Chris Jones

Announcing the 2009 Chris + Annalisa World Tour!

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:47:46 GMT

Coming once more to a supercontinent near YOU! All the excitement a balding 33 year-old engineering PhD candidate and his sweet-and-sour Italian wife can PROVIDE! Check out one of THESE exciting appearance dates!

May 6 - 9: Paris, France
May 10 - 15: Budapest, Hungary
May 16: Paris, France (Special one night only return performance!)
May 17 - 24: Austin, TX (Farewell engagement for the Southern US!) *
May 25: Santa Fe, NM *
May 26: Salt Lake City, UT *
May 27: Butte, MT *
May 28 - June 27: Redmond, WA (Extended Welcome to the Neighborhood gig!) * ✝
June 28 onward: Seattle, WA (We rock out in our new permanent performance venue!) * ✝

Act NOW! Operators are STANDING BY!

* With Opening Act The Boris and Gracie Machine!
✝ Approximate dates

Obama

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 04:23:15 GMT

Reviewing an old post of mine:

It's almost the epitome of wonkish, nerdy, left-wing political geekitude to admit this, but I watched Barack Obama's Democratic convention speech on PBS tonight.

Suffice to say, he kicked ass. You don't have to agree with his politics (although they're fairly hard to argue against); but regardless, you gotta admit it's fun to raise your fist in the air and chant "Obama! Obama!" It's like being part of a revolution in a small African country, or something.

I'm wary of saying "he's going places" as so many others have, just because it so easily invites disaster. That said... this guy's going places.

...

Yep, still sounds about right.

Palin 2012: The Final Judgement

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:09:04 GMT

Interesting blog post from Marc Ambinder in The Atlantic about how Sarah Palin's the likely front runner in 2012.

I haven't posted too much about politics lately because I believe the issues are pretty obvious and clear cut - while there are a handful of serious libertarian types out there who really believe Obama or McCain is a choice between the lesser of two evils, everybody else seems pretty solidly behind one of the two major candidates.

And beyond that, I think it's obvious that Obama's doing as well as he is because this is an election about ideas: you may not agree with what he's proposing, but Obama's definitely focused on the problems the country's in right now, and has got definite plans to deal with them. McCain's got character attacks and scoffing that anybody could possibly consider crazy liberal ideas like increasing income tax progressivity. That stuff worked - barely - in 2004, but it's not working now. At all.

That said, insofar as there really is a chance of Palin as the nominee in 2012, it seems like at least some subset of the Republican party hasn't learned that lesson. And while I'm far more interested to see if Obama can fix the mountain of problems ahead of him, it's at least an interesting side show to see if the Republicans can move beyond nominating "authentic" candidates like Bush and Palin... and, more importantly, to see if the greater electorate has learned that lesson as well.

Next summer, in Seattle (reprise)

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:29:48 GMT

Long story short: I took a full time position at Microsoft as a Program Manager, and we're moving up to Seattle, likely starting in May 2009.

This was a surprisingly tough decision to make - as the wife can attest, because, from her perspective, I kept asking her to make it for me. On the one hand, I liked just about everything about Microsoft and Seattle - the work, the people, the company, the area, the weather - except it wasn't research, and research is what I've been working on the past 3+ years.

On the other hand, the job recruiting season just got started this past week, and I got some very serious nibbles from Lincoln Labs, Sandia, Schlumberger, and ExxonMobil, among others. All of those would have been research jobs, following up on the research I've been doing for my PhD - but all had their downsides too. I'd either have had to do classified stuff - with all the accompanying security hassles - or I'd have to live in Houston (or maybe, possibly, New Orleans.)

At the end of the day, it really came down to quality of life issues: part of me feels like I should be doing research, but when I really thought about it, at the moment I don't really want to do research - the past few years have made it clear that I don't enjoy reading and writing academic papers as much as I enjoy actually building stuff (although so much the better if I can solve hard problems en route to building stuff). I think research something I've proven I can do, and maybe something I'd do again in the future, but what I think would really make me happiest would be to be actually producing stuff, in a demanding (but not soul-crushing) environment, in a city I really love.

And hey, worst case scenario - I'm getting the PhD (dissertation proposal was accepted earlier this month, now all I gotta do is the work itself and the defense), and that's not going away. If it turns out that I want a change in direction in two or three years, then the PhD + a tour of duty as a program manager at Microsoft would probably lead me in some interesting directions...

Somebody explain to me...

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:42:06 GMT

...how Sarah Palin can be, in Fred Thompson's words, "a courageous, successful, reformer, who is not afraid to take on the establishment," when she's being glowingly endorsed by the same guys who've been running the government for the past eight years?

I mean, how can you take on the establishment when the establishment publicly declares it loves you, and you give every indication of being happy to be a continuation of said establishment?

Figures...

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:10:27 GMT

...that I'd leave Seattle the exact day PAX starts up.

I've kinda been AWOL on the journal for a while, mostly because of an insanely busy summer - two weeks in Portugal back in May, big cross-country road trips with wife and gear and cat in tow before and after, a three-month internship at Microsoft where I was basically doing two jobs for the price of one, and about a week's run-up time before I give my dissertation proposal next Friday. But hopefully next Saturday I can settle back in Austin long enough to take a deep breath.

I'm pretty conflicted right now - I did get a permanent job offer from MS, but not the one I was hoping for, and not the salary I was hoping for. Essentially they want me to do program management work (i.e. not PhD-level research stuff) at a Master's degree entry-level salary... which sort of makes me wonder what the hell the last three years have been for. What's particularly frustrating is that I interviewed for a PhD-level job, and got to the end of the interview thinking I'd done pretty well... only to be told at my end-of-term exit interview that I didn't get it. Gah.

On the other hand, it's a hard offer to pass up, because I liked what I saw of Microsoft - the upper-level management may have been, or may still be, composed of evil corporate types, but the vast majority of people I worked with couldn't have been nicer. The benefits, are good, I'm actually pretty damn good at the work - I think I might have something of a knack for it - and I freakin' LOVE Seattle. This is what a city's supposed to work like, people. So while I may very well be able to find another job if I pass on the Microsoft offer, it might not be at such a cool location, and it might not even be for any more money - the greater economy's not that great, and I've heard rumors that there may be a glut of PhDs on the market right now.

So yeah, frustrating. But it'll be nice, in a week's time, to have some breathing room to figure all this out.

Fantastic Contraption

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:58:16 GMT

I beat all 20 levels of Fantastic Contraption in ~36 hours, thereby reaffirming that I made the right career decision in becoming an engineer.

Except that maybe I should be working with mechanical stuff rather than software. Oh well.

An analogy

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 04:09:07 GMT

The Dark Knight (2008) : Batman (1989) :: Batman (1989) : Batman (1966)

Much as it would have stunned the 13 year-old me to be told such a thing at the time, I believe this is a true statement. However, it does raise the question: will there be another Batman movie, 20 years hence, that's as far ahead of TDK as TDK is of Burton's Batman?

And if so, where will it end?

So it's only a masterpiece?

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:37:43 GMT

Yes, WALL-E is as good as everyone says it is. The real question in my mind, though, far more important than merely larding it down with superlatives, is how does it compare with Pixar's other works of genius?

Having only seen it the once, I'm skeptical of making any rankings too solid at the moment, but at this point I'd have it tied for first with Ratatouille, ahead of Toy Story 2, which is in turn ahead of The Incredibles.

(The real fun, of course, begins when you try to integrate the Pixar rankings with the Ghibli rankings - even on a purely visual level Ratatouille and Spirited Away are frighteningly close to each other in excellence. But that's a post for another time...)

Game system bleg

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 19:25:30 GMT

I need to post on various big-picture things - Seattle, Portugal, etc., but for now I just want people's advice on one thing:

Should I get a 360 Elite via Microsoft for a relatively nice discount, or go with the PS3 because it has Blu-ray? Note that my gut feeling is the game situation on both is a wash - yes I'd like to play MGS4, but I regretted not being able to play Dead Rising when it came out on the 360, and both have Rock Band.

Advice?

David Chase can bite my shiny metal ass

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:35:26 GMT

I was willing to give David Chase a pass on the end of The Sopranos - it wasn't terribly satisfying from an audience perspective, but it's his show, and if he felt it was important to do it that way, then that's his call to make.

However, in the aftermath of the show, I saw an interview with Chase where he actively belittled people who did want to know how the series ended, bitching that it was "childish" for people to want closure and that real life didn't work that way. Admittedly, Chase is a super-respected writer and producer and I'm just an avid TV watcher, but arguably the whole point of almost any fiction is that it's not real life - that stories are composed of sequences of dramatic events that give rise to the themes and meaning that real life often lacks.

But what really takes the cake is this answer he gave, from a recent awards Q&A

When one fan stood up and told Chase how much "Northern Exposure" had meant to him as a TV viewer and writer -- Chase was a scribe and exec producer on the seminal CBS show -- and asked to offer some insight about his experiences working on the series, Chase shot back, "I hated that show. I only did it for the money."

There is only one possible riposte to such an outrage, digging all the way back to my GIA days:

YOU DIS NORTHERN EXPOSURE!?!? FUK U WORSE THAN HITLET

Is that really the only name you could come up with?

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:28:43 GMT

I don't know if I've ever actually mentioned it, but what I study in grad school is team formation between autonomous software agents - in layman's terms, "applied AI". Especially since some of our stuff would work really well when applied to UAVs or other robotic drones, my labmates and I occasionally joke about building the Matrix, or being the real creators of Skynet.

That said, even we would not be so gauche as to actually name our robotic exoskeleton company Cyberdyne Inc..

Man, that's just asking for trouble.

Announcing the 2008 Chris Jones World Tour!

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:46:51 GMT

Coming soon to a supercontinent near YOU! All the excitement a balding 32 year-old engineering PhD candidate can PROVIDE! Check out one of THESE exciting appearance dates!

May 1: Tulsa, OK *
May 2: River Grove, IL *
May 4 - 16: Estoril, Portugal (Special extended solo engagement!)
May 17 - 21: River Grove, IL * ✝
May 22: Fargo, ND * ✝
May 23: Missoula, MT* ✝
May 24 - Aug 15: Seattle, WA * (Rockin' it urban style all summer long!)
Aug 16: Salt Lake City, UT *
Aug 17: Santa Fe, NM *
Aug 18: Austin, TX * (One night only!)
Aug 19 - Aug 29: Seattle, WA (Last chance to see!)

Act NOW!

* With Special Guests Annalisa and Boris!
✝ Approximate dates

Time of the Wolf

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:09:37 GMT

It's the financial apocalypse! End of days! Stock market back in four figure territory! Stock up on gold, gas, and soybeans while you can! MBAs are being hunted down in the street and hung from lamp posts! Repent!

...

Sorry, just got caught up in all the doom and gloom on my bloglist this morning...

My latest addiction

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 07:41:42 GMT

As the wife can verify, I get into weird, weeks-long jags where I troll the web for hours, obsessing over one particular type of information. When we started considering buying Annalisa a car six years ago, it was automobile reviews, two and a half years ago it was political weblogs to argue about the Iraq war, and now?

Seattle real estate.

I don't really have much rational reason for doing this - yes, I'm moving to Seattle for the summer, and it did start as apartment searching on Craigslist. But we've long since locked down a place to stay, and I've moved from looking for apartments to looking for actual condos, despite the fact that the odds of us moving to Seattle permanently are completely unknown, and that we're laughably far away from having even a modest fraction of the titanic down-payments some of these condos would require in today's lending environment.

Still, I search. And while most of the places I find will never, ever be rational purchases for us, I also occasionally run across things like this.

As soon as the early reports of the zomb-pocalypse start showing up on TV, you bet your ass I'm gonna give this guy a call...

Interesting fact of the day

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:14:43 GMT

From this article on demographic trends and the major political parties:

"But just before the Wisconsin primary in mid-February, ABC News polling director Gary Langer calculated that a cumulative majority of white Democratic primary voters in all of this year's contests had college or postgraduate degrees -- a remarkable tipping point for a party that since its 19th-century inception has viewed itself as the tribune of the working class." (emphasis added)

In general, I feel pretty good about Democratic prospects for the future... but either the country's getting a lot more educated than I thought, or I really need to start paying attention to "liberal elitists" critiques of the Democratic party.

Nader redux redux

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 16:37:54 GMT

So Nader's back in the race. At this point I don't have the energy to get pissed off about it - in the extremely unlikely event Nader steers voters away from the Democrats, this country deserves whatever it gets. But I think the country - and the progressive left - has learned better by now.

That said, I think there's just about nobody who honestly thinks Nader has a shot at the presidency - Nader himself is talking about his 3rd party candidacy as injecting his pet ideas into the campaign, and whines that we should have a multi-party system like much of Europe.

So here's my question - if Nader's truly interested in multi-party democracy, why isn't he campaigning to change the electoral rules away from winner-takes-all towards proportional representation? Nader can't win, but he's historically done a fine job at rallying the public towards given issues. And until the electoral system changes, basic game theory suggests that the nation will always coalesce into two basic parties.

Just a thought.

Underwater

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:00:17 GMT

Over 10% of homeowners in this country are underwater - they owe more on their home than it's worth.

That just can't be good for the bigger economic picture...

Seattle housing bleg

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:44:36 GMT

We've been using Craigslist to try and find a place this summer, with mixed results - one pretty good place we thought we had lined up fell through on us, but we've gotten some more nibbles since then, and it seems as if people are just now starting to put summer property rentals up on the market.

I could discuss the details of this endlessly, but what I'd appreciate more than anything from folks with Seattle experience is some advice on location - trading off the quality of neighborhood life with price, commute time, etc. Our options, both generic and specific, are as follows:

- Loft in downtown Seattle. On the pricey side, but not unaffordable, especially since Microsoft's kicking in a lump sum payment if I find my own housing. Really, really close to the water, Pike Market, Safeco Field, etc. Since Annalisa may be there all day sans car, this might work out the best for her, but how's crime downtown at night? And if I drive or take the bus from downtown to Microsoft, how bad will the commute be? (Note that I can deal with a 1-hour each way bus ride, but if it'll be worse than that, that's a problem.)

- Various housing options around Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, View Ridge, etc. Same commute concerns as downtown (although bus availability to Microsoft might be less), price roughly $500/month less. Neighborhood would probably be quieter, but less interesting, right? Is there any big advantage to these places vs. downtown I should know about?

- Various housing options around Redmond/Bellevue. Admittedly, I haven't seen a ton of stuff in this area, but I get the impression I could probably find something if I pushed a bit. Much better commute, obviously, but about as expensive as downtown, yes? I'm wondering about quality of life, though - is living around here really any different than living in any other suburbs-and-big-boxes edge city anywhere else in the US?

- Vacation rental in Snoqualmie. Only seen one of these, and it was about the same price as, say, Queen Anne. Still, I get the impression I might find something cheaper if I search, and from what I've seen the mountains are spectacular. I might also have a much better "back door" commute to Microsoft, although that might leave Annalisa without a car, and I don't know that she could just do endless hiking and biking in the area for three months.

Any advice or insight y'all can offer would be much appreciated, thanks!

In Bruges

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:01:25 GMT

I forgot to mention that I saw this last weekend - long story short, go see it. The ads make it look like some kind of wacky, madcap Pulp Fiction-esque crime caper, and while it does have elements of that, it's also surprisingly deep and moving and unexpected.

Look, imagine if you took Pulp Fiction, kept all the weird twists but focused them on only the two main characters, and had the film's theology be both subtle and deep, rather than ham-handed and spewed out in a monologue at the end of the movie, and you'll get In Bruges.

(And yes, wife, if you want to go see it, I'll be more than happy to go see it again myself.)

P(McCain) = .999

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:20:13 GMT

From the Democratic point of view, it's something of a bummer that McCain won - Romney or Huckabee would have been a much easier candidate to beat in the general election.

That said, ask me how much schadenfreude I'm getting from reading various conservative blogs and seeing how completely nuts they're going over the fact that John McCain, faux-conservative, got the nomination.

Go on, just ask me.

:)

You are the network!

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:06:37 GMT

Based on an offhand remark by the always entertaining Kung Fu Monkey blog, I present the following challenge meme:

Program a 15-hour primetime lineup (M-F, 7-10pm) based entirely on existing DVDs.

My rules: no using DVDs of a show that's still in production (Sorry, Office fans) and if you're picking a show that has less than a full season (e.g. Firefly), then you've got to combine it with another show to round out the episode count.

Monday (Retro day): Taxi, Soap, Life on Mars, Northern Exposure

Tuesday (Dark humor day): Newsradio, The John Laroquette Show, Invader Zim, Clone High (Fall)/The Maxx (Spring), Dead Like Me

Wednesday (Cartoon day): Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Now and Then, Here and There (Fall)/Paranoia Agent (Spring), Samurai Jack, Farscape

Thursday (Cult following day): Kids in the Hall, Arrested Development, Now and Again, Max Headroom (Fall)/Firefly (Spring)

Friday (Nerd day): Babylon 5, Deep Space Nine, Connections (Fall) /The Day The Universe Changed (Spring)

I just realized...

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 04:57:03 GMT

Today is the 10th anniversary of the release of Final Fantasy Tactics for the Playstation.

I remember getting off of my undergrad RA job late in the evening, driving over to Gamestop, plopping the money down and being profoundly amazed for the rest of that night.

On the one hand, this makes me feel pretty damn old, and if you're reading this journal because of my past association with the GIA, it should make you feel pretty old too.

On the other hand, this reminds me that it's been nearly seven or eight years since I replayed FFT. Time to remedy that, I think...

The HELL!?!?!?! (Said with a strong Boston accent...)

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:12:24 GMT

PBS is making a prime time animated series based on the Click n' Clack personas from NPR's Car Talk.

No, I'm not kidding.

Beyond that, words fail me, although damned if I'm not gonna at least want to see the first episode.

Getting my hopes up

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 18:00:01 GMT

Obama's win in South Carolina reminds me of writing this almost four years ago. That said, at the same time, I'm also a little skittish, just because it'll be easier to take a loss to Clinton if Obama arguably doesn't have a chance against her, than if he does but just barely misses.

And, for all that's being said about how no one side can clinch it on Super Tuesday, I think that, if Obama can't pull off a fairly major upset in at least a few states, he won't be able to take the nomination come June. A brokered convention, where Edwards throws his support to Obama in exchange for becoming Attorney General just seems too far fetched to me. (Although it would be pretty damn cool if it did happen that way.)