San Diego Gophersnake
Found: 1 San Diego Gophersnake which after getting run over by a car, bit itself in a very recursive manner.
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September 19, 2008
April 9, 2008
CostCo Membership
 Photo courtesy of Greg McElhatton |
Super secret thing: After your CostCo membership expires you can still buy things from CostCo online. There will be no tasty chicken rolls available to you, but cheap digital cameras are. |
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March 14, 2008
Hurray for Teaching!
 Photo courtesy of Evan G |
The awardees for the 2008 ICS Dean's Awards for Faculty are as follows: |
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January 8, 2008
UCI rejects a lot of spam
 Photo courtesy of chotda |
Sciencedude >> Blog Archive>> UCI rejects 2,500 spam messages per minute - OCRegister.com "UCI rejects 2,500 spam messages per minute" I get quoted at the end. It's a very good professor day! |
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Have you got anything without spam?
Posted by: Nate at January 11, 2008 11:31 AMDecember 18, 2007
1 videoconference. 37 people. 122.7 tons of C02 saved
A little more love from the O.C. Register via the LUCI blog:
LUCI Blog: 1 videoconference. 37 people. 122.7 tons of C02 saved "Organizing an international conference takes a lot of work. But it doesn't have to burn a lot of fuel - provided that organizers are willing to meet by video-teleconference. That's the route that UCI informatics professor Donald Patterson and 36 others took last weekend while they were ironing out the details of Pervasive 2008, a conference to be held next May in Sydney, Australia."
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December 11, 2007
"Circling the Globe in the Name of Science"
Hey, I'm in the O.C. Register, read about it in the LUCI blog:
LUCI Blog: "Circling the Globe in the Name of Science"
"5. Informatics Professor Don Patterson visited villages in South Africa and Zambia to examine how such aid groups as the Agathos Foundation use information technology to help care for children, particularly orphans whose parents died of AIDS. He also worked on a cell phone tool that makes it easy for donors who give money for aid projects to get feedback about how their money is spent."
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November 21, 2007
Inbox Zero!
 
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Just thought you might like to see what Inbox Zero looks like baby! Oh yeah.... To do list infinity but inbox zero. That mean no emails. Nothing on my desk. Nothing on my table. Nothing in my inbox. Nothing on my bed. Nothing on the file cabinet. It's all in the system. Now to get cracking... Take that Mike. |
 
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August 19, 2007
Back from vacation, time to address email
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Uggh...I'm back from Africa and time to face the 532-unread-emails music.... |
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July 11, 2007
Denny's Receipts
 Photo courtesy of SpacePotato |
I went to a Denny's this past weekend and was surprised both by the good service and by the receipt. Denny's now gives you a receipt for your meal which itemizes the order by person even when you are in a group. That would have been very helpful back in high school. It's an answer to the dreaded, "Can we have seperate checks please?" |
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I'm surprised state law allows Denny's. It's too Midwest. You should get someone on that.
Posted by: Nate at July 11, 2007 12:14 PMJuly 9, 2007
Scaffolding
 Photo courtesy of darkmatter |
SANTA ANA, Calif. — The first bus strike in Orange County in more than two decades disrupted the commutes of thousands of riders Monday after 1,100 transportation workers walked off the job. Companies sought to help employees cope with the strike by setting up car pool hot lines and other resources for people who have no transportation. Transit officials braced for plenty of confusion and frustrated residents. About 70 percent of Orange County Transportation Authority riders don't have access to a car and half are members of families making $22,000 a year or less, according to the agency's chairwoman, Carolyn Cavecche. |
"Scaffolding" is a term that I use to describe all the junk that you have to do in order to get something accomplished. Usually you find yourself thinking about scaffolding when you say things like, "Oh! But before I do that I need to..."
The scaffolding for getting to work this morning was very heavy. First I get out to the bus stop. I think I have missed the bus. So I go to Starbucks and get something like breakfast while I read "Diffusion of Innovations" until the next bus arrives. So I go back to the bus stop. No bus. Curious I start to think about how it might have come to pass that I missed two buses. Then I recall a notice about contract negotiations on the OCTA web page from last week and conclude that the bus drivers are on strike. A quick phone call to the Chief Household Officer confirms this. As I am one of the people mentioned in the article above without access to a car, I arrange to borrow the car for the day from the CHO. I get to campus and realize that, because it is June, I don't have any incentive passes that allow me to park on campus for free (as a reward for riding the bus). So I go to the parking office and get a new year's worth of passes. Then I park in the parking lot and realize I don't have a pen in the car to fill out the pass that sits on the dashboard. So I go into my office and get the pen, return to the car, fill out the pass go back to my office and finish building the scaffolding for work today by blogging about it.
Not all scaffolding is bad.... Like making coffee, that has a lot of scaffolding, but I enjoy it. Now to build that one....
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January 12, 2007
Cheap Gas in Iran
 Photo courtesy of ~VISTA |
Gas is $0.35/gallon in Iran. The source for that comes from this article. Curiously the article also suggests that the recent crash in crude oil prices is an economic attack on Iran from Saudi Arabia. Iran depends heavily on the profit from oil exports to subsidize it's economy (including it's gas). With a drop in oil prices, the pressure on the government is ramped up. Presumably this is because the government is being so belligerent regarding nuclear technology and generally making Saudi Arabia nervous. |
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January 19, 2006
Self-Promotion
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What good is a blog if you can't post information in your own self-interest? I was recently profiled in an alumni column for my high school alma mater, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology "Patterson now works at U.C. Irvine in the Department of Informatics, a type of computer science that does evaluations of new technology with people involved. He will become a Ph.D. next week." A copy of the article is archived here. |
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Well said Professor. What were some of your small roles and behind the scenes jobs whilst treading the TJHSST boards as an amateur thespian?
Posted by: Nate at January 20, 2006 4:00 AMUmm.-. I played "Ed" in "You Can't Take it With You" I am still haunted by the fact that I have no idea what my lines are.
Posted by: Don at January 20, 2006 10:45 AMJanuary 11, 2006
Car Fire in Los Angeles
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Just needed a little break this weekend, so we drove into Los Angeles to see the sights. Apparently the reason why movies all have car chases and explosions is because this is the daily life of Hollywood. Art imitating life. On the left is a real car fire that happened on our way to check out the farmer's market in L.A. |
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June 9, 2005
Online Estimated Tax Payments
 Photo courtesy of Matthew Matins |
So this is a useful, but very dry piece of information. The IRS has set up a web site where you can make online estimated tax payments:http://www.eftps.gov |
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So I just did this after going through the snail mail authentication process and it looks like it worked pretty well. The paperwork was a little overkill, but it is *taxes* after all. The cool thing is that I scheduled payments over six months into the future.
Posted by: DJP3 at June 24, 2005 8:57 AMMay 5, 2005
Suzzallo Reading room
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| Today thesis day is in the Suzzallo Library at the University of Washington! |
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The Suz harkens back to an old-money, east coast university. Why the gothic look? Or is it mandatory for all universities to copy the original American U's? What is the history to UW?
Posted by: Nate at May 6, 2005 5:32 AMJanuary 18, 2005
Duck on Ice
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There has been quite a range of weather in Seattle recently. A little snow, a little torrential downpour, a little sun .. clearly caused by global warming. Anyway on the way onto campus yesterday, a cold snap caused the Drumheller fountain to freeze over. The ducks had nowhere to float. I snapped this camera phone shot to commemorate the somewhat rare event. |
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August 19, 2004
This is the first entry.
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That's great, Don!
Apparently adding that joke to your PowerPoint slide really helped.
But seriously, congratulations.
Posted by: John Krumm at March 16, 2008 12:01 PM