We Stand on the Right

In Washington, DC opinions run deep and irrational when it comes to the Metrorail system.

"The escalators are always broken."

"Public transit? Try unreliable commuter rail."

"Waste of time. I'd rather just call a cab."

After living here for just under a year and cramming myself onto the redline at 8 am five days a week, I've learned many quirks the Metro. The sounds and announcements play on repeat in my head, I politely inform escalefters that "we stand on the right in DC," I can name most Metro sniglets, and for the stops I frequent I've scientifically - through a rigorous guess and check - determined where to stand in order to exit the train by the escalators and transfer points.

I thrive on the public transit, besides my bicycle it's my only transit. It has taken some work, but I've gotten around the broken escalators, the sporadic weekend construction, and my impulse to cab and found a routine:

After a subdued "Good morning" to the Express distributor, I grab hold of the escalator and my dress shoes scamper a top the metal as I advance past the tourists, commuters, and suitcases. Near the bottom, when the stairs begin to collapse upon one another, my head darts down just enough to catch the earliest glimpse of the illuminated sign displaying the elevator outages and next train information.

"Two minutes, got to hustle."

My SmartTrip card buried within my wallet glides over the sensor, and the gate's wings open up allowing me to slip through into honeycomb corridor. The yellow bubble lights blink and the train rolls into the station. The Metro opens its doors, and I diligently scuttle my way into car - last door on the second to last car. Stop Metro center. Exit 13th and G St NW.

Door to door takes roughly 15 minutes; with the warm weather coming, my trip length may increase when I walk slower to avoid sweating. But I wouldn't want to commute any other way.

How do you get to work?

Rare Form

It can't be called "rare form" if it happens three nights in a row.

INTP

In training, last August, amidst the flurry of activities we had to take a personality test. 70 questions and 15 minutes, then it shows you 4 letters and an accompanying paragraph for each letter. These four letters are you Myers-Briggs personality.

"INTP," it said.

Fine, so I've seen this before, myself summed up in one phase like when I was described as "crazy awesome."1 

Although, this was little different, I had to spend the next hour in an mega-conference room hearing a personality expert elaborate on those four letters and their permutations. I'm pretty adverse to training in these settings - a energized presenter, flanked on both sides by over sized screens that are illuminated by a powerpoint presentation, rhapsodizes to the audience and their reflective glasses about some dry topic.

Naturally, my arms were crossed and my mind wandered as I slouched in my chair. Slides and colors changed, and I sighed. Then we were moving. Feet shuffled, chairs growled, and audible rumble could be heard over the presenter shouting, "'I's on the left. 'E's on the right." In his black turtleneck his arms spun about directing traffic from the glaring stage.

Then that rumble moved. It moved along with the crowded to the right side. There they were chatting away. Asked a few questions to describe the other side of the room. Then, the exercise went on and we tried other letter combinations. As it went on, those four letters began to grow on me. Eventually, I gave up my perceptions and accepted the four letters, INTP, when I realized it's my preference not who I am. 

I can act like an Extrovert every once and a while, but prefer to be Introverted. Being an introverted consultant doesn't always quite fit, but understanding that I am helps me work around it when need be at happy hours or other events. 

Training pays off sometimes.

1 No citation needed. Common knowledge.

Coffee Houses in DC

Since I've moved to DC, I've tried and tried to find a coffee house, and the struggle continues; as of now, I've only found coffee shops and cafes. 

Washington's culture lends itself better to happy hours with colleagues or after dinner drinks with power players at old presidential haunts. Downtown coffee shops exist during the day to serve fresh coffee, and close up shop around 3 pm slightly before the commuters make their mass exit to the suburbs. Residentially, Busboys and Poets or Kramerbooks & Afterwords , in U St and DuPont respectively, require food purchases and the packed tables encourage quick eats/drinks with a fast turnover. Sidamo, in the Atlas District, seems promising, but their limited hours and distant location restrict it to a weekend trip, so I haven't quite made it yet.

I've had several friends inquire as to what I consider a coffee house. I've struggle a bit when I've talked about it. I watch the confusion grow on their faces as I stumble through a bumbling definition, "It's almost a communal living room. You can go and sit. No pressure; won't be bothered. Quiet, read, know people, blog." Nothing seems to get across. I've taken moment to think about it, and here's my best shot.

A coffee house is a place you can go by yourself (or small group) for hours at a time to relax and enjoy a quiet activity over coffee or tea, and you'll never surprised to run into somebody you know.

This weekend you might run into me at Brewed Awakenings in Appleton.

If you have any suggestions of where to go or an alternate definition, please comment below. 

Carbo-Load

The brakes have been pulled taut, derailer adjusted, screws tightened, tires inflated, and carbohydrates have been consumed. I'm ready for the ride tomorrow, hopefully the weather stays nice. Here goes nothing.

Bike Shop

I took my bicycle to CityBikes today to fix the derailer. If High Fidelity was written about a bike shop this would be that shop. Rows of bikes temporarily strung along the wall at varying heights and opinionated, off-beat, bearded employees' chit-chat fill the compact store. I definitely trust the employees and service department there. My bike is fixed as well as it can be; unfortunately, from the looks of it I'm going to need a new bike or install more aggressive shifting system. I'm going to opt for the new bike. It's the right time. My current bike played its part, got me started riding again, and I can still use it around town.

I'm living in the Office. I'm on a party planning committee and I'm helping out with office olympics in August.

Google and Search

About three weeks ago, I installed Google Analytics this blog. I installed it just to test out it's features - map overlay, length on site, or referring sources - but the tool has been so impressive that I've found uses for it. The biggest trend that I've noticed is just the obvious - the more I update the blog the more hits I get. I'm surprised by the hits I get; not many (a few a day), but on average that is more than the one or two people I expected.

I was conscious that people read this site and its a public site, but Google Analytics helped me realized it. Now I've added every analysis tool I can find for fun and in an attempt to improve my posts - feedburner comes highly recommended - and here's what I've found:

-On Saturday, I mentioned the Newseum and then I received three hits from the Newseum related Freedom Forum. So someone there must be watching the blogs for mentions of Newseum. In case they're wondering, the Newseum was incredibly well put together; I felt like I was in a news room saturated with media, and it was great to be reminded how the media influences and encompasses all aspects of our lives. They had an exhibit on emerging media that included some blog short films. The building stands boldly along Pennsylvania Ave amongst the Smithsonian Museums, and it's a welcome addition. I recommend it.

-Most of my friends have an internet connection from Comcast or Lawrence and own Macs and Jacob still uses Opera.

-Readers are repeat visitors, so I'm going to try to update more often. Thanks for reading.

I've added a new section, Subscribe!, with links to make it easier to add my blog to an RSS Reader.

Dance Punk Dance

Friday my profile picture was label by a colleague "Continental Charles" because it was taken shortly after I came back from Budapest. Strangely rather than reminisce about Budapest - which I do miss - it reminded me of my arrival on campus that winter term, and attempt to reclaim my spot as Resident Dancer. I fought my way through the dance-offs; in my tight jeans and Chuck Taylor dance shoes, my feet pounded away in crowded the rooms of Hiett, Trevor, the House, and anywhere else dance-punk played with cans of PBR lining the walls. It's been awhile since I've had a good dance-off.

Friday evening I took the situation into my own hands - 20 minute dance party.

Attendance: 1 person.

Duration: 20 minutes.

Location: Calvert House #922.

Best song: All My Friends by LCD Soundsystem

Claire and Veronica are in town this weekend. They're both shocked it's spring already. No lines last night, but every place was packed, Local 16 and Marvin's. 

Ethiopian tonight at Etete.

Bike DC

Bicycling magazine recently rated Washington DC the most improved bicycle city. With the new bicycle sharing program SmartBike, a single speed self-service bike rental, and increased bike lanes, the District is taking the steps in the right direction; however, at this point, I'm an experienced road cyclists, and I don't feel confident on the DC streets. The current bike lanes end abruptly and fail to connect with one another, cars park in the lanes or don't look while taking right turns, other cyclists disobey traffic signals creating a distrust between cyclists amongst motorists, and the multi-use paths aren't wide enough to accommodate joggers and cyclists. All in all it's nice to see the city gain support for cycling and get recognized for their first of many efforts. One day I hope to experience an extensive system of paths with physical barriers between the road; for now, to celebrate the first step I will observe Bike to Work Day on Friday May 16th, and the MS Ride that weekend. Thanks for all your support on the ride.

---

I was on the phone with the client the other day. After a quick thought started, there as a small pause, and he asked "Charles, I hope you don't mind, but how old are you?"

Blindly I replied "22."

He let out a short string of laughs, and said "Wow. You'll go far." 

Startling, but it was a nice compliment.

---

Last week I gave a presentation on web usability to my project team entitled "A Presentation: Don't Make Me Think" (The title comes from Advanced Common Sense). I put it together a little last minute - changed thoughts in mid-sentence or twirled my arms a bit like a dinosaur at times - but went well in the end. I'm going to work on sharpening it, perfecting the art, and giving it as a Brown Bag lunch.

Veronica and Claire are coming this weekend and planning on going to the Newseum.  Troy has already been.

April 21 - 27 2008 was the official Turn Off Your TV week; unfortunately I missed it. I will observe it this week starting yesterday.

Career Moves

A little over a year ago, when I was sent an info packet about Deloitte there was an exert from Business Week - The Best Places to Launch a Career - that ranked Deloitte #3. 

"Great," I thought, but that was all I thought. 

I never took a deep analysis to what it meant for them to be #3, or why they would send me this article. This word, career, has been used, talked about, presented throughout the year - "It's your career; take ownership. Mass Career Customization." However, now, as I've just begun the year-end process and started to look back on this year and forward to many that will come, I'm thrown directly into this conversation. 

What does the word mean to me. I must have this strange definition of the word Career, one that doesn't fit me, one that makes me take a stuttering breath to digest my thoughts before discussing it with my colleagues: careers are what parents, friends parents, managers, or business majors have. I'm just attempting something I'm interested in, something that challenges me to think critically - is that a career?

I don't want to sound pretentious here, building a career is great, but I've decided to define career and my interpretation of the word career. My career is not my vocation, my career is the skill set I bring to the table and how I want to use those skills.

I'm not to going measure my goals in benchmarks or highlights; I'm going to take a day to day approach. My career goal is that I constantly put myself in a position to grow my skill set, and stay open to new opportunities that will put me in those positions. I want to consistently take on new challenges. My five year plan is to improve and stay interested in what I'm doing everyone of those days. 

That is one thing nice about consulting all those opportunities are with one company.  In the end, this post kind of makes me want to gag, but I'm not going to lie and say "five years from now I want to be a tech lead or functional lead." One day I'll have to look further down the path, but for now, I'm happy saying that I'm not going become stagnant or take a step back. I'm going to keep progressing and see where that goes; so far it's gone a long way in eight months - since July 30.

This is not the Pony Express

On Tuesday I was tasked to track down information, and insure the appropriate procedure was followed for application change requests; unfortunately, the information was trapped in exchange server that I could only access through my Outlook 2002 client. There was this wealth of information exactly where I thought it was in one place - I had seen it, read it, noted it, replied to it, and talked about it just a few weeks early, but yet it was strewn about, unindexed, without a reg-ex search, and lost in the shuffle between every conversation I've had recently.

After a deep breath and a few random clicks on the menu bar I gave up; one by one I cycled through my mess of an inbox and other related folders. Outlook forces you to put your email into these silos of inbox, sent, drafts, etc...but really when it comes down to it each one is a message where planned, to me, from me, or about me. They are my messages, and they exist in this entangled web of response/receive protocol. This is one of the features I love about gmail - no folders just labels, and messages can have more than one label. They are easy to add and easy to see. Gmail enables me to see my mail in these chambers but I can knock them down, move them around at my will.

Outlook seems unwilling to change it's three panel view, and it has remained stale and bulking over the years; however, there is an interesting start up xobni (inbox backwards) that has a great Outlook plug-in. It has an index search, statistics about usage, and a intuitive sidebar with contacts and threaded conversations. Xobni is a great start, and has truly engaged a thoughtful discussion about the direction email is headed. I'm ready for the next step where email starts to shed its mail persona and take a more evolved collaboration approach.

My company has recently released an internal social network. Getting to the site is a pain - passwords are entered multiple times and pop-ups appear in every corner of the screen - and it doesn't have much beyond my basic info. The idea is to encourage networking - creating this online community; unfortunately, they have failed to realize the best social network they have is already well established in email. They already have my network - my contacts, their contacts, how often I reach out to them, and about what; they have my abilities - where I've been staffed, my role, and duration. Why can't I add a picture, interests, capabilities, or papers to my address card? Everything is there waiting to be used, waiting to be labeled, placed into threads, to-do's, reference...and it's just fading away when the email hits the 180 MB storage limit and it's not indexed. It's a sad day when  knowledge based company that depends on ideas let's them fall of the map into a personal archived oasis.

In its current iteration, Outlook is not the right client for this, but maybe one day. Gmail takes a great integrated approach, chat and email in one, and continues to set the pace. I'm tired of waiting for someone to do to the email client what flock did to the web-browsers. I want to see the weekly newsletters become an rss feeds, an integrated blog tool , document exchange, live search, group conversations, chat, and remove the silos. I want to organize my email vertically across conversations and horizontally across topics and projects. I don't have calendar events to be a group of emails sent out to the attends - I want it to be an event on the server that people are invited to, can see, and maybe update.

It's time to take control of my email.

Math

April is math awareness month! Check out these interesting articles, topics, problems, and facts about math:

Math, Origami, and Protein Folding from the NYTimes.

Are we wired for math? from the New Yorker (warning: long).

Math Education from the NYTimes.

Monty Hall problem - a classic that beats intuition.

Paul Erdos - my favorite mathematician.

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers - my favorite popular math book (biography of the aforementioned Paul Erdos).

Topology - my favorite subject.

Pythagorean Theorem - a proof?

I'm going to get some chalk so I can tag the side walk with some proofs.

Capital Crescent

Another bike ride this weekend. With an ominous email sent out friday afternoon, "ride will be canceled if it's raining at 8 am," the ride was in flux, but the rained stayed away just enough to make for a pleasant day.

We met for breakfast in Georgetown. On my way to Georgetown, I saw Mayor Fenty spectating a little league game at 9 am with a red tie and an overarching umbrella that could have kept the entire dugout dry. I wanted to shout good job and give a big thumbs up, but I restrained myself. 

By the time I got to Dean & DeLuca, the slight drizzle cleared away, and it was nice enough to sit at their sidewalk cafe to enjoy a blueberry muffin and some coffee. The bike rack overflowed and the rumble of clip shoes pounding away on the brick sidewalk dominated the early morning noise. 

With a few instructions, a count of people, and a couple snippets of advice we were on the Capital Crescent trail. The trail follows old railroad tracks along Potomac and through the leafy parts of the city. At mile 6 we split off from the tracks and headed up MacArthur blvd into the heart of the prestigious suburbs that comprise Montgomery Co. I peddled and peddled, past the mini mansions and let their fancy cars power by me. The ride ended at Great Falls Park which unfortunately I didn't have enough time to explore. 

We headed back to Georgetown, this time down hill, and got lunch - lunch after a forty mile ride tasted pretty good.

Also in the news of today:

I bought Rock Band.

I made Granola.

I clean my apartment to make room for Rock Band.

Today was eventful.

Technology and me

Let me digress. Coming in the workforce without experience, a day doesn't go by that I don't learn something new at work. Code aside too, I'm being pushed. The applications I make replace systems - systems built with oracle forms, access, SQL Server, and other mismatched technology. People's jobs and daily tasks depend on the work I do, and I take pride in the quality and usability of my applications. However well I feel I do, the legacy systems seem to creep along rolling over small unappealing traits that the user expects. "It used to look like this. Why does it now look like this? Why is the button here? What are my roles? Do I have access to this. Well, no I don't use it, but sometimes if they ask me this then I could find the answer there." It's nothing personal with what I developed, it is just what they used everyday for four years and now it's completely different.

I decided to take a similar adventure - learn something new. A language, a new framework, a new idea, and see how I do. With the elite jumping off the Ruby on Rails bandwagon, I decided there was room for me to jump on. I didn't know any Ruby and never used rails. A simple google search, "ruby rails os x," reviled a quick tutorial. Installed Ruby, RubyGems, Rails, and MySQL and I was off. Wait, I've learned my lesson before - bookmark the Ruby and the Rails docs. Okay now search "ruby rails os x." Generate a migration script, fill in some fields, and type the word scaffold. Then "oh! There is my first ruby on rails webpage. Not too much exciting just Create, Read, Update, and Destroy (CRUD) functionality. I explored further. What else does this get me? Pagination. A few more lines of code and I got some validation. Let's take this a little further. For the first few tasks the general work flow was google search, cut, paste, edit, try again, try again, oh I see, try again, and works. Without much experience I navigated around the RubyOnRails magic. I didn't jump in, just dabbled and took things in small steps, a change here does this, a change there does that.

"Convention over configuration" or Ruby magic are RoR's unofficial slogans; at first, it was frustrating - this unexpected behavior. Eventually, I found out that if I want to configure I can, but it just takes investigation and google to find out where. If Ruby On Rails was someone's first framework, it hides the MVC standard. I can live with that as long as we don't end up with a generation of PHP hackers.

The Scene

I earned double hipster points this week. Once on thursday by showing up at work with a Black Cat stamp on my hand from the Jens Lekman show, and once on Friday by the Black Cat stamp on my hand from the Les Savy Fav show.

Hipster points this month: 2. Good start to April. I'm not positive how the scale works, but I might get a bonus point because both shows were sold out. Tickets to a sold out show are always a great fact for a formulated conversation at work.

"What's that on your hand?"

"Oh, yeah I tried to wash that off. It's from the Black Cat show last night."

"I heard that was sold out! How'd you get tickets?"

The Jens show was fun. The band was dressed in black rather than white, and the airplane dance moves warmed my heart again. Most everyone in the crowd seemed to be in love with Jens; don't blame them.

On Friday, Tim Harrington, the Les Savy Fav singer, spent time in between songs parodying the show 24 and it continued after the encore from backstage. Through all his antics on stage he manage to hold on to the microphone even when he changed light-bulbs while walking on top of the bar - professional. He owns his own textile company.

Long walk today. Got an empanada, and then found the new Target.