Friday, November 2, 2007

Cars

There is always medium traffic on the road I take to (and back from) the UCSD. There is also usually heavy traffic on the I-5, 7 lane highway going in the same direction. Now what do you think that happens if they close the I-5 because of the bomb threat?
I'm faster home than people in cars...

Monday, October 29, 2007

Free Food

I always thought that my everyday quest after the ultimate source of free food was specific to my preferences, while in fact, it is specific to my status of a PhD. student. I feel much happier now, knowing I'm not nuts and/or alone. Moreover, there is some chance that one day, it will be over.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Fires - a summary

As far as my life is (directly) concerned, it is over. It started last Sunday by a "strange smell" in the air, blazed in Monday and Tuesday, slowed down beginning Thursday and ended up with terrible smell (again - coming back from sea) over Friday to Sunday.
It wasn't fun, not even on those days we did not have to watch every news to check whether to evacuate or not. Fortunately, we were not affected and even those who were experienced well prepared organization.
The "IT" conclusion for me is that have a dedicated server for local emergency news is pure waste of money, especially if it is well know to public. The trouble is that these servers are rarely used when there is no emergency and totally overloaded when there is. Instead, the most useful thing was Google Maps. The local emergency followed up with a local surge of demand for it did not significantly affected these servers, because they manage high loads from every day from all over the world. Local crisis, no matter how big, is a small "blip" that rarely affects the stability. For us, it was the most reliable source of detail information - unlike TV who had "terrifying pictures" but no local info or "http://www.sdcountyemergency.com/" that was constantly overloaded. Maybe it would be a good idea to use this effect in general - simply pay some "insurance" fee to big hosting company for running a very low load server most of the time and high to extreme load very exceptionally.