nerdery « blog.eliduke.com

November 10, 2007

one down, four to go

it’s really hard to believe that it’s already been a month. can you believe it? because i can’t. i absolutely can’t. i’ve tried so many times to wrap my mind around the past 30 days and i can’t. so much of it is a blur, yet so much is perfectly clear, like it happened yesterday (some of it probably did).

over the course of this month i have grown to absolutely LOVE this place. i wake up each morning and i’m so glad because it’s just one more beautiful day in paradise. be it sunny or snowy, windy or calm, cold or “warm”, i can always find a way to be in love with where i am and what i’m doing.

i love my job, i love my coworkers, i love my friends, i love my dorm, i love the bands i’m practicing and playing with, i love volunteering in other departments, i love being outside even when it’s crazy, i love taking pictures, i love hiking, i love exploring the station, i love 24 hours of daylight, i love so much about this place that i already know i’ll be coming back soon.

for the past 2 weeks the Today Show has been here at McMurdo as part of their Ends of the Earth broadcast series. i was surprised to find out how small the crew was (only 6 people including Ann Curry), and how much control they had, which was quite a bit.

the morning of the broadcast meredith and i woke up at 2:30am and walked next door to the chalet (head office). on our way over we heard cheering and arrived to see about 100 people already gathered, along with musical equipment (drums, bass, guitar) lightly dusted in snow.

there were 3 members of the crew outside: communication guy, camera guy, and ann curry, that’s it. ann was really funny and communicated very well with the crowd as far as when we should do certain things and for how long. they gave hand signals and made every effort to put the spotlight on us. the band played and we danced and cheered and sang along and i was surprised at how much i got into it. tasha said she saw me on TV!

the first segment of the broadcast was over around 3am and we were told there would be another smaller one at about 4am. i didn’t have to be at work until 11am so i decided to stick around. when 4 o’clock rolled around most people had gone home so there were only about 10 of us. this time i decided to stay out of the crowd and go up next to the camera guy and take pictures.

fast-foward a few days and rumors are floating around that NBC was going to buy drinks for everyone at gallagher’s because they were leaving soon. i had band practice that night, but meredith and i stopped by around 8:30 and found the rumors to be just that. on my way home after band practice the weather had gotten seriously bad and i was loving it. in an effort to prolong my time out and about, i decided to stop by gallagher’s again. it was about 11pm and they were closing soon, but i couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

when i walked in it looked pretty dead… only about 15 people or so. as i wandered toward the back to get a glass of water i noticed ann curry and the film crew. almost instantly the camera guy (mike) recognized me from the broadcast and said he was impressed by how proactive i was about getting pictures that morning. he loved the shots and then called ann over. they both gave me their email addresses (to send them the link) and mike even said that NBC might buy some of them if i was interested (and they were good enough)!

just then the phone rang at the bar: the weather had turned even more for the worse, it was now officially Condition 1, and we weren’t allowed to leave the bar until it passed. this was so awesome, i was so excited.

along with the phone call warning us of inclement weather, all pagers got the message as well, and i borrowed someone’s pager and took a picture of it. ann liked the picture so much that she insisted on taking one herself, but she needed a little guidance. a few days later she told meredith, “your boyfriend taught me more about manual settings than anyone ever has before.” hilarious.

anyhoo, we continued to hang out that night until the Condition 1 subsided. over the course of the next few days i kept running into the crew and chatting with them. meredith says i’m on a “high-five basis with ann curry.”

7 comments

November 6, 2007

Resurrecting ListYourList

i was a web designer in a previous life. that life ended about a year and a half ago when i decided that i’d had enough. i was spending too much time on the computer and i needed a break. i ended all previous engagements: i moved my friend’s blogs i was hosting to wordpress.com, gave ListYourList to shane, and wiped my hands clean. sure, i still checked email and uploaded pictures to flickr, but i wasn’t spending hours and hours each day doing that.

fast-forward about 6 months: ListYourList was still online and available for “pointless list-making”, but nothing new had been accomplished since shane took over and we were getting a shit load of spam comments. i talked things over with shane and we decided that there had to be someone out there in the world who was just dying to get their hands on a pet project like this and would get things moving on it. i posted a few notices on craigslist and found a guy in chicago who sounded really excited and qualified. i passed off everything to him (domain, code base, db dump) and wiped my hands clean yet again.

fast-forward about 6 months: i hadn’t heard from my chicago guy in months and the site wasn’t even online in it’s original form anymore because it was still “under construction.” i tried to meet up with the guy in chicago when i went back home this past summer, but he didn’t return my emails. hmmm…

so the site sat around for about 4 or 5 months with no activity and no progress, and i was getting pretty close to completely giving up on the whole deal. then, just last week, i got an email from kirsty taylor.

Dear Eli,

I was just procrastinating online, and I was distressed to find that listyourlist.com seems to have died a death. My good friend Rosa sent me a link to this blog, and I saw that you have disengaged yourself from it entirely. Rosa and I want to resurrect listyourlist, but to do so, we would need to be able to access the site as administrators; the domain name doesn’t register as available, therefore I presume that you must still hold the reigns in some form.

When I first discovered the absence of listyourlist, I looked for a substitute (aided by Rosa). It appears that listyourlist was unique in the un-gimmicky function it offered to people (emphasis added), and in the way that lists were completely independent, and attached to the user only.

Would you be willing to pass control to us?

We are two 2nd year Sixth Form students (that’s final year of High School), studying at Christ’s Hospital School in Surrey (England), and would welcome both the challenge (and indeed, diversion) of administrating the website.

Please do get in contact, with either of us.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter!

Yours faithfully,

Kirsty Taylor and Rosa Blaus.

wow! i was stunned. i literally couldn’t believe what i was reading. i didn’t know who kristy was, but i definitely remembered rosa from the early days of listyourlist. she stumbled upon it somehow and really latched on. we emailed back and forth about it for a while and she seemed like a really cool (nerdy) girl.

in the same email checking session in which i received the above email i also got CC’ed on an email that shane sent to rosa and kirsty. apparently they had emailed him as well (not know we knew each other) because he was still listed as the administrator for the “listyourlist.com” domain. remember, we completely relinquished control of the everything involved (domain, code base, db dump) over to chicago guy like 6 months ago. why was shane still listed as the administrator? turns out that the guy didn’t really do anything, so shane was able to just hand everything over to rosa and kirsty.

who knows when the site will be live again, but this time i think it’s in good hands.

2 comments

August 29, 2007

qoop customer service – part 2

despite all that i had already been through with QOOP, i decided that the only way to truly test their system once and for all (and prove that i was in the right), was to submit another order. i sent hugh the following response before i had completely made that decision:

From: eli
To: QOOP
Date: August 27

hugh,

thanks for the update! it’s good to hear that i actually do have options. i will definitely give that a try for my next order, but i’ll probably still keep my fingers crossed just in case.

i don’t really see how that will affect things, though. my prints were in order when i submitted the last batch (i triple checked them), so the problem had to have occurred sometime between me submitting the order and you all receiving the order. i guess we’ll just have to wing it and see.

i really do appreciate the time you have spent dealing with me on this.

eli

i was afraid that if i waited too long before printing my next batch (like when i get back from antarctica = 9 months) they might forget that i even exist. then, if the problem does repeat itself, everything would be less relevant and i probably wouldn’t get the attention that i would get now. i put in the order, making certain that the photos were chronological.

From: eli
To: QOOP
Date: August 27

Hugh,

i just submitted another order for about 650 prints, order #xxxx61482.

here is the set that i printed:

http://flickr.com/photos/elisfanclub/sets/72157601700659474/

is it possible to at least just look at the order that they arrived to you guys and see if that is the order that they are in in the set i linked to above?

thanks again for your help

eli

that was yesterday afternoon. i was expecting to get some sort of email response later that evening or early this morning. neither of those things happened and i was left waiting.

then, much to my surprise, an unfamiliar number appeared on my cell phone’s caller ID this afternoon: it was hugh from QOOP! he was calling to let me know that the exact same thing was happening with my new order that happened with the last. it hadn’t been printed yet, but hugh was able to verify that the arrangement that they received was certainly not the same as the set on flickr. i had been completely vindicated!

it was at this point that deja vu set in… hazy dissolve.

What if:

I submit a set for printing, but first you guys compare the order of the photos in your system against the order on Flickr. If they are the same, go ahead and print them. If not, refund my money.

Is something like that possible?

hazy transition

I’m sorry but we can not do the request that you asked us to do. I’m sorry about not being able to help.

wait… what? what happened? did i black out? that was weird…

anyway, hugh told me that he was going to check with the engineers and with flickr and really dig deep on this problem. he also said that when they do finally get this all sorted out that i will be getting this batch printed and shipped for FREE (that’s about $100 worth of prints)!

From: QOOP
To: eli
Date: August 28

Thanks, Eli:

As I mentioned on the phone, we’ll be checking your order for you. (Thanks for the link as a control)

I’ll get back to you with any feedback from our engineers.

Best,

Hugh

———————-

i wrote all of the above sometime on wednesday afternoon and i was waiting to see what would unfold before submitting this post. i wasn’t sure what exactly i was waiting for, but i had a feeling. boy, was i right.

at about 6pm on thursday evening i got a comment (on the first qoop post) from Bill Murray, the CEO of QOOP. say what? that’s right… this shit has gone all they way to the top. so, click that link right there and read that shit (and my response) because it’s starting to get really exciting!

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Category: nerdery