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Job Interview Update

by Al June 14, 2022
written by Al

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was going on a job interview. I did and was actually offered the job but ended up turning it down. The process had started with a recruiter contacting me and telling me about a job that had come up that was a close match to my skillset. Usually, I just ignore these calls because more often that not, they’re not even close to matching what I do. This time though it was a good match so I decided to pursue it. Before going too deep into it, I told the recruiter my salary requirements. I’ve run into situations before where a company wants to hire an experienced engineer but wants to …

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June 14, 2022 0 comments
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Technology

Improving the Music Inventory Example from Head First Object Oriented Analysis and Design

by Al June 13, 2022
written by Al

I’ve been refreshing my knowledge of software design by working through the book, ‘Head First Object Oriented Analysis and Design.’ One of the examples that they use to show how designs can evolve and be improved upon over time is an application that is used to track musical instruments inventory. The initial design of the app is poor in that it lacks maintainability and requires modification of existing classes (one of the no-no’s of SOLID design principles) and the addition of many new classes any time you want to add a new instrument type to the application. In chapter 5 of the book, they improve the design considerably by replacing unique classes for each instrument with a single class, InstrumentSpec …

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June 13, 2022 0 comments
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Personal

Mail and E-mail

by Al May 29, 2022
written by Al

Yesterday, I was thinking about how much e-mail is like regular mail. When I was a kid, during summer vacation, I couldn’t wait for the mail to arrive, always believing that today would be the day that something really cool would appear. It never did. Mostly the mail consisted of ads and bills. I do the same with e-mail now. When I’m working on my computer, every time the e-mail chime goes off I’m immediately checking to see what came in, expecting it to be something interesting. It seldom is. Like regular mail, it mostly contains ads and bills. The only difference is that now I get to pay those bill instead of my parents paying them.

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May 29, 2022 0 comments
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Personal

New Toy – Husqvarna 525RC Brushcutter

by Al May 27, 2022
written by Al

I purchased a Husqvarna 525RC Brushcutter at the local Lowes today. I mentioned in a previous post how I had replaced the carburetor on an old brushcutter that I owned and was still having a few problems with it. I planned on troubleshooting it and hoped to find out what was going on with it but decided I really needed something now so I ended up buying the Husqvarna instead. The unit is solid, well built and a lot more powerful than the previous brushcutter. It vibrates a whole lot less than the old brushcutter and because of that it’s a lot more pleasant to use. Assembly was relatively easy but the instructions weren’t all that great. Lots of little …

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May 27, 2022 0 comments
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Personal

Job Interview

by Al May 26, 2022
written by Al

I had an onsite job interview today. This was a follow up to a phone interview that took place last week. After completing the phone interview I was pretty sure that I had done well and was under consideration so when they called me in for a face to face I wasn’t really all that surprised. What did surprise me is when I got there, it appeared that they had pretty much decided they would already hire me and that this second ‘interview’ was more a chance to see the place than it was additional vetting. I was also surprised that it looks like if the details can be ironed out, I’ll be starting next week. The new place is …

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May 26, 2022 0 comments
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Personal

Dentist Appointment and Installing a Carburetor

by Al May 25, 2022
written by Al

Dentist appointment this morning. I had my teeth cleaned. The most painful part was paying for it out of my own pocket because I don’t currently have dental insurance. When I semi-retired last fall I looked into it but it appeared that after you got the insurance, you had to wait anywhere from six months to a year for most of the benefits to kick in. Didn’t seem like a good deal to me. I spent the afternoon installing a new carburetor on a brush cutter/weed wacker. I’ve had the thing for a number of years now and did little maintenance on it outside of changing the sparkplug. Last year it seemed sluggish, this year it seemed really sluggish. Sometimes …

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May 25, 2022 0 comments
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Fun

When Good Toilet Seats Go Bad

by Al May 24, 2022
written by Al

My family says I’m cheap. I like to think of myself as frugal. It’s not that I won’t spend money or always go for the cheapest deal. It’s just that I won’t spend money on something that I don’t perceive as worth it. I’ll buy the top of the line if it gives me something that other products don’t but I won’t spend money needlessly for status or prestige. Sometimes that gets me into trouble. The other day our toilet seat broke. One of the hinges on the back snapped off. (Perhaps we should consider diets.) Anyway, it was time to replace it so I looked at the seats that were available at The Home Depot. Thirty dollars for a …

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May 24, 2022 0 comments
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Python

Python Dictionary Comprehension

by Al February 27, 2022
written by Al

I’ve been busy refreshing my Python skills by working through the excellent udemy, 100 Days of Code: The Complete Python Pro Bootcamp for 2022 course by Dr. Angela Yu. I’m currently working on day 48 which involves scrapping the Upcoming Events section of the Python.org website using the Selenium WebDriver. In the example code, Dr. Yu shows how to write the output of the scrapping operation into a dictionary using a for loop but says that it also could be accomplished using dictionary comprehension. I decided that would be an interesting challenge and would help to reinforce my knowledge of dictionary comprehension so I gave it a try. I thought that it would be a fairly easy thing to do …

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February 27, 2022 0 comments
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AstronomyPhotographyTechnology

Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula

by Al November 15, 2021
written by Al

The Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula (lower left). Narrowband hydrogen-alpha, sulfur II and oxygen III data was acquired over two nights, processed using Pixinsight and the channels were mapped to the Hubble Palette. Not my favorite color combination but it does bring out a lot of detail in the image. Astrophotography is tough. Before you can produce anything of interest, you first need to learn how to use your equipment to acquire images and then you need to learn how to use the software tools to process those images. On the acquisition side, you’re having to master the use of a lot of different hardware. You need to understand and be able to set up a telescope, a mount, an …

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November 15, 2021 0 comments
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Personal

Retired?

by Al October 9, 2021
written by Al

Maybe, maybe not. To be determined. All I know is that for the last year or so, I sat in a little room, masked up and pretty much chained to an x-ray machine developing software for the company’s next generation system. The people there were nice, the product was interesting but I just decided I couldn’t take it any more. Most places where I have worked I’ve been able to shift my hours around a bit so that I could come in early and leave early, allowing me to have a little bit of time to do the things that I want. Unfortunately, at this place for a good portion of the year they held meetings from 5 to 6 …

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October 9, 2021 0 comments
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