Christopher Merle

Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, but first I need more coffee.

Page 29 of 81

Fundraising Letter

July 1, 2011 /

I just got a fundraising letter from the School of Business at my alma mater, Oklahoma State University. They want to raise money for an MIS scholarship (Management of Information Systems). One little problem. My degree is in Computer Science and I got it from the College of Arts & Sciences. This really annoys me. an MIS degree is not the same as a CS degree. They are related in that they both deal with computers. It’s like confusing a driver with an auto mechanic.

If the University wants to send me a general fundraising letter for the university that’s fine, but to send me one from the wrong college really really fucking irks me because they conflated MIS with CS, and they were too fucking lazy to to learn there is a difference.

The Search

June 28, 2011 /

Creating a search engine is hard work. Actually what I’m doing is writing a search query for a book catalog. I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get it where I wanted it to be. Anyway the basic functionality is there. All it does is search by keyword and it’s an AND Boolean search, so all keywords must be present. Though I did add a flag to turn it into an OR search. It’s better than the old search which would only search for substrings. I started to write up a more detailed account but decided that it would be best for my blog. It shows people that I’m talking about my work thus hopefully generating more business.

Space Girl

June 14, 2011 /

Great song. Take a trip down Nostalgia Lane of TV and film Sci Fi, mostly TV though. (Note it was flagged as adult. Dunno why. So may have to sign in to YouTube to watch it).

 

Karine Polwart

June 9, 2011 /

Melissa and I recently went on a 10 day musical tour of Scotland with Jim & Susie Malcolm. We had an amazing time. Every night but one our group had a private concert. All of them were good but some of them stood out a little more than the others. One of those was by Karine Polwart. I wasn’t that familiar with her. I’d heard of her and I learned she sang one of my favorite songs, "Follow The Heron". Cathie Ryan has recorded it among others. There were other great performers including Karen Matheson. I purchased her CD Scribbled in Chalk and I’ve listened to it quite a bit. She’s an amazing lyricist. Here’s two of her songs: "Follow the Heron" and "Hole in the Heart".

Tech Tuesday

May 12, 2011 /

 When I first moved to Tucson I used Twitter to find people. And it’s been a boon. I ended up meeting a lot of great tech people and got some contract work out of it. One of things I enjoyed the most was called Tech Tuesday. A group of IT geeks would get together at a local coffee shop on Tuesday morning’s. It was a sort of test for freelancers or those who could make their schedules flexible. We eventually shifted it to Thursdays. As more people started to join in they started to complain about the time and place and wanted to start meeting in the evening for drinks. I went along with it but I already meet for drinks with other tech groups. So why do another?

I like the coffee meetups. It’s different than going to a bar. It’s not as noisy and you could have good conversations. The people that co-opted Tech Tuesday are nice smart people and worth knowing but their idea of a meetup is different. It’s less organic than the Tech Tuesday. I’ll probably start up the Tech Tuesday again. 

 
I’ve also decided not to friend everyone on all the same social networks. If I want to kvetch about something, however minor, I can’t do it. Fortunately, LiveJournal is one of the few that isn’t like that. And those few that are on LJ and on Facebook and/or Twitter won’t care because it’s not directed at them. 
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