Jesse Peterson » Personal

Ironic Icealert

cubeinhabitant — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 04:09:15 +0000

At my place of employment, The Icealert System™ (trademark of Icealert, Inc.) was installed this fall at all of the doorways and the entrance driveway. The Icealert System™ display turns from white to blue when the potential for ice occurs. Now, I live and work in Iowa. We expect it to get cold. (It was a high of 13 degrees Fahrenheit today–which is below freezing, and a bit below the average of 31 [which is still below freezing]). So I was interested to see how The Icealert System™ would be helpful in such a climate where there are extended days, perhaps weeks, where it doesn’t get above freezing. I have been waiting for a day like today and was prepared with my camera phone to take this picture.

Snow covered Icealert indicator

The Icealert System™ indicator is showing “blue” because there is a potential for ice. Well, I guess there is more than potential, as half of the indicator is obscured by snow! This “obscured by snow” indication is not listed as a feature of the indicator on the The Icealert System™ web page. (In fact, in the pictures of the indicator on the companies web site, none of the picture show the indicator in snow.) This snow indication may be a hidden feature of the indicator–sweet.

This kind of reminds me of The Weather Rope. It is typically a board with one end of a small length of rope tied to the board and the other end of the rope is left dangling. There is some variation of this legend included on the board:

Rope	Weather
Still	Calm
Moving	Windy
Wet	Rain
Shaking	Earthquake
Gone	Tornado

Adelaide is 3!

cubeinhabitant — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:32:56 +0000

Yesterday was Adelaide’s third birthday. We had a party for her and this morning I was looking through the pictures. Kids are pretty amazing and grow up so fast. Here she is, three years ago, one day old, on March 1, 2006.

She is in the Mercy NICU in Cedar Rapids, IA. (Side note: This is the hospital where Nancy works.) (Side, side note: yesterday, 2/28/09, Mercy imploded one of their building that was damaged in the flood of 2008. It was a big deal for Cedar Rapids: the first known demolishion by implosion.) She was born at 32 weeks, 8 weeks early. She stayed just 2 weeks in the NICU and then was strong enough to come home.

Here she is, three years later, at her third birthday party yesterday.

She wanted a pirate themed party. (She can see just fine with both eyes. But pirates need an eye patch, of course. And they have a scowl and say, “Argh!”) You wouldn’t be able to tell that she was a preemie.

Addy’s Pirate Cupcakes

cubeinhabitant — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:13:02 +0000

Yesterday was Adelaide’s third birthday. The theme of her party was “Pirates”. We had the party at Happy Joe’s on the NE side of Cedar Rapids. Nancy purchased some pirate party supplies from Oriental Trading Company. Included were 12 pirate themed candles. You can see them in the upper left of the picture. There were pirate flags, treasure chests, and skull and cross bone candles. I made 48 cupcakes, so on the other 36, I piped black tinted frosting to make the flag and white frosting to make the skull and cross bones. (Lower right of picture) The cake mix was from a box, but I made the frosting from the Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition – 2006: “Quick White Icing”. We only had about 8 cupcakes left over from yesterday. They were still good today.

Just read: Watchmen

cubeinhabitant — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:05:38 +0000

I just finished reading Watchmen. This has been a story that I have wanted to read for some time, but with the impending release of the movie on March 6, 2009, I decided that I should read the book before seeing the movie. I am glad that I did. This was such a good graphic novel. It is very ‘dense’. I don’t know how better to describe it. There is some much story packed into the book. If you think that it is just a “comic book”, with the standard panel layout, you would be wrong. In addition to very detailed panels, there are graphical ‘excerpts’ of newspapers and books. These are included at the end of each chapter. They are not just novelty, but they add to the story. There is even a comic within the comic that ties in to the story. This all adds to the story by providing a depth of layers. I now understand why this book is so celebrated: it is so good.

I highly recommend it.

Sydney started kindergarten today

cubeinhabitant — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:34:17 +0000

Today was Sydney’s first day of kindergarten. We saw her off this morning on the school bus. The bus was a bit late. I bet that we were towards the end of the route. And I bet that it was late because every other parent did like us; take a picture of our child as she got on the bus.

She “ate” her lunch today…well, just the peanut butter sandwich. She didn’t eat the carrots or cheese. Though that was pretty good for her, considering that she had never eaten a peanut butter sandwich until a little over a month ago. (She likes peanut butter, but in a bowl and eating it with a spoon.)

Today was an early dismissal. Tomorrow is the first full day. We will see how that goes.

Surprised at Starbucks, morning coffee was free

cubeinhabitant — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:23:50 +0000

I was very surprised this morning at my local Starbucks. I stopped by the drive through window after church for my standard grande cappuccino. There was a car in front of me. When I got up to the window, I could see that there were a larger than normal number of customers inside the store. When the barista handed me my drink, I had my Starbucks card ready. But she said not to worry, it was on the house for having to wait so long. I said thank you very much.

I wonder if this is related to Starbucks refocusing on customer service and providing good coffee. I was impressed by the local store’s ability to allow a front-line employee who interacts with a customer the latitude to provide a free drink. This is the type of discretion can also be found at my favorite vacation spot, Walt Disney World. I didn’t complain about the wait, but the server provided a pleasant customer service experience for me. She was proactive. And it made me write this post. (Though that won’t get them a lot of free publicity. It is mostly my family who reads this, and they aren’t coffee drinkers.)

Primal Quest – Montana 2008

cubeinhabitant — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:44:53 +0000

My brother John is on his way today to Montana to participate in Primal Quest – Montana 2008. He is on team eCountryLifestyle.com, #65. He has done adventure races before, but never a 10 day, 800KM course.

Unexpected but refreshingly frank information from the web: Don’t see “Sweet November”

cubeinhabitant — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:22:42 +0000

So I was looking at a Java tool called Bean Builder. (Geeky stuff.) It is a tool for working with visual JavaBean graphical elements. So, I was reading the content on the main site. In a normal western language style, I was reading from top to bottom, left to right. Towards the bottom, after the scroll, I started to read the “Documentation” section. First I see the “README” link. I click it and read through the README. I hit the browser back button. Okay, next is the “Tutorial for the Bean Builder”. Noted, I will check that out later. “Bean Builder Architecture” link; maybe read sometime after I get a sample working. Ah, last link, “A Manifesto for Component Assembly”. What’s this? It says:

“A bit of a ramble about the future of programming that I wrote on a plane because the movie sucked. Don’t see “Sweet November” starring Keanu Reeves. It really does suck.”

Wow. I didn’t see that coming. I just found it a bit humorous to see this amongst the other, dryer, geekier information on the technical software page.

non-eBay item: Nintendo Game Boy Advance Home Brew Kit

cubeinhabitant — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:11:01 +0000

Notice that this is a non-eBay item. I tried to list it on eBay, but eBay won’t accept it because it could be used to circumvent copyright. But last time I checked, a general purpose computer could be used to circumvent copyright. I wasn’t using it to circumvent copyright. I wrote a program that would display pictures on the Game Boy. For instance, right now, the cartridge has a program that I wrote that displays two baby pictures of Sydney. I was also looking at the Game Boy hardware as a potential for some sort of visual display, like a gauge or something. It could be hooked up to the computer and display additional information on its screen, like the current number of unread emails, the current temperature, or something. I never went much further with this though because the screen was relatively hard to read in low light conditions like my normal programming environment. Hmf. DMCA and the ilk strike a blow against using hardware that you bought how you want to. Anyway, this is what the eBay listing would have been…

Includes

1 Game Boy Advance – used, but in very good condition. Only used by adult in home brew software development.
1 Game Boy Advance SP – used, but in very good condition. Only used by adult in home brew software development. Includes cord for recharging Game Boy and original box.
1 Flash Advance Pro Linker – Includes the actual Flash Advance Pro Linker used to transfer programs to 256M (bit) card (included). The 256M card is used to store home brew software on. The card can then be inserted into the Game Boy Advance or Game Boy Advance SP. The game system will then run the software stored on the cartridge. The Flash Advance Pro Linker is designed to attach to a parallel port. An original floppy disk includes Windows software for transferring files to the cartridge. A power cord for the Flash Advance Pro Linker is also included.
1 MultiBoot Version 2 – Includes the MutltiBoot device for downloading software to Game Boy internal memory. Designed to connect to a Windows parallel port for programming and serial port for debugging. Includes the original floppy disk.

I haven’t actually used this hardware for a couple years. But when I was using it, I wanted to create my own programs for the Game Boy Advance. For instance, I created a little program that would display digital pictures on the Game Boy Advance. This system, along with software and information available at sites like http://www.gbadev.org can provide information on how to get started programming for a portable game system.

eBay item: Garmin GPS 25-LVC

cubeinhabitant — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:01:50 +0000

I have just posted an eBay auction for a Garmin GPS 25-LVC. I bought this component from Garmin a couple years ago. I was going to use it a home automation device as a source of accurate time. But I never got around to using it. (I can blame it on becoming a father. Or just my own laziness.)

[Updated 2/24/2008: Item sold for winning bid of $11.00.]