The Portrait of a Mirror
Page 4
CHAPTER IV.
SELECT WEB BROWSER ACTIVITY (RESORTED, CHRONOLOGICAL) OF DALE S. MCBRIDE (ENGAGEMENT MANAGER, PORTMANTEAU STRATEGY, PERSONNEL NUMBER [REDACTED]), MONDAY, MAY 18, 2015.
7:53 AM EDT - https://www.google.com/
[Search Criteria ‘Diana W. Whalen LinkedIn’]
About 198,670 results (0.69 seconds)
[FIRST RESULT]
Diana Whalen | LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/diana-w-whalen-6312xxxx
Greater New York City Area - Enterprise Architect at Portmanteau - Portmanteau
Diana Whalen · 2nd
Enterprise Architect at Portmanteau
Greater New York City Area | Management Consulting
Current: Portmanteau
Previous: Portmanteau
Education: University of Virginia
Summary
System of systems engineer specializing in machine learning and dynamically adaptable enterprise architecture at Portmanteau, mainly in the high-tech space.
(I help tech companies solve IT logic puzzles with insufficient clues and where those insufficient clues keep changing.)
Experience
Engagement Manager-Enterprise Architecture
Portmanteau
December 2014—present (6 months) | New York, NY
Consultant - Enterprise Architecture
Portmanteau
December 2013—December 2014 (1 year) | New York, NY
Analyst - Enterprise Architecture
Portmanteau
October 2012—December 2013 (1 year, 2 months) | New York, NY
Education
University of Virginia
Bachelor of Science (BS), Systems Engineering and Bachelor of Arts (BA), Philosophy
2008—2012
George Washington High School for Science and Technology
2004—2008
Skills
Enterprise Architecture (30 recommendations)
Systems Engineering (27 recommendations)
IT Strategy (26 recommendations)
Programming (15 recommendations)
Machine Learning (9 recommendations)
Information Technology (8 recommendations)
Strategy (7 recommendations)
Computability Theory (2 recommendations)
[BACK]
[SECOND RESULT]
Diana Whalen and Charles Range IV — Weddings — The New . . .
http://www.nytimes.com/09/22/fashion/weddings/diana-whalen-and-charles-range-iv-weddings.html
[Article, New York Times, “The Best Kind of Gratification? Delayed Gratification”]
The Best Kind of Gratification?
Delayed Gratification
by Ramsay Smith Blake
September 22, 2013
Diana Witt Whalen and Charles Wesley Range IV were married on Saturday, September 21, 2013, at the Woodland Country Club in Charlottesville, Virginia. Julian Pappas-Fidicia, a friend of the couple who became a Universal Life minister for the event, officiated.
Ms. Whalen, 23, who is keeping her name, is an enterprise architect at the New York office of Portmanteau, a global management consulting firm. She received a joint B.A./B.S. with Highest Distinction from the University of Virginia.
She is the daughter of Regina Witt and Richard Whalen of Washington, DC. The bride’s parents are both professors at Georgetown University: her mother in systems engineering, her father in philosophy.
Mr. Range, 27, who is known as Wes, is the founder and CEO of Ecco, a start-up company providing specialized algorithm diagnostics and reprogramming services to other companies. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University and holds an M.B.A. from the Darden School at the University of Virginia.
He is the son of Agatha Young Range and the late Charles W. Range III of New York. His mother is a philanthropist and sits on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The groom is the maternal great-grandson of shipping magnate Cortland R. Young Jr. [link].
The couple met in the Patrick Henry Society, a literary and debating club at the University of Virginia, in the fall of 2010 when the bride, already a member, conducted the groom’s interview. Interviewees are permitted to choose their topics, and Mr. Range left the encounter astonished by Ms. Whalen’s repartee on everything from John Nash to John Keats and cyborgs to coxswain. “I’d never met someone with her particular kind of mental acuity. At the time, I don’t believe she’d ever even been to a regatta, but based on our conversation you’d have thought she’d rowed in Henley herself,” he said. Mr. Range was the captain of Princeton’s decorated 2009 varsity crew and competed in the 2012 London Olympics [link].
The groom was so impressed, in fact, that he preemptively ended his current relationship later that day—even before his admission into the Society as a probationary member (“It felt disingenuous not to,” he said).
They were fast friends, loaning each other books and casually going out to eat, where the conversation often turned to mathematical logic and computability theory, a shared interest. Ms. Whalen, however, was initially more reticent for things to turn romantic. “I just needed a few more data points,” she said. “Plus, delayed gratification is the best kind of gratification, am I right?”
Just as Mr. Range was beginning to lose hope, Ms. Whalen asked him to her sorority’s end-of-semester formal event, a black-tie soiree held at Woodland Country Club, the future venue of the couple’s wedding. When he arrived to pick her up, she revealed a computer program she had written, an algorithm that predicted the success of other algorithms. Mr. Range was so taken with it that they missed the event entirely. “I guess we’re making up for that now,” the groom said. “Consider this our first date.”
[BACK]
8:10 AM EDT - https://www.google.com/
[Search Criteria ‘Wes Range’]
About 7,000,000 results (0.76 seconds)
8:10 AM EDT - https://www.google.com/
[Search Criteria ‘Wes Range CEO Ecco’]
About 965,000 results (0.73 seconds)
[FIRST RESULT]
Wes Range - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Range [Article, Wikipedia, ‘Wes Range’]
Wes Range
Range at TechCrunch in 2014
Born
Charles Wesley Range IV January 1, 1986 (age 29) New York City, New York [link], United States
Nationality
American
Alma mater
Princeton University [link], University of Virginia [link]
Occupation
Entrepreneur
Known For
CEO of Ecco [link]
Spouse(s)
Diana Whalen (2013–present)
Relatives
Charles Wesley Range III (father) [link], Agatha
Young Range (mother), Cortland R. Young Jr. (great-grandfather) [link]
Website
www.ecco.com/wes
Charles Wesley “Wes” Range IV is an American entrepreneur and Olympic rower, competing in the men’s eight at the 2012 London games. He is the founder and chief executive officer of Ecco, a business-to-business (B2B) technology company specializing in resolving system-critical infinite loop [link] errors in enterprise systems.
Contents [hide]
1. Life and education [link]
2. Career [link]
3. Awards and Recognition [link]
4. References [link]
Life and education [edit]
Range grew up in New York City, the son of the late former YW Capital Management [link] co-founder Charles Wesley Range III [link], and Young Industries [link] heiress Agatha Young Range. He is the great-grandson of Cortland R. Young Jr. [link] He married Diana Witt Whalen in 2013. [reference]
Range received his A.B. in Mathematics from Princeton University in 2009. At Princeton, he was a member of the varsity crew and Tiger Inn [link] eating club. He earned
an M.B.A. from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business in 2012.
Career [edit]
Range founded Ecco in 2011 while a business school student at the University of Virginia [link], inspired by an algorithm [link] that evaluated other algorithms built in 2010 by his future wife [reference]. The company provides specialty algorithm analytics services leveraging a proprietary diagnostic algorithm that identifies, at a >99% efficacy rate, recursive anomalies—in particular, system-compromising circular references and infinite loops [link] (See also: recursion [link]).
. . .
[EMBEDDED LINK]
Recursion occurs when a thing is defined in terms of itself or of its type and may broadly refer to any form of self-similar embedded repetition. Its reach transcends academic disciplines, is likewise discernible in art and nature, and may be the fundamental linguistic and even cognitive function that differentiates human from animal existence. Its propensity toward complexity and infinity quickly defies comprehension. For instance, when the surfaces of two mirrors are exactly parallel with each other, the nested images that occur are a form of infinite recursion [link], even though practically speaking we can perceive only the first few instances. According to one study, the average human being with a score of 145–160 on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (“Very gifted or highly advanced”) was able to cognitively process 6.3 embedded layers before encountering instability of meaning. [citation needed]
Contents [hide]
1. In mathematics [link]
1.1. Recursively defined sets [link]
1.1.1. Fibonacci numbers [link]
1.1.2. Factorials [link]
1.1.3. The golden ratio [link]
1.2. Proof involving recursive definitions [link]
1.3. Recursive optimization [link]
2. In computer science [link]
2.1. Computability theory (Recursion theory) [link]
2.2. Recursive functions and algorithms [link]
2.2.1. Turing computability [link]
2.2.2. Infinite loops [link]
3. In nature [link]
3.1. Fractals [link]
3.2. Biological networks [link]
3.2.1. Circulatory systems [link]
3.2.2. Mammalian reproduction [link]
3.3. Social networks [link]
4. In economics [link]
4.1. Recursive economics [link]
4.2. In game theory [link]
4.2.1. Metagames [link]
4.2.2. Pooling games [link]
5. In art [link]
5.1. In visual art [link]
5.1.1. The Droste Effect [link]
5.1.2. Matryoshka dolls [link]
5.1.3. Mise en abyme [link]
5.2. In literature [link]
5.2.1. Frame stories [link]
5.2.2. Story within a story [link]
5.2.3. The Portrait of a Mirror [link]
6. Recursive humor [link]
6.1. See also: Recursive humor [link]
7. See also [link]
8. Notes [link]
9. References [link]
10. External links [link]
11. . . .
CHAPTER V.
The Olympia Lobby felt like a futuristic vitruvian airport, with a long check-in desk flanked by security gates on either side, east and west. In the center of the glass foyer a spiral staircase yawned chasmically, leading down to a food court known as the “Underworld.” Six white Chesterfield benches arced around the staircase’s circumference, facing the desk. Diana Whalen sat on the second from the left, looking intensely at something on her phone and absently eating what appeared to be a Doritos Locos Taco.
It was a disorienting jolt into reality for Dale, the idea that the Diana Witt Whalen of recent digital acquaintance and New York Times Style section notoriety was a real human being who physically had to eat, the pretzel in her email having seemed more like a metaphor. This reality along with the violent blond dye job and shoulder-length chop that clearly postdated the stunning photographs of her online rendered the real Diana less objectively beautiful yet somehow more attractive. Her dress was simple but obviously expensive, one of those shortish, high-necked shapeless things that, in no more than an afterthought, maybe highlighted the legs. Over it, in a flagrant affront to professionalism, she wore what seemed to be a man’s hunter-green ski fleece with a little white Vail logo on the left side. In the spectrum of possible female ensembles, hers looked almost, to borrow a turn of phrase from Eric Hashimoto, aggressively unsexy. It was as if she were actively working to subvert her beauty, and her inability to do so highlighted it all the more. Or maybe she knew that. Maybe she did it on purpose, maybe she was showing off, throwing her beauty into relief by poor dress: a literal, physical humblebrag. She was declaring herself “ordinary and unimportant,” yes—but in the manner of Eva Perón. It didn’t even look like she was wearing makeup—and not in the way that skillfully applied makeup successfully achieves “the natural look.” It looked like she was actually not wearing makeup. Dale had lived with a woman long enough to know the difference.
In the elevator he had tried out various introductory lines, from the simple, oh hi, you must be Diana, I’m Dale, to replacing Dale with Robin, to really going for it with a Robin at your service, to pathetic, tortured attempts to cast her as Catwoman that were immediately discarded, to finding some new portion of Eric’s Brief to satirically appropriate. Spoiler alert: I’m Dale. A Prudence Hyman joke, in Olympian open air, was radically bold but far too dangerous. He’d pretty much settled on spoiler alert until he saw the Doritos Locos Taco, which more or less required direct commentary. I thought you wanted a pretzel was the obvious choice here, but you’re ruining your appetite for our forty-ninth-slash-fiftieth-floor date was, he reasoned, more expressly confident.
Dale was less clear on why he was so intent on impressing her. Diana was married. In what should have felt like a “more importantly comma” sort of thought, in less than four months, he would be too. Dale’s fiancée was beautiful, well educated, professionally successful, and sexually unselfish, with an affable temperament and lovely family vacation homes in Breckenridge and Spring Lake. He had no intention of letting her go. His intention made no difference. He wanted to impress Diana anyway.
—Oh, hi there. Spoiler alert: I’m Diana.
She struggled to free a hand for him to shake and he fumbled to help her, disoriented by the impression that she was capable of reading his mind. Up close, she looked ludicrously young, all eyebrows and pointy features in that small-woodland-creature kind of way. There was an almost blinding quality to the whites of her eyes, he noticed. She was too young to be a manager, and way too young to have such an imposing, heirloomy pair of rings perched on her third left finger. Dale chastised himself for even noticing them. And yet, even though he had just met her, he couldn’t rattle the feeling that he wished she wasn’t married. The thought that she should belong to someone who was not him, regardless of his own availability, seemed like a grave mistake. That she belonged to someone with both the lineage and taste to present her with a ring like that illogically made this mistake all the more egregious.
Dale could feel the transfer of orange Dorito dust onto his fingers, and he didn’t even mind.
—What’s this? he asked, nodding at the taco. I thought you wanted a pretzel.
—Well, I do—for second breakfast.
—Second breakfast?
—We’ve only just met and you’re already second-chairing my eating habits? Don’t second-guess second breakfast. There are exactly two Taco Bells south of Ninety-Seventh Street in New York City, and neither of them are in travel-type locations where I’m inclined to lift my personal day-to-day regular-life ban on fluorescent cheese-like products. It was a measured decision, and I don’t regret it. In fact, I have to say, I almost feel like you’re angling for a bite.
Dale was surprised and delighted by the lilt in her voice as she said this. There was something distinctly coquettis
h in her faux self-righteous didacticism. It was the auditory equivalent to a wink, deliberate and provocative, the “already second-chairing” foreshadowing some kind of guaranteed intimacy, a tacit indication, almost an order, that they were going to become good, probably very good, maybe best friends. Dale had the strangest feeling that he already knew Diana from somewhere, and already admired her. This illusory sensation presented itself like a question to which Dale knew he should readily remember the answer but always forgot, like the definition of teleology versus ontology, or whether cheese was supposed to be pasteurized. Maybe through Julian, Dale thought. Never had a gay man had such exquisite taste in women.
Dale left guest passes for the rest of the team at the desk and they walked through the right security gate to the elevator bank, falling into easy chitchat. How had Diana’s journey been? Her journey had been uneventful. Wasn’t 30th Street Station an architectural respite from the subterranean labyrinth of Penn Station? The only catch with 30th Street was, of course, that once one left the station, one was in Philadelphia. Dale had attended the University of Pennsylvania for undergraduate as well as graduate school and was well-nigh a local now, and he assured Diana that once he’d understood which blocks to avoid (they required some swerving navigation) he had ceased to think of it as the poor man’s Boston, the city from which he originally hailed. She was staying at the Sheraton; did he think she would be all right? So long as she’d brought her own toiletries. Dale did not have a working hypothesis for what the Sheraton shampoo was, but he was fairly certain it wasn’t shampoo. Not that this was by any means a Philadelphia-specific problem. He had come to find a certain appeal to the City of Brotherly Love. Dale now lived in an 1,800-square-foot, four-story brownstone less than a block off Rittenhouse Square. A Flywheel class here was only twenty-five dollars and one might easily keep a car. The grocery-store-slash-strip-club wasteland by the river was odd, yes, but there were two Whole Foods and a Trader Joe’s in walking distance and, unlike in their New York counterparts, at most hours one was able to physically move in them. Dale had been to Eataly, though. Yes, that was very close to Diana’s apartment.