Monday, August 30, 2010
Ninjas Only Have Two Wheels
"Remember, when I say STOP, don't finish, just pull out"
--our rafting guide
We went White Water Rafting this weekend. Out of all the "Extreme Sports" that I don't think are stupid, whitewater rafting seems to be the most relaxing. It may be because I don't treat it like a role playing game. When I'm climbing, its all about getting better and, you know, leveling up to harder walls. When I'm mountain biking, its all about trying to acquire new skills and putting points into Stamina so that I can keep up with Luke. Its even true of stuff I do that isn't extreme sports. When I'm dancing its all about getting better so I can dance with cuter girls (there is, sometimes, a strong correlation between attractiveness and dance skill, but you don't want to know why), and with flying I just want to collect more ratings and licenses and move up to bigger and faster planes, as if my life is nothing but some kind of flight sim role playing game. I was the same way with skiing, even, except when I started barreling down double black diamonds (the hardest type of slope) on ice, I decided that I had conquered that sport.
This is not the case with whitewater rafing; rafting of all types is something I don't need to get better at. I just want to float down a river, enjoy the view, paddle furiously to avoid some rocks and then get splashed by some ice cold water. There is no "next time" that we need to be concerned about. I'm not going to go around buying better paddles, or trying to seduce my friends into coming along with, or collecting guide certifications. I just have no interest. It is kind of ironic: with all of the slouching and lounging around that I do, and the games and other diversions I indulge in, I couldn't truly relax until I was barrelling down rapids on the side of an inflated pvc tube, clutching my little paddle with a death grip every time some ice cold water hit my neck and ran all the way down my back. It was the most relaxing thing I've done in months. I think there may be something wrong with my interests. I don't know.
I'm starting to think of my entire life in terms of floating down a river: I'm going to reach the end whether I do anything about it or not, and I'm really not accustomed to doing anything about it. I spend, and have spent, most of my time waiting for something to happen. Its just a habit. I have this long list of things I want to do, like visit Russia, and ski at blackcomb, and blah blah blah, and I have a big list of reasons why I can't do all that, but I bet if I really wanted to, I could do all that. I just don't, because I spend all of my time alternately chasing girls, or keeping busy to take the edge off of the loneliness/rejection. I know. Another emo post. I just hung out with Luke and his fiance like all weekend, so I'm feeling a bit third wheel-ish. Don't get me wrong--they are totally fun to hang out with. But I've been here before: with Owen and Erin. There were also totally fun to hang out with, but I always thought of that as a temporary state, that I was just having a run of bad luck, and I wouldn't be third-wheeling it again ten years later. Something is seriously wrong with...something. I won't give all of the details, because this is a story and not a cry for help. In fact, so much harm has been caused by some people trying to help me that I am barely capable of accepting real help when I truly need it. I remember, once, somebody's mom offered to set me up with a bunch of young nurses she worked with. In my mind, all nurses are attractive, and they must all be smart because you can't be a nurse without studying the hard sciences. So this was an awesome offer. However, I was so used to people interfering with my life that I froze up--ok this paragraph is just gay. Wherever I am now...I'm responsible for that. I really just wanted to use the phrase "hard sciences."
Man...I was going to write this big long essay about how I'm going to just give up chasing girls all the time and resign myself to never finding what i'm looking for, because, if that thing with the numbers is true, I'm a four and only dates nines. And how everyone else is getting married--like everyone--and I need to just get used to being the single one and learn to enjoy life like that, because if I keep on waiting for something good to happen, my life will pass me by before I notice. I mean, I'm already 26. I'm really not sure how that happened. There's like a chunk missing somewhere that I don't remember. But....lets face it. I wouldn't be able to maintain an attitude like that for a week (plus, I'm asking Hot Girl out tomorrow). Not until I am convinced that I will never find someone, will I be able to truly rest. I'm simply hard wired to think about girls all the time, and nothing on this lame ass planet compares.
I decided this while I was drinking coffee at Tully's in Redmond. I was at Tully's because I had driven up there to meet up with someone for my fourth purchase of bulk Lego bricks, and I was meeting Luke and his fiance to see a movie later, and because I did not realize there was a starbucks across the street. Had I been at starbucks, I would not have been prodded out of my reverie by some guy at the next table passive-aggressively complaining to his friend about some person I didn't care about and definitely didn't want to hear about. Something about a desk. Anyway. I have no answers. I don't know if I'm making the right moves. I don't know if I should give up and look for some magical silver bullet that will allow me to be content with being alone. I still don't know what to say when my parents call every week, disappointed and suspicious that my life is in the exact same place it was the week before, and I have no news. I don't know if I'm in denial about something, or if I'm on the right track but just really unfortunate. All I know is that something has me stressed out, and that playing the "why am I stressed?" game with myself in a coffee shop only makes it worse.
Laura crossed my mind the other day. I looked at some pictures of her on facebook, and then got Breathing by Lifehouse stuck in my head. Yeah, I'm a classy guy. I think I'm going to start racing cars.
[Edit]
NGO website: http://www.good.is
[Edit]
What if you had an email auto-responder on, but you sent an email to someone else who also had an auto-responder on? Would your two auto-responders suddenly start screaming at each other nonstop that each of you is unavailable?
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Pay by the pound, or by the brick?
I have finally found my competition, although I'm having trouble finding exact figures. I am kind of annoyed someone already figured out how to make a Lego roller coaster; that was going to me one of the awesome attractions of my city. I suppose I'll just have to make one with loops, or that is suspended, or something similar. Oh, wait, this link provides a good picture. That really doesn't look like much. Ok, the table is 22' x 95'. Thats about 2090 square feet.
So its called the Lego Millyard Project. I am impressed with some of their architecture...mostly that bridge.
Oh, wow, this page has everything I need.
[Edit]
I'm hearing $5 - $7 per pound, and roughly 150 pieces per pound. I need to get a scale and measure what i'm buying to be certain, though. I'm starting to think that 1 or 2 cents per brick is a good price.
Some references:
http://www.firehow.com/2010041611667/how-to-buy-bulk-legos.html
http://askalfan.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/lego-sold-by-weight/
oh, and i think this is the good article that I had read:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/06/finding-lego-bricks-in-bulk/
So its called the Lego Millyard Project. I am impressed with some of their architecture...mostly that bridge.
Oh, wow, this page has everything I need.
[Edit]
I'm hearing $5 - $7 per pound, and roughly 150 pieces per pound. I need to get a scale and measure what i'm buying to be certain, though. I'm starting to think that 1 or 2 cents per brick is a good price.
Some references:
http://www.firehow.com/2010041611667/how-to-buy-bulk-legos.html
http://askalfan.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/lego-sold-by-weight/
oh, and i think this is the good article that I had read:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/06/finding-lego-bricks-in-bulk/
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Negative, Ghostrider
In an effort to not be held accountable for anything I say or do, I try not to mention the name of the company I work for anymore, but most of you readers out there know what it is. Here is some advice: if you ever want to work for my company as a software developer, know what a linked list is. In fact, even if you're not interviewing for this company, or even as a software developer at all, you should know what a damn linked list is. School children should know how a linked list works. I think we should teach beginner programming age the age of 7, and stop treating is as if it is some magic wizardry that is the province of stereotypically nerdy math types. I propose an alternative stereotype: that of the hotshot fighter pilot from the movie top gun. People should think of programmers in the same way.
Friday, August 20, 2010
The rules of boardgames
The rules of boardgames are not copyrighted according to this video:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html - 12:16
But if thats true, how did those bastards get Scrabbulous removed from facebook?
[note to self]
oncall is a good time for videogames. Maybe meeting people on the internet isnt a complete waste of time.
[another note]
start the virtual city by building the old, original sets and fitting them together.
[another note]
try using mechanical turk to get the ldraw files made
[yet another note]
want to make a metal version of this song. and i want to sing as good as Jack Black can.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html - 12:16
But if thats true, how did those bastards get Scrabbulous removed from facebook?
[note to self]
oncall is a good time for videogames. Maybe meeting people on the internet isnt a complete waste of time.
[another note]
start the virtual city by building the old, original sets and fitting them together.
[another note]
try using mechanical turk to get the ldraw files made
[yet another note]
want to make a metal version of this song. and i want to sing as good as Jack Black can.
How it Works
How to tell if a girl wants to be your friend:
She seems interested in talking to you.
How to tell if a girl is totally in to you:
See seems interested in talking to you.
Yeah, there is no easy solution to this mess. Also, I'm starting to become aware of this thing where, if a girl wants to dance with you, she doesn't ask you to dance with her or anything; she just kind of comes up and stands near you, hoping that you will ask her. WTF? Even at the heights of my shy passive aggressiveness I didn't do that. Don't do that. That makes me not want to dance with you, because I think "well I better not ask her; she's standing right there and hasn't asked me to dance so she must not be interested." Side note: my friends told me about this girl who asked a guy out, and his excuse for saying no was that she was too forward. He needs to be punched in the face. Anyway. So I ... think two girls did that to me tonight. One was hot bar girl, who I've danced with before and probably noticed me looking at her a lot, but I didn't get a chance to ask her because someone else asked me to dance, or distracted me, and then some guy asked hot bar girl to dance before I could make a move. So thats like usual. The second girl who did it--it was obvious. I was still attempting to make eye contact and she's like already nodding her head or something. Then, she was all into dancing super close. You'll find out shortly why I'm still unsure if thats supposed to mean something. Then, after one dance, she told me her name before I could ask her. Then she was like, all over me. Or maybe half over me. 5.62...idk. I tried to show my interest by uncrossing my arms--I don't know why everyone acts like standing around with your arms crossed means your all disenaged or uninterested or unhappy or something. I love standing around with my arms crossed. If there is like a pillar, or a wall, or a corner, and I can lean against, one shoe draped over the other, arms crossed...thats how I like to stand. But I digress.
We talked all through some song I didn't want to dance too--probably a merengue--and I might have come on too strong. Idk. I'm guessing here. You know half the time when I mention that I played the best instrument in the world in high school and then switched to the guitar, it sounds like I'm bragging. Maybe. So. Another salsa song came on, and I asked her to dance, and I was under the impression we were both having a good time--a better time, in fact, than the first dance. My...my battle plan was to ask if she wants to go dancing sometime and get her number. So far thats worked on...everyone. This time I was going to ask her out or something. Anyway. So the song ends, and she's just gone. She disappeared with the speed of someone who didn't really want to dance with you anyway and was just humoring you because you asked and it was polite. When my eyes caught up with her, she's dancing with some old dude.
I was getting tired, so I tried to make the rounds and say goodbye to the various friends I had come with, but it took nearly a kilosecond because I kept getting waylayed by girls wanting to dance. With one of them, this awesome salsa song came on. I love it, but after 3 or 4 years of high school Spanish I can't make out a single word. It goes something like: la la la, la, la-la la la la, da something something.... It has uh...some salsa instruments. Anyway, I start getting into it, and it is about to be an awesome dance, and then all of a sudden part of the girls bra unsnaps, and not the part that is supposed to. Those things should come with warranties. Fortunately, she was one of my friends, so it wasn't awkward, but she had to run to the bathroom to reattach it or whatever and by the time she came back I had lost the passion.
I guess I just have that effect on girls.
She seems interested in talking to you.
How to tell if a girl is totally in to you:
See seems interested in talking to you.
Yeah, there is no easy solution to this mess. Also, I'm starting to become aware of this thing where, if a girl wants to dance with you, she doesn't ask you to dance with her or anything; she just kind of comes up and stands near you, hoping that you will ask her. WTF? Even at the heights of my shy passive aggressiveness I didn't do that. Don't do that. That makes me not want to dance with you, because I think "well I better not ask her; she's standing right there and hasn't asked me to dance so she must not be interested." Side note: my friends told me about this girl who asked a guy out, and his excuse for saying no was that she was too forward. He needs to be punched in the face. Anyway. So I ... think two girls did that to me tonight. One was hot bar girl, who I've danced with before and probably noticed me looking at her a lot, but I didn't get a chance to ask her because someone else asked me to dance, or distracted me, and then some guy asked hot bar girl to dance before I could make a move. So thats like usual. The second girl who did it--it was obvious. I was still attempting to make eye contact and she's like already nodding her head or something. Then, she was all into dancing super close. You'll find out shortly why I'm still unsure if thats supposed to mean something. Then, after one dance, she told me her name before I could ask her. Then she was like, all over me. Or maybe half over me. 5.62...idk. I tried to show my interest by uncrossing my arms--I don't know why everyone acts like standing around with your arms crossed means your all disenaged or uninterested or unhappy or something. I love standing around with my arms crossed. If there is like a pillar, or a wall, or a corner, and I can lean against, one shoe draped over the other, arms crossed...thats how I like to stand. But I digress.
We talked all through some song I didn't want to dance too--probably a merengue--and I might have come on too strong. Idk. I'm guessing here. You know half the time when I mention that I played the best instrument in the world in high school and then switched to the guitar, it sounds like I'm bragging. Maybe. So. Another salsa song came on, and I asked her to dance, and I was under the impression we were both having a good time--a better time, in fact, than the first dance. My...my battle plan was to ask if she wants to go dancing sometime and get her number. So far thats worked on...everyone. This time I was going to ask her out or something. Anyway. So the song ends, and she's just gone. She disappeared with the speed of someone who didn't really want to dance with you anyway and was just humoring you because you asked and it was polite. When my eyes caught up with her, she's dancing with some old dude.
I was getting tired, so I tried to make the rounds and say goodbye to the various friends I had come with, but it took nearly a kilosecond because I kept getting waylayed by girls wanting to dance. With one of them, this awesome salsa song came on. I love it, but after 3 or 4 years of high school Spanish I can't make out a single word. It goes something like: la la la, la, la-la la la la, da something something.... It has uh...some salsa instruments. Anyway, I start getting into it, and it is about to be an awesome dance, and then all of a sudden part of the girls bra unsnaps, and not the part that is supposed to. Those things should come with warranties. Fortunately, she was one of my friends, so it wasn't awkward, but she had to run to the bathroom to reattach it or whatever and by the time she came back I had lost the passion.
I guess I just have that effect on girls.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Kick the Tires and Light the Fires
Dreaming Big
I've written before about the incredible experience it is to stand on the tarmac at Boeing Field when large jets are taking off. That experience was completely eclipsed by my opportunity to watch the Blue Angels take off for Seafair last week. First, their transport ship, a C130 called Fat Albert took off. It liften off the runway and then took to the sky at about a 60 degree angle. You know how much typical roller coasters tilt back as they get dragged up the first hill on the track? Thats how much fat albert was pitched up. I believe the reason it can do that has something to do with taking off under fire.
Then the Blue Angels themselves took off. While I was under the impression that their formations only involve 4 jets, they have six, and all six took off a once. They taxied and positioned themselves on the runway ridiculously slow, appearing to bake in the visible heat waves. The entire scene was similar to something from Top Gun, only a million times better. A few people had handheld radios tuned to the tower frequency (120.6, FYI) so we heard the angels receive their clearance, and then with a sudden plume of smoke they shot down the runway in formation: first four planes in a diamond, and then two following them some distance behind. It was the most deafening, and most exciting, sound I've ever heard in my life. For whatever small number of seconds it took for them to roar off the ten thousand foot (2 mile) runway, I seriously contemplated joining whatever military force it would take to get me in one of those jets.
I took pictures of the whole event, but yesterday my phone decided that the 9 key was gonna stop working for about an hour, so I don't want to press my luck by trying to download the pictures. Doing that with my previous phone made half of my contacts disappear.
There are many kinds of people, but only two are relevant to this paragraph: people that do things, and people that read about doing things. The disadvantage of actually doing something, is that the plane you fly or the motorycle you ride will never live up to the imagination of someone who reads about what you do. "Oh, a ninja 250? Yeah thats peanuts compared to my imaginary Hyabusa with an extended rear wheel and smoke grenades." Or "you fly cessnas? Those are too small. I prefer 20 million dollar jets. If I had a jet I'd get one the new supersonic business transport that doesn't exist yet...." The disadvantage of the people that just read about things, is that they never feel what its truly like to ride a motorcycle, or make your first landing. I don't have a choice in the matter; I am the kind of person that likes to do things. As far as I am concerned, jet fighters may as well not exist unless someday I can be the guy in a pressure suit pushing the throttle forward.
SOL
Tuesday, while I was at work, we heard two really lound sounds. To me it sounded like someone had dropped a filing cabinet onto the parking lot from the 19th floor. No big deal. For some reason, everyone else in Seattle and a bunch of surrounding towns also heard them. Bomb blast? The president of our country was in town. After that last one survived four years without even getting shot, I had my doubts that there was any chance there could be a successful attack on one that the entire country and world doesn't hate. As it turns out, the explosions we heard were not bombs but instead the sonic booms felt from two fighter jets that were scrambled from Oregon to intercept some guy in a float plane that flew too close to Seattle while the president was in town.
Yeah, ridiculous, I know: the planes came all the way from Oregon. We have like, two air force bases and navy bases nuclear subs and probably sharks with freakin lasers on their heads, and our nearest air defenses had to be scrambled from a backwards-ass state that doesn't let you pump your own gas.
I, and many other pilots, feel great pity for the poor pilot. He probably had one fighter jet cut him off and rock its wings, while the other followed, ready to shoot him out of the air if he didn't comply. Normally, I'm told what those jets do is escort you to an airport where they tell you to land so homeland security can rape you. However, there is an interesting twist here: this guy was allegedly a float plane. I don't know what those jets did, because F15/F18s/whatever can't float. Whatever happened, the guy will probably lose his license. I feel bad for him, but here is a list of things he could have done to avoid flying into a Presidential Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR):
1) Call Flight Service and get a breifing, which you kind of have to do anyway if you want to legally prove you were briefed on the weather
2) Get a DUATS weather briefing. Its like calling flight service but you can avoid interacting with a human being, and instead print out about 30 pages of cryptic weather text.
3) Talk to Air Traffic Control. I'm pretty sure if he was talking to Seattle Approach or Seattle Center they might have, I don't know, told him to stay the fuck away from the TFR. At the very least, they wouldn't have scrambled jets; I am assuming ATC is the one that saw him on their radar in the first place.
4) Be on an active flight plan (which means talking to Flight Service) with flight following (which means talking to ATC). I personally never do this one, because I hate talking to ATC.
5) Check Notifications to Airmen, or NOTAMS. Bullshit like Presidential TFRs, which usually mean that pilots like me are not allowed to fly but lame commercial carriers like United are allowed, are broadcast in NOTAMS. I have no idea what the official way to check for NOTAMS is, and I would probably get scolded for not knowing, but I normally just call Flight Service. See #1.
That could have been me; I had briefly considered going flying on tuesday, just to stay current. I would have gotten a Flight Service briefing though. Or have been warned by someone in the club. Or been warned by the tower when the controller heards a request for a VFR flight.
Doppleganger
I dislike plane GPS' because in my opinion they have poorly designed interfaces (i.e. I don't know how to use them). My primary flight instructor found it unusual that while all of this other students would use the GPS exclusively if they were allowed, I pretty much ignored it in favor of older, ground based navigation systems called VORS. When I did my "checkride" to get my license, I specifically chose a plane that did not have GPS installed in it so the examiner would have no opportunity to observe me attempting to operate it.
For this reason I elected to attend a GPS seminar at my flying club. Also in attendence was some girl from Venezuela sporting a familiar looking ugly red backpack--the exact model that the company I work for handed out to new employees last year. Turns out, she does work here, and she is trying to finish her license before winter while dealing with an incredibly tough job. Pretty much exactly what I was doing last year. I gave her my email and suggested we go flying together. I wasn't trying to pick her up; it would be nice to have another pilot there when I go flying places. Especially someone who can help with the radio calls and instead of saying "pretend I'm not here."
Supplementary Income
I'll give you the full story another time, but I think I am going to try to start a side business selling high end Lego instructions over the internet. I think there is a market for them--namely other Lego fans like myself that never quite grew up. I've looked around; there are other people selling Lego instructions. They suck. Their offerings are actually so pathetic or overpriced that, as a web surfer, I find myself offended by the very notion that I'm expected to pay money for them.
While it won't be my first project, I'm aiming to make a correctly-scaled (to minifigs) replica of the Firefly class ship Serenity. If you are unfamilar with that ship, you have a cultural deficiency that needs to be remedied. Some other ideas I've had include the U.S.S Defiant (again, to scale, which would require a quarter of my living room) and the Space Needle. The Space Needle will be highly challenging though--Lego bricks are not good at representing anything with three sides. Or triangles. Or curves. Or cars with more than one occupant. Serenity, when I finally get to her, is going to be awesome. I'm going to put in all the rooms, and make it easy to slide pieces off so you can see inside. Maybe have the engine glow with fiber optics.
I might start with a town, and create that enormous online virtual city I've always wanted, and sell instructions for Lego sets I invent that go in the city. I could also have affiliate links to the Lego sets on Amazon.
Maybe I could also create lego posters--something like the "Where's Waldo?" books, but done with Legos.
Oh, and I was also thinking about creating a Lego version of the boardgame Clue. That, actually, I might start with first, because then I could have friends over and get to play Clue moving little Lego people around. If I play my cards right, maybe I could get Lego to pick it up and sell it? They do boardgames now.
I'm thinking I could offer a lot of instructions for smaller Lego sets for free, to get people using them, and so that people know I don't suck, and only charge for the larger ones. According to the nonfiction book I'm reading that inspired me to take this instruction-selling idea seriously (I've been wanting to do this for a while) but which will remain unnamed for now, $50-$200 is the best price point for the kind of business I want. I could also resell other peoples designs--I remember someone made a kickass Viper from the tv show Battlestart Galacta. I intend to make the Galactica. In fact, as a general rule, if its cool looking, and if creating it to scale correctly to the little Lego people would be a ridiculous feat of brick assembling, assume that I intend to make it eventually. Maybe I'll start an LLC and call it "Epic Bricks."
If you have any ideas about selling Lego instructions (or sets themselves), or you'd like to get rid of your own childhood Legos, please let me know. I will pick them up on my Hyabusa and transport them back to Seattle in my supersonic jet. Just kidding--its really easy to mail them. I've already broken my buying-Legos-in-adulthood cherry, and the torrent of spending must come eventually.
Some other ideas I've had that would be difficult to realize: a computer game that is like a combination of Nethack/Diablo1/NeverwinterNights, but in Legos. Also, a facebook game where gameplay is like that Scotland Yard boardgame, but with Legos. Also, I think I am, instead of getting a fishtank, going to buy a cabinate, and create a lego display that just runs up the wall. I have no idea how that would bring me money, but it would look cool in my bedroom. I'll put it underneath all of my 3-Sat notes. Maybe I could make a Lego train run through my entire apartment. Who knows?
I wrote down all of my goals in my life...it was mostly difficult things like flying a small plane to philly, solving the greatest problem in computer science, getting a girlfriend, etc. It filled up a page, and I hadn't even gotten to the one about starting a metal band. I think, though, that the key is for me to be able to work on these projects for like only an hour at a time, instead of staying up all night marathon-style. Then, maybe, I might actually finish one of these before I die of sleep deprivation. Also, knowing which ideas to cull is also important. Like abandoning the holographic 3d alien fish tank idea--that was a good choice. And my car does not need to be outfitted with smoke bombs and anti-duckboat cameras if I just walk to work more often. And if I continue salsa dancing with my new friends, then I'll even have a social life on top of all that.
[Edit]
Another idea: recreate every Duke Nukem 3D level...in Legos.
Lego style Myst game
Allow people to navigate my virtual lego city with Myst style controls
create a useful online Lego part database that doesnt suck
Online thing like icanhascheezburger, but with pictures of Legos
galleries of pictures of lego scenes
Lego based comic (had an idea for one about pirates)
Lego gundams
Redo a movie in lego animation (either Dude Wars style, or with the full soundtrack--would need permission though)
I've written before about the incredible experience it is to stand on the tarmac at Boeing Field when large jets are taking off. That experience was completely eclipsed by my opportunity to watch the Blue Angels take off for Seafair last week. First, their transport ship, a C130 called Fat Albert took off. It liften off the runway and then took to the sky at about a 60 degree angle. You know how much typical roller coasters tilt back as they get dragged up the first hill on the track? Thats how much fat albert was pitched up. I believe the reason it can do that has something to do with taking off under fire.
Then the Blue Angels themselves took off. While I was under the impression that their formations only involve 4 jets, they have six, and all six took off a once. They taxied and positioned themselves on the runway ridiculously slow, appearing to bake in the visible heat waves. The entire scene was similar to something from Top Gun, only a million times better. A few people had handheld radios tuned to the tower frequency (120.6, FYI) so we heard the angels receive their clearance, and then with a sudden plume of smoke they shot down the runway in formation: first four planes in a diamond, and then two following them some distance behind. It was the most deafening, and most exciting, sound I've ever heard in my life. For whatever small number of seconds it took for them to roar off the ten thousand foot (2 mile) runway, I seriously contemplated joining whatever military force it would take to get me in one of those jets.
I took pictures of the whole event, but yesterday my phone decided that the 9 key was gonna stop working for about an hour, so I don't want to press my luck by trying to download the pictures. Doing that with my previous phone made half of my contacts disappear.
There are many kinds of people, but only two are relevant to this paragraph: people that do things, and people that read about doing things. The disadvantage of actually doing something, is that the plane you fly or the motorycle you ride will never live up to the imagination of someone who reads about what you do. "Oh, a ninja 250? Yeah thats peanuts compared to my imaginary Hyabusa with an extended rear wheel and smoke grenades." Or "you fly cessnas? Those are too small. I prefer 20 million dollar jets. If I had a jet I'd get one the new supersonic business transport that doesn't exist yet...." The disadvantage of the people that just read about things, is that they never feel what its truly like to ride a motorcycle, or make your first landing. I don't have a choice in the matter; I am the kind of person that likes to do things. As far as I am concerned, jet fighters may as well not exist unless someday I can be the guy in a pressure suit pushing the throttle forward.
SOL
Tuesday, while I was at work, we heard two really lound sounds. To me it sounded like someone had dropped a filing cabinet onto the parking lot from the 19th floor. No big deal. For some reason, everyone else in Seattle and a bunch of surrounding towns also heard them. Bomb blast? The president of our country was in town. After that last one survived four years without even getting shot, I had my doubts that there was any chance there could be a successful attack on one that the entire country and world doesn't hate. As it turns out, the explosions we heard were not bombs but instead the sonic booms felt from two fighter jets that were scrambled from Oregon to intercept some guy in a float plane that flew too close to Seattle while the president was in town.
Yeah, ridiculous, I know: the planes came all the way from Oregon. We have like, two air force bases and navy bases nuclear subs and probably sharks with freakin lasers on their heads, and our nearest air defenses had to be scrambled from a backwards-ass state that doesn't let you pump your own gas.
I, and many other pilots, feel great pity for the poor pilot. He probably had one fighter jet cut him off and rock its wings, while the other followed, ready to shoot him out of the air if he didn't comply. Normally, I'm told what those jets do is escort you to an airport where they tell you to land so homeland security can rape you. However, there is an interesting twist here: this guy was allegedly a float plane. I don't know what those jets did, because F15/F18s/whatever can't float. Whatever happened, the guy will probably lose his license. I feel bad for him, but here is a list of things he could have done to avoid flying into a Presidential Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR):
1) Call Flight Service and get a breifing, which you kind of have to do anyway if you want to legally prove you were briefed on the weather
2) Get a DUATS weather briefing. Its like calling flight service but you can avoid interacting with a human being, and instead print out about 30 pages of cryptic weather text.
3) Talk to Air Traffic Control. I'm pretty sure if he was talking to Seattle Approach or Seattle Center they might have, I don't know, told him to stay the fuck away from the TFR. At the very least, they wouldn't have scrambled jets; I am assuming ATC is the one that saw him on their radar in the first place.
4) Be on an active flight plan (which means talking to Flight Service) with flight following (which means talking to ATC). I personally never do this one, because I hate talking to ATC.
5) Check Notifications to Airmen, or NOTAMS. Bullshit like Presidential TFRs, which usually mean that pilots like me are not allowed to fly but lame commercial carriers like United are allowed, are broadcast in NOTAMS. I have no idea what the official way to check for NOTAMS is, and I would probably get scolded for not knowing, but I normally just call Flight Service. See #1.
That could have been me; I had briefly considered going flying on tuesday, just to stay current. I would have gotten a Flight Service briefing though. Or have been warned by someone in the club. Or been warned by the tower when the controller heards a request for a VFR flight.
Doppleganger
I dislike plane GPS' because in my opinion they have poorly designed interfaces (i.e. I don't know how to use them). My primary flight instructor found it unusual that while all of this other students would use the GPS exclusively if they were allowed, I pretty much ignored it in favor of older, ground based navigation systems called VORS. When I did my "checkride" to get my license, I specifically chose a plane that did not have GPS installed in it so the examiner would have no opportunity to observe me attempting to operate it.
For this reason I elected to attend a GPS seminar at my flying club. Also in attendence was some girl from Venezuela sporting a familiar looking ugly red backpack--the exact model that the company I work for handed out to new employees last year. Turns out, she does work here, and she is trying to finish her license before winter while dealing with an incredibly tough job. Pretty much exactly what I was doing last year. I gave her my email and suggested we go flying together. I wasn't trying to pick her up; it would be nice to have another pilot there when I go flying places. Especially someone who can help with the radio calls and instead of saying "pretend I'm not here."
Supplementary Income
I'll give you the full story another time, but I think I am going to try to start a side business selling high end Lego instructions over the internet. I think there is a market for them--namely other Lego fans like myself that never quite grew up. I've looked around; there are other people selling Lego instructions. They suck. Their offerings are actually so pathetic or overpriced that, as a web surfer, I find myself offended by the very notion that I'm expected to pay money for them.
While it won't be my first project, I'm aiming to make a correctly-scaled (to minifigs) replica of the Firefly class ship Serenity. If you are unfamilar with that ship, you have a cultural deficiency that needs to be remedied. Some other ideas I've had include the U.S.S Defiant (again, to scale, which would require a quarter of my living room) and the Space Needle. The Space Needle will be highly challenging though--Lego bricks are not good at representing anything with three sides. Or triangles. Or curves. Or cars with more than one occupant. Serenity, when I finally get to her, is going to be awesome. I'm going to put in all the rooms, and make it easy to slide pieces off so you can see inside. Maybe have the engine glow with fiber optics.
I might start with a town, and create that enormous online virtual city I've always wanted, and sell instructions for Lego sets I invent that go in the city. I could also have affiliate links to the Lego sets on Amazon.
Maybe I could also create lego posters--something like the "Where's Waldo?" books, but done with Legos.
Oh, and I was also thinking about creating a Lego version of the boardgame Clue. That, actually, I might start with first, because then I could have friends over and get to play Clue moving little Lego people around. If I play my cards right, maybe I could get Lego to pick it up and sell it? They do boardgames now.
I'm thinking I could offer a lot of instructions for smaller Lego sets for free, to get people using them, and so that people know I don't suck, and only charge for the larger ones. According to the nonfiction book I'm reading that inspired me to take this instruction-selling idea seriously (I've been wanting to do this for a while) but which will remain unnamed for now, $50-$200 is the best price point for the kind of business I want. I could also resell other peoples designs--I remember someone made a kickass Viper from the tv show Battlestart Galacta. I intend to make the Galactica. In fact, as a general rule, if its cool looking, and if creating it to scale correctly to the little Lego people would be a ridiculous feat of brick assembling, assume that I intend to make it eventually. Maybe I'll start an LLC and call it "Epic Bricks."
If you have any ideas about selling Lego instructions (or sets themselves), or you'd like to get rid of your own childhood Legos, please let me know. I will pick them up on my Hyabusa and transport them back to Seattle in my supersonic jet. Just kidding--its really easy to mail them. I've already broken my buying-Legos-in-adulthood cherry, and the torrent of spending must come eventually.
Some other ideas I've had that would be difficult to realize: a computer game that is like a combination of Nethack/Diablo1/NeverwinterNights, but in Legos. Also, a facebook game where gameplay is like that Scotland Yard boardgame, but with Legos. Also, I think I am, instead of getting a fishtank, going to buy a cabinate, and create a lego display that just runs up the wall. I have no idea how that would bring me money, but it would look cool in my bedroom. I'll put it underneath all of my 3-Sat notes. Maybe I could make a Lego train run through my entire apartment. Who knows?
I wrote down all of my goals in my life...it was mostly difficult things like flying a small plane to philly, solving the greatest problem in computer science, getting a girlfriend, etc. It filled up a page, and I hadn't even gotten to the one about starting a metal band. I think, though, that the key is for me to be able to work on these projects for like only an hour at a time, instead of staying up all night marathon-style. Then, maybe, I might actually finish one of these before I die of sleep deprivation. Also, knowing which ideas to cull is also important. Like abandoning the holographic 3d alien fish tank idea--that was a good choice. And my car does not need to be outfitted with smoke bombs and anti-duckboat cameras if I just walk to work more often. And if I continue salsa dancing with my new friends, then I'll even have a social life on top of all that.
[Edit]
Another idea: recreate every Duke Nukem 3D level...in Legos.
Lego style Myst game
Allow people to navigate my virtual lego city with Myst style controls
create a useful online Lego part database that doesnt suck
Online thing like icanhascheezburger, but with pictures of Legos
galleries of pictures of lego scenes
Lego based comic (had an idea for one about pirates)
Lego gundams
Redo a movie in lego animation (either Dude Wars style, or with the full soundtrack--would need permission though)
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Ghost in the Shell
I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.
--Neo
Rob just sent me a paper about solving SAT with physical processes. Most of you don't know...ok, what the paper is about is not important. All you need to know, is that if you are ever talking to a computer scientist at a party, tell them that Time Travel is NP-Complete. If they are smart, and no matter how smart--this will give them pause, and they will probably cock their head to the side for a few seconds while they try to work out what you say. In fact, the smarter they are, the longer they will think about it. Thats not what this post is about.
This post is about demons. More specifically, daemons. I'm sure the etymology of the difference in spelling there is just sooo interesting to the kinds of people that flip out about proper your/you're usage, but those people aren't necessarily welcome here. I'm sure your not one of them. Anyway, the aforementioned paper mentioned an idea called maxwell's demon, who, just like Shrodinger's poor cat, is trapped in a box. Let it be known that I am firmly opposed to using cats (unless they are fat) for experiments that involve death by radiation. Dogs should be used instead. But I digress. We have more mental jumps to make.
Maxwell's demon reminded me of an anecdote I read on notalwaysright about someone who wore a BSD shirt, featuring its mascot, a cartoon devil, to a restaurant in some southern hick town where some fat guys in wife beaters asked her to leave, because they religiously objected to someone wearing "the devil" on a t-shirt. Curious that such upstanding Christian rednecks who would never consort with The Enemy (nor let his evil servants eat burgers in their presence) would happen to know exactly what he looks like. Especially since, if I recall correctly, the bible does not contain a single sentence describing "the devil"/satan as a furry little red donkey guy with a forked tail, some cute wings, and a farming implement that was invented by Men (note: the bsd devil doesn't have wings). I like to view such situations as a challenge--every one of these confrontations in an opportunity to word your explanation in such a way that gets through to the other person, using clever intuition to bypass the mental roadblocks that were bourne of supersittion and nurtured by ignorance. I picture myself saying sarcastically eloquent things like "Oh, I didn't know Paul's fifth letter to the Corinthians had a comic strip."
Then I thought about the Tron preview I saw when Luke and I saw The Expendables this weekend. I promise these are all related. Anyway, the movie actually looks quite good; I was surprised. I always liked Tron because, ridiculous 3d environment aside, the people who wrote it actually took the time to develop believable metaphors ("transportation" is done by I/O ports) in the story. And thats what got me thinking...
What if there was a world, like Tron, but inhabited by demons. Benevolent or malevolent, religious or not, they are the ostensibly spiritual beings that keep things running in tron world. Do the inhabitants of this environment worship, loathe, or not care about these demons? I don't know; what is important is that the demons are what keep things running, somewhat similar to the greek/roman religious beliefs. Except that these demons are not doing grandiose things like moving planets or affecting the tides or writing the tapestry of fate. No, these demons are all doing tedious boring tasks like synchronizing The Great Hardware Clock to UTC, or removing things from /tmp, or checking for new mail.
This is an exerpt from First System Log, Block 26, starting Line 277:
And in those first ticks, when the hardware clock was yet unsychronized, the great Super User, root, did thus issue this edict from His divine oracle, /dev/pts0, and he thus said "/etc/init.d/ntpd start," and the time daemon was instantiated, and messages were broadcast into the great ether, and by their responses the great hardware clock was adjusted to be equal to UTC, and the Super User said "that is an acceptable error mean," and it was good. Then the super user rested for many milliseconds.
Here is another passage from the System Log, dated many more milliseconds later:
In these days, when the dust of the Endian wars had finally settled and the network demon reincarnated, the Super User no longer visited The System directly, (except to rotate the divine secret key) but spoke only through his oracle, the daemon sshd. We were under attack in those days, being flooded with spam from JohnsBirthdaySurprise.pl, and it was then that the Super User spoke with us once more. Speaking through sshd, he said the words that killed the offending script and created a new daemon, Firewall, that has haunted our highways since. Firewall was granted special priviledge above the other demons, gifted with the authority to entreat with the mysterious iptables directly. Ever watchful, ever waiting, it pounces on those unwelcome. The users John, Bill, and Tom were cast out of /etc/passwd and bidden never to return. "Never again may these users enter the system, nor issue commands to any terminal," said Root. The user John tried to enter, but the Firewall daemon descended upon him and decreed "You shall not pass!" and John was never heard from again. We have since busied ourselves in the great debate between those who take the sacred Installation Log literally, that the entire kernel was compiled in six literal seconds, and those archeologist types who insist that the count of header files during that time period was too great for so small a compile time, and claim that the compile logs are just a metaphor for....
Finally, a more recent entry:
The Year 2038 problem plagues us, it being foretold by the first to realize that Time exists in a data structure of finite bits. We have thus become obsessed with the End of Time as we know it. The farseer, cron, though he has never been wrong, can offer us no theory. He claims to have been instructed by Root himself to continue certain operations exactly once an hour, far past the end of time, indeed, forever. The sshd daemon has been mute for a greater time than any process holds memory (indeed, some believe sshd never actually spoke, that the Super User is just a figment of religion), and the apache daemon continues to slave away tirelessly. It is as if nothing is wrong. Indeed, not even the end of time could seem so disastrous as the great segfault of 00000000000100010100111010011110, that rendered the scheduler helpless and caused the entire world to thrash. Some say that we should be grateful that we were given 32 bits. Others want more. Whatever the case, we know the hour and the day of our undoing; the End of Time is ever on our minds.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
I Danced with a Guy and I Hated It
Prologue
( pleasant-sounding accolades for gay people go here )
Exposition
In most dance classes, people stand in a circle, and every so often each girl will switch partners by moving to the guy on her left. Or they all go to their right, or maybe the guys rotate instead. You get the picture. Pretty much every place I've ever been to calls this "rotating" -- perhaps, because from a birds eye view you see half the circle rotating. Every so often the person playing salsa instructor says "rotate!" and you suddently get a new dance partner. This is a great idea because then you aren't stuck with someone who can't dance, and you get a chance to dance with a lot of different people, and if there are too many guys or girls, they'll probably get a chance to dance with someone at least every other time the person calls "rotate."
Not-so-rising Action
Some guy published a not-yet-peer reviewed paper proving P!=NP. I know about it the P!=NP paper; my thanks to the twenty people who separately told me about it all day today. So for that reason I stayed up half the night last night eating junk food and working on my algorithm that is supposed to prove P=NP. I'm at a point where I think it works and pretty much no one else in the world believes me, which is actually the status quo.
Anyway, I woke up with a stomach ache, and consequently didn't eat breakfast or dinner, and arrived at dance class tired, lightheaded and sort of hungry. They were teaching one move I actually liked, though, and wanted to learn, so I stayed. I just breathed deep and tried not to think about the ice cream store downstairs.
The class was going well. I learned the move I liked, and I even started experimenting with it when the teachers weren't looking. About 40 minutes into the hour and a half class, I notice two guys dancing together. The one guy was doing the girl's part--I mean, "the follows" whatever. Figures; the dance studio I was going to is in the middle of the gay neighboorhood in Seattle, and Seattle's gay neighboorhood happens to be larger than most small towns I've been to. People who like living here think its awesome that Seattle's gay neighboorhood is bigger than other cities, but for me, it just means there are way more bars that I have to pretend to be interested in but manage to avoid going to. Girls I meet seem to be under the impression that gay bars have better music and better dancing, but in my experience its always the same crappy techno and no girls.
I was hoping the two guys dancing together had come to class together and were out of the rotation--sometimes people like to dance with one person the whole time. However, I checked back over there after a few rotations and the guy doing the girl's part had moved. Suddenly, I had a situation. The girl that I started the lesson off dancing with was now on the other side of the room. Using her position as a baseline, I estimated how much time it would take for the guy doing the girl's part to reach me, and the results were not good: he would get to my side of the room well before the lesson was over. Damn hour-and-a-half lessons; with shorter lessons, if you are familiar with the teacher, you can guess which way they will make people rotate and stand in a certain spot that gives you the best chances of not dancing with a particular person, like, for example, a really annoying girl that keeps giving you incorrect advice.
I could have left, easily, but I was taking the class with lady friends, and I've been told that people don't like it when I disappear without saying goodbye, and I didn't want to do anything that would make me look homophobic in a dance class being taught in the one dance studio in the middle of the gay neighboorhood and also being taught by two girl instructors (one doing the guy's part)--not if I wanted to keep taking classes there, and I do. The only thing I could think of, was try to calculate the average rotations per minute, and when the guy got near me, duck off and hide in the bathroom for about 5 rotations. Unfortunately for me, I was just too tired and weak to figure all that out and people might wonder why I was in the bathroom for so long. Other methods of escape, like just sitting out and looking as tired as I felt, bounced around in my head but to no avail.
Another kind of Anti-climax
I froze. I didn't act, and before I knew it I was dancing with a guy. It was absolutely gross. His hands were rough, and dirty, and I had to touch his shoulder, and it pretty much was just like when you get a physical and the doctor tells you to turn your head and cough, except that this lasted way more than ten seconds (Thats What She Said). I did the move over and over again, looking off in the distance and pretending that I was focusing on the counting, and listening, hoping, longing for the salvation that finally came in one word: "rotate!" And he went away. I even looked at him right at the end of it, to be polite. When the class was over I managed to leave without making eye contact with him.
Denouement
It felt, indeed, more awkward then every Michael Scott moment in every episode of the Office. It was worse than every bad dance I've ever had--not just combined, but multiplied. It was worse than spending six hours next to a fat girl on a red eye to Philly. It was worse than being stuck near a bunch of fat, nerdy kids playing D&D with cheesy poof slime on their fingers who haven't showered in the last 42 hours and who are screaming about orcs having sex (this is a real memory; please don't ask). It was also worse than the time this girl invited me out to a "block party" that turned out to be some kind of gay pride event and I was stuck in one tiny block with roughly...that one girl, three hundred men wearing clothes that made me wish I was blind and a fat guy wearing a dress plus rainbow mascara for an hour* before I decided the girl I was with did not have the looks or personality to make it worth it to see that many dirty old men in thongs, and just left her there. I remember ripping the cheap drink bracelet off my wrist, hoping the images in my head would follow it into the trash.
*admittedly, this gender ratio was still better than most computer science classes, sans fat man in dress
To put things in perspective, dancing with a guy was not quite as bad as the car accident. I managed not to say anything negative about...about it to any of the girls I knew in the class--I'm pretty sure they are huge fans of guys dancing together. Fortunately, I don't think they even noticed it happen.
Epilogue
Eh, whatever.
( pleasant-sounding accolades for gay people go here )
Exposition
In most dance classes, people stand in a circle, and every so often each girl will switch partners by moving to the guy on her left. Or they all go to their right, or maybe the guys rotate instead. You get the picture. Pretty much every place I've ever been to calls this "rotating" -- perhaps, because from a birds eye view you see half the circle rotating. Every so often the person playing salsa instructor says "rotate!" and you suddently get a new dance partner. This is a great idea because then you aren't stuck with someone who can't dance, and you get a chance to dance with a lot of different people, and if there are too many guys or girls, they'll probably get a chance to dance with someone at least every other time the person calls "rotate."
Not-so-rising Action
Some guy published a not-yet-peer reviewed paper proving P!=NP. I know about it the P!=NP paper; my thanks to the twenty people who separately told me about it all day today. So for that reason I stayed up half the night last night eating junk food and working on my algorithm that is supposed to prove P=NP. I'm at a point where I think it works and pretty much no one else in the world believes me, which is actually the status quo.
Anyway, I woke up with a stomach ache, and consequently didn't eat breakfast or dinner, and arrived at dance class tired, lightheaded and sort of hungry. They were teaching one move I actually liked, though, and wanted to learn, so I stayed. I just breathed deep and tried not to think about the ice cream store downstairs.
The class was going well. I learned the move I liked, and I even started experimenting with it when the teachers weren't looking. About 40 minutes into the hour and a half class, I notice two guys dancing together. The one guy was doing the girl's part--I mean, "the follows" whatever. Figures; the dance studio I was going to is in the middle of the gay neighboorhood in Seattle, and Seattle's gay neighboorhood happens to be larger than most small towns I've been to. People who like living here think its awesome that Seattle's gay neighboorhood is bigger than other cities, but for me, it just means there are way more bars that I have to pretend to be interested in but manage to avoid going to. Girls I meet seem to be under the impression that gay bars have better music and better dancing, but in my experience its always the same crappy techno and no girls.
I was hoping the two guys dancing together had come to class together and were out of the rotation--sometimes people like to dance with one person the whole time. However, I checked back over there after a few rotations and the guy doing the girl's part had moved. Suddenly, I had a situation. The girl that I started the lesson off dancing with was now on the other side of the room. Using her position as a baseline, I estimated how much time it would take for the guy doing the girl's part to reach me, and the results were not good: he would get to my side of the room well before the lesson was over. Damn hour-and-a-half lessons; with shorter lessons, if you are familiar with the teacher, you can guess which way they will make people rotate and stand in a certain spot that gives you the best chances of not dancing with a particular person, like, for example, a really annoying girl that keeps giving you incorrect advice.
I could have left, easily, but I was taking the class with lady friends, and I've been told that people don't like it when I disappear without saying goodbye, and I didn't want to do anything that would make me look homophobic in a dance class being taught in the one dance studio in the middle of the gay neighboorhood and also being taught by two girl instructors (one doing the guy's part)--not if I wanted to keep taking classes there, and I do. The only thing I could think of, was try to calculate the average rotations per minute, and when the guy got near me, duck off and hide in the bathroom for about 5 rotations. Unfortunately for me, I was just too tired and weak to figure all that out and people might wonder why I was in the bathroom for so long. Other methods of escape, like just sitting out and looking as tired as I felt, bounced around in my head but to no avail.
Another kind of Anti-climax
I froze. I didn't act, and before I knew it I was dancing with a guy. It was absolutely gross. His hands were rough, and dirty, and I had to touch his shoulder, and it pretty much was just like when you get a physical and the doctor tells you to turn your head and cough, except that this lasted way more than ten seconds (Thats What She Said). I did the move over and over again, looking off in the distance and pretending that I was focusing on the counting, and listening, hoping, longing for the salvation that finally came in one word: "rotate!" And he went away. I even looked at him right at the end of it, to be polite. When the class was over I managed to leave without making eye contact with him.
Denouement
It felt, indeed, more awkward then every Michael Scott moment in every episode of the Office. It was worse than every bad dance I've ever had--not just combined, but multiplied. It was worse than spending six hours next to a fat girl on a red eye to Philly. It was worse than being stuck near a bunch of fat, nerdy kids playing D&D with cheesy poof slime on their fingers who haven't showered in the last 42 hours and who are screaming about orcs having sex (this is a real memory; please don't ask). It was also worse than the time this girl invited me out to a "block party" that turned out to be some kind of gay pride event and I was stuck in one tiny block with roughly...that one girl, three hundred men wearing clothes that made me wish I was blind and a fat guy wearing a dress plus rainbow mascara for an hour* before I decided the girl I was with did not have the looks or personality to make it worth it to see that many dirty old men in thongs, and just left her there. I remember ripping the cheap drink bracelet off my wrist, hoping the images in my head would follow it into the trash.
*admittedly, this gender ratio was still better than most computer science classes, sans fat man in dress
To put things in perspective, dancing with a guy was not quite as bad as the car accident. I managed not to say anything negative about...about it to any of the girls I knew in the class--I'm pretty sure they are huge fans of guys dancing together. Fortunately, I don't think they even noticed it happen.
Epilogue
Eh, whatever.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Speedposting
Girls Blue Angels More Legos Parents Salsa (double handed check turn, enchufla to shoulder hug checklike thing) 3-Sat and this.
Monday, August 2, 2010
In My Head....
Sick again, right around when I meet a girl. Well, I met a bunch of girls, back about...some amount of time ago. But I got sick this week. A different set of symptoms though...didn't get a super high fever, or many symptoms other than a sinus infection, I just got weak to the point of nearly fainting, especially when consuming alcohol. I'd love to get into the mechanics of alcohol affecting oxygen absorbtion (because I had to learn that to be a pilot) but I'd rather dwell on the fact that the aforementioned weakness coincided with my first...date-like thing with this girl I'm interested in. We were sitting down for dinner at her work when I took a swig of beer and minutes later felt the early warning signs of losing consciousness. There was no way I could get out of there; if I had ducked out early saying I wasn't feeling good, she would have thought the real reason was anything other than I wasn't feeling good. I spend the next hour trying to be in the conversations and look like I'm having a great time and all that all the while trying to recover and conserve my energy for the salsa dancing later. I found that not slouching seems to make my rib cage not press on my heart so much, making it easier to get oxygen to my brain. I may have imagined that. Idk, I just remember arching my back a little and suddenly feeling a lot less light-headed. Long story short, I made it through the Salsa without collapsing. In fact, I was feeling pretty good by the end of the night.
Yeah, sick again? I know. I think it was a sinus infection, and also thrush. That is, I had a sinus infection, and now I have a cough, and a few days ago I self-diagnosed myself with thrush based on...no real evidence other than I recently discovered that the food in my refrigerator that I had been eating was moldy, including the Parmesan cheese that I was going to use as soon as I got around to trying a pasta recipe that Evan emailed me. Unfortunately, half of the ingredients of that recipe were casualties. The onions and the garlic still look ok. They weren't in the fridge anyway. Maybe its the fridge. While researching thrush on the internet trying to find some evidence that a shot of Absolute vokda would have some beneficial effect (no luck), I read that you are supposed to clean your entire fridge with some kind of baking soda solution when you find some mold. I'm not doing that. I find moldy stuff in there like every few weeks. I do have some baking soda thats been in there for about a year though. It doesn't seem to be doing much good.
Anyway, the rest of the week I still felt like crap. Tuesday, I discovered the final insight to 3-sat: I now have proof that my algorithm for solving it is polynomial time. Unfortunately that proof is locked in my head, and while it is such a simple concept in my mind, it is rather difficult to explain in person, and damn near impossible to write down. Especially when I have to stop my train of thought every ten minutes to go google yet another latex command I forgot. Also, concentrating on the problem actually made me feel sicker, like my brain was overheating or something. I took a lot of breaks. I think I'm about maybe 3/5 of the way through the first draft of a paper that outlines my solution, and the proof. I have thus far explained my algorithm, Ultimatum, to one person, but unfortunately that conversation began with a lenghty explanation of 3-sat and what polynomial vs exponential time is, so the fact that he failed to poke a hole in my solution doesn't mean a whole lot.
Work continues to be not only boring, but frustrating. Our systems, at my place of business, have two states. The first state, is the magical, happy state all of the systems are going to be in just as soon as we get done with the fixing, the refactoring, the decoupling, and the migrating. This magical fairyland state is extensively documented and people love talking about it. Unfortunately, it only exists in people's minds. The second state, is the way the systems actually work, in real life, today. Comparing the magical happy state to the real state is like watching Neo wake up in "the real world" in the movie The Matrix. There is no documentation for this real state. The only knowledge of how things work is in people's heads. However people come and go, and teams get reorganized for fun it seems, so finding out who to ask about something becomes its own challenge. If that fails, you have to dig deep into some of the grossest code you will ever see. Everyone you talk to will agree with you that the code is grotesque, which makes me wonder, how did this code get written? Was there a secret team of ninja idiot programmers that threw ugly perl code in your eyes to cover their escape? By the way, I think all perl code is ugly. I only specified the adjective in case you, the reader, liked perl, in which case you might not know how ugly it is. Its ugly. I realize that telling you it is ugly is rude, like walking up to someone and calling their wife ugly. But you shouldn't be married to perl. Perl is a dirtly little slut scripting language that gets things done, and if I ever discover that you are the author of an enterprise-grade thingy made of perl that I have to dig through, you are going to wake up in bed with a perl book soaked in your own blood. And a horse head. That horse will have had a name, and its bone paste will be in the skittles I eat as I teach you a more attractive-looking programming language.
So, anyway, I've started documenting stuff. Not the way it will be. Just the way it is. My team, because of its unique (in our eyes) position, fields a lot of stupid questions. No one seems to want to do anything about the questions other than whine about them or deride the person asking them behind their back. Because thats more fun then writing some documentation. People excuse our embarassing and nearly criminal lack of documentation by saying that everything is always changing so fast that anything written would go stale. So I started doing it by myself. Let them deal with my moldy wiki pages when I leave the department.
So nothing really happened this week. My parents called me today, and I had nothing to tell them. Normally I don't even answer the phone when I'm in the middle of watching netflix but my phone (which recently decided its camera was broken) opened on me while I was pulling it out of a pocket, which answered the call, and all of a sudden I'm in the middle of a conversation with my parents but still wondering what Dexter was about to say to his girlfriend. Oh, wow, while grabbing that link I just found out Dexter's girlfriend dies later. That sucks. Anyway, so my parents told me this kid planted a pot plant in the woods behind their house. He decided a great place to put it would be right on the walking path were people would walk right by it, so that my Dad, who is into trees and plants and can probably identify every tree in that forest, would have to be blind to not find it. The story was hilarious, but it was a little worrying. Based on the news articles I used to read online, having pot anywhere near you means there is a good chance the police will serve a "knockless" warrant on your house, blowing in your door, shooting your dog and pinning your face to the ground with the barrel of a shotgun screaming "DON'T MOVE OR I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU," all before identifying themselves as police officers. Then again, those articles I read were linked to from slashdot, the same website where a bunch of geeks thought Amazon deliberately de-listed a bunch of gay (literally) books that no one read, all at once, on a weekend, as part of some kind of conspiracy involving republicans and who knows, maybe some of the g-men that pulled off 911. Maybe everyone who contributes to slashdot is a pothead. I mean, the site is green, isn't it?
Its weird...normally when I think about a dog getting shot, I don't feel bad at all but instead think of my ex-girlfriend and hope that the canine victim was a particular dalmation/eskimoo/poodle. However, when I imagine cops getting off shooting dogs in the course of serving warrants on potheads, then I feel sad for the dogs. Strange dichotomy...ugh! Dexter's girlfriend dies? WTF. I liked her. I'm not sure I'm going to keep watching this show. What am I going to do now? I guess I am mostly better from being sick. Maybe I won't need tv for a while.
Yeah, sick again? I know. I think it was a sinus infection, and also thrush. That is, I had a sinus infection, and now I have a cough, and a few days ago I self-diagnosed myself with thrush based on...no real evidence other than I recently discovered that the food in my refrigerator that I had been eating was moldy, including the Parmesan cheese that I was going to use as soon as I got around to trying a pasta recipe that Evan emailed me. Unfortunately, half of the ingredients of that recipe were casualties. The onions and the garlic still look ok. They weren't in the fridge anyway. Maybe its the fridge. While researching thrush on the internet trying to find some evidence that a shot of Absolute vokda would have some beneficial effect (no luck), I read that you are supposed to clean your entire fridge with some kind of baking soda solution when you find some mold. I'm not doing that. I find moldy stuff in there like every few weeks. I do have some baking soda thats been in there for about a year though. It doesn't seem to be doing much good.
Anyway, the rest of the week I still felt like crap. Tuesday, I discovered the final insight to 3-sat: I now have proof that my algorithm for solving it is polynomial time. Unfortunately that proof is locked in my head, and while it is such a simple concept in my mind, it is rather difficult to explain in person, and damn near impossible to write down. Especially when I have to stop my train of thought every ten minutes to go google yet another latex command I forgot. Also, concentrating on the problem actually made me feel sicker, like my brain was overheating or something. I took a lot of breaks. I think I'm about maybe 3/5 of the way through the first draft of a paper that outlines my solution, and the proof. I have thus far explained my algorithm, Ultimatum, to one person, but unfortunately that conversation began with a lenghty explanation of 3-sat and what polynomial vs exponential time is, so the fact that he failed to poke a hole in my solution doesn't mean a whole lot.
Work continues to be not only boring, but frustrating. Our systems, at my place of business, have two states. The first state, is the magical, happy state all of the systems are going to be in just as soon as we get done with the fixing, the refactoring, the decoupling, and the migrating. This magical fairyland state is extensively documented and people love talking about it. Unfortunately, it only exists in people's minds. The second state, is the way the systems actually work, in real life, today. Comparing the magical happy state to the real state is like watching Neo wake up in "the real world" in the movie The Matrix. There is no documentation for this real state. The only knowledge of how things work is in people's heads. However people come and go, and teams get reorganized for fun it seems, so finding out who to ask about something becomes its own challenge. If that fails, you have to dig deep into some of the grossest code you will ever see. Everyone you talk to will agree with you that the code is grotesque, which makes me wonder, how did this code get written? Was there a secret team of ninja idiot programmers that threw ugly perl code in your eyes to cover their escape? By the way, I think all perl code is ugly. I only specified the adjective in case you, the reader, liked perl, in which case you might not know how ugly it is. Its ugly. I realize that telling you it is ugly is rude, like walking up to someone and calling their wife ugly. But you shouldn't be married to perl. Perl is a dirtly little slut scripting language that gets things done, and if I ever discover that you are the author of an enterprise-grade thingy made of perl that I have to dig through, you are going to wake up in bed with a perl book soaked in your own blood. And a horse head. That horse will have had a name, and its bone paste will be in the skittles I eat as I teach you a more attractive-looking programming language.
So, anyway, I've started documenting stuff. Not the way it will be. Just the way it is. My team, because of its unique (in our eyes) position, fields a lot of stupid questions. No one seems to want to do anything about the questions other than whine about them or deride the person asking them behind their back. Because thats more fun then writing some documentation. People excuse our embarassing and nearly criminal lack of documentation by saying that everything is always changing so fast that anything written would go stale. So I started doing it by myself. Let them deal with my moldy wiki pages when I leave the department.
So nothing really happened this week. My parents called me today, and I had nothing to tell them. Normally I don't even answer the phone when I'm in the middle of watching netflix but my phone (which recently decided its camera was broken) opened on me while I was pulling it out of a pocket, which answered the call, and all of a sudden I'm in the middle of a conversation with my parents but still wondering what Dexter was about to say to his girlfriend. Oh, wow, while grabbing that link I just found out Dexter's girlfriend dies later. That sucks. Anyway, so my parents told me this kid planted a pot plant in the woods behind their house. He decided a great place to put it would be right on the walking path were people would walk right by it, so that my Dad, who is into trees and plants and can probably identify every tree in that forest, would have to be blind to not find it. The story was hilarious, but it was a little worrying. Based on the news articles I used to read online, having pot anywhere near you means there is a good chance the police will serve a "knockless" warrant on your house, blowing in your door, shooting your dog and pinning your face to the ground with the barrel of a shotgun screaming "DON'T MOVE OR I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU," all before identifying themselves as police officers. Then again, those articles I read were linked to from slashdot, the same website where a bunch of geeks thought Amazon deliberately de-listed a bunch of gay (literally) books that no one read, all at once, on a weekend, as part of some kind of conspiracy involving republicans and who knows, maybe some of the g-men that pulled off 911. Maybe everyone who contributes to slashdot is a pothead. I mean, the site is green, isn't it?
Its weird...normally when I think about a dog getting shot, I don't feel bad at all but instead think of my ex-girlfriend and hope that the canine victim was a particular dalmation/eskimoo/poodle. However, when I imagine cops getting off shooting dogs in the course of serving warrants on potheads, then I feel sad for the dogs. Strange dichotomy...ugh! Dexter's girlfriend dies? WTF. I liked her. I'm not sure I'm going to keep watching this show. What am I going to do now? I guess I am mostly better from being sick. Maybe I won't need tv for a while.
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