Tag Archives: sdm

All things in moderation

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The temperatures in the Boston area have returned to a much more normal (and thus, moderate) level which has been kind of nice. The rides into campus in the morning have even almost had a little bit of a chill to them. But not enough to matter once I get moving. It's also been impressive the number of people I've seen commuting via bike. This has been touched on in a couple of the biking blogs that I read, but the effects of the gas prices really does seem to be getting more people out on bikes. Especially in this area, that's a very reasonable thing to do. The weather tends to be pretty reasonable from mid-spring to fall (at least) and there's a pretty good amount of bike lanes as well as dedicated bike paths. And even where there's not either of those, drivers here are somewhat conditioned to be used to people on bikes — I actually think that drivers are more considerate to people on bikes in the Boston area than they are to other cars.

But, that said, it's still worth being careful. Just because you're on a dedicated bike path or in a bike lane doesn't mean that there aren't things to watch out for. On a bike path, watch the crossings of roadways and be sure to observe stop signs and traffic signals. In a bike lane, also watch (and obey) stop signs and traffic signals. And in addition, watch out for people getting out of cars. If you can stay out of the door zone, you're better off, but the bike lane is likely to put you right there. So get used to looking through the rear windows or mirrors of cars to see if someone looks like they're going to get out.

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The week has continued to be pretty good. I had System Dynamics yesterday which continued to be interesting and engaging. I picked up the book today and started reading some of it and it does seem like a good text on the subject. Hopefully my opinion will hold, especially given the cost of it. Systems Engineering was this morning and seemed a bit repetitive between the last class and the reading. I should have a pretty good group for the project, though, so that should be good.

I've also managed to get in some riding the past couple of days. Yesterday, I went out with Kate and joined the NEBC folks on their Wednesday night hill ride. And they weren't kidding about the hills. Was fun, though, and I want to try to incorporate some of the route into my routine as getting some more climbing practice can't possibly hurt. Today, I joined the MIT cycling team on the ICIC (Intercollegiate Ice Cream) ride — they go out with some of the Harvard folks to an ice cream store at a very moderate and social pace. Nice people on both rides, drastically different types of rides, though :)

Also been trying to clean up some yum bugs and finish getting my way to Bugzilla Zero. Down to one bug, but unfortunately, it's a bit of a doozie. But, will keep trying and hopefully come up with something effective. But now, I think it's time to do some reading and then head to bed.

Summer semester begins and an information night

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The summer semester began for me today and the weather very much felt like summer… the temperatures this afternoon were in the upper 90s and even now, it's only just below 80. But while many people around here express their discomfort, especially outside, it's comforting to me as it's pretty much July and August in North Carolina — except lower humidity today :)

But in any case, I'm taking two classes for the summer. First up this morning was Systems Engineering. I think that the class has a lot to offer, but I'm not quite clear yet on how it will come together. Especially for software. And the presentation is a bit dry. The readings weren't bad, though, and I'll reserve judgement on the whole for a few classes. The work load for the class looks like it'll be pretty normal — a couple of group presentation/papers, readings and then also two individual homework assignments. I am still a little unclear about the sorts of problems we're going to be looking at for the projects, but that will almost certainly clear itself up.

Then, this afternoon I had System Dynamics with Brad Morrison. This is a class that I'm actually very excited about — the sorts of problems that get looked at in the course are interesting and I do still have a bit of a soft spot for making mathematical models for various phenomena. And as an added bonus, he professor is extremely energetic and enthusiastic about the subject and just comes across very well. The odd thing is that it looks like it's going to be a pretty small class — only about 25 people. Sure it's a fair bit of work, but that's still fewer than I expected. But given that we have a number of the full-timers doing internships this summer, I guess I shouldn't be that surprised.

Tonight, I volunteered to help out with an Information Evening for prospective students. I felt it was somewhat important to do as a year ago, I was on the other side of things. And I am pretty enthusiastic about the program and find myself enjoying talking with people about it. Hopefully a couple of the prospective students will take me up on the suggestion of sitting in on some classes too, as I think that's pretty invaluable to get an idea of what you're getting into. Was also nice to get a chance to briefly see Yoav again as he seems to be the omnipresent SDM alum ;-) Anyway, had a good time meeting with people and apologize that I had to duck out quickly, but such is life.

Heat wave says that summer is here

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As a couple of people have mentioned, something of a heat wave has hit the greater Boston area over the past few days, and I actually have been pretty glad. I'm tired of days where it's 60 and drizzly. They're particularly not motivating to get out and train/ride. Because although I do want to do well racing, I also want to have fun… if it's not fun, then I probably have other things I could be/should be doing with my time. So, yesterday I got out and did 55 miles at a pretty good pace.

Then, today, I went down to the Wells Ave training crit in Newton to try out my first crit. And, somewhat to my surprise, I actually enjoyed it more than I expected. I started out at the front and pretty much stayed in the front of the pack for the entire race (15 laps, 12 miles). The pace was high but not too ridiculously so, and by staying at the front, I was at least able to avoid some of the accordion-ing that happens further back in the pack. I also apparently avoided some sketchier riders. I didn't go for any of the primes (that's pronounced preems for the non-cyclists out there reading), instead just being content to sit back and then maybe try to go at the end. As we rounded the back half of the course on the last lap, a few guys took off and I basically decided to catch on and try to follow them for all that I could. And up until about 100-150 yards to go, I was good. But then a few more people came up behind us and overtook me, leaving me to come in about 8th out of a field of a little more than 30 riders. Still, a good result for the day and one that I'm happy with. And I'll likely go back down in a couple of weeks, hopefully with a more sizable group so that we can maybe work together and do a little better. It was definitely a better experience than last week and I also did a good job of learning from what went wrong last week. And, again, I learned a few more things.

On the way back, we checked out the route for the Boloco Grand Prix race that's in a couple of weeks (no Cat 5 field, so I won't be doing it) which included doing a ride up Heartbreak Hill. Was kind of fun to see as I hadn't before, although I think that the “heartbreak” part was lost on us as we biked up it ;-) I can imagine that after running 20 miles it would kind of suck, though. Ended up with around 45 miles for the day rounding out the weekend at 100.

Tomorrow's a day in the office and then my classes start on Tuesday. So a busy week ahead. But busy's the way I like it best. And then the next week is the Summit and FUDCon, so likely even busier.

Update

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The spring semester ended and since then, I've been spending time in the office and also trying to get some time in for relaxing. Overall, the spring semester was good. The classes I was taking for the most part were very applicable and I can even see some of the value of ERBA, although I also can think of some ways that the class could have been better and more applicable for people. Everything else was very good, though. The couple of weeks of break have been nice too, although I'm looking forward to classes spinning back up for the summer. Given that there are basically four classes offered over the summer and I have two summers to take them, I'm just going to take two classes over the summer and then return to the more full load in the fall. But my summer classes are going to be Systems Engineering and System Dynamics. The former is a class that continues to be in flux as SDM tries to find the right mix of things for the class to really work; more changes are in store for this year, so I'm trying to keep a positive approach to the course. System Dynamics is a class I'm really looking forward to — I sat in on a day of it last summer and thought that the material seemed very useful. And with things I've learned during the spring, I'm looking forward to it even more.

As far as other things going on, I think I'll resort to list form

  • Been working on cleaning up my outstanding bug list. There were a number of outstanding pirut RFEs and with the move to PackageKit, I've just been closing those out. Also, spent some time cleaning up livecd-creator bugs and have got that down to just a small number of RFEs that I think we should be able to get taken care of for Fedora 10.
  • The rest of Bike Week was good… got in some good biking and also went to the Redbones Bike Week party which was a good time as usual. Even if I didn't win anything in the raffles. Hrmph.
  • Been biking quite a bit as the weather has gotten substantially nicer. Been shooting to get between 200 and 250 miles a week over the past couple of weeks and have largely been succeeding. Doing some commuting to the office helps there
  • Raced at the Lake Auburn Road Race this past weekend in the 4/5 field. The course was nice, but I ended up off the back of the pack partway through the first lap due to some accordioning and not being as comfortable going down the hills at 40 mph on wet roads in a large pack. Decided against time trialing in cold rain so didn't finish. But, I learned from it and have some ideas on how to get some improvements over the rest of the season
  • Watching as gas gets ever closer to $4/gallon… more and more glad that I bike as much as I do, but looking at what other trips I can switch over. Also, need to stop by the hardware store so I can get some p-clamps and put the other rack on Kara's bike
  • Mario Kart Wii is fun.

Now to see if I can finish up my presentation for the Red Hat Summit today as well as finishing closing out a few of the aforementioned livecd-creator RFEs.

Woo!

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And with that, a couple of huge weights are lifted off my shoulder. Let's recap or those playing along at home…

Just one class tomorrow and I have a few weeks of “just” work before summer classes start up. It looks like I'm taking Systems Engineering and System Dynamics over the summer. Hopefully with the two classes, the workload won't be too high so that I can manage to get in plenty of riding ;-) Of course, if I bike on the days I come into the office like I did today, that'll help substantially with my overall mileage.

PDD Final Presentations

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Tonight, we had the final presentations for Product Design and Development. Over the course of the class, we were to start out by looking at a few markets to uncover the needs of users, narrow in on a market and a product concept and go all the way to building a prototype and a business plan. As I think I've previously noted, I very intentionally did not go after working on a software product to avoid falling into the trap of doing product development the way that I always do — instead, I used it as an opportunity to work within a different subject area and you know, do some learning :-)

With the final presentations, we were to all do a 10 minute presentation of our product concept with everything from information on the user needs, a prototype and our business plan. We also had a mini-tradeshow with tables for demo'ing our products as well as anything else that we wanted to do within the space of half a six foot table. Along with this was a contest amongst the products — each team was judged by the faculty and a set of additional judges to pick the “best” of the products presented.

With 18 teams, this made for a relatively long evening. But it was amazing to see what all of the teams managed to pull together in the short space of semester. Some of the products had seemed very unlikely from earlier presentations on their concepts, but they were able to pull them together.

My team worked on a product for the tea drinker and I did the first half of the presentation. And, at the end of the night, our product was chosen as the best one. Which is pretty awesome. After the presentations and tear-down, a bunch of us headed to Tommy Doyle's. And now, it's time for bed.

Not dead yet!

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Just really, really busy. Between the end of the semester and chugging towards the Fedora 9 release, haven't had a chance to write much. Highlights in bulleted form…

  • Birthday was good. Had some people over for a game night and I think everyone had a pretty good time
  • Prototype for our product in PDD is finished and it looks really nice. It's cool to have an idea and then see it realized in a physical form. Something you don't really get in the software world
  • Tech Strategy continues to be good… I want to write up summaries of some of the classes, but just haven't gotten there. Maybe I'll do a whirlwind pass through them late next week
  • Summer schedule is out… I think I'm going to take Systems Engineering and System Dynamics this summer, leaving the finance/accounting and supply chain classes for next summer
  • Fall schedule is also out… pretty much have to take System Architecture and Systems Project Management then. But also have room for at least one other class, just need to decide what. On the plus side, lots of good options to choose from
  • Fedora 9 is shaping up quite nicely — only the last minute “oh no!” types of things cropping up now. Feeling a little bit more confident today about getting the release out “on time”
  • Big presentation for PDD on Friday, big paper for Tech Strategy the first of next week… lots to do, not a lot of time
  • Warm enough that I'm not letting rain stop me from biking… realized that I didn't take the T to class at all during April. I did let the rain stop me from racing, though
  • Just another week and a half and things get a lot better…

Busy, busy, week

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As really seems to be the norm, this week is also falling into the nice and busy category.

Had the ERBA quiz on Wednesday and didn't think it was bad at all — fair in terms of what was asked and if you paid attention to the review session, you had a very good idea of what was coming. Tech Strategy I felt less prepared for than I typically do just because I hadn't had much time to really read and digest the case. We were looking at Adobe and while I had familiarity with a lot of the events covered, that familiarity just didn't run as deeply as some of the other things we've covered. PDD was a pretty interesting class too, even with a guest lecturer — the speaker was the professor's husband who has a lot of experience in coming up with product ideas and selling them either to companies or through a company he's working for at the time. His experience had largely been in children's toys, but it was still pretty fascinating to hear the stories he had as well as some of the processes and lessons learned.

Then, we had the first SDM Connect event of the year. Unlike the ones I attended last year, this one was a bit more formal — we brought in a few people from a private investment group who were actively recruiting to get someone new to join their firm. But instead of a more information conversation, it was tilted more towards being a presentation. Which isn't bad, but lots of slides with lots of words aren't my proverbial cup of tea ;-) We had a good turnout, though, which is good as hopefully it will help to ensure that we can bring in more people effectively through the rest of the year.

Today was a day at the office, but the morning started off with my alarm not having been set. Managed to get up just in time to get ready and make the bus, though, so it wasn't an entire bust. Then, I had been planning on looking at some blockers and also sitting down to do a review of pytrainer since the package got submitted. Of course, I had failed to remember that the materials for prep'ing for the office move were present now, and so instead, I spent the day doing that. My cube is now pretty empty looking as everything is instead in boxes. So, now I've shifted things and hopefully I'll get to what I wanted to from today tomorrow.

After coming home, I headed down to the bike shop for our monthly social event where I hung out and just chatted with people. It sounds like we're going to have a good showing for the race at Blue Hills in a little over a week, so hopefully that will work out well. Also, before I headed down there, Kara gave me my birthday present even though I had said she didn't really need to get me anything. She got me the Garmin Edge 305 which I've been wanting for a while but trying not to buy for myself. It should be pretty sweet for keeping better track of my riding and helping to improve my training. The next trick will be getting it to work nicely in Fedora and seeing if I can figure out what some of the web-based apps are looking for in terms of data so that we can have good support for them ;-)

Long Weekend, Cars, Bikes, and then Catching Up

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Since it was a long weekend from classes, I decided to take yesterday off of work and turn it into a long weekend in general which turned out to be a pretty good thing overall. After spending the day at the office on Friday where I successfully threw out a lot of crap from my desk in preparation for the office move, I came home and then we headed out to dinner with a friend of Kara's. Dinner was good, although for some reason, I couldn't fully get into enjoying it.

Saturday, woke up in the morning and started the day off right with a nice long bike ride. Lots of people were out and a fair number of stronger riders within the group made for a good and spirited ride. Got in about 50 miles and felt like my legs were feeling okay after a few days of not. Then some time at Starbucks and a quick stop at the shop and then headed home. Kara and I then headed out to look a little more at cars since hers has been showing some signs of its age. Then, dinner with friends and eventually home to pack up what I needed to have for the race on Sunday.

Sunday was pretty much consumed by the race and not much else between travel time, food, etc. A good time was (I think at least) had by all. See my last post for the details around it.

Yesterday ended up turning into car day. After doing some additional preparation, we headed out again. And a few hours later, we had signed a chunk of paperwork to purchase a new Prius. Okay, that makes it sound like it was a spur of the moment thing, but really, it was the result of a while worth of looking into our options. The hatchback will be good for when I need/want to carry a bike and it's just me or just me and a passenger and it's also practical from other perspectives. Going for the nav system may not quite have been “practical”, but it's at least fun ;) It's definitely the car to appeal to geeks. After all of that, we came home, had dinner and did some cleaning up around the house. Later in the evening, we finally got around to watching Juno which was fun.

Today, it was back to the grind of school and work. Although to be fair, I did start out Earth Day with a few of my classmates doing a loop up the bike path and back. Was good to get to show some more people what's out and about and the weather really is getting to be perfect. After that was diving back into the piles and piles of mail and bugs awaiting me. Made pretty good progress plowing through them, though. Also studied a bit for the ERBA quiz tomorrow and did some work for Tech Strategy. I'm pretty glad that tomorrow is the last day of ERBA as having one class less should help a bit for my sanity which is good as the continued march towards the Fedora 9 release isn't helping it any ;-) So maybe it'll balance out. Hopefully information on the summer class schedule will get sent in the next few days as I'd really like to figure out what my plan is for the summer.

But now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to go relax and then try to get to bed a little early.

Strategic Engineering

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Had an interesting presentation in today's thesis seminar. The speaker was Professor Olivier de Weck, who has a background in aerospace (fighter jets to be more specific). He talked a little about his background, but recently, his work has been on what he's termed 'strategic engineering' which is basically about designing your system so that you can adapt to future changes with a minimum of pain. In this, you can break it down even more into two pieces. The first is “Design for Changeability” — this is something that is often done in the software world when you do things like design an API by taking into account how you might want to expand it in the future and also ensuring that you have a way of tracking those changes. The other piece is “Design for Commonality” — and this is a large part of what the whole Fedora spins process is about as well as the variation within the RHEL product family. Basically, each provides the basic building blocks upon which you build more things on top of.

Then, in contrast to many of the other speakers for thesis seminar, he did a pretty in-depth look at one of the SDM theses which he worked with. The subject of the thesis was change propagation in complex systems — basically, they were looking at change requests over the life of a product and doing some analysis of grouping and where some of the loci of change were. This was really interesting to see as the application was far different from that of software and yet a lot of the patterns which I have anecdotally noticed from years of dealing with bugzilla emerged through their analysis of the data. From the initial work here, there's definitely a lot more which could be done and in a lot of ways, there's mounds of data that could easily be mined from various open source projects.

Very very interesting stuff and even if I don't end up going in one of these directions for my thesis, I think I need to spend some time reading the research that's been done previously.