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While I was down at Siggraph, I got to talk with someone who is an extremely bright guy and I admire a good bit on a professional level.  While we chatted in a real informal setting, the topic of religion came up (the thread of all my conversations always goes: “how long you worked for Intel?  Really, why’d you have that gap?  A monastery/seminary?!?!  Wow, lets talk about religion…)  Anyway, this person said that they’d really enjoyed the faith and growth of his community church, but got really turned off by the whole ‘Church’ thing as he got to know the shortcomings and problems in the parish.  “I’m spiritual – just not religious.  God can be found everywhere so now I do my own thing.  I just got to the point of say ‘I don’t need this hassle’.”

I wish I had a nickle for every time I hear this (or felt it myself).  Despite all the good intentions of everyone getting along perfectly – dealing with the other folks in the church is hard.  Maddening really.  It inherently puts us into contact with folks outside our comfort, social, economic, philosophical, educational, behavioral and all other bounds.  I know first hand.  We’re a big, messy lot for sure.  But his statement stuck with me and I pondered it a long time since I felt this very thing many times.  I was driving home about a week later that the Holy Spirit kind of slapped me with:

Yep, you may be right – you may not ‘need’ this hassle.  But they might really need you.  Now go and be the Christ you are supposed to be for them and that will teach you what you DO need.

Intel’s annual developer forum is where they roll out a lot of our new stuff.  Anandtech covered the IDF (Intel Developers forum) keynote.  Turns out, my project made it to the keynote with the strange description of: “No need to sort for transparency demo. Sorry, that’s as well as I can describe it. Look at the picture.”.  The man has a way with words. 🙂 

Still, I am the sole developer writing the code for this technology; and nice to see my work in the keynote.  My technique is the 3rd picture down of the futuristic towers and glowing orb.  It was a really nice animation – but not such a great web/phonecam photo apparently.  ArsTechnica also have an article on Larrabee that you might find interesting (I’m not confirming or denying anything in their coverage – just that they have coverage)

Any rate – lots of good stuff coming out of the IDF (including a lot of really cool features in Nehalem/7i like Turbo mode, etc).  I must confess I don’t know more than the public press releases – but the feature of this new Nehelem core look great. 

Siggraph has arrived and we have released a very good paper on the Larrabee architecture we’re working on.  Here’s the article for you perusal:

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1360612.1360617

I work with the paper authors nearly daily – amazing group of pioneers in the field of computer graphics.  Have a lot of ‘pinch me! Is this real?’ days.  Here’s a discussion of the paper on the Beyond 3D site:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=48314

I’m down at Siggraph 2008 in Los Angeles, and it’s been great so far.  Amazing talks – especially the revelations and talks about Larrabee.  However, there are some amazingly cool other talks going on as well.  I’ll post links as they get up, but wow – super cool so far.

I didn’t know that both Jamie’s parents went to Purdue.

Mythbusters come on at about 15 minutes in:
http://science.purdue.edu/centennial/MythBusters.wmv

As a perspective new home buyer – I’ve been sitting on the sidelines for about 2 years (well, saving up a good down payment anyway).  The prices during the boom were ridiculous, and as things are crashing, I’m waiting to see if were at a bottom (most experts are saying not likely till end of next year – but they’ve said that for 2 years now).  The latest national S&P Home price index keeps dropping but Portland has fared much better than most.  Lately, however, it looks like we’re no longer immune.  It reported that Portland average prices dropped a record 5% since last year.

Looking on forclosures.com and RLMS database the other night, I actually found several very nice condos and houses in my price range.  It was actually amazing/frightening/sad how many pre-forclosures were in the works.  And how many of those homes were in the 500k-1000k range (I thought rich people didn’t go bust?).  I did the same search about 2 years ago and got nothing but run-down shacks in questionable neighborhoods on the edges of my desired region.  Now I have 10 really good hits right where I was looking – one even had 2 garage spaces (kind of unheard of around here).

But when prices are dropping 5%/year -it definitely isn’t buying time.  At -5% a year, you seriously jeopardize the value of investing in a home.  The whole point of buying is to grow equity.  But, for example, if you have a $200,000 loan who’s home is losing only 5% value in a year, that’s $10,000/year you’re losing in real value.  If your mortgage payment is about $1200/mo, then you are just dumping about a years worth of money down a hole with nothing to show for it.  And any conceivable tax benefit doesn’t really offset that kind of loss.  Yes, if you really need a home, then you might jump on a good deal – but this is hardly a buyers market – even if the latest home stimulus package includes an incentive for first-time buyers (not very useful, it’s a $7500 tax credit that phases out based on income and you still have to pay back, just interest free).

So what to do?  Look for good deals.  Wait until we see some stability and/or growth.  I get the feeling things will keep dropping for the foreseeable future.  And so what if you miss the ‘bottom’?  Well, it doesn’t matter if you catch prices at the same point on the way down or the way up.  I’ll wait and keep saving a better down payment.

I was just reading a report in the Oregonian about the most important concerns to new college graduates.   Talk about a difference from the dot-com attitudes I graduated with.  Here’s their responses (according to the Oregonian)

51% of new college grads said they were going to jump right into the job market and not take time off

Order of importance when selecting a new job:
#3 = location
#2 = salary
and their #1 criteria when selecting a new job = the benefits package (quality of health care and 401k/retirement)

Another shocking statistic – around 30% of 18 year-olds in Oregon don’t even have a license and the trend of going later and later until getting one is growing (but that might be due to some newer/stricter licensing requirements).  I guess when you’re a teen – $4/gallon gas isn’t affordable.  Heck, at $0.99/gallon when I was a kid – it wasn’t cheap.  No wonder kids now a days aren’t driving.

That’s about exactly the opposite of what it would have been when I graduated in the height of dot-com craziness a few years back.   I would have put it at:
20% said they would start working – the rest were going to backpack Europe or travel to Tibet for enlightenment for a few years – or just smoke some hash.
Order of importance when selecting a job:
#1 – salary
#2 – salary/bonuses and stock options
#3 – living in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley/Somewhere cool (Pac. northwest)
#4 – salary – show me the money

Here is a nifty site.  Ever listen to electronic music and hear those interesting little audio clips sampled by the DJ of voices/movies thrown in? As Strongbad would say: ‘the system is down‘?  Ever want to know where they come from?

This site (http://s107.net/) is a compendium of all the strange audio clips, the actual text, and what movie/sources they came from. It helped me find a few strange references.  Look them up by song or search by text string.

Now that’s the love:

Best Biscuits and Gravy in Portland

Looks like I have some resteraunts to go visit…

Wow oh wow do I love this book:

If you want to know what living in Portland is a lot like, read this book.  Becuase if it doesn’t accurately describe half the people I know in Portland – I’ll quit.  It’s pretty much a stinging satire of all things that Portland loves – but probably true for most major metropolitan centers.  I’ve personally seen almost every one of these things on the list occur.  It started as a website, but now is in book form.  I picked one up for cheap at Powell’s today (another place/thing white people like!).

Here are some of my favorites:
#2 – Religions that their parents don’t belong too
#15 – Yoga
#16 – Gifted Children – favorite quote of the book:

Because if a white kid gets crappy grades and can’t seem to ever do anything right in school, they are still gifted! How you ask? They are just TOO smart for school. They are too creative, too advanced to care about the trivial minutiae of the day to day operations of school.
Eventually they will show their creativity in their elaborate constructions of bongs and intimate knowledge different kinds of mushrooms and hash.

#18 – Raising awareness – My favorite
#19 – Traveling Abroad – this one is so spot on in the book they have an actual form letter that a traveler can send to their friends that sounds almost exactly like letters I get from friends traveling abroad.  Even the order they write it in is the same.  Freaky
#27 – Marathons
#32 – Vegetarianism
#40 – Apple Products
#53 – Dogs
#61 – Bicycles
#75 – Threatening to move to Canada
#80 – The idea of Soccer
#82 – Hating corporations
#94 – Socialized Medical Care

Or, just read them all.

I think I might start a Portland version of this very thing – since the bicycle situation in Portland isn’t quite the same as his version.  In fact, in the book, he mentions Portland specifically several times…