Alon’s Blog

Open Letter to Stanford University

I have sent the following letter regarding the AlertSU system at Stanford University. I am hereby posting the letter I have sent verbatim.

Subject: Troubling unsigned email message sent via AlertSU.

I have received an email message regarding a personal issue via the AlertSU system, which is supposed to be only used for emergencies (letter attached below). The letter was unsigned except by the general name “STANFORD UNIVERSITY”.

First of all, I would like to request the name and job title of the author of this message, since this information was never supplied.

Second, this message is by no way shape or form related to any kind of emergency, and therefore should not be posted via AlertSU — a system the Stanford community cannot opt out of.

Third, I am very concerned about the content of the message itself. The message uses phrases such as “stranger”, “Unbeknownst to the student” and “did not appear to pose a threat” and selectively mentions some of that person’s private belongings. It seems these were designed to lead the readers to assume that the stranger may have intended to act maliciously, when this is just a simple case of a person forgetting his bag in a stranger’s car. The important cautionary note is that you should make sure to take your belongings with you upon leaving a vehicle.

Implying that lighter fluid and handcuffs have no use other for illicit purposes reeks of intolerance that the Stanford community should not be subject to.

Alon Altman

In the early morning hours of Saturday, January 30th, a Stanford student struck up a conversation with a stranger at a bar in Palo Alto near the campus.  The stranger, a male, suggested that they go out for food.  The student drove the stranger to a McDonald’s in East Palo Alto.  The stranger then asked the student if he could crash at the student’s residence. The student refused, so the stranger got out of the student’s vehicle.  Unbeknownst to the student, the stranger left a bag of personal items in the student’s car.  Upon discovering the bag, the student took it to the Stanford Police (on Monday, February 1) so that it could be returned to the stranger.  Among the items in the bag, the police located a pair of handcuffs and lighter fluid.  The officers were able to ascertain the identity of the stranger and, after some investigation, determined that the individual did not appear to pose a threat to the student or the community.  None-the-less, the Stanford Police would like to remind you to be wary of offering rides to people whom you do not know.

February 2nd, 2010 at 12:12 Posted by epsalon | Stanford | 3 comments

Rant about fancy hotels

I have just arrived in Cambridge, MA for a week of consulting for Microsoft Research. They paid for my flight and hotel room so they put me in a fancy $200/night hotel. In this post I will try to explain why in my opinion, in general, the fancier the hotel the worse it is.

I have nothing against hotels as a service. Hotels provide a traveler with a clean place to spend the night, and with basic necessities. Hotels are useful when traveling, or when you need a clean neutral place to have sex. However, fancy hotels do not seem to provide these well, and charge a lot of money to do so.

Compare, for example, the fancy hotel I’m staying at now with a cheap motel for $40/night. The motel included a microwave and fridge, free parking, free wifi, and a free “breakfast”, which, admittedly, is nothing to feast over. However, the fancy hotel includes none of those (or least without caveats galore).

Here is a comparison of the cheap motel and the fancy hotel. I am purposefully omitting hotel names, as this is common for many hotels and motels.

August 10th, 2009 at 04:43 Posted by epsalon | American Culture, US Travel | 8 comments

Walking to work experiment

Today is day 6 of my walking to work experiment, and I could proudly say the experiment is a success. For the past 6 work days, I have been walking all the way from home to work and back every day. A distance of 2.7 miles.

Why would I do such a thing? For several reasons: First, walking is good for my health. Second, I can save money on gas and parking. And third, it is good for the environment.

Basically, I decided last Tuesday to see if it is possible to walk all the way to work, so I gave it a try. On that first day I realized I should probably take a hat, water, and a better portable radio. I took the route recommended by Google Maps, only to later find various shortcuts to make my way easier. My conclusion after this initial experiment: It’s not too bad.

I kept walking Wednesday and Thursday. Then Friday morning it rained. I decided to walk anyway. Also, I said if I can walk in the rain, I can  keep up this walking program. So, the same day I returned my parking permit and bought an umbrella. I bought 4 daily parking permits just in case.

Now is day 6 of my walking experiment, and I still haven’t used any of the parking permits. I feel good and happy. I really hope I can keep it up.

May 5th, 2009 at 23:36 Posted by epsalon | Stanford, Daily Life, Health | 6 comments

Order, Office Depot, and Vertical Storage

Those of you who have been following my twitter or Facebook updates may have noticed that in the past three days I was in a cleaning spree, transforming my room from an unpassable mess (literally) to a reasonably clean and spacious environment. In addition to the detailed sorting and throwing away of junk, I made some reforms to the order in my room. The goal is to hopefully have maintainable order, instead of just temporary order.

One of the things I’ve realized is that I do not have enough storage space for all my stuff when all my clothes are clean. That leads to extreme clutter in the clothes drawers and clothes being stored on the floor. My soultion was to use vertical storage. I went to Target (retail) and purchased a vertical storage device. This device allowed me to make use of unused room volume for storage while keeping floor area clear. Amazing!

Similarly, I used a 99L storage tub to store all my unused boardgames and empty boxes, instead of keeping several volotile stacks around the room.

Another great solution was to puchase two additional garbage containers to allow for pre-sorting of paper and recycleable trash. No more keeping unneeded paper or empty water bottles on the floor or desk. Now I can trash them immediately and do not need to collect during cleanup time.

While I was at Office Depot, I also found a better solution than envelopes for paper storage. It’s called a “file folder“, and not in the standard sense of a directory for digital storage, but rather a physical object that stores paper.

Hopefully this new room order will actually last.

April 27th, 2009 at 04:39 Posted by epsalon | Daily Life | one comment

The strange world of Macs (Part 1)

If you had to name the two most common operating systems, you would most likely say: Windows and Linux. Well, in the US there is a third common operating system. In fact, it’s even more popular than Linux. It’s called MAC OSX. In the Bay Area, not far from Cupertino where Apple Computer is headquartered, Macs are very common. It sometimes feels like more people use Macs than Windows.

Macs are supposed to be easy to use and intuitive, so I tried using one in my local Apple Store in Palo Alto. They have working laptops there than anyone can come and use.One of the first things I’ve noticed was a lack of mouse buttons. We’ve all heard about Macs have only one button, well the new ones don’t even have that. The trackpad is the button, and there is no right or middle button. Dragging requires manual effort to keep the heavy trackpad pressed, and if you’ve reached the end of the pad, you’re out of luck. Can’t just hold the button.

Another thing lacking was a scrollwheel, the standard right-side-of-pad scrolling didn’t work. I  happened to find by chance that you can scroll on a Mac by using two fingers on the trackpad. It’s weird but it works pretty well.

The other input device I was having trouble with was the keyboard. Ctrl combinations don’t seem to work, and there are no PgUp/PgDown keys. I had to ask to know that most Ctrl combinations are replaced with a new key called “command” (it’s similar to Meta), though some things like ctrl-left/right to move a word back and forth is actually with the alt button, which is also labeled “option”. The PgUp/PgDown require yet another modifier key “fn”. The total of five modifier keys leave little space for the space bar, and the most useful one (”option”) is not near the edge of the keyboard as one might expect, but near the spacebar.

One of the first things I tried to do was install FireFox and an IM client called Adium (I googled “mac IM” and that was the first result). Software installation on Macs is different from Linux or Windows. Downloaded files are “Disk Images” (something like an ISO) which you have to mount. Then, (and this is never explained, I had to ask), you need to drag the application icon to a nearby icon of a capital “A”. I tried to attach a screen cap of that but the capture application only saves to TIFF.

Anyway, even after you install the software, it only appears in a secret menu called “Applications” that you need to do the following to reach: Click on the desktop, click on the “Go” menu, click on “Applications”, browse to the application among a whole lot of stuff (like the “Programs” menu in Windows, but not sorted by vendor). The terminal BTW is under another sublevel “Utilities”. No wonder I couldn’t find it.

Now, I tried to look for some tutorial to explain these basic features. I found a help page about transitioning from windows that didn’t explain anything (such as scrolling, or the “command” button, or how to install or uninstall software).

I can talk all day about how non-standard Macs are. The close/minimize/maximize buttons are on the LEFT and are only color coded (red=close, yellow=minimize, green=maximize). Alt-F4 and other common combos don’t work (well, it opens an “Expose Settings” screen). Command-F4 doesn’t work either. It seems the combo is Command-W (I guess W is for Wlose, or they copied it from Firefox’s close tab combo). I tried some of the pre-installed software too, but about that in a future post.

Update: I figured out how to use an image conversion program called “Preview”. It seems Macs copy the awful Windows default of hiding extensions, so I had to guess what version of the image I’m uploading…

February 4th, 2009 at 04:34 Posted by epsalon | Apple, American Culture | 6 comments