ljplicease | Entries tagged with parallel

I wonder why they bother teaching concurrency in computer science. There is this funny problem they teach you, involving n philosophers and n forks and a big pot of spaghetti which, if you solve it wrongly, could cause n philosophers to die of starvation. It's a well understood problem, and there are tones of tools to address it properly, most of which have been around for decades on every platform imaginable.

When I was working on parallel abstraction and timing at The Company, I went to a lot of effort to make sure that it worked concurrently. This put me in conflict with people who were too lazy to make sure their code worked properly in parallel. I even tried to make tools to make it easier for them to make code parallel safe, but no, that was too much effort, even though it mostly amounted to using a different class with the exact same interface.

In my current job at s-mart we use a locking mechanism which has an inherent race condition. Which means if something goes wrong it might corrupt data. Admittedly, the odds of that are quite low, but I don't understand why we don't use proper locking (ie. flock), which isn't conceptually any more complicated than the "simple"^[1] locking scheme that we use. In my last job at Company 2, we had a similar locking scheme, but it was hand coded, they didn't even bother to re-use the "simple" locking scheme provided by perl for systems that don't have flock^[2].

I found this list of the The Thirteen Greatest Error Messages of All Time. I can't help but wonder if a bit more time thinking about concurrency could have kept some of these from happening often enough to make the list.

read as: broken
and even Windows perl has adequate flock emulation now, so why is anyone using this again?

Yesterday I

Signed up for Russian 1^[1].
Got tickets to go to Canberra next weekend, which is dead this time of year^[2].
Went to a really nice Spanish restaurant for dinner and ate many delicious things. They had pretty good margaritas. I took some pictures with my phone, but I think the memory card in my phone got erased or something. I need to start photographing for real again :/
Saw an interesting play about the Spinifex people. It was deeply personal but not at all bitter.

I’m sorry I left myself logged in to IM for like two days but had been so busy that I didn’t sit in front of my home computer for that whole time. Sorry if you sent me messages I wasn’t ignoring you! Promise! I will endeavour to log myself out next time, and actually be in front of my computer when it says that I am.

Kim at work told me that I could never do or say anything to surprise her. At first this made me angry, but now I don’t really care. It occurred to me that nothing she has done so far has been terribly surprising. meh.

I had an epiphany this morning about how to reorganise the provisioning code. I was glad that I had left work early yesterday rather than agonising over it, because apparently all I needed to was to get a good night’s sleep and a fresh perspective. I realise though, that I love my job, but in some ways it isn’t as challenging as when I was working at The Company, especially that period when I was working on parallel abstraction. It’s hard to compare with accomplishing the impossible.

Today we had lunch at the pub, which was fun, except they forgot our order and then pretended that they hadn’t. There is this girl who is always flirting with Andrew. I can’t remember her name.

I’m looking forward to special visitors in March.

This will actually be my second Russian course, for some reason they start with “beginners” and then go on to 1, 2, etc.
Or, any time of year for that matter

What was 2004? It was a year of stolen and disputed elections in Georgia and the Ukraine, the rise and fall of Howard Dean and John Kerry, the first private space flight and the end of the "X-Prize," disaster in Darfur, prisoner abuse in Iraq, expansion of the European Union, the death of Ronald Regan and a month of flags at half mast, the return of Greek Olympics and a very smug presidential victory. In less political but tragic terms, the worst natural disaster in my memory has occurred in Asia as Tsunami death tolls top 135,000 according to CNN.com.

For me, the year started out as a bleak one in the coldest New York winter I have ever experienced. My mother came to visit me for her birthday. We stayed in Manhattan and it was bitterly cold.

Lowel and Johanna

I took a lighting class at Dutchess which was a blast. Some of my friends from Black and White II were taking the class and I met some other cool people. It was so much fun working with those people, including the teacher, Lowel Handler.

( Read more... )

In Short, 2004 was A Great Year and I have high hopes that 2005 will be even better.

Three

My lunch is culturally schizophrenic today. I ordered the Goulash Soup and the Texas Beef Brisket.

Two

Some of you already know that I run a web site for a retired marketing guy (henceforth "Chuck"). This is on the side, my day job is still working at The Company. The web site is www.idea-bank.com. Originally I did everything involved with the web site, except for write the actual content, of course. Some time back Chuck wanted to revamp the look of the site, and I recommend that he get someone else do the HTML. So now someone else is responsible for the HTML and I do the back end database and administrative tools.

This actually seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, because my philosophy toward HTML is somewhat old fashion. I don't believe in spinning or flaming logos, and I don't think every web page needs a fancy JavaScript driven GUI. I actually think those things tend to distract from the content, which is (contrary to popular opinion) why you actually go to a web site.

Chuck wants to improve the web site with some new features. As it turns out the back end (my part) is actually flexible enough that the changes required are minimal. A few weeks ago I asked our HTML guy to make some really minor changes, amounting to copying some files to a different location. I could actually do this myself... it is my server... but I want to stay out of the HTML code, and besides it would be rude. He still hasn't made these changes. I guess this is the downside to this arrangement.

Since the server is mine, I like to keep everything neat and tidy, and this guy is a Windows user, so he does little things to annoy me like using the short .htm extension instead of .html. We aren't running any sorry ass sixteen bit operating systems here; filename extensions do not have to be three characters, damn it!

One

Think I finally got Parallel Abstraction working. I'm stress testing it with test cases right now. This is big. This is proof that the Universe does not hate me.

First of all, I have been crazy busy lately, so if you have written me recently and haven't gotten a reply, please bare with me because things are going to settle down soon!

What happened today?

I have been working on Parallel Abstraction for most of 2004 now, with little to show for it. Well, that isn't entirely true. I have actually accomplished a lot, it just doesn't feel that way sometimes, you know? Anyway, I have been extremely stressed about this because the thing is supposed to be working by mid December, and I have my doubts about it.

I realized it really doesn't matter if I don't finish Parallel Abstraction, because it doesn't matter anymore if I get a bad performance appraisal for 2004. I was completely relieved and stress free for the first time in recent memory. I'm not going to stop working hard to make sure that Parallel Abstraction is working in time, but I realized in this case, failure really is an option. I didn't write the code originally, after all, so I don't feel I ought to be held accountable for it.

My partner came over to my office and we looked at a section of the offending code for about a half an hour, and we found the memory error that has been dogging me for the entire time that I have been working on Parallel Abstraction. I kid you not. It was like as soon as I decided to let go everything fell into place. Parallel Abstraction isn't done yet... but this is big. Melly told me that this would happen.

The major downer of the day was when Art came by to wish me luck. I told him that I was sorry to see him go, which is honest. I think he is a decent, hard working man and The Company needs more people like him, not less.

After work, I drove up to school to get one of my slides from Sarah. I really wanted to tell her about the things which are going on in my life, and ask about how things were going for her. She seemed real excited for me, and I think she's is also doing well.

On the way home, I stopped at Hanaford to pick up a Turkey for next week. I flirted with the pretty check out girl, enough so that I forgot to press "YES" on the touch pad which takes the credit card. It was a pleasant experience.

My mom and step father Don are flying in next week for Thanksgiving. They haven't been up since I moved, so this will afford them the opportunity to see my new place.

I called E as I drove home and told her what was going on. She was real happy for me too.

Yes, my friends. Life is good. It's like that Sheryl Crow song "It's not having what you want / It's wanting what you have." It's only going to get better.

So I have been working in my new department for about nine months or so now. I basically work on two major things. I don't want to get into the details of what I do, because it is pretty boring, but lets just call them Interface and Parallel. Neither have anything to do with each other. I have a partner for Parallel with whom I work with pretty closely. It has to do with the nature of the beast. When I work on the Interface, I am much more subordinate to the owner of the code, and it is therefore not a partnership. One day, when I learn more about how the Interface works it could be, but it is far too early for that.

The guy who owns the Interface code had a family emergency recently and was gone from work for three weeks. When he got back he asked me how much time I had been spending on Interface vs. Parallel. The truth is I have not been working much on the Interface, because Parallel has been soaking up all kinds of time. I find out today that my idiot manager strongly suggested that the Interface owner resign from The Company and everyone understands if he doesn't that they will probably fire him. My manager seems to think that he hasn't been working hard enough, which is bullshit.

It's bad enough that The Company continually shoots itself in the foot by getting rid of good people that they really need, but this seems totally over the top. The guy's son had been in the hospital for three weeks he comes back to work and they kick him while he's down. What makes it worse is that I think the reason they moved me into the Interface when they did because they wanted to get rid of him. They are using me as a tool to get rid of this guy and that makes me hate them.

In the afternoon I was working with my Parallel partner and we came up with an idea which I hope may tie up a whole bunch of loose ends. My Parallel partner has been at The Company for about 20 years, and he was telling me that he felt as though he had done himself a real disservice by staying here for as long as he has, because bam! they get rid of you and the things we work on are so specialized that you really don't know enough about the real world to get a decent job. After 20 years and with a family to support it is real tough to start over. I've been here for four years and I'm thinking it is time to get the hell out. Suggestions anyone? Seriously. Suggestions?

After work I was both pissed off at management, while at the same time excited about our potential Parallel breakthrough. My friend Sarah had asked me to take her portrait for her web site. She is an aspiring wedding photographer and she is going to need to advertise. I was humbled that she asked me, because she knows lots of photographers. I was also super excited to get back into the studio and shoot some pictures. Tonight was the night that we were going to get together for this.

Afterward we ordered a pizza and talked about various things. She's broken up with her sort of boyfriend and she's going to be moving to New Hampshire, probably sometime next year. I'm going to miss having her around. She says that she will be back eventually, but by the time she is, I had better be gone, for my own sake.

Current Mood: angry

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Entries tagged with parallel

lp0 on fire

Spinifex

I Cannot Be Hurt by Anything this Wicked World Has Done

3, 2, 1...

Edited For T.V. Version

Those Idiots