Subtly Simpsons My word the Simpsons are genius. You always knew that, but this site does a lot of research into the quotes that you may have missed. (via Lockergnome)

This is surprisingly difficult to keep writing with the same regularity. I guess that's why columnists get paid the big bucks. And now onto the post...

I was preparing dinner tonight (a quite good shell-less turkey taco concoction (I only mention because apparently you, the blog reading public, want to know)) and again I came upon a problem. I’m dicing tomatoes and it strikes me that I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I mean, I’ve always gone cut it in half, then lots of cuts in one direction and then lots of cuts perpendicular to that, and then I get my little square tomato pieces. But this can’t be right, as it seems kind of slow and, worse, by the time you get to the end, it’s practically impossible to make straight cuts because the tomato can’t stand up. It reminds me a lot of a conversation from that movie, Barcelona, where one of the main characters goes into a discussion about how he was taught how to shave by his dad, but he recently watched a commercial that gave him the impression he was doing it all wrong. By the way, if you haven’t seen that movie, I highly recommend it.

My feeling is that it’s always frustrating to come upon a task that people have done roughly a hojillion times before you (in this case dicing tomatoes) and to have to rediscover the knowledge of how to do it. But, rather than going and talking to an expert chef to see how she dices tomatoes, I’ll just continue to do it this way for a while, and then come upon a better way one night. I think it’s something that’s really missing from our society. There are a lot of people out there who are very good at what they do and they’re really not very good at passing that knowledge on. Oh sure, maybe the how-to-be-a-millionaire-by-the-time-you-are-sixty-five authors would disagree with me, but I’m sticking to my guns. We don’t pass on inherited knowledge very well. Maybe blogs and search engines will help. I wonder what advice google has for me on dicing tomatoes? Apparently, not very much.

D

First, I'd like to give a big shout out to Traci. Traci, thanks for reading the blog. If you'd like your name here, please don't hesitate to not email me. I'm getting to be way too big a celebrity to write random people's names here.

Second, I had a very interesting discussion Friday night (sorry about the lack of posting) about reading and the nature of what we choose to read. Actually, it concerns any types of input. I've never been one to feel like it's ok for me NOT to read a copy of the New Yorker, or Discover, or anything else out there. And not only do I read them, I try and read them cover to cover, reading every article. The problem(?) is that every time I read one of these magazines, I always derive something interesting or some new way of looking at the world. It's kind of like who the hell am I to be deciding whether or not I should read an article based on the title, the subtitle or the first few lines. What could I be missing in the most recent story!?

But then I feel guilty, because I'm never able to keep up, what with all my busy TV watching and computer playing. Even if I could keep up, it doesn't seem like the absolute best use of my time... like the actual living of life might be just as educational. The opposing side of the argument (could you tell which side I was on?) was that any intelligence I have comes from my ability to absorb from the environment around me, not actually the environment around me. That is to say, the best I can do is surround myself with a variety of information, and I'll absorb what I can, whether or not it is a magazine, or a radio story, or whatever. Or, even better, you cannot assume that this magazine is the best use of your time anyway, so don't feel bad about not reading them.

In either case, what I actually DO spend my time doing (namely watching TV and messing around on the computer) probably is NOT the best use of my time. And, in either case, I have fairly large stacks of magazines all over the place. And I never feel bad when I finish one. However, I hate feeling guilty, so I've decided that I'm going to blissfully forget this entire discussion and clean house later this week.

D

Interesting little tidbit on Ralph Nader's potential candidacy and encouraging him not to run (ralphdontrun.net). I was living in New York at the time of the 2000 election, and I recall the time was absolutely astounding. Everyone on every street corner was talking about it. But not in any kind of panicked way; it was just the only topic of conversation for about 2 weeks. I'm not exaggerating, you'd get in a cab and the drivers would ask you how many counties is Florida had been counted at that hour. People wrote little applications to parse the CNN website and ping every time there was an update. But it's funny, the website above is absolutely correct. It would have been a landslide (not necessarily of popular votes, but certainly of electoral votes) if Nader had not run. I'd be surprised if he was able to pull even 1/3 as many votes this time as he did last time, because the people that voted for him last time are so likely to be Bush haters, and are much more concerned with electability than issues. That said, I would not at all be surprised to see Bush win again, in that the Bush White House is one of the most electoral savvy I've ever seen.

Not that I think this is going to affect me either way. I'm just a cynic.

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

This is absolutely amazing poetry. I feel like a fraud for even posting it.

Have I already mentioned how depressing it is that all the great thoughts have already been thought? And how all the great words have already been spoken? On the other hand, if everyone thought that, I suppose nothing would ever be done. One of the most depressing things for me is when you come to what you feel is some brilliant conclusion and discover someone years ago already discovered it. It's not the discovery of the older work that's depressing; it's the deflation after you realize your thought has no unique value whatsoever. It always makes me feel like I should become a historian before I try any original thought.

As a note, I have never experienced the other side of this scenario, where I have thought something I thought was old and discovered no one else had ever thought of it; it's possible the opposite scenario is just as depressing. If I was really smart, I would take the fact that someone had already looked at the problem and all the mental power they spent coming up with a conclusion as directional advice. E.g. If there's a big X on the ground and hundreds of shovel marks in the middle, you are encouraged not to spend any time digging right where the X is, but can instead try to use some other solution. But if everyone thought that way, then there would be no shovel marks on the red X! Ah paradoxes. They go round and round until you stop and say "Ah paradoxes. They go round and round until..."

Oh, by the way, The Strokes are amazing. Stop whatever you're doing and go buy their albums.

D

Man I hate carrying around cash. This (Credit on your key ring) may be my solution. The only problem here is that every store on earth is going to have to upgrade their point-of-sale machines in order to support this. Have fun using it in 20 years.

Just wanted to let everyone know I've published a link to my Atom Feed, which will let you read the blog in Outlook without having to get mail, and use the excellent Newsgator I mentioned earlier. It's over there on the side (for those reading this in email or via feed, you'll have to go to the site to see it; though I suppose if you're reading this by feed, you don't need to go to the site at all).

D

This past weekend was Valentine's Day. The particularly interesting part for me is that since I'm not seeing anyone seriously right now, I completely forgot it. Actually, that's not exactly true. My google toolbar changed to hearts, my bug tracker changed to roses and candy hearts, and there were notifications all over the front of my miscellaneous websites. But basically, I just didn't pay attention to any of the signs and Sunday rolls around and I realize that yesterday was Valentine's Day.

What really struck me about this was the concept of shared consciousness and what it’s like to be completely outside it. For example, I remember listening to a story during Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me on NPR right after the last Seinfeld was aired. A guy called up and they were asking him questions about the episode and he had missed the episode to watch the Red Wings in a playoff game. Millions upon millions of people were present to some occurrence (in this case something trivial like the last episode of a TV series) and this individual was completely outside that. I felt a little like that on Sunday. It seems like so much of our society works towards getting everyone to do one thing at any one time, and when you’re outside that, an enormous amount of the mental and emotional energy of the populous goes completely missed by you. Then, when everyone is talking or discussing it, you have no opinion on the matter. Not that it’s a bad thing, just that’s what is.

The one advantage to this, I think, is that you really get to take a fairly objective look at what’s going on. For the Seinfeld guy, he could look around and see the absurdity (or not) of millions of people sitting down to watch a show. For me, it was thinking about all the heartfelt exchanges that happened the previous day, and how I was a part of none of them. This is not depressing for me; it’s just kind of interesting.

D

Nothing of great import today (is there ever anything of great import?). I've joined orkut, thanks to a friend of mine, and the concept is definitely interesting. I messed around with Friendster for a while, but it was so slow it was absurd to use. The concept, for me, is a wonderful one; basically it allows what were formerly passive networks to be actively processed by people. For dating, it's great in that A: you know your friend knows this person and B: your friends no longer have to actively answer the question "Do you have any single friends". However, I wonder how well this will work for non-dating scenarios. Like could I get a VC contact through this? The other question is how skewed is the sample. Are only computer geeks (myself included) going to be the one who log in? There was a great article on this, and other online dating tools, in the New York Times Magazine a while ago; I have yet to see any payoff however. My dates seem to only be acquired the old fashion way... by making an ass of myself. Email me if you'd like to be my "friend" (on orkut or otherwise, I suppose).

D

A few quickies today...

First, someone sent me a link for this software. FolderShare. VERY impressive. Allows synching of home, work and mobile PCs transparently, through firewalls. Dave like.

Second, I was turned on to Newsgator recently. I'm really impressed with this software as well. Integrates completely into Outlook and Exchange, which means you can take it on the road or where ever you want. It's worth the $30.

Third, while browsing through my new found enormous list of blogs to read as part of this Newsgator feed, I came across a great page. I find myself torn, though, because I don't just want to reference other blogs. I always find that the most interesting resources on the web are where people bring something new and interesting to the table. Like the number of bars in Seattle, or the number of steps between major landmarks in NYC. On the other hand, if you haven't seen it... It's new to you, right? Ah the dilemmas of a new medium. I think for now, I'll just reference it and quote the source. That should be fair, right? Anyhow, I miss pasta. (Courtesy of Instapundit)

D

Just as a warning, I’m going to be talking about me in the shower in a minute. You’ve all been warned! Abandon hope, all ye who enter here …

Today I was getting ready for work, and I took a shower for the second time in roughly 9 hours. I was thinking that this is probably a waste of water, why am I in here? I had just showered after I worked out the night before; I’ve got to still be clean, right? But then I rationalized it by saying, no this is waking me up. That’s got to have some value. You know the way my mind works, and immediately I recalled the commercial from the 80’s, which I’m embarrassed to say, I not only remember the words, but the tune.

Coast, the scent opens your eyes

Coast lather, and you re-aliii-iize

That Coast is the way, to make you feel alive!

Coast, feel alive with Coast!

For some reason, it finally struck me how absurd this entire advertising slogan is. Are you kidding? A bar of soap is going to make you feel alive? Um, ok!

Ok, so the scary thing for me is not that I remembered this slogan, but that in my old age I’ve turned into some Andy Rooney want-to-be. I am now the type of person who actually listens to the absurd words in a song or slogan and realizes how absurd they are. It’s a bit funny, because the whole ignorance is bliss thing really comes into effect. I was so much more tolerant of TV when I didn’t pay attention to these details. What do you think it is about growing older that would actually turn you into this crotchety old complainy person? Here’s to reversing the aging process…

D

Well I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone, but 50% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?. Actually, maybe it does come as a bit of a surprise, considering it's only 50% of me :) I'm going to discuss these questions below... so click through if you want to take the test before I discuss them.


1. The shards of...

My Answer: No idea
Answer: Narsil
Response: Uh, shards?


2. Who is NOT a member of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?

My A: Sherlock Holmes
A: Sherlock Holmes
R: I based this totally on the tv commercials I saw for this movie. Kind of cool that Captain Nemo is in there. Who's Alan Quatermain?

3. CMOS stands for:

My A: Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor
A: Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor
R: I don't know when I learned this, but I did :)

4. Green-skinned love slaves come from the planet:

My A: Betelgeuse
A: Orion
R: I thought this came from the wonderful game "Leather Goddess of Phobos" by Infocom, but, reflecting on it now, it probably came from a part in HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy that I don't remember.

5. I've just started up a game of CounterStrike 1.5. I'm on CT, the map is de_dust2. In the buy menu I hit 1-3. The weapon I’m buying is a(n):

My A: Pump shotgun
A: Deagle
R: Wouldn't you think that the first column would have basic weapons like a shotgun? Eh, never played CS. And do they really change by level?

6. You want to overclock your Athlon XP 3200+ up to 2.5 ghz. Given that a the default 3200 runs at 2.2 Ghz by default (11.0 clock multiplier, 200mhz FSB), which multiplier / FSB combination would most likely work the best?

My A: 15.0, 186 mhz
A: 12.0, 209 mhz
R: Funny about this, I actually had this very conversation earlier in the day, as I'm currently in the process of building my new home machine. Funny, I still got it wrong. Very wrong.

7. The Zeroth Law of Robotics states that:

My A: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.
A: No robot may harm humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
R: So close! I think this comes from Issac Asimov's I, Robot, but I've never read it. I probably absorbed this through reading slashdot, or some such.

8. 40,000 years from now these are all Temples of the Imperial Officio Assassinorum, except for...

My A: No idea what I put
A: Beil-Tan
R: What?

9. "I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis!"

My A: Zaphod Beeblebrox
A: Zaphod Beeblebrox
R: Another Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference, as are all the character choices listed there.

10. I am Rygel the 16th, ________ of Hyneria.

My A: No idea what I put
A: Dominar
R: Who?

11. Twinkle is to Drizzt as:

My A: Sting is to Sam
A: Needle is to Arya
R: No idea what this is from. I guessed the Lord of the Rings relationship - weapon is to carrier, but now that I think about it, wasn't it Bilbo or Frodo who carried it?

12. ...Live long and prosper.

My A: Strength and honor...
A: Peace and long life...
R: From the vulcans... I guess this is like a challenge response kind of thing, but I can't remember ever hearing this.

13. Which does not belong?

My A: Salmon
A: Salmon
R: All the rest are used in Monty Python sketches, though I'm sure that there must be another thought for this one.

14. As you are traveling through space, your sensors detect a strange, black monolith floating nearby. Without looking, you know that it has the proportions:

My A: 1 by 4 by 9
A: 1 by 4 by 9
R: 2001, a space odyssey by Arthur Clarke and later, of course, the movie.

15. "One Ring to find them"

My A: No idea what I put
A: Ash nazg gimbatul
R: Did you know that JRR Tolkien was a linguist before he was an author? The interesting part is that he probably created these whole languages from scratch. Very impressive! Lord of the Rings Trilogy... btw.

16. Who has never been considered a prophet?

My A: Medivh
A: Mithrandir
R: Muad'dib is from Dune and was a prophet in that... the only one I know for sure. No idea what Mithrandir is from but sounds vaguely like Lord of the Rings.

17. Which cheat code is not paired with its game?

My A: No idea what I put
A: Power Overwhelming - Diablo 2
R: I very very rarely use cheat codes, so I'm never up to speed on it... that and I've only played half of those games.

18. List these Sith Lords in chronological order of their birth: Darth Sidious, Exar Kun, Darth Malak, and Kyp Durron.

My A: No idea what I put
A: Kun, Malak, Sidious, Durron
R: I got at least part of the order from Star Wars, Knights of the old Realm the video game for XBOX, but the rest I just took a stab at. I think I got it wrong.

19. Which does not belong?

My A: No idea what I put
A: Weasel
R: Where?

20. Klaatu Verata...

My A: Nictim
A: Nicto
R: Man these language ones are really hard. A couple more coming up here...

21. Who is NOT a Ghostbuster?

My A: Dr. Hawley Griffin
A: Dr. Hawley Griffin
R: Wouldn't technically the joke answer also be correct? I remember this from a misspent youth of watching this movie way too much.

22. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Yes? No? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. The temporary abstracts of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself; although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?

My A: Because I choose to.
A: Because I choose to.
R: I assume this is from the third episode of the Matrix which I still haven't seen. Interesting thing, the Matrix was written by a couple of graduates of the Landmark Education program, and this is one of their basic tenets. That's why I guessed it.

23. What color kryptonite can permanently rob Superman of his super powers?

My A: Gold
A: Gold
R: I think I got this from the Superfriends when I was a kid. By the way, if you haven't been to Seanbaby, leave this page immediately and go there.

24. Who was not one of the Istari?

My A: No idea what I put
A: Cirdan
R: How?

25. Which character is not paired with their ship?

My A: Captain Piett, Executor
A: Talon Karrde, Lady Luck
R: Total guess, but some of them I knew. This was a real mix of Star Trek, Spaceballs, and what I would assume is Pirates of the Caribbean.

26. In a game of 2nd edition AD&D, my fighter has a THAC0 of 14. To hit an orc with an AC of 6, I must roll at least a(n):

My A: 8
A: 8
R: See above re: misspent youth. Actually, when I was going through the SAT preparation course in H.S. I remember learning about how to read answers to a question which you do not know. That almost made me move off 8. If I remember Bard's Tale correctly, you start with an AC (armor class) of 10 and count down from there. THAC0 means to hit armor class (of) 0, and then for each AC above zero, you subtract one. It just seemed obvious that someone would subtract the two and guess at 8.

27. "Success"

My A: No idea what I put
A: Qa'pla
R: I think this is Klingon, which I don't know.

28. "Well met"

My A: No idea what I put
A: Mae govannen
R: See above re: Klingon

29. In 2029, John Connor leads a valiant resistance against computer nemesis:

My A: Skynet
A: Skynet
R: This is from the Terminator series

30. The answer to life, the universe, and everything...in binary:

My A: 101010
A: 101010
R: Tough one, in that FIRST you have to know that this is from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and then you have to remember the answer (42), and THEN you have to convert 42 to binary. Tough!

31. Spiderman's Mary Jane shares the same last name as:

My A: No idea what I put
A: Sherlock Holmes' partner
R: INTERESTING. I didn't remember this, but I was never a big Spiderman fan.

32. In standard, 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons, your 5th level ranger with a dexterity of 19 dons a suit of studded leather armor (AC 3, max dexterity bonus +5). Assuming he bears no other protection or enchantments, what is his total Armor Class?

My A: 4
A: 17
R: I think I did the following math... dexerity 19 probably gives you +2 armor class, +3 from the armor, and then maybe +1 for being 5th level. Obviously, I was very very wrong.

33. In Sluggy Freelance, what is the magic word to turn Zoe into a Camel?

My A: Shupid
A: Shupid
R: I like this comic quite a bit, as indicated by my links on the side.

34. Which pair of characters was not part of the crew of the Weatherlight, from Magic the Gathering:

My A: No idea what I put
A: Urza and Mishra
R: I've never played this... I didn't even know it had a story behind it!

35. In the original Phoenix for the TI-89, how much would it cost to buy two shield recharges, and weapon #2?

My A: No idea what I put
A: $350
R: I guarantee someone got this. I was not him. Besides, I never had a TI-89... I was an Intellivision and C64/128 man myself.

36. Who is not a character of the Warcraft universe?

My A: Lothar
A: Duriel
R: All I remember is that skit on SNL with Lothar of the hill people... I never would have thought that would have made it into a video game. I'm always so bad at remembering names from video games... on the other hand, I've never played Warcraft 3

37. In Wolfenstein 3D, you play as:

My A: Blake Stone
A: B.J. Blazkowicz
R: This is pretty funny... I actually took an educated guess at this, but I was still off... the choices were:

Blake Stone - never heard of him
B.J. Blazkowicz - never heard of him
John Anderton - Minority Report
Frank Poole - never heard of him
Carth Onasi - never heard of him
Korben Dallas - Fifth Element
The Cheat, who is not dead - Home star runner

That was pretty good.... nearly 50% elimination!

38. The Vault Dweller comes from Vault:

My A: No idea what i put
A: 13
R: I don't even know what this is.

39. This ship was built at the Utopia Planetia shipyards.

My A: Heart of Gold
A: USS Enterprise NCC-1701 D
R: The funny part here is the name sounded so ridiculous, I had to guess Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

40. The most important resource of the planet Arrakis:

My A: Spice melange
A: Spice melange
R: Dune ... again. This guy loves dune.

41. If 42 is the Answer, then the Question is...

My A: "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?"
A: "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?"
R: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy... man I loved this "trilogy".

42. In what base number system does the muliplication in the above answer (well, question) actually equal 42?

My A: base 12
A: base 13
R: Uh, I suck at math?

Ok lots of writing here... I think I'll comment later on the correlation between intelligence and having too much time on your hands. Not that I have either, that is.

D

I did what I consider to be one of the nerdiest things last night. I still love it though, so I’m going to share. So frequently, I’ll be at home and remember that I need something, but forget to write it down or whatever. So last night, after dinner, I was in the same mall as a Fred Meyer. Fred Meyer’s, by the way, are the equivalent to a perfect combination of your local grocery store and Costco. They’re cheap, they’re fricken enormous, but they also have goods of regular sizes (see previous post about things to avoid while buying at Costco). I knew there were at least a couple things I wanted, so in I went. I proceeded, as I usually do in the grocery store, to wander up and down every aisle. A brief list of what I bought included:

• Shredder (with support for credit cards and up to 6 pages at a time!)
• Cheap slippers for my cold apartment
• Serving dish
• Ground beef
• Bottles of wine so I can seem classier than I actually am
• Tail lights for my car
• Couple of paint chip palettes

And so on. As you can see, a pretty fruitful outing! I certainly could have been more efficient than walking up and down every aisle, but it’s the only way I can feel complete.

I used to think I was the enemy of all marketers, but I have to say I’m probably the customer the most long for. First, I have no short term debt, and my only long term debt is my mortgage. Second, I do alright for myself money wise. Third, I watch and remember way too many TV ads (even with UltimateTV!). Fourth, I’m very quick to believe what people who sound like authorities say. Maybe this is changing as I get older, but I remember thinking that if someone demonstrated on TV that their detergent gets out grass stains, and _I_ have grass stains, then dammit, I’m going to buy their product! Makes sense, no? No. Or does it? It doesn’t. Nonetheless, I definitely tend to be much more brand focused than I ever thought I would be, especially after looking behind the curtain, if you will, and seeing exactly how artificial the entire concept of adding value through brand actually is. Ooo look! Something shiny!

D

One more quick post:

I've gotten some feedback that another mail server might be suggested... here's the information on that:

http://wittycatchphrase.com/mailman/listinfo/poisonedmonkey_wittycatchphrase.com

On that page you'll find the email address to which to send mail. I had it here, but I realized that it might be harvested by the spam bots, and so I'm dropping it.

D

I was in a bit of an interesting discussion the other day about my conversation topics. It seems all I talk about is work and computer stuff. This may be true. However, it led me to think... what do any of us talk about? I mean, you see be blather on here about meaningless nonsense, but does this qualify about actually talking about something else? Part of the problem is that I'm very focused on finishing out this job I'm working on right now and, so, to some degree this is my whole life. I go to work, I work all day, I come home and eat dinner and watch a little TV, and then go to bed. On the weekends, I relax by going out with friends for drinks, or seeing a movie or something similar. I don't feel like I'm leading some kind of sheltered or not fully realized life... it just is the way it is. But if I was going to talk about this with other people, it seems like it'd be pretty boring. Do I bore you? Wait, don't answer that.

D

Don’t you hate it when you have a bunch of stuff written in an HTML form, and then the browser fails for whatever reason and you lose it all? Not that this has happened to me…

Saturday was the caucuses for Washington State, and a few thoughts spring to mind.

First, I did not vote. I’ll get to why that is in a minute, but what I’m always amazed by is how disempowered I feel in the national elections. Generally, for senate, house and presidential elections, I’ve lived in places that are overwhelmingly in one direction, be they for or against me. So much so, that I never feel like I have any reason to get out there and vote. This seems to be exacerbated by the recent electoral redistricting, in an incredibly interesting article in The New Yorker. But on the other hand, I read a piece some time ago about the EMpowerment offered by the Electoral College generally. Something along the lines of by living in a smaller state, your votes actually count for more through the Electoral College. Well, I guess that’s a good thing, but it’s a pity I’ve never lived in a small state. I always am so amazed and touched by the pictures of people lining up to vote in elections for the first time, but it never seems to come home for me. This is not to say you can’t make a difference on the local level, but the national levels are another ball game (although, on the local level, I never seem to be able to learn enough about a given issue by the election to make a satisfactory decision; and I’d rather make no decision than an ill informed one.)

Second, I basically don’t care much about the government, except for a couple of key issues. Primarily, I never fail to be amazed at how shortsighted politicians seem to be on big issues. The two big ones are usually the environment and help for the poor, but, most recently, the deficit seems to be taking the lead here. For the environment, basically I think that there’s a sense of it’s worked for this long, it’ll keep working. While that may be true, I doubt that we really want to take a risk with the human population. I mean, there’s almost no chance we could do something that would wipe out all humans, but would we feel comfortable if we wiped out a billion due to mass starvation? We probably would as long as they were not in my backyard. See previous postings re: Dave being a cynic. On help for the poor, it’s basically the exact same thing, except instead of putting money into schools and programs designed to get people other avenues of work, we put money into prisons. I bet $1 spent up front would save us $10 on the back end. The deficit is a whole other issue… I think that it’s roughly around 25% of the tax income to the U.S. government goes to servicing the debt. If we were really concerned about finding a way to get more money for the war, for jobs, for tax breaks etc, shouldn’t we try and mine this down a bit? Again, this is a complete economic novice speaking here, but just reducing deficit should help, shouldn’t it?

Third, and finally, I think I’ve been at odds with this president’s decisions almost as much as any elected official since David Duke. I don’t think he’s a bad guy; he’s just doing what he sees are the best things for the country. Really! People are generally not that evil, especially when working in positions in which they get so much feedback. I’m absolutely sure he thought that what he was doing at any time was probably best for the country. While you may or may not agree, this view tends to give you a much better feeling for what people are doing at any given time.

That said, I’ve probably been as opposed to this president’s policies in on a number of things as any president I can remember (not that I can remember that many). But in the grand scheme of things, it’s not the end of the world; I can keep on living and, though things aren’t ideal, we get another election right now to boot him out. The interesting thing for me is that we couldn’t have identified ANY of these behaviors during the last election cycle. He said what he was going to say, and he got elected. Generally, I just think that there is virtually no correlation between what someone says during an election cycle and what they do in office. This is not news. But what I find to be pretty interesting is that even though I disagree a whole bunch about the policies, it really just hasn’t affected me THAT much. That’s not to say the men and women who have died in Iraq should have died, but who’s to say there wouldn’t be some peace keeping mission, or some other thing that would have taken American lives. Ultimately, it just feels like whomever we elect gets a 4 year chance to prove themselves, and then we either decide to reelect them, or give them the boot. Elections are basically chances to change power, and not necessarily install the guy/gal you want (since you have no idea how that guy/gal will behave until they actually get in office).


D

Wow. I'm a big fan of this. Pentrix - Videos

I remember in high school seeing people do all sorts of these things all the time, and they actually did it so fast I couldn't watch them enough to get it right. I doubt that in my old age I'll be able to have the hand coordination to pick it up now, but who knows.

This is a cool little app... naturally I checked out all the zip codes I've ever lived in, and they work :)...
Zip decode

One more quickie for today...

I made a group that we can use as a mailing list just to get updates for when posts go up to the blog. Nothing special... Click Here

Wow... could an entire campaign be sunk by a single scream? I guess so... Dean Goes Nuts.

I remember when I heard this the first time... I was actually pretty impressed that he was able to name off all the states like that, though I didn't check to see if they were in order of primary. And, to be honest, I actually admired the passion a bit. But I guess I'm the only one.

D

What is this? Three posts, in three days? What's next... dogs and cats living together?

First, I saw this on a banner ad today.

Are you really in love? Click our free love meter to find out!

DON'T CLICK ON IT.... it'll only encourage them! But, let me let you in on a little hint. If you have to ask a Web site, the answer is no... or it better be.

Second, and more philosophically, I'm so astounded at how much I thought I knew in the past, and how little I actually knew, now that I look back. I helped start up a company when I was 25... it was the height of the Internet boom and it was what all the cool kids were doing. We had a great first release, got funded, and got a fair bit of hype relatively quickly. When the second version came around, I thought I could move easily into the CTO position and help manage the developers we brought on. Naturally, the second version crashed and burned miserably and, while I wasn't the sole person at the cause of it, my fingerprints were all over it. The interesting part is that at the time it was not like I was blaming everyone else. I thought I knew what I had done wrong, but I was way off.

If I asked you to cut me a piece of metal, or as one of my favorite focus group leaders likes to say, how long a piece of string is, you'd come back with a thousand questions. How big? What kind of metal? What color? and so on. The reason you'd come back with this is because you would have no idea how to tell when you were done without significantly more information. Today, I was going through a bunch of test suites that we have at work, and I realized that this was exactly where I failed in my prior software project. It wasn't that I didn't work enough, or didn't watch the project closely enough, it was that I couldn't tell when the project would be done, and I certainly did not any method to measure progress. We did not even have formal workitems that had to be completed, let alone something as granular as a bug tracker (to actually see what is going wrong). It really is such a simple concept, but so frequently in life we seem to miss it. "I'd like to make more money" you might say... but when are you done? When you get a raise? Two? Ten? And what if you never saw your paycheck? How would you know you ever actually DID get a raise?

I suppose the net of it is experience is a phenomenal teacher, and so on with other cliched phrases. But in this case (as in most cases I suppose), the cliche is accurate. The 2.5 years I've spent at my current job, as well as the 2 years I had at my previous job, really did educate me enormously. And now that I've spent just 6 months as a release manager, and a good amount of time just creating the tools to watch exactly where we are and what where we need to get to, the differences between then and now seem even more extreme. Just FYI, the company _is_ still in business, and doing fairly well (from what I understand). Check them out!

I'm sort of using this space to reflect on how quickly we all learn by doing and how much even a short time of distance can mean to reflection. But I also want to temper any arrogance that I (or anyone else for that matter) might have at all. I'm 29 now, and when I'm 35 I hope to re-read this and say, wow I was a moron then.

D

Uh, no surprise to anyone I guess, but I'm wrong again.

I resisted this for a while, but I guess I'm going to have to make a small comment on the Janet Jackson thing.

First, maybe she's a good actor, but I'm going to have to go with what I saw in Poetic Justice, and say she's not. Then I must come to the conclusion that it was actually unplanned. If you watch the video, the first thing she does is look down and try and see what went wrong. She even makes a move to reach to her brassier to see if she can undo it. Clearly some portion of the top was supposed to tear away, but the correct portion didn't tear. On the other hand, it's difficult to see exactly what was supposed to remain there afterwards (I know a red lingerie was what they claimed, but I don't know where this would have come from). The other counter argument is why would she have decorated her nipple if it wasn't meant to come out? My only conclusion there would be that it was supposed to show through the red lingerie with the decoration. Honestly, I don't think I'd be surprised if I found out either way was true.

Second, I'm astounded about the efficiency of the Internet when it comes to distributing information of this kind. I actually missed it on during the Super Bowl (I was watching the world series of poker during the half time show), and didn't hear about the incident until the next morning. I was doing mail, and went over to your local file sharing tool and typed in Janet Jackson Super Bowl. 19000 responses came back. 19000! How can the record or movie industries ever think they're going to beat the masses of file sharerrs when something that was totally unplanned and unexpected can be replicated within 10 hours to 19000 different locations.

Third, while it was unexpected and probably would make me feel uncomfortable if I was watching it in front of my kids, the entire brouhaha with the FCC and all is absurd. It's this kind of over emphasis on what can and cannot be shown that makes the rest of the world so annoyed with us. Gimme a break, the thing was on for less than a second. And if people hadn't made such a big deal about it, I wouldn't have even known about it! I guarantee that it's been 100x more noticed than it ever would have been if people hadn't replayed the piece a thousand times. Actually, since I heard about it, I've seen the clip (with the "inappropriate" parts blurred) no less than 10 times on television, on clips for the local news, on sports center and so on. Maybe I'll have more of a sense of outrage when I have my own kids.

D

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Couple of things today...

First, I was going to start with my immutable law of movie paradigms, as a homage to the TMQ, but then I thought that as an aspiring writer and comedian (though aspiring is a bit of a stretch), it's just theft. I actually remember listening to Joe Rogan (star of the abomination fear factor and the sublime NewsRadio) talking on the Howard Stern show about a set he watched while he was judge at last comedian standing. He was so strong in his opinion about the struggles a comedian goes through to work out a bit, I hesitate to use another person's material even a little bit.

But on the other side of the coin, there was a wonderful story on the creation process, about how even the most spectacular artists copy wholesale from other people to find their voice. While I would never presume that the things I put in here are art, or voice of any kind... Certainly, it'd be nice to find my voice through the expertise of others. So without further ado, the start of a list I like to call:

The Imutable (yes I know it's misspelled, it's intentional) law of movie paradigms
#1: Wearing sunglasses have absolutely nothing to do with the sun. While people take off their sunglasses in the bright sun to give an evil glare, they put on their sunglasses in the pitch black night club to show how cool they are. I mean come on. Have you ever tried this? You'd be falling over everything.

#2:Wincing and moving your head to the left equates to total invulnerability I remember noticing this for the first time during True Lies, when at one point the terrorist shoots the cockpit window out of the plane that Governor Arnold is flying. Where the terrorist was standing, he's able to shoot out both sides of the cockpit canopy. He's also standing exactly perpendicular to the direction the plane is flying. Unless bullets can magically go through people, it is annoyingly impossible to shoot out both sides of a canopy and not hit the pilot. But it's worse than that. The classic shot is when the hero is running and the bullets go running right up behind him/her until the hero finds some way to dive out of the way. Wouldn't that mean the aggressor is shooting at the hero's feet? Gimme a break.

#3: Parking is never a problem. At any hour, of any day, the hero can find parking right in front of wherever they need to go. I should be so lucky.

#4:Women always kiss men first. Seriously! Check it out sometime.

I hope to add to this in the future, but I think this is a pretty good start. And if you're doing a movie sometime in the future, please note these for your records. Breaking the imutable (yes I know it's misspelled, it's intentional) law of movie paradigms will guarantee my appreciation, which generally equates to box-office failure.