Stephen Witherden’s Website :: Professional

I drive in to work at an unusually early time for me: it’s around 7:55am when I arrived at the front gate to the airbase. The security guard smiles his familiar round smile as he waves me through. His cheerfulness belies the fact that, were it not for the identification I present to him, I would go no further than his little box.

It’s cold and dark outside, the Auckland sun only just beginning to shine a few anaemic rays in my direction. I pull up to the car park. The car park straddles the red line which denotes the “operational” part of the airbase to the non-operational part. “Identification to be visible at all times” the sign says something like that. I clip my ID onto my belt and walk to the door to the building I’ve spent most of my waking hours in this past year or so. All of my personal belongings go into a secure lockup just in front of the secure doors. Nothing unauthorised is permitted here. I’ve taken to simply dumping all the contents of my pockets here, just in case.

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Apologies for the dry nature of this post.

Last month there was a big to-do about a student who left a communion ceremony without having consumed the communion bread he had in his mouth. He apparently wanted to show it to someone outside the church who was curious. When they realised he wasn’t playing by the rules, people even tried to compel him to eat the bread but he “escaped”. He kept the bread for a week before returning it because he had received death threats.

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I’ve been particularly busy lately with a number of projects on the boil. It means I don’t have as much time as I’d like to devote to friends, family or my blog. That said, it also means I am being quite productive. Maybe it has something to do with the free freshly-ground coffee we now have access to at work *jitters*. I guess it’s quite telling that it’s 1am at the moment and I am still thinking of things I’d like to do before going to sleep. 

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I am sorry life’s been rather hectic lately and I haven’t had a chance to make any updates. I know that many of you are asking the question “when are you coming home?”

Well, I finally have my itinerary. I will be arriving in New Zealand at 7:30am on Friday 26th October. Don’t worry about picking me up at the airport, my empliyer will (had better) be arranging a rental car.

I look forward to seeing y’all all in the land of the long white cloud! The image on the right is a screenshot of my itinerary. Click it for flight numbers and times.

Last night I became acutely aware that this blog of mine is read by many of my family members and friends. I also became aware that most of my recent posts have had very little to do with something these people really want to know about: me.

So, I thought I would devote this afternoon to giving you all an update on my goings-on. I have sat down to write this many times, but there’s just so much to write it’s daunting. I also have this desire to start at the beginning, but the beginning is so far away that it would take till next year for me to elaborate on it all. So, here goes, stream-of-conciousness-like.

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Firstly, I should mention that this post involves some boring, geeky mathematics. Geometry to be precise. In da Vinci’s day, Euclidean geometry was the pinnacle of intellectual pursuit and you will find a great many interesting geometric shapes coded into his artwork. Shapes that now have conspiracy theorists practically frothing in delight.

For most of the drawing in this post I will be using something called “Scalable Vector Graphics” (SVG). You will only be able to see the cool animated images here if your browser supports SVG or you have the Adobe SVG plugin. Firefox supports SVG natively.

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“Look, here’s bragging rights” Todd poked his nose into my cubicle, his eyes twinkling behind his glasses, just a little more than usual.
“Oh, sounds exciting, show me” I swiveled around and paid him my full attention.
“Look at this, I designed it.” Todd proudly proffered a print-out of a plane.
“See, there” he pointed at a part of the tail “I designed that”. He practically beamed.

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It snowed yesterday. All week, the weather man had been threatening “ice rain” would hit us Thursday. When I returned to my car after work that night, I was surprised to see my car was covered in a film of ice. I unlocked the door and tried the handle. Locked. Unlocked it again then tried to open it: locked again! So I tried a third tie, this time I pulled harder and the door opened with a crack. The ice was keeping the door closed!

Needless to say, driving home was an experience. It was very difficult to see out of the rear view window at first but this eventually cleared up. At temperatures of -3C any precipitation that fell at that time ended up as snow. When I eventually arrived home I was treated to the sight of snow on my steps.

Now, I quite like snow but have never seen it actually snowing. This was the first time in my life I had ever seen a little precipitation. Granted it wasn’t anything close to a snowstorm, but it was still a wonderful (and cold) experience. It’s hard to believe that not too long ago we were sweltering at 110 F and now I have to leave the heater on all day and night so that the water pipes don’t freeze.

Auckland may be well known for four seasons in one day, but Texas certainly does appear to have very stark seasons. The next morning my neighbour (who borrows my washing machine every now and again) kindly dissolved the ice on my windscreen with isopropyl alchohol.

As they say here in the US: “it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas”.

Ok, so after all that excitement, this is a boring work post. My company (Beca Applied Technologies) is looking to hire intermediate to senior software developers (that’s you, Doug). There is a CV submission thingy but the user interface is horrible.

Let me know if you are interested and I can write a recommendation for you, my recommendation will help a fair bit I am sure. I will also get a finders fee or something I think.

Ok, so now it’s time for a boring work post. I wish I could show pictures of where I work but no recording devices of any kind are allowed in the building. Security is reasonably tight. I can’t even get back from the toilet without a swipe card.

Yeah, Cecil guys & gals, I have been there before, but this time knocking on the door is not allowed. I once forgot my card when I went to the toilet. I had to get the security person (her name is Barbra) to ring into the office so that someone could walk out with my swipecard. No swipecard, no entry. Our swipecards have our pictures on them too.

Anyway, So I am writing code (no specifics). The design is finished and one of our key problems is interfacing with a particular API. This API is all done in unmanaged C++ libraries and we’re programming in C#. Non-programmers, continue reading at your peril… (more…)

Hi all, just a quick update. After 10,000 km and 11 hours in flight, I braved the ordeal of American customs. I was searched for bombs, patted down and everything!

It’s very hot here. My flight for Denver leaves in about an hour. My phone also works here so you can call me (in emergencies only).

I have finally received my passport with Visa attached!

It was quite an experience. The immigration consultant called me this morning to inform me that the DS2019 had arrived from Boston. I signed the form and she took it in to the consulate which meant I could have left today (Monday) instead of Wednesday as we previously had thought.

So, I scrambled to get a flight for today confirmed, but it became more and more apparent that it was near to impossible to make it from the consulate at 2:30pm (when they give back your passport) to the airport at 2:55pm (the required 3 hours prior to my booked flight).

So, I am now scheduled to leave at 5:55pm on Tuesday 18th July. This time, it looks like I will actually be leaving! For those of you who are really interested, a copy of my itinerary is below. I checked it very carefully this time because one of the previous versions had me ending up in Houston! (more…)

Ok, first thing I have done you may not have noticed: I have added subscription functionality to my blog. So now you can receive an email every time I make an update.

Cornelia: I have subscribed you already, because you were complaining before that I don’t tell you what’s going on. You have no excuses now, since you’ll receive an email every time I write anything :p

Another thing I have been working on is my Geographical Positioning Systems. I bought a GPS receiver (the last one on that site) which I have been playing with for a while now. I am quite impressed. It was cheap, only about AU $130, but it comes with all the trimmings: car charger, wall charger, USB charger. (more…)

Well, after a great deal of toing and froing, my citizenship ceremony is scheduled for Thursday 15th June at 1pm. It will be at the Auckland Citizenship office at the AA Centre, level 6, 99 Albert Street.

The “Texas Counters” on the left hand side give you a good idea of the number of seconds remaining before my citizenship is confirmed.

After the ceremony, I can apply for a passport, that takes 3 days minimum if I pay them money. This means that, allowing for shipping and suchlike, that I can expect my passport by the 22nd of June.

Edit: You know, after showing these cool dynamically updating counters to my family, Arth says: “I’ll just print it out for your Mom”.

^^;;

I downloaded a nifty open-source tool the other day. It’s called FMA or Float’s Mobile Agent. It’s a lovely little tool which connects to your mobile phone through a bluetooth COM port and sucks all the data from your phone onto your computer. It’s great, I especially like the fact that it can tell the temperature of your phone!

Anyway, so it grabs all your meetings, contacts etc and then you want to synchronise with Outlook. I tried it, and it failed. Damnit! Damn stupid open source software I cursed fluidly. (more…)

Ok, most of you are fully aware that I am a geek. As such, I like geeky toys and whatnot. That said, I haven’t had much reason to buy anything suitably geeky in, well, forever. The technology has just never been cool enough in my opinion. A pocket PC I can also use as a mobile phone? Yawn, snore.

For years I have had this romantic notion of a personal area network (PAN) in my head. The PAN is the backbone of your own personal (some say wearable) computer which is always at hand (some say pervasive or ubiquitous). I originally thought the PAN would piggy-back on the body’s own electromagnetic field but when Bluetooth came out I decided it would have to do for now.

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Many of you know that I worked at a place called Cecil for quite some time. The source of a great deal of joy and a great deal of stress for me for quite a few years.

Leaving a position like that, in a job like that, part of you (the vindictive mean-spirited part of you) kind of hopes the whole place will fall apart without you. That somehow, without your incredible insight/skill/talent/charisma, the whole operation will grind to a screaming halt.

Of course, that didn’t happen, they soldiered on and seemed to go from strength to strength, I was almost offended when (in my absence) they started breaking all the “rules” I’d ever assumed about software development… (more…)

I have been on training for the last 1.5 days. This is the first training I’ve had at Beca (I don’t count TechEd and Health & Safety training.. no, really, it doesn’t count). It’s the first time I have actually learnt something completely new in about 5 years (new programming languages don’t count, that’s just too easy). I am so excited I can’t contain myself, so many new concepts and moving parts that could go wrong, I love it! Most fun I’ve had in ages.

Link 16 is a tactical data link used in the military. It’s about 20 years old but it’s still considered state-of-the-art. I kind of like it, it’s cool. I would tell you about it but then I’d have to kill you :p

As for Texas…

There is even less certainty around whether or not I will be going to Texas. Katie from HR suggested I keep my South African citizenship so that they don’t have to re-submit my paperwork for visas etc.

-.-

Only, you see, the whole problem is: if I am a South African citizen (even if I have dual citizenship) I can’t have the technology exported to me. That’s kind of the whole point. Of course, Beca spent over 3 months checking my “security clearance” to see if I would be allowed to do the job in the first place. Um.. yeah, well, turns out that a a few weeks after they tell me to start packing, I am not allowed to.

So, my faith is rapidly waning. The window of opportunity apparently closes in the middle of next month. So either I am leaving by then or I am not. Although I do still hold out hope, what with the way things are going at the moment, I don’t think they’ll be able to get me much further than Sydney.

I feel most sorry for Sarah, but I will make sure she will be able to live where she is at least till the end of the year.

What will I do if I don’t go? Well, I guess I could do almost anything. I have always wanted to live in New York, just for a little while.

Well, doesn’t that just take the cake?

Thomas called me into his office today and informed me that there’s been a bit of a snag with getting me to work for L3 in Texas. Essentially, in order to be able to go to work for L3 either:
a) The US congress must pass a bill which allows L3 to “export” cool secret stuff to South Africa (that means me apparently), or
b) I need to become a New Zealand citizen

So, they are going to have to try and turn New Zealand’s 9 month citizenship process into a 1 month process. L3 have indicated that if it takes too long (2 or 3 months or so), they are probably no longer interested in having me, so we have to do it fast.

Now, I know what you’re going to say. Why didn’t they figure this out earlier? Well, to be honest, I haven’t the foggiest. It’s a mystery to me. I guess something didn’t happen when it was supposed to.

It’s a good thing I worked for the University for years. Working for the University gives you a deep appreciation for bureaucracy and a lot of tolerance for major screw-ups. I mean, they didn’t pay me for about 4 months when I got my new contract. I ended up having to verbally abuse the head of HR before I got my money.

It’s at times like these when you really have to sit back, take a broad perspective and laugh.

It’s a good thing I applied for New Zealand citizenship about 5 months ago. I didn’t receive confirmation of my application (as I had been promised) but apparently they are “very busy” and will “get back to me”. I don’t think I have even been assigned a case worker yet and I know they haven’t requested my paperwork yet. Technically, there’s only really 4 months to go before I should be able to officially consider myself a New Zealander, so greasing a few palms should prove effective.

Aaaaaaargh!
I just received an email from HR telling me I will be leaving on the 22nd of May!

It seems they expected me to check my horoscope to find out when the date would be because they “assumed I already knew”.

Now, I have been known to possess incredible powers of deduction but that is beyond even me…

*runs around in ever decreasing circles*

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