Meseret Gebre

relearning the linux stack!

// June 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Announcement

Since I left academia, I have dove into the deep fiery hell of Microsoft tech and corrupted my soul. I bet all my profs and advisor would be very sad, but I am giving up my evil ways and now is the time to go back into the light! From now on I will still have to use Microsoft tech because of work, but I promise to maintain my skill levels in all the linux based work I used to do. First I will start by refreshing on my Rails skills by checking out rails 3! This will force me to relearn Ruby and some new cool tools like Cucumber and Pickle. Man, this may sound nerdy, but I am excited at all the stuff that I will get to learn

WPF Series

// May 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // Announcement

I am starting a record here, to document my learning experience with WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). Learning because of a business need. I have started a cool project at work and in order to make our latest product the greatest it can be, I have to learn as much as possible about WPF in order to max out the user experience.

Time To Get Back into Shape!

// April 2nd, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Announcement

Believe or not there used to be a time when I was in great shape. I’m not in horrible shape now, but, there was a point when I carefully monitored what to eat. Counted my calories, kept my sugar intake to a minimum and worked out on a regular basis (6 days a week ). There was a point when all my friends thought I was crazy and extreme. I did everything from lifting, yoga, to cardio, and hours of soccer with friends. Over the last 6 months I hit the breaks a bit to make more time for my research work, but I feel like I have used that as an excuse to slack off. I don’t count my calories anymore and I even started eating junk food like BW3 and drinking diet Big-K!

I wanted to make a point, that no matter how lazy I get I will never eat fast food like McWhatever and the likes

There is one thing that this break from my extreme lifestyle has thought me. Its that when I stop stretching and doing yoga I started to lose flexibility and got more like to  injuries (like my ankle). Also that there can be a good balance between the two lifestyles. You don’t have to be hardcore everyday, but instead be hardcore mostly everyday (if that makes sense). Also what you sacrifice has to be something you can recover from, for example. Cardio should never be sacrificed!  you should always try to keep your muscles flexible, if not yoga, try to stretch for about 15 minutes a day. Lifting you can slack with, but only after you have gotten to your goals!

When I say slack, I mean cutting your lifting workout by half. That way you can stay where you are, but you will not grow any stronger. When you feel you have rested, start your hardcore workouts again!

With that said, I need to my a** back into 6th gear again and start hitting the gym hard again. Also, keeping your body properly feed with complex carbs and protiens and good fats in also important, but thats another post for another time.

Doing Your Tax != Hard

// March 26th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Announcement

This is my second year doing my taxes now and I just finished all my taxes in about 20 minutes. There seems to be a spooky factor when people bring up tax season. I am trying to figure out what all the fuss is about? When doing your tax there are four places you have to file your tax with. These are:

1. Federal tax
2. State tax
3. City tax
4. Local School District

All of these tax forms I filed online! You only need two things handy to complete all of your taxes.  Your W2, you get these from your employer (if you have a job) and finally your bank account and Routing number, this you can get from your bank.

If you run a business or make alot of money, unlike a poor graduate student (me) you might need to get your taxes professionally done.

For the federal tax can be done freely @ http://www.irs.gov/

For the state tax, just do a google search with you state’s name and append ‘tax’, for me the google search was “ohio tax” the first hit was the right place @ http://tax.ohio.gov/

The city tax was a bit weird, because it was not so obvious on where to file, but a quick google search turned up a place called the Regional Income Tax Agency aka RETA @ http://www.ritaohio.com/

The last tax to file is with the local school district, this can be filed at the same place where the state tax was file, so just follow the second link if you are an Ohio resident. Remember you don’t need to pay someone to file your taxes when you can do it yourself online and FREE! After about 30 minutes tops you are good to go and hopefully you’ll be getting money back like me

Muse Code Generator

// March 25th, 2009 // No Comments » // Announcement

My latest work on research has been the development of code generation tool that basically sets up all the needed directories for a muse simulation to work correctly. It also gives users the option to generate agent,state, or event classes which are subclasses from muse base classes. The language I’ve chosen to create this tool is ‘kick ace’  python. Python is probably is my favorite scripting language. Once the tool is complete it will be documented on the muse site @ musesimulation.org

Research Work Issues

// March 24th, 2009 // No Comments » // Announcement

I had a freaking break down today. There are just so many things going on with research and at times can feel very over whelming. I took this day off to get a hold of myself and to reorganize my current attack plan. Things on my list that have to be done for research include:

• Thesis write up
• muse benchmarking
• muse website

My issue today was with testing.  Ignoring the fact that I am not a c++ expert (in my opinion the shear complexities of c++ requires many years of development to master, and the word expert should not be used to lightly),  dealing with code that runs in parallel is just a pain the a**. There is no easy way to test, no easy way to unit test. When a bug is discovered, well, good luck because hunting that bug down will consume valuable time. I have managed to make good progress on the muse website musesimulation.org. However my work on the thesis writeup has been at a stand still for the last week and a half because I have been developing simulations for my benchmarking.

Benchmarking is a whole other ball game. I found the best way to find bugs in the kernel is to create different types of simulations and see if they work. Everytime I create a benchmark simulation I find an error. This got me thinking, why is there no good way to test parallel code? However I am determined to create something useful and I will give it all I got

Anyways, this is my rant for the day and if you have some tips about parallel development please feel free to leave some hints.

Favorite Shows on Hulu

// March 20th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Announcement

I love hulu and I have a couple of shows that I absolutely love to watch on the site. The following are the the descriptions of the shows as displayed on hulu and also an episode from the show you can watch here!

Lie To Me

When you scratch your chin, wring your hands, wrinkle your nose or swallow too much, Dr. Cal Lightman (Roth) knows you’re lying. He doesn’t just think so – he knows so. As the foremost deception expert in the country, Dr. Lightman can uncover the deepest secrets and crack the hardest cases. More accurate than any polygraph, he knows whether those in front of him – be they family, friends, criminals or complete strangers – are honest or not. Dr. Lightman heads up The Lightman Group, a private agency contracted by the FBI, local police, law firms, corporations and private individuals when they hit roadblocks in their searches for the truth. Joining him at the agency are a variety of experts in the field of behavioral evaluation: Dr. Gillian Foster (Williams) is a gifted psychologist and Lightman’s professional partner, a woman whose guidance he needs whether he knows it or not; Will Loker (Brendan Hines) is Lightman’s lead researcher who practices “radical honesty” at all times; and Ria Torres (Monica Raymund) is the newest member of the team, selected for her innate ability to read body language and catch certain clues that her colleagues may miss.

Life

A detective gets a second chance after serving time for a crime he did not commit.

Fringe

From J.J. Abrams (“Lost”), Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the team behind “Star Trek,” “Mission: Impossible III” and “Alias,” comes a new drama that will thrill, terrify and explore the blurring line between science fiction and reality. When an international flight lands at Boston’s Logan Airport and the passengers and crew have all died grisly deaths, FBI Special Agent OLIVIA DUNHAM (newcomer Anna Torv) is called in to investigate. After her partner, Special Agent JOHN SCOTT (Mark Valley, “Boston Legal”), is nearly killed during the investigation, a desperate Olivia searches frantically for someone to help, leading her to DR. WALTER BISHOP (John Noble, “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”), our generation’s Einstein. There’s only one catch: he’s been institutionalized for the last 20 years, and the only way to question him requires pulling his estranged son PETER (Joshua Jackson, “Dawson’s Creek”) in to help. When Olivia’s investigation leads her to manipulative corporate executive NINA SHARP (Blair Brown, “Altered States”), our unlikely trio along with fellow FBI Agents PHILLIP BROYLES (Lance Reddick, “The Wire”), CHARLIE FRANCIS (Kirk Acevedo, “Oz”) and ASTRID FARNSWORTH (Jasika Nicole, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”) will discover that what happened on Flight 627 is only a small piece of a larger, more shocking truth.

Hulu Rocks

// March 20th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Announcement

First, I would like to state that I am currently a grad student. With that disclaimer, everyone knows that typically we don’t have much money to spend. The stipend you do get will probably be enough for you rent, food, and utilities. Cable, especially in Oxford Ohio is a luxury not enjoyed by most grad students. Hulu comes to the rescue with streams to the hottest shows on television. With hulu around cable will soon be obsolete.

Wordpress VS. Mephisto

// March 19th, 2009 // No Comments » // Announcement

Just setup my wordpress blog and it was super easy and a blast. Themes are plenty and most free! WooThemes.com has many awesome themes, although not free, this current theme I am using was!

The setup was no more then 5 minutes. Mephisto on the other hand required quite a bit and was not an easy install. I used to blog with Mephisto on my personal server from home, but having an awesome, flexiable blogging engine like wordpress I see no need to make things complicated. Granted, Mephisto, being a Rails application is wonderfull. In my humble opion, if you are someone that just wants to start blogging and don’t really have a computer science background, I say stick to Wordpress. They have many plugins and lots of wonderfull themes. If you want a little challenge and want a Rails blogging system and have lots of free time, maybe on a weekend, then installing Mephisto is a good experience to have under your belt.