Now that’s impressive!

A friend of mine sent me a video of Dustin Carter, a wrestling badass. Check out his workout:

Despite having no arms and no legs (a rare infection forced him to have both arms and legs amputated), Dustin has an awesome record. It’s really inspirational; as one of the Flowrestling comments says, “No excuses.”

There’s also a documentary on him. Here’s a teaser:

Even Sports Illustrated has picked up on him here.

I must admit, I find the lives of differently abled people quite interesting, and Dustin is no exception. It’s amazing that he has adapted and succeeded. Well done, Dustin Carter! Keep wrestling!

On to something lighter

Here are some groan worthy puns that made me smile this week. Enjoy!

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
10. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
11. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: ‘You stay here; I’ll go on a head.’
12. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
13. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’
14. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
15. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
16. A backward poet writes inverse.
17. In a democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.
18. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion

R.I.P. Viola Holloway

Yesterday my grandmother, Viola Holloway, passed away after 89 fruitful years. While this is incredibly painful for me, her passing is not all sad; given her condition this semester, I can say she’s in a better place now.

Viola was an awesome grandma, and I’m going to miss her tremendously. She always had treats and encouraging words for me! I will cherish the memories and try to be as loving and supportive of my progeny as she was of hers.

Exercise. Be happy. Live simply. Viola had it right.

Go visit Petite Pensieri at First Thursday tonight!

After birthing a super cute baby boy, a good friend, Tahra, started a business selling handcrafted baby items (with another friend in a similar situation, Katie). The business, Petite Pensieri, is very inspiring; I have been impressed by so many elements! Tahra and Katie have shown tremendous initiative and their products are high-quality and useful.

From a technological standpoint, Etsy offers an amazing platform for handmade items. The service allows you to quickly and easily list items for sale. Etsy’s fees are quite reasonble: “It costs 20 cents to list an item for four months. When your item sells, you’ll pay a 3.5% transaction fee.” Shopify is a similar idea: you create an online storefront and they manage everything else for a fee. The monthly cost of Shopify ranges from $24 (for 100 products and a 2% transaction fee) to $699 per month (for 50,000 products and no transaction fee), so the two sites addresses slightly different needs. With some quick math I’d say Etsy is cheaper up to $1,600 worth of sales a month (24+0.02*x = 0.035*x -> 24 = 0.015*x -> 1600 = x). To be fair, Shopify wins if, for example, you want custom domain names and landing pages or selling goods that don’t qualify for Etsy.

Tonight, Tahra and Katie will be offering their awesome wares at First Thursday. If you’re around, go enjoy the experience and keep Austin weird (or at least local )! If you’re going to a baby shower, buy something nice from Petite Pensieri and the baby will thank you later!

The Timeline Resume

Over the weekend I published my resume as a timeline. With the standard text-based resume I found it hard to show my simultaneous jobs (for example, in Spring 2010 I was pursuing my PhD, working part-time at IBM, researching under Christine, teaching/grading Project Management, keeping up the lab’s computing infrastructure, supervising Michael Hanna, assisting a couple companies with their computing needs, and actively participating in two organizations). The timeline allows me to show these jobs at once rather than tacitly asking the reader to juggle all the “X – Present” entries under multiple headings.

Timeline resume (April 14, 2010)

It was a great project with HTML/CSS and JavaScript! I was inspired by other great infographics, but after I had published the resume, I found there were some other timeline resumes I could have used as a guide. In any case, I like mine and I hope you do too!

Do you see any improvements I could make? Anything that is unclear or hard to use?

Seth Holloway… Not Seth Halloway!

I’ve long been in the habit of spelling my last name for people after I tell them. Some people reply almost indignantly, “How else would you spell it?!” Well, I set up my Google Webmaster tools and people are stumbling upon the site from the query “seth halloway.” Perhaps it’s time to publish all the common misspellings of my name:

• seth holloway
• seth halloway
• seth hallaway
• seth hollaway

At my first grade graduation, the principal beckoned me across the stage by calling “seeth holloway” and I’ve been called “sean holloway” and “scott holloway!” After attending a diverse graduate program, I have heard some amazing mispronounciations and I know that I have nothing to complain about

Spinning plates

One day I was enjoying a balmy afternoon at Mozart’s with my wife. While it was not my goal to eavesdrop, I overheard two women talking about finding jobs–a common topic these days. The profound bit that I picked up on was an analogy: finding jobs is like spinning plates. If you apply too much or too little force to a plate, the plate will fall. I think this simple idea applies to all facets of life; once again, moderation is a virtue.

Is the Dunning-Kruger Effect an explanation for why the ignorant are blissful?

I recently stumbled upon the Dunning-Kruger effect on Wikipedia. Essentially, this is a cognitive bias where unskilled people rate themselves much higher than their ability and skilled people rate themselves lower than their ability. The ignorant are blissful and the informed are self-deprecating–how interesting! I’m not sure this cognitive bias explains “ignorance is bliss,” but it certainly helps me understand some people better and helps to remove self-doubt. Here’s a snippet from the Wikipedia article:

It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. “Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”^[1]

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” –Bertrand Russell

So, if you’re feeling like you could do a better job, you may be doing a positively fantastic job already–give yourself credit. But beware, for if you think you’re doing a swell job, you might just be overly confident (On a related, yet confusing, note, depression may be a survival tool so maybe you should be glad for Dunning-Kruger.)

Austin Software Mentorship — Meeting this Thursday

Last semester I received an energetic email about offering UT students one-on-one interaction with local software professionals. At first, I did not understand the vision (sorry Sukant!), but I felt it was worth pursuing so I replied. After a couple emails I was on-board and ready to help out with the noble vision. Basically, students graduate with a lot of skills, but they still have a lot left to learn before they’re truly effective in industry. Why don’t we augment the curriculum and arm students with the skills they need while they’re still in school? From this simple idea, Austin Software Mentorship was born. It’s a really cool group and I’m proud of where it’s going! I’ve met a lot of incredible local people and been humbled and impressed by their range of skills. I have a lot to learn

So why am I am posting? To announce the first major event!

What: Professional-grade classwork: How software professionals might code your homework and projects

Where: TAY 3.128

When: 7pm Thursday, February 11th

More Information
PROFESSIONAL-GRADE CLASSWORK
How software professionals might code your homework and projects

Local software professionals will introduce concepts, techniques, and tools
essential to software development in industry.  Students in a software
discipline are encouraged to work these practices into their software
classwork.

Pizza and beverages will be provided.

I encourage any student or software professional to join the mailing list and get involved; I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Geaux Saints!

Tonight, I had the distinct pleasure of watching the Super Bowl with my in-laws who happen to be huge Saints fans. Congratulations to the Saints on an amazing victory! As they say (technically, spell) in New Orleans, Geaux Saints! And thanks to my new family for letting me enjoy the festivities with them. I’m sorry that Andrea was not here to celebrate with us, but we’ll watch it again from the DVR when she returns