Note of the Living Deb

It's so nice to finish working on a problem by the end of the day. At least I think I finished.

The problem was to code the following foreign language requirement: First you need fourth-semester proficiency in a European language. (Easy, we have a rule type just for this.) Then you need either six upper-division hours in the same language or any six hours in a second European language so long as they are not all from one course.

We can keep from counting the same courses again, but not from counting courses from the same field again. We have to specify either hours or courses or everything listed on the table; we can't specify hours and courses and just some things from the list. Nor can we specify "more than one course."

The solution:

1. Part I: Fourth-semester proficiency in a European language. Use FL rule type, specify fourth-semester proficiency, list all allowable languages.

2. Mask hours beyond 5 of every European language course that can be taught in versions exceeding 5 hours. This way a single course cannot fulfill the whole requirement.

3. Mask hours beyond 5 of the other courses that wouldn't fit in the previous rule due to space limitations.

4. Part II, option a: require 6 upper-division hours from one option, each of which is a different European language. This could end up being either the same or a different language. If the same, it works. If it's different, it's option b, so it still works.

5. If the previous rule is not satisfied, skip it and do this rule; otherwise skip this rule. (This "branching" is to be avoided if at all possible because students working on the previous rule can't see their progress until they have satisfied the rule, so it's confusing. Oh, well.) Part II, option b: Can't use an FL rule because it counts courses, not hours. Use an LL rule type, require 6 hours from European languages the list of courses that satisfy foreign language requirements. Due to similar courses getting rejected in an earlier rule, this should not be possible in the same language as chosen for #1 above. If students use other courses, they won't count. An override to the system will be required. But that's probably just as well so that courses they want to count toward their major don't end up counting here instead. And most people will just take the courses listed here.

6. Unmask the 6+ hour courses so any extra hours can be counted towards other requirements or electives.

Whew.

(Hey, my programming friends sometimes write about coding or write actual code. Oh, but that's in case you want to copy the code or modify it yourself or have ideas on improvements. Oh, well. Not a single one of you would ever care about this. Unless my boss found this journal. Hi, Boss!)

Link of the Day: Merle Sneed's On the Road to Walmart - Read about different transportation strategies and other thoughts connected with a trip to Walmart and how they relate to personal finance. "It is amazing how hard some people have to work to do stuff we take for granted. . . . I saw a one-armed guy today smoking a cigarette while pushing a shopping cart loaded with merchandise toward the bus station. The cart kept veering to the right and he kept fighting it with his one arm, periodically pausing to take the cigarette from his mouth."

Today class started, so the buses are running on a full schedule which means they should be coming by much more regularly. I looked on the website and in response to the rise of gas prices, they are reducing the frequency. So last year, buses were scheduled to come every 7 - 9 minutes, and this year, every 9 - 12 minutes. I looked up the schedule, and on weekday mornings buses are scheduled to run every 12 minutes. Still, I shouldn't have had to wait 20 minutes for a bus this morning. I can see on the schedule that one bus was just plain missing. This means I still have to leave the house at 7:15 to be sure of getting to work on time (by 8:00), even though I live only four miles away. I may as well take the city bus.

You know what? That really pisses me off.

I live on a shuttle route for a reason, and that reason is not so that I can have a forty-five minute commute each way.

I keep thinking I should ride a bike to work, but it's more dangerous and I get so completely sweaty and I can't read while I'm biking. Jerks!

**

And yesterday while I was working on course schedule change forms, I realized that every single time I get a "cancel" form, I better look something up on the mainframe because I can't trust what's on the form.

And today, I realized have to look the same thing up on "change" forms. Why? Because one section said there were no changes when in fact the mother of all changes had occurred. The new electronic form is capable of complete lies. That section is utterly useless to me.

You know what? That makes me want to cry. I get so tired of having to interpret my way through piles and piles of stuff I don't even care about just to get to the few morsels I need, and now some of the piles of stuff aren't even helpful to anyone.

New electronic forms were created for a reason and that reason was not so that I can look everything up in a different place to double-check it.

And why are people still changing the course schedule when classes have already started! Jerks!

**

There's one tiny section of our office that is left to be remodeled. Today, an office near me is schedule to be painted. Somehow this involved many, many minutes of hammering sounds with a hint of drilling sounds.

It's just another thing that makes me wish I had less than eight years and four and a half months before I can retire.

Buses suck. More specifically, buses not coming for a long time suck. Also, jam-packed sardine-city buses suck. Also buses where the driver pulls way past the stop and refuses to open the front door (and opening only the back door), thus confusing everybody, suck. (I'm guessing the driver doesn't want to let the air conditioning out of the front of the bus where the driver sits. Still, added confusion sucks.)

I walked a lot.

It's very hot.

I turn very dark pink when I walk in the heat for more than twenty minutes, and then everyone freaks out and says I shouldn't do that. No, I should stand in the heat for three days waiting for a bus. Or pay hundreds for a parking sticker so I can drive everywhere, except then I still won't be able to find parking. And also, people should never exercise. They should only sit on their butts all day because exercising is unsightly.

I should document how to set up an XPAF printer and put it online. No, I don't know what "XPAF" means, but I do know how to look up all the e-mails and meeting minutes explaining how to do this and bring them together into one good document.

Mayonnaise mixed with mustard is just as good as plain mayonnaise for many applications, such as today's cheese sandwich, and has fewer calories than the same volume of mayonnaise alone.

I'm out of the habit of tango-ing.

I'm sleepy.

My co-worker I told you about who suffered "a broken hand" when he was hit by a car told me (over the phone) that it looked like he'd been in a fight.

I said it wasn't a fair fight.

He said he liked that phrase and was going to use it. He said it would have been fair if he had been in a car also.

I said it also might have helped if he'd had any warning that there would be a fight.

He said that was true. There weren't even any screeching tire sounds or anything.

[Skip to the last paragraph if you don't like hearing bad news, are not into rubber-necking, and are not overly interested in looking at the complex realities behind newspaper stories.]

Obviously he's all scraped up and bruised up. He also said he's not supposed to be walking. He says between him and his wife, there's just over one whole person. He is her legs (leg--he can hop); she is his hands and brain. He can use three fingers on his broken hand for typing, but he can't yet grasp anything with that hand.

Neither of them can drive with their bad legs and hands. He tried working from home yesterday, but is going to have to wait a bit longer.

Someone else told me they had seen the car. The front was completely smashed in as if the driver had hit a wall. But all she hit were people. I'm trying to imagine that, but I just can't.

Other updates since my previous post: The pedestrians were not in the road, they were in the median. That guy in the coma died and was my co-worker's best friend. He was in his wedding party and his band. So all those pains and itchings I was feeling sorry for him about were nothing compared to that.

The link in the preceding paragraph is oddly inspiring. (An earthen couch covered with grass in the back yard? That sounds cool.)

We got a request a while ago to submit possible mottos for my workplace. We got a couple of examples:

"Office of the Registrar – Your Credit is Good with Us.

"Office of the Registrar – Preserve the Past, Provide for the Present, Plan for the Future.

"I'm sure you can improve on these ideas."

No, I couldn't. I was really in a bad mood that day and had nothing positive to say about our office. All I could think of were evil, smarmy things, which they really did not want to hear.

Now that the healing power of over two months of time has gone by, here are the mottos I've come up with:

Office of the Registrar ...

... Our favorite color is red tape.
... Where beauty trumps function.
... Giving you the run-around because bad guys take advantage.
... Where your needs might be addressed in phase II.
... First SSN remediation, then your request.
... Awfully good service, considering.
... Leaping technical difficulties in a single bound! Daily! Instead of fixing them!

I might be able to use a little bit more healing.

I did think of one positive one:

... Strict with records; nice with you.

See, and for the logo there's a filing cabinet with one of those combination locks like safes have, plus, connecting the drawer handles, both of the two kinds of locks that bicycle owners use. And there's a person with a tight grip on the cable lock behind her, like it's a leash on a snarling guard dog, but she's facing the other way, toward a student, and smiling nicely. Oh, wait! There should be a snarling guard dog, too!

There's a reason I'm not in advertising.

I uploaded three training modules in time for tomorrow's meeting. I have only four rule types done so far (out of 28), but I think I'll be able to get the rest up in a timely fashion. (By which I mean this summer, or maybe even in the next month, but definitely this year.) It feels so good.

It occurred to me that if I get a large portion of the training I want online, some of the other jobs duties won't seem so much like irritating distractions and will be a little more fun. That would be nice, too. (Don't worry, I'm still job hunting, but it's nice to not have to accept anything unless it's totally awesome.)

Broken thing of the day: The error message on one command quits showing the student number and starts showing part of the SSN. (Reported.)

Other broken thing: Every time I try to add a student's test records to the test database, an error occurs that is not my fault. (Fixed already!)

I tried a new kosher sandwich place today and a new Asian food place, both of which I have mixed feelings about which I do not feel like going into.

Work is hard. I don't know how to explain when to use "OR." I said to use OR only when you need to use both OR and an understood AND, as in the following example. My second reader said, "I don't see any ANDs." Duh! Understood! Invisible! Lurking between the lines! You didn't even get what I was saying at all!

I realized our actual users with much lower math skills on the average might actually start typing AND in if I even mention it.

Robin recommended one brief sentence where I say that the system uses standard AND/OR Boolean logic with understood ANDs, which is all some people will need, and then lots of examples for those who don't. But I like to explain the examples! How can I explain without mentioning the assumed ANDs? Which I had to learn via trial and error because no one here has mentioned the word AND in relation to the system the entire 5.5 years I've been here. I think I'll just talk about how to read the list in English with lower-cased "and's" slipping in.

Now it's time to relax; we're going to watch one of the movies that came from Netflix. We've gotten through all the ones Robin lined up for when I was gone (as I recommended he do). No more graphic violence ("Dead Alive") or sex. We're watching either "Sunset" (an old western) or "Roman Holiday" (an older romance).

Broken thing of the day: In the test system, one command mutates a student's ID code into something it can't recognize and then gives you an error message.

One great thing about vacations is that when you get home there's a contrast between what you've become used to and what you were used to before, and certain things stand out.

One thing that stands out is that my job is stressful and that I enjoy dealing with this stress by eating continuously.

This probably means I should supply myself with foods that have a very high volume-to-calorie ratio. Like water. A little more crunch would be nice. Crushed ice, then. No, I don't think that would do it. Celery is exceptional in this regard. Unfortunately, it tastes disgusting to me.

Robin suggested that I get some kind of stress squish toy. And dress it up like my boss. Unfortunately, I find that letting loose with the physical, while great for getting some exercise, is not helpful in reducing my stress. In fact, I think it just gives it more power.

Another solution is to take breaks. I actually did storm out of the office at one point so I could get some serious cussing in where no one had to listen to me. But breaks have never really helped me. I hear that they allow you to return refreshed and energized, but this is not true for me. Sure, taking a break is great during the break. I am one of those people who can really take breaks and clear my mind of whatever. I really do leave work at work when I come home virtually all the time, for example. But then after the break, it's just as bad as before. I feel the same way while playing ultimate frisbee: I certainly feel less dead while taking a break than while playing, but the second I'm back in I feel dead again.

Another solution that works for me is to web surf. But I've been warned that they're doing computer spying at work now, so you have to be careful with that sort of thing.

Another solution is to get a better job, which I am working on. But all jobs have some forms of stress. It would be good to figure out a better way of dealing with it.

Meanwhile, there was ice cream at work today. I had four bowls of it. In addition to my morning snack of an energy bar and my afternoon snack of a too-large handful of nuts and of course my lunch. I consider that ice cream to be a perk of my job. But, you know, my extra chin is harder to see as a perk.

And what, specifically, made me want to cuss? It was recommended that in my online training documentation I define "simple." Um, isn't "simple" that thing that you don't have to define because it's just exactly what you expect? I do later say that you can't use complex forms, and the word "complex" is linked to a glossary entry which spells out exactly what elements are considered complex in this context. And I have an entire training module on complex rule types earlier on in the training. "But what if a person just goes right to this page without having read that?" Well, then they'll be clicking on some of the links I described. I'm sorry, no, I am not defining "simple."

Also, when I say that the thing I'm talking about can be contrasted to another thing and the name of that other thing is a link to a similar document for that other thing, and that other document has examples, then I am not putting any examples at all of that other thing in the document about the first thing. Jeez. How huge do they want these documents? They are already bloated to over four times their original size. I really only want to say everything once if possible. And it's still crazy and overwhelming.

And speaking of eating continuously, someone recently introduced me to the blog called hello I am fat. It's "one of those weight-loss blogs," not generally my favorite topic, but I love her voice. Here are some quotes I've enjoyed.

From last June 22:

Work is so easy. Eating at work, I mean. Because I can't sit at my desk and eat a ham, and since I work at a public service desk, I can't disappear into the break room and eat a Christmas turkey every ten minutes, and the food on campus sucks and the vending machine is almost always broken, if I simply remember to plan ahead, with my baggies of cereal and the lean cuisines and the yogurts and the fruit, I am golden all day. A beautiful golden god.

Home is less easy, even though I have learned the most important lesson about stocking your house with groceries, which is Do Not Leave a Bucket of Fried Chicken Or A Cake In Your House lesson. If you have the stuff within reach, look there you go! Reaching for it!

From last September 20:

Now here I am, the heavier than the heaviest ever (I think I prefer "heavy" to "fat." Heavy makes me sound like I am substantial and important. Fat makes me sound – well, you know. Fat. "But wait a second!" you say, and then I punch you. But not really, because I love you.), and getting on the scale this morning, after a week of back on weightwatchers, complete with an extra point because of my extra ass, I realized that all I want is to be back under my previous record for land mass. I want to be the previous heaviest ever again, because this weight I am now, it is unsupportable. It is insupportable. It sucks.

Site of the Day: hello I am fat's Retail Therapy (Warning: cuss words) - "I thought about it and it resonated with me, and I thought, fucking hell. I can't do this any more – squeezing into things and feeling ugly and uncomfortable and stupid. I can't sit around waiting to feel good, because that's just going to drive me to drink. More." This one is fabulously uplifting, and she gives you the secret, too.

It was supposed to rain, so I decided to hit some factory tours.

Lake Champlain Chocolates

(Scroll down for hot chocolate recipe.)

The Story

Once upon a time, a restaurant owner used to give his employees boxes of chocolates for special occasions. After a while, one of his chefs explained to him that although he really appreciated the gesture, the chocolate was kind of terrible. A challenge was issued, and the chef could, indeed, make tastier chocolates.

They started selling these chocolates at the restaurant, and eventually it grew to become half the business. Finally, the restaurant was sold and the chocolate company was spun off into its own business.

The Process

This factory is all tier three. Tier one chocolate making is located in tropical areas. This is where the cocoa beans are grown. Cocoa beans grow on trees. The pods grow directly from the trunk and large branches and are about the size and shape of a football. They are removed with machetes.

Inside the pods are lots of white, wet, and gooey beans the size of olives. They start to turn purple when they hit the air.

So to make chocolate, the first thing you do is pile up the cocoa beans on some banana leaves and cover them with more banana leaves and let them ferment for several days to develop their color and flavor.

Then set them on wood racks and turn them continuously to let them dry (which may take up to two weeks). By this time they are smaller, the size of almonds, and dark brown and hard.

Tier two is where the cocoa beans are processed to turn them into chocolate. First the beans are roasted. Then the shell, which is a little thicker than a peanut skin, is removed, leaving the nib. The nibs are then pressurized to form cocoa liquor, which consists of cocoa butter and cocoa mass. The cocoa mass is then processed to turn it into cocoa powder. At the very least it is ground more finely. It may also be processed with alkali (Dutch process) or other things.

To cocoa powder and cocoa butter, add sugar to get dark chocolate. To get milk chocolate, also add milk powder. White chocolate includes cocoa butter, sugar, and milk solids. Because white chocolate has no cocoa powder, some people (and laws) say it’s not really chocolate, even though cocoa butter comes from cocoa beans. Additional ingredients such as vanilla, may also be added, but only natural ingredients are used by Lake Champlain Chocolates.

Milk chocolate tastes sweeter than dark chocolate not because it has more sugar but because it has proportionately less cocoa powder, which is bitter.

The tour guide explained that the cocoa powder is the part of chocolate that has been found to have antioxidants, and so that is why it is sometimes recommended to have one ounce of dark chocolate per day. One ounce is about one-third of a candy bar. She did not explain that the calcium in milk interferes with the antioxidant properties of the cocoa.

So then once the chocolate is created, it is shipped to the Lake Champlain Chocolate Factory, in the form of what looks like flat chocolate chips, for the tier three processing, which is to mix it with other flavors and form it into shapes.

A lot of care is taken with temperature so that the finished chocolate is glossy and snaps when you break a piece off. If vegetable oil is used as an ingredient, the chocolate will bend instead of snap. If the chocolate’s temperature or humidity changes too abruptly at any point, a white film may form.

After melting, the chocolate gets piped to other areas.

For hollow chocolates, only one half of a mold is filled with chocolate, then the two halves are clamped together and the mold is clamped to a “magnetic tumbler.” This gives it the equivalent of a slow-motion amusement park ride. The mold is turned on a rod sticking out from a cylinder which is also revolving, all very slowly. (I had always thought of hollow chocolates as having less than half as much chocolate as solid would have had.)

One kind of chocolate may be hand painted onto part of the mold before the other chocolate is poured in to make a design.

Truffles have ganache centers. Ganache is made of cream, butter, and chocolate. Truffles are made with a pipe within a pipe. First chocolate is squirted through the exterior pipe. Then the ganache is squired through the interior pipe. Then more chocolate is squirted through the exterior pipe. This all happens very quickly.

Chocolate-covered solids with flat bottoms (such as turtles) first have the interiors created. Then these interiors are placed by hand on a conveyer belt. Part of the conveyer belt is dredged through chocolate at the bottom so that when it gets to the top, underneath the turtle, it coats the bottom of the turtle. At the other end of the conveyer belt is a short chocolate waterfall which covers the top of the turtles.

Chocolate-covered round things (such as nuts and malted balls) are put into a tumbler to get coated and to make the coating shiny.

My Experience

I arrived in time to take a tour with a busload of folks, but it was so crowded that I didn’t get to see some things as well as I wanted to. So I decided to go on another tour. It was free and I decided not to eat any samples the second time to be fair. I refrained from everything but the dark chocolate, fresh from the mold ten minutes previous to our getting it. I just wanted to see if I could taste the difference between fresh and regular chocolate (dark chocolate supposedly stays fresh the longest, at one year). No, I could not tell the difference.

Between tours I decided to buy something. I ended up choosing a hot chocolate, which was available at several levels of darkness. I chose the darkest one (75%), which turned out to be a little too dark for my tastes. I also paid attention to how it was made.

First the worker put in three tablespoons of the chocolate-chip things which were made of the 75% dark chocolate. Then she added one teaspoon of cocoa powder. Then 3/4 cup of milk. Then a candy thermometer. Then she heated the milk with a steaming wand, stopping to mix it occasionally, until the thermometer indicated the appropriate temperature (which I did not think to find out).

Between the tours I also got to see a film crew for a kids’ show interviewing some of the employees. If you’re watching a nonprofessional doing interviews, see if you can notice that one arm might be behind their back holding their list of questions.

Vermont Teddy Bear

I had a long wait for this tour. The best part of the wait was watching little kids get bears. There’s one kind of teddy bear you can get only at the factory.

While You Watch

First you choose the type of bear you want. There are also a couple of other options, like a dragon. You just pull an empty shell of an animal from a bin at the bottom of a long, wide pipe.

Then you stand in line to get your stuffing. The worker asks if you want your bear stuffed with happiness, friendship, giggles, or other choices. The youngest kids were most likely to choose giggles. Then the worker turned the dial to the appropriate section. Then you could step on a peddle to shoot out the stuffing while the worker held the bear over a pipe to fill the arms, legs, head, and then body.

The stuffing came out quite quickly, and the workers were amazing at dealing with the sudden stops and starts they got from the customers.

Then you get to hug your bear and decide if it is too firm, too floppy, or just right. Most people thought their bears were perfect right from the beginning, but one thought hers was too firm, so I got to see stuffing being pulled out and rearranged.

Then you get in another line where a worker sews up the back of your bear while you fill out its birth certificate. They used thick, white thread and the same stitch knitters use to connect pieces of garments, so just a little thread shows, and it’s buried in the thick fur.

I think I might have learned a new, quicker way to tie that first knot in thread. This new method involves wrapping the thread around the needle and pulling it through. I’ll have to try it out next time I replace button.

After the final knot is tied, the needle is pushed through the entire bear so it comes out the belly. Then you are directed to cut the umbilical cord. This leaves a long thread buried completely inside the bear. The time is declared, and you are directed to fill this time in on the birth certificate.

Then you are told to choose a bow tie (attached to a loop of elastic), which can be worn by the bear as a tie, a hair bow, or, by wrapping the elastic twice around an ear, like a barrette.

These jobs looked like pretty good factory jobs. All the kids were so cute and smily and just loved their bears the whole way through. They were so tickled with each part of the process, it was fun to watch. There was one eye-rolly grown-up just wanting to get through the process as quickly as possible; she didn’t even want a birth certificate. The employee operated the stuffing pedal for her.

The Tour

The tour started with a description of what makes Vermont Teddy Bears special.

For pictures and a different description, see the short online tour.

Several layers of fur fabric are cut at once. Then the pieces are sewn by hand. In films of sweatshop seamstresses, they always sewed things amazingly quickly. These guys were not doing that. They have to deal with tight curves and thick fabric. They carefully align things, then push a very short amount through the machine before aligning the next part.

The eyes are on rods pushed through the fabric and held on with plastic nuts screwed on and glued to the other side. The arms, legs, and head are similarly held on in a durable way. However, here the nut is not glued in place so that the limbs and head can turn all the way around.

The stuffing is polyester fiberfill because it fluffs back up after squishing and because it’s washable. The whole stuffing technology was originally developed to fill life jackets (aka personal flotation devices). The whole bear is washable, but you are not to put it through a dryer because the fur will matte up or, if it’s too hot, just melt away. This fire-resistant fur will melt before it flames.

Near the end of the tour we got to see the bear hospital where injured bears are nursed back to health. The tour guide emphasized that we should not try to fix a bear ourselves but send it back to trained professionals. She showed a head attached directly to an arm as an example of how things can go horribly wrong. And she talked about people who tried to sew their bears back together. Or glue them. Or her latest favorite--melt them. It’s easier to fix the bears without all the glue or the melting.