An Evening With Traffic Signals

       This past Friday I asked my brother if I could tag along with him. I like to say that his job is changing light bulbs which he sarcastically answers with “They’re not light bulbs they’re LED’s!”. I can’t quite begin to explain his job but I have to admit that it is pretty exciting. He was on call this Friday, this means he takes calls from different cities of reports so he has to go fix them. Sometimes a light wont light up, sometimes a whole post was knocked out and cables must be changed etc.

      Friday started out with a simple call, some pedestrian signs where reported as “Not working”. For the average person it might not sound exciting, to me it was totally wicked I find a lot of things exciting. When we got there it was getting dark, problem wasn’t too bad according to my brother. As I was waiting in the truck he was doing some paper work when… a little dog almost got hit by a car right in front of our noses. It was very scary and it all happened so fast. My brother said he’s seen, sometimes just heard accidents. So here I was freaking out about a little dog and my brother has seen it all. It’s a scary world out there.

       We ran a few other calls near by, not as simple as the first. I like going with my brother because he usually explains things to me and I like learning. On one of the calls he had to use the bucket to reach the traffic lights, he went over the security measures, tools and explained to me what he was going to do etc. The truck was parked next to the sidewalk and I was standing on the sidewalk just looking up at my brother do his job. It wasn’t until I started to look at the passing cars that I realized, “this is dangerous”. The cars are passing right under him, trucks, buses seemed like they were just about to knock him over. When he came down I asked him if he gets scared or dizzy up there. He said at first he used to be because he had to use a wooden ladder but the bucket makes him feel safer and he’s gotten used to it. He then told me a story about a guy who was knocked off by a garbage truck, the guy survived but with everything broken, he assured me he’d be fine because he’s “Spiderman”. Yup, my brother has a sense of humor.

      So, Spiderman and I went to do some more work (or he did I just learned and watched). He showed me some cool tricks to solve some of the problems faster, and at one point I saw a roach and started to jump. I must’ve looked like a crazy lady jumping on the sidewalk, but my brother said it would be ok because the roach was probably scared of me (who wouldnt?). After a few calls he took me to McDonald’s and got me a coffee because he knows how much I love coffee. We also ate dinner there, and I asked for a Happy Meal I didn’t think he would listen to me but he did and didn’t fail to make fun of me.

       After a long conversation about the economy, software vs hardware, and my Happy Meal toy we went back to the streets for more work. It was fun, we had a brother-sister conversation as well. It’s fun catching up with my brother. It was a great end of the day. I learned that my brother’s job isn’t as easy as I like to make it out to be, it has its dangers but overall very exciting.

      So for all that wonder where on earth I got my geeky side from thank “Spiderman”or as I like to call him “Loser”. He’s responsible for getting me addicted to technology since before Windows 95. =)

GWT

 

      I finally got my score for my GWT (Graduation Writing Test). I have to say that I am very pleased and very surprised. If whoever scored my essay would only see my chats they would surely fail me. I got 11/12 and that in my book is a WOW. I really have no idea how I pulled that off, it was really early in the morning, it was cold, I had a runny nose and I had a really bad headache.

      I do have to say that most of the congratulations should go to the EOP’s GWT Workshop that made me sit through five straight hours on a Saturday morning going through what the test would be like. I learned strategies and words, I wrote a practice essay too. Thank you EOP, they really made a difference.

      My second thanks go to my commentators on my other blog, the strangers that inspired me to write. For them I practiced my writing. Thank you strangers!

      For now I’ll go celebrate and hop back on to my Misspellings Train.

25 (geeky) Random Facts

 

1. I started tweeting on Chris Pirillo’s birthday (@chrispirillo) to help him be a trending topic on Twitter, thanks to him I got my first followers. Thanks Chris.
2. I’m a PC (and Linux) period.
3. The one subject I always feared become my favorite: Physics.
4. My first computer was an Acer Windows 95, I learned to use it before my older brother and I was only in Kinder.
5. My favorite PC games of all time are: Buzzy the Knowledge Bug: The Jungle and Buzzy the Knowledge Bug: The Farm.
6. I secretly disliked math with a passion back in high school, now it’s what I do everyday =)
7. My Spring Break was spent in a lab writing code, the staff actually told me to go out and enjoy my break.
8. My secret favorite color is red.
9. I usually give my phone number in binary.
10. I strongly dislike Hotmail and love Gmail.
11. The blue whale of death scares me waaay more than the blue screen of death.
12. I seem to work better under pressure.
13. I gave my 8 year old nephew a lecture on Physics only to be called “brain washer” by my family because he says he wants to study Computer Science when he grows up. Not my fault science is fun.
14. I want to attend DEFCON sooo bad.
15. Back in the day I wanted to be an Astronomer and math scared me away, funny how things change.
16. I love science but I don’t really like Sci-Fi stuff.
17. My Taskbar HAS to be on the top. If its at the bottom I feel lost.
18. I have to change my desktop background every 3-4 days or I’ll go insane.
19. I’ve only crossed one thing off my Bucket List and that was: Solve a Rubik’s Cube.
20. I take my math notes in many colors, it makes math even more fun!
21. I would like to be stuck in an elevator.
22. I’ve had dreams where I’m writing code for my projects, AND the code actually worked.
23. I love jigsaw puzzles, I work on at least one in between quarters.
24. I learned my multiplication tables in one day, my dad said I wasn’t going to sleep until I knew all my 1-12’s. I’m very glad he did that.
25. My favorite number is five, 5^2 = 25 therefore this is why this is here.

Waving Away In Google Wave

     Its Sunday afternoon and although I should be finishing my math homework and studying for my second midterm (tomorrow) here I am typing away in excitement (sort of). No one seemed to understand my ‘Happy Christmas’ joke yesterday (yes, it was Halloween but like I said it was a joke…) and I thought that was funny. Anyhow turns out that my day was somewhat like Christmas because I finally got my Google Wave invite that I had been waiting for. I wanted to start surfing the most talked-about wave but there was a problem, I have Internet Explorer. Ugh.

      I downloaded Google Chrome, and the whole process went by pretty quickly which made me one happy camper. My next step was to head over to Google Wave. I went over with an open mind because I knew the project isn’t final. The first thing I noticed was that my contacts box was empty! As I’ve learned from RL and Twitter, things aren’t always fun when you’re alone. Luckily I get to invite people. But before contacts accept invites and get added and the whole process goes on I wanted to experiment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Extensions

Twitter:

I read all the new messages you get like the Welcome to Google Wave, Extension Gallery, Profile etc. Because I didn’t have any contacts to start Waving I decided to start looking at the extensions. The first thing I did was to start a new wave (pretty simple) and as a Twitter addict I looked for some Twitter extension that I knew had to exist (because Tweeps Twitter). So I found Tweety the Twitbot. I added : tweety-wave@appspot.com to my contacts, and of course added Tweety to my wave. You are prompted for your login info so that you can grant access to Tweety.

 

    You can see the last 20 tweets and update your Twitter. The problem? You can’t reply to other tweets and you have to start the process again to update the tweets from your tweeps. Maybe I’m doing something wrong? But so far I get no real time updates unless I create a new wave, sad.

 

        Google Wave is still kinda lonely, mostly because it takes some time for the invites to be sent. I did find a pretty cool thing:

Search: “with:public”

 

 

     You’ll get a list of public waves you can join. I found that most were tests from people. After joining a few it kind of feels like a chat room especially when you have others online in the same wave.

 

 

          For now I’ll stick with the public waves until my contacts get their invites. See you all in the Wave!

- zolivares@googlewave.com