A Geek for all Seasons

Yesterday and today brought a couple of important successes - although neither was as complete as I had hoped.

On Thursday, I had a "conference call" with the IRS Appeals office.  Back in February, the IRS had sent me a note saying I owed self-employment tax for 2005.  From 2004 to 2006, I had a research grant from the National Research Council to work at the Naval Research Lab.  The terms of the grant didn't require me to do much in particular - no timesheet, for example, and I could pretty much set the agenda for my research.  As a result, I wasn't considered an employee of the National Research Council.  Nothing was taken out of my stipend so I had to pay quarterly federal & state taxes.  There was a big question when I got the grant about whether I would count as self-employed and whether I'd have to pay the self-employment tax.  NRC's accountants said no, and had precedent to back 'em up...  but the tax form they sent me was a 1099-MISC, so it wasn't entirely a surprise that the IRS thought maybe I had been self-employed...  Anyhow, it took me a while to reply to the IRS's February letter.  (I was rather focussed on getting hitched.)  When I did, the early, easy-response option had expired and I had to pay a $60 fee to file a petition contesting the IRS's decision.  Fortunately, I didn't have to hire a lawyer.  My case gradually wormed its way through the system, with me faxing several documents off to the IRS Appeals office.  The "conference call" included only myself and one other person - to whom I'd spoken before.  She said she'd read the documents I'd sent in, and was "inclined to agree" with me.  She has to check a couple details before the ruling's official, so I'm not completely out of the woods yet - but it looks like I won't have to pay the $8622 in back taxes and penalties.

Today, I spent a lot of time trying to work out some kinks with my USB system at work.  Briefly, I'd upgraded my work computer, but not the computer controlling the data acquisition (DAQ) system.  Since I do nearly all of the DAQ programming, my computer's the test-bed for any new features of the DAQ.  After updating the OS, I found I could no longer communicate with the oscilloscopes that formed the backbone of the DAQ system.  Since I knew I'd tested all the software running in the screen room on my own machine, my attention immediately turned to figuring out what had changed during the operating system upgrade.   I spent a lot of time on that, and never could get a simple test program to work...  But today I found that the screen-room (DAQ-controlling) computer spoke to the scopes via an external USB hub.  When I attached the hub to the computer on my desk, everything ran fine....  The original (and major) code I used assumes there's a hub present, and since it's been about a year since I wrote it, I'd forgotten how important that assumption was.  The catch is, my little test program (which emphatically knows nothing about hubs) still doesn't work - on either machine.  So I still want to know what the little program is doing wrong.  Whatever the issue, though, I can get on with other parts of my job - like upgrading the main DAQ system.  I just wish it hadn't taken me so much time & effort to get to this point.

I just happened across a news article documenting mass political killings carried out by South Koreans.  Not only did the US know about the murders at the time they occurred, but the US helped to cover them up.  The whole episode was classified Secret, and the US dismissed North Korean reports of the slaughter as lies.  Over 100,000 people died without trial, and in many cases, without evidence or official charge.

And we claim to be the good guys.

I'm not going to go on an anti-US tear here.  Despite its faults, I like my country.  I am, however, frustrated at the official lack of sympathy for innocent bystanders killed by our policies, and the public assumption that we are innocent of any wrongdoing, no matter the resultant death toll.  I'm also frustrated that there's a commonly-voiced argument that the U.S. (and by extension, its allies), are defending themselves.  Anyone who disputes this is assumed to be either crazy or evil, or both.  Yet we should recognize that those who dislike the results of our policies have legitimate complaints.  Time and again, we have characterized our enemies as barbaric and unprincipled.  This dehumanization and fear can be used as justification for imprisonment and execution despite poor evidence.

Such views are not limited to America or modern times, of course.

So what do we do?  There are extremists who wish to kill us, and who will willingly sacrifice themselves to do so.  The usual response has been to recruit those who are willing to risk their lives in order to kill extremists.  But if our soldiers kill too many innocents - or do not provide ample evidence that those killed are, in fact, guilty - it fuels resentment and fear among those who do not automatically assume our soldiers are good.  Those people then see the U.S. as a nation of extremists, unwilling to compromise, unwilling to police itself.  By recklessly entering an "us or them" mentality, we encourage our opponents to do the same.  Extremism breeds extremism.  A blanket dismissal (by either side) of openness, compromise & discussion restricts the opposing side's options to two:  violence and passively waiting for violence.

How do we break the cycle?  One option is to be more aggressive and better at violence than any conceivable opponent.  Another is to surrender to the inevitable.  Neither route is moral.  How do we preserve our moral authority?

"False positives" in this context mean classifying someone as an enemy when they are in fact a friend or neutral.  False positives undermine a war effort by generating internal fighting and making us seem barbaric and unprincipled to our enemies and neutral parties.  This in turn leads to wasted resources and increased recruitment possibilities for our enemies.

"False negatives" here would mean classifying an enemy as a friend or neutral.  Such errors lead to infiltration of our military or intelligence agencies, and to direct attacks upon our civilians and soldiers.

No policy is capable of eliminating all false positives or all false negatives.  A given policy may be biased one way or the other, but in a wartime context, we will make mistakes resulting in innocents' deaths.  Minimizing the noncombatant death toll requires several key policy elements:

Publicly acknowledge every person we've killed or imprisoned, the evidence we have against them, and the rationale for our actions.
Admit mistakes, apologize for them, and make reparations to their families and communities.
Publicly discipline those soldiers, generals, and politicians who have demonstrated recklessness, a bias toward either false negatives or false positives, or torture / imprisonment / execution of suspects in violation of official policy.
Understand what motivates our enemies, how they see us, and how they view themselves.
Understand the differences between various groups who hold a grudge toward us.  The current situation in Iraq is complicated by three Shiite groups (Sadr, Maliki, and Iran), three branches of Islam (Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis), more than seven sovereign nations (Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Jordan), and at least one international terrorist organization (al-Qaida).  Each group has its own agenda.  None of them see the agenda simply as "destroy America" or "destroy Iraq".  All of them have reasons to distrust America.
Negotiate where possible.
Publicly criticize our allies when they fall short on issues of human rights and justice.
Understand and exploit internal divisions within each group of opponents.
Use violence as a last resort...  but keep it as an option.
Make each opponent see a benefit to working with us and a danger of working against us.
Be public, clear, and honest about our own objectives.

1.  My code at work had kittens.  ( I rather enjoy the metaphor for having to split one large, unwieldy block spinning off several smaller, more manageable blocks...  the process is messy and somewhat unintentional, and required a fair bit of clean-up.  Afterwards, everything will hopefully be reasonably coordinated.)

2.  California's Supreme Court has a clue.  I've run into several arguments against gay marriage, all of which make no sense.  They're neatly listed and summed up (with reductio ad absurdum counterarguments) here.
    The most common (non-religious) counterargument seems to be that marriage is an institution built around raising children.  Although many places have proposed laws restricting marriage to one man and one woman, I've never heard of a restriction barring marriage by the infertile.
    The second counterargument is that marriage is a fairly meaningless right, and that forbidding it to certain people doesn't measurably harm them.  Marriage is, however, a factor in a huge number of federal and state laws, including taxes, death & disability benefits, adoption, domestic violence, hospital visitation rights, default power-of-attorney, inheritance, insurance, housing, immigration, education, and social security.
    While I'm obviously pleased by the California Supreme Court's view on the matter (including the details that the court is majority-Republican and Gov. Schwarzenegger doesn't intend to contest the ruling), I'm nervous about the possible backlash.  Gay marriage was a factor in the 2004 election though probably not a deciding one.  McCain opposes gay marriage, although it should be noted that all three candidates have avoided taking strong stances on the issue.
    It's often said (by Republicans) that such issues should be left to the legislative, directly-elected branches of the government.  This flies in the face of the Constitution's creation of the Judiciary as a branch co-equal with the Executive and Legislative branches.
    Still, I'm nervous when the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are in conflict.  In CA's case, the judiciary is the lone backer of a gay marriage right.  This is a victory, but it's not over till the calls fade for a DOMA at the state and federal levels.

I had a few comic book subscriptions when I was young.  One of them was Iron Man.  This was during the period when the suit was worn by James Rhodes ("Rhodey").  All I knew about Tony Stark going in was he the original inventor of the suit...  and later became a homeless alcoholic.  I'll try to avoid spoilers:

    The movie was great.  Rhodes and Stark have well-developed, distinct personalities, and you can clearly see the tendencies which will lead eventually to Stark's downfall and Rhodes'.  The romantic tension simmers between Stark and his assistant, Pepper Pots.  It's a four-color comic, and the good guys are clearly good (despite a few flaws), and the bad guys are thoroughly ruthless.  Despite that, the bad guys don't make any classic villain mistakes.  Stark himself is clearly a reckless playboy genius, and although I have some mild complaints about the (lack of) realism in his safety procedures, those mistakes fit the character rather well.  His AI assistants are unrealistically competent and his inventions are unrealistically powerful, but that fits the genre just fine.  There's a brief appearance by Nick Fury, and I whole-heartedly approve the casting choice.  The Iron Man suit is incredible, but not invincible, and it goes through multiple revisions over the course of the show.  Several minor characters get good lines and solid roles, and they overall give the impression of real people with detailed backgrounds, even if those backgrounds are not directly referenced.
    Stark's lines and presentation in the early part of the movie - during the pre-capture flashback - are very pro-military.  Being more of the pacifist stripe myself, I was a bit annoyed by it.  After he escapes, there's a brief swing in the anti-military direction, and I became a bit annoyed by that as well.  By the end of the show, I think the military establishment is painted in a very fair light.  Soldiers are trying to do the right thing, but violent force is the tool they know best.  They generally don't "shoot first & ask questions later," but once they've tried asking questions and not received a favorable response, they're perfectly willing to shoot potential hostiles.  The problem is not the military itself, but the spread of military capabilities to those who are unscrupulous in its use.
    Lastly, make sure you stay to the end of the credits.

The past few weeks have been pretty busy at work...  To cite the big-scary event:

We've got one of our big plasma guns installed over at University of Maryland / Maryland Centrifugal Experiment (MCX, where I did my graduate work):

MCX gun firing

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On Monday I was over at MCX to take some data with the gun on the MCX machine.  There was a short in the MCX capacitor bank just before it reached 10 kV.  The energy released was something like a 1-ton SUV hitting a brick wall at 60 mph.  (Yes, I did the calculation.)  It was loud.  There was a flash inside the screen room (which means high voltage got back there somehow.)  There was also a huge cloud of smoke in the experimental area... No one was hurt, but multiple breakers were tripped, and the lights were still off in part of the lab when I left.  Also, their data-acquisition system's down, but I don't know how bad the damage is to it.  Several cables were vaporized.  Several more were melted.  The guys doing HVAC work in the building came by.  I kicked them out.  Vocally.  Firmly.  They don't do High-Voltage, and having untrained folks nearby when you're trying to figure out What Nearly Killed You is a recipe for disaster.  The MCX folk and I went in to crisis mode, quickly shutting down everything, bang-sticking all the HV equipment (and some of the low-voltage stuff to make sure).

    I don't think any of the HyperV stuff is damaged, but I won't know for sure until I get back over there and do a detailed check.  Near as we can figure, one of the high-voltage cables in the charging circuit was under tension.  It happened to snap during charging, and whipped back to touch a contact for 120 V AC, thus shorting about 10,000 Volts to lines rated for about 600 V.

   Boom.

The wedding was great - but exhausting

The day started at 7 AM (sort of)...  We had gone to bed well past midnight Friday night after the Rehearsal Dinner (organized by giddysinger's parents - Thank You!) and hanging out with several friends from out of town.  Neither of us slept very well, and somewhere around 4 AM, my hubby-to-be siad in a quite conversational tone, "Are you getting as much sleep as I am?"

"Almost."  Nervousness kept me up for most of the night, and when the alarm went off at 7, it was almost a relief to have the clock's blessing to get up and start trying to resolve the last of the plans.  I took a shower, helped a bit with the writing of the programs and the Danger sign for the Jacob's Ladder (picture to be added later), and then was off to the beauty parlor.  (Paid for by my step-mother;  Thank You!)  The morning was a blur - I probably answered some wedding-related emails and made a call or three.  My sweet focused in on the final details of the wedding program.  (We had stopped work on it the previous night after realizing we couldn't think clearly.)

After getting my nails, hair, and makeup done, I called the Prime Maven, who had been assigned the task of finding corsages for the four mothers.  She reported success, and when I asked where she was, she giggled "Your living room."

"Excellent."  Her next task was to get me (and the newly-printed programs) over to the church.  We scarfed down a brief lunch and piled into her mother's van with both dresses, official documents for the minister to sign, the guest book, and earrings for Ruthie, who was to be our greeter.  I fielded a couple more phone calls en route, and once we were on site, I balanced sending documents & items to appropriate people and getting dressed.  (Actually, most of the dressing-of-me was done by Mary and Cathy...  It's impossible to don the appropriate undergarments and the dress solo.)  Meanwhile the boys were off setting up the reception hall.

The main event started on time.  I hid behind a pillar outside the sanctuary until the Matron / Maid / Maven of Honor started down the aisle.  When she did, Father and I moved up and my heart began racing.  Suddenly my eyes were filled with tears.  This was really happening - I was excited, overjoyed, and terrified all at once.  Dad asked the name of the piece the pianist was playing.  "Ummm - some Trumpet voluntary."

"It's the same piece your mother and I used in our wedding." 

Then we started walking.  As our volunteer photographer began snapping pictures (Thank you!), I realized tears were running down my face, and that my carefully-applied makeup was probably running wild.  My love was waiting at the front, and with an encouraging squeeze, my father placed my hand in my groom's.  He was beaming.  I kept looking around the room and realizing (nearly) all my friends were present, and that they were all smiling at us.  Snuggly man's mother opened with a brief reading, the reverend said a few things, then my mom went up to play her violin.  There were readings by the two fathers, a recorder piece by a couple of our close friends, and a song with the congregation.  It was wonderful.  When Rev. Alexander asked the congregation if they supported this union, my heart and mind froze for a moment until the powerful "We do" reached us.  I felt I could barely hear or speak the vows, then it was done.  Some more approval and encouragement from Scott, followed by the Revels contingent leading the attendees in Calon Lan.  Then we were out and done.

Along the way I had been stunned by the beauty of the church decorations.  I had asked Charlene for "a few bows" to put at the ends of the first few rows.  In addition to those, there were long ribbons along the banisters and flowers swirled around the music stands.  I hear that she had a tough time getting to the church, but everything was set up and wonderful by the time I came in.  Thank you to everyone who helped with the decorations.

There was a receiving line, while one of my bridesmaids braved the wind and rain to gather the outside decorations.  We went back to the sanctuary a little later for photos while the non-principals headed over to the reception hall.

It was great.  I'm very glad so many people could make it.

Thank you to everyone who helped put this thing together.

And I'll probably have to post more on the reception later...

Someone sent a very nice bunch of white flowers to my door today.  In a big blue vase.

There was no note.

giddysinger denies he's responsible...

My B-day's today, and I had a bridal shower yesterday, and Valentine's was last Thursday, so I can come up with a couple of possible reasons for it...  And perhaps a short list of suspects, but... um...

To whoever sent them:  Thank you.

My bridemaids (Aemccurry, TeleriB, and Mary) are nuts.

They're also wonderful.

Little known fact:  Before I knew most of my current friends, I hung out with a bunch of goths back in college and would occasionally go dancing with them.  The girls knew this and somehow got it into their heads to throw a goth-themed bridal shower for me.  Giddysinger's step-mother and father hosted the event, and their house was filled with black drapery and some repurposed Halloween decorations...  Everyone was in black and seemed to be having a good time playing things up - even though none of the attendees were native to the scene.  Much of the food was dark (blue-corn chips, red grapes, almond-stuffed dates, pomegranate juice, and red velvet cake were all prominent) and all of it was tasty:

Munchies

One of my guy friends and a veteran of the original goth-themed crew had created a 3-CD mix of appropriate music which was playing in the background throughout the party.  At the end, I got the collection.  Although I have a few of the songs in my collection already, most of it falls into the category of "heard it & liked it while dancing at the Capital Ballroom, but never learned the title and artist."

We created our "Goth Names" (mine forms the title above), and Arabella did our makeup appropriately.  There were also temporary tattoos (my first - a dragon on my right forearm).  The gifts were plentiful and wonderful, and everyone seemed to have a wonderful time.

Thanks to all who came.
Thank you to everyone who brought / sent a gift.
Thank you to my bridesmaids and Roberta for organizing and hosting this party.

I had a blast.

(To those of you who took pictures: please send me digital copies.  The above is the only one on my camera.)

The invitations are all but done:

    Everything's been printed and stuffed into appropriately-addressed envelopes, incl. Invitation, Reply Card, Reply Card Envelope, Directions, and Inner and Outer Envelopes.  I've got a little bit of blank stationary left over corresponding to all those pieces.  All that's left is to take the pile (60+ envelopes) down to the post office and get postage....  That'll happen Saturday, exactly 1 week after I had orignally planned, but still within Ettiquette guidelines of 6-8 weeks prior to M-Day.

It occurs to me that I didn't put any notes in about the wedding rehearsal...  but I'm in reasonably good contact with my bridesmaids, and can easily make sure the minister, my mom, and pianist know the time as well.  Should do that soon.  Must also get the snuggly man to pass the word on to his guys.

Should finalize wedding registry ASAP.

Hopefully none of the non-invited folks will take offense....
I omitted the "and Guest" for several of my single friends without thinking about it...  dunno how that plays.  If any of them ask, they're welcome to bring a date.  I'm mainly worried about total head count, and a couple extra shouldn't make a difference.  Some folks got the "and Guest,"  some didn't.  Not sure why.  Hopefully no drama.
WIDE range of political perspectives will be at this thing....  Hopefully no drama.
I've been warned that some dancers are considering crashing the reception.  Hopefully the timing will work out to a break for the Live Musicians.  Must coordinate & plan timing of toasts, cake-cutting, dancing, etc.  hopefully they'll either eat beforehand or give me a count of the number I'm supposed to feed.
Hopefully no one will get too close to the Fully Operational Battlestation.  It'll have warning labels and interlocks, and a nearby Responsible Adult, but one can never be too careful...  Of course, it's not fully operational yet.  Expect pictures when it is.... unless we decide to keep it a surprise.
Hopefully my SCAdian friends will figure out who these invites are from - we all play under alternate names there, and it's quite possible they won't recognize the names on the invites.
And of course, I'm aware of several smudges, misspellings, and associated minor mistakes that made it through the printing & assembly process.  But at this point, I just want to send this out the door and move on to the next task.

Since college, I would occasionally respond to criticisms of my grammar / spelling with "look, this isn't my native language."  Since I was born & raised in TX and have been an English-speaker all my life, this would draw a quizzical look and the question "Well then what is?"
    Math.
    Forgive the hubris of that statement and bear with me for a moment - in some ways I'm very comfortable describing things in mathematical terms, more so than in "natural" language.  Unfortunately, there are many concepts that don't translate very well.  For example, here's the best I can come up with for "Have a happy holiday" in physics / mathematical notation:

X = <You | happiness | Holiday>
X_{realized} >= X_i for each internally-consistent wavefunction i

The right-hand side of the first line's adapted from quantum mechanics' bra-ket notation:  All three components are required to be nouns.  The first and third are possible states of a given system, and the second's a quantity we want to describe / measure.  Formally, the bra (<You|) and the ket (|Holiday>) should be states of the same system, for example the ground and first-excited energy levels of a hydrogen atom.  Using them here as intuitively separate objects is stretching the concept quite a bit...  Together the bra and ket (bra-ket, you see?  the spelling's funny 'cause the notation was invented by a Dutchman) describe the overlap between the two states.  <You| happiness |holiday> is therefore a measurement (or predicted measurement) of the happiness resulting when you and the holiday intersect.

The X is just there to label the happiness of the overlap state so that I don't have to scribble down the  bra-ket on the subsequent line.  The second line's present just to say that we want X maximal...  since there are several conceivable ways your holiday happiness could go...  Of all those ways (i), we want the ones which maximize your happiness (X_i).  This is called a selection rule.

anywho....

you have been physicked.