Tag: life

I recently wrote a letter to the editor to the Clarkson Integrator publicly insulting the Clarkson Senior Class for their behavior during Friday night's bar crawl.

Let me start by apologizing to the Clarkson Senior's, as I have since learned that the event was not a Clarkson sponsored event. That was a misunderstanding on my part, and I do offer my sincerest apologies.

My original comments still stand, only redirected specifically to those in attendance at the event, regardless of class year or university affiliation.

Further, I must now go on to state that my original comments towards certain members of Clarkson's student body (specifically those participating in issuing attacks against my property and character) have only been reaffirmed by the student response on the Clarkson DailyJolt forums. link.

While your personal attacks against me are unfounded, untrue, and further demonstrate a lack of maturity, I can tolerate those... however, your threats of personal property damage are intolerable.

I have filed reports with Campus Safety, Potsdam Police, and have indeed notified Maxfield's proprietors that one individual identified himself as a Chef at Maxfield's restaurant.

I have been in contact with the Senior Class president via email, and have apologized to him for singling out the Clarkson Senior Class. I also recognize that several of you posted in the forum's your feelings that the thread was irresponsible and immature. To anyone else who would like to contact me, you have my email address and I welcome your comments so long as they are void of personal attacks.

This is far off the beaten path for me to post about. Normally my blog posts are about some shiny toy I've recently aquired or a programming technique or trick I've picked up along the way... I do not believe I've EVER posted anything to reflect any political or societal views what-so-ever. But this struck me today and I wanted to voice an opinion.

I was reading an article on CNN today that discussed the increasing number of interracial couples in today's society. From the article:

"Mom always told me, 'Don't you ever bring a white man home,"' 
recalled Jones, echoing an edict issued by many Southern, black 
mothers.

But at 37, the Alexandria divorcee has shifted to dating "anyone 
who asks me out," regardless of race.

"I don't sit around dreaming about the perfect black man I'm 
going to marry," Jones said.

Black women around the country also are reconsidering deep-seated 
reservations toward interracial relationships, reservations 
rooted in America's history of slavery and segregation.

The author makes a vague, unreferenced mention of "statistics" and then continues to say:

[Black men] are nearly seven times more likely to be incarcerated than white
men and more than twice as likely to be unemployed

Which leads me to the purpose of this post. Probability and statistics are two entirely different things. Just because, statistically speaking, there is a 7:1 ratio of black men to white men incarcerated DOES NOT mean that a black man is 7 times more likely to be incarcerated. Nor does a 2:1 unemployment ratio mean that a black men is twice as likely to be unemployed.

I think this is a severely important distinction in a society where the racial divide, while still present, is blurring significantly. The statement that "a black man is seven times more likely" to be incarcerated is harsh, incorrect, and potentially very damaging to the mindset any young black man. It has several negative connotations... you might as jump in your way-way-back machine and shout "you're not as good as that kid, and you're going to jail."

Whereas the statement "there are currently 7 times the number of black men in jail than white", the truth of which I can not confirm, while discouraging, carries no implication for a particular individual based on race... and, in some individuals, could be a motivational point to encourage a change in that statistic.

Probability vs. statistics. It's an important distinction. One that, when used improperly, can impose unintentional consequences on society. One I'd expect to see the editors of our major news outlets aware of. I do not believe the connotations of these statements were intentional by the author, as [s]he is apparently unaware of the difference between these two mathematical concepts (or, more correctly, that the difference did not occur to her/him while writing this article)... but lets face it, "black men are seven times more likely to go to jail" is the kind of crap my Grandma would say.

Original article

I'm sure most everyone saw the news today that several electronic devices located around the city of Boston proved to be a "hoax" and posed no serious thread. Indeed, the devices were part of a marketing campain for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which was described by the AP as:

... part of the Adult Swim late-night block of programs for adults on the Cartoon Network... [It] centers on a talking milkshake (Master Shake), fries (Frylock) and a meatball (Meatwad).

As my friend, Donald, would say, we're doomed.

Wah... what a freakin day.

So I went to bed around 4am Thursday morning after a rockstar evening... only to be woken up at 7 by a friend who was stranded in what is best succinctly described as a long-winded-emergency-situation... so I got in my car to pick her up, brought her back to my place where we proceeded to sit on the couch in a half comatose state for several hours.

On my way to retrieve said friend, however, I discovered a foot long scratch/dent alongside my previously pristine 2004 VW GTI VR6 :(. So, naturally, I went to take a picture of the damage to report to insurace, only to discover that my brand f*cking new digital camera, is also broken. And wouldn't you know, while I'm leaning over to take a picture of my broken car with my broken camera, my brand new cell phone falls out of my pocket and lands on a rock?

Peter, Paul and Mary.

Anyway... highlight of my day - the lovely Josephine got in touch with me this evening and I wound up unwinding after work with her over a bottle of wine and some nice food at the First Crush. If you read this, baby, it's always a pleasure :).

So here I am.... 6:15 am on Friday morning, STILL UP (yeah, still... haven't slept since Monday night). I'm giving a final in less than 2 hours, and then have my department xmas party. I'm supposed to start making phone calls in 15 mintues to wake up some friends. You know, I had this silly preconception that finals week would be easier as a professor than it was as a student. But when all of a sudden, 80 people give a shit how they're doing, that makes for a stressful week.

Here's lookin foward to '07. To old friends, I miss you. To new ones, I love you all. And to ones I haven't met yet, well, just keep on keepin on.

I had the pleasure of catching the sunrise this morning at the public boat launch in Norwood near the NYMO Dam on the Raquette river. Got this one great shot of the rising sun reflecting off the dam building and across the water.

Kyle dropped me a LinkedIn invite and mentioned that I hadn't been bloggin much recently... so I thought I'd post a quick update on life and work.

The move to Potsdam went very smoothly, considering that I did it in my 2 door VW... I was able to take much more than I thought with me in only two trips. Life here in the North Country has been pretty amazing, which is strange to say. I kind of figured I'd be quite bored for a while until I got settled into a group of friends - but instead I've found myself making excuses to stay in and enjoy the quiet time! I've met several extraordinarilly interesting people, as well as the run of the mill college students, and my social calendar is filling up quickly :).

I've also replaced my morning cup of coffee with a 15-20 mile bike ride from Norwood, down 56 into Potsdam - then depending on how I feel continuing on into Hanawa Falls, then looping back to Norwood on the River Road. I still love my coffee, but can now make it through the day without migraines if I forgo the indulgence. I've also recently taken up Kayaking, and plan to invest in one later this fall depending on the financial situation when I get to that point.

On the job front - things have fallen into place well at Clarkson - I'll be teaching EE261, Intro to Programming, and EE408, Visual Environments (aka MFC, though I'll be teaching .NET WinForms instead) this Fall, and EE368, Software Engineering Junior Lab, and one other course in the Spring. iTiE Solutions, Inc. hit the ground running a couple months ago and is fairing well, I'm just putting the finishing touches on my first contract today... I'll have details and some tech blog posts about that coming up soon. It also gives me some material to start a profile page at the company's overly neglected web page, which I intend to dedicate some time to this week.

So that's what's new with me. Hope everyone had a great 4'th!

Welcome to the world Penelope Joy Jackson! Congrats to Brian and Mer on their new family :)

The Jackson Family

Wow. What a day. What a week, in fact. Today, I gave notice at Kenosia. It's been an extremely stressful decision to come to, and as I type this, I'm almost delirious from exhaustion. But I believe that I made the right decision, and that I'll become successful in my new venture.

"What new venture", you ask? iTiE Solutions. I'm founding a software company based on the design and implementation of usable and simple software solutions. It's a scary prospect... but one that I'm at an appropriate time in my life to try. I currently have no personal or financial obligations to anyone other than myself, so if I fail, I'll be able to look back and say nothing other than "I tried." If I succeed, I'll have a whole new life ahead of me.

As of this point forward, timfanelli.com will be the official technical blog of iTiE Solutions. I've launched A Mac and a Dream to chronicle to my journey into the world of self employment, and soon I'll launch a new website to host my personal blog, where I'll continue to post ramblings about things none of you care about anyway :).

In case any of you were curious, the name, iTiE Solutions came from two places. First and for most, it was inspired by Greg Lacey, who was the campus recruiting manager for IBM while I attended Clarkson University. Greg would come to campus once or twice a year and speak to the Software Engineering and Computer Science students about the "core ities" of software development. Among them, usability and simplicity; hence the name and goal of the company. Second, it's an acronym -- Information Technology for Integrated Enterprise Solutions. As many of my long-time friends and readers know, my area of research and expertise is enterprise software architectures. It's what I enjoy and am passionate about in my career. I hope to use this new venture as an opportunity to design and develop simply, yet powerful, middleware and web based solutions to meet the needs of my customers.

So, with that, I'm off to recover from delirium with beer, television, good company an a burger. iTiE Solutions will be in business on June 1, 2006; wish me luck.

Well it's eBay time again... I'm offloading my shiny new MacBook Pro - check out the auction and bid if you're interested :).

In other news.... well, there's nothing new yet. The summer's been pretty slow since the move back to Potsdam. My contract at Clarkson started earlier this week, but I don't have students until the end of the month. I'll have to spend a bit of time over the next few weeks getting my lesson plans and presentations together though.

Oh! Almost forgot - I'm going to see Tom Petty and the Heart Breakers next weekend in Saratoga Springs - woohoo! The Allman Brothers are opening - should be a great show!

Guess that's it for now. I really just wanted to shamelessly promote my laptop auction across the internet. Haha.

After a not-so-brief 42 day down period, Tim Fanelli (dot com) is back up and running! I'd cancelled my internet service at home back in February and just this week got around to setting up Blosxonomy on my RimuHosting server... I'm happy to see though that after two days of uptime, my daily page hits are back where they were, and google is referring sites regularly... it's like I never left!

Blosxonomy.com will be back up and running in a day or two, and development will resume shortly thereafter! I've got a couple things I want to change after having gone through the installation process from scratch after having forgotten how to set it up. It's not as simple as I'd though!

Not a whole lot to report other than that. This is more a post to test that my site's configured properly more than anything.

Congrats to Figgy and Stacy on the engagement! Hopefully now she'll never have to worry about the "you can't go after Figgy" law. We were all concerned for her on that front. Thankfully, there won't be any more victims of the law either.

With gas prices being "low" at a $2.25 a gallon around the corner from where I live (still over a 100% increase from just 5 years ago), I wanted to put things in perspective a little.

I pay $4.68 for a Grande Latte at my local Starbucks. That's $37.44 a gallon for 32 ounces of tap water filtered through ground beans and 96 ounces of steamed cow juice. Now call me crazy but it seems to me that water, coffee, steam, and milk are all significantly cheaper to grow, process and distribute than gasoline.

Good thing cars don't run on coffee like I do :-\.

Well it's official at work now, so I can finally post about it. Friday Aug 26 will be my last day as a Zedaker. I'm moving on to a company called Kenosia, starting right after labor day. I'm very much looking forward to having a fresh start somewhere new, after almost a full year of indifference towards the products I've been working on. I've enjoyed being at Zedak, and think it's been a great experience, but I've just found myself not real excited about what we do there; and an opportunity came along that's much more exciting.

More exciting how, you ask? Well for starters, Kenosia is effectively a start-up with an industry standard product. Kenosia started out as a Bristol subsidiary, and obtained quite a few major name customers. Just two months ago, however, they were aqcuired by HALO Technology Holdings, and are now starting fresh with the feel of a startup. So I'm really getting in at the ground floor during a very exciting time.

Additionally, they're going to whip my ass into shape right quick. This is a two part story; I'll start with the short one. Kenosia as an organization seems to be mildly obsessed with "personal wellness", which, as best I can figure, does NOT involve couches, tv, and beer, as I have previously been led to believe. In fact, it involves "running" (read: fast walking with noone chasing you) at lunch; 2 miles. Yikes. I think I may be able to make it a solid mile just before dropping dead at the moment. So mapped out a 1 mile loop near my home that I'm going to start running this weekend. If I can't do 2 miles without wanting to die before my start date, well then I'll just continue feeling like a big loser and life will go on I suppose ;).

So that's what's new with me. In other news, I'm working on my CSS a little. It's not perfect yet, but you can check it out here.

"Mmmmm, beer. The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson

Visited Poughkeepsie this past week -- all in all had a really good time. Matt and I went to Half Time to stock up on beers. We found something called "Sam Adams Triple Bock" which looked really interesting; it was bottled in a small dark blue container, no label, and the neck was wrapped in a rubbery foil, topped with a cork. At just under .00 per bottle, we both got a couple figuring it had to be pretty fantastic.

You can read the rest of my review of the beer here - at eBay where I'm trying to get rid of the crap.

And then, I also got some of my two favorite beers: Golden Monkey (thank you dowem), and Dog Fish Head's 90 Minute IPA. Truly a fantastic IPA; smooth, refreshing, not too bitter. Drinkin' one right now. Mmmmm.

So that's it for me. I'm just trying to stall a little longer before going to work on a Saturday :-\.

Also, if you're in the market for a new cell phone, check this guy out: Sprint Network eBay Store. I just bought a Treo 650 from him for mad cheap and no activation fee. His name's Dennis, nice guy, very helpful, and knew what he was talking about (gave me some info that was confusing on Sprint's site and saved me a bunch of money every month.). Highly recommended. (I wound up calling him directly instead of buying through eBay... so I can't leave him good feedback. This'll have to do ;)).

Well I broke down and got a puppy today :).

Well tomorrow is Andi's birthday. I got her a 1945 Smith-Corona Sterling Silent Portable typewriter. The typewriter is fully restored and functional, and writes amazingly well considering it's history. It's the last model Smith-Corona produced at their factory in Syracuse, NY before closing down in 1945 to support the war effort. Imagine, a pre-war finely tuned piece of machinery in the art of communication. The history alone this piece must have seen is well worth the investment in an antique; but a fully restored and working tool -- complete with an original carrying case, and reproduction of the original manual -- it's a piece of art.

Many thanks to George at myTypewriter who helped me pick this model, and did an amazing job restoring this piece.

Just wanted to post a pic of me and my Stewie -- so here:

That was when Stewie was just 9 weeks old, it was the first day I had her. I hadn't even gotten her home when that pic was taken, I was at Andi's parent's place swapping cars when that was taken.

In other news, Konfabulator released a Windows version today, including Konspose, a decent Expose. Definitely worth the look, and well worth the registration fee.

And finally, jETIA has been resurrected from subversion now that Cheese is done and we can deliver the product -- huzzah! (and, simultaneously, BOO!). So maybe I'll have some stuff to say about that in a bit. We'll see.

you've ever tried to stuff left over fish into a ziplock bag... ok, now everyone laugh in slightly amused horror at my girlfriend who was busted in the act this evening in an attempt to clean up the kitchen which got her BANNED FOR ALL ETERNITY. I ask you this: A "desperate house girlfriend", or cunning and deceptive she-devil "banned-from-the-kitchen" tactics?