Monthly Archives: August 2006

Apple Remote Desktop vs VNC

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Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work between my multiple computers and since I like having only one monitor/keyboard/mouse shared amongst them, I’ve been using VNC to control then. A friend of mine has told me that Apple Remote Desktop is faster, so I decided to spend the money and order a copy. I received my copy this morning and I have to say that I’m blown away. My network is no slouch (gigabit ethernet) so it wasn’t the bandwidth that was the problem in the sluggishness of VNC. Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) is not only faster, but easier to use. If I want to move a file to another machine, I just drag it to the window. It does lots of other stuff, but just being able to control machines (share the screen) makes ARD worth it.

Completed another race

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Today I completed the America’s Finest City Half Marathon. I’m still not sure what my motivation is for continuing to run, but I figured I was already in shape from June’s marathon, so I might as well do a half marathon. This race was a completely different experience from the Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon. This was significantly smaller than the Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon with a limit of 6000 half marathon runners (it sold out) compared to over 20,000. The budget was much smaller as noticed with the race expo being held in the basement (basically) of a local hotel instead of the convention center. One of the biggest issues I saw with the race, due to its start location, is that we had to board buses to be driven about 25 minutes to the start line instead of basically driving right up to it. So I had to get up at 4:30 am for the 7 am start. Also, the race numbers were given out alphabetically instead of by estimated finish time and then everyone regardless of estimated finish time, started all bunched up. It took me over 2 miles of zig zagging before I was able to maintain my pace.

I did quite well and beat my goal of 2 hours (just over a 9 minute mile) by coming in at 1:49:29 for a pace of an 8 minute, 22 second mile. Not bad, in my opinion.

So, next year, I’ve decided to just run the Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon (I’ve already signed up) and spend other times with activities like mountain biking and I know my wife wants to go kayaking, so maybe we can do that.

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Is programming really engineering?

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In a recent blog post that I read, the author said that he had just finished reading To Engineer is Human and said that programming is not engineering. While that may be true in the pure sense of programming, but to say that all programmers don’t do engineering is absolutely incorrect in my opinion. I read the book mentioned during my 4 years of engineering school to earn a BS in Engineering at Harvey Mudd College and find it hard to believe that I don’t use some of that education in my career as a software engineer (a term that the blog post author doesn’t believe in). I do a significant amount of design work in my day to day work and have to problem solve which I consider engineering. Pure programming, in my opinion, is the stuff that is being outsourced to countries like Russia and India (not to say that those countries don’t have engineers). Anyone can write code according to specification, but it takes thinking to design software, analyze risks (in most cases not physical risks), and do cost/benefit analysis; skills that I learned in my training as an engineer.

This will probably be an ongoing debate that will never have an agreement, but it saddens me to see people lump together people that have an engineering background with people that just decided to write code as a hobby (some of those people are good enough, in my opinion, to be engineers).

That damn cross, again

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Congress, senate, and the president decided to bypass a court ruling and enact a law to transfer the Mt. Soledad cross to the United States government. There seems to be much rejoicing by our mayor and city council members about this; rightfully so, the city no longer has to pay to defend the cross that shouldn’t be there; the federal government will now be entangled in the legal battle about a religious symbol on government property. As I’ve said before (I think), I have no problems with people’s religious beliefs as long as they are not imposed on me and likewise I will not impose my religious beliefs on others. Not only is this cross on land that I, as a taxpayer, own, my tax dollars are now paying to keep this religious symbol. The cross just needs to be moved and then the matter will be over.

It appears to me that in the last few years (probably since George W. Bush came into office), that our country has brought religion more into politics. I don’t seem to recall stupid laws, rulings, etc. being so prominent prior to 2000. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention or maybe the president has decided that his sole purpose in office is to make everyone belief in his right wing conserative Christian beliefs. This kind of imposing religion on others (which is being done by the law about stem cells, limiting abortion, etc.) seems to be what radical extremist in Iraq, Iran, and the rest of the Middle East are trying to do.

Airport Security

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Last SUnday, we returned from our week long trip to San Francisco/San Jose and as usual came back on a plane. This was our first flight after the new rules about no liquids and the increased paranoia about terrorism. The San Jose airport didn’t appear to have tighetened security and we passed through security without problems as usual. Most people seemed to be adjusting to the new rules. When we arrived in San Diego, I saw national guard troops at the gates apparently inspecting all carry on luggage. The difference in security at the airports makes you go “hmmm”. It isn’t unusual to have different rules and practices at different airports, but if the government is serious about security, it needs to be consistent. What kind of scared me about the troops is that they had a bucket full of confiscated liquids and gels; this was at the gate where all the passengers had already passed through the security checkpoint. Were the security screeners asleep at the wheel? Shouldn’t everything have been searched before hand?

I’m not convinced that the screening at the airport will really prevent terrorism. In my opinion, the only effective way to counter terrorism is through intelligence like the plot foiled in the UK. If I thought hard enough, I’m sure I could find holes in airport security, but since I’m not a terrorist, I won’t spend time thinking about it.