Remember when your mom would make you wash dishes before putting them in the dish washer? Remember how backwards that sounded, remember how you just didn’t see the logic, but she made you do it anyway?
We were right! From CONSUMER REPORT’S 50 ways to save water:
”Don?t prerinse dishes before loading the dishwasher. You?ll save as much as 20 gallons a load, or 6,500 gallons per year. Our tests show prerinsing doesn?t improve cleaning. “
How I have dreamt of this day!
If anyone still reads this they’re probably wondering what I’ve been up to recently. Most of the time is spent at work, a quantum of my time has been spent nursing a recent infatuation with Texas hold ‘em, and the rest has been focused on launching a video blog with my sister.
If you find the last bit interesting, check it by clicking here, or aim your web browser at unstarved.com.
“Have we learned nothing from the tragic events of 1998, when, under the watch of President Morgan Freeman, this nation was plunged into chaos, and hundreds of millions of people died at the hands of the deadly Wolf-Beiderman space rock? The mere fact that this country is even considering putting another black man, Barack Obama, in the Oval Office proves that we have not.”
- The Onion on the disaster of a Barack Obama Presidency.
My friend Anon from Cal Poly is a decently bright guy. He graduated from the Engineering school with a Bob Marley-esque GPA (it was high), interned at one of the hotter bay area tech companies over the summer, and is now working on a PhD at an Ivy League institution. We talk politics on an almost daily basis, an area of discussion which brings up passionate and downright furious rants about the inadequacies, incompetencies, and impotencies of blah, blah, blah, blah….
So it’s understandable that I made sure to remind him that if his state is one of the many states (including California) who moved their primary up to February 5th, the voter registration deadline was coming up.
Me: You’re registered to vote in the California primaries, yes?
Anon: ummmmmm
Me: DUDE
Anon: I don’t know.
Me: COME OOOOOOON
Anon: the thing is…
Me: For someone as angry at politics as you, there’s no excuse for not voting in the primaries.
Me: If Anon is too lazy to vote in the primaries, we as a generation are [explicit deleted]ed.
Me: Proper [explicit deleted]ed.
Anon: haha
Anon: you have a strong argument here.
Anon: how do I register?
…which is a valid question. Assuming you’re in California, the easiest way I’ve found to register is to fill out this form, after which you’ll be mailed a copy of your voter registration information to sign and return, with postage already paid. In California if the envelope is postmarked by the 22nd, you’re eligible to vote in the primaries. A full list of ways to register can be found at calvoter.org:
How do I register to vote?
To register, you’ll need to complete a voter registration form, sometimes called an affidavit. There are many ways to get the form: - pick up a form in person at any number of public offices (library, DMV, post office, county election office, city clerk, etc.)
- call 1-800-345-VOTE to request a form be mailed to you
- call your county election office to request a form be mailed to you
- download a form in English or Spanish from the Secretary of State’s web site
-fill out the online registration form at the Secretary of State’s web site (it will be printed and mailed to you for your signature)
Additionally, many campaigns and political parties send out staff and volunteers to register voters at malls and other public places. You may request a voter registration form from these people too. The law requires them to supply you with a form regardless of which political party you want to register with, so don’t be misled by signs that say “Republicans Register Here” or “Democrats Register Here”. You can also register to vote when you renew your driver’s license with the DMV. The deadline to register to vote in the November election is October 18th. Your form must be signed, dated and postmarked by that deadline.
Me: I think Ron Paul has a chance to win the Republican nomination.
Lauren: Ron Paul?
Me: Yeah.
Lauren: Isn’t he the cross dresser?
While eating dinner at work today, one of the engineers mentioned there was a secret club at Disney Land called “Club 33″ that was accessible only to members who paid exorbitant fees. Confident it was an urban myth, I fired up my web browser and went to snopes.com and then wikipedia, where I found the following:
Club 33 is a private club located in the heart of the New Orleans Square section of Disneyland. Officially maintained as a “secret” feature of the theme park, the entrance of the club is located next to the Blue Bayou Restaurant at “33 Royal Street” with the entrance recognizable by an ornate address plate with the number 33 engraved on it.
Members enjoy access to the club’s exclusive restaurant and full bar. It is the only location within Disneyland to offer alcoholic beverages, though Disneyland has a park wide liquor license and has set up bars throughout the park for private events. Club 33’s wine list includes vintages priced at $200.
Well, damn…
In this video by Oxford mathematician Peter Donnelly, he poses the following hypothetical question:
Given an AIDS test which is 99% accurate, what is the probability you have AIDS if you tested positive.
The interesting part is this isn’t as easy as it sounds, and the rarity of the disease determines the answer as much as anything else. Let’s say for the sake of discussion that on average out of 1 million people, 100 have AIDS. We would then see the following:
This means that of the 1 million people who get tested for AIDS, 10,098 of them would test positive, while only 99 actually have AIDS.
You can take a test which is 99% accurate, have it turn out positive, and still only have a 99/10,098 = 0.98% chance that you actually have AIDS. An extremely accurate test says you have AIDS, and yet it’s extremely unlikely that you do.
This leads me to agree with former Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who famously stated, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
A red-haired family claims to have been driven from their Newcastle home because of abuse. Why is the harassment of redheads dismissed as just harmless fun?
Here’s a joke. “What’s the difference between a terrorist and a redhead?”
Here’s the punchline. “You can negotiate with a terrorist.”
BBC News
Really? I knew the Irish and the British weren’t exactly best friends forever, but this seems bizarre. Also, there’s apparently an entire mythology surrounding redheads that I was unaware of. The first commenter writes:
Redheads are feared because they are believed in folklore to be the devil’s children and have red hair because they were conceived during their mother’s menstruation.A welsh proverb says “os bydd goch, fe fydd gythreulig” or “if he’s redhaired then he is of the devil”. Yesterday’s superstition has become today’s teasing.
L, Wales
My favorite though, is the BBC sidebar with relevant facts about redheads:
[There is] Disagreement over redheads’ reputed higher pain tolerance.
Oh, yeah, it’s why we have absolutely no objection to being beaten, it tickles.
It would not be incorrect to suggest that as a college student my investment strategies and budgeting could both be accurately qualifed with the adjective “non-existant”. College wasn’t real life, and this “future” people told me to worry about seemed intangible and distant at best.
But since I’m entering the phase of my life in which the next step is retirement, I figure it’s time to start looking at this elusive time period which exists beyond my next meal.
The following two short films I think anyone would find useful as they look at their financial future. Both films indirectly address lifestyle inflation, the concept that spending naturally increases to match your income unless you consciously try to avoid it.
“It’s Friday evening, and the US is preparing for a long three-day weekend, often considered the official start of summer here.
So what’s a pasty white nerd to do? You can’t go out on the beach, because the goodlooking people will laugh at you, and kick sand in your face.
I’m not bitter.
But now you _can_ do something: you can download the latest -rc kernel, and smile smugly to yourself, knowing that you are running the latest and greatest on your machine. And suddenly it doesn’t even matter that summer is coming, because you can just sit in the basement, and close the blinds, and bask in the warm light from your LCD, rather than the harsh glare of the daystar…”
- Linus Torvalds, from here.
This weekend Lauren and I drove up to San Jose for Mother’s day as well as to search for a place to live after graduation. After looking at a ridiculous number of apartments over an increasingly stressful three days, we finally managed to secure the only one we really wanted.
It’s not the largest place we visited, and it certainly wasn’t the newest; The current owner’s grandparents bought the house from the original owner in 1921. I could talk about it, but instead, how about I just post some pics plz…
View from the street
The fig tree in which Teddy Roosevelt lost his virginity
Ultra-futuristic furniture from 1923
Unfortunately, the current tenants hadn’t left yet and so we didn’t photograph as thoroughly as we would have otherwise. The rest of what we have can be seen here.
If you are unable to remember someone’s first name, simply ask them: “What’s your name?” When they reply with their first name, laugh and say “Oh no, I knew that, of course. I meant your last name”. This is a much more acceptable thing to forget–and you still get their full name.
– Bettina, from Tricks of the Trade: Socialite
This is brilliant, but what about when I forget this question?
Me: Who the hell are you again?
Them: What?
Me: Oh no, I knew that, of course. I meant your last name.
Them: Go away!
Me: All right, I’ll talk to you later.
Me: *Writes down Wot Goway*
“Grad school is the snooze bar on the alarm clock of life.”
- Slashdot drone.
Once in a while I’ll haphazardly bungle onto Canadian news and get zapped by a bit of culture shock:
That smoky haze above the park just north of the Legislature was from the thousands of people who sparked up joints as part of the Toronto Freedom Festival and Global Marijuana March, “a celebration of all things marijuana,” as one organizer described it.
The park was jammed with tokers who gathered to make a collective case for the legalization of pot, under the watch of Toronto police, who ringed the periphery and herded some marchers through downtown streets, but otherwise let the crowd blast off and didn’t arrest anyone.
A police news release prior to the event said they expected a crowd of 10,000 to 12,000, which may have underestimated the actual attendance. Officers at the scene didn’t want to guess at the crowd size.
- The star
In California people wouldn’t be allowed to march while smoking cigarettes.
me: I just received David Sedaris/Sarah Vowell tickets.
me: I waited too long, and as a result got better seats at a cheaper price.
me: procrastination pays off…. eventually.
ug: the second mouse gets the cheese.
me: and all the fresh mouse meat his little stomach can carry.
Over at favoritearchitecture.org you can view and vote on what you believe to be the 5 most representative examples of architecture in the United States. There are the standard buildings, some I’ve never heard of but which are quite impressive, and then there are a few choices that are downright confusing.
“If you want to play the arrogant asshole and call people pedophiles I respect that. I really do. I?ve been overcompensating for my low self esteem by calling people names for twenty years. I know how it works and the only rule is if you can?t take it, don?t fucking dish it out.”
- Mike Krahulik (AKA Gabe), from here.
Though I’ll be the first to extol the virtues of open source software, it’s easy to see how the suits get scared off when I find comments like this in a prominent location in the kernel:
723 /*
724 * Tell the world that we’re going to be the grim
725 * reaper of innocent orphaned children.
726 *
727 * We don’t want people to have to make incorrect
728 * assumptions about where in the task array this
729 * can be found.
730 */
731 init_pid_ns.child_reaper = current
Lauren and I have been planning on traveling to the eastern hemisphere after my graduation for a while now, but it wasn’t until recently that I fully comprehended that a round trip ticket to any of these locations would cost more than I recently spent on a motorcycle.
Now left to my own means I would have at this point probably have given up on international travel as simply not worth it, I’d rather have a motorcycle collection than a photo album.
When I pointed out that air fare to these foreign countries violated several stipulations of the Geneva Convention, the much more worldly Lauren looked me sternly in the eyes and said “get over it.”
23:44 <me> Does anyone else have “message in a bottle” stuck in their head?
23:44 <anon> now I do, ass
… 11 minutes pass
23:55 <me> There are quite a few songs about prostitutes.
23:55 <me> Why are so many musicians tight with prostitutes?
23:56 <anon> are you listening to Roxanne?
23:56 <me> NO
23:56 <me> NO I AM NOT
“Most people use passwords. Some people use passphrases. Bruce Schneier uses an epic passpoem, detailing the life and works of seven mythical Norse heroes.”
- From here.
This is just one of the many facts I did not know concerning Bruce Schneier…
“I know very well that some atheists can get downright annoying in their insistence that they have have objectively demonstrated the nonexistence of God using simple algebra and a household magnifying glass.”
- From here.
I recently ran across a statement Frank Zappa gave to congress in 1985 on censorship among other topics. While the whole statement is certainly worth reading, I found the following particularly interesting:
Many people in this room would gladly support such legislation, but, before they start drafting their bill, I urge them to consider these facts:
(1) There is no conclusive scientific evidence to support the claim that exposure to any form of music will cause the listener to commit a crime or damn his soul to hell.
(2) Masturbation is not illegal. If it is not illegal to do it, why should it be illegal to sing about it?
(3) No medical evidence of hairy palms, warts, or blindness has been linked to masturbation or vaginal arousal, nor has it been proven that hearing references to either topic automatically turns the listener into a social liability.
(4) Enforcement of anti-masturbatory legislation could prove costly and time consuming.
(5) There is not enough prison space to hold all the children who do it.
I find it terribly dissapointing that I did not hear about zefrank’s year long project, in which he shared tightly cut 3-5 minute humorous videos with viewers every week day for a year, until it was canceled. It’s damn funny and had quite a wide reach of influence, as can be seen from the fact that Jack Black has a cameo in his second to last broadcast.
I recommend you watch this video followed by this one. Let’s watch the monkey dance…
On the last day of my psychology class we had a career counselor speak to us; One of the first things she did was write the word “career” on the board and ask for the first word that came to our mind upon reading career. Many words concerning the perceived drudgery of work came out initially including stress, repetition, and boredom. I got the conversation swinging the other way by throwing opportunity up on the board.
The only word that really surprised was from a young woman whose first response to the word “career” was “husband”.
Today I learned:
“To be ‘three sheets to the wind’ is to be drunk. The sheet is the line that controls the sails on a ship. If the line is not secured, the sail flops in the wind, and the ship loses headway and control. If all three sails are loose, the ship is out of control.”
From here.
It doesn’t take an expert on culture to realize this reference is horribly out of date. A recent Gallup poll revealed that no more than 60% of Americans use wind propelled vehicles as their main source of transportation. It’s past time for a new metaphor which dignified peoples may use to divulge their insobriety.
Friend: How you feelin’?
Me: My portfolio’s entirely undeversified.
Friend: I’m sorry?
Me: I’m practicing Dianetics.
Friend: What?!
Me: I’m runnin’ Windows 98 without virus protection.
Friend: Give me your keys.
When I registered for this recently completed Winter quarter, I chose to take a general education course which I had no interest in, mainly due to my inexplainable urge to graduate. As such, I decided to take advantage of the “credit/no credit” (CR/NC) option in the interest of putting forth as little effort as possible.
One might be surprised that it is common to hear, “I took class X CR/NC and received an A”; such a result is undesirable and so I went to great lengths to avoid it, using the following methods:
Above and beyond the tactics listed above, the professor at least feigned dislike for me while in the classroom. It would be difficult to imagine the shock and disdain felt when I received a 92.5% in the class; I received not just an A-, but a solid, highest grade I could have possibly gotten, A.
Our world is one without justice.
“If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base.”
- Dave Barry
This article on memory and the minds of experts is intriguing for a number of reasons, and I encourage you to check out the full article here. However, the bit I found most relevant is as follows:
“Thus, motivation appears to be a more important factor than innate ability in the development of expertise.”
- Phillip E. Ross
Of course, there’s a motivation for any person to want to believe that expertise (and Ross is referring to performance, not just “knowledge”) is related to effort and I recommend a healthy dose of cynicism when people come up with conclusions which are in their best interest.
“Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.”
- Stephen Hawking, from this webcast of a talk at UC Berkeley.
According to some guy on the Internet, Lawyers not only make a #$@%-ton of money, they’re making way more than they did even a year ago, to the tune of around 15k per associate lawyer for one large firm. However, I barely skimmed the article and lawyers making money wasn’t the part I found worthwhile.
What I found fascinating was the problem of partner/associate generational gap. As Mr. MacEwen relates:
From both sides, the attitude of the other is perceived to be highly unattractive:
- Partners think (and I paraphrase, here as below): “Associates make so much ____’ing money, and they think new matters just fall out of the sky. You ask them to work over the weekend and they say they have plans. I never ‘had plans’ when I was in their position. Who do they think they are?”
- Associates: “Partners make so much ______’ing money, and they want us to do all the work, particularly the scut-work. I never see clients, I never go to court, I never get any real experience, the work is mind-numbing, and they keep tacking on another 50 hours to their ‘expectations’ almost every year. Besides, everyone knows institutional loyalty died a long time ago; if I don’t manage my own career, and try to have some semblance of a life on the side, the firm sure isn’t going to do it for me.”
I bet several people in the tech industry were nodding along with this. A lot of companies seem to expect what MacEwen terms “institutional loyalty” without supplying the job security which made them worth being loyal to in the first place.
I’ve been lucky enough to secure a job at a company I like doing work I find interesting for good pay and decent benefits, but at the same time I know that the likelihood of being employed at any given company for more than 5-10 years in the tech industry is no better than a 50/50 proposition regardless of skill.
I’m curious what others think about this attitudinal gap. Am I way off base here?
I’ve been using the phrase “the better part of a ____” recently, it’s an excellent aide for exaggeration, since in most usages you’re just implying that something has been occurring for more than half of a given time period, which can easily be abused.
Example usages:
Do you have any good “Better part of a blank” usages?
“I’m really not a fan of Sigmund Freud as his theories aren’t testicle.”
Lauren’s looking into getting a digital SLR camera and a couple decent lenses, so I’ve been reading an article on doing exactly that when I was reminded that I will never be a decent photographer:
“You need to learn how to stick a camera 12 inches from your subject. Remember that the ruder your personality, the better a photojournalist you will make.”
I’m just not that rude or fearless. My hope remains that these are qualities which can be learned.
“I told them it wasn’t dangerous, but apparently I’m not credible in this hazmat suit. I don’t think it’s fair that they judge me by my clothes.”
- from here
As Harry Potter has grown in popularity so have the cries that it is luring children into the practice of witchcraft. It seems to me that this is as likely as A Wrinkle in Time resulting in little time travelers, but it’s just a fact that a person’s popularity is proportional to the size of the target on their back. There is absolutely no way J.K. Rowling is advocating witchcraft.
Or so I thought…
Today I came across the book Everything You Know About God Is Wrong, which includes contributions from known heathens Richard Dawkins and Neil Gaiman, and I noticed that Amazon is giving you a discount when you buy this book along with Harry Potter!
Clearly I was wrong, there is at least a strong correlation between Harry Potter and Atheism, and we all know witchcraft is a mere half-step from Atheism.
Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the demise of Studio 60 and voiced several common speculations on why the show didn’t make it. I felt the need to answer a few of these here.
“It was a drama about a comedy show, but the skits weren’t funny. In fact, much of the show was decidedly unfunny.”
As a general rule, I refuse to watch a television show if it isn’t funny; this doesn’t mean it has to be a comedy, but clever dialogue is a must. This show was a treasure-mine for witty dialogue that only Woody Allen in his prime could best.
As for the skits, “Science Schmience”, “Jesus as the Head of Standards and Practices”, and the parody of “To Catch a Predator” with Santa Clause were all excellent, but that’s not the point. Any real sketch comedy show has its attractors and detractors, and Sorkin was naive to think he would be able to produce a sketch which would be found universally funny. As such is the case, he should have refrained from showing finished sketches whenever possible as it is irrelevant to the show. The sketches were shown less frequently as the show progressed, but by then ratings were already dismal.
“The cast was a bad fit. Aside from Matthew Perry (who was a wonderful surprise) and Timothy Busfield (who was underused), not much else worked.”
My counter-argument for this is a blank stare. I can’t argue that I would like to have seen more of the excellent Timothy Busfield as Cal, but aside from that all I can do is disagree.
“Almost every story line was a dud …”
This is the only part he got right, assuming “dud” means “vector for excellence”.
“Who’s the rooting interest here? Ultimately, it was hard to care. Those who tried to care were Sorkin loyalists, and even they were dropping off at the end. Those who didn’t care at all opted for “Heroes” or something else.”
I originally had an aversion to the show because I saw Sorkin as trendy and pretentious; it was simply the premise of being back stage at an SNL-like show that hooked me. The premise for “Studio 60″ is something that Sorkin probably knows quite a bit about, while The West Wing which seemed more like a way for liberals to feel good about themselves than an hour of entertainment.
As for Heroes, I feel that’s what President of the fictional network NBS Jordan McDeere was referring to when she told her boss Jack Rudolph “I’ve already got a dual masturbation show in active development”.
I don’t pretend to understand how television shows succeed, but I still haven’t spoken to anyone who watched Studio 60 and didn’t find it to be excellent. I suppose all I can do at this point is buy Sorkin’s Sports Night and wait for the remaining Studio 60 episodes to be released to dvd.
I consider myself a fairly informed consumer and as a bargain hunter, you could say I’m a bit obsessed. So when I find socks for 92% percent off, it’s easy to find myself a bit excited. But when those socks originally cost $500, the deal loses some of its appeal.
Screenshot for posterity:
You may be wondering “Why Eratosthenes?”
As a family member is considering buying a Wii, I thought I’d write down my thoughts concerning the console. As it turns out, I have far too many thoughts about this piece of electronics equipment. Specifically, I had 1,784 words worth, and that doesn’t include this excerpt. Therefore I can only recommend that you read the following if you consider yourself a veteran of the masochistic arts.
I obtained my Nintendo Wii just before Christmas, and so have had access to the console for just over a month and a half. As some relatives are considering buying one “for their children”, I’m posting a review of the console as I feel I represent the type of person who previously wouldn’t doesn’t identify himself as a “gamer” and yet felt compelled to purchase a Wii.
The Upsides
Intuitive Controller. I recently held a Wii Tennis party where we had teams playing the Wii Sports Tennis game. Of those present many who competed had never held the Wii Remote before their first match. The instructions I gave were no more helpful than “The game moves the character for you, just swing when appropriate.” Of course, there are many subtleties to the game, but these crude instructions were enough that people were able to have a good time without looking down to remember where the “q” button is. I don’t think I could have gotten my Dad to play Tiger Woods golf on the xbox, but when all he had to do was swing the controller like a golf club he was more than willing to step up to the Wii Sports Golf game. A fun moment occurred when, after completing a practice swing, he tried to “step up to the ball” to hit it, as if here were actually on the back nine. The controller aides immersion in a way that no amount of high definition graphics can.
Cost of console. At $250, the Nintendo Wii is far from free, but if you’re comparing it to the cost of the Xbox 360 ($300 for the ‘core’ and $400 for the ‘premiere’ edition) and the Playstation 3 ($500 and $600, respectively), it might as well be. It’s even cheaper than the last generation of consoles released by Sony and Microsoft in 2000 and 2001 respectively, which both cost $300. I suspect that part of the reason the blu-ray equipped Playstation 3 and well established Xbox 360 didn’t sell as well for the holidays is that their entry point is higher than most parents are able/willing to spend for their Christmas budget. If you’re going to buy a game or two and an extra controller, the costs can quickly go from exorbitant to ludicrous. Also, the Wii is the only console that actually comes with a game, the incredibly addictive and family friendly Wii Sports
The Games. What’s a game console without good games (Answer: the Sega Saturn)? Between the included and excellent Wii Sports, the addictive mini-game based Rayman Raving Rabbids, the critically acclaimed Zelda title, and Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, there are some good games available right now. The Wii is also backwards compatible the GameCube, Nintendo’s previous console, meaning you have access to the existing catalog of games over the past six years. Nintendo also has the Virtual Console through which you can buy even older games, and which deserves its own section.
Virtual Console. Through the wireless 802.11b/g card provided you can connect to the Internet and access the Virtual Console, which allows you to purchase and download older games to play on the Wii. You can currently purchase games that originally ran on the NES, SNES, N64 platforms, as well as Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx 16. At $5-$12 each, you can access great games from a previous era and play them all on a single console. Currently there are 52 Virtual Console titles available, and more are added each Monday.
You get a GameCube for free! Unlike other consoles which are partly/mostly backwards compatible with previous offerings, the Wii is 100% compatible with previous games, which means the entire back catalog of GameCube games are available on the cheap.
The Downsides
The Cost of Controllers. If you’re buying a Wii, you’re probably going to want to play with a friend, indeed Nintendo has made it a major selling point of the console (It’s called the Wii for fornication’s sake). There is one Nintendo “remote” controller with a “nunchuck” attachment, which allows two handed motion sensing along as well as ananalog joystick. These two components are sold separately at $40 for the remote and $20 for the joystick. In the included Wii Sports games, two player tennis and baseball require at least one extra remote, and two player boxing requires an extra remote and nunchuck. Buying the extra remote bumps up your entry price up to $290, with the extra nunchuck you’re up to $310. Note that it’s definitely normal for a console to only include a single remote, but the Nintendo controllers are expensive in proportion to the console. This may be justifiable given the new control scheme is a major part of the console, but it’s something to watch out for.
Perhaps worse is the fact that if you buy titles on the virtual console, not all of the games are compatible with the wii controller, as the original host system had far more buttons in a different configuration. Specifically, if you want to play SNES, N64, and most TurboGrafx-16 and Sega Genesis games, you’re going to have to buy a different controller. You’re looking at $20 for either the classic controller or a wired GameCube controller, and $34 for the wireless GameCube controller.
The GameCube Integration Isn’t. This one caught me by surprise. I bought Super Smash Bros., a GameCube game, bought a used wireless GameCube controller, and then a Classic controller with the intention of two player Smash Brother goodness. As it turned out, this was not to be. There were two problems with this setup:
Now, if you already owned a GameCube, this is no problem, these are things you already have. If you’re just starting out with this console, you’re looking at $60 to get setup for playing multi-player GameCube games. Now this is much cheaper than purchasing a GameCube with an extra controller, but when the Wii claims to be “backwards compatible” one doesn’t envision dropping the better part of a C-Note just to access that compatibility.
Wii Infrared Interference. The Wii remote allows you to point at a screen directly with the remote controller for menu navigation and game play. This pointing mechanism works by the Wii Remote detecting infrared from an IR transmitter placed either on top or below the television. What may not be obvious is that infrared is common, being given off especially by light bulbs. We have a lamp placed next to our television and if we don’t adjust the Remote’s sensitivity, the remote will start jerking around the screen, which causes problems especially for finesse games like the drawing and shooting portions of Rayman. It should be noted that this can be fixed by adjusting the sensitivity, but you might need to adjust the sensitivity both when the light source is on and when it is off.
Poor Graphics. This has been covered extensively, and indeed the graphical capabilities of the console are inferior to the Xbox 360’s, which offers high definition output as a rule, all games being done in widescreen with a resolution of at least 720p, and which has the ability to upscale to 1080i for games which don’t support it. The Wii is 480i 4:3 with the included cables and can only do 480p widescreen (dvd quality) with a proprietary Nintendo cable. I’ve played some of Zelda on the Wii and compared it to Kameo, a similar style game on the Xbox 360, and there is no doubt that on an HD set, Kameo completely blows Zelda out of the water, it is a gorgeous game to watch. On the flip side, Zelda is still a much more fun game to play. Though the graphics can assist immersion, game play trumps graphics, so this isn’t something I’d worry too much about. Also, the majority of Americans do not have high definition sets, so it’s not likely they’d notice a huge difference anyway.
Virtual Console Issues I love the idea of being able to play the old school games just as they were on my modern console. Two problems are getting in the way of this: The games are annoying to buy and some of them don’t support all the features they used to. Virtual Console games are purchased with Wii Points, which are 1 US cent/point. To purchase these games, you need to enter in your credit card number, city, state, COUNTY, phone number, and other billing information via the Wii Remote. If this wasn’t annoying enough, the Wii doesn’t encrypt and store this info, instead forcing you to re-enter this information every time you want to add points to your account. While this might be a better choice from a security perspective, it is a pain and discourages from purchasing these titles.
Once you have the titles on your system, several games do not support all of the features that the original title did. Currently, Nintendo doesn’t support rumble feedback, even when attached to a GameCube controller which supports it. Also, Nintendo 64 games which required the add on memory pack don’t support those features which require it and Nintendo claims that there is no fix. This means that you won’t be able to save Time Trials for MarioKart64.
Conclusion
Wii Still a Good Deal. Despite the pitfalls mentioned above, you can still get a system which will play all the Wii and NES virtual console games multiplayer for $310, which includes the base system with its’ included controller ($250) and an extra remote/nunchuck combination for $60. More than that, it’s a fun console that gets you moving as opposed to the stationary button mashing imposed by other consoles with a game development community that’s excited about writing games for it. Also, at this early stage, it seems that the Wii is on its way to the head of the pack of the new generation of consoles, which means that aside from Nintendo’s already worthwhile catalog, many third party developers who neglected the GameCube will again allocate developer resources for the Wii.
I kept trying to come up with a catchy closing line, but then realized I’m not trying to sell anything. THE END
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say they wouldn’t use Ruby because it lacks automated refactoring tools. Ruby doesn’t actually need them in the way Java does; it’s like refusing to switch to an electric car because there’s no place to put the gasoline. But programmers are a stubborn bunch, and to win them over you have to give them what they think they want.”
-Steve Yegge on the “Next Big Language“
We recently caught a mouse in our apartment with one of those old school snap traps. The results were less than pleasant, so much so that had I planned on forfeiting the apartment to the next rodent to place a single paw in the door.
But when I when I saw a mousetrap that used an electromagnet and infrared sensors to catch a mouse without harming him AND using entirely excessive technology, I am ready to take up arms again if need be.
Anon: god
Anon: i have a problem
Anon: with hubris
Red: me too
Red: specifically,
Red: I had to look that word up
Anon: haha
Once in a while I get comments on old blog entries. Presumably people somehow end up on a given page through google, and are disoriented enough that they accidentally end up commenting.
But recently I got a comment that has me puzzled, which is as follows:
3. you suck
Comment by emily ? February 1, 2007 @ 3:48 pm
I have a suspicion that this person will be more closely aligned with one of two groups, either people I know or people I do not now (This does not acknowledge people I will come to know in the future as it is currently standard practice in an investigation to rule out the existence of time machines). As far as I can remember, I know exactly two Emilys, and I doubt that either of them are responsible for this. There is a possibility that one of them was offended by the quote containing the slur “overly gay,” but she has a strong sense of humor and I suspect is not the type to get riled up about such things.
The other possibility is that I do NOT know this person, which would further break the possibilities down into: I managed to offend her (perhaps my quote was overly long?), emily enjoys taking others down a notch so that she might feel better about herself (Also known as the Seesaw syndrome), and “other”, where “other” might include “it’s a code informing me that the stock market is going to crash in exactly 37 days”, “I don’t particularly like hot sauces”, “I am fat and sassy”, etc…
Or perhaps I’m just a dick.
Anon: it looks fun
Anon: but I’m surprised the universe didn’t explode from that much concentrated nerd
Me: It was quite concentrated
Me: we had victor calculate whether it would be enough nerd to cause the universe to implode before we held the event
Me: you know, for safety reasons
Anon: ha
Me: He figured out that actually calculating the amount of nerd would actually be nerdy enough in itself to decimate the universe, so he just guessed that we’d be cool.
I’ve never really thrown a party.
Not the paper hat and cake type, but more the beer and conversation oriented type of party. Don’t get me wrong, when I was in LA many a party was thrown in my apartment, but it was never my doing and people were always looking at me with a “who invited this schmuck” type of face. Hardly conducive to an evening of enjoyment and relaxation.
So when we needed to plan a social event for the Linux User Group, I sent out an email that began as follows:
“We haven’t had a social meeting this month and there’s no better way to get engineers together than playing video games on the hot new console, which is why we’re having:
===Wii Doubles Tennis Tournament===
A series of 2 vs. 2 Wii Tennis matches which will determine the participants’ fortune in not just some silly game, but in LIFE ITSELF.”
We ended up with 9 two person teams and had to close down registration because, quite frankly, my apartment isn’t that big. Team T-Shirts were heavily encouraged and those teams that showed team spirit did significantly better than their counterparts, as can be seen from this photo just before the championship match between Team Bohemia and the Rockaholics:
In the end we had 25+ people all packed into my apartment, and it seems like everyone had a really good time, despite the close quarters. I’m looking forward to planning similar events in the (distant) future.
The number one way to get me interested in something is to describe, in heart-stoppingly dense detail how the technology around it works. I had already been planning on watching the Super Bowl, of course, but this article is the first thing to get me excited about it.
The article details the workings of the yellow first down line, the new super slow motion cameras, the Cablecam, and even the production trucks that will be present at the big game. It’s a downright fascinating read.
The part that surprised me the most, however, is that “NFL Films shoots, as its name suggests, on film. They value the look of 16mm film and shoot more than 25,000 ft of it, making them Kodak’s number one 16mm film stock customer.”
The volume doesn’t surprise me, but I’m as shocked that Kodak still makes film as I am that NFL films buys it. The next thing you know they’re going to be transporting players to the game in covered wagons.
A California State legislator wants to outlaw incandescent light bulbs in favor of more energy efficient counterparts.
The actual name chosen for this proposed law is ” The How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act”.
The most surprising point is that the answer to this law’s title would actually be “one”.
More information here.
“User generated content” is the phrase surrounding “web 2.0″ companies, which means create a community and have them do all the work to make you rich, while giving them no money and a false sense of empowerment.
digg is the poster-child for this new business model. It’s essentially a news site, where ordinary citizens like you and me choose which stories get to the main page. It’s interesting to see what’s valued in a complete democracy that doesn’t discriminate based on age; so far CAPS and exclamation points!?!?!?!!!! seem very important, while spelling and accuracy are seen as the excrement a bygone generation. I submit to you, from this article:
“Jeremy Schoemaker, a Technorati top 100 blogger, has been subpoenaed to testify about comments made on his blog. This will be a case to follow and could set a president for who is liable for what in comments of websites.”
Apparently this Schoemaker case will re-define how we choose our country’s leader.
On google news, if you’re logged into your gmail account, it keeps track of what links you click on so that it can recommend “personalized” stories that google thinks you’d like to read.
Trust me when I say you do not want to know what google thinks of you. About 20% of the articles are politically related which I’m not ashamed of, I’m proud to say I maintain an interest in world politics.
But about 50% of my “personalized” feed is… not what I’d like to think or admit I care about. Currently here’s a story about Jennifer Garner’s fiance, another about David Beckham starring in a new Disney movie, and a third about… *sigh* …Kevin Federline. I want to blame google, admonish it for giving me bad picks, but the truth is, when I’m bored, I click on this celebrity gossip, though I normally don’t make it most of the way through the article.
I’ve decided to take this in a positive light: Google has made me realize I have a problem, which is the first step towards healing. I now catch myself when I start moving my mouse towards the latest Paris Hilton/Brittany Spears story and look forward to the day when the space once filled by this trash is occupied by tech writers righteously masturbating to whatever the new Apple rumor is. Because that’s the kind of article I’m proud to be associated with.
I’m going to print up cards with this conversation and hand it out whenever I hear it starting up. It should save a lot of people a lot of time.
Atheist: ?Religion is irrational.?
Believer: ?Oh yeah? Atheism is a religion too, because it?s a cause that?s believed on faith! See Merriam-Webster?s 4th definition of religion.?
Atheist: ?Atheism is religion the same way that NOT collecting stamps is a hobby.?
Believer: ?You can?t prove the non-existence of God. And belief without proof is faith. Check Merriam-Webster?s second definition of faith. Therefore, atheists are irrational by definition.?
Atheist: ?You can NEVER (or almost never) prove a negative. Besides, some things are so obvious that proof is unnecessary. Do you believe there?s a monster under your bed? You have no proof that it doesn?t exist. Therefore, by your reasoning, it?s only reasonable to believe there MIGHT be a monster under your bed.?
Believer: “Hey, you never know.”
From here
“Getting A Self-Charging Smoke Alarm Is Better Than Dying In A Fire”
From here.
Jane: iPods don’t weigh 3 pounds, do they?
Anon: Depends on how many songs you have on it.
In my psychology class, the teacher will often assign fluff questions as homework, usually just to start a discussion or illustrate a point. The teacher will then anonymously read some of the responses to the class. They’re silly things like, “If I could ask an omniscient being one thing, it would be…”, or “If I could take one famous sea mammal to a baseball game, who would it be?” But as they’re anonymous, once in a while someone comes up with a good one. Today, my favorites were:
Prompt: I know my life would be better if I just…
Response: abondoned my morals.
Prompt: If I couldn’t fail, I would…
Response: Gamble.
When looking through craigslist at rental properties, I often read mistakenly read “NO POETS” instead of “NO PETS”. Oddly, in the instant before my brain recognizes its mistake, I accept this prejudice as completely reasonable. It’d probably make sense to outlaw writers in general, as well as those working for web 2.0 startups.
I mean, lets be real, I have a television to feed.
As cereals go,
It may be delicious
It may be nutritious
But buying “Organic High Fiber Os”
Will make me feel old.
Last night Lauren and I went to her Beginning of the year company party. The picture below represents one of the better pictures of the evening (which should tell you something about how the night went….), after sending it through an image editor.
I know this feeling quite well:
“Few things make me feel less manly than getting my car serviced. On some level, I feel I should be doing that stuff myself, even though I know the engine was designed on Krypton and forged in the fires of Mordor. Still, I feel uneasy that I can’t fix it with a rock and a house key.”
About a third of the way through this video, Stephen Colbert makes the geekiest reference I have ever heard on mainstream television. I was several years into my CS degree before I understood all the concepts in this rant:
“Computers aren’t supposed to be easy or cute, they’re supposed to be intimidating, punch-card reading, hulks of metal that take up an entire refrigerated room and force you to manually implement recursive procedures and abstract data types in Fortran 77.
I’ve been there, deep in this shit, and it is no picnic.”
- Steven Colbert
The best part is that I’m actually reading an academic paper on implementing recursive procedures, though fortran isn’t mentioned and the room I’m working in is heated as opposed to refrigerated.
For those who got their hands on a Nintendo Wii, it looks like the Godfather might be an interesting title on this platform. From this interview:
“You’ll be able to throw left and right hand jabs, hooks, and uppercuts; grab enemies and throw them around with both hands; perform head-butts and neck-snaps… We had so much fun with the controller possibilities that we mo-capped a bunch of exclusive moves to fit some of the gestures we’d developed, like the open-handed smack and pistol whip.“
But is there a motion available to perform the “Kiss of Death”?
Apparently there is a competition to find the most ridiculous warning labels. While this year’s winner warned us “DO NOT put any person in this washer”, by far my favorite was the second place entry:
To see all of this year’s “winners”, you should probably try this link.
Paul Erdös was one of the most prolific mathematicians in History, writing approximately 1,500 mathematical articles before his death in 1996. He was so prolific, in fact, that the six degrees of separation in the math world is called the Erdös number, which describes the collaborative distance between an author and Erdös.
One of my professors related that he once had the chance to speak to Erdös and had asked what the secret was to his astounding output. His response, as related by my professor, was “Speed-up drugs.”
Several friends of mine are planning on going into research and found this anecdote quite depressing and chose to interpret this as a joke. However, scanning wikipedia today I discovered Erdös proclivity for “speed-up drugs” is less than a secret:
“After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month. Erd?s won the bet, but complained that mathematics had been set back by a month: ‘Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper.’ The bet won, he promptly resumed his amphetamine habit.”
So remember kids, if you’re not doing speed, you’re not living up to your potential.
My senior year of high school my government teacher had us create a budget for how much it would cost to live on our own, we even had to go find an apartment and include rental costs. Looking back I will admit it was a valid and noble exercise, encouraging youth to open their eyes to the harsh financial situation that is the “real” world.
But the teacher was a dick and I planned on doing the minimum to get a decent grade.
The most annoying exercise was planning a food budget, mostly because you had to provide actual highlighted receipts, which were presumably taken from your parents. I managed to come up with a food budget that I didn’t have any problems living on, which consisted of 3 meals a day made entirely out of Frosted Shredded Wheat, quesadillas, frozen waffles, and soda; it came up to almost exactly $12/week. I was not stupid enough to actually follow this budget.
However, this guy was. In fact he’s stupider than me, as he went the entire month of November spending $30 dollars on food and writing about it each day. I really enjoy this entry
“I think my body finally caught onto my plans for the month; and it?s not pleased. I fealt like I had weights tied around my ankles and did a lot of staring blankly at my desk today. I think my body is just revolting against the drastic drop in calories. Everything I?ve read says it should ajust in a few more days. I didn?t really read a lot of things though.”
If you’re interested, start here, and scroll down to the bottom to start at day one.
A friend recently claimed that his birthday, Oct. 5th, is the most common birthday in the US. While I initially didn’t believe his claim, I found an article which agrees with him:
“The average pregnancy lasts 274 days. Oct. 5, he wrote in an e-mail, is about 274 days from New Year’s Eve, the day millions of Americans are celebrating with alcohol.”
The next time I hear someone mention that their birthday is in early October, I plan to snicker knowingly.
Whatever was originally envisioned when post it notes were created, I imagine it wasn’t as a protective armor for “Walt’s” unsuspecting Jaguar:
You can see the construction of this prank here.
What Ryan describes as “a wonderfully fun trip” seems a lot more like an episode of the discovery channel’s I shouldn’t be alive:
“10AM: Water is still warm, but not boiling. Bryan and I are post-holing around in the heavy snow trying to stay warm - neither of us can feel our toes. The stove flame is starting to flicker out. I crank the fuel up, only to realize it is already on full blast.. I turn off the stove and shake the fuel canister?. yup - frozen. My 4 season mix of propane, isobutane, and butane has become slush. Bryan?s 3 season mix is frozen solid.”
I often have similar experiences at movie theatres, that air conditioning can get chilly.
While we do have parents, my sister and I aren’t exactly what one would call “children” at this point, so I wasn’t terribly surprised when our busier-than-usual parents decided to the forgo hunting down and decorating of an evergreen coniferous tree.
Refusing to let the tradition die, we decided to construct our own tree out of the only thing available to us. The following is the building of our tree in a fast-motion video:
“I’m the weirdo who wants to pay directly for the shows I watch, and what the networks are telling me (via their pricing) is that they will charge me more for profoundly restricted versions of the same content if they believe they can get away with it. No. No, in every language. I’m not a psychotic demagogue when it comes to DRM, I’m willing to tolerate it when I get what I want out of the bargain. That’s not happening here. These are versions of shows for more money with less features and zero portability.
I don’t want to be so strident. At first, I thought that content holders weren’t taking the tectonic potential of these services seriously. I now believe it’s just the opposite. Looking at their model, it’s almost engineered to make digital delivery the least appealing option.”
-Jerry Holkins, from here.
As someone who is outraged at the poor service and embarrassing quality present with my only current option for television, I would love to be able to pay to download high definition content and get rid of cable all together. I would in fact cherish it and declare the day on which it ocurred to be a high holy day in whatever religion I found to be most amicable to the idea. But by making the prices as ridiculous as they have at $5-$6 per one hour show, they’ve completetely excluded a vast majority of those interested. Watching two programs a week would already cost you more than the hundreds of channels of 24 hour programming available through the competition.
Google’s new patent search is the most fun I’ve had on the internet since napster closed down. Checkout a technical description of a Ouija board, pocket protector, or electric guitar.
But if you really want your mind blown, check out this patent.
“Manufacturers are getting better at building cars that are fast and good- looking, not some tree-hugging penalty box,” says Angus MacKenzie, editor in chief of Motor Trend Magazine.
-From the Christian Science Monitor
Is it too late to ask for a Tesla Roadster for Xmas? An all electric sports car with a 4 second 0-60 time , 300 mile range, and style-by-Lotus good looks sounds like a great gift for that aspiring file-system hacker in your family.
Science News Online reports:
“People with generally positive outlooks show greater resistance to developing colds than do individuals who rarely revel in upbeat feelings, a new investigation finds.”
In unrelated news, it was recently discovered that being sick all the time “sucks”, and that 80% of chronically sick people were found to be “generally pessimistic”.
With finals complete, Derek felt an insatiable need to play Guitar Hero, so we called up Seth, got some controllers together and prepared to rock. The following is the two of us playing “John The Fisherman” by Primus. I’m on bass, which proved arduous. The retarded look on my face indicates I am having fun. You’re gonna have to trust me on this one.
UPDATE: I do realize it’s not exactly titillating to watch people play guitar hero and that except for about 30 seconds before the end where I bring our game crashing down it’s probably not even worth pressing play. The reasons I put it up relate much more to the technology I used to bring it to you, the reader. First I recorded the video with my new digital camera, then I edited the video down with Kino on linux, and finally I figured out how to get videos onto google video and embed them into this webpage.
It’s not so much the content of the video that’s exciting so much as the fact that it’s there.
While reading up on the federal tax income tax code over at irs.gov I found sources of income the average American might not remember to report. And remember, if you lie on your federal taxes, you go to jail:
Illegal Income, kickbacks, and bribes are one thing, but would the IRS really nail a guy for not paying taxes on his Nobel Peace Prize?
I was relaxing after finals reading about the 10 most dangerous play things of all time, cruising past the lawn darts and the Atomic Engergy Lab, when I discovered something interesting:
Sky Dancers, quite possibly one of the sweetest toys my sister ever received, was added to the list because “over 150 children fell prey to Sky Dancer’s helicopter-blade arms and erratic ‘Oh-Jesus-it’s-chasing-me!’ flying patterns. Injuries included scratched corneas and temporary blindness, mild concussions, broken ribs and teeth, and facial lacerations that required stitches.”
I remember my sister and I playing with this toy all the time and being especially careless. I’m lucky I wasn’t disemboweled.
In reading a 25 page excerpt from a Benjamin Barber book, I have again been confronted with the untethered skill with which this man owns the dictionary. His vocabulary is ridiculous, so much so that I decided to write down every word I had to look up in an effort to document this savage display of lexophilia. Now, I’ll be the first to admit I probably should have known a few of these, but after stumbling upon “panglossian” I was disoriented to the point where I would have been lucky to recognize my own name.
Ze words:
inimical
panglossian
parochialism
demagoguery
riven
ironist
nexus
examplar
sobriquet
abjures
weal
panacea
It’s worth noting that the spell checker I am using doesn’t recognize three of these words; I’ll leave it to the reader as an exercise to determine which three.
Before I met Ben, I hadn’t considered there might exist a group of individuals who hold the stern belief that it is both right and good to judge a book by it’s cover. These cold-hearted bastards use the title “Graphic Designer” and when I offhandedly suggested they look a little deeper and evaluate the actual text in a given work they suggested that I take a long read on some well traveled rail tracks.
Given this, it shouldn’t be too surprising to find that someone would have a best o’ 2006 list for book covers. Though I don’t have the asthetic sense to second guess any choices made with regards to art, in the category of best title I’m casting my vote for “Abandon the Old in Tokyo.”
“There are not many operating systems that anyone has ever described as ?fun?. Indeed, the friction and labor of development under most other environments has been aptly compared to kicking a dead whale down the beach.”
- Eric S. Raymond, from The Art of UNIX Programming
Me: I tried to draw once, but a tsunami killed a couple hundred thousand people the next day so I decided I had better stop.
ug: holy shit, that was you?!
This photographer for this WW2 poster must have hated the dutch:
This summer I bought a motorcycle from my Uncle B, a 1972 Honda CB350 Twin, which looks exactly like this. This bike had essentially been baking in a garage for the past 7 years, but was otherwise pristine and has only ~6k miles on it.
I took it to a local shop with the purpose of bringing my bike into the new millennium, and finally got it back1 today. As I didn’t have a truck to tow it with, I had to drive it back to my apartment. I do have my motorcycle license, but it had been quite a number of months since I had actually ridden a motorcycle, so some of the minor points were a bit fuzzy, like which direction on the left foot pedal was an up-shift and which direction was a down-shift. As it turns out, pushing down is a down-shift and lifting the peg upwards with your toe is an up-shift; you can see how this could be a source of confusion. This led to me stalling on Marsh St. right in front of Fosters Freeze. This particular location wouldn’t have been especially troublesome if it hadn’t been the first Saturday of the month between the hours of noon and one.
As it happens, between the hours of noon and one on the first Saturday of the month, the San Luis Obispo scooter club meets. Let me emphasize that there are exactly twelve hours in the year that these people meet in this precise location. This meant that a group of people who I (used to) hang out with were watching me as I rode up, first in recognition and envy of my sweet new ride, and secondly, to whistle and yell derisively at my apparent inability to manage a simple stoplight.
1. If anyone wants the name of a motorcycle shop to NOT go to, I’d be happy to oblige.
“I don’t want to brag, but the bandwidth at the office is sufficient to download our lord and savior Jesus Christ.”
-Jerry Holkins, from here.
During my last week at home this summer, my dad and I built a coffee table from plans in one of the woodworking books he had lying on the coffee table (eerie). Though it took much longer than I expected, I am more than pleased with the results.
The legs and sides are made from birch, the top is tile on top of 3/4″ MDF. The end result is a sturdy piece of furniture which handily keeps refreshments and remotes several feet off the floor while weighing only slightly more than a Yugo.
Note to self: In a Socratic discussion, if at any point you utter the phrase “Are you high, or just plain retarded?”, you’ve lost.
“I have previously told the story of a respected elder statesman of the Zoology Department at Oxford when I was an undergraduate. For years he had passionately believed, and taught, that the Golgi Apparatus (a microscopic feature of the interior of cells) was not real: an artifact, an illusion. Every Monday afternoon it was the custom for the whole department to listen to a research talk by a visiting lecturer. One Monday, the visitor was an American cell biologist who presented completely convincing evidence that the Golgi Apparatus was real. At the end of the lecture, the old man strode to the front of the hall, shook the American by the hand and said–with passion–”My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years.” We clapped our hands red. No fundamentalist would ever say that. In practice, not all scientists would. But all scientists pay lip service to it as an ideal–unlike, say, politicians who would probably condemn it as flip-flopping.”
Richard Dawkins explains the difference between science and fundamentalism.
“Every 5 minutes you spend writing code in a new language is more useful than 5 hours reading blog posts about how great the language is.”
- From here.
I entered a programming competition teamed with uber-coder Thomas Norrie and robot/computer science powerhouse Shawn Tice. Having secured excellent teammates with with to hitch my metaphorical wagon, I felt that victory was imminent.
Until Sandbagging McSanderson Brian Muramatsu showed up.
Despite saying that he and his single teammate were “just there for fun”, “would probably leave after getting their first problem”, and “would most likely just play solitaire the entire time”, 4/5 of the way through the contest we found that they not only hadn’t left after completing their first problem, but they were our only competition, both of us having three problems complete and hurriedly working on a fourth.
Through creative placement of a laxative in Muramatsu’s coke and staying the hell out of Thomas and Shawn’s way, we were able to get our 4th and winning problem completed with only 3 minutes left in the competition.
With the $250 prize winnings it seems Christmas has come early.
“The Bible’s like the constitution, you can find whatever you want in there.”
- Dr. Evans, professor of Footinmouthology
In an article about the use of fear in political campaigns, CSM’s Jeffrey Shaffer gave this out-of-left-field example:
“A memorable example occurs in the 1951 science- fiction classic “The Day The Earth Stood Still.” Halfway through the movie, the alien Klaatu (Michael Rennie) escapes from government custody, begins mingling among the local population, and is alarmed by the growing climate of antialien hysteria.
Soon he joins a crowd gathered around his flying saucer. A reporter, eagerly so- liciting worried comments from the onlookers, extends a microphone toward Klaatu and says, “I suppose you’re just as scared as the rest of us.” Trying to change the mood, Klaatu replies, “I am fearful, when I see people substituting fear for reason….” The newsman, dismayed that Klaatu is digressing into a boring monologue, cuts him off with a quick “Thank you!” and moves on to someone else.”
TextMate is quite the hot text editor. The most interesting feature is the ability to define macros with placeholders which can be tabbed between, a good (but long) demo of TextMate’s features can be seen here. My justification for resisting TextMate’s wily ways is four-fold:
I was excited to discover a text editor with similar functionality for Linux called Scribes, which is open source and free of cost. It too has a good (and much shorter) demo. My only remaining complaint is that it doesn’t have a command line version, which I might be able to forgive in return for intense macro goodness.
Now what would really be nice is if my current text editor of choice already had this functionality and I am simply unaware of it.
Judging by this, the creator of xkcd and I have similar views concerning myspace.
Do go into computer science if:
- you love math (I don’t mean you did well at it in HS, I mean you enjoyed it and would learn more on your own)
- you have programmed and found it fun and interesting (not you tried it and thought it was easy, or did pretty good in some course)
- you are a strong problem solver
The above slashdot comment got me thinking. I don’t know about you, but when I graduated from high school, my interests were:
And quite honestly I wasn’t that into sports at the time. Unless a high paying career in the breast inspection field opened up, limiting my prospects to my interests would have rendered me useless to society and foreshadowed a bleak financial future. And trust me, the breast inspection field has some of the lowest turnover of any industry.
By exposing myself to CS I came to enjoy math, discovered that programming can be satisfying, and have improved my problem solving skills measurably. Even among those who came into a Computer Science program with the prerequisites suggested above, few understand what completing a CS degree entails. It’s common for students to become disenchanted with a Computer Science when they realize we don’t create 3D first person shooters as part of the standard CS curriculum.
As CPLUG pres. and a 100th year senior in CS, I find myself talking to freshman who have no idea what’s going to happen to them over the next 5 years they’re in school, and who will most likely become distraught when they find out. They probably still think they’re going to graduate in 4 years, silly bastards.
Shawnymous: Why are you up so late?
Shawnymous: Do you have a project due?
Shawnymous: Are you learning more emacs legerdemain?
Shawnymous: By the way, I’m trademarking that last bit: “emacs legerdemain.”
Shawnymous: I’m *almost* inspired to write a book.
Shawnymous: I just have to learn emacs and find the time to write a book.
Shawnymous: But god dammit if that title wouldn’t sell.
Shawnymous: You’re either immobilized with laughter or not there.
Shawnymous: Probably the former.
Shawnymous: Take your time. Drink some water. Keep Hydrated.
Since I began working at Apple, I’m often called upon to support newly converted Mac OS X users, especially those coming from the Linux side. The following is a discussion I had with one of my professors about the entirely excellent Adium instant messaging client:
DrAnon: On another note, how does one tell Adium to send on something other than Enter or Return? Is it possible?
Me: go Adium->Preferences->General
Me: then uncheck Send on Enter and Send on Return
Me: then Apple+Enter will send
DrAnon: Cute.
DrAnon: Where does it say anything about Apple+Enter?
Me: I believe this requires mind reading
DrAnon: And what’s wrong with control?
DrAnon: My thumb is not used to so much work.
Me: Control called Steve Jobs’ mother a whore in ‘81
DrAnon: Control’s temper strikes again.
Scott Adams’ blog is amazing, much more so than his comic would lead you to believe. It’s witty enough that I could probably post a quote from it every day and never have it get old, which would make providing content for this blog extraordinarily easy, but would put me in a bit of a rut. So I’ve decided to leave you with one last quote from Scott Adams about his annual poll on our Weaseliest Cultural figures, then he shall never be heard from again:
“The funniest part of this poll every year is not who wins, but who doesn?t. For example, it?s no big surprise that President Bush took top honors for Weaseliest Politician, given his name recognition and the unpopular war in Iraq. The funny part is that Kim Jong-il only placed sixth. “
“I worry that all of my wisdom is derived from bad analogies.”
- Quoth Ratbert
When security deity Bruce Schneier links to an article detailing how to steal an election by hacking the vote titled “How to steal an election by hacking the vote”, I began to worry that criminals aren’t even being subtle anymore.
Also, Democracy as an institution appeared to be doomed.
Fortunately, Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert, was there to calm my jangled nerves:
“I think about the history of ATMs when I hear all the nervous Nellies wetting their pants over electronic voting machines. I believe those worries are totally misplaced. Now don?t get me wrong ? there?s a 100% chance that the voting machines will get hacked and all future elections will be rigged. But that doesn?t mean we?ll get a worse government. It probably means that the choice of the next American president will be taken out of the hands of deep-pocket, autofellating, corporate shitbags and put it into the hands of some teenager in Finland. How is that not an improvement?”
Looking for news to discuss, I found myself at Tech website Gizmodo viewing this post of a cuddly bionic turtle.
Now, when you repost something from another website, it is normal to provide a link to the original source. It surprised me quite a bit to notice that Gizmodo attributed the tortoise to boingboing, who attributed it to The Daily Weird, who attributed it to METRO.co.uk, who is presumably the original source as they attribute the story to nobody.
Either the Internet at large is too lazy to find an original source, or world’s greatest blonde joke is back in action.
UG: I’m something like 2 books behind in my english class
UG: during discussion, i just nod my head
Me: who needs english to get by
Me: During neither of my internships was I required to write an analytic essay about Faust
UG: egzackly
Me: I was understandably pissed
We got our tests back in Theory of Computing today, and one student disagreed with how a problem had been graded:
Student: You took off 10 points on this problem…
Professor : (annoyed) Your answer is completely wrong, I can’t even read what you wrote.
Student: The problem is only worth 5 points.
New rule: If you’re defining a word, none of the words in the definition get to exceed two syllables, or you get shignucked. In case you’re wondering:
Lauren enjoys science fiction, all kinds of science fiction. The one exception is the kind that I like, which is good science fiction. Firefly is perhaps the one series which we both appreciated equally, it still had it’s cheesy sci-fi moments, but for the most part it stayed away from aliens farting amusing gases, time travel, worm holes, dopplegangers and the like; All of which I have seen in the past two episodes of Farscape i have been forced to watch.
Ben came over this evening, thinking he would weaken me with these images of horrible alien makeup (High-Def is no good for suspending disbelief), props stolen from the neighboring set of Barney & Friends, make me forget that I had yet another blog entry to write and earn him self a free meal. Well if he’s going to make me forget, he needs to bring way more alcohol.
I’ve been reading Dr. Sipser’s “Introduction to the Theory of Computation” and it’s blowing my mind. Unassuming at approximately 400 pages, this book doesn’t screw around. On page 81, in the middle of a proof, it mentioned the following, “the class of regular languages is closed under intersection, which we proved in footnote 3.”
Proved in footnote 3. If you’re reading a book of proofs and even the footnotes have proofs, you’re in for some serious shit. It was at this point that I noticed that both the front and back cover are adorned with proofs, and even the dedication page establishes universal truths. The next 100 pages I would come to know as the most amazing of any textbook ever to escape from any publisher’s ravaged womb of a printing press; God’s existence was proved twice1, disproved three times2, and ultimately shown that in the 3rd dimension3, he could neither be proved nor disproved, though Sipser has shown that what he can’t prove doesn’t matter.
[1] In the 2nd4 and 5th dimensions, respectively.
[2] In the 1st and 4th dimensions, as well as cross-dimensionally on Sundays (”Sunday” doesn’t exist in the 2nd and 5th dimensions, as shown in footnote 68 of Sipser).
[3] See: Our dimension.
[4] See: The Bible.
“Over and over again lately you have tensions in some town, then Belov shows up and tells people they’re being terrorized by Caucasians, and the violence begins.”
- Fred Weir, from here.
Apparently the “Caucasians” they speak of are a dark-skinned people from the former Soviet Caucasus region. Every frakin’ day I learn something new.
I haven’t been updating watchred as often as I’d like, but it’s time to start. Ben and I have entered into a challenge where we must update our respective Internet-holes four times by the Saturday of each week. We forgot to name a price for failure, but I’m certain it will be severe and involve watching the Star Trek animated series and at least one of the biblical plagues (I’m hoping for locusts as boils would interfere with my “social agenda.“)
Now I have a midterm tomorrow that I’ve only begun to study for and I have to admit that I’m cheating a little bit with this entry, but so be it.
Cal Poly’s career center has a copy of my resume. They’re nice enough that when they see a job that is perfectly matched to my aspirations and skill-set, they let me know about interview possibilities.
Today they contacted me about such an opportunity:
“Brian,
Based on the information you entered in your Mustang Jobs profile, you are eligible to submit your resume for an interview with ABERCROMBIE & FITCH for the Manager In Training position.”
They know my innermost hopes and dreams….
I called an 800 number this morning, and the line was busy, as could be expected. Fortunately, I was prepared, and this particular phone was equipped with redial. I called again, still busy. The last time I’d been in this situation I was probably 13 years old, calling KOME to guess the top five at nine and win tickets to the No Doubt concert.
The difference being, this time I did get through, and this time I am going to go on a trip that is sure to blow my unprepared psyche. But this call wasn’t about concert tickets; no, no, no. This call was about something much greater….
This call was about a tour of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.
“Most engineers are not early risers. I know a team that has to come in for an 8:00am meeting at least once (maybe several times) a week. Then they sit like zombies in front of their email until lunch. Then they go home and take a nap. Then they come in at night and work, but they’re bleary-eyed and look perpetually exhausted. When I talk to them, they’re usually cheery enough, but they usually don’t finish their sentences.”
- Google employee Steve Yegge, from here.
You know those scams where you fill out credit card offers and give someone your kidney and they give a trip to Hawaii? Lauren and I signed up for one. It took us several months and about $150, but we were finally set to receive our forty inch plasma TV we were promised.
Except…
We got a letter stating that the TVs were discontinued, and that they would be sending us cash instead. After quite a bit of research, we decided that the original TV did not fit our needs anyway, and instead bought this 62″ Toshiba:
Total out of pocket cost including all the offers and getting the TV to our house ended up being just over $200.
No, you cannot move in with us ;- ).
“That doesn’t change the fact that he’s written some of the ugliest code since the Enigma machine.”
-Capt. Anon
In reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, I ran into what may be the greatest paragraph in all of the English language. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that all of human existence has been leading up to paragraph five, page 271 of this novel. It’s all downhill from here.
“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”
Ryan has been posting a ton of pictures lately, so I figured I’d post one of my own.
After seeing the classic 1934 film The Thin Man, I’ve realized what I want to do with my life. Screw computer science, I want to be a retired alcoholic detective who’s fallen into money. I’ll solve crimes between lavish parties and come up with witty jokes about my drinking, such as:
Reporter: Say listen, is he working on a case?
Nora Charles: Yes, he is.
Reporter: What case?
Nora Charles: A case of scotch. Pitch in and help him.or
Reporter: Well, can’t you tell us anything about the case?
Nick Charles: Yes, it’s putting me way behind in my drinking.
It’s a hard life but somebody has to live it. It might as well be me.
From a wiki article on Zeroconf.
There are two very similar ways of figuring out which networked item has a certain name. Apple Computer’s Multicast DNS (mDNS) is in use, and is published freely, though not by a standardization body. Microsoft’s Link-local Multicast Name Resolution (LLMNR) is little used, but is in the process of standardization by the IETF.
To paraphrase: There is a freely published NON-standard way to do something which is actually being used; there’s also a standard way of doing something, which nobody uses.
I propose that ANSI standardizes the word “standard,” many implementations of the word seem to be incompatible.
I watched the Italy vs. France World Cup final earlier today as Italy won after double overtime with penalty kicks.
I’m not sure how I feel about the penalty kick system; penalty kicks do not tell me which team is better at “soccer,” they tell me which team is better at the entirely different mini-game known as penalty kicks.
Imagine if a football game ending in a tie meant the kicker who scored the best out of 5 field goals from the forty yard line would be declared the winner. The teams have shown they are essentially equal, and we just need to declare a winner for posterity’s sake. I’ve discovered an equally fair way to decide the winner of any given sporting event, I call it the “coin toss.”
“The extremists rule this country because moderates have shit to do.”
-Jon Stewart
Me: *driving in the car* wait, you don’t know where we’re going? You suggested Taguri’s…
CptAnon: It’s not that I don’t know per se, it’s just that the location of this particular restaurant is not a subset of my knowledge at the current time.
Me: Did you think that as we got closer, it would rise in front of us, like some sort of tangible mirage?
CaptAnon: It’s not entirely unheard of….
Me: …in the bible. Do you normally rely on divine intervention when choosing an eatery?
So how did my first week go? I just got back from my first employer sponsored beer bash so I’m in good condition to tell you about it.
Well.
It *went* well.
In case you didn’t catch it the first time: today, my employer sponsored an event where I showed up, talked to cool people, and drank beer. On the clock.
I might go so far as to say it went quite well.
I’ve never owned a video game console. It didn’t stop me from playing console games, it just reduced the frequency. I could only play Mario Bros. while I was not at home, due to the fact that my family was the only one who didn’t own a Nintendo. Lauren has never owned a video game console either.
So it’s a bit exciting that everyone in Lauren’s department at work got a free Xbox 360. The first and only thing I’ve done on this machine was play an amped up version of the arcade classic Asteroids, and I can say without so much as a waft of sarcasm that it rocked. That was four hundred dollars well spent.
“Just to let you know, at least one of the projects you’ll be working on should make it into the next release of Mac OS X– it’s not just busy work.”
-BossMan
Normally in an internship they give you busywork, and the youngling’s time at that company is essentially a three month long job interview. They may give you something worthwhile, they may not; it’s not why you’re there. But to actually be relied on to produce something of importance is an entirely different ballgame. It has its own sets of advantages and drawbacks; pressure being one of the more significant drawbacks, the product of your work being appreciated by hundreds of thousands of people being a notable advantage.
There’s always the possibility I’m missing something….
Me: *eagerly* All right, I’m ready to contribute to the next OSX release! What are we doing? Adding Mind-Controlled input devices? Quint-Core 1337 bit processing support? iOrgy?
iBoss: Do *you* remember…. the iPod sock?
Me: the $30 remains of a child’s scarf we’ve been passing off as a viable protection for a device which costs $400?
iBoss: …Also known as “the most profitable product in Apple’s arsenal”. We want you to work on an innovative evolution of this product which people actually wear on their feet.
Me: you want me to design a sock…
iBoss: I want you to *knit* several socks. Design has already been covered.
They call it a battle of the bands, but were are the Lieutenants rockin’ the mic? Where are the trenches filled with roadies? Whatever happened to matching olive green outfits?
At least they still have booze…
I’m interviewing to be a College of Engineering Ambassador in order for a shot at a sweet polo, and was informed by one Ms. Elise that the attire would be “business casual.”
Now, there is a major disconnect between between CSC and the rest of the college of engineering with regard to the definition of business casual. Beards and ponytails are not uncommon, ties are sacrilege, and a work dress code that denies shorts is reason enough to work elsewhere in many elite circles (note: I don’t wear shorts. But I am considered “weird”).
In that context it’s not so strange that when I was told that I needed to wear business casual, I immediately panicked. “Shit,” I swore to myself, “I don’t own any Birkenstocks.”
I don’t like bumper stickers, but I don’t know how to convey this information in a contextually appropriate manner.
The Da Vinci code has been panned by both critics and friends, though I think many of them are hopping on the “Dan Brown’s Overrated” train. I argue that the train itself is overrated.
Now, I’m not saying the movie is in my personal top 10, it isn’t. But it is being grouped in with other films, such as National Treasure, which are in the same category of “bad conspiracy theory”. However, I find it hard to believe that either The Da Vinci Code or National Treasure are as bad as everyone makes them out to be. They’re empirically superior to those comic book movies everyone seems to love. Call me straight, but I just don’t find movies with full grown men hopping around in spandex all that enticing.
Except for the new Superman movie. Kevin Spacey as Lex Luther?
best… casting… ever…
Me: Does java RMI not give you “pass by reference” semantics for arrays?
Dr. Keen: It does not.
Dr. Keen: You have dispelled the wizard’s illusion. Please leave Oz at once.
On occasion I come across something which causes me to laugh hysterically and uncontrollably, though it occurs to me that what I’m reading is in fact stupid. But then I wonder if I am completely alone in finding such a thing amusing:
“I did once write a column on a different subject, but my magazine never ran it. It was on ultrahot hot sauces. By this, I should say that I mean very spicy, and not boiling hot–an important distinction of the kind a professional food journalist sometimes has to make.
An example of an ultrahot sauce is “Dave’s Insanity Sauce,” which I ate on a little cracker once, and then my head hurt, and then I had to lie down. And then I was crying for a day or so.
Dave’s is actually on the milder end of the ultrahot hot sauce spectrum. There is an entire category of ultrahot hot sauces that promise death. Most of them are packaged in little coffins. Some go so far as to promise not only your death, but the obliteration of the earth. I am not a person who fears death. But I could not bring myself to endorse death by ultrahotness, which is perhaps why my magazine found my piece ‘overly gay.’”
-John Hodgman, The Areas of My Expertise
How ’bout it. Hot or Not?
Semantics | Sem*an”tics |
n. sing. or pl. Gr. shmantikos having meaning, from sh^ma a sign.1. the study of the meanings of words and of the sense development of words; — formerly called semasiology.
-PJC
The phrase “arguing semantics” is a new pet peeve of mine, as arguing semantics literally means “arguing meaning,” which is exactly what one should be arguing, as far as I can tell. Especially on topics such as abortion, where the semantics of “life” and “person” are the entire argument; in this case, if you’re arguing semantics, you’re just paying attention.
Most people seem to think that “arguing semantics” is some how analogous to being picky. Perhaps a better phrase is “arguing pedantics,” where to be pedantic is to be “overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning,” though common sense and my spell checker tell me you can’t just add an s to an adjective without serious repercussions.
In general I’m not a big fan of watching graphic deaths, seeing people in pain is not my idea of a good time out. Before anybody jumps on this bandwagon, I don’t object to violence in entertainment in general, for example I enjoyed Fight Club quite a bit, the humor resulted in an ultimately redeeming cinematic experience. However, movie producers of the world must realize that if a large enough percentage of the movie is graphically violent and in no way amusing, I’m probably not going to watch it. This could potentially cost the move industry tens of dollars in the next year alone.
Normally, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal to me, as I tend to avoid such movies, but it’s been a long term goal of mine to watch the top ten movies as listed on imdb.com, and quite a few of these movies are indeed graphic. I’ve seen eight eight of the top ten movies, and there is a definite tend towards graphic depictions of unsightly acts. In fact, I can confidently report that every one of these films displays one or more actions in the following four categories: Jew Killing, Mass Homicide, Anal Rape, Dismemberment. It’s a bit complicated keeping track of them all, so I’ve come up with a handy list for reference; I’ll probably print these on business-size cards for use at parties:
Everyone has something that helps them procrastinate. Some students watch a lot of TV, some students (and professors) play video games, some students learn a new programming language or construct too many “sweet proofs” when they should actually be studying.
The number one thing that cripples my productivity is chat programs. It has literally gotten to the point that when I’m not logged on, there’s a slight anxiety. “How will people reach me?”, “What if somebody puts up a particularly amusing away message, and I miss it?”
I have decided to give Internet chat the chop block for a week. No logging into any instant messenger network or Internet relay chat from today at 2:44pm until next Thursday at the same time. I imagine it will make me slightly more productive, but as is usually the case, I suspect another vice will creep in to take its place. Perhaps I’ll update this thing more often…
I’ve only got seven classes left until I graduate, which should make for a 16 unit quarter and a 12 unit quarter, resulting in a March 2007 graduation. That was the plan anyway; Two of the technical electives I’ve been planning on taking won’t be offered again until Spring of 2007 (read: after March), meaning I’d have to be around at least that long if I decide I absolutely have to take those classes.
There are several possibilities here:
Currently I’m leaning towards either 2 or 4. Job experience and money can always be justified as I make my self a more valuable graduate heading into the workforce and allow myself to go out for sushi more often. I’ve already interviewed at CustomFlix (recently bought by Amazon) for a position in the fall with positive results. This has the advantage of being here in San Luis Obispo (close to Lauren), as well as having Amazon/Apple/Lockheed on my resume.
On the other hand, I’ve never taken a class in Graphical User Interface programming or Databases, both of which I feel I should have some experience with before I graduate. Also with Derek and I rocking the CPLUG executive board, it looks to be a fun year.
This has been bothering me recently, but after typing it all out, none of the options look particularly bad. Next year should be a good year regardless.
Go me
We just rented Bubba Ho-tep, which is described on imdb as follows:
“Elvis and JFK, both alive and in nursing homes, fight for the souls of their fellow residents as they battle an ancient Egyptian Mummy.”
There is nothing about that sentence that isn’t awesome. If Elvis vs. Mummy doesn’t convince you, perhaps the fact it stars Bruce Cambell of the Evil Dead series will do it for you.
If Bruce Cambell doesn’t motivate you to watch a movie, you might as well be dead.
“See, that’s where you’re an idiot (I was going to just say wrong, but it doesn’t express how I feel very well).”
A recent article on slashdot discusses how the original THX sound that is played before a movie (bwuuuuuuuuuuwaaaanng) was created by Andy Moorer using 20,000 lines of C code. Many comments on the article argued that this explanation was improbable and one went so far as to offer an alternative solution:
George Lucas: How’d you make that sound Andy?
Andy Moorer: We electrocuted a sperm whale.
George Lucas: God damn that sounds great.
Andy Moorer: [Giggles] I *know*
George Lucas: Thing is… we need a story that’s not going to bring those Greenpeace punks down on top of us.
Andy Moorer: I coded the sound with 20,000 lines of C?
George Lucas: Nice. Let’s go with that.
“if other people’s code hasn’t driven you to drink, that only means you haven’t had to read enough of other peoples code.”
-Rob McCready
Last time Lauren and I had a Borg Sphere, we did two silly things:
This time around, we did things right.
“That’s it! Pack yer shit! We’re moving to Israel! Why? 4 words: Compulsory Universal Military Service. Hot Jewish girls who could kick your ass 6 days a week and twice on Sunday to make up for Saturday. Don’t believe me?”
-Preston Thomas
I really don’t know Preston Thomas, but I’m fairly familiar with Patrick, his twin brother. I’m not a fan of getting my ass kicked, especially by females, so this doesn’t appeal to me, but hey, to each their own.
Rachel: Why are you wearing a sweatshirt?
Me: Same reason you keep breathing. Homey don’t play Skin Cancer.
Me: They think Cal Poly students are retarded, but it’s PEOPLE who are
retarded. The fact that the people they come into contact with happen
to go Cal Poly is incidental.
Alex: yup, stupid people everywhere
Alex: I’ll vouch for that
My 7 year old cousin Bella had her first basketball game when I was up visiting in Sacramento. She and her younger brother Noah wanted to ride with me to the game, as their redheaded 20-something cousin is plainly cooler than their stodgy old 30-something parents. I humbly agreed.
On the way to the game I followed my Aunt Young as I had absolutely no idea where this basketball court was located. Of course, both of my younger cousins insisted that I try and beat her to the basketball court, at which point my sister asked them, “What face are you going to make when we beat Mom there?” Their response was instantaneous:
The youngest members of the Kiss army
It’s official, I’m working for a fruit company this summer.
Ryan: get this, we’re having a quake 2 game at lunch almost every other day
Ryan: quake 2
Ryan: at work
Ryan: on CompanyX’s LAN
Me: damn, I would do very poorly at that.
Me: maybe I should take an elective in pwning newbs.
Scene: Driving in a rental car in Sacramento. It’s dark and it’s raining.
I’m lost, of course. Fortunately, I had the foresight to print out directions before I got on the plane, but reading them would require more light than was available at the time. There was only one solution: The overhead light.
“Now what could go wrong with turning on the overhead light?”, you might ask. Normally, the answer is “very little”, the light bulb might be burnt out, but at least your situation would not be any worse than before. But as it turns out, the designer of the PT Cruiser felt it appropriate to place the moon-roof controls adjacent to the overhead light switch. So instead of being able to read my map, and getting where I need to go promptly, I’m now in the dark, wet, lost, and unsure whether the next button I press will activate light or an ejection seat.
The rest of the weekend went considerably better. Except for where my plane broke down and I had to get a rental car to drive back to San Luis. That part was bad too.
I’m taking a class called Philosophy of Politics, and we are reading a book called COMMUNISM, FASCISM, AND DEMOCRACY, a very brave subject for a man named Cohen.
The professor for this course is damn near insane (genius?), though he looks to be an excellent source of notable quotables. Really, all I hope to get out of this class is the ability to knowledgeably call someone a fascist. That’d be sweet.
Tuesday Morning
A friend from the scooter club called to say someone had seen a scooter similar to mine in Atascadero. I’ve gotten calls like this before, but it’s never panned out. As a precautionary measure, I send the Atascadero police department an email with a picture of my Vespa.
Wednesday Morning
Got a call from Officer Piapen in Atascadero. They found my freaking Vespa.
I am one happy camper. It’s in one piece and it runs. Whoever had it dropped it and took a drill to the ignition cylinder, but it’ll take about $60 to get it back where I had it.
Mad sweet. And I’m off to Vegas tomorrow. This could be the best spring break ever…
The long awaited sequel in my to VAIN has finally arrived. I’m really not sure who the target audience is, to get the whole thing you’d have to recognize the people in the picture, understand more than a bit about networking, and know what a wormhole is.
And even then, it’s not really that funny. Let’s just consider this a poorly thought out experiment and move on.
I just got done with my algorithms final a couple days ago, and though I believe that class to be one of the more important classes in my major, I hated the man who taught it. He was bitter and angry, and nothing brought out the worst in him like students, especially his students.
Given that, there’s no doubt the man was damn funny. He told my favorite story about a week before class ended, and I suspect it originated in deep space or left field. After crushing that barely detectable light we called hope in the previous midterm, it’s possible he felt it necessary to lighten the mood:
Prof: I lectured to an empty room once.
*awkward silence*
Prof: I was teaching a grad course and only five people were enrolled.
Prof: Some days only two or three people would show up.
Prof: One day, I walked into the room and nobody was there.
Prof: So I was pretty tee’d off, and I thought, “You know what, I’m gonna go ahead and lecture”
Prof: So I did.
Prof: I lectured.
Prof: I fielded questions.
Prof: I collected homework.
Prof: People walked past the room looking at me like I was insane.
Prof: Can anyone guess the punchline?
*awkward silence*Prof: I was in the wrong room.
“Religion isn’t the opiate of the masses anymore, Karl. IDEs are.“
“The whitespace thing is simply that Python uses indentation to determine block nesting. It forces you to indent everything a certain way, and they do this so that everyone’s code will look the same. A surprising number of programmers hate this, because it feels to them like their freedom is being taken away; it feels as if Python is trampling their constitutional right to use shotgun formatting and obfuscated one-liners.”
The thing is, the forced indenting is one of the reasons I wanted to learn Python. I don’t want work on code that was created by some crackhead programmer who thinks fitting his entire program into a single line will somehow reduce the number of bugs due to faulty statistical analysis. Either way, it’s an enjoyable rant on what programming languages one should learn, by Stevey, whoever that is.
It’s the kind of thing you hear in the news, but never really believe can happen in your own home, to those closest to you. Deep down I’m aware it’s happening in the shadier corners of the planet, but in the room right next to mine? I’ve heard again and again that all the other kids are doing it, but it won’t happen to my friends. My friends know better than that.
The topic was recently brought up in a conversation between Kris and I; he guiltily and in hushed tones confided that his own sister had asked her brother (her own related-by-blood brother for pete’s sake!) for his help with this task. Simultaneously horrified and embarrassed he claimed he was unaware of how to accomplish such a thing. To the best of my knowledge, they haven’t spoken since.
This morning…
*deep breath…*
This morning… Byron added a song to his myspace page. This song plays without asking for your permission.
Byron Clamor, you’re violating commandment number six, you’re killing the Internet. I know you explained that you “just caved in,” but if your so called friends jumped off the Brooklyn bridge, would you be walking on air with them, or would you try to grab their ankles to stop them from going over like a sane man? If you had implemented a piece of javascript that allowed stabbing in the face, I would be less repulsed as I recognize there is a time and a place for face stabbing over the Internet. This would would have a plethora of ethical uses for both digg and the World of Warcraft Forums. But forcing unsolicited songs from my speakers? Man… that’s just plain wrong.
If I had to pick a single word to describe the title of this entry, it would be ‘plagiarism’. If forced to choose a second word, it would most likely be ‘blatant’.
It’s been an arduous week, the kind that makes people say to themselves, “The ‘Real’ world has got to be better than this.” I’ve never fallen for this myth.
The thing is, at the base of it all, I’m a pessimist. I assume life is not going to get better. Working with this assumption, it follows that whatever you call the ‘Real’ world must be worse than school, as it appears later in the chronology of my life. Ya dig?
Just one more week ’till Vegas and spring break, at which point I hope to locate my lost shaker of salt….
“I have pi memorized out to 60 digits….
I hope that gets me laid.”
-whereami
Now that is totally sweet.
“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”
- Voltaire
Ryan: ahh.. beer
Ryan: the 6th wonder of the world
Me: 8th
Me: The 6th wonder of the world is the sphynx or something.
Ryan: fuck you
Ryan: it?s beer
Me: hahaha
Me: you?re right
Me: fuck the sphynx
Ryan: god damned half cat
This just in: There is a difference between a Bran muffin and a Raisin Bran muffin.
The difference is quite noticeable. It’s the raisins, some of the most disgusting little dried up fruit imaginable. All muffin-sellers please adjust your signs accordingly.
I kick ass at public speaking. I have oratory skills that would make Hitler and FDR alike let out a low, appreciative whistle and say, “That man knows how to bring it to the mic”.
I should qualify this proclamation, the two recent speeches I’ve had to make were not of any instructive value, they were more about mocking friends whom had already consumed a few alcoholic beverages. So I suppose my expertise lies more in “roasting” among drunken friends than any real talent. Regardless, it’s the one skill I have that I am completely confident about; if approached in a dark alley and met with a thug who challenged me to throw down street style, I would propose it is highly probable that I would be declared the victor.
Last night I had a chance to thank Dr. Nico at a faculty appreciation dinner. The good doctor was the first computer science professor I had at Cal Poly and is the reason I am still in this major today. I was more than willing to thank him publicly, but when they added in a free prime rib dinner, that sealed the deal.
Honestly, my favorite part of the evening was simply getting to hang out with the professor, meet his wife, and have a beer (well, he had wine, but I had beer) with the man. I asked him how he decided to get into the biz of teaching, and he replied, “I’ve wanted to do this since I was about five.”
And that is why Phillip Nico is the man.
Last fall, my Vespa was stolen.
But when you ask a vending machine
For Reese’s Pieces
And get Corn Nuts instead…
that really hurts
The weather got warm this week; into the 80s on Monday here in san luis, but dropped down a whole lot today, down into the 40s.
Apparently Lauren is a bit chilly
Today I cut a 1/2″ piece of steel into two pieces without even touching it.
Under pressure I might concede the 6800 degree flame helped.
Two interviews today. Both for internships with the same company. This is a company that I’d very much like to work for, so I was ready, though nervous. Job interviews are strange things, you never know exactly what punches are going to be thrown and so what you’ve been training for may be nothing like what you see in the ring.
ROUND 1. FIGHT!
We went toe to toe for thirty minutes. My interviewer was ill, which put him at a disadvantage, but I feel I made a good impression and have a strong reference for this position. booyah.
ROUND 2. That guy with a chair came out of nowhere!
Upon discovering there was another interviewer for an equally enticing position at the same company, I went gDub style and busted in where I wasn’t invited. I gave him an ultimatum: interview me or forfeit a shiny new Intel Mac laptop.
Not surprisingly, they chose to interview me (them laptops are hard to get). Surprisingly, I felt my performance was much better during this interview. Maybe it was because the topic was more familiar, maybe it was a result of gained confidence from my earlier interview, or maybe the interviewer and myself were just on the same wavelength.
Ultimately, I think he was intrigued by the fact that I showed the drive to barge in where I wasn’t necessarily welcome to get something done.
I’m gonna go weld something.
UPDATE: I just realized that the tshirt I’ve been wearing all day is on backwards. If I hear back from either of these jobs I won’t wear it any other way.
Ok, two annoying things with my cingular service that I’ve found solutions to recently that I figure others (specifically my immediate family) might appreciate.
I hereby promise this is the last time you will ever be in danger if learning something from this website.
Over at Pandora.com, if you tell it what kind of music you like, it will give you streaming radio of similar music. Now, it’s certainly not perfect, the algorithm they use seems to be based strictly how the music sounds, not the content of the lyrics. But as long as you keep this constraint in mind, the hit rate is surprisingly high.
If it wasn’t for Pandora, I would have never even heard of the Desaparecidos or had the opportunity to listen to “Wreck My Car,” by Scott H. Birham.
Life without Desaparecidos just isn’t worth living. Not this week anyway.
“Kernel programming is a black art that should be avoided if at all possible. Fortunately, kernel programming is usually unnecessary.”
-From the APPLE kernel hacking guide.
Apparently modifying the kernel is for those who are attracted to the dark side of the force. To that I say: I won’t lose you the way I lost my mother. I am becoming more powerful than any programmer has ever dreamed of. And I’m doing it for you, to protect you.
Ok, it’s a bit creepy, but I’m ready to do what’s necessary.
“I once made a pretty decent scale drawing of a pixel. That’s about the best I can do.”
-Shaun McCance
I feel that.
Three weeks, three job interviews. Job market’s looking up.
I have become a (relatively) competent geek.
Just one moment ago I realized, “Damn, a link I need was sent to me on my instant messenger client on my home computer, and that computer is quite far away.” Fortunately I was able to retrieve the necessary information through the following steps.
Just think, if I were an english major, I might have had to drive home.
“The speech is about 36 minutes in length without applause right now. Factoring in those interruptions, the speech should be comparable in length to last year’s address, which ran 53 minutes.”
This is in reference to the President’s upcoming state of the union address. Apparently they invited the United States fighting 109th applause squad, as headed by the Supreme court, almost half of which has been directly appointed by the Bush family.
Murderball is the best sports movie that has ever been made.
I will stand by that, I don’t care what you throw at me; It’s better than Bull Durham, Rocky, and Field of Dreams combined. I just wish I knew what I could say that would make every person reading this go rent this film right now.
“One interesting gender difference observed by Koch (1994) is that when dealing with computers, girls blame their own inexperience and lack of ability if something goes wrong, hence decreasing their self-confidence level, while boys tend to blame the program or the computer system if something goes astray.”
There was a big explanation here a moment ago, but my computer ate it.
I was innocently reading Luis Villa’s blog on planet gnome when I discovered what appears to be the Best Blonde Joke Ever.
Kels: do you remember TGIF?
Kels: and they had that contest where people were suppose to send in what they though TGIF stood for?
Me: sorta
Kels: and in the commercial the guy from Teen Angel was like I think it means Turkish Guys in Feathers
Me: haha I remember that
Me: it was a horrible show
Kels: come on! he died from eating a hamburger that was under his best friend’s bed. How is that not GENIUS!
Me: Teen Angel is the most morbid concept ever
Me: man dies young, hilarity ensues!
It was friday.
The 13th.
And it was a full moon.
And I won a trip to Vegas at Lauren’s company’s new year party.
Me: How was class
Me: Did he announce the midterm?
Captain Anon: i missed it too… my gf is in town from NY… plus my car broke down yesterday… tons of crap
Me: I hate it when my gf comes across the country to visit me
Me: pisses me off. Some people are just selfish.
Captain Anon: seriously… “hello, i’m trying to study here”
I always hang up on callers that do not introduce themselves and call me “sir”. The quickest possible way you could empirically express that I am nothing to you but a few characters of text on a piece of paper is to call me sir.
Nobody calls me sir. Do I look like a Knight to you Mr. Telephone man? Does my voice bear a similarity to that of a Drill Seargent (SIR NO SIR)? Are you trying to date my teenage daughter? Holy Moses, I hope not.
In fact, I’d probably stay on the phone longer if I heard a string of curse words coming through the horn. I’d be confused, but I might say something like, “Jesse, is that you? You need a ride man?”.
Telemarketers should use this scheme, confusion buys time. They’d have to improvise a bit, but maybe when I offer a ride, they accept, and when I arrive at Mothers Tavern (a local bar) I find, instead of my inebriated friend, a man offering me a 3 day trip to Las Vegas for only $99!
brilliant.
About me:
i bruise easily.
oh, and i hate having fun. that sums it up
Fox buys myspace, and begins censoring customers from listing competitors’ sites (such as youtube) in their personal profiles.
What happens when two rich guys get bored with the American Dream(TM)? They ride across the country, not on Harleys like normal people having a mid-life crisis, but on Segways.
“At MIT, everyone is bright, and some are super-bright. Some super-bright people are total jerks, and some are the nicest you’ll ever meet.
I had one famous computer scientist as an instructor who bore down on a student for not knowing how to solve a digital signal processing problem - after she protested that she didn’t know the complex algebra required, he said, “come to me after class, and I’ll teach you complex algebra.” And then, after class, he told her, “I don’t have time.”
In contrast, I had an equally famed materials science instructor who set aside office hours to meet with any of his dozens of students who needed help on their homework, even though he had plenty of teaching assistants.
* So when I join a company and hear how smart the people there are - I’m not impressed. Unless they’re also good people to work with. That’s a lot harder to find.”
From Phillip Chu’s What I Learned at MIT.
The triple overtime game at Penn St. vs FSU last night had some of the worst kicking that has ever been seen, and though i have not heard it discussed, I think a record was set in football last night.
FSU Seminoles kicker Gary Cismesia had no less than three entirely separate and unique opportunities to win the football game with kicks from less than 40 yards. One of them was an extra point. You couldn’t have paid anyone to do that badly.
And the kicker (pun righteously intended): If he hadn’t made a 48 yard field goal with 4 minutes remaining in regular time, FSU wouldn’t have even made it to overtime and he would have been unable to humiliate himself so thoroughly. Talk about your missed opportunities.
On a separate note, USC is playing Texas tonight. Should be a fantastic game. Go LenDale.
Everyone claims to have the answers. Dr. Phil tells us our relationships are falling apart, Michael Moore claims to have moral superiority on every issue, Pat Robertson knows who the government should assassinate, and Bill O’Reilly is waking us up to the War on Christmas.
It seems to me shows that have have “Truth” or “No-Spin” in the title are the ones you have to be most leary of; This isn’t necessarily because the message that’s being peddled is inherently incorrect, but most of the time what is actually being delivered is an opinion, which is the definition of Spin and by presenting itself with a false title, ambiguates the Truth.
But the “Joke Documentary” format avoids telling you what to think by presenting you with something that’s obviously false, or shows you that everything you know isn’t exactly the way you thought it was. I believe this leaves much more room for individuals to think about the issues and form their own opinion, instead of regurgitating talking points.
Given the previous, my motivation for being a big fan of Pen & Teller’s show Bullshit! should be fairly clear; even the title lets you know not to take the show at face value. With a show called bullshit, you do not expect to hear the One True Way something is meant to be. They’re presenting you with information and you decide what to do with it. So what should you actually expect from the show? On the first show I watched (about PETA), Penn presented this excellent example of bullshit:
“Everyone is pro-choice and pro-life, it’s for or against abortion that your group is about.”
-Penn Jillette
I highly suggest you check out some of the promos available. The War On Drugs I find especially fun.
Watched Logan’s Run last night. I do believe that this movie set a low point in special effects that has yet to be bested. Also, apparently no people of color survived whatever catastrophe befell mankind, either that, or in this version of the future, the Nazis won.
For those who think SNL isn’t funny anymore, I suggest you watch The Chronicles Of Narnia rap by Andy Sandberg and Chris Parnell.
It’s exquisite.
I don’t really like poetry very much; I apologize if you are one of those for whom poetry is an important aspect of your life, but I know what I dislike, and poetry has traditionally fallen into that category.
Now, I should clarify: I have no rationale for disliking poetry other than the fact that, on a case by case basis, I’ve discovered that over ninety percent of it doesn’t hit me on a gut level upon first reading, as I have come to expect from music, film, photography, and even the depravities that are web comics.
It is understandable then, that I was caught off-guard during our recitations for ENGL 253 when a poem was recited that my immune system did not violently reject! Not only did I not mind hearing it at that moment, but I in fact wanted to hear it again and perhaps, time permitting, a third just to make sure I had fully grokked the short text.
Now, in place of this post, I had originally hoped to have the content of said poem, but I ran into a bit of a problem, specifically, the author remains among the living. This shouldn’t surprise me, but honestly, it’s been a while since I’ve been exposed to a poem that wasn’t A) Written by a friend, or B) Written by Walt Whitman. Our author’s pulse has proved problematic, specifically because it means the copyright on his work is still valid and, more importantly, legally binding.
Now, far be it from me to criticize the author of a poem for trying to make a living off of his work, but it had simply never occurred to me that I would ever need to pay for a poem. The Sky is blue, the Pope wears a silly hat, USC is going to humiliate Texas, horses are hung like Chuck Norris, and any poem worth sharing is written by a dead guy with expired copyrights. And this is as it should be, not the dead guy part, but the expired copyright part. As little sense as poetry makes in the first place, having poetry that you can’t discuss is right at the top of my list of pointless things, right after Aluminum Socket Cover and Razor-Edged Sheath.
All ranting aside, if you’d like to read the entirely excellent “How I Came To Own The World”, I suppose you had better buy/rent/steal When People Could Fly: Prose Poems by Morton Marcus.
It makes sense, after all.
Weeks of studying and test induced stress, followed by two graduation parties and Joel coming up from Camarillo meant my body let down its spandex-tight defenses right about the time I inundated it with alcohol.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I woke up sick Sunday morning, but I’ll be damned I was. You never expect to be sick, what I expected included going to the gym, scaling mountains, working on my Vespa, reading ahead for next quarter, and in general saving the world. I simply don’t have time for this water-torture like dripping from the nose combined with the exhaustion and the watching of bad movies.
Well I’ll tell you what. Come tomorrow, I’m just going to ignore it. I’m going out. I’m gonna start studying. I’m not going to watch Tron again, no matter how amazing Jeff Bridges is. With the Internet as my witness, I SHALL BE PRODUCTIVE.
To tomorrow!
Recent studies have led to the discovery that the size of ones testicles and their intelligence are inversely related.
This explains quite a bit. Look at Iraq, John Bolton, and most recently the Harriet Myers debacle; whether or not you agree with him, it’s quite obvious that dubya has huge balls. Enormous. Along with the great wall of china, our president’s balls are the second major landmark to be visible from space. I’ve heard rumors that the CIA developed a cloaking device with the sole purpose of making los juevos primeros less visible and therefore less of a target. It’s true.
Now, I’ve forgotten where I was originally going at this point, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone who normally reads my blog;
I too, have huge balls.
No shaving ’till after finals.
It’s more than a credo, it’s practical. When people see my scraggly half-ass neck beard, bleary red eyes, and the sweatshirt that I clearly haven’t taken off for a week (After 2am, I just call it a blanket), they don’t screw around. They know I have things to do, and lack both the time and the patience to be harassed by extra-curricular activities such as paying bills and showering.
It’s also a clear signal to my friends who are done with finals and/or graduating: NO, I cannot go to Spike’s with you, and if you ask again, come Saturday you won’t be walking across that stage, you’ll be rolling, Holmes.
All right, there’s more to say, but my sister reminds me it’s time to get back to paper writing, so happy finals everyone!
*The title is a common misinterpretation of a popular Jimmy Hendrix song. Name that song for a chance to appear in the comments section of this very blog!
(21:05:00) Travis R: I don’t think he gets the humor of the club
(21:05:25) Travis R: like we’re playing double dutch, and he tried to slide-tackle the jump ropes.
The club he speaks of is The Cal Poly Linux Users Group, of which I am the Treasurer. We play double dutch surprisingly often.
“I had a job interview today and the guy asked me if I knew what a cookie is. I said ‘Cookies are a delicious delicacy.’ He didn’t laugh :(”
-Johannes
Oh the shame.
Update (12/5/2005): Shocklingly, he’s getting flown up to San Francisco for a follow up interview. Go Johannes…
You don’t need to understand this. I am documenting this quote so I can look back and laugh, please proceed to the next blog entry without informing me that this entry did not entertain you in the slightest:
“I could export to a folder and then scp the files over, but thats just because I am a beautiful and unique snowflake.”
-Miguel De Icaza
B. Lawless normally posts more on the serious side, so when I saw this, I was more than pleasantly surprised. I hereby nominate Mr. Lawless for “Most Ironic Use of Rat Bastard” for this year.
Speaking of other people’s websites, I set up a nifty little place on the web for my friend Melissa, who actually knows how to write. You would be adrift on a kiddie pool of thoughtlessness if you didn’t click this link. I especially enjoy the link she posted to a commercial that if not created directly by satan himself, was at least the product of several Care Bears and Barney getting together for a jam session.
Lastly, Joel finally set up a site with which it is finally possible to hear him bitch across an almost infinite distance. He starts off with a diatribe on how the software that was provided for him at no cost on web space he’s not paying for is utterly and completely deficient. Predictably, he hasn’t posted anything significant since. He did not follow the teachings of the late Mitch Hedburg:
“The two most import things are you gotta start strong and you gotta end strong. It can’t be like pancakes; All exciting at first, but by the end you’re $%*#ing sick of them”
30 facts about Chuck Norris. I know what you’re thinking: “that sounds way lame, linking to random websites makes the baby jesus cry.” Most of the time I’d agree, but this particular website is quite exemplary. I will give you two of the top thirty in no particular order:
#1) Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.
#2) Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.
Impressed? You can get the rest here.
You’ll notice on the right sidebar I’ve added a wishlist category of links, one of them is called “Christmas,” and is general cheap stuff that I would love for the holidays.
The other is a list of parts for the new Vespa I’ve purchased. Not all of them are necessary, it’s more of a list of stuff I’d like to get eventually and the cheapest prices I’ve found for them. My sister convinced me some people might want to help me out with it, so I’ve made it available as well. If I’ve been the best man at any of your weddings recently here’s your chance to thank me.
If you’ve got a wishlist available, let me know, so I can start shopping early. Please Note: If you happen to have any children under the age of 7 who are cousins of mine, there is a very good chance I’m referring to you.
Lauren and I went to talk to the Farmer’s insurance across the street from us about getting Vespas insured, and met an insurance agent named THOR.
Does “the red-haired and bearded god of thunder in Norse Mythology” spell his name in all capitals; I don’t know. All I know is I’ve always wanted some physical manifestation of supernatural force on my side in case something goes wrong and now both Lauren and I will have it.
What’s that? You’re going to try and steal my Vespa? Go for it, and prepare to have Mjolnir (literally, “that which crushes”) knocking on your back door. When you get hit with most fearsome weapon in the Norse arsenal, you better be damn sure you’re going to feel it in the morning.
For those who’ve read my sister’s blog recently, you might have noticed it was difficult to comment through all of the online poker and penis enlargement spam that had been accumulating since I gave up on keeping her spam at bay late this summer. This leads me to ask the question: Is the need for a bigger penis directly related to online poker?
Well, I finally went through and deleted all of the comment spam and moved all the content to a platform that allowed me to keep the creeping waste-product of capitalism that is spam at bay. When all was said and done I had deleted just over 12,000 comments, which is rather impressive, even when you consider it’s being done by a script.
So anyway, my sister has a new site up with a new look, so I suggest you go over there and leave her a comment.
Best tshirt store ever: BustedTees
Where else can you get a tshirt expressing your constitutional right to bear arms?
I’m at Linnaea’s coffee shop in San Luis Obispo (free wireless for the win) and a guy at the table next to me is trying to convert the girl he’s with to christianity. He’s got sort of a Brian Wilson look to him; Not the good sun-n-surf early Brian Wilson, but the creepy Charles Manson era cults-are-fun-homeless-guy Brian Wilson.
This wouldn’t bother me except he started his proof with “First, assume God is good,” which is a hell of a logical leap if you’re trying to convert somebody’s entire view on life, the universe, and everything. I feel sorry for the poor girl, the look on her face is a combination of uncomfortable, skeptical, and yet still receptive.
I’ll keep everyone up to date on what’s sure to be a fascinating session of eavesdropping.
Joel’s wedding. He’s been bugging me about writing a blog post non-stop ever since he tied the knot and it’s pretty much driving me nuts. The thing is, I don’t normally do step-by-step re-tellings of a weekend’s happenings, because more often than not, that kind of stuff is boring. It’s the reason you don’t read your family’s emails. I don’t care that baby boop’s bowel movements are solidifying in comparison to two months ago, in fact, I don’t want to hear about defecation unless it involves monkeys and beehive hairdo’s.
But it I guess Joel only gets one wedding and I suppose as the best man it would be rude not to post more about it, sooo….
Ze Rehearsal Dinner
They told us to meet at Nicole’s parents place at 5:30. As it turns out, the reservation wasn’t until 6:30 and the restaurant was literally 5 minutes away. What kind of people make you cut your nap short by fifty-five minutes? I’ll tell you what kind: bad, bad people. But there was beer at Nicole’s parents, and that made it better.
The restaurant, Matteo’s, was of an Italian persuasion and it was quite delicious. Nicole’s father and I decided that the sea bass could only accurately be described as life changing. Bambi used to give me nightmares as a kid, so I had the veal. There was also free wine. Well, not free, but I didn’t have to pay. Yay for not being Joel’s parents.
Ze Wedding
So I dropped the ring.
Ok, it wasn’t during the ceremony, but still it definitely fell and caused many to panic. I won’t bother trying to describe the ring in detail, a picture is the only way you can really comprehend it, but essentially it’s a ring inside a ring, which results in nothing holding the inner ring down within the ring-box. What this means is that the sprung design of the box essentially makes it a very effective catapult. Points for me.
Pastor Mike said boob and sex during the ceremony. He also mentioned The Princess Bride. He’s pretty much my hero.
After the ceremony, there were hor’dourves and an open bar. Ordering a Vodka Tonic when you meant Vodka Collins is quite disappointing.
Ze Reception
My Best Man’s speech was rock solid. Afterwords, men wanted to be me and women just wanted me. It was awesome. I couldn’t go to the bathroom without being complimented. For the rest of the reception I had Joel carry me on his back. There was dinner and an open bar. When you sit at the head table people bring you free booze. You don’t even have to stand up to get blitzed at no cost to you. Again, not really free, but yay for not being Nicole’s parents.
Jackie’s speech could be described as being *cough* concise.
The reception was surprisingly short, but it turns out it was only the setup for…
Ze After-Party
Holy Christ was this party rocking. Great catered food, pool table, jacuzzi, and to continue with the weekend’s theme, every type of booze you’ve never wanted right at your fingertips.
Congratulations to Joel and Nicole, and thanks for letting me be a part of your wedding.
PS. If you’re wondering about the picture at the top, you’re not alone.
Update: If you’re into that sort of thing, Ryan has a much more relevant wedding picture over here.
Apparently some people don’t need money like I do.
After losing my Vespa, we were a little paranoid about leaving Lauren’s outside for the weekend, so we found a more secure place for it.
This is part of the best man’s speech I actually had written down in front of me that I decided to censor on the fly:
“I still remember when they got engaged, they SWORE to keep it a secret so that they could surprise all of their friends at a graduation dinner that was planned to happen two weeks later…
Which would have been great, except that I found out about this THE NIGHT THEY GOT ENGAGED. Children at gunpoint have kept secrets longer than that. I wouldn’t trust either of them with my locker combination at the gym.”
I originally wrote this in because children trying to keep secrets is amusing.
I eventually nixed it because children at gunpoint, while hilarious, is not at all funny.
Me: I totally locked my keys in the apartment.
Me: let me know when you’re leaving work
Lauren: awe…
Lauren: do you want to come and pick up keys?
Me: how?
Me: Unlock my car door, put my key in the ignition, and drive over there?
Still not about Joel’s wedding 
I can’t decide if this is the funniest or most horrible thing I have ever seen. However, I could easily see reality television resulting in the apocalypse.
It appears that President Bush is doing the reverse of what Reagan did with Robert Bork in the 80’s: by nominating a centrist judge at first, he’s polarized the conservative senators by introducing a moderate candidate that nobody would support, then introduced a candidate with extreme right wing views that will have a much easier time at it because of the last candidate’s failure.
I can’t say that I’m surprised by the nomination of Samuel Alito, though maybe I should be as it means that Bush is living up to a campaign promise.
I really should have written about Joel’s wedding instead of this.
boo!
“I think Wallace and Gromit is playing at The Palm, but don’t quote me on that.”
-Byron C.
And remember, MC DP says Don’t Copy That Floppy.
This weekend has been full of some extreme ups and downs, which was perfectly mimicked by the many amazing roller-coasters at Magic Mountain, including Goliath and Scream.
Especially Scream.
This weekend at Magic Mountain was the most fun I’ve ever had at an amusement park. It was good to see Joel, even though it took him 2 attempts and 110 miles to finally get there.
While at Magic Mountain, we were recording the USCvNotre Dame football game. After making it 10 hours without hearing the score, the outcome was revealed right as we were about to watch the opening kickoff. No biggie, it was still amazing; Leinert called it “one of the greatest games ever played,” but then he did score the winning touchdown.
And now I come home to discover my Vespa stolen. If you see it around, let me know:
http://slo.craigslist.org/mcy/104614668.html
Did you know that until the Supreme Court struck it down in 1965, there was a law that stated married couples could not legally use contraceptives in Connecticut?
1965. That’s only 40 years ago folks.
Those crazy northerners and their backwords ways.
For reference: Cuz is another member of the Groom’s party at Joel’s wedding. We’re discussing my best man speech below:
(15:12:22) Me: I’m kinda working simultaneously on the speech I wish I could do and the speech I’m actually going to do.
(15:12:54) Joel Conary: you can give the speech you wish you could do at the after-party
(15:13:16) Me: the speech I wish I could do starts out:
(15:14:29) Me: “I researched for quite a bit on what should be said in a best man’s speech, and about the only piece of information I could find was as follows:Do not _EVER_ say you have slept with the bride.
And I haven’t. Which is why I’m best man and Cuz here is riding the pine”
If you send Jacqueline Stallone a picture of your ass, she can predict your future.
You don’t even need to add an extra remark to make that funny.
From a guide on how to pack for long motorcycle trips:
With a little effort, you can get an adaptor for your cell phone and laptop so that you can connect to the internet while you’re in your tent. Don’t do it. It’s a couple hundred dollars, the connections are typically 4800 baud (very slow), and it’s wrong. When you’re travelling thousands of miles from home on your motorcycle, you must guard your karma.
Understood. When you’re cruising along the highway with a motor wedged up your ass, you need all the Karma you can steal.
Some riders have been known to carry portable TVs. This lets you watch the weather in the evening. If you watch anything else, you are going to spend a lot of extra time in purgatory. Bring a book. Only 7% of all Americans read a book last year; less than 40% of all Americans will ever read a book in their entire lives. Bill Gates read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica in High School, and he’s worth $100 billion now.
There’s quite a large jump between encyclopedia reading and being the richest man on earth, but I suppose it’s possible the secret to unimaginable wealth is hidden within the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I mean, really, raise your hand if you’ve read more than a paragraph from this traditional elementary school shelf-buster. I bet if you read Encyclopaedia Britannica cover to cover there’s a bunch of hints, for example:
“George Washington was born in START A SOFTWARE COMPANY a cherry tree that fought bravely along the Delaware.”
“But Rosa Parks feet hurt and so when asked to stand she STEAL APPLE’S INTERFACE AND CLAIM IT WAS YOUR OWN snapped the bus in half like a pencil between her fingers.”
Started noticing a little problem with my Vespa soon after I got it, and by looking at the symptoms I suspected that I had a worn shifting cross, which I viewed as an opportunity to tear into my engine and do a partial engine rebuild.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think the engine needed to be rebuilt, but one of my goals with this vehicle was to bite the bullet and really get to know it in a mechanical sense. I wanted to experience this Vespa in a manner that was so thoroughly physical that I would require gloves and my Vespa would be left huddled in the corner calling the 2-stroke equivalent of a social worker.
I ordered a bunch of parts from Scomo and got ready to get down and dirty. I fully suspected it to take a full 3-day weekend, but from working with my dad on various projects throughout the years I knew that it would take at least four score and seven years. And so it was.
The shifting cross is also known as the cruciform, for a reason that was quickly made obvious to me: even Jesus would want to kill himself trying to get to this thing. The motor has to be removed from the frame, split in half and all the gears have to be removed. There were points where I had mini-panic attacks and what little sleep I had was plagued by nightmarish visions of my scooter spread out over my parents garage for all of eternity, like an even-poorer version of a 74 Chevy pickup on blocks.
Fortunately, the night before (or the morning of) I was to move back to San Luis, we had it completely together and started it at 1 am. I’m sure my neighbors are still pissed…
To be fair, if my neighbors weren’t mad at me, I would never see them.
Check it out:
Rachel not only has a blog, but she is the first non-techy friend of mine to install linux. booyah.
About a week and a half ago I became the proud owner of a 1978 Vespa P200. It’s a 2-stroke engine, meaning it is made to burn oil as well as gasoline, which I find to be immensely satisfying in California.
Unfortunately, the only pictures I have are ones taken in the previous owner’s garage. Looky see:
Also, Lauren bought a brand new 2005 Vespa ET4 to drive her to and from her new job at Web Associates in San Luis Obispo. Snazzy….
Not really, but somebody did spoil the ending for the most recent Harry Potter book for me in almost the exact same font.
Ok, life updates in shotgun format just for historical purposes. It is not my job to entertain you people, no matter how many fake degrees I put on my resume.
1) Joel’s getting married, you all know this. He asked someone we all know to be his best man. Somebody close to everyone who reads this website, someone whose last name ends with Agner . You didn’t know that, even I was surprised.
Be sure to come back for drafts of my Best Man toast, which will be epic in ways that only those who have been to Molten Core will understand.
2) I work at Lockheed. So Far: Great People, Good Pay, Good Hours, not terribly interesting work. Coding with .NET is meh. Imagine you’d spent your entire life studying to be an architect and your new boss hands you a lego set and tells you to go at it. It’s colorful, but not all that challenging.
3) I like my parents. Visiting Parents = Good. Living with parents = too much of a good thing. I’m ready to head back to San Luis Obispo to continue my eternal college experience.
Thought of the moment: Smack someone you love on the bum.
Paul Winchell died this past weekend, and with him goes the original voice of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh.
Initial autopsy results show his top was made of rubber and his bottom made of springs.
Last night, I had a dream that I went to an open mic night to do a stand-up routine…
…and only thought up a single joke ahead of time. It did not go as well as I might have hoped.
While walking into work I read the headline “Tsunami Warning Fizzles.”
For those who don’t know, there was a HUGE earthquake off the cost of Eureka California ( magnitude seven point OH ) on Tuesday evening that set off a Tsunami warning along the west coast. While those of us who found out were convinced of our imminent death, the news channels wouldn’t have been more excited if Michael Jackson was caught molesting Scott Peterson’s son at Robert Blake’s house.
They were salivating at the death and destruction the Tsunami would bring; there would be countless wrecked houses to stand in front of, cute orphaned children to exploit, and of course the freak house that had been moved 400,000 miles and remained completely intact.
Which brings us to the word ?Fizzle.?
Dictionary.com defines Fizzle as ?To fail or end weakly, especially after a hopeful beginning.?
The writers for the San Francisco Chronicle had already booked flights to Tahiti for lengthy vacations. With this kind of abundant material they could have brought Ann Killion ( sportswriter for the SJ Mercury ) on and had her write the entire newspaper. With a disaster of Tsunamic proportions, the news really writes itself. All you have to do is report the number of bodies found today, and the new inspiring story of the dog who carried an entire school bus full of unconscious nuns/orphans/puppies back to their church/happy family/pile of dog biscuits.
But then it all fell apart. It was a huge earthquake, but it was the wrong kind of huge earthquake. What all started out so swimmingly ended up fizzling like Woody Allen’s career.
Bonus: Where did the title of this entry come from?
Upon meeting my new boss:
BossMan: So, what time would you like to start working in the morning?
Me: It doesn’t really matter, I can come in any time you need me to be here.
BossMan: Well, me and Bob normally get here at six in the morning.
Me: I’ll see you at eight.
First day of a real job tomorrow.
Not a job that involves the transportation of individually packaged cheese packets or explaining that despite the persistent rumor to the contrary, buying a service plan for a laptop does not immediately qualify you as mentally deficient; instead, this job will be the culmination of my schooling up to this point, the ultimate pointer as to whether or not I’ve been wasting my life in front of a text editor when I should really be up to my knees in my own feces with the Peace Core or working at starting my own public access show in Aurora, Illinois with my best friend Garth.
I don’t know where to go from here, there are many directions and I’d like to go to sleep soon, so I’ll just do some bullet points:
Man, that’s a hard life.
The things that were done to myself and others in the Networking final that was administered yesterday surely violates several stipulations of the Geneva convention.
I’ve discussed the actions with my state senator and he has assured me that those responsible for this injustice will be prosecuted as nothing less than terrorists.
Dr. “Smith,” pack your bags, you’re off to sunny Guantanamo Bay.
Did You Know?: This same professor just offered me no less than two jobs in the fall, one of them as a grader for a class I’m not entirely sure I’ll pass.
Written in the grime on the back of a Semi:
“I wish my wife was this dirty.”
I only have one mind. It can only maintain momentum in one direction as it is one single thing. If my head contained multiple instances of intelligent entities I would be capable of doing much more, for example as I write this I could be studying for my biology quiz later today or even work on my programming project whose description is so vague it would have been better communicated through a series of shrugs and facial contortions.
But that is not the case. And so I’ve failed out of my first class ever. Two programming classes is too much for my feeble mind. I thought I might be able to pull off a C after not completing two programming assignments in a row, but one blank midterm later, I realized it’s not possible and endeavored to save my other classes from the same fate instead of continuing the futile grind which consisted mostly of a staring contest with my computer monitor punctuated by restroom breaks and spontaneous fits of cursing.
but all is not lost
I’ve been offered a summer job actually writing code with quite a respectable company. I’m still waiting on the background check to go through, but pending that speed bump, I shall be starting June 13th at a certain company whose name rhymes almost precisely with Lockheed Martin. I’m thoroughly excited, though intimidated by the task I’ve been assigned.
congratulations
Lauren graduated from USC, which is hard for me to comprehend. Right now, she’s just looking for a job, and once she has that I’ll still deal with it mentally by telling myself it’s an internship, but once she doesn’t go back to school in the fall and refuses to go to class despite my urgings, I’ll have to come to terms with the situation.
At least by then USC football will be back and I’ll be able to go to a game with the free ticket that Lauren gets….. Wait a minute! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
“I tend to become a bit condescending when people say stupid shit.”
-Anon
Did you know if you added Orange Juice to Champagne you can have it for breakfast?
Man, alcoholics are creative
There’s a new manager at staples, and we had a lovely conversation!:
TheMan: What are you going to graduate with?
Me: Debt.
Only the facebook can make it official.
This means that the only remaining scholarly person I know who is not on the facebook is my sister. Alex Reed, the one man I thought would withstand the gusty winds of change, caved like an anorexic in a hot dog eating contest.
Stopped by Barnes & Noble today for a coffee and some free reading, when I discovered the book Liberalism is a Mental Disorder by Michael Savage.
First off, excellent title. It’s what drew me to the book. I’m sure he considered many other reasonable titles before he settled on it and he definitely went in the right direction. Other titles he rejected include Liberalism, the new commy-terrorism and Liberals: They WILL eat your baby; but it got my attention and that’s what matters.
When I initially went to see Fahrenheit 911, some conservative minded friends went with me and so, in a reflexive post-movie state, I asked them what they thought of the film. After they expressed an inclination to burn down his house and kill his children (see: terrorism), they pined for a movie of similar caliber from their point of view. I think Michael Savage is the man for such a movie. I would probably enjoy a movie like this so long as it was truly funny. While a great many friends take politics very seriously, I really believe that comedy is much more important in my day to day life. I propose instead of having “debates” (I’ll get back to Savage’s use of quotations later), we have each candidate do 30 minutes of stand-up and choose the next leader of the free world with a device that can only be called the laugh-o-meter. Their performances wouldn’t be any more scripted than they are now.
Incidentally, if this system had been in place in 2004, the election wouldn’t have even been close. The Great Reverend Al Sharpton would have annihilated the whole crowd. Bush’s frat boy humor just isn’t appealing, Kerry could bore a guy on laughing gas to tears, Howard Dean has that mad look in his eyes that makes you question whether or not he’s kidding. Only Sharpton could say, “George Bush giving tax cuts is like Jim Jones giving Kool-Aid. It tastes good but it’ll kill you,” and get away with it.
Getting back to the book, what makes Michael Savage great is his fanaticism, he put “United Nations” in quotes, apparently Mr. Savage believes the UN is a fictional body of world leaders, much like Super Friends (Come to think of it, calling Korea, Iraq, and Iran the “Legion of Doom” wouldn’t be any more ridiculous than “Axis of Evil”). Now, I’m not saying the UN is in any way efficient or effective, but to put quotes around an international diplomatic organization calls your grip on the bike handle that is reality into question. At a later point, Big Mike inventated the word islamofascist, which to me sounds like a game where you run around hitting fascists on the head with a laughably over-sized mallet; the point being that this was a situation which necessitated a hyphen, to indicate your intention is humor and not a failed attempt at english. I suppose it is possible that it comes up so often in his daily vocabulary that he has actually started to believe that this word is, in fact, in Webster’s, under i.
My favorite quote from 15 minutes of reading has to be:
“Ultimately, the legions of leftist revolutionaries are laughable. Their ideology has been a complete failure wherever it has been tried… …Which is why I invite you to sneer at their Big Lie. I invite you to remain vigilant before a bomb goes off in your mother’s house.”
Did… …did Michael Savage just threaten to level my mother’s home if I refuse to sneer?
School’s been keepin’ me down for the last couple weeks, I’ve got tons to post about but it doesn’t look like today is going to be the day where I mount an offensive on the heap of good material that has been accumulating in my notebook, as I have yet another program due tomorrow.
On the plus side, Darth Vader has a blog.
David Sedaris is speaking at Cal Poly this weekend, and I will be attending. He stooped so low as to be interviewed by the Mustang Daily, which resulted in the following:
MD: Do you have any advice for college students? We need it.
David Sedaris: Right… I would just encourage college students to take drugs and have sex with as many people as possible because one day they’ll be old and right now they’re the perfect age for all that stuff. They might as well have fun now, and then they can reflect upon it later when they’re old.
MD: I’m using that as my headline: “David Sedaris says: Get Laid!
David Sedaris: Don’t leave out the drug part.
The following link is a video clip describing The Internet vs. Real Life from Red vs. Blue.
It’s funny.
The concept behind red vs. blue is to create an animated picture show, but without actually doing any of the work of animating, which, as Lauren can tell you, is hard. What they’ve done is esentially move characters around inside the video game Halo and then added their own sound.
At which point hilarity ensues.
Who says programmers don’t have fun. The guy on the right wrote the textbook for CSC 453, introduction to Operating Systems. And one of the other three guys in the picture is a VP at Novell. I’ll let you guess which one.
I recently discovered Paul Graham’s “What You’ll Wish You’d Known,” a speech that was originally written for a high school graduation ceremony, but that works just as well for those graduating college any time soon (For example: NOT ME ).
What do you want to do with your life?
“People are always asking you this, so you think you’re supposed to have an answer. But adults ask this mainly as a conversation starter. They want to know what sort of person you are, and this question is just to get you talking. They ask it the way you might poke a hermit crab in a tide pool, to see what it does.”
Or, as I’ve heard it put before, they’re not asking because because they expect you to have your life planned out, they’re actually looking for ideas.
You can dooo eeeet!
“Don’t get demoralized. Don’t think that you can’t do what other people can. And I agree you shouldn’t underestimate your potential. People who’ve done great things tend to seem as if they were a race apart… In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they’d seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends.”
This has been a strong belief of mine that many people are actually strongly opposed to. You tell some people that the student body at MIT is just like any other and there’s a good chance you’re gonna see some palm to face action in the near future. It’s like insulting a religious institution: “HAVE YOU NO SHAME,” they would cry as I am banished from society in the name of protecting impressionable young minds.
Perhaps my favorite tidbit from Mr. Graham’s speech is actually in the footnotes, in reference to the oft repeated high school teacher mantra…
Behave like adults!
“I wonder if they’d like it if you did. You may be loud and disorganized, but you’re very docile compared to adults… Imagine the reaction of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a time. To say nothing of the things you’re taught. If a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school, the first thing they’d do is form a union and renegotiate all the rules with the administration.”
While playing World Of Warcraft, an online only computer game that is very popular among those in the know, I discovered a bug. Specifically, one of the quests specifies you are supposed to look for a certain character in “Warrior’s Hall” which, as it turns out, doesn’t exist. I finally found the character in “Hunter’s Hall” and dutifully submitted a bug report so that other players would not have to suffer the same indignities that I was subjected to for asking people for the location of a non-existant building.
But then I had to go and end my bug report like this:
“I got flamed many times trying to find “warrior’s” hall and it was not
enjoyable, so if you could fix this type, I’d appreciate it.”
That’s right, I mispelled typo. I’m pretty sure I’m banned from the internet at this point.
“[Wal-Mart’s] $285 billion in sales nearly match the gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia.”
-From The Christian Science Monitor
Call me extravagant, but I would think if your company pulls in as much money as a country that just happens to be “the world’s largest net oil exporter…”, you’d be able to pay your employees decently and maybe offer affordable health care.
Me: Where’s Young taking off to this weekend?
Uncle C: She is going to Truckee with like 8 other gilrfriends for a Spiritual Women’s retreat.
…
Uncle C: I was actually San Jose last weekend for something similar with the Bible Study Fellowship organization. The only difference was that I was with 3000 of my closest friends instead of 8.
Me: What can you do, you’re just more popular than she is.
Uncle C: True, it is a gift, and sometimes it fills like a curse. But it is the will of the people to see me.
As Lauren was in town this past weekend, we went to see Sin City, which was a bit of an experience. First of all, if you’re not up for the most gruesome of the gruesome, this movie is not for you. As Jeffrey Westhoff so succintly put it, “You know you?re gone beyond run-of-the-mill movie violence when you need to use the plural for ‘castration.’”
Quite honestly, I’m kind of a wuss when it comes to violent movies, I like to think it’s because I’m too empathetic; when someone gets dumped at the junior high dance in front of all his buddies, I feel his pre-pubescent shame, so when I’m witnessing a level of gore that makes The Holocaust look like Woodstock, it becomes hard for me to stomach.
On the plus side, the cinematography and the general look of the whole movie was amazing, they even managed to make Elijah Woods scary. There was no shortage of humor, so long as you take your jokes like I take my coffee, black and bitter, with type O positive added for flavor.
Without spoiling anything, I’ve come up with a Litmus test to tell if this is your kind of movie:
“Downloading copyrighted music doesn’t give me the same warm, fuzzy feeling running over babies with a lawnmower does.”
-inspired by grub, slashdot idiot #11606
If you found the previous quote in no way offensive, and in fact humorous, Sin City is your type of film.
Me: good riddle
Eugene: do you get alerts?
Eugene: i just put that up
Me: No, I just check my website habitually when i’m bored
Eugene: so do i
Eugene: you need to update more often
Eugene: three times a day at least
Me: I thought you checked your website habitually
Me: and I was thinking
Me: you need to update more often
Eugene: how ironic.
Oh, it’s over. The challenge is over, with myself as the shining victor. In the end it wasn’t even an argument over whether a Styrofoam cup constituted a dish, Joel left plenty of evidence to convict himself. Really, it’s like his intent was a solid, undeniable loss.
Even as I’m writing this, Joel is completely unaware of his defeat:
(11:32:51) Joel Conary: many blog worthy events last night/ this morning?
(11:35:16) Me: there’s a couple that could be considered blog worthy
(11:35:20) Me: but one in particular
(11:35:27) Me: you’ll see, it should be up soon
(11:35:40) Joel Conary: dammit. nicole wouldn’t t3ll me either
But he’ll know very soon.
