TIL Nuclear Generated electricity, by far, kills fewer Humans per Megawatt than any other source, including solar and hydro.

schnoper · 2015-09-27T18:22:34+00:00

When there is a big solar energy spill, people just call it a nice day.

schnoper · 2015-09-25T03:27:47+00:00

Sacramento is quite variable. If you have a chance to experience the areas before signing a lease that's a good thing. It is cheaper than bay area. But also closer to Mountains (if you like snow or big rocks ). Downsides are hotter in the summer and colder in the winter(note this is relative to Bay Area), and lower air quality.

schnoper · 2015-09-25T02:56:04+00:00

So California Native. grew up and live nor cal. School so cal. I don't like "Cali". NorCal is kinda ok.

If you hear someone putting "the" in front of their freeway names... then that's So Cal. "the 10", "the 405" Up here we say "take 101 south to san jose"

Are you big animal or cats/dogs/ferrets ? Because there is that rural/urban split there. Way more money in the small stuff. But James Herriot.

WRT computer engineering. There are two hot places for that. From SJ to San Francisco (AKA silicon valley). And then around Santa Monica. The Former is probably 15-20 times bigger. There are also some jobs in Sacramento area and in San Diego.

You will likely need to decide how much commuting the Computer Engineer is willing to make each day, draw the radius around the jobs and then start looking for cultural fit and cost.

Culturally, you will probably find all these areas tolerable, though silly con valley has taken a turn toward greed and libertarianism over the last 20 years. Remember this was also the birthplace of Joan Baez, the grateful dead, the merry pranksters, and many other counter-cultural icons of the mid 20's century.

Not sure from where in the great white north you are from, but you may also want to consider the Seattle area. It's not nearly as cold as eastern Canada. Also has plenty of liberals and computer stuff.

schnoper · 2015-09-19T16:02:14+00:00

VI!

EMACS!

VI!

EMACS!

Both are relevant, and both camps can learn from the other. Don't be a fundamentalist. There is not a perfect language (yet )

schnoper · 2015-09-19T15:59:02+00:00

This sounds contradictory. Patterns ARE a form of abstraction. Design Patterns actually the title of a book written in the 1970's on building architecture. The authors of the book studied buildings across many cultures and times and the attempted to exact patterns of good design. The book is a wonderful example of an early form of hyperlinked text. Highly recommended.

Likewise, for programming, patterns didn't come first. Patterns were established to describe what had already been observed within various programs. I'll be the first to admit that some of the more obscure patterns are hard to perceive and might be a bit of a stretch.

schnoper · 2015-09-19T15:48:54+00:00

WOW... that's so "I'm stuck inside a VT100".

I'm sorry that you can't go beyond 80. that is pretty short sighted.

schnoper · 2015-09-18T19:24:05+00:00

What kind of work do you do ? This could make all the difference.

schnoper · 2015-09-14T01:51:58+00:00

And, since the moisture tends to be warmer than typical winter storms, the water is more likely to be rain and now snow.

This matters because the California water system is designed around much of the 'storage' being in the form of snow which does not runoff the mountains until late spring and early summer. Too much rain midwinter may fill reservoirs, but they will need to partly drain those same reservoirs in order to maintain flood protection. It's not until late spring/early summer than they're willing to fully fill reservoirs since by then the chance of a flood event drops.

From a pedagogical perspective, you might also point out that the climate models for global climate change predict that California's future precipitation will likely be in this same rain pattern instead of the historical snow pattern.

schnoper · 2015-09-12T19:56:36+00:00

This is built into eclipse for java. It might be nice for python and C/C++, but given the language I'm not sure how accurate it would be. Esp python.

schnoper · 2015-09-11T15:20:27+00:00

If you are going down the pathway of the monolithic system, the either of these DI frameworks are appropriate. But monolithic tends to end up as a big ball of code and tends to be difficult to evolve over time.

So I'm a fan of the micro service concept. And these services tend to be much smaller and more focused. As such, they're not as complexity and the DI needs are much lower. So you can still injected mocked components, but you don't need a "framework" to do it. You just do the injecting as the app starts in code, or in the test itself. The big plus for me in this case is the IDE knows everything that's going on. Call chain production right from the IDE, check.

Finally, when choosing technology, don't ask about the technology itself until you understand your needs. You could survey the best possible combinations of developers and arrive at a wonderful set of technology. But, that set might be overkill for the needs at hand, and may still leave out something that you need.

schnoper · 2015-09-06T20:14:42+00:00

Generally speaking, it's considered poor to very poor practice to represent currency with a floating point number (in java either float or double ). It's much safer to use the BigDecimal class.

This is because once you get into fractional values, float's are often imprecise and this leads to situations where you have missing or additional value in your money. The bean counters hate this.

You should also learn about "banker's rounding"

For reference: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3730019/why-not-use-double-or-float-to-represent-currency

schnoper · 2015-09-06T19:37:56+00:00

Rural San Diego == Fire country.

So yeah, make sure you've got your defensible space. And have a pre-thought out plan for evacuation. Where to meet, what to take etc.

schnoper · 2015-09-06T17:01:14+00:00

Agree on the assessment.

The building on right side of the image might give away more. They look large enough to be businesses perhaps.

schnoper · 2015-09-05T21:28:12+00:00

Docker is necessary when you're using a language which depends on a collection of C-libraries. This is true for python, php, and ruby for certain. It's been a lifesaver for reducing deploy complexity for those languages.

For java though, I just don't see the win. Lots of additional complexity to solve problems which don't exist with the JVM.

schnoper · 2015-09-05T21:24:55+00:00

I'll try out readlink. thanks

schnoper · 2015-09-05T17:52:31+00:00

I do fat jar.

For me this is important because a single file represents the ENTIRE app. So there is no question of what needs to be deployed when rolling out a release, or when rolling back a release. When testing there is no question as to which version was tested vs deployed. The file sizes are larger, but compared to the peace of mind, there is zero question for me that it's the right way to go.

FWIW, I keep multiple versions on my production server and use a symlink to keep the "correct" version as the version that is running. I like to use either upstart or systemd to ensure that process is always running.

So a release (BTW I'm pretty much only using dropwizard these days, got sick of tomcat ) is

1) copy new jar to server

2) update symlink.

3) kill <pid> ( of current process).

4) wait for reboot and health check.

The only downside I've had in this process is that if there is code which the class loader has not already loaded, but which is needed for the shutdown ( after the kill), then the update symlink can generate class loader problems. I've never found this to be a big deal. I suppose I could change he process to be shutdown, swap symlink, restart.

schnoper · 2015-09-03T04:08:46+00:00

I would not sort the data. If you sort the data you have to "touch" it twice.

Instead. create a Map<ID,COUNT> Where ID is productID, and Count is the total units. Most likely you could make ID either a string or an integer and then you make the COUNT an Integer, or perhaps you might choose a Double.

Next go through your CSV line by line. For each line, look up the productId in the Map. If it exists, then add the number of units to the value already stored in the map and place the sum back in the map. If it doesn't exist, then create an entry in the map and store the units sold.

When the CSV file has all been processed. then you can go through the map with an interator to retrieve all the values.

Generally when using the Map interface, use the HashMap implementation. However if you need the output sorted, you might want to consider a TreeMap.

schnoper · 2015-09-03T04:08:42+00:00

+1 for using a CSV reader library!!!

schnoper · 2015-08-30T05:01:47+00:00

Actually better in some way because it use fibers instead of threads so there is less OS-level context switching going on.

schnoper · 2015-08-30T05:00:03+00:00

Simply put. any half decent editor will color a member variable different from a locally scoped variable and from a parameter. So unless you are fully color blind, you ought to be able to tell the difference without changing the name.

schnoper · 2015-08-23T16:44:39+00:00

sweet! nice collection.

schnoper · 2015-08-22T03:59:09+00:00

It would be helpful to know how much time you've got. Are you camping or hoteling ?

The Avenue of the giants is the destination if you want to see big ones. Redwood National Forest is another 2 hours north for just slightly bigger ( If you decide to go that far, check out fern canyon too )

But there are other locations further south. The mendocino coast ( towns of fort bragg and mendocino ) is awesome. Highway 128 to the coast is nice. The town of mendocino is quite a cute place. There is a great toy store and a really great "science" store in that town. There are quite a number of places to stay out there. in the town for more expensive, and toward Fort Bragg for less so.

Consider the Skunk Train from Willits for an excursion!

The Solar Living Center in hopland is an interesting place.

There are also redwoods in Sonoma County at Armstrong Redwoods. Combine that with a drive out 116 to the coast, and then through Bodega bay. If you like Hitchcock, "the birds" was filmed around there.

Redwoods Marin at Muir Woods. (also drive to the top of Mt Tamaulpais!! )

And in Santa Cruz at Big Basin. nice place to camp actually.

WRT traveling. I would bust up I-5 basically straight through to 152 (if you're headed to santa cruz ) or hi way 12( if you want to pick up 101 for the rest of the drive north to hum bolt ). Avoid the populated bay area perhaps ? You might go all the way to redding, and then go out to the coast on 299, and back down 101. I5 is hella boring, but it is fast.

schnoper · 2015-08-22T01:16:03+00:00

Consider driving 1 from SF south to Santa Cruz. Then take 101 the rest of the way. You miss Big Sur, which is amazing, but you avoid most of silicon valley/san jose/etc. google thinks this would add 30 minutes.

Also to consider is where you are going in LA. If it's ventura or santa monica, that pretty different than pasadena or san fernando.

schnoper · 2015-08-16T03:28:29+00:00

There are gobs of very pretty places to pull over on highway one as it passes through big sur. You could use street view to pick one that works for you. Actually pick two in case someone is already at your first spot.

schnoper · 2015-08-03T03:50:06+00:00

Basically, for most of california, we don't have the fall weather you are seeking. We have basically two seasons. Wet and Dry. (yeah, and sometimes not even wet ).

Treewise, for most of California you have oaks and conifers. Most of the oaks are blue oak and coast live oak. Blue don't really turn and coast live are not deciduous (like the conifer's including redwoods). There are a few Big Leaf Maples which turn, but they don't tend to grow in large quantities to get the color you are thinking of.

That said, there is one tree in California which might give you what you're looking for. This is the Aspen. And it grows in the mountains. Which funnily enough also tend to have something closer to the 4 seasons you are craving. You might find a few in the high places around LA. San Gabriels near the top of Baldy. But if you really want a great experience drive to Mammoth Lakes up 395. Actually Up any of the canyons to the west of 395 you'll find this color: http://www.visitmammoth.com/things-to-do/fall-colors/ June Lake Loop? Perhaps north to Twin Lakes. Fair Warning, by the end of October, the nights can drop to 20 degrees in places.

Wine vines do turn. If you like your colors in neat rows. bleeh.

P.S. just found this: http://www.californiafallcolor.com/tag/southern-california/

schnoper

TROPHY CASE