originally posted may 18, 2003

let life commence

Today was Commencement 2003 at Carnegie Mellon. My undergraduate career, which ended last December, is now immortalized with an extraordinarily expensive piece of paper. Also this month: the ebb and flow continues at work, and my home phone will soon be no more.

milestone: i am a college graduate

Commencement went flawlessly, with cool, mild weather and a mostly on-time schedule of events. I was a bit disappointed that our choice of speaker, Teresa Heinz, was not that notable of a public figure. Past keynote speakers have included Department of Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge and actor Blair Underwood. Teresa Heinz is the widow of former senator H. John Heinz III, a charismatic Republican who gained unprecedented popularity among all Pennsylvanians and a direct heir to the H.J. Heinz food company. After Sen. Heinz died, Teresa Heinz would eventually switch her party loyalty and marry Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, now a senator and a would-be Presidential candidate for 2004. Heinz's sudden change of loyalty and outspoken views have made political analysts question her ability to serve as a proper First Lady, but they didn't register on most students' political radar screens.

Honestly, I remember very little about Heinz's commencement address beyond the usual pro-America lines and reflections on Pittsburgh. In retrospect, her brief speech was far more enjoyable than student speaker Theresa Nguyen, who delivered a cliched melodramatic "remember when" script and also drew boos with a tongue-in-cheek remark that she's not a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Heinz indicated that she's a fan of short speeches, and I was inclined to agree as the sun emerged from clouds to roast black-clad graduates for a few minutes during her speech.

I was moved by commencement exercises. All of the usual saying goodbye never meant anything back home at high school graduation, mainly because I was eager to get out of Syosset by any means necessary. However, I know I'll stay in touch with people at CMU, and the School of Computer Science diploma ceremony was much smaller than my high school's (158 students in my department, versus 445 in my high school). The outpouring of support for our advisors and faculty was truly inspiring. Some of the faculty members were nearly moved to tears. I was too.

It's sad that my CMU friends and I are parting ways, but the separation is not total. Since I'm in Pittsburgh, I can still meet up with my friends still attending school. Some of my friends are remaining in Pittsburgh to work on research, attend graduate school, or simply search for jobs in this still-troubled economy of ours. Through the magic of alumni networking, we have been assured that there will continue to be CMU-themed events throughout the nation wherever there are alumni to gather.

My parents, aunt and uncle came to town. My uncle, a lifelong Pittsburgh Pirates fan, was shown around the Pirates' home ballpark, PNC Park. As he and my father reminisced about players I've never heard of, we took a stroll around the park. Unfortunately, the Pirates were out of town so we couldn't catch a game, but the experience was well worth the time taken.

more ebb, more flow at work

After posting a 68-hour work week two weeks ago, my longest to date, I logged only 43 hours last week. Projects have finished up, and new project work kicks off tomorrow. I'm optimistic about projects at this phase of the game.

The company grew explosively in the beginning part of the year, leading to many new employees like myself becoming swamped with work. Now that the growth has slowed down, some of the recent hires can now catch their collective breath and learn more about the whole software development process. Weekly developer meetings have shed a lot of light on our practices and made us a lot more interdependent. When people come and go at all hours, it's nice to have knowledge as spread-out as possible.

unwiring

I've decided to make the leap and discontinue my home phone service in favor of an all-mobile-phone arrangement. Looking at my statements, I pay about $17 for basic home phone service that I rarely, if ever, use. By comparison, I pay $23 for a basic mobile phone plan that I use more often. My neighborhood boasts excellent GSM coverage through T-Mobile, including a full service meter all throughout my apartment. I figure, if I upgrade to the next cell phone plan, I can save a small amount of money but also simplify my contact methods. Now, even if I move, I can always keep my phone number.

The main downside to this plan is local calls -- they won't exist any more. Instead of paying little to nothing for a local phone call, I will now have to draw from my calling plan. The same goes for 800 numbers, which are no longer "toll-free." Of course, I still have access to a phone at my job, but I don't think it's right to come into work just to use it.

Back to May 2003, or to the year 2003.

Where am I?

This is Weill Aspects, the official news archive of Jason Weill Web Productions. All articles posted to the front page end up here. This page was generated automatically by a series of Perl scripts.

Articles in Weill Aspects are organized solely by date. You may find the Google search in the left column to be useful if you are looking for an article but do not know the date on which it was posted.

Weill Aspects is composed of static web pages generated as appropriate when a new article is posted. It was developed in May 2001 as a way of managing the content on this site. I also used it extensively while in Japan, during which time I did not have continuous access to the Internet. I was able to write daily updates during July and August 2002, pack the files onto a CD-R or memory device, and upload them from the Internet-connected computers at school.

These scripts are all hacked together in less than elegant fashion, and I don't plan to release them. Some of the design that went into Aspects also was used to develop Livestat, a suite of Perl scripts to process statistics for academic competition tournaments. Livestat is available freely.