Blogs from July to September 2005

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---

A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.

(Goethe)

September

Friday, 2005-09-30

Muppet Show Quiz 

 
You are the the Swedish Chef. You are a talented individual, nobody understands you. Perhaps it's because you talk funny. 

• FAVORITE EXPRESSION: "Brk! Brk! Brk!" 
• HOBBIES: Kokin' der yummee-yummers 
• FAVORITE MOVIE: "Wild Strawberries...and Creme" 
• LAST BOOK READ: "Der Swedish Chef Kokin' Bokin'" 
• QUOTE: "Vergoofin der flicke stoobin mit der brk-brk yubetcha!" 

What Muppet are you? brought to you by Quizilla

Taguchi

I went to listen to Dr. Taguchi's lecture on some obscure topic today afternoon. I did not understand much. I think I am not really a systems engineer then, or not one of that flavor. It was interesting to see Taguchi, since he is so famous and central figure in his field. He must be well over 80, but he was still able to talk somewhat coherently - actually I think his slow speed was mostly due to his somewhat poor spoken English. It was important to see and hear him lecture even though I did not belong to the target audience, I am afraid. 

Do not buy Cygolite bicycle lamps

Definitely, they have poor quality. I bought one on Wed, and it broke down before I could even take it out on my bike. I got a new one, which I was able to use for 45 seconds when leaving MIT yesterday. Then it broke down too. I definitely consider such a quality a bit too low for $100 product. Fortunately, I got my money back.

Thursday, 2005-09-29

Slower than I anticipated

Writing my thesis has turned out to be somewhat slower than I thought. Fortunately, I still have a lot of time, so I need not worry too much. I also think that the structure is getting better. What was surprisinly hard was to write a explanation of the way Crawley defines system, architecture etc. It was not easy. Furthermore, the other authors are at least as subtle or confusing. Most of them do not even define "system" or "architecture", but assume some kind on intuitive definitions. 
I think, that most of the difficulty I face is just do to my ignorance. I should know better - but if I knew everything, writing the thesis would be very boring. Is "painful" better than "boring"?

Beware of garbage trucks!

When cycling (or I guess walking too or driving a cabriolet), beware of garbage trucks at work. I overtook one today. It apparently did not like it and squirted some nasty liquid on me. I have had nicer experiences, too.
I also noticed, that there are many policemen guiding the traffic all around Boston in the morning. I find it curious, and extremely worrying, that the policemen have to giude traffic even though there are working traffic lights. Would the car drivers not obey the lights otherwise? Scary. 

Wednesday, 2005-09-28

A LED flashing vest? 

Should I order a LED reflective vest? It is orange, and I think it would be so much fun, as they say here in USA.

Ethics class and success 

Really many students in the Ethics-class seem to equate success with having a hig position and enormous salary. One is not succesfull in life, if one cannot make it to at least a VP or even President in some company. And even after making a lot of money, if one get fired, one is not successfull. This was one thing in today's discussion. The other was that even though many students feel that having to work more tan 60 hours per week is not quite OK, they cannot make the connection to the societal contracts there are. The anti-union propaganda seems to have done well: so many people think that having to work extraordinarily long hours is a free choise, and necessary for promotion, and that that's the way it is. I do not understand either, why employers are letting employees work so long. I am sure, and there are studies proving it, that working more than 40 hours a week does not really increase the amount work getting done. But who cares? Heroism rules? The same tendency seems to be taking place worldwide. And yes, I used to work too much. Not good.

Where to buy reflective tape?

I would like to buy reflective tape for my bike? I would also like to buy relctive armbands with LEDs. If someone knows, where to buy such stuff in Boston/Cambridge, please let me know by leaving a comment. Thanks! Or, if there is a cheap web-store somewhere, that would also be nice. Or maybe a reflective vest with LEDs? A orange one. Would that not be so nice?

More light

I decided, that I am worth it and bought a very powerful head light for my bicycle. Boston and Cambridge both have both poor street lighting and too many potholes. In addition, somehow the pothole keep multiplying in places where I would not expect them. Truing the wheel costs $12, and truing my brains is not possible. So, good lights are essential.
I had a very nice ride this morning. I cycles south-west Beacon Street, then through some upscale areas and through Brookline to the Arnold arboretum. I did not see too many autumn-colored trees. It is a bit too early still. Then I took small roads to Tremont Street and found my way to Community Bicycle Supply, which is the best bikestore I have seen here in Boston or MA. 

Tuesday, 2005-09-27

Police, again

Today, next to the Green building in the MIT-campus, I saw how a fat police walked in front of a truck. The truck was coming from some construction site closeby. It seems, that since there is no sound signal (beeb-beeb) indicating a forward moving truck, there has to be a fat police walking in front of the truck. What a suitable job for a fat police. 

Bike OK again 

My bike is OK again. I also invested $24 for personal safety and bought flashing lights for getting noticed from back and front. It is really dark here in the evenings and a cyclist without lights is next to invisible. I realized that yesterday, when I encountered several of them on the Washington bridge.

Mind changing 

I thought more about working as a consultant. I now think, that it would be interesting and a good way to learn more about American workplace for a certain time, not for the rest of my life. Let's see. I have already applied for many consulting jobs, but of course, no company sees it necessary to reply (well, one sent an automatic replyu, though). So, I am not holding my breath. Maybe they look my picture and decide that I would not suit their corporate image, would scare the client away or whatever. 

Motto of the day 

Only engage, and the mind grows heated. Begin it, and the work will be completed. says Goethe and is right. So, were I just to start writing, my thesis would be ready in no time at all.

Bike broken

Bad luck continues. I went for a short ride (I was about to ride to Watertown and back, but right after Harvard a stick went between the back wheel and the mudguard, which broke down completely and stopped my bike in no time. So, I had to use some real force and force the parts back to decent forms, so that I could ride back to the bikeshop. Cycling is getting very expensive here in USA. My bike breaks down all the time

Police

When even someone is digging a hole in the street, there is at least one police car standing next to the hole. I do not really understand, why the police has to be there? Do they suspect, that the hole diggers have something nasty in their mind? I would assume that the police would have better things to do that spends days watching hole digging. Like making sure that car drivers do not speed and that cyclist obey even rubimentary traffic rules.

Monday, 2005-09-26

Laptop broken

My laptop broke down last night. Today, I took it to the Apple store. They promised to fix the laptop, but it will take some 7-10 days. Meanwhile, I have no computer and so I must rely on Athena clusters. Which are good for working and bad for entertainment. Maybe I get something done then. Anyway, I will be semi-offline from email. So, if you have urgent issues, please do not rely on email. Call me / SMS em at +1 617 820 9118.

Sunday, 2005-09-25

Why troops out of Iraq?

There has been some large demonstrations in Washington DC and London telling the leaders to get the troops out of Iraq. So, some analysis is necessary. But not by myself, since I am a dilettante. Instead, I let Juan Cole to provide some sound reasoning for getting the US troops out of Iraq. There are other analysis too. In the newest Foreign Affairs, Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr has a bit view on the matter. He says that US has no strategy, no real goal in Iraq, and thus US cannot win in Iraq. He proposes starting with providing real security to at least some parts of Iraq, and trying thus to prevent the rebels/insurgents/etc the support of their fellow Iraqis. Decide for yourself.

Seeing hippies

I cycled all the way to the Franklin Park to meet/see some cycling hippies. They had taken part in the Hub on Wheels cycling tour around Boston. As it started very early and would have cost $35 or so, I decided just to cycle to the meeting and see the hippies. Very nice hippies they were. It was so nice to see long haired, colorfully dresses and happy people. 
Also the Mayor of Boston and the commissioner of parks, bikes etc were present. They promised more bike paths, more frequent snow removal in winters (good, maybe they remove snow from the Harvard Bridge, since it was not usable even for walking last year), fixing both Harvard and Longfellow bridges, etc. Now, everyone is waiting. 
I cycled back along the Washington street. It is rather colorful street, with various smells like coffee, laundry, pot, car, cigars, etc. The cyclist can enjoy all these, the driver misses everything. 
I signed to Massbike. Maybe I will have some extracurricular activities later, after all (but I assume that talking about cycling is a sure way not to get a job in USA).

On newspapers 

I just received my first Sunday New York Times at my doorstep. What a nice way to start a Sunday it is to red NYT and have some breakfast. It reminds me of the way we live back in Finland. In Finland, most people subscribe to at lest one newspaper, which are then delivered to their homes (in side, using the mailbox attached to the front door). This is the main difference between Finland and USA: here many people do not subscribe to a newspapers. Yesterday, I counted 136 newspapers while walking by 110 houses in Beacon Street. With maybe 5 apartments per house, this makes about 25% subscription rate. The rest of civilized people then buy their newspapers on the way to work etc.

Friday, 2005-09-23

Funny regulation

According to a new piece of regulation in Boston, liquor store must immediately inform the police when someone buys a keg of beer. The must either email, fax, or call the police and tell the police the name, birth date, and address of the buyer. The police then keeps track of buyers in an open register, which anyone can go and check. It may well be, that buying and consuming a keg of beer may well cause some mob behavior. The funny thing is, that one can buy 1000 bottles of beer and the police do not care. Or one can buy 100 liters of Jack Daniel. Or, if one insist in buying a keg, one can just take a taxi to Cambridge and buy the keg over there and bring it back to Boston. The Cambridge police does not care...

Traffic jam, part 2

Now, the jam is getting worse, apparently a) because people are fleeing partly unnecessary and b) because the mayor et all could not figure that that asking 1.8 million people to evacuate by private car would cause a decent traffic jam. Now, some cars do not have fuel, which of course is not helping that much. I just hope, that the storm does not hit the highway, since that would cause too much suffering (and bitter court cases later). Let's hope for the best and a lenient route for the storm. 

Thursday, 2005-09-22

Anguish is the impossibility to dominate the situation.

Traffic jam

As expected, evacuating 1.8 million people by private cars creates a huge traffic jam. Cars are moving so slow, that people resort in pushing their cars in order to save gas. Using busses would have done it already: take all school and other busses in the city. There must be thousands. Create a partition of the city, allocate busses. In each bus, especially school bus, allocate 20% of the seats for luggage. Limit the amount luggage allowed. Set up pick and and drop-off places. Drive buses shuttle-style between the places. Make sure there are no private cars on highways. In a pinch, use large truck for ferrying people too. This is how it is possible to evacuate a city. With private cars, no way. See also an article in NY times

Career Fair, part 2 

MIT career fair takes place today. It is quite exciting, as I have never been to a career fair. I will report later. Here.
Well, nothing to report on. I talked to a few companies, and that was it. I have been to merrier fairs in my life, though. It seems, that companies, which can provide challenging and interesting enough jobs for me are really few and far between. I do not want to do trivial task, and I wanto to have a life: travelling 80% of the time is not for me (especially if I would have no say on whether to travel or not). So, I think I will just have to search and search. Maybe I will someday find a job which is suitable for me and for which I am suitable. As we know, given enough time, even rare events do occur....

Turning point in Basra, updated

According to an article in CNN, the local (elected, legitimate) officials in Basra have decided not to cooperate with the occupying forces before the occupiers apologies, turn in to the local law enforcement the two British undercover agents who shot an Iraqi policeman, and compensate for the broken prison. So, now the occupiers have lost the support of the elected, though local, government. No matter how one looks at this, this could be going better. 
The situation in Basra is confusing. See e.g. Juan Cole's comments. It is not really clear what has happended before the Bristish agents were arrested. 

Correction 

Thanks to my always vigilant editor S, I reformulated my rant/comment on Americans and volume of speaking. See the new entry. I try to write better and more constructively in the future.

Wednesday, 2005-09-21

Cultural differences 

Robbie noted today during the MIT alumni dinner that one can tell Europeans from Americans. Europeans use both fork and knife, Americans manage with just the fork. Both leave the table satified. 

Future of work? 

In his book Future of work T Thomas W. Malone claims, among other things, that in the future work will be more and more organized using individual contractors. These contractor will come together for a project (most likely virtually) and dissolve after the project is done (or their part in the project); analogy to film industry works well. I think this may well happen. Actually it has already happened to a great extent in USA: most jobs require very specific skills (and only those, no general skills are required or appreciated), and in most states it is easy to hire and fire - actually working as contractor would be much safer for the employee. Indeed, I do not even see why the employers are still hiring anyone, keeping up offices, and all other extra things. They could as well hire the specific Java-architect/programmer/tester/project manager and let him/her find his own place to work for the duration of the project. Well, this is how I am going to run my own business later: a virtual enterprise (there is one very well working already, but it works on the darker side of international law).

Do Americans have hearing problems? 

I was working in the SDM-office today. A bunch of excited students came from a class. They were a bit loud in their reflection of the class. This made me to think about the following. Why is it, that the bigger the group, the louder the noice and voise? Why is it that the louder the voices, the emptier the content seems to be? "Oh my god, I was like awesome, you know, and she was like yay". You know. 

O tempora, o mores 

Before the MIT alumni dinner, we will have a "happy hour" meeting. From the invitation: "some reminders, the event will be non-alcoholic due to MIT rules. Orwell would be proud of this misuse of words. 

Iraq, hurricanes, etc 

Another hurricane is threatening USA. Now it is Houston, and people should evacuate. According to an article in Guardian "There will not be enough government vehicles to go and evacuate people in all the areas," and people should try to evacuate on their own. I just wonder how can a city be evacuated by private cars, and also why they cannot use the school busses for evacuating the city. (Oh, I saw an article in NY Times. It shows schoolbusses evacuating the city of Galveston. The sad thing is that the highway is full of private cars. By the way, according to the evacutation plan of Helsinki, Finland, no private cars will be allowed on the exiting highways, only busses).
In Iraq, the situation is getting worse by the day. According to many articles and this column the rebels/insurgents/militias/freedom fighter have infiltrated the local police force, maybe 10% of the Iraq defense force is loyal to the government, and actually, at least the Brits are now fighting the newly and democratically elected government already. What a mess, it really is time for the occupation forces to get out of there. They are not doing any good there. Let the Iraqis sort out the mess, they are much better in doing it. And if there should be any foreign troops, let them be UN troops. 

Ethics class 

The most interesting (and also scary) thing in the Ethics-class is the wide variety of views hold by the participants. Some have strong ethical view based on Christian / Kantian principles (like me), some have rather utilitarian views, and some quite easily equate prevailing laws and personal ethics (do whatever, as long it is lawful, or at least you do not get caught). I enjoy the class. It also seems that even though they assigned the groups "randomly", each group is going to have representatives of all above mentioned fractions.

I am quite a Finance/Accounting guru 

I just found out that I got 74 and 80 out of the Finance/Accounting midterm and final, respectively. Not bad considering, that I spent some 4 hours studying for both (total 8), some 14 hours for assignments, and left the exam before 75% of the time was up not checking my answers (they pay the TA to do that...). So, I apparently know something about the topic. And I got the B I was aiming for. 

Thesis colloquium starting 

This is the email I sent last night:

I got an idea, while doing my thesis. You see, doing thesis is a lonely thing to do, which is not good for us, who have been conditioned to working in groups.
But there is a solution: let's arrange a thesis seminar, or discussion club. The idea is that one of us gives an informal presentation (max 15 minutes) of his/her thesis, and then we would discuss about it - by discussing we all would learn more and the thesis would become better and we would have some fun; we can have the seminar in some place where they serve decent refreshments... What do you think?
I can volunteer to give a presentation after some 2 weeks once I have read most of the material I have to read.

So far I have got very positive feedback. I will now start arranging the first meeting in two weeks time. I think, that it is best to have the colloquium on Saturdays, since people are quite busy during the week. I wonder whether a lunch meeting in some restaurant where they would have projector and whiteboard would be fine? Which such restaurants there are near MIT? Any ideas of the location are welcome.

Tuesday, 2005-09-20

A question to US readers 

I am considering insuring my computer, books, bike, etc. The total price of all of them is maybe now $5000. I assume I should also insure the flat, so that I burn it down or water it too badly, I can pay for the renovation. Does this make sense? Or actually, any ideas which company to contact and what would such a home/bike-insurance cost?
to answer this question, please.

Some vacuum cleaners

I saw two interesting vacuum cleaners today. First, I saw one guy cleaning a staircase of a house with a petrol-powered vacuum cleaner. It was in his van and a long orange hose snaked its way into the house. Later, I saw one guy with a small garden tractor vacuuming the first few leaves of the autumn away in front of the Hancock tower. 

A long day

I started by counting cars and humans at 8am at the Back Bay station. Then visiting my bank, bikeshop, etc. Back at home I read one dissertation on measuring the complexity of SW architectures. It was decent, has some good ideas in it and some random good points. Then reading some articles, cycling to the gym, counting some more car and humans, writing a short report, and reading "Billy Budd, the sailor". It may be a classic, but I have real difficulties in understanding the language and seeing the literary point. Such a complicated and digressing way to write.

On dress codes 

I was looking at the passengers/commuters, who arrived in the Back Bay station this morning. Some of them wore suits, but surprisingly many had just shirt without a tie. This gives me some hope: maybe there are other than modeling jobs available after all.

On recycling 

I found out, when picking up my bike from the shop, that one can indeed recycle stuff here. There is even a website for that. I just need to get a blue box and put my recyclable stuff there. This is just wonderful.

On becoming a model citizen 

I will soon be a decent citizen, even an alien one, since I will get my credit card soon. I already have some checks, which work like credit cards, but they are too complex for me to use. Once I have a credit card, I can build up a credit history, and soon enough, maybe in two years, I am credible enough to get my own cell phone contract. So nice. 
How do you cash a check? I went to my bank to cash the check I got from Air France. First of all, I needed to present two IDs. My passport was not good enough, but my drivers license proved that I am I. I just wonder: if I were to get a counterfeit passport, would I not get a counterfeit drivers licence as well? Of course not, criminals are always stupid. Anyway, after proving my identity, they took the check and cashed it against my checking account: if I would not have enough money in my account, they would not cash the check. Strange. Even stranger was that the teller needed to get 3 different permissions from 3 different managers just to cash the check. Idiotic. Not lean at all. 

Monday, 2005-09-19

On on-campus recruiting 

This week and maybe this month there is at least one company presenting itself in MIT. I was hopeful, that these sessions would help me in getting a job. It may not be so: I talked to one recruiter/representative from the Boston Consulting Group today. She said clearly, that they do come to campus to recruit young students, those graduating very soon and who do not have that much experience. She also said, that persons like me should just submit applications in their website. We all know, what happens to such applications: nothing, they seems to disappear to /dev/null. Anyway, by going to the presentations I will get to know the companies a bit better - and I always will get a free dinner!

NASA press conference 

NASA is staging a press conference. They revealed the new Moon-Mars space architecture. I do not know much of these, but the result looks like a kind of mess: reuse of Apollo ideas and the Shuttle, which may be not very good - I am not sure that the set of requirements is not itself contradictory. Anyway, they (or Griffin, the boss of NASA) does not seems very enthusiastic. Not a good salesman. Let me write more after discussing with the real experts here in Aero/Astro-department. See e.g an article in NYT.

Hair styles 

I saw a chinese girl, who has shaved some of her hair away from here forehead. She looked nice, but I am not sure why she had done it; maybe having too low hairline is not fashionable in some circles. Anyway, I have never seen such a haircut before. 

Career fairs coming

From MIT job interview guidelines: "Clean well-groomed and professional looking. Remember, the choice to cut your hair is yours, but the choice to hire you is the interviewer's. Be sure beards and mustaches are neat and trimmed." I assume I should consider getting a crewcut. Otherwise I will be unemployed until I get bald. And note that " If it is a Fortune 500 company, obviously you should wear a traditional suit.. I wonder how many has tailored suits? And what if the company is 501st in the Fortune list? A normal suit is OK? In all, it seems that most jobs in USA as modeling jobs, not something else. 
Some notes to do to prepare for the career fair on Wednesday. Bring resumes (maybe general and also specific ones) or send resumes later (but they have already all resumes on a CD!). Decide companies to talk to with. Remember that the company representatives are in MIT to meet us. 2 hours is enough time for visiting the fair. Dress appropriately (business casual). Ask non-trivial questions. Make eye-contact and shake hands. Get information, so that you can contact them later. Prepare and practice a script (name, program in MIT, when graduating). Know the company: what they do, what kind of positions they have; show interest in the company. 
Top 10 characteristics, which companies are looking for: communication skills, work experience, motivation/initiative, teamwork skills, leadership abilities, GPA/academic credentials, technical skills, interpersonal skill, analytical skills, ethics. 
After the fair. Send a note to interesting companies. Do not worry being too pushy. Sending a letter is OK. 
Most companies come for entry level employees, but even still the fair is good place to build up some networks. (All interviews in the interviewtrack are for entry level workers). 

System architecture homework done 

It took us (Bill, Wilfried and I) 5 hours working time to do the first SA assignment. It was not even hard, and it was actually kind of fun and interesting. We have some 10 pages of text, a number of OPN-graphs, and some tables. Not bad at all. Lean studying rules still supreme.

Sunday, 2005-09-18

Idling, counting cars 

Well, nothing much has happened. Someone stole my New York Times. What a wanker he must have been, a poor bastard. I mean, stealing other's newpaper is a more serious crime than stealing other's car. My early Sunday was ruined. Later, at 2pm, I went to count cars and people with Giorgia (from Venice!) and Kumar. There were not many of them. After spending two hours sitting on a bench in Commonwealth avenue reading Scientific American I walked to Quincy Market. I met with Ville and Jani and we had some more than decent seafood in Barking crab. Then, one beer in some bar in Harward Square (X bless public tranport) and back at home at 10.30 pm. Not an ordinary day, but maybe I could have studied a little more. Or then not. Anyway, no regrets, tomorrow will be a better day in all respects. 
No politics, rants, complaints, or whining today. Sorry for that. I let Bill Clinton to speak and rant. 

Saturday, 2005-09-17

Dissent among republicans 

So, now the republicans are opposing the efforts to rebuild New Orleans. Some of the reasons are valid and good: it is not that wise to build the city again several meters below sea level. There is lot of empty space next to New Orleans. Some are fiscal: spending $200+ billion borrowed money on this effort may well be the last straw which breaks the trust of Chinese and others, who financially run USA. And some are outright reckless: claiming that other Americans should not pay for reconstruction is really against the Christian belief. Was it not so, that it is the duty of a Christian to help those contemporaries, who need help? That those who do good deeds and are not selfish, will get surer ticket to the ride to heaven? What? I think, most US "Christians" are cherry picking the bible, using it just to justify their own prejudices and naked greed. 

Disturbing stories 

Here is a story about brothels in concentration camps, especially from the point of view of the enslaved women working there. It is both interesting and disturbing, but important reading, I think.
Here is a story about the possiblity of civil war in Irag. It is rather disturbing, but may not be that far away. At the same time, support of the war in Iraq has reached it all time low in USA. So, the pullout will suddenly start to make political sense. I am sure that the eventual pullout will happen with as much planning and oversight as there were when starting the war. Back in USA, president Bush has given an open check to reconstruct New Orleans (very good for his friends in Halliburton etc), while at the same time promising not to raise taxes to finance this recontruction. On the contrary, he is trying to cut taxes even further. Even his fellow republican are opposing this - both from fiscal reasons and for non-fiscal (one senator thinks that it is just unfair and unjust for everyone in USA to have to pay for New Orleans, which tells me something about his level of solidarity) (yes, I have links, but they are lost now).

Job Hunting Tips of The Day 

From some recruiting service:

Smile - If you don't radiate enthusiasm and energy, then the interviewer is not likely to take much interest in you. If you forget to smile, or if you speak in a monotone voice, sound tired, or walk slowly or with slouched posture, you'll turn off the interviewer immediately, no matter how well you've prepared for the interview, and no matter how effectively you communicate. 

So, those with back problems do not need to bother, or those who for some reason walk slower than the interviewer. Are monotone voice and effective communication not mutually exclusive?

Job search continues 

I have now applied for many jobs. I am waiting. It may be, that I do not have specific enough skill in order to get a job here in USA. I get the impression from job ads and from talking to friends, who have been here longer, that US employers want to hire employees with very specific and narrow skills. They also do not mind wasting most of the skills of employees, since they apparently have too much money and too little sense. Or then I am confused. Please, enlighten me! Am I wrong, should I cut my hair, should I take my blog off-line, should I start writing about baseball, should I buy a pick-up truck, should I drink Budweiser? Or, is it that nothing helps? (well, I removed the seminaked picture of myself and replaced it with one, in which I look like a chef. See the homepage)
Please help and 

On baseball 

Ok, let me try to write about baseball. Maybe I will get an job interview by showing that I have popular interests and I am not an incurable old hippie. This is what I think. I think, that rigging the baseball games would be in the interests of the spectators. The reason is simple. The main reasons people go to the games is entertainment and excitement. If we would rig the games so, that they would (individually and as a series) cause the maximum amount of excitement and anxiety (and other desirable psychological reactions) among spectators, each spectator would receive more benefit and according to utilitarian ethics, everyone would be better off. But wait, I think this is what is going on. The only problem (for Red Sox) must have been that they have not paid enough to the rigger and thus they have lost most final games. 
The same reasoning applies to all sports. Actually, not rigging any sporting event is against the needs of the stakeholder and thus also against shareholders of the team. Thus, since maximizing share/stakeholder happiness is the only responsibility of all of us, rigging the games is a virtue. (Actually, check Formula-1: as long as Ferrari was winning all the time, the value of the sport went down. Surprisingly, Ferrari is not winning any more...)
Does this qualify as baseball/sports commentary? Or at least as a reasonable sophisticated conspiracy theory?

Daily crono 

First time in gym for a long time. I found that I am not as strong as I would like to be. Soon I will be. Later, lunch in Buddha's delight, then running around to get the newest issue of Scientific American. It is a special issues about the future of the world. Later still, napping at home, installing new OS to my Mac (10.4, which is just incredibly great), then meeting with Lavonardo in a pub for a few bees. A nice day, but not as productive as I would liked. Tomorrow will be better, as always. Life is just getting better - I intend to have it so until I am no more. 

Friday, 2005-09-16

Urban transport planning 

What a great class! First of all, the topic is both very important (traffic and land use in cities is a major problem in virtually all over the world). Second, the professors are good. The Spanish (or Basque) professor Mikel Murga is so serious in arranging more space for pedestrians, cyclist, and people in general. He is also apparently very experienced consultant, and has many war-stories to share. Frederick P Salvucci is just I like imagine, funny, full of energy, knowledge and experience and very polite, too. He also arranged all kinds of refreshments, even brought a coffee maker to the class and brewed coffee for us! And assignments are interesting, too. The first one is to get the flavor of traffic problems by going and calculating traffic flows in Boston. Next one is to take a global database of traffic, land usage, etc and try to figure something interesting out of it. There are 4 assignments, so the workload is not going to be that large. And anyway, traffic planning is a topic I have been thinking about as long as I can remember. Besides, in order to become a great system architect it is essential to study a wide variety of topics. Just studying IT and SW would be a voluntary handicap. 

Rescuing education 

While the Finnish government and parliament have seen it fit to cut funds and personnel (up to 6000) from the Finnish education system, Singapore is doing the exact opposite. It is not hard to predict, which country is going to better in the future. I just do not get the blindness and incompetence of Finnish politicians. I need to go back and fix them! They should beware. 

A way to wake up 

The effects of jet-lag are gone. It is hard to wake up in the morning, and even harder to start reading something. Fortunately, I found a way to make it easier: doing some 5 to 10 minutes stretching exercise seems to wake me up, clear my mind, and make concentrating in abstract stuff a bit easier. Try it! Even better is to have a walk and stretch afterwards, but sometimes there are reasons for not being able to walk. Like torrential rain or too many blisters already. 

Daily crono 

Not an ordinary day was today. I got up late, at 8 am, read some articles for the system architecture class. It was surprisingly hard: either the articles were hard to understand or I was just tired. Then, lunch with Kumar and Bill, the class, the other class (urban t p). So far, close to ordinary. Fortunately we had a graduate student meeting/party in the MIT museum. A few beers, some chatting, checking new exhibits, and then to the student center to play some pinball (Simpson, which is a great game, hard for me to play, but I have sometimes reached 30 million points). Later, back at home, writing, reading, talking with S, idling.

Thursday, 2005-09-15

Job in New York? 

I want to get a job in New York. Does anyone know some good head-hunting or recruiting company, which would be able to get me a job there? 
Or, does someone know good places for networking with people, who know who hires system architects in NYC? I appreciate a lot any hints. 

Risks are getting real

Steve Weber has written an article on risk management. Bob Herbert add still another story about fragilities of societies. The Iraqies are asking for their this is getting close. There are no words to decribe to attrocities. Those who commit them are the main culprits, of course, but those who destroyed the security forces are partly respobsible, too. And if they and we do not come up with more intelligent and creative solution, the mayhem is going to continue for generations. The only good thing I know is that this madness saves some oil in the ground in Iraq. We will need the oil later for drugs, plastics, etc. But they price we pay for saving oil this way is way too high.
Following Juan Cole's blog is a good way of staying on top of events in Middle-East.

A note on DSM 

Today's SystemProjectManagement-class was about DSM (Design Structure Matrix). It is a way to depict the sequences and relationships amoung different tasks in a large project/process. Or actually it shows the information flows. Anyway, I think the most important use of DSM is process re-engineering. It can reveal deviations from the nominal process. Once we know the deviations, we can either change the process to agree with practice (if everything is going well) or increase discipline/incentives to work according to the official process. 

Something not so ordinary 

Today was turning into an ordinary day. Not good. Fortunately I got to participate in a small tram adventure late in the evening. I was reading my new Goethe-book (Maxims and reflections) and took the wrong tram and ended in the Government Center. This was not so strange, it happens once a month or so. But the tram I took back broke down 10 meters before the Park Street Station. Apparently the brakes went on or something. After some reboots, the driver gave up and we just waited for the next tram to come and push us to the station. The most surprising thing was that everyone stayed totally calm.

Nice new reading 

Today I got the new issue of Arthur-magazine and the Goethe-book. Great, not just only reading system architecting and urban transport. I need to read widely every day. Otherwise I feel I am not alive.
Goethe says: No one is prepared to grasp that, both in nature and in art, the sole and supreme process is to create form and structure. I would replace structure with function. Then the maxim would be a good motto for my life. 

Wednesday, 2005-09-14

Cleaning / procrastinating 

Now that I write my thesis at home in the morning and late evenings, cleaning suddenly matters. It is hard to concentrate if one cannot tell floor from beach and when one constantly coughs. So, I went and bought a vacuum cleaner. Armed with it I dared to look behind my coach. I found huge balls of dust but also one remote control and two books. So, the effort paid off well in many ways.
While cleaning, I was thinking about my requirements of good life. Some of them are (in no specific order)

• Having intellectually challenging things to do.
• Working in meritocratic organization 
• Being able to walk from home to office. 
• S
• Earning enough money to not to have to think about money daily. Some 50000 euros per year before tax is quite enough. More is of course better, if it does not compromise other requirements. 
• Not having to drive car. Not having to own a car.
• Having a decent 1 bedroom flat in a townhouse. Not having to own the flat.
• Having enough space for a decent home library.
• Having lots of friends, meeting many of them daily. 
• Being reasonably healthy 
• Having enough reasonably priced restaurants within walking distance from home. Not having to cook. 
• Having access to a laundry service.
• Not having to manage a boss. To be independent of any authorities. 
• Having decent bookstores within walking distance
• Having decent cafes serving coffee in real porcelain cups within walking distance
• Being able to learn new things everyday.
• Being able to avoid succession of ordinary days.
• Living in a reasonably egalitarian society, not having to worry about personal safety. 

There may be others. 

Do recruiters read resumes at all? 

A recruiter contacted me. He asked me to come to visit their stand in the coming MIT career fair. The company he represented would have a job, which would fit my profile well. The position would be "junior SW engineer". I wonder how they think that my profile fits that. Of course, I know a thing or two about SW engineering, and actually worked as junior SW engineer for the first 8 months or so after joining Nokia in 1998. But, I just cannot figure how they think I would now be interested in such a job? I mean, after working for years as SW and system architect of rather large embedded system, and after graduating from MIT, I do have somewhat higher career goals. Furthermore, I think that employing me as a SW engineer would be waste of human talent. And of their money too - I would not be the best choice for such a job and I would increase their job turnover significantly.
But it may be that the email came from some robot. Maybe they are sending the same email to everyone who has the word "software" in one's resume. At least, I cannot believe that anyone who has read my resume and has some common sense would offer me such a junior position. 
So, I ask potential employers, who reading this blog, to really read my resume and not offer junior positions. Do not waste your time. If you want junior employees, look elsewhere.
Of course, I sent a very polite reply to the recruiter.

A question

What does "must be eligible to work in the U.S." mean in a job advertisement? Am I? Not with my current visa, but what I heard, the employer can arrange a H1B-visa for me. Are employers not willing to do it?

Avoiding succession of ordinary days

In order to avoid having to suffer succession of ordinary days (and to meet new SDM06ers, and to have a few glasses of wine, and some great food), I decided to participate the information session in Burlington today. We took a limo there. I have never taken a limo before. It was fun, it is a good car to have discussions in, but extremely unpractical otherwise. And we did not have any champagne, which was a disappointment. The information session was pleasant. First Pat and Jack gave their speeches (after we had had some dinner), then we had a panel discussion after which we had some more wine (or at least I had, the others did not so much). An evening well spent. The prospective students were really promising and I hope to see many of them in MIT in January. 

Tuesday, 2005-09-13

On complexity 

I have been reading more about complexity. It seems to me, that all proposed complexity measures for SW and for architectures are actually watered down versions on the classic Kolmogorov-measures, especially of the field called descriptive complexity. Since it is hard, or since researchers are lazy, to really quantify the the information needed to express an architecture, most proposed measures use some rather indirect measures (like counting some simple things like number of vertices in some graphs etc). Now, either I am totally ignorant (for now, not for long) or there is simply a rather nice opportunity to really do something new here. 
On practical side, I recommend using TexShop and BibDesk when writing theses. They decrease the amount of manual labour by at least 50% compared to using MS Word or some similar tool. Actually, they are faster in almost any even semi-serious writing task. 

Daily crono so far 

I slept late, until 7.25am, had a walk, worked at home until 12 noon. While working I got to know, that a certain company does not have openings, which would be "good match" for me. This even though they boast that they recruit for talent, not for job. I have this disadvantage of believng what people and companies say, taking it by face value. I should not. Later, lunch in the Kendall foodcourt, some more work on my thesis, and then System and Project Management lecture. It was good. de Weck is a good lecturer. Now, it is time to go to the gym. It is 4.54.
Oh, there were too many others in the gym at 5pm. It is not fun to train with so many other. So, I decided to have a snack with Dave, Christian and Matt, after which I procrastinated by playing pinball. But then I managed to do some work on my thesis (mainly reading one paper on a very complex graph-based method for measuring complexities of any networks - it was the first paper I did not understand right away, which is great. The harder, the better, or almost so).
Later, I went to watch Quiz show, which is our assigment for Wednesday's Ethics-class. It was a really good movie both as a movie (a docudrama) and as material for discussing ethics. I almost cannot wait for the class to start. 
Back at home at 10 pm, working 45 minutes on Ethic-assigment (writing something about the movie), then revising some documents, and later reading Billy Budd. Not an ordinary day. Neither will tomorrow be an ordinary day. I will participate in an SDM information evening somewhere outside Boston. We will drive a limousine there (or I assume I will not drive since I intend to drink some beer). I have never been in limo so far. So, one thing down by tomorrow evening. 

A curious thing 

I have noticed, that different times of the day lend themselves to different tasks. Early morning until 1pm or so is the best time for reading new material. 1pm to 6pm is best time to go around, think, discuss, and attend classes. 6pm to 1am is the best time to write. The best times to take a nap are at 3pm, 6pm, and 9pm. The best time to have a walk is before 8am, and after 8pm. The best time to drink beer is anytime. 

Monday, 2005-09-12

Change of plans 

I went to the Media lab for the Psychology-class. 9 other students turned up too. But the professor were nowhere to be seen. We started to suspect, that not showing up on time is a clever trick to make us realize something about psychology. After 30 minutes, we gave up, one of us went and asked the department assistant whether the professor is going to show up or not. We found out that nobody knew where he was. So, we left. Later, Vineet and Uday told me that professor Ariely has taken 2 years off as sabbatical and is now doing something in Princeton. Apparently he was faster than MIT's bureaucracy. So, no psychology class for me in MIT.
What a disappointment this was! I just had to find another class.It should be preferable 9 units, convene once a week, in the late afternoon, not have a final nor midterm, have nothing to do with IT. Not a simple task to find such a course. It took me 1 hour to find the following:

11.540J Urban Transportation Planning.. History, policy, and politics of urban transportation. The role of the federal government and the "highway revolt." Public transit in the auto era. Analytic tools for transportation planning and policy analysis. The contribution of transportation to air pollution and climate change. Land use and transportation interactions. Bicycles, pedestrians, and traffic calming. Examples from the Boston area. Lectures: F. Salvucci, M. Murga

It must be fun. I am glad to be able to take a course by F. Salvucci, who is quite legendary figure in the field of urban transport. See here and here.
The class meets most of my requiements: it convenes only on Fridays from 2pm to 5pm, it has no final, it has nothing to do with IT. It is a 12-unit course, though, but all 4 assignment and the final project are done in groups and the groups seem to be quite large. So, I can lean a bit on the group. The course has some kind of semi-optional recitations on Monday or Tuesday evenings from 7.30pm to 8.30pm (biweekly or so). And then there is one walking tour around Boston. Sounds too good to be true!

Where are the challenges lurking?

The big money will not be in IT nor in biomedicine in the future. The big money will be in infrastructure. Especially, really big money will be in energy systems, in production of energy, transportation of energy, storage of energy and consumption of energy. The coming energy-booms is going to make the IT-bubble of the 1990s look insignificant in size. Therefore, everyone who has either feeling of duty (in making the world better or at least habitable for coming generations) or is just full on unsatisfied greed, will do well be studying some issues related to energy systems. Fortunately, developing the new energy system will be a task requiring exceptional system architects. And since most talented persons do not see this and concentrate in IT or bio, I will have no worries in the future.

Ethics, literature, and authority

I was able to participate in the Ethics etc course today. In the beginning, I was a bit shocked as I realized, that I was clearly the oldest student in the class. But then I realized, that it is just nice to have young classmates, who will certainly give me fresh ideas. And at least they are full of energy. The class itself was terrific. Of course, I was a bit confused how to behave, what kind of speech acts are expected by the professor and by the students. When I realized, that there is no specific format, I relaxed and started to participate lively in the discussion. The class is a bit too large for a real discussion, even though I must admit that professor Hafrey does a good job in keeping the discussion progressing. He is also able to remember, what everyone has said and to contrast opinions. After 45 minutes, I suddenly realized what the whole class is about. It is about understanding, that a) stories themselves can teach us a lot about ethics and authority and b) the ways we interpret the stories reveals a lot how we will interpret different situation in both personal and professional life and c) that stories also tell us quite a bit about us humans. I understood a) and c) before the class, but b) occurred to me just during the class. I think this class is really going to be useful.

Daily crono 

Other things today. I took a walk in the morning. The weather is still nice: it was about 23C already at 7am. After hacking my thesis a little at home, I went for the non-existent lecture, and then used the 1.5 hours I save to print out and sort material for my thesis. Later in the evening, I went to listen to D.E. Shaw's recruiting presentations. The company seems to be interesting and they claim to have very meritocratic way of recruiting and also running the company. Maybe it could be a nice place to work for a while. Late in the evening, I read an interview with Fred Salvucci.
In other developments, today the boss of FEMA got finally fired. According to my memory, this was the fist time any of Bush's cronies got fired because of not handling his job. I hope, that this becomes a trend and finally the government will become better again. By the way, Paul Krugman claims, that the rampant cronyism and budget slashinghas driven many competent persons out of the government offices. If that is true, it is very sad and needs to be changed at once. 

On complexity 

I have now some 50 articles already, so it will take me at least 2 weeks to read them and make some notes and to get a reasonable understanding about the state of the art in software and system architecture complexity measurement.
It seems, that the area of system architecture complexity measurement has not been really studied at all. At least I cannot really find any really relevant literature. Most literature is about computational complexity (Kolmogorov, Chaitin, etc), which is relevant, but not really applicable to system architecture modeling as such. The reason is that knowing how expesive some model in terms of computation may not correlate to cost of designing, implementing, and maintaining the system, which the architecture defines. On the other hand, most of the existing software complexity measures, of which I know, require too detailed model of the software. So much even, that using them to estimate the complexity of SW before implementation is not usually that successfull. As an evidence, the Rapid Development-book by McDonnel (???) uses only lines of code in estimating the cost of designing and implementing a SW system (well, he also has different treatments of system, application, and shrink-wrapped SW) (I read some parts of the book yesterday at Kumar's place. I think I should buy the book, too)

There have been some efforts to apply existing SW complexity measures to measuring complexities of SW architectures, but so far I have found the efforts rather unsuccessful. Of course, counting the types and instances of object and processes (or, using the terms of Crawley: forms and functions) and interfaces between them will give some rather intuitive measure of complexity. Intuitively, the more there are forms and function, and the higher their inter-dependency, the more complex the architecture. Furthermore, one can give some intrinsic complexity values of forms, function, and maybe concepts used in sub-architectures. Using these as pragmatic ways to calibrate the measurement, one could maybe say quite much. 

There are of course other possible approaches. One can consider the architecture as a graph and calculate some metrics of the graph. Or, one could apply the Kolmogorov-type approaches: maybe one build some logical formula in OPN, while running the simulation. Already now OPN keeps track of calculations by building complex formulas and simplyfying them only in the end Or so I have understood. So, if one would build a logical formula for each simulation branch, and then calculate some kind of Kolmogorov-measure for it, one could be able to say something "real" about the complexity. Maybe.
In general, I think that the possible ways to measure the complexity are of 3 types: syntactic, semantic, and judgmental. Calculating some metric of level of cyclicality of a graph is pure syntactic. Calculating some Kolmogorov-metric as I drafted above is more semantic, but does not need human interaction. Finally, one can assign complexity values to atomic parts or subsystems (manually, based on expert judgment) and somehow calculate a sum of it (as explained above). This is what I call (for now) judgmental. 
But thesis is not only about developing some complexity measures. One (I) must also justify the whole effort of measurement. Of course, the intuitive idea is that a simpler (less complex) model is somehow preferable to a more complex model. This is what the famous KISS-heuristic is all about. And it is also, what in philosophy of science is called the Occam's razor. But even this is not as simple as it looks. There are several reasons: a simple model may not be extendable in the future: it is simple just because it is fixed, contains no options. Thus, maintaining and extending the model may become really expensive. Also, if we have several complexity measures, most likely they will not rank alternative architectures in the same order. What if we have 6 alternatives and 3 measures: then we can have all combinations of orders, and the whole exercise of measuring the models would have just increased the confusion. Based on these simple reflections, I assume that I really have to also discuss rather philosophical topics in my thesis. But that is fine: I am a certified philosopher. 
Still, just having developed measures and justified KISS is not enough. I must also explain, what system architecting is, why it is important, and (to fulfill the management content requirement of SDM thesis) discuss what this whole shebang has to do with running product development organizations effectively. Furthermore, I need to explain what OPN is. But this I can well "copy" from Bill's excellent article, or at least find some inspiration there. 
This is what I learned today while thinking about complexity. 
I assume I am quite a bit excited about my thesis... the above text is more or less 3% of the text needed...and I am gathering some speed again as I can write this much blog ... I am a happy camper. 

Sunday, 2005-09-11

Maxims 

A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.

Thus:

Rest not! Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.

Lose this day loitering, 'Twill be the same story Tomorrow -- and the next more dilatory. Then indecision brings its own delays, and days are lost lamenting overdays! Are you ernest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or dream you can - begin it! Courage has genius, power and magic in it. Only engage, and the mind grows heated. Begin it, and the work will be completed.

By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, send by S. These will be the mottos of my forthcoming book on lean studying.

Puzzles 

1. Why is it, that the Chinese can routinely evacuate 800000 people (they did it again during the last few days in Zhejiang due to incoming typhoon), but the Americans failed to evacuate at most 100000 in New Orleans? 
2. Why is it, that the Singaporean government (in a country poorer than the USA) can decrease the childhood mortality so much, that if the US government could do the same, some 19000 children would not die in vain? 
3. Why is it that those, who oppose abortion, do not care about those poor kids, who die during their first year just because the government cannot organize health care well? 
4. Why is it, that the US government spends its money in Iraq instead of fixing the national highway system, whose poor condition is directly responsible for some 13000 deaths per year? 

Daily crono

Again, a very nice day. A slept late due to excessive surfing and studying last night. After chatting with S (blessed are those who implemented IP-phones), I realized than this semester I ought to have time to read newspapers and subscribed to NY Times' weekend editions. Since they do not deliver instantaneously, I got out, bought today's paper and read it in the Espresso Roayle, one of the most pleasant cafes in Back Bay. Then some studying and later dinner in some Vietnamese restaurant with Robbie, Ashok, and Kumar. Now, at 10pm it is time to read Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville (or at least some of it). It is required reading for our ethics course.

Saturday, 2005-09-10

Dictatorship emerging 

According to New York Times, the president of USA has the right to detain US citizens indefinitely without court orders. I consider it very scare. I used to think, that such powers are not compatible with the principles of democratic Western societies, that such powers belong only to dictators. I see no reason to trust the government in this issue: they are bound to make mistakes and detain totally innocent persons. And even criminal should have right to get their case decided by a real court. 

FEMA, DHS, and flu pandemic 

After following the sad story of total incompetence of the current US administrations in dealing with the situation in New Orleans, I am really worried about the eventual flu pandemic. If the current administration has it way, no poor people will get any medical treatment during the pandemic. Most likely rich people will not get any either. This country is likely to be totally unprepared - anyway it is not the task of the government to defend the life of citizens, it seems. It is everyone for himself! Please, tell me where to buy some Tamiflu!

Finland, education, and future 

The Finnish government has decided to see to it, that the quality of life, the standard of living, and the international competitiveness of Finland is going to deteriorate fast in the very near future. First, they cannot take care of the critical transportation infrastructure, and then they decide to cut 6000 jobs from the university system. I just cannot figure how they imagine Finland to compete, when the quality of education goes down. What do they think they are doing? How shortsighted can they be? The only thing Finland can do is to work smarter, not harder in the future. There is no way Finland can compete with China and other such countries in the amount or price of workforce. But we can well try to compete in cleverness, in general level of education. However, our current government is totally shortsighted. So sad! I think I need to go back to Finland and fix some things!

Daily crono 

S gave me some good advice in the morning. I got very energetic and started to search material for my thesis. After some hard work I have now more than 20 good references on complexity. I have also skimmed through all of them. I think I will have something original to say on measuring the complexity of system architecture models. All existing studies are rather simple and mostly concern only SW architectures. 
In addition, I had the regular Saturday lunch and walk with Kumar. We had lunch in Pho Pasteur and walked around Back Bay. Later, I took my bicycle to Community bicycle supply to get the back wheel trued. 
Great day!

Friday, 2005-09-09

Time for reflection 

I think the most important things for me this fall are the reflect on the things I have learned so far in SDM@MIT, to complete my thesis, and to learn a few things I do not know, but which are essential for becoming a better system architect. I took so many courses in the spring term and was somehow too tired and confused in the summer, and I think I have to let the information mature, sink in. Also, I need to learn more about leadership and psychology, so that I will be better in dealing with people, when I get a job. I can learn the necessary technical skills while working. 

Modest fame achieved 

Before the beginning of the first class of "System and project management", professor de Weck came to talk to a guy sitting behind me. After some chatting the professor asked the guy, whether he knows who Matti is. Of course, I had to admit being the only Matti in the class. de Weck then told, that he had asked some other professor, what kind of class SDM05 is. The other professor had told de Weck, that the class is nice and that there is a certain Matti, whom de Weck will certainly get to know soon. I was very much flattered, especially when he told that the other professor had talked highly of me. My reputation travels before me: hard work always pays off, especially in a strictly meritocratic organizations. 

Back in business 

I woke up at 6.55 am full of energy thinking of different ways to measure complexities of system architecture models. It felt so pleasant; it means that I am getting back in the business of studying. I had a walk, breakfast of fruits (yes, I am trying to move away from the group of people having opinions, i.e., those that weight over 0.1 ton), did some research, and left for MIT. 
Yes, I will start writing more about politics etc later this week. Now, I need to keep on doing research...

Thursday, 2005-09-08

Courses selected 

After some rather unstructured searching and thinking, I think I will take the following electives in the fall semester

• MAS.777 Psychology: Theory and Applications by D. Ariely. Description is as follows:

  Basic research in developmental psychology and decision making is used to present some of the changes that take place as people and their environment transition, particularly when factors affect people's ability to function in their environment. Students use ideas from basic psychology to create technological approaches to the problems they portray. Topics covered include continuous and discontinuous changes, memory, saving, payment methods, attitude to morality, education, attention, and attachment.

• 15.269 Literature, Ethics, and Authority by L. Hafrey. Description is as follows:

  Explores how we use story to articulate ethical norms. The syllabus consists of short fiction, novels, plays, feature films and some non-fiction. Major topics include leadership and authority, professionalism, the universality of ethical standards, and social enterprise, as well as questions of gender, cultural identity, the balance of family and work life, and the relation of science to ethics. Readings include work by Sophocles, Martin Luther King, Jr., Virginia Woolf, Vaclav Havel, Wole Soyinka, and others; films include "Three Kings," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Blade Runner," and others. Draws on various professions and national cultures, and is run as a series of moderated discussions, with students centrally engaged in the teaching process

They should be fun enough. Since I have already completed 5 electives, I can now take courses just for fun. I was considering doing some second degree, which is basically possible in one semester. But it would force me to work too much, and I really want to enjoy my time here. I also want to visit all kinds of events, lectures. Furthermore, I need to complete my thesis and other mandatory courses, and get a job,too. I should be busy enough...

Boston - the most expensive city in USA 

According to a new study Boston is the most expensive city in the USA. I think that does it: I will move to New York after graduating from MIT. But I may come back later to do my PhD. Unless I get greedy and try to make it up a corporate ladder or something. Not likely / possible for me. 

Strange feelings

I hate jet-lag. It makes me sad, anxious, tired. I do not feel good at all. Maybe I am getting old, because I do not remember this kind of bad feeling in the past. But it maybe something else, though. Maybe I am just anxious because I should start my thesis and other things and I got used of not doing much. I hope I will get better next week, otherwise I need to resort to using some drugs. 

On the hurricane

I am at loss of words on the latest catastrophe. I just cannot believe the total incompetence and contempt the USA government is showing in its dealing with the huge catastrophe. I will comment later. For now, I just afraid that the dire predictions of epidemics come true.

Pages updated 

I have update my MIT-pages, my traveling pages, and added some new books (I just bought 8 books for courses, got some in mail, and then also brought some from Finland) to my list of books.

Wednesday, 2005-09-07

Back in Boston 

I am back. Rather nice to be back, meet friends and start studying. I do not yet know exactly which courses I will take this semester in addition to the mandatory ones, but I think I will have to decide today. Not having much time is nice.
My cave was exactly as I left it 2 weeks ago. Nobody had broken in and cleaned it. What a disappointment! So, I had to wake up early today and clean it. I also managed to pay all my bills and none of them was late. Not bad. 
Air France had sent me a letter telling that they will finally pay for the bike they destroyed. They wrote that they ask for my forgiveness and hope that I will use their services in the future. I think that I will: it took a long time for them to give me the money, but it was partly my fault too as I was not that fast in sending receipts etc. Anyway, I should receive a check soon enough. 
I recounted my finances and I realized that even without taking a loan I should be able to survive at least until the end of February. At least if I do not order too many books, drink too much (or any) beer and eat in cheap places. In other words: if I study, I will be OK. 
A question: why do women carry they shoulder bags under their arms, while men's bags have longer straps and hangs down at hips? S claims that it is easier to carry bags under the arm, but I am not sure. 
By the way, I have some job interviews going on. One job would be managing 60 people. I am interested. Who would not? I will tell more when I or they have decided and we have done with the talking. Now, envy me!

Finland - what do I miss 

I miss at least:

• S, friends, relatives (but they do not live in Helsinki)
• Real Finnish food: all kinds of fish (fried, smoked), talkkuna, some types of bread, 
• Trams, taking long rides on trams, looking at people and reading. It is so calming. 
• Talking Finnish, being able to express my thought and feelings exactly. Being able to make quick jokes.
• The University Library
• Suomenlinna, boat, sea
• Our home, books, and other things, the view from our home
• The cafes serving good coffee in real cups
• Bars, beer
• The public sauna in Harjutori

But there are certainly other things too. I just do not miss them right now. 

August

Wednesday, 2005-08-31

Our claim on Eternity, part 2 

In a place holy to me, where thoughts flow freely, mind is in peace, and new ideas come to me, that is: sitting on the third balcony of the southern reading room of the library of the University of Helsinki, I read of the history of philosophy in Finland. G.H. von Wright wrote: The only thing that is immortal is what Man has done, with his emotion and love, to enrich his surroundings. These deeds never die. 
I have spent countless hours, days, months, on this chair, looking out of the window at the large trees, at the main building of my alma mater. I always feel so good here. Maybe I will later return to Finland, get some funding for some reseach, and can spend my days here. It would be a good way to get old and wiser. 

Great Finnish food 

Italian prime minister Mr. Berlusconi should visit Heipan Herkkulounas (delicious lunch place of Heippa) in Kallio. I just had the most delicious lunch there with S. I had fried small whitefish (muikku) with mashed potatoes and mushroom sauce. Great. S had fried liver, which she praised. I do not like liver and cannot tell good one from bad one, but I trust her in this. I like this small restaurant a lot: everything they serve is fresh, simple, and traditional. I assume Mr Berlusconi has visited some larger restaurant chains in Finland, which do serve substandard copies of Italian food. He should know better: the best food in Italy is also available in small restaurants.

A pleasant surprise 

I was trying to register as a PhD-student to the University of Helsinki. I still have the right to pursue PhD-studies in theoretical philosophy there and I do not want to lose it. So far, registration has been easy and free. This year, however, the rules have changed: I have got back my right to pursue Master's studies in mathematics, and thus I have to pay the membership fee of the student union. Now, I have a dilemma: either I pay (and get all benefits), or I renounce my right of study for good. Let's see. I am tempted to pay, and keep my options open. An extra right of study may turn out to be a valuable option later on. 

Travel notes 

Some short notes lest I forget what I have done here in Finland. No need for anyone to read this, it is only for myself. 
Saturday, 20th, arrival. Nice, sunny day, a short walk around the bay of Töölö , coffee and icecream in the garden of the Blue villa. Nice, quite, peaceful, so strange, no hurry. Walking around the city center, wondering why there are so many drunkards, and realizing that they were there when I left, I can even remember some of their bloated and scarred faces. 
Sunday, 21st was busier. S was trying to sell some of our unnecessary things in the fleamarket. She had moderate success, or actually rather good since it was raining. I was just hanging around until the rain got too bad. Later, I took a sightseeing tour with the number 6 tram. In the evening, we visited our godson's 3rd birthday, and then met with Lassi, Päivi, Satu, Tomppa, Tappi, and others. They were having a late BBQ on the cliffs overseeing the residence of the prime minister. I hope he appreciated the songs they sang. I considered it safer for me not to sing. 
Monday, 22nd sleeping late, reading books (the Science of the Artificial etc) in the holy place, accidental meeting with Susanna, who has started to study again (good for her!), then sleeping more, and later meeting with Aaro and having a pint. 
Tuesday, 23rd return to Nokia, but not to where I used to work. It would not be appropriate and the office is in Espoo, which is just too far for any civilized person. But, visiting the other colleagues in Pit&aml;jänmäki is is always nice. Nice guys: Olli, Ville, Mika, Puaso, Ile, Julle, Harri, Jarmo etc. I was also pleasantly surpised of what I heard: their work is going really well. 
Wednesday, 24th. Meeting Mikael over lunch. Later, meeting Mika,Teivo, Samuli and others for some early beers and discussion about NGOs etc. 
Thursday, 25th: breakfast meeting with Jaana. She is working even harder than I was in the spring. But she is organizing a large conference, so I guess there is a reason. Later, traveling to Tampere to meet my mother and to borrow my brother's car. I also met with some friends (Kössi and Tero).
Friday, 26th: driving from Tampere via Helsinki to Valkeala. Some 400 km in less than 5 hours. Not bad. The car is excellent, really fast and fun to drive. In the evening, chatting with S's uncle and his wife and S's sister. Great time in the middle of the countryside. I feel uneasy in the countryside, but having nice company helps. 
Saturday, 27th: driving back to Tampere, not that fun, smaller road, slow. Visiting S's father due to his 70th birthdate, later visiting my mom, and some friends (Kössi, Santtu). 
Sunday, 28th just hanging around with my brother and mother. Later visiting his garage, watching some DVDs and drinking some beer. 
Monday, 29th negotiation a loan from my bank (yes, I got X keuros with interest of 3.05%), meeting with frieds. 
Tuesday, 30st: visiting the bank again, traveling back to Helsinki (only after meeting with Antti).

Saturday, 2005-08-20

The first flight this year

Last year I had 44 flights (but 45 take-offs and landings as the airliner broke down midair after taking off in Belem). This year I have just stayed put in Boston (and in New York). Anyway, flying was just as painful as earlier, or actually a bit more. They do not serve any free alcohol in Iceland Air. No beer, no sleep. Back in Finland, I was and still is a bit tired.

First impressions in Helsinki 

Sunny, warm, green, quite, spacious. Lost of drunken people of all ages roaming the streets. Buses are expensive; it is very quiet inside the bus. Cars are even smaller than I remembered, only a few SUV. Good. Price of gasoline is 1.27 euros per liter ($6.1/gallon). TV-shows seems as stupid as ever, but I cannot compare with USA, since I do not have TV there. Well, too tired to write.

Friday, 2005-08-19

At the Logan airport 

I did not had to remove my sandals. So, a very clever criminal could fill in the soles with Semtex. That would be a nasty trick and not that hard thing to do, either. One can also bring in large bottles of beer. Who knows whether there is beer in them? Is that visible in the X-ray. I am paranoid. But I do not know, why my laptop had to go in its own basket through the X-ray?
The restaurant next to the security checking (before it) serves good food. It is very slow, though, since the waiters have to spend most of their time using the fancy cash-terminal with a nice touchscreen. More time with that than with the customers. Muda rules!
Of course, there is no free WiFi here. It would be too good. 

TA or not TA - a temporary problem 

Professor John Sternman was (or maybe he still is) looking for TAs for his coming System Dynamics-course in the fall. Since I was recommended by Jim Lyneis (who taught the course in the summer), I went and talked to professor Sterman. I do think that system dynamics is interesting, but the work/reward ratio of being TA was not good enough for me this time. The total compensation would have been about $9600, which is not good enough for a task, which most likely would take almost 2 full workdays the whole fall term (attending lectures, running recitations, correcting up to 70 assigments, etc). So, after some hesitation, I decided to reject the possibility. Of course, I did not even know whether I would have got the position, for there were other applicants, too. The main reason is that I need to get a job anyway next spring, and when I get one, I will earn this $9600, which I now plan to borrow from my bank. I hope they are still willing to provide me with a study loan.

Thursday, 2005-08-18

SDM@MIT open house on Wednesday 

SDM arranged an open house meeting for prospective students. I like those meetings. It is nice to meet next years students, discuss with them, answer their questions. And having free food and beer, well, I do not mind. So, first Pat Hale gave a good overview of the program, then industry co-director John Grace told, why he thinks SDM is such a good fit for the needs of industry. 
It is also fascinating how much more careful some people are than I was when applying to SDM. I just saw the program mentioned in the MBA-book by the Economist, then checked the website, and decided to apply and come here if accepted. The program was and still is exactly what was looking for: a good mix of technical courses and management courses. And hey, it is MIT, my long time dream. I had so long dreamed of studying in MIT and once I realized I have a good opportunity, I did not hesitate a minute. And also, I think that one cannot really plan one's life, one must just follow one's intuition, leap and see whether everything works out. Usually it does. But I do understand, and accept that many others are more risk averse. There is nothing wrong in being risk averse. But I am so happy, that I just leaped and came here.
John Grace told me that he has found my comments in the meetings we have been together to be very much to the point. He told too that after spotting me he was wondering whether this kind of large hippy has any brains at all. He said that I seems to have. I was so much flattered.
By the way, this year is the first time in my life I have not been bored most of the time. Clearly MIT is the place for me to be. I just need to figure out how not to be forced to leave MIT ever. 

I am too large 

I am way too large. My bike broke down again yesterday. It seems that I am too heavy, the back wheel get deformed way too easily. I need to get a fatter tire. It might help. It is not 32mm wide, maybe 42 or so would help. It cost 12 dollar to get the wheel fixed, so cycling is too expensive this way. Well, I will not get it fixed before leaving for Finland - I can walk, it is good enough for the last 2 days of exercise. 

Wednesday, 2005-08-17

MIT is not lean 

MIT prides itself of being the vanguard of lean development. But when it comes to MIT itself, the bureaucracy is just incredible. Today, I took my I-20 (some form which every alien must carry when abroad) to the international students office (ISO), because it must be signed. I was ready to wait for a few minutes for someone to sign it. How naive can I be? It takes 2 days to sign the form! It is just incredible. Let's do some calculations. According to Little's law the queue length is equal to throughput times cycle time. So, cycle time is 2 day or 16 hours of working time. I assume that even when doing other tasks, even the slowest official can sign on average, say, 20 forms every hours. So, they must have a constant queue of 16*20 = 320 forms to sign. Well, it may be true. Except that the pile, on which my form was put, was very thin.

Sightseeing by bicycle 

I have always wanted to see the center of Newton, MA. Somehow, it fascinates me, it sounds so excotic. Today I decided to cycle there are see how nice a place it really is. But it is too close, just cycling from Boston to Newton would not make up a decent exercise. So, I first cycled all the way up north of Massachusetts avenue past Arlington, over Arlington heights. It was uphill all the way. Nothing to see there, small malls after each other, large wooden houses. It looked so similar all the way, that I was wondering whether I had got lost and was cycling circles. In the end, I found a small gas station, bought something to drink, and turned back. It was much easier to cycle back to Watertown, all the way downhill. From Watertown, I cycled up by the riverside (which I have done once earlier, a nice route), and finally found a place which I assume is the center of Newton. It looks like a Wild West village. Small, low house, some taverns, and that is it. Nothing to see there. Again those large houses, empty streets, almost no pedestrians, no cyclists. Fortunately, some women were walking with their kids, when I started to think that I really had got lost. It turned out that I had, I was cycling to west, away from Boston. I turned back, and finally came back after cycling 2.5 hours and some 30+ miles (50+ kilometers). 

Tuesday, 2005-08-16

War, genocide, etc 

A new film has come out about the events in Rwanda some ten years ago. The film is based on Romeo Dallaire's book Shake hand with the devil. The film's website tells more about the story. Surprisingly, Dallaire's book is one of the books we are reading for the course Ethics, Literature, and Authority in the fall. You may also read a review of the film in the Guardian Weekly.

Wal-Mart hit by the rising price of oil 

Both revenue and profit of Wal-Mart are now lower than forecasted. They say that the price of oil is hitting them. I think I wrote about this earlier: when the gas gets more expensive, Wal-Mart is not the cheapest place to shop anymore. At some point, even Americans start to calculate how much a trip to a far way Wal-Mart costs (say, one owns a SUV with 10 miles / gallon mileage. Wal-Mart is 20 miles away. 40 miles means 4 gallons of gas. At $4/gallon, that would be $16 dollars, which is not insignificant price to pay for going to shopping). Thus, price conscious shoppers will not frequent Wal-Mart anymore, revenues go down, it becomes harder to run the large stores. This is a death spiral for Wal-Mart as we know it: it is already the cheapest store, paying the lowest prices to its suppliers, and exploiting its employees as much it can. Thus, it cannot really cut its cost and prices so much that visiting it would make economic sense. This is getting interesting. (and in addition: the higher the prices of oil, the higher the transportation costs in W-M supply chain, as in any supply chain. I do not know whether W-M's supply chain is especially energy intensive or not) See for example an article in the Guardian.

Really effective security measures 

According an article in today's Boston globe the always vigilant authorities have add also the terrorists-to-be to their no-flight lists. In several occasions, those dangerous 1-year old terrorists have been prevented from boarding the planes. It is good to know, that the TSA is up to its task, since I am going to fly to Finland on Friday. I am so happy to know that no explosive babies will be able to board my plane. What is a bit more worrisome is that the masterminds behind these terrorists were able to get some forged documents faxed to the authorities and the terrorist was, after all, able to board the plane. Too bad. I am so happy that some of the sales taxes I am paying here are used in making my life much safer that it would otherwise be. 

Temperature makes a difference 

I had not realized how big extra effort how weather causes when cycling. Today was the first cool day since I started to train seriously, and the difference was significant. I do not have speedometer, but I would say that the average speed was up with some 5km/h. Cycling was so easy, I hardly was out of breath. I cycled all the way to Watertown, around it and back, and still a little tour in the South End. A note: it is incredible, how poor roads are in Cambridge. Cycling there is almost too hazardous. How come Cambridge is too poor to take of the roads? Has the mayor been bribed by the SUV-manufacturers? One would need an SUV to drive there. 

On "Talk and Talkers" 

"Talk and Talkers" in an essay by Robert L. Stevenson describing and celebrating the joys and pleasures of good talk, of having someone to talk about myriad topics, to battle for and against concepts, ideologies, and beliefs. I read it first thing this morning, while listening to the 5th and 7th symphonies of Sibelius, and all my angst went away. Reading the article felt like drinking from a quell of wisdom, peace, and liberty. For today too much talking is about mundane issues: work, money, career. A proper citizen cares for those issues, too, but concentrates in other issues: becoming a better, and more complete human being. I encourage you to read the essay yourself. Some quotes follow. 

In short, the first duty of a man is to speak; that is his chief business in this world; and talk, which is the harmonious speech of two or more, is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money; it is all profit; it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health.
Communication is no longer by words, but by the instancing of whole biographies, epics, systems of philosophy, and epochs of history, in bulk. That which is understood excels that which is spoken in quantity and quality alike; ideas thus figured and personified, change hands, as we may say, like coin; and the speakers imply without effort the most obscure and intricate thoughts. Strangers who have a large common ground of reading will, for this reason, come the sooner to the grapple of genuine converse. If they know Othello and Napoleon, Consuelo and Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin and Steenie Steenson, they can leave generalities and begin at once to speak by figures.
The best teachers are the aged. To the old our mouths are always partly closed; we must swallow our obvious retorts and listen. They sit above our heads, on life's raised dais, and appeal at once to our respect and pity. A flavour of the old school, a touch of something different in their manner - which is freer and rounder, if they come of what is called a good family, and often more timid and precise if they are of the middle class - serves, in these days, to accentuate the difference of age and add a distinction to gray hairs. But their superiority is founded more deeply than by outward marks or gestures. They are before us in the march of man; they have more or less solved the irking problem; they have battled through the equinox of life; in good and evil they have held their course; and now, without open shame, they near the crown and harbour. 

It is for the reasons stated in the last quoted paragraph, that I so much cherish having old professors and experts taking part in our classes. 

Monday, 2005-08-15

Google has no work for me 

I applied for a job in Google. They asked me to send my transcripts. It took them about 3 weeks to come up with the following:

"We received your resume and would like to thank you for your interest in Google. After carefully reviewing your experience and qualifications, we have determined that we do not have a position available which is a strong match at this time."
"Thanks again for considering Google. We wish you well in your endeavors and hope you might consider us again in the future."

And they could not even address it to me. Just copy-paste from somewhere. Is that how much I am worth? Or any applicant, for that matter.
Job search continues. It seems to be hard if I cannot even get through the first step and get into a interview. Let's see. I think I really have to get into a PhD-program. It may well turn out that I am an outcast, not really good for any corporate positions. Hmm..., I think it is time to have a toast to Google.
Then again, maybe I should write more elaborate resume, maybe I should mention smaller things like working as a kind of quality manager, defining SW and architecting processes, taking Wiki-based communication systems in use, working on product strategy, elaborating my international experience more, working as a change agent, and whatnot. It seems, that in USA one must mention and boast of all achievement, no matter how small they are. Ok, this is one thing to do during the break. And maybe I should take some "fashionable" courses, boast about Jave, Cnet, and all other trivial issues. Maybe that is the name of the game. Any ideas and opions are very much appreciated by me, the job seeker. Just click on the comment-link below. Come on, make my day!
Suomeksi sanoisin, että yllättävän paljon vituttaa moinen kohtelu. Peskeles, täytyy vaan truivaasta. Kyllä se siitä!

Our claim on eternity 

George Monbiot has written a very wise column in the Guardian. I find his writing very true and aligned with my view of the world:

[...}I find this oddly comforting. I like the idea of literal reincarnation: that the molecules of which I am composed will, once I have rotted, be incorporated into other organisms. Bits of me will be pushing through the growing tips of trees, will creep over them as caterpillars, will hunt those caterpillars as birds. When I die, I'd like to be buried in a fashion which ensures that no part of me is wasted. Then I can claim to have been of some use after all.
"Happy the hare at morning," WH Auden wrote, "for she cannot read/ The Hunter's waking thoughts. Lucky the leaf/ Unable to predict the fall ... But what shall man do, who can whistle tunes by heart,/ Know to the bar when death shall cut him short, like the cry of the shearwater?"
It seems to me that we are the happy ones. We, alone among organisms, who perceive eternity, and know that the world will carry on without us.

You definitely should read the article, if you wonder what legacy you are going to leave in the world. Or maybe you should read it even without wondering eternal issues.

Change of plans 

I have changed my plans a bit, as I realized that I will get only huge stress if I try to work on my thesis before traveling to Finland. Most likely I do not get anything done. I am mentally tired, I need to get away from MIT for a little while, I need to read some of the books I have bought this year, but not read. Maybe I could write my long overdue "Guide to lean studying - how to do two degrees in one year and still have a life". It will be an instant bestseller in bookstores of TOP-25 universities of the world. And I will have enough money to pay my tuition. And writing it will be fun. 
So, from now one, until the 7th of September: sleeping a lot, cycling, walking, reading, meeting friends and relatives, partying. Should be enough.

List of books in a nice format 

After about an hour of furious hacking, I managed to convert my list of books to a nice, web-friendly, format. Check it at the list of books. It even has helpful links to Amazon in case you want to buy some of my books. I am not selling.
If I ever become unemployed, I will input all my books. Then I will need to arrange them a bit. A single list would be rather long. I have some 40-50-meters of books in Helsinki. Of course, part of them belong to S but anyway, many books in out house..

Time to start writing thesis 

Well, enough cycling, drinking, and sleeping as the only things I do daily. Today I will start working on my Master's thesis on complexity measures of system architecture models. It is a fascinating topic and one which is not that well known yet. One must always work on novel topics. So, what is it going to be about. It is going to be about the KISS-heuristic. How can we keep it simple, if we do not have formal (or semi-formal) methods for estimating the complexity of a model? How can we choose among several models, if only we can rely on is our intuition. Each of us has different intuition, thus we get a nice discussion. Therefore, developing some complexity measures would be at least slightly important for the profession. Another note: de Weck's isoperformance-idea also relies on some intuitive notion of complexit. He proposes choosing among different alternatives, which all have similar performance. I think one criterion he subconsciously uses is complexity. And then there is Occam's razor to keep in mind. Oh, this is going be great fun, almost awesome, yay, yummy, and all other teen words popular here in USA.

An article on exurbia 

New York Times has an interesting article on the growth of suburbia. It is quite much in line with Peter Elk's observations. And even though it is worst here in USA, the same development is going on in Finland, too. When I was kid, my grandparents lived in the countryside some 30 km away from Tampere. Neither they nor any of their neighbors commuted to Tampere daily. It was just too far. A few years back, when my grandmother died, we sold the remaining fields for developers, who build them full of house. Everyone commutes to Tampere. Not even high prices of gasoline prevent them (it is now 1.3 euros per litre!) from commuting. Interesting. 
If you can read Finnish, please read another article by Peter Elk. He writes really well, much better than I do, of similar topics, which I care for. 

Sunday, 2005-08-14

MIT-pages updated 

My MIT-pages were totally out of date. I updated them a bit. If you are interesting in what I have been studying, my MIT-pages is a good place to start. 

Books arranged 

I was about to go cycling, but a furious thunderstorm scared me too badly. It takes just two lightning strokes within 500 meters to convince me of the wisdom to seek some safe, and dry, place. Since I could not go out, I decided to come back, have some beer, and arrange my books. I used a program called Globalbooks for finding the bibliographic information of each book. The program is good in finding the information, but very bad in producing neat output. And I am right now too lazy to hack a script to make it neater. Therefore, the list of books is rather plain. But better than no list at all. The list contains 78 books. 

RSS-feed improved 

I hacked some more. Now the RSS-feed is valid RSS. It also contains the first 6 lines of each entry. Great, eh?

Lost civil liberties-mug. 

"Pour in a hot beverage and watch your civil liberties disappear! Mug features the complete text of the Bill of Rights, but pour in a hot beverage and see what remains thanks to the Patriot Act!" I definitely need one! They are available at The unemployed philosophers guild. Thanks to Peter Elk for the hint. 

Saturday, 2005-08-13

RSS-feed installed 

I hacked a simple RSS-feed to my blog. Now, I am modern. Great. The URL is 

http://www.iki.fi/mane/rss.xml

Is this not quite an important thing? You can also use the link above. At this point, the RSS-feed has just the topics. Use your browser to get the contents. The feed gets updated every half an hour.

Dreaming of a good job 

Getting older is good. One gets to know oneself better every year, one realizes what ones really wants to do, in what kind of tasks one is good, happy, and productive. And in what kind of tasks one is not happy and not productive; one can be good, but it does not help much if one cannot muster any motivation. So, I have realized, that being an consultant in some larger consulting company would not make me happy. And in general, I really need to be able to attach quite much importance to the things I do. I just cannot just do something for money, not even if the amount of money would be large. It just does not happen. And I cannot handle organizational politics, I cannot manage any bosses if they try to use hierarchical authority over me. I need to get a jobs, which I consider important. I need to have extremely lot tactical autonomy, and I need to have flexible working hours. Is that too much to ask for?

Rather hot still 

At 9.44pm. In my cave: 30.5C, 70%. Outside: 25C, 90%. There was a thunderstorm, which lowered the temperature a bit, but it is still unpleasant. I am a bit dehydrated after cycling 1.5 hours and walking about 1 hour. Of course, the best times for me to have any exercise are in the mid-winter, when it is way too cold, and in the summer, when it is too hot. I just do not have any motivation to exercise when the weather would be tolerable. Or almost. 

Local greenhouse effect 

Now, at noon, it is 29.3C in my cave. It is getting hotter. Outside it is 31C, with 54% humidity (head index 34C). It will be 36C later today. Thus, excellent weather for a long, but slow cycling trip. 2-3 hours is just fine. I just have to drink something while cycling and apply some sunscreen. 

Shameless boasting, modesty off 

Today is my official day of not studying. Saturdays always are. Next thing to start is the thesis. Tomorrow will take care of it. Now I am just so happy to have 138 units with a GPA of 4.7 or 4.8. I think that is not an insignificant achievement. At least, there are not that many other, who could take similar load with similar results, and still have most weekend off from studying. I am quite proud, as you most likely can appreciate.

Friday, 2005-08-12

Cycling 

Finally, I was able to muster up enough time, energy, and soberness to have a nice cycling trip to the southern suburbs. I took the Tremont Street all the way to the Jamaica Pond and then back by the Willow Pond. There are pleasant parks to cycle in here in Boston. Suburban streets are OK too, but there are just too many poorly coordinated traffic lights there. So, I either end up standing still for long times or ignoring the lights. Both are bad choices. So, finding parks is essential. The other option, at least during late evenings, it to go to the industrial areas. There are no traffic lights there and after 6 pm it is quite peaceful and safe to cycle there. I like industrial areas a lot, they are the best places for recreational cycling. 
Check some bicycle information. For example, use the calculator to see how much you can save by not having a car. Or, check how you can move your fridge with a bicycle. Not that I am that tempted to do so - well, I do not even own a fridge.

On SW, again 

Reijo has a great point. It is not that "most SW developers just are not up to their tasks" rather it is, that "most SW developers are not let to be up to their tasks". This formulation is close to the truth. Companies treat their emploees in ways, which do not encourage professional pride and growth. 

Daily crono

Cycling, finishing the RFID-project with Kumar, then having dinner in the good diner in Harvard square. Later, listening to Avett Brothers in Club Passim. Really good band. They play energetic bluegrass or something. Fun. I got tired, had some strange pain in my head and decided to head home. The others continued to some bard. 

Thursday, 2005-08-11

Not for yellow-beer-drinking wimps!

Now, I have really found a great beer. It even comes with a very suitable attitude for me. The name of the beer is Arrogant Bastard. The beer has a fantastic taste, enough alcohol to make instant impact on the lucky ones, who know where to buy the beer. Well, read the truth from the site and envy me. I am drinking it right now. Go figure! Or, check the animation. This is how you (I) will end up looking after too many bottles of Arrogant Bastard. Clearly, not for wimps!
Arrogance warning on... This blog is not for wimps or sissies. Or anyone drinking yellow-beer. If you are such a loser, go away to do some sissy things. 

Oil is getting priceless 

Oil is getting more and more expensive. See the news. Read the leader of the Economist. I think Economist may be right. Shortage of refinery capacity is one factor, successful speculation plays roles. But the fact is, that demand is larger than supply, and supply is more likely to get smaller still. Demand is certain to get larger. So, the prices will rise further. Once they reach all time highs and gas will cost $4 or more in USA, I am sure we will have local insurgencies in USA. Oh, it is getting violent, and popularity of Bush will collapse. He and his bosses do not like that. So, what could they do? Well, one thing would be to prevent China from buying so much oil. They have to military to do so, but unfortunately oil is traded in open market. The market would just raise the price because the risks would be higher. Similarly, if and when USA invades Saudi-Arabian and Iran, the markets will react. So, just invading and robbing the oil fields will not be enough. USA must nationalize the oil fields in the Middle-East. This, of course, will hurt some of the real bosses, but short of rigging (big time) the elections, this is the only real alternative. And, remember, nationalizing property because of national security is not socialism. On the contrary, it is part of spreading the freedom (from free markets) around the world. Remember to buy stock of some company producing killing apparel.
Enough conspiracy theories for today?

Supply chains and Wal-Mart 

Why is Wal-Mart so successful? Well, they are more efficient than the other in optimizing their supply chains. They are also quite good in keeping their employee's wages down. And denying them medical insurances. Etc. But that's alright. Clearly, it is according to the values of the society. In Rome, behave as Roman. So, let's not complain. Let's instead discuss why Wall-Mart, K-Mart, Target (and in Europe Carrefour, Metro, Aldi, Lidl) are so efficient and successful when compared to traditional retailers. The simple reason is that they have shorter supply chains. They have outsourced part of their supply chains to their customer. They just bring the good near the cities, not near the customers. So, customers must pay transportation from warehouse to their homes. Traditional retailers have one more step in the supply chain: the retail store close to their customers. Furthermore, the big chains, being far, have outsourced freezing and refrigeration to their customers. The warehouse stores are so far, that one must buy more than one can reasonable consume before the good go stale. So, one must buy a huge fridge and freezer. But this is all well known. But, the real question is why do we need Wal-Mart in the first place. If we have time to drive far to buy groceries, why do not we just drive all the way to the slaughterhouses and farms and factories and buy enough for a few years? More seriously, the price of oil is going to change the situation and may hurt Wal-Mart more than smaller retailer. I would assume that underground warehouses in urban centers with home delivery systems are the next big thing. Unfortunately, I do not have money to start such a business. Or time, for that matter. 

Daily crono 

Last Systems Engineering lecture. Great, I like Dan Clausing so much. He is walking encyclopedia of product development. It is unfortunately, that some of my classmates are too proud to listen to him. I admit, that his way of expressing himself is not very current, but when he speaks, one learns. If one just can be humble and polite enough. And, without knowing the history, changes of progress are slight. The course itself could have been better. I will later write a longer proposal how to make it better. 
Later, beer with Kumar, hacking at home. It is somewhat hard to concentrate when it is 30C all the time. But is means that beer tastes even better. And some beer means a lot of creativity. Just wait and see/read. 

Why is SW development so hard? 

Brooks claims that is hard because SW is intangible, it is complex, malleable, etc. I agree on those, they are real reasons. The most important reason is that most SW developers just are not up to their tasks. Anyone can learn some Java or some other language, get a job doing some trivial stuff and claim to be a programmer, even one with significant experience (after doing the Java-stuff for a year or so). Have you ever heard of a SW developer/programmer, who agrees that his skills/productivity are below average? Mine are, or then not. But I am not that good a programmer. I am more than a decent designer, though. What a loser I am! But seriously, there is a dramatic difference between SW engineering and, say, nuclear engineering. No person can claim to be competent nuclear engineer by just walking down the power plant for a year without any training. I am sure, such a person would not get a change to have anything to do with design or implementation of any nuclear power plant. I do hope so. But I am not sure that some not that good SW engineer cannot sneak in doing some programs for the power plant. Well, maybe not. You may get the point or not. SW engineering is hard for those who have no clue! As is any engineering! The main problem is, that the SW engineering community is full of imposters. Now, I am about to have a clue after graduating. Or then not, in which case I will commence a new career as a bicycle courier. 

Wednesday, 2005-08-10

Stillleben in Boston 

Nothing much is happening. On Monday, we had the final exam on accounting. I did manage to study 5 hours for it. The exam was just as irritating as exams always are. So, I just did whatever I could figure out right away (less than 1 minute thinking time for each question), wrote down my answers and left the building when 25% of the exam time was still left. I definitely did not check my answers, since I just cannot do that without walking around, strecthing a little etc. And such things are not possible in exams. So, I leave the checking to those, who get paid for checking my work. I did the same in the mid-term exam; I got 74 out of 100, which is more than enough for my ambition in any course requiring exams. Later on Monday, we (I, Kumar, Ashok) spent some time discussing system dynamics even though we actually finished the assinment last week. No change to the write-up resulted. Dinner in the Cambridge Mall, than back home. The next day was terrible: I could not fall to sleep at all. It was too hot (almost 30C) in my cave, there was some strange noise coming from somewhere, I had no ear plugs etc. I fell to sleep at 6 am, so I had to skip the SE-lecture on Tuesday. Instead, I slept, picked up my bike from the shop, went to the SD-lecture. It was good, interesting actually. How ignorant some locals are about the global problems and also about history! It is fascinating. Then it was time to celebrate by drinking some beer at Kumar's with Ashok and by having nice dinner in Island Hopper. Today, no lectures, just hanging out: looking for apartments, hacking, discussing politics and study plans etc. 
So, nothing much is happening. It seems, that after a semester I lost the power for a few days. Tomorrow, I will go cycling before the SE-lecture. On Friday, I will cycle at least 3 hours, and during the weekend, at least 6 hours. It is quite fun.

Global warming out of control in Siberia

The global warming is entering a new phase. There is one giant positive feedback look coming in existence, when the Siberian permafrost is melting. It will speed up the greenhouse effect significantly and may cause really dramatic phenomena. I just hope, that our politicians would not be such a shortsighted bunch of losers. Greenhouse effect is THE national security issue they should be working at, but no, they are just hiding their heads in the sand. So sad. I need to start doing something at this. 

Sunday, 2005-08-07

Nice weekend 

No interviews, but very fun even without. On Friday evening, I tried to study in the SDM-office, but all I could do was to read some not study related material. Later, I went with Dave to a party, which was organized by Sam's friends, musicians. Nice party, live music of many types, lots of beer (though we brought our own), huge crowd. Back home at midnight, then hacking this and that until early hours. On Saturday, sleeping late, then walking and having lunch with Kumar and his cousin, Subu, from San Francisco. Subu told that there are many biotech companies in the Bay-area and that they may desperately need me. I just need to contact them. Then, lunch at Pho Pasteur, after which I took off to Bill's 30-year birthday party somewhere in the southern Boston. I got lost, but fortunately T-mobile works that far too. A nice party this one, too. We just idled, looking for the patterns of the situation, after which I got autistic, or just tire. Came back home, entertained myself by looking at how marvelous car Porsche Carrera GT is, and just idled. Today, on Sunday, I did not sleep that late. Instead, I got up, cooked some paste for breakfast, and went cycling. I tried to cycle to the Revere-beach and further north, but I could not find the small roads leading there; the number 1-road is to busy and its surface is even worse that the road surfaces in Cambridge in general. They are just terrible, worse than in any Chinese city I have visited. Who cares. So, I headed to Somerville, Davis Square, Harvard, Central, and then downtown Boston. Then the bike broke down and I had to take it toCommunity Bicycle Supply. They promised to fix and tune-up my bike by Wed. At this point, I really ran out of ways to procrastinate, came back home and have now been reading for the accounting exam for some 6 hours. I think it will be quite OK. I will still do something at in in the morning. 
No politics. This was a boring blog-entry, just to keep some record about days, which so easily disappear from my memory otherwise. (pictures by S.)

Friday, 2005-08-05

What is wrong with me? 

I have now applied for several job. I have got two answers requesting more information. Then nothing, total silence. Is it really so, that my 7 years of experience in Nokia, my international experience in Finland, China, and USA, and my very successful studies in MIT are not worth a single interview? Or is it so, that the market for system architects is so small, that the likelihood of someone needing another one is vanishingly small, not to say minuscule. Or am I doing something wrong? Should I post not-funny pictures in my homepage? Should I just limit my blogging to the courses I am taking, the bars I am visiting (none), and other insignificant topics? Are the employers so timid, that my blog is able to scare them away? Is that not against the "equal opportunity"-ideology, which makes up the small print of every job advertisement? Should I just forget the whole thing, start up my own consulting company, or start to drive bus? Or should I start really networking, smoozing in bars and some other place? Any ideas are more than welcome! 
Now I am off for a short bikeride. If everything else fails, I can always become bike courier...
Damn, it was hot. 36C, full sun shine. I cycled some 45 minutes, and almost fainted back at home. I must remember to drink more in the future. Cycling was fun, though, I saw some new areas next to the Boston University. 

What is wrong with goverments? 

I think our governments are compromising our security by devoting so much time on terrorism, which is not likely to kill millions of people, and at the same time almost neglecting the danger of flu pandemic. It seems that the governments are not really interested in preventing premature deaths. If they were, they would decide to buy the Tamiflu-patent from Roche, and build up new facilities to produce the drugs. But no, no way, they just concentrate in issues of almost no significance. Of course, a truly security-oriented government would do its utmost to mitigate the problems due to coming end of oil. But no, they just behave as everything could continue like this forever. During the break, I will write a pamphlet on these issues. I am really getting angry at the incompetent incumbents. 

Thursday, 2005-08-04

Good news 

I took again a long T-ride, while celebrating my re-found freedom from homework assignments. I was very glad and relieved to note, that the terrorist threat, which was so acute on last Sunday, has now disappeared. There are no more public announcement blasting off in the T. So, I think, "now, more than ever, it is important to be alert, and inform the police or MBTA of all suspicious behavior" does not hold, the terrorists have left the town thanks to the vigilance of the traveling public. Or, could it just be that the MBTA finally understood that the announcements had nothing to do with security. Or, maybe someone's incentives are full now, no more need to enhance security this year anymore. Be that as it may, I am very glad that the announcements have been cancelled.

Systems engineering and ships 

Today, I had just one lecture. It was on systems engineering, especially on ship building. Of course, as it was presented by some military guy, it was mostly about battleships, but I still learned a lot. A funny thing was to note, that the speed requirement of US destroyers has been 30 knots per hours for very long time. The lecturer could not give any convincing reason for that except that some admirals like it so. This is not a good enough reason, since the maximum speed requirement has dramatic effects on the design. The lecturer also claimed that US would like to build bigger aircraft carriers, but cannot do so, because there is no large enough dry dock in USa. What an excuse. An aircraft carrier costs some $7 billion. Building a new dry dock to build a bigger one cannot be such a big deal. Furthermore, I am sure it would be rather easy to build modular aircraft carrier system, which could sail to the target separately and make up a single large artificial, floating base once there. At least I can easily envision such a system. But maybe I'd better not to tell the US Navy how to do it. They might even do it and not pay any royalties! 

Two types of cyclist here in USA 

It is such a pleasure to watch bicyclists in Boston. Most of them really know how to cycle. I have never seen so many cyclists, who know how to pedal, do not swing their upper body while cycling, and also wear helmets. On the contrary, it is really painful to watch the motorcyclists. Most of them do not have even rudimentary riding skill. They do not know how to turn, they often miss gears, and even when driving staight they seem to have real troubles in keeping the bike in control. And not a single one of them wears any kind of protective clothing. Bad combination, which will make surgeons sad but so rich. And also the down-takers, too. It seems that many people just have too much money, and too little to look for in their lives. Otherwise I cannot understand such a disregard of protective measures and driving lessons.

Other stuff 

I have started to get my lunch-box from the Thai-truck. Today, I got steamed tuna with rise and spicy thai sauce and vegetables with $4. It was really good and healthy. 
I read two profoundly interesting articles today, both in Guardian. The first one tells about the change in fashion, especially how the fashion and liberation of the women have had such an uneasy relationship. It also tells, that thongs are not anymore fashionable, or at least they will not be soon. It is funny how much power the fashion designers have. They basically decide what we wear. The other article tells how globalization is coming to its end and fast. The basic idea in the article is that the current period of globalization rest on two favorable conditions: a relative world peace and availability of cheap oil and other sources of energy. The availability of the cheap oil is coming to its end, which may well end the period of relative peace, too. It is very likely that what we see now in Irag is just a prelude for something much worse. The article also talks at length about the suburban sprawl in USA and elsewhere, which has been possible only because of cheap and readily available oil. Read the article, it is quite eye-opening.

The dirty secret of the US economy for at least a decade now is that it has come to be based on the ceaseless elaboration of a car-dependent suburban infrastructure - McHousing estates, eight-lane highways, big-box chain stores, hamburger stands - that has no future as a living arrangement in an oil-short future. The American suburban juggernaut can be described succinctly as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.

I saw a funny girl in the metro. She had rasta-type hair, which is not that peculiar. But each string/tail of her hair had a Heineken beer cap hanging from it. They made nice jingling sounds, whenever she shook her head. 

Wednesday, 2005-08-03

Homework done - summer semester almost over 

Thanks to Marat, Kumar, and Ashok, all our homework (systems engineering, system dynamic, and operations management) are ready, done, and over now. Great. Our efficiency is formidable. The only thing remaining is the accounting exam, for which I plan to read 8 hours on Sunday. After that, I will have completed 138 units of graduate level courses, which is 6 more than MIT normally requires for 2 master's degrees. In the fall, I may take some 40 more in addition to my thesis (24), so the total of the year will become around 200 or more. So, it seems that MIT is not such a though place to study after all, since to do all this I have not even sacrificed that many weekends, none in the summer actually. But MIT is a good place, for the first time in my life I am not acutely bored most of the time for the lack of things to do. Maybe I need to stay in MIT for few more years, this is so much fun, almost awesome, as they say here.

Daily crono 

Well, work, work, and still some work, but only until 6pm, when we ran out of it. Then dinner with K&A in Cambridgeside Mall Foodcourt, then back home to read "What is the matter with Kansas" and going to bed early. 

Tuesday, 2005-08-02

Rampant militarism 

I just wonder how Americans, who are well educated and enlightened people, tolerate such a waste of their money, time, and other resources on preparation of and actual killing of other human beings. Today, in the Systems Engineering class, we heard a lecture how MITRE (which is part of the government, but pretends not to be) helps the rest of the government in this worthless task. It was so boring, that I almost walked out of the class, especially since most of the lecture was not about systems engineering but these killing preparations. 

No change 

I have noticed no change after my birthday. Everything is as it was. I do not feel weaker nor stronger. I am as happy as I was before. Well, a bit happier since I got the book. Maybe we should have giftdays every month, just to celebrate the existence of our loved ones. I cannot figure out any better reason for celebration (well, if all countries would slash their killing budget by 90%, that would be even better). Funny how I am becoming even more pacifistic than I was when I was a young and energetic. So, the idea of people growing conservative when they grow old is not true. At least there is one exception alive. 

Incompetents nominate each other 

So, mr Bush did nominate this incompetent bully of mr Bolton as the ambassador of US in UN. As I wrote yesterday, democracies may vote themselves in dictatorships. As an outsider, I have nowadays hard time to find real differences between the way mr Bush and his bosses run this country and how some presidents run some countries in Africa. It looks so much alike. But it may just be that I am reading the wrong newspapers. And it must be, since they moronic war on terror has ended now and turned into something more sinister. Whatever.

Daily crono 

Yesterday, I got up late, went to the SDM-office in MIT, did some trivial work (our assignments), had lunch alone, went to the accounting class (it was fine), and then finished the System Dynamics assignment with Ashok (it took total 4 hours: either we are really good, or then we get a C). Kumar was there too, encouraging us and doing other important tasks. At home, S was packing up her things, after which we (or at least I) enjoyed a spectacular thunderstorm. The lighting stroke twice withing 100 meters of our house, it was great show. I have not seen lighting so close since 1995, when I saw a lighting from 50 meter distance in Barcelona. Boy, it was scary and fun. Today, just lectures as summarized above, and falefel for lunch. Later, I have the sad duty to see S off to the airport. It will be too quiet in my little cave,sigh.

July

Sunday, 2005-07-31

Birthday 

I like to be celebrated, I am an arm-chair celebrity. So, today was an excellent day again as today is my birthday. I am not going to say how old am I now, since it is classified information. However, yesterday my age was a product of 3 prime numbers, taday it is only product of two prime numbers. The first one to guess right (former classmates, childhood friends, and kin may not participate) will earn a pint of beer in a bar of my choice. 
Celebration is not an abstract term, and thus I and S went to Espresso Royal for some coffee, bagels, cakes, and of course New York Times. It is a pity that one cannot smoke cigars in American cafes - a celebration without a cigar is lacking. But it was fun: she also took some great pictures of me. Beware when I publish them. They are R-rated. Later, she left for library, and I continued celebration by doing the second funniest thing I know: riding the T (metro) from one terminal to another. First I took the green line to the Boston College. The terminal was a good place for reading newspapers. Then, I took the blue line to Wonderland. Nothing there, but a nice smell of the ocean. I then took the orange line to Oak Grove. Nothing there either. But it was fun, I saw many strange characters, finished my newspapers, and relaxed. I think riding public transport is one of the best things one can do. In September, I will go to New York for a few day just to ride the metro. 
I got a present too: What is the matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank. I have read some 30 pages of it: it is great, really eye-opening and also a scary story of people voting against their own good. But that is the problem of democracy. A democracy can vote itself into dictatorship. It has happened before.

Security theater light

Impressed by the security theater in New York, the local transportation authority (MBTA) has started its own. Unfortunately, the local police force seems not eager to waste time on checking back-pacs. So, MBTA has copied the most efficient method form the tele-marketers: continuos recorded public announcement. On average once a minute, the loudspeakers in the subway station blast the message: "Now, more than even, it is important to be alert, blaa, blaa, and inform MBTA of all suspicious activities. We rely on your eyes, your ears, [something unclear] to guarantee your [or our, it is unclear] security". I thing the sheer activity of repeating announcement constantly is very suspicious. I think the only real purpose is to create an atmosphere of fear, which will then be exploited by removing basic civil freedoms. And, anyway, repeating too many times is like crying wolf. Furthermore, why they do not blast the announcements inside the trains: it may well be, that the eventual suspicious activity starts only inside the train. And, as the repetition proves, the memory of passengers is taken to be shorter than 2 minutes. So, given suspicious activity in the train, it is likely to go unnoticed. 
As the terrorists may well attack some other targets, once the public is well trained and will spot them in subway station, I propose blasting similar repetitive announcements throughout all baseball and football games, and also inside each and every shopping mall. One never knows!
According to recent news the department of homeland stu^H^Hafety will start tagging aliens. They have started an experiment, in which aliens will be given an RFID-tag when entering USA. The aliens must not lose the tag, since they need it to get out of the country. Everyone but Canadians are suspect. If this really becomes reality, I think it will backfire: why would anyone enter this country, if supervision/suspicion/paranoia is much larger and more rampant than it ever was in the former communist block. But, I am sure the madness will not stop in aliens now entering the country. Soon, all aliens must carry RFID-tags all the time, and all public spaces will be equipped with readers. And then, since the government ignores the domestic terrorist at its peril, all citizens will be tagged. And most will happily comply. Next, everyone must wear skin-tight spandex overalls all the time. What a business opportunity. Imagine how must Halliburton and other will profit from manufacturing all the infrastructure. Fortunately, no price is too high when it comes to security (except when it comes to road traffic safety or tightening gun laws - then any price is too high). 
As is evident from the fact that a new law prevents suing the gun makers even if the sell guns to terrorists. I would call that suspicious activity, or even a real fire hazard. I am sure the tobacco industry regrets not putting more money in lobbying. Also, the extraordinarily high insurance costs of medical doctors would go down fast, it the lobby of doctors could get a similar special interest law passed. They should try! (Actually, I think that there should be an upper limit for the compensations, and that should apply to all industries and professions.)
Enough ranting. I feel much better now. Soon, they will be knocking on my door... or will they bother to knock at all?

Real theater 

Yesterday, I went with S to see short plays in MIT Kresge auditorium. The title of the event was "what can happen in 10 minutes". It was a soiree of 10 10-minute plays. Each of them was very good, the scripts were clever, actors skillful, and everyone was funny. I have seldom laughed so much, and so innocently. Great. It was a pity that we saw the last soiree, I would like to seem them again.

Coding 

I have been coding a simple program in Perl. I am really surprised how hard it is for me to code anything after a break of 7 months of so. Well, I think I will get back in speed after a few more hours of agonizing and humiliating mistakes and manual browsing. So humiliating.

Friday, 2005-07-29

The importance of laws (sueing) and processes in USA

I have been wondering why life is so much more regulated by laws, processes, and regulations here in USA than in Europe. It is really irritating. Today, while walking idly, I finally got it. It is because multi-cultural nature of the society: one cannot know how people would behave without the processes, regulations, and fear of getting sued. In Finland, we have a very homogenous population, with very much shared values and ethical standards: there is no need for external guidance/threats - we all know how to behave anyway. (this is not to say that there would not be laws or that we would not respect them. On the contrary, Finns can be very legalistic sometimes. But we do not fear getting sued, nor do we leave our brains at home when going to work, we can even take own initiative even in normal service occupations).

On military papers in the SE course

Even though I do not really like the amount of military influence in MIT, I have to admit that the paper on Theater Battle Management Core System we need to read and study in our Systems Engineering-course is one of the best papers on the mistakes happening in large scale systems engineering I have ever read. It is phenomenal, really honest, saying things as "The requirements process for TBMCS V1.0.1 was profoundly flawed from the start", " the communications architecture was not well defined or understood until after the failure of the first operational test","TBMCS did not have a vision that the program could follow.", etc. What I have read earlier, these and other similar problems are quite common in developing large systems. I recommend this paper for everyone who has something to do with such an activity; the more the higher in the organization one is.
Bill gave a good advice: we should ask for a non-military project. It is not fair to be forced to work with military systems. It is against my deepest convictions - in the future I have to be more principled.

On productivity in France and in USA

Paul Krugman has been reading an interesting new study on Work and leisure in the U.S. and Europe.. It turns out, that the French are as productive, or actually even more, as the American, when measured by GNP per working hour. It is just that the French (and other European) have collectively chosen to work less and enjoy life more (and spend more time with friends and family). Is that good or bad? I think it is good: I see no point of spending whole life working and not having time to travel etc. If the consequence is to, as Krugman puts it, "having smaller car and smaller houses and less eating out", so be it. But how large a car is sufficient for having good life? Is a bigger car always better, something to strive for, to sacrifice many hours? Why not buy a bus right away? Or, what is the point of having 5 bedroom house in suburbs, if one has to stay in the office 60 hours a week, 50 weeks a year? Would it not be nicer to have a smaller place and some time to stay in the place? Anyway, read the column and decide yourself.

Aimee Mann

Aimee Mann gave a concert in the Copley Square yesterday. I like her songs quite a lot, especially I like her voice. But it seems that her voice does not sound so good in an outdoor concert. It was quite thin and hard to hear. Maybe it was just the way they had mixed the sounds. Anyway, it was nice to see her and hear her singing. And a good way to have a break in active work on systems dynamics. 

Daily cronos

Yesterday, just work and Aimee Mann. Today, cycling in the morning, then writing a research plan in a vain effort to get some money. (See also my thesis outline - they do not match!). Then, some hacking at home after which I went with Kumar to the SDM-LFM-SloanFellows-party. It was supposed to begin at 4.30pm, but the logistic students of LFM (the organizers) had forgotten to check when the bar opens. So, we waiting outside 45 minutes. I cannot believe I did that. Maybe it was worth it since I got to talk with some interesting Sloan Fellows. Afterwards, we went to pick up our new server-computer from Watertown UPS and had dinner. Then just hanging at home. By the way, UPS stands for Unbelievable Poor Service. They cannot even call when they are at my door. Rather,they just leave a not saying that I was not at home. Nor can they ring the puzzer. If I ever run a business, I will not use UPS a single time. They just lost a possible customer. 

SysAdim-day

Today was the official System Administrator Appreciation Day. I notices it a bit too late. But I just want to say, that I do appreciate the work they do. Without them, my blog would not be online, not to speak of many other, and more important things, like having electricity etc. Keep on the good work, SysAdmins!
Check also what Lazu has to say about vacations. I tend to recognize myself from the things. I like to have vacation, and much of it, but having nothing to do drives me nuts in 5 minutes and I start to "sleep all the time, drink too much, or be in a bad mood" as I learned from a book and from S. I think Dick Feynman was right. He did not have holidays in the traditional meaning: during his vacations he usually worked in some other field of science - having vacation from physics, not from using his intellect. That's what I intend to do, too, in the future. No just idling and doing nothing. I think half of day of idling is the absolute maximum for me - and even then I need to have something not-too-light literature to read. 

Thursday, 2005-07-28

Excessive militarism in MIT

Our Systems Engineering course has a final project. There are two alternatives to choose from. The first one is to do some design with jet engines. The second one is to do something with military command systems. I am not really thrilled about these alternatives. The first one has too much mechanical engineering involved for my taste and experience. The second one is again one more example how the excessive militarism rampant in USA is wasting our time and efforts. It is as if there would not be enough significant, and really important problems to ponder in the world. Investing a single second for making killing innocents easier is life time wasted. Why do not we do something with energy systems, health care systems, urban transport systems, water management? All of these would be both more important and harder than making killing more efficient? Or, what about doing some systems engineering related to preventing terrorism? I think the amount of effort devoted in this country on military and killing is a crime against humanity.

Wednesday, 2005-07-27

Lean studying

Lean studying work best, when one arranges for apparent, but of course not real, lack of time. Or, maybe it is just me. For the last 3 days studying has been fun again. I have had enough things to do until late evening. Today, I would not have had, but I decided to take morning of, sleeping late, having lunch in some Indian place near the Harvard Square with S, and then just spend one hours surfing the net. Then we had the most entertaining accounting lecture. It was fun. Later, after 5pm, I wrote an outline for my thesis, had pictures taken of me, finished the Systems Engineering HW#3, and even filled in the reading quiz. Now, it is time to drink some wine. 
Today may have been the last really warm day in Boston. It was 36C, and very humid. I was about to go cycling, but then decided not to. I am getting sissy. 

A puzzle

Why is it criminal to plot bombing some innocent people in New York, when it is not criminal to plot nuking Iran's capital, if the first plot realizes (and even if Iran would have had nothing to do with the first plot). What I read from several sources is that Rumsfelt and his cronies have been preparing a plan for nuking Iran. What would they say, if the the Iranese (or Chinese) would publish similar plans. Oh, actually, the Chinese did so already.
Another puzzle is what is going to come about from the USA, China, Australia, South-Korea, and India plan to reduce greenhouse emissions. They say that Kyoto-protocol has failed and want to make something better instead. Or so they say. Let's see what the plan really contains when it comes out tomorrow. Most likely it is not going to make any difference, but good propaganda.

Tuesday, 2005-07-26

Sunday in NYC

On Sunday, S took me to Shiller's for a late breakfast. It is a nice place, very much like some places I have visited in Paris: lots of mirrors, noisy, busy, with good coffee and excellent omelets. I do not usually mind noisy places, but this time the sheer volume and high pitch of a group of American women in the adjacent table was way too much. I just do not understand, which their voices are at least one octave higher than European women's. It is actually terrible, not sensual at all. Hurts my ears. Luckily I do not have to date in America. Otherwise I would have to buy very discrete ear plugs.
We tried to visit some art galleries and museums, but the heat took the edge out of us and I became cranky. Not good. So, we decided to go for lunch to the Grand Sichuan. Good as always.
Any ideas why there are next to no public toilets in NYC? It is very hard to find a toilet, which one could use without paying for a beer or coffee etc. I assume this again has something to do with security, but since it does not make any sense, I cannot figure it out. Maybe public toilets are fire hazards?
Overheard in NYC. A bus driver explained why he keeps on working: "I try to keep busy to keep my weight in control and stay out of trouble".

Last two weeks of the summer term 

Two weeks left and quite many small things to do. Yesterday, we finished the System Dynamics HW #6, which was harder that we thought - or we did not use enough time on it. Today, in the morning in the Systems Engineering class we were discussing error budgeting and critical parameter management. Both of which are important when doing things with hardware and also mission critical SW. Then we had yet another repetition of basic statistics - I still do not get it by heart but I can do the HW easily. In the afternoon, 3.5 hours of System Dynamics. It is getting shorter but feels longer. Still two lectures, I assume. Then working with Dave on Finance HW and later on Systems Engineering. So, nominally busy day. Great.

Some haikus

I wrote some haikus last week:

Air hot and humid flows 
small desperate fan blows 
Summer turns into night

--


Pieni tyttönen
aamulla kukan löysi 
lumen seasta.

--

aseman harmaus
äänesi kaiun lämpö
sateen alle jää

--

Monday, 2005-07-25

Security theater in NYC

We got to play our part in the amusing security theater in NYC on Sunday. We (I and S) entered the Metro-system in the lower east side. I got through without acting my part, since I had my shoulder bag. She had her backpack, so she had to act her part. It was quite easy: it was enough to open the zipper. The cop was a lousy actor: he did not even look inside of the bag. Not to mention looking under the layer of clothes. Two other actors were standing and idling nearby. They had NYPD uniforms on. I just wonder, how come the terrorist would so stupid, that they would not hide their bombs in suitcases or shoulder bags. But of course, changing the script or making it more complex might make the play too difficult to play. That must not happen, because it would reduce the level of feeling-safe among the innocent and ignorant population, which could affect the popularity polls of the directors of the play. Being good citizens of the world, we are happy to play our part. It is of course a bit sad, that this play has nothing to do with safety or security. 
If I were a terrorist, I would try the following: a) using dead-man switches in my suicidebombs. That would defy the shoot-to-kill-policy as the bomb would go off when the police would shoot the bomber. b) use other bags than backpack. c) Bomb any large crowd. A few mortar rounds into baseball stadium would be rather nasty thing to do. d) Poison the milk supply - simple, killing easily tens of thousands. e) explode chemical trains next to large cities. f) destroy fragile electricity systems, repeatedly. g) draw attention away from the bird flu, which is likely to kill thousands of times more than any terrorist act and also disrupt the whole international trade and cause widespread political upheaval in developed countries (actually, they are doing this already - and our moronic "leaders" are happily playing along). Fortunately, I am not a terrorist. And before anyone says I tell the bad guys new tricks, I have to confess, that I have collected all these ideas from New York Times and other newspapers during last 2 months. 

New York: Botanical garden etc

Finally, we had a chance to visit the New York Botanical Garden. It proved to be worth its fame: the collections are really good, facilities first class. Especially, I liked the glass-room, the large native forest (16 hectares), and the collections of conifiers, which are the best I have seen anywhere. The garden's collection consist of 30000 species, so there is something still for making a 2nd visit very likely.
Visiting botanical gardens is one of my dearest hobbies. I always try to visit the local botanical garden in any new city I happen to be. They are peaceful, relaxing places. The only problem is that visit tend to take a lot of time and energy. So it was also this time. We spent some 3.5 hours in the garden and were totally exhausted afterwards. We should have drank more, but it was so nice that we forgot. 
The return trip from the garden, which is up north in Bronx, was adventurous. We got on a bus, which took us only 2 stops south. Then we got on another, with the same number, which caught fire. Finally, we got on a third one, which took 45 minutes to reach "the hub". Then, by metro, but the metro stopped and threw everyone out half way to our hotel. But the next one made it all the way to the Union Square. 
We had nice dinner in the 8th street in one large Japanese place. The food is excellent there, and what is more important, beer costs only $1.5 per pint.

Friday, 2005-07-22

Goodbye open society

I am scare. The open societies I have so long cherished are now melting away. In UK, the police shot some random Asian man, because he was running away from the police. Even worse: they first caught the man, threw him on the ground and then shot him 5 times. Is this the way our societies are going to be in the future? That any police officer can sentence anyone (especially anyone non-white) to death and execute anyone just like that? If that is the case, the terrorist do not have to even bother anymore. We have capitulated. And it is not happening only in UK, it is happening in USA, too. Today, some moron came up with an idea to randomly search bags of passengers entering the NYC metro. Of course, the terrorist are stupid enough not to blow up the bag when searched. And, of course, they are not clever enough not to turn around and use the next entrance: the new rule says, that refusing to let the officers search the bag is quite Ok. Oh, why do we have to put up with this theater? Why not use all these bag-searching resources in trying to figure what the terrorist are up to and in preempting their plans? Yes, that would be much harder, but it would have some effect too. This theater is so stupid, and so dangerous, that I think the directors of this theater should be thrown to jail for endangering national security. See also what Bruce Schneier has to say about this moronity

I need to go cycling: I am so upset by this moronity. 

Thursday, 2005-07-21

On the amount homework and units

MIT measures the size of a class in units. The formula for figuring out the likely time needed to complete the course in X-Y-W, where X is the number of hours of lectures, Y the number of hours of laboratory work, and W is the number of homework. For example, I am currently taking Systems engineering and Operation management classes. Both of the are 3-0-9. So, I would assume them to take about similar amount of time, but they are not. Systems Engineering is taking much longer, even more than it nominally should. It seems that the faculty has two ways of interpreting the amount o homework necessary in a given course. Some of them, like professor Simchi-Levi, think that it is enough to give enough homework to guarantee that we learn what we are supposed to learn. Others, like professor Frey, seems to feel forced to give enough homework to fill in the nominal hours, no matter that quite a big junk of the homework does not add anything to our learning. I think it is not hard to guess, which approach I consider fair and professional. 

Wednesday, 2005-07-20

Lazy day

Drinking beer and sleeping with air conditioning, which means sweating the whole night, is not good for dutiful studying. I woke up early, but could not really stay awake. And I was dreaming of taking a holiday somewhere, just reading, eating, using locally legal drugs and other nice things. But no mercy for poor students even though I decided not to attend the finance and accounting class. Instead, after having lunch at Kumar's, I went cycling for an hour. It was as nice as always, and the temperature, 33C, was very close to the ideal. It is a pity that this studying prevents cycling. Or then it is my laziness. 
In the evening I was doing the most stupid imaginable with Ashok, Krishna and Kumar. It was about doing some planned experiments on the length of flying times of paper helicopters. It was fun, but I think we do not really learn anything by flying paper helicopters. If I were not aiming for the PhD, I definitely would not do such things. Maybe I should not do them now either.
It is hard to blog in this heat. I am so tired. In the fall I will start writing more again.

Tuesday, 2005-07-19

Au revoir in American

"Au revoir" in Amarican is "Talk to you later". Sometimes I hear someone saying "See you later", but never anyone saying "Listen to you later". 

Still hot

The weather was hot enough to prompt an official warning today: "If you have to venture outside, remember to drink a lot of water and and do not exert yourself". We (with S) went to the Cambridge brewing company, but they did not serve water. What a pity. But the weather is still rather lenient here. In Hanzhou, where I lived a while ago, a taifun was doing its thing. See the picture. 
Studies are going steadily forward. Most of the things are easy, lectures rather trivial to grasp, and I have lots of free time. Not bad. 
Now, too tired to write more. Maybe tomorrow.

Friday, 2005-07-15

Back to the original plan

I have now reallized that my original plan is still the best possible. The plan is, just for record: complete the SDM-program in one year, get into the ESD PhD-program, start it in January and complete it in less than 3 years. If the are promising academic prospect, pursue them. Otherwise, get a job, work for a few years and go to one of the TOP-5 universities in the field of political science and complete at least master's degree in political science. This is the plan and I will not change it; I may have to get a job every now and then to finance my studies, but I assume that is the way life may well go. 

Wainwright is a safe bank

I withdrew some money from my account today. It was the normal hassle of writing checks to myself, they calling the other branch for a signature sample and getting it by fax etc. What was new was the added security in the transaction. As is reasonable, they did not trust in my passport. It may be counterfeit after all. Nor did they trust in my Finnish driver's licence: again, issued by an alien country for an alien, it is no good in USA. Fortunately, I had my MIT ID-card, so that they could verify my identity. The moral of the story is: never leave home with MIT ID-card! If you do not have one, get one! 

Thursday, 2005-07-14

Still getting back to my senses

I have been really worried about money during the last weeks. I was sure that I am about to run totally out of money and could not even buy a ticket back Finland. Or that if I took a loan, I would somehow not be able to pay it back and that it would become such a pain and shame. Thus, I was looking for extra financing here and there. Now it has become clear, that there is no real way to get money in MIT (as I cannot be an RA and I was told too late that I could be a TA - all positions are taken up already). And with my visa I can work only 20 hours outside MIT per week (starting from September). But, as I have written several times, I do not want to work. So, my current and final decision is to just to my two remaining courses and my thesis and just take it easy and enjoy my life. I will take a loan from my bank so that I will not have to worry about money too much. And I will only take the two mandatory classes I have left (plus maybe the class on "Ethics, authority, and literature" in Sloan. It would count as hobby, pastime, not studying at all. 
I still did apply for a directore job in Google. I got an automatic reply back and have not heard from them ever since. If I got it, I would have to move to Mountain View. Would that be so bad?
Oh, the exam went OK, I assume. It was a long and complex one. I just answered all questions, check them cursorily, and left. I will not find out the results: I need to take the 2nd exam anyway, and knowing how bad I did would just add unnecessary stress. 

On drugs and pain

Yesterday's New had an interesting article Let a Thousand Licensed Poppies Bloom. It argues that the whole world would be much better off, if instead of trying to prevent the farmers from growing poppies the governments would buy the poppies and make morphine out of it. Even in USA only half of the chronic pain patients get adequate medication, not to speak of those in poorer countries. 

Wednesday, 2005-07-13

Exam coming

Finance exams starts in 5 minutes. Quite fun. I should do reasonably well, but we will see. After the exam I will meet my thesis advisor; I have not done anything for my thesis yet. Let's see. 

Tuesday, 2005-07-12

Getting humbler 

I think I have to bite the bullet and start looking for a real job. After all, I will have only 2 courses in the fall; I could easily handle them and my thesis even with working full time. If I would get a full time jobs, say, in September or October, I could work for one full year before starting my PhD-studies properly. This would fill in my coffers so that I could survive the next 2-3 years with a PhD-salary. Or, if the job would be a good one: I might even stop dreaming about getting an PhD. Anyway, I need some money and the sooner, the better. I have no real intention to run too deeply in debt while in MIT. 

Monday, 2005-07-11

Rollercoaster

It is hard to get used to decreasing income and bank balance. It makes my feelings go up and down. Now I am up again, I think I have enough money until January. Or almost. But I need to get some more from somewhere: but USA does not let me work outside MIT and MIT does not really let me work inside MIT. I could become a teaching assistant, but there are only a few positions available. I cannot become an research assistant, because I am an SDM student. Stupid. I only have 2 courses left in the fall - paying full tuition for them is insane. I need to take extra courses. Or something.
But at the moment money is not the biggest concern. I have to start to study for the Finance exam on Wednesday. No real urge to do so, but maybe I can use one day on it. 
Weekend was OK, or nice actually. On Saturday, Biju invited me to AID-meeting. I was the only non-Indian there. AID seems to be very serious NGO doing good work: Indians in USA helping India. Not bad. In the evening, we (I and S) went to see the Penguin-movie. It was so moving, that I shed quite a few tears. On Sunday, we just idled around downtown and Boston Commons. In the evening, I cycled for 75 minutes. Today, I cycled 45 minutes in the morning, then bought flight tickets to Finland (I will be in Finland from 20th of August to 6th of September - I look forward seeing all my friends and relatives.). 

Course rankings so far 

As started by Yoav in his blog, here is my current ranking of the course I have taken so far (16 of them), in quartiles from most important to least (for me, at this point), also taking into account some aspects of their quality

1. Engineering Apollo, Disruptive technologies, RFID, System Architecture
2. Systems optimization, Finance/accounting, Operations management, Systems engineering
3. Human side of technologies, Innovation in Marketplace, System Dynamics, Air traffic seminar
4. Product development, ERBA, Technology strategy, Thesis Seminar.

I am sure someone will comment this list. Anyway, I have learned a lot during each course, so I cannot say that I have wasted my time totally. Not even during PDD, even though I felt like that during the course. But, after all, some courses have to be in the 4th quartile.

Friday, 2005-07-08

Now back to great feelings

I have got my motivation and working spirit and productivity back. It feels rather good. I just wrote almost 4 pages for our small summer project: I developed a model for modeling any warehouse with any distribution of racks and shelves, boxes, and RFID-readers. It was really fun. The next thing is to instantiate the model and implement it using some tools: it should be easily doable with Matlab, but since I am not an expert user, it may take me a couple of days. Anyway, doing this small project is much more intellectually challenging than most of our homework assignments. This is why I really prefer project-based courses. And why I detest and loath courses with exams: I am too old for taking exams.

This morning, we had an excellent workshop on networking and interviewing skills. It was absolutely the most useful career related workshop I have attended in MIT. Those who did not attend really missed an excellent opportunity. Poor them. Now I know a bit better how to get a job. The problem is that I also want much less to get one. I just cannot stand the ideas of being bossed around, of losing my freedom in time management, and having only 2 weeks of vacation per year. It feels terrible. Maybe I should get my head checked and adjust my medication, too. 

Daily crono

Yesterday evening, we (the SDM@MIT) had a nice seafood dinner in the Alewife Summer Shack - we did not have the BBQ on Wednesday, so we decided to spend the money indoors. The food was good, especially the swordfish skewers were delicious. Beer selection was not that good, but I did drink half a dozen Amstels anyway. Afterwards, since the crowd was too happy to drink free beer to not to move anywhere else, we (I and S) went to check out Robbie's place in Back Bay. I need to start looking for a bigger place to live in, if I intend to stay here for a longer time.

Thursday, 2005-07-07

Much better today

I feel much better today. Yesterday, I was really down, could barely work, was totally lost. I had no idea what to do next in my life. And all this did really disturb me. So, I did the bear thing and slept most of the day. It helped, I am not desperate at all.
I think, that the fact that I may have to get a job in less than a year is really bugging. I need to somehow start to stand this prospect - but anyway, following the advice "If you go corporate, do it only in short stints" will help me a lot. Maybe I could do something for a year or so. I would make enough money to take a year off by doing so. But most likely I will continue all the way to PhD here in MIT. It would postpone the job anxiety a few years. Would be fine. 

Systems engineering

Somehow, I have to started to agree with Yoav on the quality of the Systems Engineering class. It has got really boring. I think, that the topics are important, but the professor does put too much stuff in one lecture, which then makes the lectures really rushed through. I have started to think, that making the class project based would be good: one project for the whole class, done in groups of max 5 persons (not random), and having the lectures supporting the project, would make the course much better. It would eliminate the apparently random content of the course. And, yes, Yoav and others are right: there could be more examples in the class: not that trivial problems, solving them by cold-calling student and not tolerating long (longer than 15 seconds) answers, and keeping the tight discipline. 

Be that as it may, I find all courses during the summer boring, too simple, not really interesting from an intellectual standpoint. They just do not get me really motivated. Studying has turned into just completing the assignments. Maybe it is just me, maybe I should self-motivate or find other viewpoints or whatever. 

Bombs in London

Some criminals have set off almost 10 bombs in London. About 40 were killed, about 1000 injured. I hope the British are able to keep their cool. If they do not keep it, the criminals have won. What the British should do is to find out those criminals, bring them to normal justice and do everything according to the normal procedures. More commenting later. I am cool.

Wednesday, 2005-07-06

Counterfeit no good!

I was still quite down in the morning and decided to sleep in. I think missing one lecture is not a fire hazard or someting else bad and illegal. Then, at 1 pm, I decided to go for lunch and also for the Finance lecture. So, I left home wearing shorts, sandals, and my counterfeit North Face goretex raincoat. S left earlier with our only umbrella. After 5 minutes, my Chinese raincoat failed, and I was totally soaked (to my underwear). And I was still at least 15 minutes from MIT. There are no shops nearby to buy any new gear. And I could take a taxi, since I ran out of small banknotes last night. Not that here would be any free taxis to flag down either. So, I came back home and did some work here. For example, I read the appropriate chapters of the Finance textbook, so that I would not miss all the fun.
The SDM BBQ has been cancelled. I would have liked a beer or two, and some seafood. 

Tuesday, 2005-07-05

Not good

I have a very bad culture shock right now. I miss Europe so much, I just cannot understand this country. I get so depressed with all these rules, the rigidity of everything, and the sigs telling about laws and fines. I am also disappointed by the racial clustering: black, latinos, and whites do not really mix, and opportunities are not evenly distributed. Oh, I am so tired. I cannot do anything sensible anymore today, I just want to read some good book, forget where I am, and hope that this culture shock goes away tomorrow. Nothing like this ever happened in China. Maybe European and Chinese cultures are closer each other than European and American cultures. I would say so right now, but I am definitely badly biased just now. 
If this feeling does not go away, I cannot stay here and do my PhD. It may well happen to be the case.

Daily cronos

Yesterday, parties at Sam's and Kumar's. Some alcohol. Today, classes, lunch with S in the Bengali restaurant, dinner with Kumar and Ashok in the Hong Kong Eatery (decent and very cheap place, just like in China, great as such). And then the above thing.

Sunday, 2005-07-04

Quotes

In a mall, at the counter of a pretzel joint

We cannot anymore accept bills bigger than $20 due to the dramatic increase of counterfeit ones. We apologize of any inconvenience. 

I assume this only a problem north of Boston. It seems that counterfeiters live there and are lazy enough to venture to Boston proper. More seriously, if there indeed are that many counterfeit bank notes, I would assume FBI (or the government as a whole) to do something: losing trust in bank notes is not good for the society (or community).
A conservative in NPR this morning

It is not wise to use tens of billions of dollars in preventing global warming, when millions of people die of poverty. Helping to reduce poverty is more urgent.

Sure, but how about cutting US military budget from $500 billion to say $50 billion and using the savings for reducing poverty, combatting diseases (e.g AIDS, malaria, and getting ready to deal with the coming flu pandemic even in USA), and developing new energy systems. I cannot see any need for the current military (defense) budget: there is no country, which could invade USA, and all the threats that are likely to damage US economy and kills Americans are not deterrable by means of guns and killing foreigners. 
President Bush this morning (not verbatim, but factually)

We think that it is not good to prevent producing CO2. It is better to develop technologies to remove it once it has been produced.

I hope he follows his idea in his own life. For example: why to use the restroom. Much better is to just use diapers and get rid of dirty diapers. 

My new resume 

My new resume (pdf) is now ready. It is pretty plain, not too much content, just the minimal information what I did in Nokia. The problematic thing is, that I cannot really acknowledge all my workmates. In fact, I did not do those things alone. So, thanks to all with whom I had the honor to work. Other, smaller, problem is, that being a system architect of a large system one ends up doing really many things, taking part in huge number of management meetings and strategic planning, and saving/spending huge amounts of money and resources. It is hard to detail all that in a resume, no matter how long one writes. Hmm, maybe 200-pages would be enough.

Saturday, 2005-07-02

Nunc est bibendum

Clearly, I have not been drinking enough this year. Not drinking drains my energy and creativity. So, I will now (3pm) open a bottle of white wine. Then I will drink some wine, not just sip but drink, the way we do in Finland (but not like were drank when we were 16-19: two bottles, the first one in less than 10 minutes, then the second during the next hour). Now, it may take an hour. The first one. And just to let you know, I cycled 2 hours, and will do some writing for our Systems Engineering assignment. It is just the thing to do while drinking. Try it - you will be surprised. I have invented two of my patents while drinking. Teetotallers beware. I also do recommend Tramal for increasing creativity. But one cannot easily get in it in USA. In China, it was available over the counter in drugstores. Not bad.

Cycling 

So, I cycled for 2 hours around southern Boston. Boston is a nice place to cycle: countless small roads, street and alleys to explore, no significant traffic (almost empty streets), and very polite car drivers. The poor area as OK, the rich ones are not: one cannot even buy a bottle of Coke in the rich areas. There are no shops, no kiosks, not gas stations. I cannot understand how anyone can live in such a deserted areas. And the houses are too large, too closed, too expensive. 

Empty street

I thought, that Beacon street would be no-parking-zone today. That's what the signs promised. Pah! The cars are still here. Boring. And no Ferraris, at least none driving when we were having dinner outside on the stairs. I felt like Aidan from "Sex and the city" except that I was more handsome. But still no Ferraris. I just love the sound of an accelerating Ferrari. Fortunately, S was with me. Log(S)-Log(Ferrari) = 6. At least. We are still listening to Rammstein. 

Friday, 2005-07-01

6 months in MIT

And still going strong. Actually, stronger every day. Very good. Today, a lecture in the morning, during which we found out that we did our latest Operations management assignment absolutely correctly. I sense an "A" coming (it will go good to my 4.8 GPA from the first 93 units). Then, some food with S and a visit to the Kresge chapel. They did not marry us, nor did they wed us either. As a matter a fact, both priests were suspiciously absent. Maybe that was just OK. There was nobody in the big Kresge-auditorium either. It was time to have coffee. In the afternoon, 4 hours concentrated agonizing or fun with the accounting assingment (83% done) with Dave. Then, stealing the cake in the SDM-office. In some wineshop they tried to intoxinate us. We bought some bottles and were able to escape. But the conspiracy succeeded as you may notice. 
A sign in MIT: "MIT students do not pay tax. All others pay tax. We apologize for any inconvenience." Rather polite. 

What are they searching my pages for

Some Google-searches, which have led someone to my pages lately.

• hotel manaca
• Brazilian tanning oil they sell on ipanema
• travelling trips
• Newbury comics and Entrepreneurial strategy
• matti kinnunen
• checkoslovakia
• apollo chicken harvester
• Chocklate Plant
• D. Winter + Epilä
• hammock + stand + selfmade
• The life and pictures of scientist invention
• Cotton Candy machine price
• Liemandt can lead to confusion over specific roles 
• personality characteristics in Liemandt culture
• sobrium 10
• work shops or lectures taking place in manhattan in 2005
• map of checkoslovakia
• ginko goethe poem
• china pantyhose-leg
• "without any shoes" " socks"
• what did thay invent in ancient singapore
• mane sexy maNE
• "revere beach" coffee wifi

Guess which country

Which country does this paragraph describe, if any:

Our previous president was a self-indulgent bubba though one with an undeniable roguish charm and a certain wonkish fascination with policy with the morals of an alley cat. [...] The president before them, although smarter and better informed than his critics ever acknowledged, got by largely on the stagecraft he learned as an actor. The president before that was an utter disaster, an ineffectual and inveterate micro-manager without a clue about a bigger picture. The president before that was a football player (which is not necessarily an insult but not necessarily an endorsement of intellectual prowess either), and the president before that was a crook.

Next, you can read the whole article by Alan Bock. It may or may not make sense. 
All opinions are mine and do not reflect opinions etc of my current or future employers as far as I am aware. Similarly, all opinions on SDM at MIT are mine only. The official at SDM-homepage gives the other view.

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