DCortesi . blog

I needed a free PDF printer recently and came across PDFCreator. I downloaded, installed, and it works great! Gotta love open-source.

Hello from Seattle again! You’ll be hearing that a lot lately…

I got in a little early today because I wanted to go to the client and put in a few extra hours. The office is right down the road so I decided to take advantage of the brisk weather and walk on over. On the way over I passed this one company whose office is set deep in a wooded environment. I’ve been a bit stressed lately, so I took a little detour and managed to end up in the middle of several tall firs. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and felt my brain let go. I leaned back and opened my eyes to see the tops of the firs mixing with the sky. Man, do I miss the woods! It felt great to get outside and walk around.

Speaking of the woods, I’m looking forward to my upcoming stay in Seattle. There are so many things here that I can’t wait to do and I’ve gotten a lot of great ideas. There’s obviously the great hiking, camping, etc of the northwest and I hope to be able to get out and do a lot of that. But there’s also Vancouver, an awesome bike park just half a day’s drive away, Seattle’s Underground Tour - I had no clue about this underground city thing, but my bro mentioned it to me when we were talking last week. Somebody also mentioned that the San Juan islands are pretty cool to check out. And then I’d love to hit up some of the old-school alternative scene…you know go check out where Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, etc. got their start…if it’s still around, that is.

And then, of course…there’s Mt. Rainier. All 14,410 ft of that sucker are going to tease me every time I go back to the airport and I see it looming in the distance.

I can’t wait for it to get warm so I can get out and do all this stuff! It should be a good few months. And since I’ll be out here for a while in corporate housing, this is also an open invitation for anybody that wants to get away for a while and join me in the back country! Come on…you know you wanna hit those 20 ft drops on your mountain bike at Whistler.

A couple years ago at an RSA conference, I saw Oracle’s CSO Mary Ann Davidson give a presentation called “Confessions of a Process Junkie” about software engineering and the culture surrounding coding. She had a very good argument regarding the qualificaitons and certifications required of civil engineers vs. the standards and (lack of) qualifications and certifications surrounding software engineers. For example, here are some of her examples of if Civil Engineers built bridges like developers write code:

• “We can add some rebar later, so what if the concrete has set?”
• “The bridge has crumbled? Sorry, I can’t reproduce that problem here.”
• “But it wasn’t designed to have so many trucks on it.”

I think you can start to see the point. Well, as is usually the case. A picture is worth a thousand words.
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from SecuriTeam

There’s so much that can be said about this topic, but I think the image above says enough by itself. I wonder if software will ever reach the point where it can be relied on to drive mission-critical systems as this certainly isn’t the case today.

The UConn Huskies played the Washington Huskies tonight. Last-second three pointers to tie the game, overtime, turnovers, and 47 UConn free throws made for quite the exciting game. My poor mother (HUGE UConn fan) must have been falling off the sofa with anxiety. But UConn pulled through in the end and won. Time to hit the sack for me - busy day tomorrow…but first, time to rewind and watch a few highlights on my HD DVR!

I talked with Mike about this recently, but I was surprised to realize that my entire family blogs. Brother, Sister, Mother, and of course myself. I started back in January 2002, my Sister started a couple years later, my Brother a year after that, and my own Mother soon thereafter. I find it pretty amazing that we all are doing this blogging thing. It’s a great way to keep up on family especially when all three siblings are in different time zones. I’ve been able to learn so much about my family that (due to my poor phone skills) I probably never would have learned otherwise. So congrats and thanks to my fam for taking part in the blogging revolution! In any case, back to a little vino, work, and the UConn game - go Huskies!

I’ve been pretty busy with work lately. I’ve gotten some great opportunities and have been thinking a lot about what I want to do when I grow up. I’ve also been thinking about how I’ve been able to achieve what I have. Most of that can simply be attributed to my father who instilled in me some of the best work ethic one person could ever hope for. This has also led me to think about success and how one defines being successful. The truth is, everyone defines it differently. I suppose it’s what is important to you that determines how you can be successful. Which leads me to ask, am I successful? Sure. Can I be more successful? Of course. But what is it that defines success for me? Well that’s frequently a moving target, but here’s what a few other people think.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

- Albert Schweitzer

Success… it’s what you do with what you’ve got.

- Leroy Van Dyke

Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

- T. S. Eliot

I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.

- General George S. Patton

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.

- Christopher Morley

We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

To freely bloom - that is my definition of success.

- Gerry Spence

You will find the key to success under the alarm clock.

- Benjamin Franklin

And on that note…I’m going to bed!

Leo: Now is not a good time to photocopy your butt and staple it to your boss’s face. Eat a bucket of tuna-flavored pudding, then wash it down with a gallon of Strawberry Quik.

I totally agree…I’m off to find the nearest 24-hour Kinko’s. Let me know if you want a copy…

As I walked out of the Safeway (yes…I’m in Seattle again) tonight sporting my week’s supply of Gatorade, I caught a foldable table out of the corner of my eye with stacks of rectangular shaped boxes and a sporty mother and daughter team standing behind them.

“Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?”, the young girl blurted out.

I paused.

Visions of peanut butter patties, thin mints, and classic shortbread cookies danced through my head like a heroin addict making a score. My mind had already turned toward the table and it was a simple matter of making my body follow.

But it resisted. The burn of a good workout yesterday picked my right foot up and moved it forward in a straight line. Then the left. And the right again. My brain screamed “What are you doing, you fool?! Those are Girl Scout cookies!”.

My body laughed and said “Hey buddy, you’re gonna be lying out on a beach in a bathing suit by the end of the week…what do you want to do?”.

Much to the relief of my waistline, my brain conceded and the Girl Scout cookies have slipped from my grasp until next year.

So if you’re thinking about hopping on the Dan Ryan (90/94 South out of Chicago) in the near future…don’t. It’s a simple as that. At least, not until 2008. Chicagoist reported that the Dan Ryan is undergoing repairs (including shutting down half of the lanes) to improve capacity.

In other words…a six-eight lane highway that is currently handling double it’s intended capacity will be cut in half for two years in order to ultimately increase the capacity. Joy.

More information can be found on Avoidtheryan.com.

On a side note, did you realize that Chicago has some of the best tap water in the country?!

So I was in San Fran this past weekend visiting Mike D, or as it will be known for the context of this post: “The City of Eating”. Yea, we ate quite a bit. I got in late Friday and we hit up a local bar for a quick drink where I fashioned my cell phone as illumination for the menu in the dark interior.

After a couple more drinks than intended, Saturday morning was late in coming. Not to be stopped, we headed across the Golden Gate bridge and went to a great restaurant called Sweden House Bakery and Cafe. We got a nice seat out by the bay, where the seagulls and pigeons were very close neighbors:
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They weren’t kidding either. As soon as the couple next to us left, a seagull and a few pigeons clattered onto the table nearly knocking over some glasses to get…a packet of butter?! Crazy birds.

Then it was back to the Golden Gate. Feats of engineering never cease to amaze me. Did you know that there are 27,572 galvanized wires in one main cable?
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Even if you didn’t know, you probably don’t care. He’s one of the few pictures I have of people for those of you that don’t care for the significance of the 7,650ft that consists of the length of one main cable.
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After that, we drove around various parts of San Fran and saw everything from anatomically-correctenhanced robots to super steep hills and the stairs going up those hills.
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*phew* What a busy day! So what better to do after a draining day of site-seeing than take a nice long nap, grab some dinner, and dance the night away.
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I must be getting old, though, as for the first time ever I wore earplugs at the club. And in all reality…I am very glad I did. It sounded louder than normal and even with the earplugs in it was still pretty loud and more than enough for me to get lost in the beat. I probably still wouldn’t be able to hear today if I hadn’t worn those earplugs.

Sunday, as is intended, was a day of rest. After (yet another delicious) breakfast, we went and saw Ultraviolet. The effects were great, but it wasn’t really my style. The best part was the opening scene, which…ultimately didn’t have much to do with the rest of the movie but was just really cool!

Well I think that’s the highlights. Thanks, Mike D for a great weekend!