Minor Work-Related Frustrations & Successes

There are three large tasks I wanted to have cleaned up before the long weekend, but it looks like none of them are going to be completed. In each case, I'm at the mercy of other people or teams, waiting for them to complete their particular subtasks so that I may proceed. These subtasks are not, apparently, significant priorities for them so my projects are on indefinite hold until they get into gear.

On the good side, today is supposed to be my last day being borrowed by the Sarbanes-Oxley compliance group on behalf of Unix Engineering. I've heard no mention of extending my association with the compliance group so in theory, I'll just be a regular Unix administrator again tomorrow when my mandate expires. On the downside, I haven't heard who is supposed to be taking up my compliance evidence collection tasks and I'm sure there will be some minor training and handing off of files of data. Until this happens, I'm not truly released from the project.

In any case, tomorrow has the double charm of being both payday and a vacation day: we're heading to West Virginia as early as we can tomorrow morning for a long weekend at the trailer so I expect to be out of contact with most of western civilization until Monday night. Don't let it collapse in my absence. If it does, please take pictures: I'll see what I can do to stitch it back together on my return.

Minor Work-Related Frustrations & Successes

There are three large tasks I wanted to have cleaned up before the long weekend, but it looks like none of them are going to be completed. In each case, I'm at the mercy of other people or teams, waiting for them to complete their particular subtasks so that I may proceed. These subtasks are not, apparently, significant priorities for them so my projects are on indefinite hold until they get into gear.

On the good side, today is supposed to be my last day being borrowed by the Sarbanes-Oxley compliance group on behalf of Unix Engineering. I've heard no mention of extending my association with the compliance group so in theory, I'll just be a regular Unix administrator again tomorrow when my mandate expires. On the downside, I haven't heard who is supposed to be taking up my compliance evidence collection tasks and I'm sure there will be some minor training and handing off of files of data. Until this happens, I'm not truly released from the project.

In any case, tomorrow has the double charm of being both payday and a vacation day: we're heading to West Virginia as early as we can tomorrow morning for a long weekend at the trailer so I expect to be out of contact with most of western civilization until Monday night. Don't let it collapse in my absence. If it does, please take pictures: I'll see what I can do to stitch it back together on my return.

Square Dance Experimentation

I started wondering a little while ago: who has to dance more steps, the folks dancing boy or girl? Does this vary from level to level? Do some callers make one role work harder than the other (at least in terms of dance steps)?

Tonight, the experimentation began.

Tonight was a rare 5th Thursday so DC Lambda Squares hosted an A2/C1 club night with Ett McAtee calling. I put pedometers on at least each dancer of a particular couple and recorded their step count per tip, noting which were A2 and which were C1.

While the pedometers are of the same manufacturer and lot, they have different sensitivity. I'm trusting that by randomly switching these between dancers across the course of the experiment, the variation will average out in a sufficiently large sample space.

The raw numbers aren't meaningful yet. I'll write more on this when I have a much larger sample. Who knows... it may be good filler in a slow news quarter for the GCA journal. :-)

Square Dance Experimentation

I started wondering a little while ago: who has to dance more steps, the folks dancing boy or girl? Does this vary from level to level? Do some callers make one role work harder than the other (at least in terms of dance steps)?

Tonight, the experimentation began.

Tonight was a rare 5th Thursday so DC Lambda Squares hosted an A2/C1 club night with Ett McAtee calling. I put pedometers on at least each dancer of a particular couple and recorded their step count per tip, noting which were A2 and which were C1.

While the pedometers are of the same manufacturer and lot, they have different sensitivity. I'm trusting that by randomly switching these between dancers across the course of the experiment, the variation will average out in a sufficiently large sample space.

The raw numbers aren't meaningful yet. I'll write more on this when I have a much larger sample. Who knows... it may be good filler in a slow news quarter for the GCA journal. :-)