tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57987162008-05-20T09:30:07.419-05:00Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comBlogger184125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-58956590649055515692008-05-05T16:03:00.003-05:002008-05-05T16:12:28.823-05:00

SPSS 16 EVAL is EVIL. I've been using SPSS 16 for Mac OS/X for a quantitative analysis class. I had been using a licensed copy on my mac book pro, and recently installed the eval version on my mac pro - more and faster CPU cores, more and faster memory, more and faster disk; seemed like a good idea to run it where it'd go faster, but I didn't want to pay for two licenses. Well, the 14 day eval

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-46646410022450904172008-04-02T08:27:00.003-05:002008-04-02T08:37:12.367-05:00

So, yesterday (April fools day, no less), Microsoft held their Windows Server 2008 product launch event in Minneapolis. I got there late, since I had class, and got the software bundle they were handing out. These events usually include free copies of the products being launched - in this case, Win Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008. Much to my surprise, there was also a copy of

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-68497180454238302752008-03-26T23:40:00.003-05:002008-03-26T23:48:32.513-05:00

Don't get me wrong - I love winter. I love snow. I love skiing. Earlier this year, Laurel and I went skiing and she progressed from being scared of the "magic carpet" conveyer belt to riding on the chairlift and bombing the hills. But it's nearly april, and there's still snow on the ground. I want to go running. I want to bike to work. I want the snow to melt and have spring. In other news, Bea

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-6056021111563285522008-03-12T09:09:00.002-05:002008-03-12T09:12:29.547-05:00

The Wall Street Journal has cited some research from Utah that dual monitor rigs are significantly more productive for knowledge workers and engineers than single monitors. Turns out, Al Gore already knew this.

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-2466739592003026062008-02-12T17:29:00.000-06:002008-02-12T17:33:42.371-06:00

But you can maybe fix it, according to this post at bbold.com. Launch word (and wait for it to eventually launch) In the menu bar, go to: “Word” > “Preferences…” In the preference pane, click “General” Uncheck the box called “WYSIWYG Font and Style Menus” Uncheck “Show Project Gallery At Start Up” Click “Ok” Quit Word Re-Launch Word. This does seem to help quite a bit. Dumping some of the

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-9553904603606529712007-12-10T20:49:00.001-06:002007-12-10T20:57:56.702-06:00

So, I'm sitting at Caribou Coffee in St. Paul, waiting for my wife to call to say it's time to come home. She's putting the kids to bed (although she should be done by now...) OK, that was weird. She called, just as I was typing the above sentence. Freaky. Anyway, so I'm now 39. My kids made a bit of a big deal about it being my birthday, because they get so excited when *they* have birthdays.

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-57985904535957745312007-11-11T15:41:00.000-06:002007-11-11T15:51:18.506-06:00

I'm taking a data mining class at the U of Mn, and for one recent problem set, we had to determine some cluster shapes that present reasonable clusters but score poorly on the silhouette coefficient (see page 541 of the PDF). I had some ideas of cluster shapes that wouldn't work well, but I wanted to validate that. It didn't take that long to whip up a bit of ruby code that explored the two

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-81258389093850272372007-10-28T20:27:00.001-05:002007-10-28T21:30:04.410-05:00

I've got a original 17" Core Duo MacBook pro, which I purchased when they were first announced, and I purchased AppleCare with it when I got it. I wasn't sure if the applecare would be worth the money at the time, but this week it's proven to be worth the expense. First, the hard drive failed. The hard drive was a 7200RPM Seagate - I don't have the exact model number, but I think it was a

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-39617756122416092422007-10-28T20:15:00.000-05:002007-10-28T20:26:13.150-05:00

Len and I did the Monster Dash 1/2 marathon on saturday, Oct 27th. The course started at the Lake Harriet Bandshell, went down the Minnehaha Parkway nearly to Cedar, then turned around and looped Lake Calhoun and then back down to Lake Harriet. It was a beautiful day for a run - the temp was a little cold at the start, but we warmed up nicely. Len said he wanted to take it slow, but slow for him

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-51073672598058021782007-10-07T14:00:00.000-05:002007-10-07T14:10:54.275-05:00

Well, I was right about where I expected to be - 1:44:48, for a 10:29/mile pace. This is a little slower than my first time doing the TC 10-miler, but again, I'm happy with the time, particularly given the weather. The weather was hot and sticky - as I write this, it's 82 degrees and 67% humidity. Rain had been in the forecast but didn't make an appearance. Even so, I was soaked just from my own

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-64695456959806116682007-10-06T19:44:00.000-05:002007-10-07T13:59:40.343-05:00

I'm running in the Twin Cities 10-miler tomorrow (Oct 7th, 2007). It's supposed to be stinky hot for October in Minnesota; the high today (the day before the race) was a record-setting 87 - the normal high for early october is in the mid 60s. I expect to be slow. Nevertheless, it should be a good run. The re-route around the collapsed I-35W bridge makes the middle part of the course even more in

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-34912637085475934192007-08-24T16:46:00.000-05:002007-08-24T16:58:47.800-05:00

I was noticing that Mail.app and occasionally Safari would sometimes be really slow, particularly right after launch. In some cases, hitting 'reply' to a message would take almost a minute of waiting for the beachball to go away before I got a message window. It got so bad that I decided to fire up the debugger and see what was going on. I'd get a backtrace that would look like this: (gdb) bt

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-42005656082692429502007-08-02T11:52:00.001-05:002007-08-02T11:53:58.823-05:00

As you've probably heard by now, a section of I-35W collapsed over the Mississippi River on August 1st. I was a few blocks away, and took some pictures with my camera phone. They're uploaded to flickr.

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-75255648777338721542007-07-28T18:50:00.000-05:002007-07-28T18:53:31.113-05:00

Yay! I got into the Twin Cities 10-miler this year! Hey - Abby? Did you get in this year?

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-52634264253490749462007-07-17T21:31:00.000-05:002007-07-17T21:42:44.381-05:00

After checking for the existence of the previous post, I noticed that my blog site was kicking out 403 errors. The specific nastiness looked like this: Forbidden You don't have permission to access / on this server.Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. I checked the apache error logs, and saw a whole bunch of errors like

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-55099165423494155352007-07-17T20:48:00.000-05:002007-07-17T21:01:23.670-05:00

I used to run a Sun E3000 server in my basement. I served up this blog, the DaisyCutter site for my band, several friends web sites, I hosted my own subversion repository, ran my own sendmail and IMAP server, etc... It was pretty neat, having a big enterprise-class machine of my own... you could think of it as a gift from PowerAgent. I knew it ate a lot of power based on the amount of heat it

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-46091107043147100922007-06-24T20:53:00.000-05:002007-06-24T21:34:42.022-05:00

Major thanks go out to my good friend Jeremy! A couple months ago, Jeremy said "The Police are doing a reunion tour, and they're playing at Dodger Stadium. The show is just about sold out, but I've got two tickets. If you can get yourself here, you can have the second one." Well, after (more than) a bit of negotiation with my wife, arrangements were made. I flew out saturday morning, and Jer

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-7286172938409436762007-05-27T21:00:00.000-05:002007-05-27T21:04:32.560-05:00

I'm in Red Wing at my father-in-law's house, letting the wife get some time off. Here's a picture of the girls in Dianne's garden - click to zoom.

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-20258143283602860542007-05-06T18:24:00.000-05:002007-05-06T18:32:26.949-05:00

Today I went from my hotel for JavaOne out through Chinatown and eventually to the Presidio, across the Golden Gate Bridge, tagged the "vista point" sign on the north end of the bridge, and came back. Total distance, according to my Nike+iPod Nano sensor thingie (so take it with a grain of salt) is 15.83 miles. My legs hurt, and I've got blisters on my little toes. But traversing the bridge was

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-12270910558216776322007-04-29T14:14:00.000-05:002007-04-29T14:24:10.871-05:00

This weekend is "spring jam" at the U. On friday evening, there was a battle of the bands behind Coffman Union. Battle of the bands, in 2007. 2007. TWO THOUSAND FRAKKING SEVEN. So what did I hear, in the 10 minutes I listened? Modest Mouse? Snow Patrol? Panic! At the Disco? The Shins? Timbaland? NO! I get Hot Stuff, from Donna Summer, and Roxanne, from the Police. It's like it was "1979 night".

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-17779239009978703582007-04-29T13:44:00.000-05:002007-04-29T13:46:18.578-05:00

I'm going out to JavaOne this year. Despite having been at Sun in the mid-90s when Java was launched, and having done lots of work in the java world since then, I've never been to javaone before. Anyone else going who's reading this?

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-39715383892444279442007-04-29T13:38:00.000-05:002007-07-08T02:30:00.962-05:00

The last day of classes for spring semester is May 4th. In its infinite wisdom, the university has employee perf reviews at the end of April - meaning that for someone with supervisory responsibilities, you get to write reviews in addition to dealing with your last homework sets, finishing up class projects, and preparing for finals week.

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-53528300516766191912007-03-18T15:37:00.000-05:002007-03-18T15:40:18.796-05:00

"Far Cry" - listen at their web site, or buy it at iTunes. Very nice. Sounds like all the stuff I've ever liked from the canadian trio, all blended up. Very nice bass work in particular, even allowing for my high expectations from Geddy.

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-13271252050335520292007-03-18T14:33:00.000-05:002007-03-18T14:46:10.887-05:00

With apologies to Mrs. Piggle Wiggle - "Installer's Mac! Don't Touch!" This posting at Unsanity.org provided a belated explanation of how I managed to kill one of the iMacs at work. I was installing the 10.4.9 update, and during the 'optimizing system performance' phase had the bad idea to ask "I wonder what the CPU frequency is on these 17" C2duo iMacs"? I went to the apple menu, selected '

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5798716.post-55734543277479443062007-03-01T17:17:00.000-06:002007-03-01T17:27:36.320-06:00

In an amusing irony, The Minnesota Daily, the student-run daily paper of the University of Minnesota, today ran an article profiling U of Mn President Bob Bruinicks. A sidebar of the article included the following text: Former University President Mark Yudof delegated the decision to shut down the University during a winter storm to Bruininks, fearful Minnesotans would never respect the

Pete Clarknoreply@blogger.com