. Not just computers and electronics, but really anything that is complex enough that they don't fully understand how or why it works. Not that they won't use technology or try to avoid it, but it is simply something they don't like. They will be quick to jump at the chance to point out any negative aspect of technology and argue about how things were better in "the old days"; but they also won't stop using technology, because, let's face it, it's convenient. The author, Pirsig, gets into a discussion as to why this may be the case and examines this mindset as a philosophical viewpoint. He does a much better job on the topic than I could so go read the book.

One topic I would like to discuss, however, comes up when he is relating a story of bringing his motorcycle into a shop to get something fixed. The mechanic, who is supposed to be well-trained, tries to force something and manages to break part of the bike while the narrator watches. In frustration the narrator simply tells the mechanic to stop and that he'll simply take it home and work on it himself. He uses this to lead into a discussion about how people work. He suggests that if you arrive at a garage and the music is blaring loudly that you should turn around and leave immediately. Having loud music means that the mechanics are trying to distract themselves from their jobs. So if they're listening to the music they're not paying 100% attention to their work, and they probably want to be doing something else. This means they are more likely to miss something that will end up costing you in increased parts and labor.

I'm no mechanic and maybe this is true, maybe it isn't. But Pirsig weaves a convincing argument. When I'm working on a programming project I'll usually have some music playing. While I'm writing standard boilerplate-type code this is no problem, I really only need half my attention to do that. But when I'm really trying to focus on something, like tracking down an obscure bug, or solving some difficult problem the music gets turned off. When I need 100% focus on a problem the music becomes incredibly distracting and I can't get anything done. So it seems likely that this would hold true for other people in other professions as well. As I said, I'm no mechanic, but I would guess that diagnosing car problems is rather similar to trying to fix a bug in a program. You need to pay close attention to what is happening, analyze your data and make hypotheses about where the problem could be. Then you need to start isolating systems and components until you can find the problem. If you're distracted the analysis will be harder because you can miss little things that are actually important. Missing those little things means spending more time on the problem than otherwise would be necessary, and for a customer this means more money for labor costs.

I had several more paragraphs typed up, but decided it was getting long winded and boring, so I cut them, and instead will simply say that the above is certainly true for programming and computer repair, so I easily believe that it applies to mechanical repair as well as many other areas of expertise.

Anyways, if you enjoy philosophical / sociological / psychological stuff then I'd recommend reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

[This Entry]

This morning I presented my Thesis Proposal Defense. For those that are unfamiliar with these, in the Master's program here you write a Thesis Proposal document before doing your actual thesis work. These documents are generally about 20 pages, mine is 22. Once your advisor and your 2nd committee member approve the document you schedule your defense and give the document to the 3rd committee member. So after much difficulty getting a hold of all of my committee members we finally got it scheduled for today.

The Defense is a presentation which is supposed to be targeted towards an audience which is less familiar with your specific field of research, so generally a little more high level and only touch on the details unless the audience members ask questions. Being a common occurrence most Proposal Defenses usually just have the 3 members of your actual committee, and maybe some friends or co-workers.

I, "fortunately", was able to pique the interest of two more faculty members either because they were genuinely interested, or perhaps just bored since we're between semesters. Either way, they showed up and were ready to dive right in. Normally you spend about 15 minutes on the presentation and then maybe answer 5 minutes worth of questions. I wasn't quite so lucky. My research draws from a number of broad areas each of which I could have spent 15 minutes on discussing it; so in preparing my presentation (and the proposal document itself) I had to pick and choose what to talk about. I was about halfway through my presentation when some of the faculty members started asking some questions, so I took some time to answer those; probably an extra 5-7 minutes worth. Then once I finished we spent probably a good extra 20-25 minutes with questions. Fortunately, I was well prepared and had done an incredible amount of reading that didn't even make it into my bibliography because I already had more than the expected amount. The 2" binder of papers I read is sitting on my floor right now filled completely and doesn't include papers I only read on the computer and decided weren't important enough to print out. So I felt rather confident in my knowledge about things even if that breadth and depth wasn't immediately apparent in the presentation. So I was able to address each of their questions with satisfactory and complete answers.

I was starting to feel a little harassed though, since I hadn't seen this level of "assault" in any of the defenses I had attended. I did get some good feedback of how I can structure my presentation in the future (for my actual Thesis Defense) to allay some of these confusions and questions; so that was good. I just hadn't thought of that arrangement beforehand. So I survived the "attacks" without needing my advisor to defend me, which happens some times for students.

After the public was dismissed I was glad to be held for an extra moment just to be told I had done a good job of answering all the questions, so that felt good. I picked my committee members because I value and respect their judgments and opinions, so to have them directly tell me that they felt I had handled things well helped take away some of the stress. I was dismissed to give them a moment to talk things over and was then brought back in for handshakes and congratulations.

I had passed.

They signed all the paper work and then it was official. So that feels good to be done with. And, it means my pay goes up by a dollar an hour. Not too exciting, but that does translate into an extra $80 a month, which will be nice.

[This Entry]

I haven't updated about the books I've been reading recently. So here is a catch up post.

These may not appear in the order I read them, but it will be approximately correct.

Collapse - Jared Diamond
Diamond discusses several ancient civilizations and explores why they failed. He defines a set of causes from which a civilization can fail from any single cause or from a conglomeration of causes. One of the most popular reasons for a civilization to fail is poor resource management. For example the mysterious lost peoples of Easter Island cut down all of their trees. They no longer had wood available for building fires, homes, or boats. The loss of trees allowed for rapid soil erosion causing crops to fail. Eventually the entire civilization disappeared. He then explores these same factors in several modern societies and what they are doing to hurt or improve their situation.
At the end he discusses things we can do to prevent from destroying ourselves as these many other civilizations have done. He actually ends up with a similar thread as "Fast Food Nation"; which is that big corporations can bring change incredibly more quickly than any government regulations can. If you don't like what a company is doing tell them so and organize a group that will boycott their goods until they change. If you can get a large enough group together they will change rather rapidly (given a reasonable request). So vote with your money and not with your mouth.

The Age of Napoleon - Alistair Horne
I picked this one up in the bargain corner of the BYU Bookstore. It was only a couple of bucks so I thought it might be worth it. It wasn't terribly well written. It attempted to cover Napoleon's influence on things non-military oriented. So there was no discussion of battles or campaigns, except incidentally as they affected his ruling. It as sort of interesting, but I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to read it.

How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling - Frank Bettger
This one I purchased on the advice of a Board writer. I have no interest in selling or learning to become a salesperson, however, Olympus recommended it regardless of that fact. So I gave it a read. It could use a thorough editing and revision, but since Bettger was not a writer by trade and I'm sure is dead by now (born in 1888) I doubt it will be happening. Anyways, it contains some interesting anecdotes about his life. He went from a failed baseball player to one of the best insurance salesman ever. One thing I liked about it is that he specifically refused to try or use any tactic that he felt was a "trick" to get the client to buy. He thrived on honesty and building lasting relationships with his clients rather than fast talking and slippery contracts. He discusses a number of things to do that will keep you organized and motivated which can be applied to any trade. If you have some spare time and feel like learning a little bit, I'd recommend reading it.

A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet - Madeleine L'Engle
Josh has these sitting on the bookshelf in the living room and I was bored one day so I started reading through them. I know I read "A Wrinkle in Time" for school at some point, but it's been many years. I still enjoyed that one, but the other two really weren't as good as I was hoping. L'Engle really isn't that great of a writer. She reuses the same plot devices in each of the books. In every single one the night of the events has a mysteriously strong storm that arises. A new mysterious stranger (an other-worldly creature) arrives to the Murry residence to take some of the kids on an adventure to save the world. But if you let yourself ignore some of the poorly used plot devices the storylines themselves are decent and enjoyable, more or less.

Besides another technical book , "Harnessing Hibernate", which I won't bore you with a discussion of, I think that's all the reading I've been able to do recently. I'm in the middle of "Foundation and Empire" by Isaac Asimov right now. I've also had "The Life of Pi" recommended to me, and one of these days I need to get around to reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

[This Entry]

It's time for another update on car information.

My 2007 Honda Civic LX sedan with Automatic Transmission (all that is included to help out the search engines) is now 16 months old. The odometer currently reads 9813 miles.

The efficiency has been better this summer which I assume is a matter of the equipment being broken in and operating more efficiently than last summer. The hot temperatures mean that it takes less time for the engine to warm up to the most efficient temperature range. So I don't get hit quite as badly when only doing short cross-town trips (but still hurt a little, see July on the graph for MPG). I was pleasantly surprised to find that my highway mileage is close to the 40 MPG advertised on the sticker. My city mileage is also very close to the 30 MPG advertised. But, let's look at the graphs, they're more fun than my words.

First up is the Price Per Gallon. This has nothing to do with my car, but is interesting to look at, and now that I'm driving it's something I care about. This graph reflects the price I paid per gallon of 87 octane gas, mostly filling up in Provo, with some fill-ups from Idaho. Hopefully we'll see the same $0.50 drop in price this fall that we saw last fall.

This is my real-world Miles Per Gallon. This summer has been pretty good with MPG upwards of 35 most of the time. The blip down below 30 (this summer) was July when I filled up on July 1, and then not again until Aug, 1; which tells me that I didn't do a lot of driving, so I must have been only doing in-town driving which will, of course, result in lower mileage. The numbers overlaid here are for the approximate odometer reading at the indicated date; this is to give you an idea about the mileage as the car gets broken in.

And now, let's look at how much it's costing me to drive. This is the Price Per Mile, based on gas alone. When I first got my car it was costing about 9-10 cents per mile now it is up to about 11-12 cents per mile.

I hope you enjoyed analyzing this information as much as I did. I like to know how I'm doing with my driving efficiency. I try to drive in a manner to minimize gas consumption. There's no need to lay on the gas all the way up until 30 feet before the red light. It just burns your gas and causes more wear-and-tear on your brakes.

[This Entry]

I've had this idea in my head for a while, and decided to write it down here. Utah has been running lots and lots of radio ads for their "Zero Fatality" campaign. I always thought a good billboard to go along with it would be something containing the slogan:

Wreckless Driving, Not Reckless Driving

[This Entry]

I spent the last 3 hours or so getting a nice clean RSS 2.0 feed setup for this here blog-a-ma-jig. The feed could be fancier and do nice things like contain the last X posts or something, but setting it up like this was actually fairly easy because Greymatter has a nifty little system that allows you to send content to an external file based on template variables. So I just pointed the entry stuff at a page that builds an RSS feed for me. It's fully RSS 2.0 compliant. I also went and double checked my standards compliance for this site. I had a couple of errors that I fixed. Most noticeably that including the xmlns declaration in the html tag is now required.

So, you ask, why did I go through all the trouble of setting up an RSS feed? Well, because Jessica (of Jessica and Mitch fame, see links on right) asked why she couldn't add my blog to her Google Reader. It sounded like a fun project, and after some Googling it looked like it wouldn't be terribly painful to do. So this is for you Jessica.

To subscribe to this hifalutin blog using that fancy RSS stuff simply use this URL: http://www.singingtree.com/~kyle/blog/kyle_getthoughts_rss.xml

Just copy and paste that into your Google Reader, or go to that page directly and your browser (if that's how you get your RSS on) will ask you what to do.

If you run into any issues let me know.

If you happened upon this page while looking for information about adding RSS to your Greymatter setup:
You can grab my templated rss file and take a look at what I used. You'll want to make some modifications for the things that specifically reference my blog. Also, I tried doing fancy stuff to include the previous entry (since the templates supposedly support placing "previous" before them), but the results were inconsistent, so I gave up. My Templated RSS File: kyle_getthoughts_rss.txt

You just take that file and put it in the same folder as your Greymatter index.html file, then go into Configuration (after logging in to your Greymatter) and write the filename into "Connected Files" and select the option to rebuild the connected files whenever you add an entry. That should do it.

[This Entry]