dailylife

Hurricane Irene is on its way from North Carolina to the northern part of the United States. It is not assumed to hit Washington, DC directly and has lost a lot of its strength, but high water and strong winds could cause a lot of damage.

When DC was impacted by hurricane Isabel eight years ago, many homes were without power for several days. Just in case that happens again, we have bought some extra water, candles and food that doesn't have to stay refrigerated. All loose items have been removed from the balconies and patios in our apartment building, to prevent things from blowing away. The storm is supposed to be here between 8 pm and midnight.

Yesterday evening we went to Mackey's bar, where there was a Friday evening social with the DC Dutch club. It was a nice group of people, and since the weather was good we were sitting outside. There were even real bitterballen.

This morning I went for my first run since we arrived in DC. I passed the White House, the Washington Monument and many other famous sights. It was drizzling a little bit, but no heavy wind yet.

The apartment complex getting storm proofed yesteday.

We stayed up late yesterday, and the alarm went early this morning, but we're in good shape for the move.

The movers will be here between 8 am and 10 am. The logistics of packing were a little more complicated because we had to separate the things we'll need in our temporary apartment vs items we can live without for two months.

Today I went for lunch with Petra; it was great to see her and catch up. We went to Redbowl, an Asian fusion place in Cary, where we had saté with peanut sauce. A shared favorite.

After lunch we did something very Dutch and unusual: we walked across the road to a coffee place. The coffee was excellent, an espresso with freshly roasted beans.

For the first time in weeks it's cooler now, only 79 degrees.

A good day to stay at home and do some house keeping.

I came across an interesting publication this morning, the ThoughtWorks Technology Radar. ThoughtWorks, a software development company, is often ahead of the curve, technology-wise, and it's interesting to read their "Technology Radar".

The Tech Radar is a short PDF with recommendations on which technologies to Adopt, Try, Assess or Hold. It gives an opinionated overview of new and emerging technologies in software development. Last week they released the 5th edition.

Their July 2011 edition recommends to "Adopt" GIT, the version-control software, and to "Hold" older and less flexible tools such as ClearCase, something that I think makes a lot of sense. Quality software is not created by artificially constraining developers while doing basic things like check-ins. Folks in my team have been pushing to move to GIT as well, something that I'd like to experiment with.

Interesting is the Radar's emphasis on solutions for the "software last mile" problem: how do you get code in production in a reliable way. I'm very familiar with these "DevOps" practices, because if you don't have a solid process and tools to transfer code from development, to test, to staging, to production, you really don't have quality production system.

ThoughtWorks Technology Radar: http://www.thoughtworks.com/radar

Yesterday a district court in Washington, D.C. issued its ruling in a case that boiled down to the definition of "strictly random".

Every year, the U.S. government organizes a lottery that allows 50,000 people world-wide to win permanent residency to the States. The goal of the "diversity lottery" is to make green cards available to people from low-immigration countries.

In the 2011 drawing a computer programming error was made and two weeks after the official drawing of the lottery the Department of State closed the website and voided the results:

We regret to inform you that, due to a computer programming problem, the results of the 2012 Diversity Lottery that were previously posted on this website have been voided. They were not valid and were posted in error. The results were not valid because they did not represent a fair, random selection of entrants, as required by U.S. law.

People that had originally learned that they had won a green card, were upset about this and a lawsuit in federal court tried to stop the government from re-doing the lottery. Their injunction sought some form of relief for people who thought they had won but two weeks later saw their hopes go up in smoke.

The key question that judge Jackson answered in her resolution of the case was whether or not the first drawing was indeed "strictly random", as required by law. If it was not random, the results would indeed have been void, just as the State Department said, and re-doing the lottery would have been a reasonable recourse. The statue provides:

Immigrant visa numbers made available under subsection (c) of this statute (relating to diversity immigrants) shall be issued to eligible immigrants strictly in a random order established by the Secretary of State for the fiscal year involved.

Dictionary definition vs scientifically random

During the trial the CIO of the Department explained what went wrong in the selection process. The algorithm that was used only looked at submissions of the first 2 days (instead of during the entire application period) due to a simple programming error. The drawing was thus not random in the strict scientific sense of the word, where each submission had an equal chance of being picked. (An interesting piece of information: at its most busy time, the Department received about 1 application per second. The first website that I was team-lead for years ago had similar performance requirements and was, incidentally, also associated with a lottery).

The plaintiffs argued that the State's selection was random if one employs "a straightforward
dictionary definition". They cited the Merriam-Webster dictionary which defines
"at random" as "without definite aim, direction, rule or method.", and they provided the Court with an Oxford English Dictionary definition: "having no definite aim or purpose; not sent or guided in a particular direction; made, done, occurring, etc. without method or conscious choice, haphazard."

The court made it clear that this dictionary definition is not the "strictly random" that Congress had in mind. Analyzing language from the State Department's regulations, and examples from laws on casinos and the like, the court came out in favor of the State Department's definitions:

But Congress was not using the term in casual conversation. The statutory provision was written to govern a complex numerical selection process – the manner in which a small group of petitioners would be selected from a pool of millions in a computerized drawing of international significance – and so in that context, the term can only be interpreted in the sense of a technical process.
This conclusion is bolstered by the fact that the word random is not used in isolation, but it is part of the phrase “random order,” a term used in probability and statistics and computer
science. 8 U.S.C. §1153(c). The statute is not satisfied by a result that can ultimately be characterized as random; rather, it calls for a process – the random re-ordering of the data.

In conclusion, the Court found that the State Department had acted correctly in voiding the result and scheduling a new drawing:

The Court is sympathetic to the plaintiffs’ plight. While it does not doubt that the emotional impact of the Department’s reversal has been painful and real, and that many of the plaintiffs have compelling reasons to seek to immigrate to the United States, it must take note of the fact that all of the others who submitted timely petitions during the thirty day period also “played by the rules . . . seeking only to pursue their own American dreams.” There are 19 million more stories, from other lottery participants, many of which may be equally or even more compelling, and it is for that reason that Congress determined that every applicant would have an equal chance of winning the right to apply for the visa. The Court cannot order the Department of State to honor a botched process that did not satisfy that regulatory and statutory requirements. Moreover, the Court does not find that it was arbitrary or capricious for the Department to decide to rescind a lottery that did not meet the single most important criterion for a drawing: a random selection.

The new drawing results of the lottery will be available today at noon EST.

Elin Boshuizen is born!

Our dear friends Joost and Ankie were blessed with a baby girl yesterday early morning. Mother and child are doing fine and are already home.

Congratulations!

Today is Fourth of July, America's national holiday, and a day off for me.

In the afternoon we went for a hike at the Eno River. Halfway through we got caught in a large thunderstorm, and we were soaking wet within a few minutes. We made our way to a shelter, a wooden house for campers, where we waited until the worst of the lightning was over.

It's not the first time a summer storm surprised us on the Fourth -- three years ago we were at the Al Buehler trail when the same thing happened. Quite an adventure.

There is still a storm warning in effect for Durham, and it's raining heavily.

Yesterday we had dinner with Belen, Christoph, Emily and Esteban.

It was a fun dinner; in the spirit of the July 4th weekend we had burgers and bratwurst. Emily and Christoph are traveling today to Massachusetts.

Last weekend we celebrated Sasha's graduation; she now has a PhD in Economics from Duke!

Milan, Nadia and Irena attended the festivities, and we had a very fun weekend. Here you'll find some pictures of the various ceremonies.

The weekend started with a Baccalaureate service at the Duke Chapel, followed by the PhD hooding ceremony. On Sunday was the diploma distribution of the Department of Economics.

Preparations...

Baccalaureate service at the Duke Chapel

One of the highlights of Commencement Weekend is the Baccalaureate Service held in the majestic Duke Chapel. The ceremony features a procession of the degree candidates in academic attire. The service includes a sermon by the Dean of the Chapel, and the President’s Charge by Richard H. Brodhead.

PhD hooding ceremony

The Hooding Ceremony is a special recognition ceremony for doctoral degree candidates during which a faculty advisor and the Dean of the Graduate School place the doctoral hood over the head of the graduate, signifying his or her success in completing the graduate program. The ceremony is similar to a graduation in that faculty and students are dressed in academic attire.

Diploma distribution

Diploma distribution of the Department of Economics.