Bridge Collapse

Tonight I was on the road after a late evening at work, cruising along in the the convertible listening to KBEM, the public radio traffic station. I passed 35W, deciding to take 77 south, since a bunch of cars were lined up at the metered entrance ramp. The traffic reporter announced the local slowdowns in a professional manner. As I entered the 77 south bridge over the Minnesota river, the traffic reporter's voice cracked. Panic entered his tone. All I heard was, "35W has collapsed. The 35W river bridge collapsed." My stomach clenched. I thought the Minnesota river bridge I just passed collapsed. Seconds ticked by slowly. Everything was happening in slow motion, the rush of the wind in my convertible dulled.
Then the KBEM reporter said that the traffic cameras showed the 35W bridge over the Mississippi river collapsed. I felt sick. The bridge is only a few blocks from Hennepin County Medical Center, my former workplace. The rest of my drive passed by in a haze of worry. State troopers passed me going northbound, sirens wailing.
At home, I turned the TV to Fox 9 news. Jeff Passolt, who I usually listen to cracking jokes on the KQRS morning show, was saddened. Tom Lydon, who interviewed me a couple of years ago for a silly office story, was pale and somber. None of the TV news crew wore makeup or styled hair. Everyone seemed to report for duty as they were.
I'm still watching now. Hennepin County Medical Center has issued a code orange. I hope all of my former co-workers are OK. As I'm watching city and county employees respond to the scene on the news, I'm overwhelmed by their difficulty of their work. The Minneapolis police, the Hennepin Country Medical Center staff, the fire crews and paramedics are all working darn hard to help people. Thank goodness we have such dedicated public employees here in Minnesota. I know that they are carrying pagers and cell phones, dreading the call, yet ready with anticipation of the crisis. These guys and gals are the best. Working for less, yet doing so much more than us in the private sector.
I'm saddened by the chaos and fear. Now Channel 9 is broadcasting a call from Amy Klobuchar, former Hennepin County employee, now a U.S. Senator. If anyone can help this situation at the national level, I believe she can. I know she will do the most she can. Any county employee would.
I still don't know if everyone I know is OK, and I'm pretty worried, so I'm going to sign off right now. I hope for the best. I wish everyone is OK.

See You at C.U.

Many of you might know I'm a proud county credit union member, one of the numerous benefits of being a former county employee. I was listening to an episode of the Montel Williams show last week, on my TV H-band radio, and a medium was chatting with guests about spirits she could see standing around them. The medium pulled some nifty party tricks.
One of the guests said she worked in a County Credit Union, and a ghost was hanging around the C.U., bothering the county employees. I almost started cackling. I can't imagine strolling up to the teller, and seeing an ethereal being floating near the change wrapper. I had to choke down the giggles so my office mate wouldn't think I'm nuts.
The medium explained to the C.U. employee that the ghost's name was Martha and she is a spirit who just loves hanging out at the Credit Union, possibly a former C.U. member in life. The C.U. employee was perturbed, and said, "If she loves it so much at the Credit Union, then why does she keep stealing my keys?" The medium said, "It's just to let you know she's there."
I lose my car keys at least twice a month, so often that I keep several spares hidden in the house. Maybe I could blame this on a ghost who loves hanging around my house instead of my bad memory. Of course, my house isn't nearly as nifty as the county credit union. At the C.U., they have an awesome change counter that's free for use by members and their own cookbook for sale, called "C.U. in the Kitchen". My credit union definitely isn't haunted. You should become a member! They opened it up the membership to people living in the county, not just county employees. C.U. at the Credit Union!

Sub-Compact Satisfaction

Toyota sent me a survey this week to evaluate my Echo satisfaction. The Echo is pretty darn awesome. This car never needs repairs. We’ve been together almost three years, and other than a synthetic oil change here and there, the car needs nothing. I’ve never gone for such a long stretch without replacing an alternator or a radiator.
Of course, I generally buy elderly vehicles, so I expect to make repairs as we go. I figure either I can pay for occasional repairs and parts, or pay a loan payment every month. With the Echo I chose the latter route. This is the first time I’ve owned a brand new car and the thrill of custom ordering a car from Japan is incredible.
If only I could have custom ordered my little Festivas from Korea. My Festivas were the best. Back when I was a county employee, one of my co-workers spotted Little Red, my Festiva GL, in the parking lot of our server co-location company in Eagan. Little Red sported a few bumper stickers. Okay, maybe a few is an understatement. The entire hatch was covered with stickers. None of them were mine. They came with the vehicle. Anyway, my co-worker took a look at all of the Sierra Club and Arbor Day stickers on my Festiva and dubbed it the Hippy Car.
There is nothing about the Echo that says "Hippy" quite like Little Red's overt environmental and political messages. In the Toyota survey, the Echo scored high in sub-compact satisfaction, but if I had to fill out a survey on my Festivas, they would score off the charts in every single multiple choice question. You just can't quantify love.

Angry County Employee On the Loose!

It's been quite a while since I was a county employee, but I still keep up with county employees in the news. I feel a bond with them in ways that are only attributable to the unique culture that county employees share. There aren't too many places where the dress code states "no jeans" and one of the employees interprets that to mean pajama bottoms should be worn instead.
I was reading a really boring newspaper story about a lady getting into a row with Lifetime Fitness over her membership fees, but I perked up when I saw near the end of the story that she is a social services planner for Hennepin County. Suddenly, her motivations were crystal clear to me. I understand why this person seemed so cranky. Working in social services at Hennepin County could make anyone cranky. It's a department that would challenge Mother Teresa. The clients are challenging to serve and the funding for programs to serve them is sparse. I think Lifetime should just refund her dues. They probably don't know how tenacious an angry county employee can be, but it looks like they're going to find out.

A County Employee to the Rescue

What happens when an inspired country employee fights crime with the help of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program? You'll find out in this thrilling post. (This is not an Onion article or something I made up just to make county employees sound cool, since I used to be one. This is an actual article from USA Today.)

Missing laptop found in ET hunt
Posted 2/21/2007 2:54 PM ET
By Rachel Konrad, The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — The Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, has signed up more than 1 million volunteers worldwide in a search for extraterrestrial intelligence. They've found no aliens yet, but they have at least turned up one missing laptop.

The Berkeley effort, better known as SETI@home, uses volunteers' computers when they go into screen-saver mode to crunch data from the Arecibo radio observatory in Puerto Rico. The computers are trying to spot signals in the radio noise from space.

One volunteer, James Melin, a software programmer for a county government agency in Minnesota, runs SETIhome on his seven home computers, which periodically check in with University of California servers. Whenever that happens, the servers record the remote computer's Internet Protocol address and file it in a database that people running the SETI software can view.

One of the computers on which Melin installed SETI(at)home is his wife's laptop, which was stolen from the couple's Minneapolis home Jan. 1.

Annoyed — and alarmed that someone could delete the screenplays and novels that his wife, Melinda Kimberly, was writing — Melin monitored the SETI(at)home database to see if the stolen laptop would "talk" to the Berkeley servers. Indeed, the laptop checked in three times within a week, and Melin sent the IP addresses to the Minneapolis Police Department.

After a subpoena to a local Internet provider, police determined the real-world address where the stolen laptop was logging on. Within days, officers seized the computer and returned it. No one had been arrested as of Wednesday and the case remains under investigation, said Lt. Amelia Huffman of the Minneapolis Police Department.

Kimberly's writings were safe, and the thieves didn't appear to have broken into her e-mail or other personal folders. But the returned computer contained 20 tracks of rap music with unintelligible lyrics, possibly from the person who stole the computer or bought it on the underground.

"It's really, really horrid rap," Melin said. "It makes Ludacris look like Pavarotti."

Kimberly was more enamored with Melin's detective work.

"I always knew that a geek would make a great husband," she said. "He always backed up all my data, but this topped it all. It became like Mission: Impossible for him, looking for hard evidence for the cops to use. ... He's a genius — my hero."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Doesn't this article have all the elements of an engrossing short story? There is the excitement of aliens, software programming, heroism and crime, mixed with the romance between husband and wife. If I was a publisher, I'd contact Mr. Melin for the rights to a fictional work based on his experience.

A County Employee's Vote Counts

Two weeks ago, in the midst of the election mania, I came across a Star Tribune story featuring a nifty comment by a Hennepin County employee which stresses the importance of voting.

"Andy Leith, 51, of Minnetonka, said he got to there early even though he normally votes later in the evening. “I wanted to get my vote in, in case of a car wreck and I’m killed later,” said Leith, a geologist who works for Hennepin County. “I’d like my vote to count, and I wanted to make sure I got it in.”"

Since I'm a former Hennepin County employee, I understand his fear. Whenever you're crossing the street near the government center, even thought the little walking man is lit up, cars turning left are coming straight towards you. The general attitude was that anytime any of us might get rolled over by an errant motorist and end up in the Hennepin County Medical Center emergency department. (Remember, at HCMC there is an Emergency Department, or ED. There is no ER. Speaking strictly from the view of a former HCMC employee, ER is a TV show, not a part of the hospital campus.)
As Andy Leith's comment underscores, do what is really important to do right now, while you still have the chance. That includes exercising your right to vote, giving your pets or kids a hug, or starting the book you've always wanted to write. All we are is dust in the wind.

Change is Constant, Growth is Optional

Some of you might know that before I became a "hotshot" software engineer at a big corporation, I used to be a lowly programmer in the IT department of a non-profit hospital. When I worked at the hospital, I had a sheet of paper hanging on my battered cube wall that said, "Change is constant, but growth is optional." I didn't need to listen to Kansas' "Dust in the Wind" at the hospital. (See my previous post for an explanation of my cornball Kansas cravings.)
When you work at a hospital, everyday someone is ill, someone is dying and the doctor needs you to fix the icon on their desktop right now so they can get to their Physician's Desk Reference on-line to look up contraindications on a prescription for a patient. I miss doing work that really matters. I miss helping the doctors at the HIV clinic track patient data so they can get a grant. I miss helping chaplains track their time spent with families so they can get reimbursed for comforting someone who is grieving. I miss the cafeteria food terribly. I always ate the vegetarian option that the patients were having that day. Yum!
I loved and hated non-profit work simultaneously. There were never enough resources to go around. It drove me crazy because I could never do enough and I couldn't order the software we needed because there was no money in the budget. Once I had eight projects at one time, writing my own sadly homegrown duplicates of stuff we couldn't afford to buy.
But it doesn't seem like you're working hard when you like what you're doing. I can't tell you how awesome I felt when the deputy medical director thanked me for my work on a project. Wow! A really smart guy who has tons of education and spends all his time helping people, and he gives me a compliment. That's worth more than stock options.
I strive to grow a bit here and there. The constant change in the hospital forced me to grow and become a bit more respectful of the fragility of normal, day-to-day life. Heart attacks and car accidents happen on normal days. Appreciate this time.

Developers play air guitar to Megadeth

Developers play air guitar to Megadeth | The Register



Someone in the UK did a study on musical preferences and discovered developers enjoy listening to Megadeth, Slipknot and Iron Maiden. Wow! I fit right in. I first heard Slipknot on the knac.com when I was working on a Java servlet and JSP-based system for the Chaplaincy department at a local hospital. As soon as I heard "Wait and Bleed", I started typing faster and faster. The music increased my development efficiency and I credit it (in part) for allowing me to finish the system in a month and a half. (Only to have it entirely wiped out by a virus that attacked our production server. But that's a story for another time.)



My co-worker Rocky is buddies with a member of the venerable Slipknot. He recently put the kibosh on his blog - so now we won't be able to hear about his trials and tribulations of being a part of the IT scene and the rock scene at the same time. Rocky - bring back your blog!!!

Phrase of the Day: Prairie Dogging

Prairie Dogging - When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.



Courtesy of my friend Vicki

Origin of the Species: Programming Monkeys

The phrase Programming Monkeys has its origins in the most Dilbertesque moment of my 7-year career in IT.



Sometime last year I was sitting in a team meeting in my former organization, listening to the supervisor talk about how everyone should be consultants instead of programmers. Then he said it - "You could teach a monkey to program a computer." Some of the other people in the meeting were incensed by this statement, but I couldn't fail to see the humor in it.



Later that week I picked up a Barrel of Monkeys game at the dollar store. At the beginning of the next team meeting I set a plastic monkey in front of each person and said, "I've found some new additions to the team. A whole barrel of programmers."



My supervisor also frequently used the phrase "low-hanging fruit" to describe tasks he was assigning to us, which for me conjures images of bananas and mangoes. Despite the fun times we had in team meetings, eventually I left his group to become a software engineer. Now I'm just a programming monkey munching on the low-hanging fruit of the internet revolution.