Despite many attempts to get my HDL cholesterol levels up over the past several years (although my LDL levels are steadily trending down) my doctor decided to try something different: niacin. Niacin, vitamin B₃, is reported to raise HDL levels -- about 3 points for every gram consumed daily. One of the temporary side effects of niacin is flushing. I started taking 2 grams/day of inositol hexanicotinate, a form of niacin sold as a no-flush version. Sure enough, no flushing - or at least I assumed no flushing as I didn't notice any change after taking them. After I ran out of that bottle I went by GNC to buy a larger bottle (if I'm taking 2-3g a day and the capsules are at most 500mg, I need a bottle that is going to last me for more than a week). They didn't have the inositol hexanicotinate version so I got the pure niacin version. Thinking my body was already adjusted to the dosage I took my usual 1g in the morning yesterday. 15 minutes later and I was having a major hot flash, red in the face and torso, and my hands started itching. Talk about uncomfortable, scary as hell, and yet oddly fascinating all at the same time! I'm imagining that taking a dose of niacin is the closest any man will get to understanding what women go through in menopause.

I cranked back down to 1g/day (500mg twice a day) today in hopes I can becomes less sensitive to it over the next couple of weeks.

Today is a monumental day in the life of our new house: we have air conditioning.

We're not exactly sure how the previous tenants lived in the house for 4 years without AC. The thermostat on the first floor says the house is currently at 81 degrees. The upstairs, where my office is located, is much warmer -- you can feel the temperature difference walking up the stairs.

This will undoubtedly help my allergies as well. Having the windows open non-stop for the past six weeks has contributed to me being miserable despite the daily Allegra.

Excuse me while I go lay down on the air vents...

While out in California visiting Meg a few weeks ago I was told that car dealerships in the San Jose area had stopped accepting SUVs as trade-ins. I'm not sure the accuracy of that but I don't disbelieve it -- particularly given this article from Wired: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/rising-gas-pric.html. My favorite part of the article (and there are lots of good parts) is:

General Motors is looking to unload Hummer, the epitome of gas-guzzling excess, after sales fell 60 percent in May. The number of Civics sold in one month exceed the number of Hummers GM expects to sell all year.

I admit to being an odd bird (you can stop nodding your heads now) but I'm still amazed at how few people can tolerate silence. Benjamin, for example, always has music playing either via his iPod or computer be it in the house, in the car, while working out, etc. He doesn't like silence.

I on the other hand very seldom play music except while in the car (which is seldom in itself these days). I'm perfectly happy running, working out, cooking, working, and doing virtually everything without music. To take it a step further, often I prefer silence.

This concept appears to be foreign to many people these days. Take for example the gym I attend. The facility is very small (a joint collaboration between the Raddisson hotel and the next door office building) and has a single TV in the room. If the TV is on a specific channel and someone wants to change the channel they usually ask those already in the room if anyone is watching it -- the implication being that if no one is watching the currently-playing channel the asker will change it to something else. Several times I've been the only person in the room and turned the TV off prior to starting my workout. When the next person walks in they don't bother asking if I wanted the TV off but instead just turn it on to whatever channel they desired.

On a similar front if I do have music playing in the house Benjamin will ask before changing it to something else but never thinks about playing music when there is none currently playing.

Has this uncomfortableness with silence always been there and personal music players (eg: iPods) have allowed folks to counteract it or is the dependence upon sound a recent development due to the accessibility of personal music players?

My husband is annoyed at how Green I have become. Those of you who know us will likely not find this surprising. Part of it, however, is his fault, albeit indirectly, due to his economics class and the ensuing conversations. I somehow escaped high school and college without a single economics class and was intrigued with some of the concepts he was learning such as the concepts of a 'public good' and 'private good'. Specifically his example that air was a public good as breathing air does not decrease the air available for others (so it is non-rivalrous) and breathing air does not prevent others from breathing it (it is non-excludable). From a scientific standpoint that is factually incorrect: if I breath the oxygen out of the air, you can't breath it. I'm sure an economist would wave their hands at the issue and say "but plants just convert the carbon dioxide we exhale into oxygen -- your example is too narrow" and he or she may well be right if they discounted environmental issues. That did get me wondering how economists calculate environmental impacts into their evaluations.

Fast forward to the article The Economist Has No Clothes by Robert Nadeau in the April 2008 edition of Scientific American. In the article the author asserts that the current formulas being used by economists, by definition, do not include environmental impact:

Because neoclassical economics does not even acknowledge the costs of environmental problems and the limits to economic growth, it constitutes one of the greatest barriers to combating climate change and other threads to the planet.

Ah - so the answer to my question is that they don't -- economic reports just ignore environmental impacts.

Later in the class Benjamin did a report showing how online music purchases has increased public good. This, in particular, opened up to me a fascinating line of thought. The general logic was that if people downloaded music instead of purchasing physical copies of CDs it would decrease the manufacture of CDs and free up resources for other purposes. During our conversation it occurred to me that downloading music, and other media like movies, is more environmentally friendly than borrowing or buying physical copies be they new or used. Not only does it save in physical media (less end-of-life costs due to landfill) but in the amount of greenhouse gas released due to gas. Yes, gasoline. If demand for physical CDs decreases, manufacturers will create fewer CDs which will decrease the amount of merchandise shipped to stores resulting in either fewer trips or the use of smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles for the transportation. Not to mention the obvious savings of gas for people making trips to their favorite box store to purchase one.

That got me thinking about other things like DVDs: should I feel good or bad about my Netflix subscription? On the plus side I'm not purchasing a copy (reduce and reuse) but it still has to be mailed to me (transportation costs and mailer waste). After some thought I decided that, in general, I should feel good about Netflix. Yes, the mailman has to deliver it to me but he's coming to my house every day regardless if there is a movie in the mail or not so while it doesn't have a zero cost it has a near-zero cost compared to me getting in a car and driving to Blockbuster, for example. Even better would be to stream the videos directly from their website (the lack of Linux-compatible video player notwithstanding). This resulted in the creation of a list containing possible movie-watching options from most environmentally friendly to least:

• Netflix Instant Watching
• Netflix DVD rentals
• Borrowing DVDs from friends that live closer to you than the local video store
• Driving to local video store to rent DVD
• Buying DVD from online retailer who ships via USPS
• Driving to local box store to buy DVD

Note that "Buying DVD from online retailer who ships via UPS/Fedex" didn't make the list. If the driver was already going to be in your neighborhood to deliver something else, it probably ranks around "Driving to local video store". If they have to drive much further than the distance between your place and the box store, it probably comes in dead last.

I came up with a slew of others, all of which are obvious after you think about it. Like for produce:

• Growing your own produce
• Buying produce grown locally
• Buying produce grown regionally
• Buying produce grown nationally
• Buying produce grown internationally

Or commuting:

• Telecommuting
• Commuting via walking or biking
• Commuting via public transportation
• Commuting via car pool
• Driving by yourself

Or music:

• Buying music via the internet (iTunes, Amazon, etc)
• Borrowing CDs from friends
• Buying used CDs
• Buying new CDs

See, not rocket science but I never considered the environmental benefit from buying music online prior to the economics conversation. This seems like an under-marketed area for online retailers.

I predict that we'll see a Tipping Point for digital vs physical media in the next few years after which physical DVDs and CDs will go the way of the 8-track yielding both economic and environmental benefits. I just hope the movie and music providers get past their shortsighted DRM tactics prior to the Tipping Point or it will be a step backwards for consumers (although part of me wonders if the Tipping Point can even occur until content is provided DRM-free).

I ran across an interesting, and humorous, discussion titled Redefining the dictionary given by a fabulously dressed Erin McKean at TED last year. Worth a watch when you have a spare 16 minutes.

Benjamin just completed his last final for this trimester today and he's off for the summer. Unfortunately due to the outcome of a group project, the odds are very good that he will be making a B in one of his classes which mars his otherwise straight-A+ record. The amazingly frustrating part is that the issue with the group project was mostly beyond his control.

Benjamin was one of three people on this major class project. Lets call the other people X and Y. Each person was responsible for their own portion of the project. In addition, person X agreed to take the three parts and combine them together such they had consistent formatting. Benjamin was already doing the "gather it all together" work for another class project and X agreed to do it for this one. X would then send the final document to Benjamin who would print it out and have it bound at Kinkos. X got him the document and Benjamin did his part. Apparently X is an idiot and simply copy/pasted the parts into one document and did not do any of the formatting. X also used the words "bull crap" in one of their portions. This is annoying but not terrible and played only a minor role in the ensuing catastrophe.

Person Y, on the other hand, is a poor excuse for a human being. Instead of creating content for their own section of the project, Y plagiarized 6 pages worth of content from the web. When the professor got to the aforementioned 6 pages she stopped reading (never getting to Benjamin's part of the project) and called the three of them into her office. As with most universities, J&W has a zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism. She could have had all three of them expelled. Instead she reamed them a new one and said that she would only give them, at most, 60% of the possible points and that was being generous.

I'm frustrated -- probably more so than Benjamin is at this point. It's easy to look back and say "Benjamin should have read the entire project before having it printed and bound" to which there is a point and something he himself has said. Given how overworked and stressed he was during the week that the project was due, I'm impressed that he pulled it off at all. He had no bandwidth to assume complete control for this project in addition to the other projects for which he was already doing so. In addition, that's not how group projects should work. Person Y (and to some degree person X) violated the trust that a group project assumes and as a result all three of them are suffering because of it. I, personally, still hope that person Y is expelled. I have no doubts that in a corporate setting Y would be fired and likely both Benjamin and X would be severely reprimanded if not fired as well. In this case I can see the correlation between academia and industry, but that doesn't mean I think it's fair.

So for those following The Denver Monthlies, don't be surprised if you read about his first B in the next edition.

I'm sure you already heard, but good news from CA today! Gay marriage is legal in California!

"In contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation," the court said in the 120-page ruling, "and, more generally, that an individual's sexual orientation -- like a person's race or gender -- does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.

"We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples."

Now there's two states that B and I can move to after he graduates from college!

I've forgotten how much I hate computer hardware.

Three weeks ago today I was working at my computer and heard a loud POP, loud enough that I remember ducking for cover. I wasn't able to figure out where the sound had come from and after a bit I dismissed it and continued working.

The next morning I was working away and my computer spontaneously rebooted. Now that's annoying. To make matters worse it continued to do so. There was nothing in the log files that might indicate what the problem was. I know that brown outs can often cause this and since we just moved into the new house I thought we might be having some minor electrical issues. Determined to get it resolved I head off to Best Buy and purchase a UPS ($130). Nope - UPS doesn't fix the problem, the machine is still rebooting. After literally hours of frustration I determined that the problem was my dual-head AGP video card. The loud sound that I had heard the night before was one of the capacitors exploding. I removed the card and was reduced to using the on-board video with just one monitor while I awaited for a new video card to arrive.

Early in the next week (two weeks ago) the new video card arrives ($40). I pop it in and as soon as it boots up into graphics mode it reboots. Damn. I'm guessing that when the capacitor exploded it screwed something up on the motherboard such that no AGP card will work. Reverting back to one 1600x1200 monitor is totally out of the picture and a thought that was not even entertained (I did mock the thought for just a bit, but didn't entertain it). As anyone who has ever used dual monitors before can attest (my mother being one of them) once you go dual-head you never go back.

Because my computer is a work computer and since it very clearly isn't functioning correctly I submitted for a replacement. This is where I was concerned about things getting tricky. IBM has a policy that desktop systems are only replaced once every 3.5 years -- and they're trying to push it to 4 -- to minimize expenses and prevent people from requesting a new one every year. My system at the time was 4 days less than 3 years old so it was almost to the 3.5 mark but note quite there. If your computer is nonfunctional they'll fix or replace it regardless of how old it is, but I wasn't certain that "I can't use both of my monitors" counted as broken. Luckily the person who approves all desktop replacements for Tivoli use to be on my team several years ago and after I explained what was wrong he said to just order a new one and he would approve it. And so I did.

Now we wait another week and a half for processing and shipping and the machine arrives last Friday. In a box that looks like it would house a laptop and not a desktop. I open it up and there is indeed a desktop in the box, obviously designed by the creators of MicroMachines. This thing is microscopic. It does, however, already come with a video card that supports dual-monitors. Imagine my shock! So I sit down to plug in my keyboard and mice and - lo and behold, it has no PS/2 ports. Anyone who knows me will likely recall that I'm a stickler for my input devices. I am a passionate user of the Microsoft Natural keyboard (the original, not the Elite or the Media) and the Logitech TrackMan Marble trackball (the original, not the one with the scroll wheel). In fact, I'm so passionate about my input devices that I have a spare keyboard and two spare trackballs should some unforeseen event befall my existing ones. The spares are vital because they don't make either one of these input devices any more.

I get online to see if Best Buy has a PS/2-to-USB adapters and yes, they do but it has such horrible reviews on Amazon that I'm not going near it. Another brand has rave reviews but is not available in any stores we have here in Denver so I'm forced to order it from Amazon ($30). It gets ordered and I plug in a spare USB keyboard and USB mouse to get by and cross my fingers that the ordered device works as designed.

Meanwhile I work at getting the new computer set up. The video card is being very persnickety and I fight with it all day Saturday. Eventually through enough research I figure out that the supplied ATI video card will not support a dual-monitor set up at full resolution. And really, this doesn't overly upset me because I've come to absolutely hate the ATI card with a passion - their Linux support sucks so bad it could suck a monkey through a garden hose. Running two 1600x1200 monitors at 1024x768 resolution is unacceptable, end of discussion. You're thinking "so you just used the new video card you just bought, right?" Alas if it were only that simple. There are two problems with the new computer that prevent me from using the already-purchased video card 1) the new machine uses PCI Express (PCIe) and the already-purchased card is AGP and 2) because the MicroMachine case is so small, the video card must be a low profile card and the already-purchased card is full-height. So Saturday afternoon I get online to order a replacement video card. Finding an nVidia PCIe low-profile video card is more challenging that you might think but I did find one on Amazon ($60). Fed up at this point I order it for 2-day shipping.

While I'm waiting I'm also trying to figure out why the new computer seems so slow - slow like molasses in December. On Sunday after several hours of research I determine it is because the new machine has SATA drives but the BIOS is set to present them as IDE drives giving me a non-blazing 3MB/s transfer speed. I'm not a speed fanatic, really, I'm not, but the computer was virtually unusable at that speed. You can't just flip a switch in the BIOS, however, because 1) the initrd kernel image doesn't have the AHCI module to support SATA and thus won't recognize the drive and 2) the fstab file references /dev/hd* when the SATA drives are going to be presented to the kernel as /dev/sd* drives. All of this is determined by trial-and-error-and-research (rinse lather repeat) and involves many cycles of rebooting, adjusting BIOS settings, and editing configuration files. Finally I master the beast and my drive now transfers data at 61MB/s.

Monday and Tuesday I work entirely from my laptop as the new machine is unusable and yet I've already transferred everything to it from the old machine -- there's no point in going back to the old one. Today, Wednesday, both the PS/2-to-USB adapter and the video card show up. 10 minutes later the new machine is 100% operational with dual-screens supporting my full monitor resolution and working input devices.

Three weeks, $260 (out of my own pocket), and many frustrating hours later, I finally have a working computer again. This is why I hate computer hardware.

I'm way behind on my LJ posts so this update is past-due by at least two weeks.

I wasn't accepted for this round of the IBM Corporate Service Corp. According to the post on the intranet there were several thousand (~5,500) people that applied for just a few (100) slots.

That's ok though, this year may not have been the best time for me to go anyway. I do plan on reapplying for the next round.

Today I applied for IBM's Corporate Service Corps. Think Peace Corps but for computers instead. To quote the original IBM press release last year:

This program will provide leadership development experiences for IBMers, exposing participants to the 21st Century context for business – diverse cultures, policy environments and societal expectations. IBM will team with non-governmental organizations to place small groups of employees from different countries and business units together, outside of the office structure. They will build relationships and work on some of the world’s toughest problems, such as enhancing global economic opportunity and access to education resources. The Corporate Service Corps will be global from the outset: Approximately 600 IBM participants over the first three years will be drawn from all over the world. Project destinations will be in emerging and developing countries.

The program would be 6 months in total but only a month of that would be out of the US and in the destination country. The other 5 months would be part-time work in preparation for leaving and for debriefing once the in-country assignment is over.

The pre-reqs were reasonably high and they aren't accepting that many people so we'll see if I get selected. Preferential treatment will be given to folks who are already involved in volunteer work and while I listed DP and my sign language interpreting for Gateway the last several years I'm not certain if that's what they're looking for.

For the initial phase only three locations were listed as options and you were to rank them in your order of preference. My order was: Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa. Who knows, maybe my non-existent Russian will get some use?

The application deadline is February 15 and the coordinators are hoping to let folks know a month after that who has been accepted. Nothing to do but wait!

The counter-offer was more than reasonable so we accepted it -- we're buying a townhouse!

The only thing that Benjamin and I don't absolutely love about this unit is the outside color. It appears that Gargamel finally got the upper hand and made a line of paint. Yes, the condos are Smurf blue. Luckily the units around it aren't so you can't see the color from the inside :)

Check out realtor-provided pictures at 8351e29th.com.

The plan is to close on February 15th, lease back the unit to the current owners until March 31st, and take possession of it on April 1st. The lease-back helps the current owners who are in the process of building another home and gets us closer to the end of our lease at the lofts on April 14th.

This unit is vastly different from the unit we first started looking at but has the benefit of much more square footage, much nicer finishes, and a better possible resale value while only being slightly more expensive.

Earlier today we submitted an offer on a house in Denver. The sellers have countered. Stay tuned...

As mentioned previously, ITIM was released to manufacturing (RTMed) last week and yesterday was made electronically generally available (eGA). Yay!

Several news reports have been released. None of them mention the better performance with V5.0 (probably because we don't give out specifics without a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so they'd have no data they could share to back that up).

Well, specifically for this comparison: We're not in Austin anymore.

It's cold. Butt-freezing, teeth-chattering, toe-curling cold. The current temperature is 19 degrees with today's high being 23. The low tonight is 8. Yes eight. Temperature-wise that's been about par for the past week or more. It's currently snowing and has been off and on for several days. The snow actually isn't that bad (particularly since I can commute in house-shoes) but the cold is cold. It probably wouldn't be so bad if we weren't living in a 100-year-old building with original windows and 14' ceilings. The building is heated by steam and apparently there isn't enough steam to go around to warm up our loft to above 60 degrees on average (sometimes it gets up to 65 and we rejoice). Or, maybe, it does get above 60 degrees but you'd have to be 10' tall to feel it given the high ceilings. And did I mention we don't have ceiling fans to help circulate the warm air?

On the flip side I bought a pair of all-purpose boots on Sunday evening that have come in particularly handy for my treks outside (to the gym, library, bank, post office, etc).

But yes - it's cold.

I realize that subject line makes very little sense to non-IBMers, let me translate:

IBM Tivoli Identity Manager version 5.0 released to manufacturing last night just before midnight EST!

That may still not make much sense to some folks, so let me break it down further:

The project that I've been working on for almost 2-years was finally released last night on schedule!

This is a huge thing due to the size of the project, the size of the team, the aggressive schedule, and that few of us are still sane after the two years :)

This release has a lot of "firsts" that I was directly involved in that will positively impact our customers:

• First time to have team members in all four US time zones. The joke is that I moved to Denver specifically for this reason. [Ok, this one doesn't impact our customers but it's a fun fact.]
• First time to have a hardware sizing tool available at release instead of 90 days after release. This is vital as without a sizing tool our customers just have to guess what kind of hardware they need for their deployments.
• First time to have a Performance Tuning Guide available at GA (general availability - about 5 days after RTM) instead of 90 days after release. This is important for customers with medium to large environments as well as the IBM Service team who is helping them deploy the version. [Well, technically we aren't going to hit GA but rather 1.5 weeks after GA. Still that's better than 12 weeks!]
• First time to release an internal-only document for Support and Services highlighting some known rough spots in the product so they can guide customers around them.
• And best of all: it's the first time that product performance and scalability have been an integral focus of a release from the design phase. In all past releases performance and scalability have been, literally, the very last thing looked at just before we release. I'm unable to say in a public forum just how much faster the product is without all of you signing an NDA. Just trust me that It's Faster and It Scales Better and that's a Very Good Thing for our customers and for me!

Please excuse me while I do the engineer's happy dance for about a week.

Every time I hear the song Don't Speak by No Doubt I think of the importance of punctuation. Specifically, take this line:

Don't tell me cause it hurts

The meaning is actually ambiguous in my mind without some punctuation.

Consider it a rebuttal to some previous comment:

Don't tell me "cause it hurts"

Or what about if it was actually an order:

Don't; tell me: "cause it hurts"

Or maybe it is being spoken by someone who is a bit masochistic:

Don't. Tell me cause it hurts

And yes, these are the things I think about when I'm at the gym and this song comes on :)

We've released the September edition of The Denver Monthly yesterday for your reading pleasure.

I had an article about the Denver Mint all written up and ready to go until it was lost due to user error (a major brain fart on my part, arg!). Either B or I will try to recreate this for next month's edition.

To those of you who receive announcements via email: We've had some difficulty in getting both everyone BCC'd (as compared to CC'd) and the URL in the same email for some reason. To fix this I've created an announcement-only mailing list hosted on my server that will ensure a BCC-like distribution as well as including the URL in the footer thereby nicely solving both problems once and for all. If you'd like to get off (or on) this distribution list, please drop me an email and let me know. Sorry for the inconvenience.

We've released the August edition of The Denver Monthly today.

This one is a bit short due to us being in Austin at the beginning of the month and putting the results of that visit in the last edition. I'm sure we'll hear all about Benjamin's classes in next month's newsletter as he starts classes today!

After taking a look back at my journal entries I was surprised to see that I've never posted anything about PGDP or WordCheck, which really is amazing since it has consumed many hours of my life.

I guess I should start with some background. Last September I came across Digital Proofreaders whose mission is to preserve books by providing texts to Project Gutenberg (PG). The site provides a mechanism for content providers to upload scanned and OCR'd copies of books, proofers to validate and correct the text one page at a time by comparing it to the scanned image, formatters (aka foofers) to format the text, and post-processors to ensure consistency and do a final edit before the text is uploaded to PG. Each book, or project, is guided through the process by a project manager who is responsible for helping with questions from proofers or foofers.

I began as a simple proofer, proofing a couple of pages a day during my lunch break. The more pages I proofed the more annoyed I became with the spellcheck component of the proofing interface. It didn't offer the ability to see the page image in the default interface, the misspelled words were displayed as a drop-down box with suggestions instead of a text box to make corrections, and there was no way to add words to the spell checker's dictionary so there were many false positives.

After searching some of the forums, my concerns were shared by others. A bit more digging revealed that the PGDP code is open source and thus available for improvement. It will surprise no one that I got annoyed enough that I started working to improve these issues collaborating with more senior project developers and active members of the community. The resulting "spell check" was sufficiently advanced that we renamed it WordCheck to convey that the tool does much more than simply check for misspelled words:

• The image is always shown when making corrections to the page text.
• Instead of using drop-down boxes to indicate misspelled words, edit boxes are instead.
• If the project is listed has having multiple languages, the page text is checked using all possible language dictionaries instead of just the first one reducing the number of false positives.
• Each project now has its own 'dictionary' in the form of a Good Words List that project mangers can use to add frequently-occuring words such as proper nouns to further reduce false positives.
• Each project also has a Bad Words List that a project manager can use to add words that should be flagged even if they pass the dictionary. This is used to help proofers find and correct scannos (like typos but made by the OCR software) such as modem for modern or arid for and.
• While proofing, proofers have the ability to suggest that a word can be added to the project's Good Word List.

This initial version was released in mid-March.

After the initial release development continued to enhance the ability for project managers to manage project word lists and proofer suggestions. These enhancements were released at the end of May and improved the project manager's interaction with WordCheck. Further tool development occurred and another minor release was made at the end of July.

As a proofer I can vouch that the changes made my life much easier. Several project managers have said that they are seeing better quality texts coming out of each round as well since WordCheck as been released. Overall I've really enjoyed working with the PGDP folks, both developers and proofers. I think my WordCheck active development is coming to an end unless defects are found. Instead I have my sights on the proofing interface itself and the spaghetti code that makes it run.