Opinions, facts, and a grain of salt. Take two... they're small.
I just happened across the FISH! Philosophy.
If anything like that happens where I work, I'm walking out the door instantly and not going back.
This kicks every manner of ass:
Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark?! I have to admit it kind of works.
Between then next Batman movie and this, my inner comic geek will be well placated this summer.
"Dwarves don't toss each other".
Finally one that really does fit the category name: This web site is pretty amusing. I don't understand half the shit in those pictures, but every once in a while they have some darn funny ones. (And a few NSFWTM ones, too.)
If you ever wondered why Trey rocked, and how much, here's all you needed to know:
That's about the coolest band poster I've ever seen. I know, I know, his other poster was friggin' cool and all, but the nod to Andre gets me. And an the faux stop sign tops it all off.
Rock.
And they do, too! Check out their youtube presence. The Surfside IV is a certifiable great band.
Holy shit this is a cool pad: http://kensparkesphotography.com/?p=42.
I don't know why that image amuses me so much.
Tess managed to find a b-day gift for me that was at once something I've always wanted and something I had completely forgot that I always wanted: A grappling hook! How fargin' cool is that?! It's a fold-up model, and even came with its own black rope. Super cool!
Who says you have to start getting "old" presents at age 40? I mean, what's to stop and "elderly" guy like myself from wanting his very own grappling hook? I've had my eye on one of those since I was a little kid (for all the obvious reasons) and had forgotten all about it. I mean, I could have bought one for myself by now, but it just ever occurred to me. So in steps the coolest wife a guy could have. And now I have to find things with which to grapple!
I found this article about the ten manliest guns to be fairly amusing. The guy who wrote it is an SF author of a few books, makes his own knives and is still in the military going on 20 years now.
I haven't been a scout since I was kicked out of the cub scouts for stabbing a fellow cub with a pencil (no, you may not touch my pinewood derby racer, you lout). And since I always knew they'd never let me back in, I gave up on being a scout -- even though I'm honest and virtuous and I help old ladies cross the street all the time. So imagine my excitement when I came across the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique. What ho!
Potential members need the following qualifications:
- not opposed to alcohol.
Check. Possibly double-check.
- fond of IPCC reports (especially the pictures).
I've seen not only Gore's movie, but also Gore himself dissecting it and providing many colorful charts, some of which I think maybe could have come from the IPCC.
- mostly in agreement with the "truth."
Get thee behind me, Intelligent Design!
- into badges.
Indeed! Oh, you mean those badges. Yeah, sure I dig them. I even had a few of my own before I got booted. I never managed that knot one, and I didn't fare well on the bead count.
- grieving for the slow and miserable death of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Sure. Many a desktop wallpaper has come from the Hubble. I'm sad enough to see it go.
- possibly possessed of supernatural powers.
Hrmm. I'd have to think on this one...
- not in the business of total world domination
Nope.
- committed to the constant and diligent presentation of science stories, be it to editors, producers, directors, educators, relatives and/or friends of various ilk, in an effort to lessen the gap that is this thing we call public scientific literacy.
I've forwarded the occasional link. And many people have (probably unfortunately) heard me go off into the conversational weeds about arcane nonsense like why clouds are like pork and beans cooking on the stove, or why cashews aren't really nuts, or what the mineral composition and method of deposition are of the rocks on the side of a highway. I've even written a thing of two about such topics.
So I think I'm a shoo-in. If they let me in I'd even promise not to get stabby (as long as they don't touch my junk)
They have various merit badges, which I think is the best part. Here's the ones I think I'm qualified for (click on the links to go to the OOTSSOERAAAP description for that badge):
As stated above, it can take a few minutes between the zoning out and the "That's great dear"-style pat on the knee.
I once used old cash register parts as a server monitoring system. Does that count?
The "I'm pretty confident around an open flame" badge.
I think anyone who knows me knows the answer to that one.
Back in the early 90's my roommate and I used a part surplus, part kit-built HeNe laser to shine Morse code at the dorms of our university.
The "destroyer of quackery" badge.
I'm going to have to take this one, even though I wish I could suspend the pedantry sometimes.
The "I may look like a scientist but I'm actually also a ninja" badge.
Well, I own a belt-fed, tripod-mounted, crew-served weapon -- and the first thing I did with it was take it apart!. That's lethal, I guess. Not so sure on the ninja front, though. I'll look at this badge as partially earned. It's a goal.
The "sexing up science" badge.
Halfway through my 9th grade biology class, the teacher decided he wasn't really teaching me much of anything, and put me and a couple other kids on a special science project for some self-paced learning. It involved breeding various fruit flies and counting them and such. After a couple weeks, we wound up soaking cotton balls in the ether used to anaesthetize the flies, turning the lights off in the lab and playing flaming hockey to pass the time. Until they caught us, that is. Then we decided to turn the flies loose and let nature decide if the recessive ones ought to live.
The "my degree inadvertently makes me competent in fixing household appliances" badge.
Tess will call me remiss if I don't choose this one, too.
The "I can be a prick when it comes to science" badge.
And she'd make me pick this one, too.
The "will gladly kick sexual harasser's ass" badge.
I'm probably not legally allowed to talk about this one.
The "has frozen stuff just to see what happens" badge (LEVEL I)
Yep. When I was a kid, I spent all weekend rounding up carpenter ants. I put a bunch into separate jars and then froze them all for varying times in the deep freezer on the back porch. The aim was to see how long an ant could stay frozen and still wake back up. I'm not going to say whether or not the "wake back up" part ended up involving a magnifying glass or not.
The "has frozen stuff just to see what happens" badge (LEVEL II)
All sorts of things have gone into a cooler with dry ice. Some of it may have been alive at the time. I'm not going to say.
The "I bet I know more computer languages than you, and I'm not afraid to talk about it" badge.
I think I'm going to have to take this one as well. Though I come across plenty of people every day at work who beat me by a mile in this category, I think I hold my own. I've even written (and run!) programs in Chef and Brainfuck. Beat that, COBOL-lovers!
The "respect me - I've published at an upper tier publication for popular science readership" badge.
In college I went on a trip to the Petrified National Forest to look for evidence of bee burrows in the petrified wood. The goal was to answer the question of which came first: the bee or the flower? As a result, I was a co-author of a paper on the topic. I wish I could recall the publication. I've tried looking for it, but it pre-dates the web. It's probably widely available via gopher.
An odd aside, on that trip I also found a really cool fossil that's in a museum in Colorado now. It's true. I was off taking a whiz against these large, flat rocks sticking out of the side of a dry stream bed, and wound up peeing the sand right off this one that had really cool symmetrical ripple marks in it. After my business was done, I scraped off more of the sand, only to find all these paw/claw, tail, and tongue marks from a small reptile embedded in the ripples. Turns out this little guy liked to feed at the water's edge, and did so by hopping back and forth and then using its tail to launch it into the water, at which point it stuck its (presumably) sticky tongue out to catch insects in or on the water. The reptile in question was called Hesperosuchus agilis, and fossils of it are very common in the Park. But up until then, nobody knew for sure how (or what) the thing ate, and the marks in the sand clearly showed what its mehtod was. The downside? I had to carry that goddam 60 pound piece of pee-moistened sandstone 5 miles back out to the trucks. Shit, I'm taking the badge just for that.
Oh yeah, I'm not going to tell you if the bee or the flower came first. That would spoil the mystery! You'll just have to go to Arizona and destroy radioactive glass logs with a pickaxe to find out. Oh, all right. The entire story is here.
The "I've done science with no conceivable practical application" badge.
Lots and lots of it.
The "I know what a tadpole is" badge.
But of course! Though I've never frozen, burned or electrocuted one. I've blown a few up I think.
The "have used a dental drill and I've never been a dentist" badge
My best friend's dad when I was growing up was a dental technician. He made dentures and crowns and so forth. They had a lot of dental equipment in the garage that got put to good use.
The "experienced with electrical shock" badge (LEVEL I)
Sadly, yes.
The "experienced with electrical shock" badge (LEVEL III)
I've woken up on the ground after a big jolt, sure.
The "totally digs highly exothermic reactions" badge.
Hells, yeah! I've done more work in this area than I'd admit to publicly. Put it this way: when I was a teenager I built a rocket launcher. That is to say it was a shoulder-fired method for launching model rockets. All perfectly legal. Had a range of a few hundred yards, and was pretty accurate after I got the guidance system worked out.
The "science has forced me to seek medical attention" badge
Yeah, been burned by flame and acids, had to use the eye wash station once, been cut a few times.
The "somewhat confused as to what scientific field I actually belong to" badge
Started out in biology, spent a lot of time in geology, now it's computer science. So I guess I'd have to take this badge as well.
The "I'm into telescopes astro" badge (LEVEL I)
Who hasn't?
The "I'm into telescopes astro" badge (LEVEL II)
Indeed, a very large one at U of A. Even when it wasn't for a class (I took a few Astronomy course as electives), I'd go down there when the seeing was good or I was bored.
The "I've set fire to stuff" badge (LEVEL I).
Lots and lots of stuff.
The "I've set fire to stuff" badge (LEVEL II).
You bet. Magnesium rocks.
Not any more, but I have in the past.
The "I build robots" badge (LEVEL I)
I have indeed. Not for a long time, though. When I was growing up, I wanted to do this for a living.
So there it is. Not a bad lineup! I can see them all sewn onto my sash right now...
What a difference 10 days makes:
All the cabinets are in, and the moulding is going on tomorrow. The Corian guys came in today and made measurements, and will have the coutners done Thursday. Two day turn-around. Not too shabby. Once the counters are in, Jim can put in the plumbing (read: sink) and the rest of the appliances. That's a good thing. It's tough using the bathroom, the garage, and the grill to make dinner. Later in the week is electrical and gas. We're in the home stretch.
As an aside: I'm so very glad I didn't attempt this myself. There's nothing being done outside my skill range, but Jim (our installer) has access to knowledge and parts that make the job 10 times easier. I would have done a fine job I think but it would have taken 3 months. Since our kitchen has completely weird dimensions and lots of hidden mysteries (which is probably why the last guys got the cabinets refaced instead of torn out like we're doing), every time Jim turns around he's got to put on his "craftsman" hat -- which is a hat he wears very well!
If we'd have had the guys who did our kitchen in San Diego do this one, we'd be screwed. Totally screwed, blued and tattooed. But we lucked upon a guy who spent 23 years in the Navy as a carpenter, and does this as a semi-retired job. The guys takes pride in what he does. Can you imagine that? A person who cares about doing a good job, because he's the person doing the work? What a completely novel concept. Jim makes even the stuff nobody will ever see very presentable. The guy cares about his workmanship. He even cleans up after the other contractors. Pride in what you do is a good thing, especially if you do it well.
We were talking the other day before he took off and I had a long discussion about craftmanship. He was shrugging it off, but I insisted that what he does qualifies. He's not just "hanging cabinets", he's designing and fabricating stuff. He's a carpenter, not an installer, and I told him that meant a lot to use. He's doing what we can't do to "make our house a home". It sounds cheesy, but Jim had a smile on his face in the end. Because I think now he knows that his skills and efforts are appreciated.
Our house is finally starting to come along. All we have left is the exterior wood damage to fix, stucco/paint in the front, a little painting in my office/spare room and the kitchen:
I swear this is the last fixer-upper I buy. What a complete pain in the ass. 95% of that pain is from contractors, by the way. A pack of friggin' retards, all of them. I'm surprised half of them know how to wipe their own ass without someone pointing. Then again, I'm a misanthrope at heart so my cynicism may only be like 80% warranted. Ninety percent, tops.
My brothers, uncle and I met up with my friend Andy over the weekend. It was his birthday, so we decided to stay at his place on Staurday night and meet up Sunday to go shoot machineguns (he's got a Browning as well). They all shot flawlessly, which was something I'd wondered about. (You have to figure that these are hand-made, custom guns. A lot can go wrong.) I'm really happy with it. (Well, I had to file down the T&E a little so it would fit on the traverse bar, but that wasn't a big deal.)
My brother showed Andy the video he took on our last trip to the Big Sandy MG shoot in October. Andy was on the fence about going, and ended up staying home. While watching Shawn's video, he gained a new appreciation for the scope of the event. He just stood there watching it saying things like "No way..." and "Right on!". After it was over, he turned around and said "OK, we're going to need a shitload of ammo..."
We all put in our orders and he went to the store Monday. Took two hand trucks two trips to get it all out to his car:
Each one of those cans holds 400 rounds of .308 ammunition, and there are 23 of them. I think that ought to about do it.
I had seen the Steve, Don't Eat It site before, but forgot about it for some reason. After reading all the entries, I can honestly say that I'm more informed now than I was before. Who knew that Rosie O'Donnell's scrotum and bacon-flavored dog snacks had anything in common? Or that you can make wine with an old sock? Good stuff!
And his site has wonderful party tips. Like these weevil hors d'oeuvres:
I also vow to never, ever eat natto.
The dude is the business, man: too cool for school. To wit:
Those tribal-ish tattoos on a woman's lower back which extend outward? The Germans have a name for them: Arschgeweih. Which literally translates to "butt antlers".
Turns out that Jaegermeister sponsors a Miss Arschgeweih contest at bars. And they even have t-shirts which commemorate it.
I dig the Germans.
Tracy's friend Ian sent her an email about this guy who live a few miles from me. This guy collects tanks.
If I ever became insanely rich, I know what my garage would look like. That dude is my personal hero. I have to rty to make it up to the museum one day.
And if I did, it would be awkward and horrible. I could hurt my partner if I tried to dance; in fact, people have been hurt. But I have to say that "Get Down Tonight" by KC & The Sunshine Band makes me want to start dancing when I hear it. But then again I've been listening to Peter Frampton lately when nobody's around. So I could have a brain injury or something.
The latest addition to the locker is a big one:
It's a beaut, too: an Israeli-made Browning 1919A4 light machine gun, in .30 caliber (7.62x51). It's got a lot of newer parts, and has been completely re-parkerized. The trunion has almost no wear, there's not a weld in sight, and the tolerances are pretty good. I had to open the top cover with a rubber mallet the first time, in fact. The charging handle was pretty stiff, too. I'm going to need to take it apart and apply a generous helping of LSA to its guts with a shaving brush.
It's sitting on an M2 tripod of WWII vintage. The tripod has a brass id tag, but it was removed for repainting. The tripod's in very nice shape for being old.
Not shown is the T&E mechanism (well, it's shown; it's in the ziploc bag on the right, in the case by the manual). That mounts under the rear of the gun, just in front of the trigger/grip, and attaches to the traverse bar (the rod that runs between the rear legs of the tripod). It's a fairly complex device, and it's job is to raise/lower the muzzle, as well as move it left and right. This is done by using the adjusting knobs on the T&E itself (which are much like those on, say, a microscope), and/or moving the T&E across the traverse bar (which has gradations engraved on it).
The way it works is that once you get it all set up in a position, you sight the weapon in on one or more locations and then note the numbers on the T&E and traverse bar. That way, you can move between various targets without having to look down the sights; you're already zeroed in.
My uncle got one too (my friend Andy also owns one), so we were thinking of having a mini-competition next time we go on an overnight camp trip. We need to find a place that has some decent range, though. Then there's always the Big Sandy Machinegun Shoot, which was a hilariously good time back in October. It'll be a kick to go again as shooters and not observers.
...to watch the whole full-length movie, here's a 30 second version of It's A Wonderful Life. Bonus: it's re-enacted by bunnies.
If you buy an expensive piece of electronics (or an expensive anything, really), you should be happy with that choice. Like everything else, it should function as you'd expect, without the artificial limits or constraints that companies sometimes apply in order to keep people safe from themselves. If you happen to believe that making concessions to the lowest common demonimator is putting artificial barriers between you and satisfaction with your purchase, then you have one of two options:
I don't know about anyone else, but I tend to go on features, and figure work-arounds as need be. I recently came across such a situation when I bought a Pioneer AVIC-Z1. It has almost every single feature I want in an in-dash nav system (I wish it would show you raw GPS info). Except that lawyers have obviously gotten to the designers before the product got out the door, and so some of those features don't always work when you'd expect them to. This annoys me.
Tracy and I take road trips occasionally. Wouldn't you know, the Z1 plays DVDs -- in Dolby/DTS stereo no less. And even though the screen is only like 7 inches, it looks pretty good. Except for that little issue of how the DVD function only works if the car is in park and the parking brake is on. Uh... if I want to watch a DVD while my car is in "park", I'll go inside and look at my TV. What? Am I supposed to want to watch DVDs at rest stops or something? I figure that Tess might like to watch a movie while we're on the road. And I figure that I'm responsible enough not to be saying "Durrr... that's a good movie..." right before we crash.
Likewise, I'd like to be able to set a new destination while underway. Say that you think you need to go to a certain Point-of-Interest (POI in Z1-speak) but on the way there realize that your needs have changed, or that you'd like to go somewhere else. Well, you need to find a place to park, stop the car, put it in park, set the e-brake, then change your route to include the new POI. Why can't my passenger do that for me if one is available? The seat has a pressure sensor in it. Why isn't it smart enough to know that if I have a passenger, some features aren't at all dangerous and are in fact very desireable? The thing already understands natural human speech, why can't it figure that simple thing out? It's a binary decision!
Well, the Z1 has many nice features. And you get access to all of them. When parked. I would ike to access them maybe while not in park. Not competing product has the same featureset or interface, and many have similar restrictions anyway. So I'm faced with choice #2 above.
Lo and behold, other folks felt as I did. Someone discovered that before starting the car, you can disengage the e-brake and then flash the headlights three times right after the car is started. The Z1 thinks it's in some demo/diagnostic mode and every menu option works. And while this is a handy feature, it's just a little too Rain Man for me.
Luckily, someone with more electronics skill than I has developed a tiny electronics package that simulates this flashing by oscillating the power to the wire which senses if the headlights are on. And they sell this circuit to folks willing to cut and crimp a few wires in order to get more convenience out of their purchasing decision. How cool is that!?
I'm in the process of ordering my flasher circuit now. I've already got the crimpers and heatshrink tubing, so all is well. Soon, I will not have to be faced with decisions spawned by fears of litigious idiots. Huzzah!
There are some pretty cool images on the Pictures That Could Be Superheroes Machines page. The Überschwerer Kampfschreitpanzer is a particular favorite. I dig the MG42 up on top...
My new favorite band is Ok Go. A couple years ago, that song "Get Over It" was big on the radio, and I figured I'd look into getting the rest of that album, but forgot. So I'm sitting home today with a cold, and that song pops into my head. I head over to the Ruskies and three bucks later I have two CD's worth of mpeggery stored away.
I'm giving the latest album a listen, and I like it. Their music reminds me of The Stranglers a little. It's sort of low-tech in a way that I like. Has an infectous beat, which is always good. It sounds like music that could have been made 25 years ago.
Tracy pointed out that the video for the song "Here It Goes Again" is worth a look, and indeed it is. Those treadmills look fun.
Anyway, I wound up going to their web site and buying a t-shirt. They'll get more off that sale than if I bought their CDs in the store. If they end up playing locally, I'll go see them for sure.
Tracy and I picked up a Series3 Tivo Saturday. I'm not normally given to high-tech gadget lust, but this was a compelling buy. When I was in Phoenix, I went to Fry's with my mom and brother, and they had the new Tivos there. It sure looked nice, but it was too expensive. My mon's been pining for one. She's saddled with the Cox DVRs now, and hates them. But they can record one channel while you're watching another. Well now, here's a Tivo that can do that as well -- and it has all the regular features like wishlists, upcoming episode searchin, season passes and such that the Cox DVR lacks.
After I got back home, I started thinking about it some more. We've had our current Tivo for 4 years, and we got the lifetime subscription on it. I like that I don't have to pay every month, and that $250 lifetime fee would have cost $600 if we were paying monthly. The Tivo only cost $300, so we're fifty bucks into the black. If I could get the same lifetime subscription on the new Tivo, the price goes down if we have it for a few years. (Of course, the older Tivo's price goes farther into the negative cost end of the scale over those same years, but that's beside the point.)
Our Tivo has been making some odd noises; I think a fan is going. And it has a nasty habit of thinking that it's out of space, when there are plenty of yellow-flagged shows to get rid of (Tracy's lost a few episodes of Lost that way). The menus are slow, and the little IR emotters that shine into the cable box's front are constantly getting knocked around. And another nail in the Series2 coffin: Not only did we pay a little extra for an HD-capable TV, we pay extra every month for an HD cable box -- and we never watch HD channels since the Tivo can't record them! That's kind of a waste.
So I'm at Fry's looking at the new box and it seems like a good deal. It has two HD tuners in it, and so all you need to do is get Comcast to come over and bring the decoder cards that slide into the back. Then we can stop paying $18/month for an HD cable box. Being able to record one channel and watch another is a big plus. But the biggest thing is that it occurs to me that if we want to watch an HD program, we just change the channel! There's no more need to find the TV remote, change the source, find the cable box remote, change the channel to an HD one, turn on the stereo, adjust the volume, and settle in... only to have Tivo change the channel halfway through on the other input, since it think it wants to record something for us.
Being able to ditch the cable box and its fee, plus being able to watch a set of channels that we pay extra for is a big plus. I've heard rumors that there might be a Comcast-branded Tivo coming out soon, and that was sort of what I was angling for. But will the interface be the same? Will it have two tuners? What will it cost per month? I'm pretty certain that there won't be any way to transfer the lifetime subscription over to that box. And what if we move to a place that doesn't have Comcast? We've already taken our Tivo to a different cable company, and it's a couple minute's setup to change it over. No way will Comcast let us take the cobranded box with us, even if it would work someplace else. Why pay rent on something when owning something else means that it gets free-er the longer you have it?
So we bought the new Tivo and called it Christmas.
I have it all hooked up, and I'm waiting on the Comcast guy now. It works as is, but only gets the non-digital channels (up to like channel 70 or something). We already got to see the dual-tuner feature in action, too. It's going to come in very handy. We were watching a channel, and had paused a little, so we were into the buffer. I was fiddling with the remote and accidentally changed the channel. Normally, that means the buffer is lost on the old channel and you have to pick it back up in real-time; anything you missed is gone. But this time, I clicked the last channel button, and there was our buffered show. Cool!
Something I like but hadn't thought about before seeing it is that the whole interface is bigger. The channel guide stretches out so that you can see more on the menus. This is because you can set the Tivo such that it will always show stuff at 1080p (ie, 16:9). This means more area for menus. But for normal viewing, it will draw letterbox bars where it needs to. Changing a channel to an HD one means those bars go away and suddenly your watching HD. Flip back to normal TV channels and it's 4:3 with bars again. It's very nice. (And snappy! No more IR emitter lag!)
Another bonus was that it supports HDMI. So I can lose the five AV cables coming out of the old Tivo. I wish my amp had HDMI inputs. Then I could lose another 8 cables. I really like not having that rat's nest back there. Birthday might come early this year...
I ran across this today and had to share:
I wish I could find the wall-sized prints. Awesome indeed.
Google had a halloween party yesterday. It was a big event. I vaguely recall it being a large to-do last year. I went down to see what the fuss was all about, but then went back upstairs and got back to work. We worked a lot last fall. Most of October and all of November, in fact.
I only got a few photos, but coworkers snapped more than a couple. One in particular got a large set. She put them up on her Picasaweb account. They even got some with people I recognize.
She got Jeromy and his daughter. Last time I saw her she was a couple weeks old.
Nobody managed to get my coworker Scott, even though he had lots of people take his pic. He and his wife Dana had good getups. (Dana was "a grandmother", by the way.)
There were kids all over. The wee batman looked happy. Some pretty darn good costumes all around. The iPod guy was good. Evel Knievel was a favorite. Borat was very nice -- and he stayed in character! The guy dressed as a pirate who had a real, live bird was good. My favorite has to be Waldemar. Just... wow. I don't think anyone but him could carry that off.
And finally there is the 82nd representing in the background, yo.
It was a pretty good time. I had a few folks take my photo, and only one negative comment (which I didn't expect at all). A lady came up to me and said "You've got the scariest costume here". "How so?", I asked. She explained that there were "too many of you soldiers in the world today". I replied that there was almost not enough running around during WWII, and that without them and the sacrifices they made a lot of the people in this world would be leading fairly unhappy lives right now. The Dutch in particular, I said, didn't seem to think there was a shortage of soldiers in Fall of 1944. In fact, they're still happy there were so many back then. And then I went on to explain that my grandfather was in the 82nd Airborne and wore a uniform identical to what I had on. I said that I wanted to wear it to get a connection with what those folks went through, and that I'd like to think that there's some small part of me that has a little of what those guys had, to do what they did. She paused for a bit and then said "Well, ok I guess. So how does it feel to wear your grandfather's uniform?" And I told her that it was constricting and hot, but I was really happy I was wearing it.
Why do some people feel like they need to go up to complete strangers and be nasty like that? She was dressed as a witch. Would she be open to J. Random Holy Roller running some "You're setting a bad example for the kids here, with that witchcraft thing" nonsense past her, completely unsolicited like? I'm sure she'd have an open mind about that person's viewpoints and they would engage in meaningful dialog.
Lastly, I would like to comment on the ban on "weapons or weapon-like objects" as part of costumes. This guy didn't get that memo. I even took my leg knife off. Hmmph
Man, I'm dying laughing at this chat log of a 13 year old kid trying to steal someone's online game account.
"Mow some yards" indeed.
It's the smell of .45ACP cartridges being disassembled at the rate of 600 per minute. To wit:
That is me shooting the Thompson M1928 at the Big Sandy Machine Gun shoot. It would be a bargain at twice the price of $20 per magazine. I could have spent all day there. Did pretty well, too; I hit many a barrel and even single shots were pretty easy once I got the hang of it.
And note the finger that came out of the trigger guard when I thought the mag was empty. That's some style there, if I do say so myself. Remember, kids: If you aren't shooting it, don't be fingering it.
I was just sitting here thinking: I love the smell of newly tanned leather. I'm not sure why, but it's a comfort smell. That's weird.
For soem reason, I don't like artificial materials in clothing. The only thing I ever wear that isn't natural is probably the elastic in my socks and underwear and the occasional fleece. Aside from that, I just don't like nylon and such.
This is why I tend to gravitate to leather and canvas and wool and wood over plastic and nylon and gore-tex and polycarbonate. It's all heavier, I know. And it smells after some use, I know. Part of me likes that smell.
I just bought a newly-made M3 shoulder holster for my 1911 (it's made slightly longer than the original WWII version; my original version is somewhat constraining) and the smell is just... lovely. Saddle leather, I guess it is. I can smell it across the room, and so I had to start huffing it. I guess I should go buy an old surplus army tent and then just get it over with and go catatonic in the backyard.
Really, I'm not sure what it is about the smell of old canvas and such that I like, but I suspect it's what keeps me buying various articles of duffel. Better than gambling, I guess.
Tracy and I learned how to captain a 34-foot trawler in SF Bay over the weekend. She has all the pictures on her flickr account.
We've had our eye towards buying a used boat for a while now, but wanted some education on the basics of powerboating. I hooked up with Club Nautique and we signed up for their basic Powerboating Course. It was really everything I was looking for. We covered rules of the road, safety, engine systems and chart reading.
It was a two-day course, and Day 1 had us on the boat right away. We all climbed about the Lucky G, our trawler, and immediately when through the pre-launch inspection checklist. We checked that the seacocks were open, no water in the bilge (and the pumps worked), went over the electrical system and Tracy even got to do the radio check.
I was in charge of securing the starboard lines. And so I was at the stern line, having untied it but with the rope still lopped once around the cleat ready to free it, when Captain Richard, our instructor, shouted for me to release the stern line. I did, tied the line up to the railing and we were off.
We powered out to a quietish spot in the bay and Rich told me to take the helm. I drove around in circles for a little while, and we all got a chance to get a feel for the throttle and steering.
While we were out in the open water, Rich taught us how to do a pivot turn. Which is no mean feat in a boat that can't steer in reverse. The trick is to turn the left all the way to port, go forward at idle a little, then put it in neutral. After a couple seconds, you put it in idle reverse, keeping the wheel to port. Even though it can't steer, the prop walk takes over and helps out a little -- if the wind cooperates.
The Lucky G has a left-handed prop. That means the propeller rotates counter-clockwise in forward gear and, obviously, clockwise in reverse. That means that when in reverse, the stern will swing to starboard and the bow to port. This is because the propeller doesn't just move water forward and backward, but it also shoves it to the side as it's turning. In forward, the shape of the hull, the rudder, wind and such are more powerful than this weak force. But in reverse, it's that sideways pushing of the water which swings the stern around. Lucky G made a decent counter-clockwise pivot turn when the wind wasn't too fast. Pivots in the other direction are impossible.
Once we all got the pivot turn down, we headed back to the slip. Jason was the guy who got to put it in and he did really well (he'd been on ski boats and such before).
As soon as we had it in, I asked if I should secure the stern line. Rich smiled and said, "No, you should back the boat out, head down two rows, turn right, do a 180, and then put it back into the slip". And so I did. The first time I put it into the slip went off without a hitch. The wind was just right and I somehow managed to line up exactly where I needed to be. And so Rich made me do it once more.
I completely missed the entrance on the second try. I was over as far as I had been before, but the wind had died. So we all got to see firsthand how much even a little wind can push around a ship with that much freeboard. So I had to do a pivot turn and try again. Trouble is, now there was a ship coming out of a slip in front of us, a ship which had pulled up to the fuel dock (which was two slips away from us) and another large boat of some type heading into the marina. So that was another good lesson for us, and I managed to get the boat into the slip OK.
Tracy's turn at the helm had her a little nervous, I think. Rich was impressing on us that everything is slow and deliberate. "This boat's pretty big, and takes a little while to respond to changes", he explained. But after the first docking, Tracy was a natural. Once you get a feel for the controls it's a lot easier. She did her two dockings with no problem.
After lunch, we went back onto the boat to learn about docking. And then we got to practice putting the boat into a slip the opposite direction from our normal one.
We didn't leave the marina all day except for that once, but both Tracy and I has sea legs pretty bad. So we decided to watch Jaws on Saturday night. It was funny watching it and saying things like "Hey, isn't Quint leaving the dock a little too fast? That's a no-wake zone..."
Sunday started out with about 3 hours in the classroom. We learned about the buoy system, "person in water" (man overboard) situations, some safety stuff and concluded with a navigation exercise.
Rich split us into two teams. Tracy and Ron were together as Team A and me and Jason paired up as Team B. Team A had to get us out of the marina, under the Bay Bridge and into Clipper Cove. Team B's job was to get us back, and we had to go around the other side of Treasure Island.
Rich gave us about a half hour with the charts, dividers and parallel rulers. We had to draw each leg that made up the route, and then mark bearing and distance. Then we had to think about speed, and that gave us our travel time. Oh yeah, we also had to avoid obstacles. My first route has us going through a portion of the Bay Bridge.
We quickly figured out that you have to plot a course that runs fairly close to a buoy or other marker. There are a lot of red and green buoys (as well as orange sqares, daymarkers with stacked green and red, etc), and if you're looking for "red #2", then you have to make sure it's #2 and not #4. I wish we would have brought binocs with us.
I also wish we would have brought a calculator as it would have made things a little faster when plotting the route. You have to travel 1.13 nautical miles at 9 knots. How long will that take? Well, you figure it out with a little basic algebra. Travel time for that particular 1.13NM leg was a about 7 1/2 minutes. I can't recall the last time I did long division by hand, but it's good to know that I still could.
After class, we picked up lunch to go and set out. Team A had Ron at the helm and Tracy navigating. The first leg terminated at a buoy which wasn't there. Since the third leg of my journey used that same buoy on the way back, I was interested in finding it as well. Turns out that it was just missing. So they had to break out the pencil and re-plot the route on the fly.
While Tracy was at the helm, she got to experience what would be one of four "PIW Drills". That's where Rich would throw overboard a couple fenders tied together and yell "Crew overboard!". Tracy handled it right, first designating a spotter and then simulating a call to the Coast Guard. Ron was on the pole and hooked the "person" no trouble.
We pulled into Clipper Cover and found a quiet spot, then Team A got to learn about the anchoring and how to set and retrieve it. We ate lunch "on the hook" and then it was time for our tests. The test wasn't very hard. It was 35 questions, and some of them were very similar to the California Boating Safety Course (though jet skis weren't on it).
I'm happy to say that everyone passed. Tracy and I both got one wrong answer. The question I missed was: "What knot would you use to join two lines of differing sizes?" I answered a bowline, even though I knew the answer was a sheet bend. I was doing the little "rabbit goes out the hole, around the tree..." thing in my head when I was trying to recall the answer and I think that screwed me up.
After the test, it was time for Team B to take over and get us back. I started out operating the windlass for the anchor recovery exercise, with Jason at the helm. I don't think he saw my hand signals. Rich dinged us pretty hard on the lack of communication (or, I should say "the lack of effectiveness of cimmunication"). But we got it hauled up and washed, and were on our way.
The fun part came when we left the leeward side of Clipper Cove (it's an anchorage protected from the wind, which is why the airplanes used it) and into The Slot. Calms seas became 4 foot waves. We had water washing up over the boat at one point. Turns out it's also one of the best sailing areas in the world. The ocean wind gets funneled under the Gold Gate and then howls down in one direction towards Oakland. All the tidal action floods and ebbs though this narrow gap as well. So currents are fierce.
We managed to avoid all the boats, big tankers, the waves, etc and started out on our third leg with about a 90 degreee turn to port, headed roughly south. San Francisco was on our starboard and Tracy got some nice photos. We managed to find our alternate buoy easily since we recognized it, and so Rich said that we should learn about the GPS navigation system.
We set in a new course and were gazing at the autopilot when Jason said to me "Hey, you should drive now". Why? As soon as my hand hit the wheel, Tracy screams "Crew overboard!". I made Tracy the spotter and put Ron on the hook. I somehow remembered to turn off the autopilot and get us downwind of the fenders floating in the water. But I came in too fast and had to make another pass. The second time was slower, but the wind pushed us off course and Ron couldn't hook it. I got right up against them the third time, and even though Ron got the fenders aboard, I was still going too fast. Rich explained that if Ron were trying to yank a 200 pound man out of the water, he'd have been pulled overboard as well.
So we headed back in, me humming the "red, right, return" mantra in my head and Jason got us into the slip. We tied up, washed everything off, went through the checklist and were done.
I'm definitely going to take another course or three. And the owner of the club had a good point: Charter the Lucky G a couple times in the coming months. Every time we go out, we learn new things and reinforce what we already learned. And it'd be a fun weekend excursion. Rich says there are some really nice anchorages up by Sausalito suitable for overnight stays.
Anyway, there's the novelized version of 16 hours of boating instruction. Now if I can just stop looking at the boat section of craigslist all will be well...
I think this would kill me. But it looks like a hellaciously fun way to go.
...plus a million things I still don't know. That's what I learned last night.
See, I stayed up until 4:30 last night reading every article on this page and this page. I'm serious; I read them all.
My head (no pun intended) is awash (err...) with tales of woe and doom. But I found it very informative. Knowing what not to do was, I think, what was putting me off. It's not very hard to spend $50,000 and through omission of action wind up with exactly $0. Hearing about what's bad enables you to think about what needs to be good. It's a lot of work, too, keeping everything in order. Except now it's not mysterious, what needs to be done.
Plus, I know more about galvanism and electrolysis and pumping and amp-hours and hull-throughs than I ever thought I would. So that was a cool brain-load last night. Made for a tired day, though.
I still think that I'm going to start slow, renting bare charters for a while, until I get the basics down. It pays to hang around the marina, listening to folks who aren't selling things. Besides it'll still get me out on the water and exploring so that's cool.
After reading all that last night, I was sort of thinking way back to that VW Squareback I built right after high school. If I didn't turn a wrench at least once every 3,000 miles, I'd break down somewhere for certain (including one time on the Goldan Gate Bridge at 4:30 on a Friday; that was a fun time). The car would just get mad at me for my inattentive ways and would not put up with me anymore until I gave it the care it desired. After a while I found myself getting bored and gapping valves and replacing points or fuel filters just because it was "Sunday".
I get the feeling that the same sorts of things are involved in boating. There's lots of putzing around with various maintenance-style tasks, it seems. About as much time is spent fiddling and maintaining as actual on-the-water boating, it looks like. But being a handy guy who likes to tinker, that's fine by me. I still think it'll be fun. Better use of time than video games, anyway...
Boy, they sure did produce some swell comics back in the 40's. If only that one came with a secret decoder ring, too! That would be nifty!
So this was somewhat unexpected. And more than a little bizarre. I mean, appreciate the thanks and all that, but at first it sorta seemed like candy from strangers, you know? "Geeks bearing gifts", you might say.
And I was forced to wonder what sort of thinking was behind your giving free food to people who get free breakfast, lunch and dinner (and snacks)? I'm not complaining, mind you; I got my slice. I just found it curious and somewhat odd, in a cool way. I bet those other guys who have to pay for lunch every day were jealous, and that's cool too.
Anyway, thank you for the pizza, you're welcome. Pizza is good, schwag is even better. Wink, wink.
With the utmost gratitude (and a full stomach),
wee
P.S. If you ever want to stage another event to thank Google for everything that it's done for your company, you might want to think about hosting the video of that event on Google Video instead of YouTube. Just a friendly hint...
Check it out: Google can show you when earthquakes happened.
One more: If I was a tax accountant, I'd advertise in January.
Another good one: The country or the bird?
When I was walking in the parking lot at work I saw a bumper sticker on a car that said "Churches Eat Souls". I stopped and reflected on that for a moment, and realized that one little sticker said volumes about what blind faith can do to people. It made me think about my soul, and if I have one.
Of course, this was coming after my previous post about radical Islam, and an email thread started by Greg about patriotism, so it might have been my mood at the time which made me so introspective. But the way I saw it, and how I stopped afterwards, made a lasting impression on me.
Amazing what a bumper sticker can do sometimes.
Islam is an alien society to me. I have a hard time getting my head around how a large group of people can be so fundamentally religious that every part of their society -- including its leaders and its laws -- is based solely on religious ideas. I reckon that it takes either absolutely deep conviction or blind ignorance to throw everything you have (including your very life) to the will of some intangible notion of a god and its supposed will as interpreted by its devoted (yet mortal) followers. I'll never be that pious. I'm not sure if that's necessarily a good thing or not, but deep down I just can't get past the power grab that always seems to come from being the incarnate arbiter of god's will. Though at some level, you have to respect devotion of such magnitude. They have nothing if not a sense of devotion.
I figured that I knew as much as any Westerner about the what makes Islam seem so... angry. I know what the difference is between Sunnis and Shi'ites, and I know why they will never really get along with one another. (Shi'ites lost their true religious leader way back in 931 AD. Osama the Sunni is freshly pissed off about the outcome of the World War I and the demise of the Ottoman Empire.) What I didn't know was why pretty much all Muslim groups seem to be singularly united in that they are looking forward to the demise of Western Civilization.
That's doubtless a very blanket statement, and I feel a little unwilling to paint an entire religion (or, ah, culture) with such a fanitcal brush. Maybe it's Western media, but it's hard to escape the notion that there are large numbers of Muslims who would like to see Europe, and the U.S. in particular, gone.
So I found this story, Islam's Imperial Dreams, very engrossing reading.
Turns out that it's not just because we're heathens (well, that does play a part in it, I guess). It's because they're upset that they still don't have a caliph in Spain. They're upset that their conquer of Europe was stopped by the Franks. They're mad that their dream of a worldwide, theistic hegemony was finally put out of its ailing misery not long after Ferdinand got shot.
Put short: There's a fairly significantly vocal group of Muslims who want to rule the world, and we're standing in their way.
It's not religious conviction, desire for god's glory, land for their people, or any other altruism that's feeding this desire. It's greed. Pure, unabashed greed. These vocal few hate us because they want what we have, and want to kill us to get it. They want to do this under a religious banner of "Convert Or Die". And given that under their religion (which effectively means "in their society") one can be put to death for apostasy, I'm glad we're in their way; I'd be the first to die. I don't even really believe Mohammed existed (beyond a metaphor), much less that he was a prophet of any sort (you can't be a prophet without a god, right?).
I'll respect anyone right to practice a religion -- until I have to face the prospect of death because of it. That goes solidly against the grain of one of my most important convictions: Do whatever you want, just leave me out of it. So life as a subjugate in a fundamentalist Muslim world would not go well for me, and I'm happy that I live in a society that is somewhat more tolerant (though I suspect that this wouldn't be the case if some fundamentalist Christian types here in the U.S. had their way; these clowns are merely the other side of this same fanatical coin).
At any rate, part of me thought that they hated the Western world because we offended their religious sensibilities or were simply amoral in their eyes. Now I realize that I was giving them too much credit. They're merely hiding behind religion, and using it as a tool to further their greedy ambitions -- just like everyone else has been doing for thousands of years. That really doesn't elevate them much beyond the level of common thuggery. Or televangelism.
I kind of feel sad for the jihadists now. I mean, it's a land grab, nothing more.
I'm sure not every Muslim in the world is wringing their hands in anticipation of watching hordes of Westerners being put to the sword in the town square, but those guys burning American restaurants because of a few Danish cartoons haven't really got everything screwed down tight upstairs, if you get my drift. And I'm pretty sure that Ahmadinejad's wanting Israel to be "wiped off the map" isn't exactly a fringe notion. Iran elected the man president, after all, so he has to have popular support. Whether that's tacit approval for a plan to nuke Israel might be too much of a stretch, but I have to believe that the people knew who they were electing -- and what direction his geopolitical ideas ran towards.
So it could be a few vocal (and/or violent) bad apples spoiling the barrel. But it's interesting to know where they're coming from when they do stuff like blow up a bus or crash a couple planes into a few buildings or kill over 100 people because of an off-hand comment about Mohammed and women in bikinis. You have to try to get your head around to that way of thinking to even begin to understand anything as alien as dying and wanting to kill because of a cartoon or a disparaging remark.
I'm just having a lot of trouble coming to grips with people who have that much religious conviction. Their way of thinking is completely inconceivable to me.
You know that you're bound for a happy day when the drive into work features the asshole in the beamer who cut you off 5 minutes earlier parked on the side of the road with a cop behind him. I just love seeing BMWs getting pulled over. And if you get to respond to their prior shenanigans by flipping them off as you drive by, so much the better.
I got plenty done today (mostly due to my upbeat mood), including finishing an XML-based thing I was doing. More internal tools leveraged, so that ups my score a little come review time. Plus it'll save a few folks some time and effort down the road, so it's a nice thing to have behind me. Later in the day, I bailed out on TGIF, happened to meet Tess as I was driving back from the hardware store and we went shopping for groceries. Got home before 6:30!
And the best part is that I was doing it all in my new boots:
These are the handmade orthopedic work boots of which I've enthused about on a previous occasion. They really fit my feet extremely well, but they were so stiff at first that it felt as though I had strapped bricks to my feet. But they're loosening up nicely. I went and ordered some Pecards shoe butter for them. It's supposed to lube all the fibers up and help them start conforming (waterproofs the leather, too).
Now, I'm going to install Windows on a tiny PC hooked up to my TV, and have a strong drink or two. I have one more small cigar left for after dinner, too. All in all, a happy day.
I went to drop off my lunch tray and happened to notice that the two fellows playing pool on the billiards table next to the mini-kitchen were Tibetan monks. Maroon robes, shaved heads, beads on the belts, the works. The one guy was pretty good, but for some reason the visual anacronism was enough that I just couldn't stop chuckling and so had to get out of there.
Every year Google rents a ski resort and takes the entire company on a trip. I didn't know if I was looking forward to it or not.
Both my knees are pretty well shot. One from a raquet ball accident and the other from falling off a mountain. They aren't too bad for hiking and whatnot, but aren't terribly amenable to any sideways-type motion. So I wasn't sure how into skiiing I'd be. Besides, I don't know how to ski, and I didn't want to spend the entire day listening to someone tell me how to get back up once I'd managed to fall. I mean, is there really anything to do at a ski resort besides, well, ski? Apparently there is.
The invitation came out and we had to pick what activity we wanted. I guess they rent all your gear for you and everything and snowboarding is popular. I was preparing to sit in a lodge near a fire and smoke cigars, read a book and drink myself silly on brandy. But then I saw they had inner tubing! I can do that, dodgy knees and all! I needed gear, however.
Along comes this email on the misc list at work telling us that The Sports Basement was holding special hours for Googlers -- and we'd get 20% off anything we bought during the special sale. Coincidence, or clever marketing? Hmmmm....
So I wound up getting some decent waterproof boots, waterproof pants with far too many zippers, a fleece liner, a decent jacket (also with excess zipperage), waterproof gloves, and a fleece beenie. I am very eXtreme, let me tell you. I may in fact, if the situation warrants, "Do the Dew". And how.
Now we'll see what this ski resort thing is all about. In style.
Ever wondered what they eat in "worsh up" country? Stuff like Tator [sic] Tot Hotdish.
Yeah, you heard that right: "Hotdish". That's what it's called. It's, uh, hot. In a dish. Get it? Double points for creativity!
And it's NOT a casserole! Because it has soup in it, see. Lots of soup. Beef, an onion, tater tots and soup. No additional salt needed. The tots and soup have all the salt you'd want. Though I'd add cheese or heavy cream in there somewhere. And gravy. Got to have gravy. Might as well make the circle complete. Since you're using tater tots as a FUCKING INGREDIENT and all...
Anyway, that's a hotdish. Just thinking about it makes me want to eat a salad and jog 3 miles.
I finally got to go to a Trader Vic's! Last week, Tess was driving back from Stanford and spied a little tiki-ish sign on the side of the road. Trader Vic's! Right there on El Camino Real! We had to go.
We got together with coworker Jim and his wife and had dinner there last night. I was expecting kitschy (and would have been perfectly happy with that; in fact I wore a nice aloha shirt, just to hedge that bet) but the place was very swanky. And the food was amazing. I had this Chilean sea bass in a wasabi buerre blanc sauce... oh baby. That was probably the best fish I've ever eaten. It was one of the best dinners I've ever had, actually. That was a shock.
When the waiter asked if we'd like drinks, I had to say yes. You're there in Trader Vic's! Drinks? The order of the day is a Mai Tai, natch! It was predictably tasty. I've had many versions of the beverage, but it was important to taste the original.
I've found my new favorite restaurant. Any out of town guests better bring something tropical and semi-fancy to wear...
If anything ever fit the category of "Random Stuff" that would be this video called Morning Musume vs. Lizard.
They subject this young japanese pop group to a giant lizard. By making them wear meat helmets. I guess the winner is whomever keeps their head in the lizard tank the longest.
That's just... wow.
Also be sure to check out Morning Musume vs. A Large Black man. I'm no entirely sure what the point of that game is. I think he wants to cook and eat those tiny women, but it might just be about ballons.
Well, more accurately, it would be "Austria by September". Tracy and I are going to Europe. Much as I hate the general concept, we're taking a tour package. But I think this one will be different.
We certainly would get to see a lot: seven countries in 14 days. And frankly, I'm kind of glad that I don't have to worry about hotels and transportation and such. I'm sure getting around is easy enough, but at least with this one, they take you right to where you need to be so you can spend more time walking around the place instead of trying to figure out what turn you should have taken at that last roundabout, where the nearest rental car place is in Belgium, how to get over that fence to that certain spot in the woods, etc.
This all came about because I decided last summer that I wanted to go to Europe again -- the continent this time. And I happened across this book. I read it cover to cover. That sealed it for me. I bought a Michelin map of France and Holland, and sat down and started to see what a good 10 day trip would look like.
I wanted to see Pont-du-hoc, Omaha Beach, Carentan, Foy, Bastogne, Nijmegen, Eindhoven, and a couple other places. I didn't want to specifically see all the "Band of Brothers" battle sites, just a couple of them along with some other spots listed in the book. So Tracy and I were thinking that we'd get a rail pass, book a few hotels and sort of play it by ear once we got over there. We did that in London, and it worked out pretty well.
But then I saw the tour and figured that it's probably the only chance I'd have to get such a unique first-hand perspective of the war. And getting that perspective while standing on the exact places where the events occurred is just too good to pass up. (How else could you go see the grounds at Brecourt Manor? It's private property...) My goal was to actually be where everything went down. I wanted to see if that would impart a sense of gravity to the history, to make it somehow more visceral and get a feeling from the place. I don't know how much more visceral you can get with two actual vets telling you how it was -- while pointing at where it was!
So my reasoning is to do this tour this year, and if I want to go back and see Monte Cassino or Nuremberg then I can do that next year. But I might not be able to do the Easy Co. tour next year. Or, more correctly, Bill and Babe might not be able to. They aren't entirely young. (In fact, I saw this tour last year, for the 60th anniversary of WWII. I thought it was a one-time deal, and was surprised that they're doing it again.)
The only possible downside I could see is if tour is be "overly commemorative". There's one part where the vets review soem British WWII re-enactors. I don't have much interest in that. I just wonder if after a bit the tribute might get a little old or contrived. But probably not; I'm sure the spirit of the thing will be suitable for the occasion. Now that I think about it, even if it does get a tad maudlin at times, it'll still be worth it. And I also like that they provide airfare and meals. It's pretty much all included for you, so there's less to worry about and more to see.
It also occurred to me that my brother Shawn might like to go. I was thinking about talking to my folks and seeing if they want to pitch in on his ticket with me. He doesn't have the resources to go on a trip like this, but it would be something he'd remember for the rest of his life. He's a good traveler as well, so that'd be fun. Now if only I can convice Andy and UJ to go...
I've been working more than not the past couple weeks, and it's been frustrating. I can say that C++ blows. I like to get stuff done, not have to think about how to get stuff done. I never thought I'd say this, but... I miss Java.
Yeesh.
So after a particularly long and frustrating day, I was grabbing a Naked Juice out of the fridge in the lobby (Tess needs her googly dividend, you know) and I saw the following on the little search term crawl screen they have in all the lobbies:
matrix mpeg bill gates steve ballmer
how do I kill myself
There I was holding my juice, thinking about what a crappy day it's been (more to come!) and for no reason happened to look up at the search terms scrolling by as I was walking out. I just focused on those two by random chance. The two lines were one after each other, right like that up there.
I laughed loud enough that the guy playing the piano on the break room broke cadence.
All is well.
So yesterday MC Hammer was at work. I think he was speaking about The Jesus or something. I'm not sure; I didn't really get close enough. A few guys got pictures with him, though.
I also grabbed a copy of the new cookbook from Boulevard Restaurant. The recipes sound tasty, but they're, ah, "overly French". I have no clue where to get white truffle sauce, and I'm not sure if I really need Bosc pears as opposed to the hoi polloi variety. I might try their steak though. I had it at lunch. The sauce was tasty, and looks relatively easy to make.
Oh yeah, I also saw the other guy from Wham. Nobody could figure out what his name was. How sad would it be going through life as the least-famous half of a really bad 80's pop band whose members are known more for public restroom hijinks than their music? Better to have rocked and lost then to never have rocked at all, I guess.
Hey, if you're ever in the mood to self-diagnose, try the Worst Case Scenario site. No more wondering about whether you're gonna die... Have the worst conclusion jumped to for you! To wit:
The Worst Case Scenario system cuts out the leg work by immediately jumping to the most paranoically horrifying disease closely matching your symptoms. There may not be an exact match, but there's always something relatively close and totally panic inducing.
Can't get much clearer than that. After all, why waste all that time with doctors when you're going to be dead soon anyway?
Who knew Alton Brown was an inventor? True! He helped invent a new oven. And they make a black model, too.
Very nice...
Having nothing much to do this morning, I decided to load up the Russians with 50 bucks (from a $100 credit card I got for finding my apartment via rent.com) and see how many MP3s it could get me. I found some nice stuff:
Albert King: Born Under a Bad Sign - Really super good blues.
Beck: Guero - His newest. Some good songs, and it was only like a buck-oh-five. Or maybe a buck-fiddy. I forget.
Billie Holiday: All Or Nothing At All - We already have a lot, but one can never have too much Billie.
The Blue Hawaiians: Live At The Lava Lounge - Hello, my name is Bill and I am a tikiholic.
Bo Diddley: His Best - The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection - I've always dug on Bo, but until now never managed to get one of his records. Nobody does slide guitar like him.
Cake: Pressure Chief - This was an automatic choice. I'll listen to anything by Cake. I have all their albums, and every song on every one of them is listenable.
Calexico: In the Black Light - A coworker turned me on to these guys. They're from Tucson, too, but I think they formed after I had already left there for San Diego. They sound pretty much like you'd expect: a kind of tex-mex/rock & roll combo.
Cheap Trick: The Essential Cheap Trick - I actually owned "Live at Budokan" on cassette, and of course it's long gone now. Kind of a guilty pleasure, I've always liked Cheap Trick and I have no idea why.
The Chemical Brothers: Singles 93-03 - I'm pretty sure that Tracy won't like this one but I found it strangely compelling.
Deadly Avenger: Deep Red - I found these guys in the "Funky Breaks" section. And, um, I like bongos.
Duke Ellington: Take the "A" Train - Reminds me of being on liberty, and the USO on a Saturday night. Oh all right, I'll fess up: it has "Caravan" on it.
Echo & the Bunnymen: Ocean Rain - Retro emo. They were one of my favorite bands in high school. They're one of those 80s bands you never hear about on those "I love the 80s" shows or in movies with 80s soundtracks, for some odd reason. I sure listened to the heck out of them, but I guess nobody else did. Still good, though...
ELO: The Very Best Of Electric Light Orchestra (CDs 1 & 2) - The disco compilation down below got me started down this track. Why not download a couple hours of ELO?
Frank Sinatra: On The Sunny Side Of The Street - "I got chunks of guys like you in my stool..."
Foo Fighters: In Your Honor - I've never owned one of their albums, and only ever heard them on the radio. Thought I'd pick some up...
Funkadelic: The Electric Spanking Of War Babies - Not too bad. I think I remember them from way back when. Some of the songs sound oddly familiar.
Goldfrapp: Supernature - A band I'd never even heard of before today. But after a quick listen, this is a decent album with a mesmerizing kind of beat.
Joe Walsh: But Seriously Folks - I heard a Joe Walsh song on the jukebox in this shitty dive bar a bunch of us went to after work last night. So I figured I'd load up. You never know when Mike The Mullet will come over for a Pabst...
Junior Brown: 12 Shade of Brown - I was amazed that I had not one single Junior Brown album anywhere. So I had to rectify that situation.
Kasabian: Kasabian - One of my new favorite bands I think. I've been listening to the album while everythign else downloads, and have yet to hear a song I dislike. I wish this album had more songs on it.
KC & the Sunshine Band: Best of KC & the Sunshine Band - Because you have to. Really.
Kool and the Gang: Collection - Where goes KC, so goes Kool.
Kula Shakur: Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts - They remind me of The Verve. Some mellowish eletronica stuff, some faster stuff, some world beat sounding stuff. Good background music. And there's the odd bagpipe in there, too.
Miles Davis: Essential Miles Davis - Miles Davis' music is sitting in a chair by the window, reading a book, on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Nine Inch Nails: Pretty Hate Machine - Somehow I never got this when it came out back in 1989. Heard it enough. Same thing happen to Red Hot Chili Peppers. Anyhow, I got it for a dollar, so it was like going back in time and telling myself to save $14.
Planet Funk: Non Zero Sumness - Spacey electronica music. I got it for work listening. Might grab another one of the albums as well.
Rage Against the Machine: Renegades - Another odd, guilty pleasure. I always dug RAtM. I think it's that beat thing. This was the only album from them I didn't have.
Red Elvises: Surfing in Siberia - These guys are hilarious. Everything they do is great. Russian Elvis rockabilly surf music. Love it!
The Stranglers: Rattus Norvegicus - Old punk kinda-sorta, and still a good listen.
T-Bone Walker: T-Bone Blues - The Essential Recordings - Man, that's some great stuff there...
Ursula 1000: Ursadelica - I found this album by accident, and it's great! It's hard to describe (it's a remix compilation), but it has elctronica/bossa nova/lounge/tiki sort of music on it. I especially liked "gaijin a go go" by Temura Mental and "Chick A Boom" by Joe Bataan. Can't spend two bucks any better than this.
Ursula 1000: Kinda Kinky - After I found the compilation above, I went looking for more. The genre for this one was listed as "Club/Dance, Funky Breaks" so I had to give it a try. Reminds me of Propellerheads.
Various: Pure Disco, CDs 1996 & 1997 - Sometimes, and not very often, this movement overcomes you. And then you have to listen to Alicia Bridges.
The Verve: A Northern Soul - I found them from a compilation I got a while ago, and for some odd reason recalled their name today. Very atmospheric music, good for doing concentration work.
Violent Femmes: Violent Femmes - I think I must have owned five copies of this back in high school, and got a kick out of listening to it again.
Wild Sammy: Speed Crazy - These guys are hard to describe (being from Japan makes that axiomatic) but they have an infectous beat (to which I am always the sucker).
Not bad for 48 dollars and change, eh?
So I'm in this high-level meeting today, and during a bit of a lull the Director across the table from me says, "So what does your shirt say, anyway?"
"Uh... it says 'I am a strange foreigner...'" is about all I could manage. Apparently the (caucasian) Director can read a little Japanese. "Ah... yes, that one means 'Gaijin'... Heh heh". So after that it was class clown time. Might as well; the damage was done. And the meeting was mostly over anyway.
I didn't know that the meeting this afternoon was going to be filled with brass. This was the third in a series about this one particular project, and without looking at the meeting details, there was nothing special to set it apart from the others -- which only had four people attending. There were a dozen of us in there today.
Point is, I wasn't thinking about my work-wear, any more than usual. I don't really care if what I'm wearing meets someone's definition of fashionable. That's not how get I dressed -- unless some non-normal occassion warrants extra thought in the clothes department. I mean to say that I merely used my semi-autonomic, base criteria method for selecting clothing this morning:
Had I known, I would have worn something less skater-dude. I mean, I like the shirt. It's comfortable and roomy, and hardly anyone can tell what it means. So if it's handy when I'm coming out of the shower, I'll put it on without worrying about what it looks like, per se. It's not that I wasn't thinking this morning, it was that I just didn't know to bother with it.
But that's second time I've gotten a reaction from the shirt. The first was when Kumiko (the really cool Japanese translation lady who is working with officemate Jim) came by the office. She was in there talking to us for a full 15 minutes before she even noticed that I was wearing something with Kanji on it. And she thought it was hilarious. "Well, yes. Every foreigner is weird. To Japanese. But it is funny to see you wearing it."
Not sure how to take that.
So we had to do this corporate ethics online training thing a while back. I ignored it since it's utter bullshit. "Beth decides to award the big contract to her husband's company. Would this be against the code of ethics?" Ugh.
I got a nag email today telling me to do it or else. So I logged on to the third-party training website, went through all the steps, read the examples (I opted out of the audio-enhanced version without even having heard it first) and took their quiz. I almost just did the quiz first without reading anything, but I had a sneaky suspicion that they log what pages you see. It was banal. "Kim Wong has joined the sale force. Ted says Kim should come over to his place after work, as he 'likes to eat Asian...'". I couldn't make stuff like that up. One page was so comical I printed it out.
Jim walks over to my desk as I'm reading this nonsense and I mention that I'm doing the online ethics training. He says that he has it scheduled for later in the day, and asks about it. And I unwittingly violate the code of ethics, right there in the middle of the test. Our conversation went like:
"Is that it? The website we have to go to?""Yeah. Annoying, too. Resizes the window for you, uses Flash, opens new pop-ups all over the place, real basic common sense busy-work."
"Huh. Looks really boring."
"Yeah, but you know, the Beth chick in the tutorials is actually kinda hot..."
But I passed the quiz, in spite of myself!
This is an interesting article on how names affect a person's life. I read a long time ago that what you name your child determines, in some very small way, what their life will be like. And coming on the heels of Penn naming his daughter "Moxie CrimeFighter", the subject had been in my head. I think I need to go pick up a copy of Freakonomics. Come to think of it, Steven Levett was at Google the other day and I missed it. Nuts. Damn work always getting in the way...
And I've always wondered about this:
For the study on black names, he analyzed birth records of all children born in Florida between 1989 and 1996. Names with apostrophes and unusual letter combinations were more likely given by mothers who dropped out of school, he found.
He also applied what he calls the Scrabble test: Names that would earn high scores in Scrabble - with z's, x's and q's - were most likely given by poorer, uneducated mothers.
I could never figure out why someone would name their kid "Da'Quan" or "Shaquasia". I always thought it was something cultural that I wasn't privvy to, when in reality it's because the mothers are uneducated simpletons. Ockham wins another roun
