Distractions, reflections

Distractions, reflections

David Ing, at large … Sometimes, my mind wanders

Tues. Nov. 15, 2006: Book before dissertation

November 15, 2005
David doesn’t behave like the normal Ph.D. student, which is acceptable in Finland.

(by David): I had to prepare for the dissertation seminar, which is mostly a coaching session for people who haven’t done extensive research in their careers. I have to say that I’ve found this a strong point in the training at HUT. This seemed to be something that was missing in my education when I was at UBC. Last year, I was sitting in a class taught by my friend Annaleena, where she stepped the master’s students through how to do library searches (e.g. the Web of Science database). Annaleena has said that the professors at HUT may not be the most dynamic speakers, but they’re good researchers. I would add that they’re generous with their time with Ph.D. students who are apprentices. This is despite the fact that in North America, where a professor supervising five students would be considered heavy, and Stanford chaired professors aim for one — Finnish professors may supervisor as many as 25 students. They’re really overworked, so I mostly try to stay out of their way.

That being said, I’m still a Ph.D. student here, and participate in the doctoral seminar. To be up front, I haven’t done that much writing on the dissertation since I was here in the spring, but I’m not going to hide behind that. One result of aligning my dissertation research on innovation with the research relevant to my day job is that I’m now making advances on book, to be co-authored with some friends at work. Thus, it’s become an interesting pitch at the university. I’ll probably get the book done and published before I finish the dissertation, which itself will be done sometime before I finish my course work. It’s certainly everything backwards from the normal student.

In my university role, I’ve come to prepare fewer slides, and find that writing on the blackboard works well with students for whom English isn’t the first language. It slows down my talk — I really work on speaking slowly, already — but for the dissertation seminar, I put together a lot of the slides that I used at the conference in Florida in September. I created three slides up front to explain the outline and direction of the book. The whole presentation deck was 35 slides.

At the dissertation seminar, I decided to only speak to 3 slides. I’m sure everyone was happier.

Sun. Nov. 13, 2005: A monastery with high speed Internet connections

November 14, 2005
David finds the Scandinavian surroundings a bit … quiet.

(by David): I’ve stayed at the Radisson SAS Espoo before, on an expense account trip to Finland. In 2003/2004, I stayed in Simo’s extra apartment. (No, it wasn’t for trysts. He was living across town, and it was a convenient place for kids to stay before and after school, for those odd weeks when they weren’t with their mother. A modern solution to a modern challenge). On the last few trips to Finland, it’s been now a habit to stay with Minna, and cook for her family. (Live-in chefs with master’s degrees are in rather short supply, anywhere). It’s too bad that Minna’s house was full up on the trip, but I’ve been running around so much recently that the quiet is a good thing.

The hotel is on the edge of the campus of the Helsinki University of Technology, so it’s only a 20-minute walk (practically east to west across the campus) to the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management. (The Finns refer to the “Tuotantotalouden osasto” as “Tuta”, which is supposedly a playful pun on childhood, Finnish). There’s small plaza with two small grocery stores, pharmacist, bank, etc., so it’s reasonable to live fairly normally here.

The airplane touched down in rain, yesterday, and it’s been steadily gray. With the sea near the front doorstep, I can’t remember days this gloomy in Vancouver. One of the professors asked me why I don’t come to Finland when the weather is better. That’s because the Finns are smart enough to enjoy the short summer when they can. Thus, classes when the weather isn’t great.

The hotel is nice enough, and I actually like the minimalist Scandinavian decor. Since I’m here by myself this time, though, I feel like I’m some sort of monastery. The hallways are quiet. I haven’t opted for pay tv, so it’s Finnish television. I get to watch last season’s O.C., Karate Kid 2 (the one in Okinawa), and other American shows with Finnish subtitles on the screen. I did get to see an episode of Six Feet Under that I hadn’t seen yet, which indicates that Canada is two seasons behind, when the Finns are only one behind.

The isolation is actually tolerable, because I’ve really had a chance to do a more thorough investigation of Internet radio. When I’m in the office in Toronto — even when I’m working in a client’s office — I’ll usually plug headphones into my Thinkpad and listen to JazzFM, which I normally play on the radio at home when I’m working. I hate fund-raising time, though, so in offices, I’ll sometimes switch to KCCK, which is a college radio station in Iowa. It reminds me of days when I used to live in Evanston and listen to WXRT — which use to play progressive rock (e.g. Peter Gabriel, as well as jazz (e.g. Pat Metheny). Subsequent trips to Chicago have disappointed me, because WXRT isn’t the station of old. It’s a sign of old age, I guess, because radio stations have to keep up with times, and as people get older, they seem to stop listening to new music (even by the favourite artists they listened to, between ages 20 and 30).

Despite the “radio” choices on RealPlayer and (shudder) Windows Media Player, I’ve found the selection of stations on Live365 to be quite broad. Unlike the kids, who download MP3 audio onto Winamp, I’ve found Live365 to be an ethical alternative, because they pay royalties to the musicians they play. I’m not yet a VIP member, so I’m still a free rider).

I’ve been listening quite a bit to Attention Span Radio, which has two stations — one that plays primarily jazz fusion, and then another that plays contemporary (post-bop) jazz. The variety is enough that I’ll end up doing searches on AllMusic to figure out who the artists are.

On this trip, though, I’ve been blown away by RvrJazz, which seems to be a radio station just slightly north of New York City. They claim to be modelled after WRVR — a station that I’ve never heard — in the 1980s. They play a lot of CDs that I actually own. There’s something about following Pat Metheny with cuts from Steely Dan. Even WXRT in the 1980s was never this close to my listening tastes.

But, because jazz fusion isn’t everything, I’ve also discovered Into the Mystic”, which is spun by a broadcaster in Columbus, Ohio. I probably ran into this station searching on Kate Bush or Rickie Lee Jones. Diana would like this station.

I listen on the extra Walkman headphones that I carry around in my knapsack, and then the tinny computer speakers when I’m not sitting at the desk. I’m beginning to wonder if I should be like the boys, and have speakers hooked up to my computer at home ….

Fri. Nov. 11, 2006: Missed the flight

November 13, 2005
David sees signals of overload in missing his flight to Helsinki via Frankfurt.

(by David): It looks like I’ve really maxed out on stress. My colleague in my day job said that I always look like I’m not under stress, but I guess I hide it better than most. I know when I’m tired, and try to watch out. On Thursday morning, when I drove into the office, I pulled into 3 parking spaces, before I decided to choose one. I got into the client office late — after making a stop at our downtown office to pick up printouts — and the remaining parking spaces were pretty tight. Since I was tired, I decided that I shouldn’t take any chances, and gave up on 3 parking spaces before I found a space that wasn’t so tight.

On Friday, in packing, I seemed to lose sense of time. I know that it usually takes 4 to 5 hours to pack for a trip of 2 weeks to Finland, if I don’t do any packing in advance. I got up late (having stayed up until 4 a.m. finishing up a report, and then puttered away at things that needed to be done: re-registering on the company’s medical plan (on the last day of registration), and checking in with DLH (since people in Finland will ask about him).

Diana picked up Mary — they were planning to go shopping out the direction of the airport, after dropping me off — and I was still packing. With a 5:15 p.m. flight, I had planned to leave around 2:30 p.m., knowing that if I left around 3:00 p.m., that I would probably still be okay. By 3:30 p.m., I was throwing things into the suitcase, and we were rushing to leave.

And … by 3:30 p.m., we were hitting rush hour traffic. I’ve been doing the trip to the airport almost every day for the past 8 weeks — the client office is right across the street from the airport — and Mary said that it was clear that I was taking all of the right side routes to get out of traffic — but it still took about 40 minutes to get airport. When I got to the Air Canada counter at about 4:30, the check-in clerk said that I was arriving about 20 minutes after the flight had closed, and that I would have to rebook.

I walked across to the ticket desk. In line, I phoned AmEx, and they said that the alternative flight at 7:15 to Frankfurt was full, so I might have to go the next day. When I got to the ticket counter, the check-in clerk was very nice, and said that I could get the last seat on the flight to Munich. I’ve taken that route before, so I said yes. She checked with some other reservation clerks, and put stickers on my tickets. Since I was booked on Air Canada for the whole trip — yes, the Germany-Finland legs are actually Lufthansa, but they’re Air Canada codeshares — she said that Air Canada usually charges for ticket changes, but that she wouldn’t charge me today. I thanked her profusely.

At the other end, Annaleena was scheduled to pick me up from the airport, but when I looked at my PDA, I hadn’t updated her phone number from when she was in Sweden. I phoned DLH, and asked if he could call Annaleena. At that point, since the time would have been past midnight in Finland, DLH said that he would phone Annaleena.

As soon as I got on the Toronto-Munich leg of the flight, I put on the eye shades, and went right to sleep. (The plane was full, so I was in upright seating). On the Munich-Helsinki leg, I tried to do some reading, but still fell asleep.

When I arrived at the Helsinki airport, Annaleena wasn’t there. I phoned her, and she said that she had come to pick me up for the original flight, but I wasn’t there. (Sorry). I took a taxi to the hotel, instead.

I’ve been definitely stressed out this past week. I know that DLH has been pretty stressed out recently, but I guess that I was so stressed that I forgot that, and he probably miscalculated the time zones to speak with Annaleena. These are signals that everyone is just too busy.

Postscript, adding injury to stress: As the flight was landing in Munich, the overhead door flew open, and someone’s laptop fell onto my lap. The top of my left thigh hurt initially, and then was okay. After sitting on the Munich-Frankfurt flight, my thigh started to hurt again, and I’ve been walking with a limp. It could have been worse … it could have hit a bone ….

Thurs. Nov. 10, 2005: Hours like a student

November 12, 2005
David’s work hours seem to follow those of student days.

(by David): In my work like, not much has changed since 1976, when I first started university. I read articles and books, and write reports, most of the days — work days, and weekend, although the content is sometimes different.

Working in consulting usually means a little bit of a rush towards the end, even if the project is well-managed. In the earlier days of a consulting gig, there’s always a possibility to move around deliverables a bit, but at end of the project is the end of the project, so everything has to be wrapped up.

I’ve known since August that I was planning to leave for Finland on November 11, so this hasn’t been a surprise. I’ve been managing the consulting time pretty well — there’s really only me and antoher consultant, and we’ve been working together well — but working towards a final report means that there can effectively only be one person that “owns” the document at any given time. It’s possible to work on sections, and copy-and-paste them into a master document, but there’s always the risk of making mistakes doing that.

So, the schedule was a four-hour slot for a Powerpoint presentation on the second last today — this Thursday — and then the final report due on the Friday.

On the late Wednesday night (actually early Thursday), I was up until 1 a.m.

On the Thursday night, I asked my colleague to finish up around 8 p.m., and hand the document over to me. I started working on the document around 8:30 p.m., and finished at 4 a.m. When I spoke to him on Friday morning, I told him that the document was all his to finish. The amount that he had to finish was up to him, but most of the content of a 70-page-plus document was done.

These types of deadlines definitely give me a flashback to student days …. Nothing much has changed.

Tues. Nov. 1, 2005: Slipping into academic lectures

November 4, 2005
David sneaks over the university to hear a lecture, and is found out.

(by David): I take advantage of living in downtown Toronto, and being an alumnus of the commerce program at U. of Toronto, to attend various Rotman School events. It’s one of the leading business schools in the world — no one would argue that it’s top 50 worldwide, and there’s always the quibble about whether it’s in the top 20 worldwide, and its position in the top 5 in Canada — and it’s got a strong academic staff, so there’s always good speakers coming through. I just have to mark my calendar to remember to go.

My attendance at Rotman events isn’t directly related to my day job — I don’t have or want any official power there — so I just slip the event into my work day, and shift some hours around later, so there’s no real impact on my day job.

So, on this day, there was a debate between Nicholas Carr — famous for his IT Doesn’t Matter article — and Don Tapscott, who is a well known consultant who happens to live in Toronto.

Normally, my visit wouldn’t be a big deal… I usually just come in, and take a seat at the table up near the front of the lecture area. I came into the building, picked up my badge, hung up my coat, and slipped in beside the curtain up near the stage, and went to sit down at my usual position in the front row … and then I noticed that the CIO — my current client — was sitting two seats over from me.

We said hi, he introduced me to someone he was with, and I did my usual note taking and recording.

No damage done, but at least one person at my client knew that I wasn’t billing for those two hours that morning! At least this is some recognition that I work for a client for my knowledge, and not really by the hour ….

Mon. Oct. 31, 2006: Next generation PDA

November 2, 2005
David gets a replacement for his Palm IIIxe.

(by David): Back in the Palisades days, IBM had a deal with Palm, so I managed to get an IBM Workpad, which was the first generation PDA. It was black-and-white, and didn’t do much, but since I would sync it to my laptop, it was helpful when I really didn’t want to boot my computer just to look up an address or phone number. I’m on my Thinkpad so much, that I really don’t need a lot of computing power. The old PDAs used to run 2 months on 2 AAA batteries, but then everyone went crazy for more features, so the PDAs had to start using rechargables … and they had to be rechanged everyday.

Of course, the old Workpad broke, so I got a second generation one from my job at Palisades. IBM stopped selling the Workpad, so when that one broke, I ended up buying a Palm IIIxe from Factory Direct. Under $100, with 8 MB of RAM, and still black-and-white screen on two AAA batteries.

Somehow, I lost the Palm IIIxe, and I’ve been working away from the desk at home, so I’ve been a bit annoyed at not having a PDA. I looked at what was new in PDAs, and decided to wait a few weeks … for the new Palm TX.

The Palm TX is, in effect, a Palm Tungsten T5 with Wifi access. This means a mobile browser! The other advance (from older Palms) is non-volatile memory. On old Palms, when the power ran out, everything on the PDA was lost. Now, when the battery runs out, at least I don’t have to reload everything!

The TX has been a nice luxury — it’s cheaper than the older models, but I could almost buy a cheap used laptop for that price, these days! Still, I’ve been listening to Podcasts recently, where the user interface has been discussed, so I’ve bee considering this my portable alternative to a Mac. (I’m still on Sony minidisc, no iPod!

Two annoyances with Palm, so far. One old application I used — Currency — a useful cross-exchange rate program that hasn’t been updated since 1999! — caused the TX to go into a loop. I had to reload the TX many times until I figured out that it’s a lost cause, and replace Currency with FXPilot from Oanda, which does the same thing, but in a user interface that requires two more taps. Secondly, I bought an SD card and then got Realplayer for Palm under the assumption that I could now play Realaudio (which is a super-compressed streaming format, which I normally have use Total Recorder to convert to MP3). Wrong! It turns out that Real doesn’t support Realplayer on mobile technologies! What are they thinking? (It’s possible to get WMA support — Microsoft’s version of streaming audio — on the Pocket PC format).

On the whole, I’ve been satisfied with the TX. It’s brand, brand new, and I bought a “multilingual” version over eBay, instead of going to a store, because this multilingual version comes with a multi-voltage adapter that I would otherwise have to pay $40 for!

Postscript: In packing for Finland, I discovered the Palm IIIxe in my travel luggage. I remember now …. I was taking notes at the conference in Florida, and already had all of my luggage packed. I just slipped the Palm into my travel luggage, because I tend to use the Palm when I’m on the road! Maybe Diana would like the Palm IIIxe.

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