Telephonic Antipatterns

I bought a 4 GB micro SD card because my text messages filled up my phone and SIM card memory. Guess what. My phone is incapable of saving text messages to the SD card. WTF? Did the people who designed my phone do this on purpose?!? Maybe they divided 1120 bits into 4 gigs and realized their 4th grade education had skipped reading big numbers*.

LG Electronics Model CF360: an example of how NOT to make a phone.

On a related note, please to not be suprised if you send me a text and I never get it. My inbox may be full. Or I have smashed my phone. I don't know what to do now. I just sold myself out to AT&T to get this piece of crap; I don't want to spend the money on another one, and I don't want to walk into an AT&T store with a funny list of questions like "can this phone have the alarm on while the ringer is off? Can I save text messages to the SD card? Does the menu take 3 days to appear after I hit the menu key?" My other option is to hack my phone, but I don't really want to entrust my personal life to a jailbreaked phone. Also I wouldn't know where to start--rewrite the whole operating system? I probably couldn't do any worse than the morons at AT&T/LG, but every hour I spend rectifying the blasphemous programming crimes done to my phone is an hour I'm not out meeting girls.

I suppose I'll just start deleting text messages. Its not like I really needed to know who "ribbon girl" was anyway. What horrible discovery will I make about my phone next?


*according to wikipedia and my calculator, a 4 GB card should hold roughly 30.6 million texts. The .6 makes it definitely worth it.

Riding High

Woke up after a night of drinking, practiced the theme song to Duke Nukem 3d on my guitar, as well as In the Sun, and then took Luke and Kathy flying. The weather was perfect for flying: overcast but no clouds lower than 12 thousand feet in the entire Seattle area, with stable (as in, not turbulent) air and good visibility.

I took them to Bremerton. How and where to park the plane and whether we could grab a fast bite at the diner there may seem like trivial matters, but ironically, they are what I worried about the most. Luke thought this was funny, after the whole flying around and not dying thing we did. I guess I have the hard stuff down by now. I did make mistakes though. I forgot to diagram the airport on a piece of paper, and had to fly over it at a higher altitude just to read the runway numbers. Then, I was apparently cursing a lot, which I don't really remember. Mostly over nothing. Then, when we landed at Bremerton, I came in too high (like usual) and had to slip it in. Unfortunately for Luke and Kathy, I forgot that they didn't know what a slip was, so I imagine it was a bit scary when the plane was suddenly sideways just as we were landing.

The next plan is to someday meet up with Bridget, and/or this girl whose name starts with N, who live somewhere over there, at the Bremerton airport diner, thus infusing a sense of practicality into this whole flying business. I feel a lot more confident about that now--now that I know where to park and where to find the diner and all of those scary details I was fretting over. It took about half an hour to fly there.

Then we went to a bonfire with some friends. There is this school of thought that some of my friends are proponents of. It is something about doing whatever your want, or being yourself, and not worrying what other people think of you. I put this to the test tonight when I brought a six pack of strawberry flavored smirnoff to the campire. One thing led to another, and everyone there found out I am allergic to an undefined set of beers as well as white wine, and I was given everyone's opinion on what to do about it, and I had a stomach ache from all the smirnoff I had to drink to maintain my almost-buzz. In fact half of the people there will probably remember me as the obnoxious guy who was allergic to like, everything, man. Thats not how I want to be remembered. Next time I am going to bring a flask of Captain and a bottle of 151--both for drinking and for the fire (someone brought wood from a freshly cut tree). Also, I don't know what the latin word for don't-care-what-other-people-think-about-you is but I am filing it in the "overrated" section next to carpe diem.

It was a cool day though. I'd like more of these. Some adventure and some friends and some fire.

Responsibility

I had to paraphrase this as to not disclose useless secrets:

Guy from "Team A" (after a big effort to clean up this one problem): "You guys should fix this."

My manager: "Actually it is your responsibility to fix, for these reasons...."

Guy from "Team A": "Oh I was hoping someone [else] would fix this, but this is a really hard problem...nevermind."




The moral of this story appears to be that the severity of an issue, even one that takes several programmers from multiple teams over a week to fix, is inversely proportional to your ownership of the software flaw that causes the issue.

There was an enormous effort to move "Team A" out of the organization my team is a part of. This move was hailed as an alleged success story. The biggest impact of this move appears to be that the people on "Team A" can act like total dicks to us because they no longer report to the same people.

Thats just my opinion though.

This one is more for me

I want a phone that vibrates silently when I am called, and vibrates silently when I receive a text, but makes an actual sound when the alarm goes off in the morning. Raise your hand if you think thats difficult. Here, let me make a table for you:

Text ---- no sound ---- yes vibrate ----
Call ----- no sound ---- yes vibrate ----
Alarm -- SOUND ----- I dont care! ---


My phone can't do it. There are two options here, which, as a cartesian product, form four choices for each alert. Am I going out of my mind? Are four choices too difficult? Yes, because I cannot have an audible alarm if the ring is silent. Maybe I'm just an idiot. I carried a Nokia 3120 around for years without really knowing how to find the calculator. Seriously though, I don't think I am. I have examine anything in the phone that looks like its related to settings, and there really isn't a lot to go through.

So, I can choose between not waking up in the morning (sound off for calls and alarms) or being a dick in movie theatres/meetings (sound on for calls and alarms). Maybe I'll just use LJ's excuse: "I didn't think anyone would call me!" Twice. In the same lecture. And he continued leaving his phone on after I confronted him--me, of all people. I hated confrontation back then. The only thing that could make me speak up was when someone did something so rude it shocked me and I yelled at them before the shy part of my brain could freeze up my vocal chords. But I digress.

I am now seriously considering hacking my phone. Not because "information wants to be free." Not because I hate some large company. Not because I want to watch movies on it that the corporations don't approve. Not because I want to jailbreak my phone and switch carriers. I want to hack it so that I can receive phone calls and wake up in the morning. I have this belief that if everyone in some group of people had their cell phone in their front jeans pocket, and it vibrated for all incoming correspondence, that we wouldn't have this problem with cell phone rings interrupting presentations, class, meetings, etc. I have no memory of ever interrupting a meeting because my cell phone is always on vibrate (until now) because I like being the only person in the room who knows I just got a text message. I am alone here? Have I really found an edge case that accidentally got removed by the morons programming my cell phone? Seriously, are all of the good programmers out there at Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Drexel University? Because I haven't found evidence of them anywhere else. The operating systems that control my phone, my GPS unit, my laptop and my personal computer all suck horribly. By "suck horribly" I mean that they should be used as examples of what not to do (people at work thought my Ubuntu power button situation is hilarious). The only meaningful computer in my life that doesnt suck is the one that tweaks the fuel intake in my car.

Thats not true. My PS3---wait, no, no that isn't that great either. Oh man even my wristwatch--oh forget it. I don't think that watch even has a full computer in it. I didn't mean to start ranting about idiots again. All I really wanted to do was post the workaround for myself:

copy a silent mp3 to the phone

It is possible to make my phone vibrate and ring for all types of alerts (calls, texts, alarms, etc). If I switch the call and text "ring tone" to a silent mp3, my phone will effectively gain the ability to do what five year old phones can do out of the box.

My phone is an LG Electronics CF360 on an overpriced AT&T plan. I don't recommend this combination.

Cellars

I paid $60 for yet another five weeks of salsa lessons at the same studio I'm still not sure about, because last week my keen James Bond skills--well--ok I was staring at Red Shirt girl while she signed up for another week of classes. Red Shirt girl is one of those girls that just started salsa (about two weeks ago, literally) but is an exceptional dancer. I assumed that, since she was taking the beginner class before my "intermediate" class, that after having become an awesome dancer in two weeks she would progress to the intermediate class. I was wrong. However, our teacher demoed the little "pattern" he's going to teach us, and I think I saw a move somewhere in there that I want to learn. So it wasn't a total waste.

Anyway, none of that is important. What is important, is I sort of told my whole class about my failed attempt to go dancing at Sea Sound lounge, and my Dance Fail at triple door. They laughed, but this one one hot girl also expressed a genuine "awwwwww." I think I accidentally went too pathetic with the joking again. I gotta stop doing that. First I tell the hot girl in the apartment office all about stalling out my new, expensive sporty-looking car, and now I'm telling the hottest girl in my class all about the time I had to duck out of Triple Door because I didn't want anyone to remember my face. I should really stop joking about this stuff but I'm such an easy target.

[the real reason for this post]
There is a bar called Cellars on like 1st and Blanchard. They have Salsa/latin dancing on Tuesday nights. Live band. I passed it while I was looking for Sea Sound lounge, which I'm told is on Sundays. Cellars is a cool little bar. Tiny dance floor. The gender ratio was about...20 to 4? That reduces to 5:1. no.....it was way worse than that. I can't give it a number. Here's the skinny:

$9 Captain and cokes.
Terrible place to go alone: won't have anyone to dance with.
Great place to take a girl you want to see naked someday if she knows a little latin (or you feel like doing the awkard pretend-to-dance-with-a-total-beginner thing) . You can get a bite to eat and then dance. Not so good for girls that you are casually hanging out with--unless maybe you go as a group? I don't know. The place is small, intimate. I could be wrong though. I didn't do any dancing.
[/the real reason for this post]

That reminds me, I can't decide if sitting at the bar by yourself sort of labels you as a loser (making it less productive than sitting at home) or if there is some way that you can still be cool and meet people. Maybe it was the live band, but I wasn't that uncomfortable just sitting there all by myself with no one to talk to (there were guys on either side of me that were equally uninterested in being friends). Well, this girl two bar stools away did glance at me but I wasn't into her and the only thing I hate more than starting conversations with girls in bars is hearing other guys tell me how to start conversations with girls in bars. Kind of weird though. I never would have gone to a bar by myself a few years ago. Maybe a shy person can become an extrovert. Well, maybe not. I wasn't actually alone; there were people from the studio--why I was there in the first place. But I didn't see them at first and by the time I got comfortable at the bar I didn't want to talk to them anyway.

Music Video Idea

Whenever a kid puts headphones on, it makes objects glow and pulsate with the beat, like the jellyfish in The Test. Also similar to Push the Tempo.

Desperate Ground

Ground on which we can only be saved from destruction by fighting without delay, is desperate ground. --Sun Tzu

I've been plagued by a sort of exhaustion recently that I was only dimly aware of. Its chief manifestation was a lack of motivation. I doubt it had anything to do with the weather, but thats how the saying goes. Bowing to Luke's constant pestering, I finally went skiing with him yesterday at Crystal Mountain, finally trying out the ridiculously expensive but awesome looking powder skiis I purchased months ago. The good news is the skiis did their job, though they haven't been tested in terrain of pure, deep, untracked snow.

Skiing on the West Coast, or at least in Washington, is different from the East Coast. The mountains are bigger and they get more snow. Unlike the mountains in Pennsylvania, there is so much terrain no vantage point exists, from which you can survey all of the terrain, except, of course, for low earth orbit. The popular lexicon out here contains words that are unfamiliar to the ears of an East Coast skiier: pow, untracked, lines...all concepts that only have meaning in a place where God (and/or atmopheric condensation) dumps foot after foot of natural, fluffy snow on the mountains, with no need for pathetic snowmaking machines that make weird sticky snow. This natural fluffy snow is what my snowboarder friends call pow, I suppose, because telling people that you had a great line in powder yesterday would probably give people the wrong idea.

The sheer expanse of the mountain, as well as the altitude, and the fact that I haven't been skiing all year, left me exhausted after a single run. Luke told me there was food at the top of the mountain, so to the top I went, and for most of the time I was up there I was inside a cloud:


That little rope marks off an edge that you don't want to fall off. Later, I took this shot when the cloud broke enough to reveal what lay behind that curtain of moisture:This next pic is a shot of the way I came, back towards the lift (which you probably can't see). It was difficult to take because people kept walking up from the lift and I didn't want them thinking I was taking a picture of them. I also didn't want them in the shot. I like it; it show the gradual obscuration caused by the cloud, which was technically fog because it was at the ground level. I'm calling it a cloud though, because I was on a mountain and it is more exciting that way.

There was another slight break in the clouds that revealed another mountian for a few minutes. Luke probably knows that the name of the peak is, and he probably told me too.
The reason I took all of these shots at the top of the mountain was because there was a little hitch in my plan to grab a bite to each and stretch out in the warm lodge at the top of the mountain. Namely, there was no lodge at the top of the mountain. There was a building, yes. That building had a skii patrol facility, restrooms accessible only from outside, and a restaurant. Like, with waitresses and wine glasses and table cloths, and that restaurent was "no longer seating." I suppose if I had gotten up that morning and said "I want to go to a restaurant that people think is cool because you can only get to it via a $60 ski lift ride," then I would have been content. However, I had actually gotten up that morning thinking "I'm going skiing" and was therefore severly pissed off about the lack of sustenence, and waste of an otherwise good building at the top of a mountain. They had even posted a sign of a brown paper bag with a cross out symbol on top to make sure no one could go in seeking rest. Unless, of course, they had made a reservation. I can't speak for anyone else, but when I am exhausted and sweaty and had to fall back on a deodorant shower that morning because I got up so early, all I want is a warm building where I can collapse in a chair and scarf some overpriced food off of a plastic tray. I certainly don't want to sit down to dinner in a place where the wait staff is dressed like its somebody's wedding.

Thanks to Crystal's obnoxious restaurant placement I was relegated to the picnic tables outside in the cold. I bought a tiny bowl of "lobster bisque" for $7. This was my first hint that for some people, skiing is more of a rich man's pleasure and less an awesome adventure.

I found more evidence in the lower lodge. The lower lodge was a normal lodge: a big cafeteria style thing with the same crappy food as every other ski resort. The notable thing, here, though, was this sign:
I apologize for the blurriness. I took it quickly, not wanting anyone to wonder why some guy is taking a picture of the Not Welcome Here sign. You see, people who are smart enough to bring their own (good) food are apparently not allowed to eat it in the ground level of the lodge. They have to eat it in the locker room. That is not an exaggeration. There are tables and chairs for food eating surrounded by benches and lockers. I observed this place, and the people eating there, because I was on my way to the toilets. I made a snap judgment that the people eating down there were not dressed as well (no designer ski wear from Hot Topic, etc), however, my mind may have already been primed by that "Brown Bag Area" sign and scenes from the Titanic where the poor people are locked in the lower levels.

None of this really matters much, however. I had a good time. In fact, after the first run my heart was beating so fast it probably counted as tachycardia. It occurred to me while I was halfway down the slope that skiing at high altitude with an undiagnosed heart condition and asthma and without an inhaler was probably a dumb idea. But I was already in it, and there was nothing I could do. These slopes we do don't exactly allow for stopping, especially when you are too exhausted to jump for the turns. It is ride or die--or I suppose more accurately--carve or fall. Thats where the reference to Sun Tzu's desperate ground comes from. In writing it may not sound fun, but that may be one of my favorite things about skiing: the excitement involved when not only is there no turning back, but there is no stopping or pausing or thinking either, unless you want to roll fifty feet with your skiis crossed. You can be fatalist about it, like when I was a beginner and fell deliberately as soon as I thought I was out of control. You don't have to be though. You can fright to stay upright for as long as you can, dragging every second out, balancing precariously after every unexpected hit (from a bump), frantically searching for a place to turn to an area with smoother moguls. Then add to that the fact that you are tired and can't just jump your way out of your mistakes, and you've got some serious excitement.

When we left Crystal I was throughly exhausted, but it was an entirely different kind of exhaustion from before. My body was done...quads all beat up from carving heavy snow, shoulder sore from what must have been one of my falls...overall physical energy was down at the I'm-only-capable-of-napping levels. However, in every other respect, I seemed to be less tired. My mind was more awake than ever, and I itching for another adventure. Things that I didn't really feel like doing now sounded like great ideas. Its a good feeling. I plan to hit the slopes again as soon as my shoulder stops hurting.



[comicon]
Luke and I sent to Comicon (Seattle) the next day. We only caught the tail end. Some guy palmed me his badge thing as we entered. We watched part of a panel on how to do webcomics. I didn't recognize any of the authors except for Scott Kurt(sp?) who writes a webcomic called PVP Online that I used to think was funny. We also sat through most of a Star Trek...thing. It had something to do with Star Trek, and it didn't suck, and I came home afterwards and watched the new Star Trek movie. I also bought a hot dog. There were girls there, but not many. There were a lot of guys there, and a lot of them were the kind of guys I am not interested in being friends with. Also one of the girls we saw was a furry, so that subtracts a few points from the girls side. I suppose furriness could be cool, and by that I mean specifically that if I sat here long enough, I could probably envision some kind of furry-like naughty costume that I would think was sexy. Unfortunately I haven't thought of such a costume yet, and I think that sticking a fuzzy tail thing down the ass of your jeans is a bit of a turn off. Despite all of the negatives that I managed to drag out yet again, I did have a good time and I want to go again. There is something cool about many of the people who go to these things...people whose excitement and passion about some subject is infectious. As long as that subject is not Dungeons & Dragons, I think we could all be friends.

Also, I bought an iron-on thundercat patch. I think I might slap it on my jeans. I'm thinking right leg, near the bottom, so that it might catch someone's eye when I'm salsa dancing and I do a flare thing with my leg. I would rather have dragons on my pants, but they didn't have any dragon stickers, and my current jeans have that hole in the knee from collapsing in front of Rite Aid anyway.

In the immediate future I am planning on more skiing, more episodes of Castle with Firefly Girl, more dancing and more conventions. I am signed up for some thing called sakuracon in April. It has something to do with anime. If Adam's more-girls-than-guys-at-cons prophecy doesnt come true, me and that boy are gonna have words.

Oh, also, for next Halloween I want to be the guy from Memento. You don't have to know anything about it except for it will involve drawing on my chest with a sharpie, and I will (ironically) forget this decision and wonder aloud what I wanted to be for halloween. Please tell me I wanted to be the guy from Memento. Oh man...if more people saw that movie, the fact that I forget girls names...it would be like I'm flirting with them!

I think for Sakuracon I will go as Akira, so long as anytime someone recognized me I can tell them I hated the second half of that movie.

Also I just started skimming this over and there are some terrible typos. I feel kinda bad if you went through all that. Maybe I'll clean them up later.

Yummy

Tonight I went to...well, salsa practice. I realize that saying it that way makes it sound kind of gay, and at the same time makes me picture little kids in soccer uniforms piling out of minivans, but it was actually pretty chill, and super helpful. I got to work on my moves a lot, and many that I had forgotten came back via muscle memory. Finding these moves is like diving under water in pitch black darkness to find your keys. Actually, its not. I have no other use for that simile, though.

Despite accidentally sending the text "Andrea hot bar girl" to Meryl last week, I have continued my habit of texting girls' names to myself. Tonights notes:

-End philly favorite with hook turn
-right turn behind the back but instead of switching hands, duck at the end
-2 (double) hair caresses from right2right over left2left -- one involves girl right turn first
-russian = marena
-candy


Yeah. She said her name was Candy. I'm not even going to bother coming up with a silly nickname, because she's already named Candy. That is awesome by the way. Although it reminds me of how I met Krist--never mind. Maybe I'll call her Twizzler in my head. Or gummy bear. Yeah. You're welcome for that. Sexy Skittle. Hot Tamale. Hot Chocolate--although she's not black. White Chocolate? Vanilla chocolate. Vanilla is so much better than chocolate. Man...I can't think of--well fruit rollups, tootstie pops. Blow pops...Blowpop. I would have to very sure about who I texted that one to. Anyway. She is hot. While we were dancing I thought there was a ring on her finger. Then I later realized that my left is her right. You'd think I'd figure that out after three years of actually trying to dance, but I've made this mistake before. I think I'm gonna have to suspend all calls to isEngaged() in my head until I'm off the dance floor.

Oh man, that reminds me of the time Gina told some guy at a club that the ring on her right finger was her engagement ring from her Egyptian boyfriend to make him leave her alone...which is how I found out she wasn't giving up med school to move to Italy to live in a Castle with some guy whose Dad owned a famous banking chain. That was also the same night two girls deliberately bumped into me and...lets just say that belongs of my list of Oblivious Fails. Damnit that is a long list. Oh and this girl Erin from Manayunk Brew pub also goes on that list. But I digress.

My attempts to run into Red Shirt girl have so far...well I haven't run into her. All this effort recently and what I have to show for it includes...knowing the names of some girls I barely know, and a few salsa moves. I guess thats good. Not enough to make my mom stop telling me about these dating sites she hears about. I mean, I'd love to join them, except my experience with cragislist and okcupid has been terrible, and all those pay sites play horrible commercials during my favorite tv shows, and those horrible commercials always show these models hooking up that I bet don't look anything like the people on the dating sites. Plus, I'm still a little skeptical about there being any girls on the internet at all. I mean, do we really know? Plus, Kate Beckinsale is already married. Ok I'm not actually sure how thats related.

[random things that have been bouncing around in my head]
You know...just in case anyone missed hearing me say weird stuff at random intervals. So I'm thinking about getting slightly more serious about visiting Russia. I bought a tiny book about Russia. Apparently Kiev is in Ukraine, not Russia. Who knew? I'm a gummy bear. Yes I'm a gummy. I'm yummy chummy funny lucky--sorry. I'm still listening to that song. Anyway, I also want to start having parties here. Oh man I had so much more to say--like about how I just read The Gunslinger by Stephen King, and this thing at work that I'm not allowed to talk about--but I am so bored writing this. Well, whatever. I'm thinking about writing romance novels. I have no interest in them, because they appear to be composed of all of the elements of a book or movie that I always ignore, such as people's feelings, and superfluous sex scenes (yeah, I said it. I don't like sex scenes that serve no purpose--they should stay on the internet where they belong). However...I was pacing around in my office (its shared) trying to avoid work, and realized that of all the various genres, romantic novels probably have the best kind of fan base. As in, mostly girls. This is partly inspired by a Questionable Content subplot. I was thinking I would put like a code in the book, like that xkcd geohashing function, so that the smartest of my fans would figure out the code and somehow get a chance to date me. So maybe next time I'm in a book store I'll pick up a romance novel and try to get through a whole paragraph. Thats actually the problem with this idea--if I can't stand reading the genre, how could I write it?

Maybe it could be a super geeky romance novel. "The freckled redhead slid the memory card in, further, futher into the robot. The round sets of LEDs in hits head switched to a dull red--the LED color of passion." And then Jane said "thats why I never kiss 'em on the mouth."

Ok. Maybe not. It was just an idea. If you, like me, still have the gummy bear song in your head this may help. Oh NIN...makes me want to make out with a girl wearing a hoodie with thumbholes in the sleeves. And makes me want to learn the piano better.

What have I become...my sweetest friend...everyone I know goes away
In the end

I'm tired of looking in the past and seeing what went wrong--but whats the alternative? Keep gazing off into the future? I did too much of that too--missed out on a lot. I don't really know how to live in the moment either. I mean, right now I'm sitting cross-legged on the ikea chair that I hoped would force me to learn to sit up straight (fat chance) banging my knee against the desk in rythm to the super depressing song I'm playing because it reminds me of someone that I know I'm better off trying to forget, all while I type in a retarded journal whose most faithful reader is me, trying to ignore the pain in my right wrist because I don't want to go to bed yet because I know in final moment before I go to sleep I will want to think about someone I like and there is no one left to think about. This isn't exactly the kind of moment I want to treasure. Except for how long that sentence was. Last night I may have dreamed about a swimming pool. Hmmmmm. That girl on House said life is a serious of rooms. I don't know. Maybe I'll come up with an answer tomorrow during my lunch break.

Seriously I can't believe her name is Candy. Who names their kid Candy?

So proud, even if I'm the only one who thinks its funny

"Also, whats the deal with _your_ email? It sounds like a World of Warcraft character. Not that there's anything wrong with that--my best friends are world of warcraft characters."

[Edit]
Thats not actually true--I've never played. I have played Warcraft I, Warcraft II, Warcraft II Dark Portal, Warcraft II Battle.Net Edition, Warcraft III, and Warcraft III Frozen Throne, so I'm going to pretend to be a part of that geeky community as I please.

Another reason I hope girls don't read this

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

/**
* The Collatz Conjecture states that if you pick a number,
* and if its even divide it by two and if its odd multiply
* it by three and add one, and you repeat this procedure
* long enough, eventually your friends will stop calling
* to see if you want to hang out.
*
* http://xkcd.com/710/
*
*/
public class Collatz {

/**
* rely on finite stack as failsafe to prevent running forever.
* (this system appears to always terminate anyway, though).
*
* @param x
*/
public static void collatz(long x){

System.out.println(x);

if(x == 1){
/* the next number is actually 4
* (depending on your religion)
* but then it would run forever
*/
return;
}else if(x%2 == 0){
collatz( x/2);
}else
{
collatz( x*3+1);
}
}

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{

System.out.println("Enter an integer: " );

collatz(
Long.parseLong( new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)).readLine() )
);
}
}


I theorize that for any integer, this function will always reach 1, and I have no intentions of proving that. Also I made a graph, and also I'd like to graph the depth of this function, where the x axis is an integer, and the y axis is the count of iterations before you reach 1.


This post will be continued after lunch, and after I do some actual work....

// http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJRMwdmFYWg&feature=popular


[Edit]
You know you want to: http://igraph.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html

Blah Blah Blah

[weekend]
A Salsa Congress is a big event where a bunch of people that like to dance salsa all show up in once city and dance. I don't know why they call them congresses and I think that is a stupid name, and I bet its always the same thousands of people that show up every time, but I've never been. I typically don't here about these things until shortly after one ends--and its always the one that was in the city I happened to be in. When I was in philly, I missed the Philly Salsa Congress. Then I moved to Seattle and missed the Seattle Salsa Congress. This is the backstory for the next paragraph.

Last weekend a coworking got sick and was unable to do our on call thing--having a boring weekend and not doing anything fun because if anything breaks you have to jump online and fix it. I took her shift. I assumed that they would take my shift this weekend. Apparently this person is still sick, and I will now spend two miserable weekends in a row. Plus, last night this girl told me that this weekend there is a Salsa Congress in Vancouver. For once in my life (excepting the times I've forgotten) I know about a salsa congress in driving range before it happens. However in all likelihood I will be stuck at home troubleshooting other peoples problems. This on call thing is becoming a problem.

[notes from last night]
I am terrible at remembering girls names. Really bad. Last night when I went to this "dance practica" thing hoping to run into Red Shirt girl -- she wasn't there :( --I resorted to just texting myself things I wanted to remember:

Enchufla swing arm low (start an enchufla left to her right, but swing her arm behind her back. its awesome)
Jenna short hair green shirt (I didn't really want to dance with her--i'm less attracted to girls with short hair and she has an affinity for correcting me while we dancing--which would be ok if I thought she was right)
Allison=hair (dark skin, white shirt, big poofy hair)
Hammerlock is the key also salsa videos (that move i was trying to remember can be started from a hammerlock and i need to start watching salsa videos online to steal moves)



[liquor]
Luke sent me a map generated by Microsoft's search engine, which I only use when clicking on links that Luke sends me. Admittedly this engine did a better job of finding liquor stores near me, but I'm going to continue using google maps because Google isn't the company that, for ten years now, has been the main reason I can't run games on linux. If you suffer from insomnia I'd be glad to explain why. Anyway, the reason I'm writing it here is that this engine, which I won't name, claims there is a liquor store on:

6th ave between Lenora and Blanchard.

[lyrics]
I want to close the text editor that has been sitting open, so here are some barely-started lyrics I practically copied from this song:

i wanted you to know
that i love the way you laugh
and the way you dance
the way you talk

the secret's over now

blah blah blah



[also]
http://mobilementalism.com/2005/09/02/howto-install-java-j2me-midlets-on-your-mobile-phone/

Technology: 12, Dave: 0

[Phone]
My brand new phone that I had purchased only a year ago, with the ridiculously slow operating system, died on me yesterday. The very day I was hoping to show up early to salsa class and get Red Shirt girl's phone number. I didn't really mourn its passing, mostly because when I pressed MENU,* to lock or unlock it, it took forever for it to actually lock/unlock. In fact, everything about that phone was slow. Navigating through the menus was like wading through a pool of molasses with sacks of hard drives full of poorly-written code attached to your legs.

Something had been rattling around inside the phone for about a day--must have banged into something important.

I stopped by AT&T for a new phone. I wanted to pay full price and avoid a contract, because I hate making commitments to companies I hate, but apparently the cost of a phone is greater than the cost of breaking a contract. Thanks a lot, Cali. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the sales guy thought I was either a douchebag or a huge nerd when I told him the operating system on my previous phone sucked.

I finally walked out with a mostly working phone and began my initial period of mixed fascination and hate. Its kind of like your first few dates with a significant other, except instead of a girl it is a cell phone, and instead of euphoria its acute disgust. My new new phone has basically the same crappy operating system as my old new phone, the main difference is that it has been endowed with an unnecessarily large memory and an unnecessarily fast processor.

This is not how I wanted the story of my old new phone to end. I would have preferred that every human being on this planet be told what a crappy operating system my old phone had, and then found a perfectly coded, open source, and beautiful Nokia-and-AT&T-compatible operating system on the internet that does not have twenty layers of abstraction for code monkeys that can't manage memory, and programmed by people who don't think it should be called GNU/linux. Even if that single person was me.

I guess if I want to live a normal life, I can't spend time fighting these battles. If only I had an evil and completely asexual twin that got along with people who expect the entire world to change for them.

The next problem with my new phone...well we're gonna have to skip a few. Especially which button they chose for backspace...those bastards. Anyway the next problem I'll choose to mention is the part where I tried to delete a contact, and then wasn't able to make any new contacts, and then all of my contacts disappeared. My reluctance to trust my contacts to the memory of this new phone was involved, however I just lost a lot of numbers because they were only stored in the memory of the now deceased phone, so I think such reluctance is justified.

In the time since I've received a number of problematic texts from numbers that I should have recognized. For example, "I think we should just be friends blah blah blah" is not, in fact, a text that you can respond to with "hey who is this?"

I got my contacts back by reseating the SIM card. I suppose that means they will all disappear again the next time I drop my phone.

[Board Games, part 1]
I haven't played Settlers in a while. However I have managed to keep up with all of the girls that attended, so I suppose its no great loss. Also, I was getting pretty damn good, and no matter how hard I try, when it comes to Settlers (and Descent3) I can't pull back and go easy on someone. Doesn't matter if a friend is a total beginner, they get the same cutthroat treatment from me. Hopefully if I stop playing for a while I won't win almost every game.

Speaking of those girls, it has taken a long time to find some to come salsa with me, but despite that setback I may end up with way more than two. This has the potential to be awesome. If I can manage to show up at the same club, roughly weekly, with ten girls, everybody will know me AND adding that many girls to a single dance floor could actually swing the normally male-dominated gender ratio back into balance. I could restore balance to the dance floor. How awesome is that?

Possible Salsa Harem Candidates:
-Firefly girl
-Pilot girl
-that sarah girl I barely know (doubtful)
-Actor girl
-that girl from craiglist
-that girl I never want to hook up with again
-Red Shirt girl
-possibly someone from or associated with my dance class

Thats eight. If I can pull this off I am the king. If any of them read my blog regularly, I am finished.

[Board Games, part 2]
The host of a board game club I attended once roughly a year ago, who I retroactively decided was creepy, emailed me to inform me that their policy required their members to attend twice a year, and he was forced to let me go. I never asked to be a member, was not aware that I was a member, and had replied to one of Mr Creepypants' emails to confirm my disinterest in making another appearance there any time soon. While I did enjoy playing half a game of Starfarers of Catan before I had to catch a bus back to Seattle, the gender ratio was worse than a gay bar and driving all the way back there to play some board games while sober is possibly the last item on my list of possible things to do on a saturday night. At this point if I did want to go play some board games with them, I would shoot him an email and then show up. That's about exactly what I would do if I were still a member. I hope this means the picture he took of me will be removed from their website.

Sill, I feel a slight sting being kicked out of a club I didn't want to join. That would be like, way back in high school, having the chorus teacher come by the band hall while I'm practicing my trumpet to let me know I couldn't be in chorus. People who play the trumpet, by the way, are typically competent singers because they have good pitch. That actually goes for most instrumentalists.

I do want to play Starfarers of Catan again. If you like spending 8 hours to play a board game, please contact me and we'll set something up. Maybe they'll set up a table for us in Vegas.

[Work]
This week it is my turn to deal with all of the crap that no one wants to deal with. That means being at work and "on call" with my pager and everything during the daytime, from 9:30 to 5:30. This leaves an hour between when I can and want to go leave and 6:30 when, thanks to rush hour, construction, and about a million busses, I can actually make it home. You can expect more posts like this one. I used to feel bad; there are a lot of posts that don't make it. In fact this is post #90 according to google, but you would see a different sum. I don't plan on feeling bad anymore. If you get tired of hearing me complain about modern technology and the lack of girls in Seattle, thats your fault for continuing to read this. Hmm...I do still have to make sure I don't say to much when I drink and write. So I suppose the filter isn't coming all the way off. Thats what she said.

Things the Amazon Kindle is Not Good For

After not caring about the Kindle for so long I am kind of rooting for it now. Maybe working here is getting to me. Maybe I heard about Apple releasing their on kindle thing and decided they were jackasses and hoped they would get crushed, or at least fairly beaten by, the kindle. So if you are going to buy one of these book readers (I'm not) you should buy a kindle. And if you buy a book reader thats not a Kindle, definitely don't buy the one from Apple. I'd actually like to see Apple lose more than Amazon win. Even if Microsoft released some crappy electronic book reader that blue screened when you looked at it, and saturated the market with it, causing damage that would cause decades for the industry to recover from, I would still be happy because at least Apple lost that round.

Anyway, since I am now some kind of fan for this device I would never buy, and since I have to sit around at work for like an hour waiting for rush hour to go away, I thought I would write down a list of things the Kindle is not good for:

1. Giving yourself a papercut. No paper :(

2. Using as a surprisingly noisy projectile weapon. Books can be tossed about and thrown out the window without breaking them. And when you throw hardbacks, they usually open up and make a sound. Thats pretty cool. Also, watch this movie.

3. Burning for heat. Its electronic, so you can't pile up a bunch of kindles and light them on fire for warmth because the toxic gasses will probably kill you.

4. Blending into the background. A guy sitting around reading a book isn't that notable. But a guy sitting around staring at futuristic and expensive looking white box will get noticed.

5. Levitating. Admittedly, books can't do this either.

6. Smelling like a book. New books have that paper smell. Sometimes its fun. The Kindle doesn't do that.

7. Going on a long journey with a light source by no power. Imagine if you were on an interstellar space ship that had light but no gravity, electrical outlets, or batteries. You could take books and read them over and over again for the rest of your life (traveling between stars takes a looooong time) but the Kindle would run out of batteries. I suppose another use case is if you were descending deep into subterranean dungeons to fight monsters from hell--a book can be read (or burned) by torchlight, but down there, there is no way to recharge your Kindle. And with your luck they wouldn't even release dungeon maps for the Kindle anyway.

8. Giving away. When you read a physical book, when you're done with it, you can give it to a friend. The MPAA and RIAA call this piracy, but they suck so screw them. With the Kindle, there could be some sharing mechanism for our ebooks, but lets face it. It probably sucks.

9. Balancing objects such as tables and slide projectors. Many books of varying sizes can be placed under the legs of tables and projectors to balance them without being harmed. If you do that with a Kindle though, I think it will damage the screen.

10. Playing the boardgame Clue (a.k.a. Master Detective). My family uses thin hardback books to shield their clue sheets from prying eyes. The Kindle wouldn't work for this.

11. Slamming down on the table to make a noise. The Kindle is too light to make a respectable boom sound, and would likely be damaged in the process.

12. Using as a secret stash for illegal software or candy or whatever. For an example, see one of the best movies of all time. You have to like cut holes in lots of pages and glue the ends together.

13. Ripping pages out. Sometimes people just gotta rip a page out of a book and take it away, leaving the book deformed and less useful. You can't do that with a Kindle. You can't even approximate the action.

14. Drawing notes on the margins. If you draw on the margins of the kindle, you're really drawing on the screen, so you can only make one set of notes or juvenile doodles for all books, for all time, whereas in a book you get a set per page!

15. In an emergency, every page of a book can be ripped out and folded into a paper airplane. This is not possible with the Kindle.

16. Props for being a douchebag: you can line up books on a shelf to make people think your smart (Advanced Calculus, The Lord of the Rings, Programming Concepts) or nerdy (your set of retarded, overpriced D&D manuals). You can't do that with a Kindle, and if you found a way, it would be way less subtle than a shelf full of books you've never read.

17. Conversation pieces. Sure, you can sit down on a bus with a Kindle and hope that someone asks "what are you reading?" instead of "WTF is that?" but with a book, a stranger might invade your space and twist their head to see the title of the book without talking to you. The kindle doesn't give them the chance to do that.

18. Cluttering up your office. If you were trying to discourage people from sitting on your couch and talking to you, ebooks will not help. And you can't leave your expensive Kindle lying there. Unless your ***** of an ex-girlfriend bought it for you a week before dumping you and you want it to be stolen.

19. Giving yourself a present you already owned just to screw with people, like House did. You can't wrap an ebook up in brown paper and throw on a mysterious card. And people would already know you have a Kindle, so thats out.

20. You can't sell an ebook on your company's internal mailing list for selling stuff and have people race to your desk to buy it.

F6F6F6

I shook my hands, ran them under water, and washed them, yet they are still sticky with climbing chalk. My lungs aren't too happy about breathing it, either. Then theres my sore fingers and my forearms which are still hot even though I went climbing hours ago.

Tonight was the first time I'd gone up a wall in over a year. Felt good to be doing it, even though I was just bouldering and I sucked. And even Luke got tired of my Thats What She Said jokes. And my fingers hurt so much. It was a good time though. The gym was ridiculously crowded, but I didn't mind so much because there was a lot (for Seattle) of girls there. Hot, toned, confident, climber girls. There are certain attractive personality traits that all climber girls seem to posses...which I don't feel like describing.

I got to the top of a few V1's and V0's. The ratings aren't so helpful at this gym. Some of the bouldering courses went way higher than I wanted to go without a rope. I'm going to try going maybe once a week until I get my strength back. I will probably just boulder for now; I've forgotten how to tie an S knot, and I've definitely forgotten all the answers to the questions they ask in a belay test, like which vocal commands to pretend I use--which one of us says "belay on?" The correct answer: "thats retarded." People who use the official climbing vocals, as well as people who think you should no longer put two spaces after the end of a sentence, can kiss my ass.

Then....later on.....I thought there was a practice thing at the dance studio across the street tonight. I was going to go tonight, but then I double checked the schedule so I won't look like an idiot, and sure enough, I had confused Sunday with Monday. In my mind, for as long as I can remember, I imagine weeks starting with monday, and both saturday and sunday are at the end. If you're curious, I also imagine months of the year in a big circle, going clockwise. December, January and February are on the bottom, and depending whether or not I remember that February is actually part of Winter, either february or march starts curving up, and then theres march and whatever else and blah blah blah I digress.

It turns out, mondays are reserved for some "group private lesson." What could that be? Red Shirt girl (I wrote about her previously, but then retracted those posts, so you probably haven't heard of her yet) said she was doing some kind of dance team. There is no dance team on the schedule. Could it be the

Side note: right now I am listening to the thundercats theme song. mmmmmm. thunder, thunder, Thunder, THUNDER CATS.

Where was I. Oh yes. Could this be the dance team thing she mentioned? I decided that I needed to go to 7-11, a destination that takes me right by the studio, wearing a single shot of cologne. Thunder, Thunder, Thunder THUNDER CATS. I used to be quite opposed to this kind of thing--in all the time I was pining after Madison, I only used knowledge of her schedule to purposely run into her once. I have since changed my opinion, especially since I'm not going to meet anyone sitting in my apartment playing Mini Ninjas, and 7-11 makes good hot dogs.

So yes. Red shirt girl, or someone who looks just like her from across 4th avenue, has dance practice on whatever days. I think I need to start drinking coffee at the not-a-Starbucks coffee shop across the street, and sip my Tall Vanilla Latte while reading a book at the outside part, right around when her dance class is over. Actually thats pretty lame. I dont know why...it sounded like a great idea when I was walking home from 7-11. Maybe I'll just do my own thing, and if I run into her again, get her number.

I met her last week....how long do I have before I'm in her friend zone? Does the timer last forever if we never really get to know each other? Those questions are directed at anyone who hasn't subjected me to unwanted, merciless lectures on why I should go after Jessica despite the fact that we lived far away, she had a boyfriend, and was always busy when I called. And pretended to go after her. And then wanted to be my wingman.

Anyway, Red Shirt girl and I have had two conversations: one that started when she commented on my dancing skills but was cut short because the dance teacher came over, and one about how awesome Philly is. Whatever happens, this better not end like my story with Krystal. I don't know what I'm going to do different. Well, definitely don't sign up for a 6 month performance class that is way above my skill level. Thats step number 1. Definitely talk and/or dance with her again. Step 2. Definitely ask her out, like soon. Definitely don't make any of the dumbass mistakes that I made with Krystal, Heather, Laura, Jessica, Kristen, Katie, Battlestar Julie, the other Laura, the other Katie, Ariana, Madison, Danielle's roomate, the three girls at Danielle's party, Andrea, Ketchup girl, that girl on the 7th floor, Jessica again, and the girl in the pizza shop. Crap and the one that liked my bike. If I can avoid...all of those...I'll be fine. I'm kind of worried one day a DeLorean will suddenly appear in front of me, and an older me will get out and just punch me in the face and scream "what is wrong with you?"

I have Epic Failed with more girls than I've dated. And I do mean Epic.

Maybe thats how the world works.

Maybe, when a ridiculously hot snowboarder girl walks up as you're hopping on your motorcycle and asks if you want to do this salsa thing with her, maybe the answer is always yes. Maybe I had the right idea when I randomly walked up to that girl I barely knew in high school and made a fool of myself asking her out--three times. Maybe the Rose Ninja wasn't a dumb idea. Maybe a 7 hours train ride isn't, in fact, pathetic--I mean I went farther than that for a powdered double black diamond--why not a climber with an penchant for adventure? Maybe I should just stop being a pussy about everything, jump first, and ask questions later. (Except at work--that computer is still a little bit broken). Maybe girls that don't want me can go die in a fire. Maybe good things don't come to you while you are at home watching South Park in your boxers. Maybe you have to fail a lot before you finally reach what you're after. Maybe you fall a lot, and get all banged up on the way down. Why do we fall, anyway? Maybe you dont need to sweat the details. Maybe I'll pregame before dance class! Maybe I'll fly to Vegas myself and learn Texas Hold'em instead of waiting for my friends to have a free spot in their schedules. Maybe we'll hit Vancouver and do a serious study on correlations between differences in drinking ages and friendliness of girls. Maybe we'll go skiing and meet hot snowboarders on the lift. Maybe I'm running out of things to put in a sentance starting with "maybe." Maybe not. Maybe thunder Thunder THUNDER THUNDER CATS!!!