Handoff: I KNEW it

A Heretic may see the truth and seek redemption. He may be forgiven his past and will be absolved in death. A Traitor can never be forgiven.
--some fictional character

Yeah, so, I was right.  I don't know what those two girls said to each other, but they totally attempted...something.  I can only describe it as a "handoff," a word from work, actually, because I don't know what else to call it.  I didn't know girls did this.  It all makes sense now...the texting, getting me to take her dancing, and the weirdness.  Ugh.  Anyway, so the girl that I don't like that I've been handed off to said something about FWB.  So now, we're going to go into another tangential rant.  If you like, found this blog because you were googling for something you actually wanted to read, and you are reading this thinking "wow, this doucebag is pretty full of himself and not even a good writer and his life is not that interesting" then you are right.  I know that's what you are thinking because thats what I think whenever I find a random male-authored blog, so fuck off and have a nice day.



In my opinion, friendships with benefits (FWB) satisfy guys the same way that retarded, platonic relationships satisfy girls.  You know, the kind with unrequitted feelings.  I know that a lot of people disagree with me, but pretty much every personal experience I've ever had* confirms this.  Except one.  I think.  Anyway.  This is one reason I avoid, at all costs, becoming close friends with girls I want that have rejected me for some stated reason other than finding me unattractive:  if they are already getting what they want, they'll have no reason to change the status quo.

My theory about why FWB is awesome is that you get the companionship, someone hot to talk to and hang out with and make out with (yay!), without leaving yourself vulnerable to her proverbial ice pick of crazy:  you never leave your back open.  Basically, you are able to breathe without the risk of having your world collapse around you because the person you love has tossed you out, or decided you don't like her dog enough, or because your love has been poisoned by selfishness or some other human imperfection.



So anyway, that is why, in some vague way, I feel like a traitor for turning this girl down.  Never in my life have any of them just come up and asked for it, and now, here I am passing it up.  Oh well;  I'm not into her.  What am I supposed to do?

I'm starting to become concerned that most of the girls I talk to are way out of my league.  That means I am going to have fail a hell of a lot in order to succeed.  Yuck.  Ironically, though, this isn't all that different from how we design software these days:  planning for failure.  Everything you do, you have to assume that a component you rely on, or, to phrase it in a way that better fits this analogy, something you attempt, will fail, and then you...well then the analogy falls apart.

Some other girl here, that I actually liked more than anyone mentioned so far, just told me she's "taking a break from dating" because her life is crazy or something.  That sounds like bullshit.  I wanted to tell her that my ego is not fragile, in order to discover the truth, but instead I just texted "no problem" because I figured that response gave me the best chances of hooking up with her in the future.

*this...might not be true, but I really like saying it

Handoff: the summary

This girl I was kind of interested in, as far as I can tell, is handing me off to her friend (who I am not at all interested in).  I could outline all of the facts here and let you be the judge but I don't really want to get into it.  I already started writing this huge long emo rant, and I was only saved because the quote for it was in some obscure Star Trek episode that I can't remember, and my attempts to google it turned up some kind of Star Trek wiki that distracted me for like 4 hours.  By the time I came to, I wasn't that mad anymore.  The sad thing is I don't even like Star Trek that much.  Anyway, if we are talking face to face, and you're into relationship games, I can give you the facts.  I don't think it matters though.  Unlike computer science, knowing why you failed is not equivalent to knowing how to succeed.  Yeah, that was the theme of my emo rant that I started writing.  Anyway.

I missed a day on this 750 words thing.  Why?  3-sat.  I got another inspiration 2 days ago.  I'm doing a lot better about having a life while working on it.  For example, I went to a work party tonight at the Science Fiction / Music Museum.  My 3-sat algorithm that I came up with this time is a lot simpler.  I will probably have it coded by the end of the weekend.  Then, I'm going to experimentally test if it even looks like polynomial time, because mathematically proving it is going to be a bitch.

Anyway, the Music Muesum thing had a Battlestar Galactica exhibit.  Here are some pics.  I'm not going to label them, because if you don't know what you are looking at, you are probably just going to be bored by them anyway:

Ok I lied about not giving you captions:  the second one is the viper model that gets its ass kicked in the beginning.  The first one is the older viper model that kicks ass.  The third is some uniform, and the fourth is this awesome model of Galactica from the old series.  I really wish they had a model of the one from the new series;  it looks more awesome, and also I want to make a lego model of it....

So...my 3-sat idea is something about solving the dual of the problem by deliberately adding false clauses in a special way that allows you to solve subproblems in such a way as to skip a percentage of the original problem--this is what I remember Ali saying was the key to having an algorithm that is not exponential.  My algorithm, as usual, is an eerie combination of DFS and BFS.  Fun fact:  every time I spell out "BFS" in my head I hear myself saying "breast first search" instead of "breadth first search," not to be confused with "best first search," which, in fact, rhymes with breast.  I'm just waiting for the day that that slips out in a meeting.

Reqiuem For a Prejudice

Jack, they had me a long time ago.

--this isn't a real quote**

First of all, this is not about men who talk in annoying pseudo-falsetto voices and cut off their balls for reasons other than cancer:  I still hate them.  No, this is about curly braces:

{}

For those of you who are not programmers, curly braces are a method of grouping lines of code together, similar to the way a poem is organized into stanzas.  The difference is if you get a stray line in the stanza of a poem, your computer doesn't freak out at you.  Also, this kind of poetry keeps the stock market ticking.  Anyway.

There are many debates on the subject of programming languages.  For example, some languages have curly braces and some do not.  Some of the people who prefer languages without curly braces like to look down on people who use languages that do have curly braces, and say they are bad programmers.  Some of the people who use the languages with curcly braces say the ones without are bad programmers.  That's only the tip of the iceberg.  Basically, there are hundreds of meaningless ways to group programmers.  Usually what people do is come up with some line, some difference between you and a group of other programmers, and write a blog post about how dumb the other programmers are.  Such a blog post is typically based on bias, prejudice, personal anecdotes and lack of experience instead of any shred of empirical evidence, which causes people who already agree with you to agree with you more, and people who already disagree with you to think you are an idiot.  That's pretty much how programming debates work.

For example, one debate is between whether the language called Java should be used for everything, all the time, because its teh best language evar, or if the language called Ruby should be used for everything, all the time, because its teh best language evar.  Another common debate is whether or not someone's favorite new toy (like object oriented design, SOA, ruby on rails, HTML version gayass, REST, AJAX, shards, "object oriented" databases*, functional programming, web 2.0, lisp, the semantic web, mojo, your mom) is the best thing evar and will solve world hunger, cure cancer, and cause world peace, OR if its simply not that great.

The debate I felt most passionately about was the curly braces debate.  In all of computer science there is no debate more contentious and more meaningless than the placement of curly braces.  For the sake of brevity, I will describe it as a battle between the following two options:

Option 1, or "opening brace goes on the same line"

yourHatLooksGay(){
  //do they make them for men?
}

Option 2, or "braces line up"

yourHatLooksGay()
{
  //do they make them for men?
 }

I was a fervent zealot of option 2.  I jumped at the chance to defend my opinion, and while coding I would occasionally think about the witty, awesome and incredible arguments I would use to proverbially slay those ignorant, retarded, base, fools who dared believe that option 1 could ever be acceptable.  I even spent hours "fixing" other peoples code to get rid of those blasphemous curly brace positions.

Then, I was forced to use option 1 at my job.

Years later, I now use either interchangeably, relying on whatever style is used in the file I'm looking at.  Its like I just don't care anymore.  The voice inside my head that screams for everyone do to it my way has fallen silent, and, in fact, I now see positives and negatives to both versions, and I even end up using option 1 in personal projects out of habit.  Gasp!

It gets worse.

I used to love a special text editor called Eclipse.  If you're not a programmer, picture something like Microsoft Word, only more complicated, and less retarded, but not that much less retarded.  Anyway, I fell in love with Eclipse fast:  my friend Duc showed me the F3 trick that takes you to a symbol definition, and I went head over heals with all of the neat tricks you can use to effortlessly zoom around the code base.  Other people disliked eclipse;  I loved it.  Occasionally I would ignore yet another nerd saying I should use emacs or vim, or yet another moron bitching about these fancy editors making us poor programmers--which is bullshit, by the way:  I cut my teeth on C++ and therefore unlike people who started with java/ruby/python I actually know how to use pointers, which I believe makes me smarter than at least 50% of programmers out there (I get past the remaining 49% on mostly hubris).  So to summarize:  eclipse = awesome.

Then I started working here.  In order to make eclipse function with what must be one of the most pathetic version control systems on the planet, an Eclipse plugin was written to adapt the two together.  Now, I don't know if that plugin is to blame, or what, but using Eclipse here means having it freak out every once in a while and destroy your workspace.  This causes you to then spend anywhere from 30 minutes to two days fixing your tool chain.  Well, ladies, and gentleman, Eclipse crashed one too many times.  Are you still reading this?  I mean, seriously.  This post has gotten so boring I am being distracted by urges to go do my actual work, because that is more interesting.

Yeah, so I'm trying to code on the command line again, with vim.  And then there was a funny story that I can't tell you about because of NDAs and our internal software, and omygosh I'm bored.

In summary, the trick to sounding smart is to put down both sides of a debate.  I know this, because I typically think both sides of a debate are all idiots anyway, and sharing this view has made people think I'm smart.  It feels so good.

And something about...here laid to rest is my...the curly braces...oh who cares.


*object oriented databases:  unlike everything else on that list, "object oriented" databases don't actually have much value in any situation, except for solving the toy problems used by vendors trying to push "object oriented" databases.  Of course, this is not to say that a pure relational database should always be used....

**there is a quote that sounds a lot like this in some movie I've seen sometime in my lifetime.  I'm pretty sure a male character said it, and there is a "they."  That's all I can tell you, but if you happen to know the movie I'm referring to, please let me know.

Brown Sugar

If I was a better cook, "Brown Sugar" would be an illusion to dating a black girl.  However, I'm not a good cook and Seattle is so white I don't think I've even seen a black girl in weeks.

No, instead, I just wanted to let you know that the proper way to store brown sugar, as I learned last night, is to store it in something called an "airtight container" to prevent it from drying out and turning into, literally, a brick of sugar.  I'm not kidding about the brick part.  I think if I had more of these I could build a tasty house with it, so if you have one of those weird kids that like, licks walls and stuff, you could bring him over and he'd go crazy.  Anyway, once your brown sugar has been brickified, the brick can never be unmade by any craft we here possess.  It can only be softened by the fires of mount doom, or your microwave, long enough for you to scoop a few spoonfuls onto some ham.  I read this little fact after 5 minutes of trying to stab it with a fork, before which I then tried smacking it on the marble countertop.  That's how I discovered its was truly a brick.  So, now I know.

Mardis Gras is coming up.  Mardis Gras is one of those stupid holidays that does not have a fixed day of the month but instead fluctuates wildly according to some gay formula I have no intention of memorizing.  According to my personal calendar, February 3rd is or is near the earliest possible day Mardis Gras can start, give or take half a month.  I am beginning to think about my possible involvement in this holiday, how and when I'd get to New Orleans, and who I'd hang with, mostly because I had a dream last night about...something about Mardis Gras, I think.  I remember realizing that I was dreaming, and thinking that the dream would make a great blog post, so...here you go.  Something about Mardis Gras.

Oh yeah!  In this dream, I was googling beads.  Because of a story this girl I never want to see again told me, I desire to find some really exotic beads that like light up and stuff.  So in my dream I was google to find rare, light up beads.  I found some that were ok, not great.  Maybe in real life I will have better luck.

Jessica Rides Again

I picked my car up from the shop today.  The total bill was $800.  Admittedly, the portion of the bill that covered the pathetic bastard who crashed into my car without leaving a note on that fateful snowy night was only about $460.  Most of the rest was for a second key.  Had I know how ridiculously espensive those keys are, I would have reconsidered having a second one cut.  However, I have been running with only a single key for over a year, and my car cannot be opened without the little clicky button (if you use the key alone the alarm goes off) and the clicky button I had appeared to be...running out of battery.  So. Jessica is back, and ridding better than ever.  Good enough, in fact, to attract the attention of the po-po.

Now, like those annoying magazine articles I read occasionally, I will segue in to a related but technically uncessary backstory:

When I was new at driving, my red light instincts were not well formed.  I had a poor sense of where the point of no return was,  and would occasionally misjudge a light so badly that it was red almost a full second before I blew through it.  The last time I did this, I was driving home with friends.  Chris was the sole passenger in my car, and Owen was in another car.  I know this, because shortly after blowing the red light Owen called Chris to inform us that a cop had pulled out.

Immediately I sprung into action!  I floored my parents red station wagon and bolted for the next exit/turn.  And...seconds later the cop was right behind me.  My escape attempt was so poorly executed that the cop thought I had pulled off that main road to find a spot for her to pull me over.  I went with it.  1998 Subaru Legacy's make poor getaway cars.  And something about not running red lights.

Today, the scene was quite different.  I have long since honed my red light skills:  when I see yellow, I make a snap decision immediately and commit to it.  This snap decision always errs on the side of caution, unless I am in a hurry or some jackass that can't drive is riding my ass.  When I make the decision to go for it, Jessica's turbo always comes through for me with an extra burst of speed that I then have to catch with my brakes on the other side.  But that is neither here nor there.  I don't know what that expression means, but it sounds like a great way to end this paragraph.

Tonight, Saturday, Jan 21, while on the way to meet up with Pink Shirt Girl at a new salsa place that we were checking out, was the first time I have ever been pulled over in a car for allegedly speeding.  Yeah, I know I have multiple pulling over stories, but they were all for other stuff:  the red light, the passing someone too close to the oncoming vehicle in the other lane while a cop watched, and the u-turn at Friendly's that earned us two squad cars full of some cops that seemed seriously pissed that we were not drunk--just hungry.

Tonight I was in the right lane of what Seattle's finest informed me was a 35mph four lane road on which Biff Becker would say you can realistically do at least 70-78 mph safely.  An SUV slowed down to pull off.  I checked my left mirror and blind spot.  There was a car in the left lane way behind me.  I had enough room, so I put my turn signal on and coasted for as long as I could (I like to let it flash at least 3 times before a lane change to avoid attracting attention by appearing to drive aggressively) and then I popped Jess into second gear and gunned it.  I don't know how to describe how good it feels to do that, but it feels amazing.  Anyway.

I have a memory of something suspicious in my rearview mirror, something I should have paid more attention to, but I think that is nothing but a false memory filled in by hubris.  I had forgotten all about the SUV and was now paying attention to this bus in front of me when all of a sudden my world was full of strobing blues and reds.  A quick lane change confirmed that the cop was after me.

I chided myself for not spotting him;  I usually am quite dilligent about spotting cops, but perhaps tonight I was just caught up in the euphoria of having Jessica back.

I pulled into some parking lot and stood down:  ebrake and interior lights on, window down, keys out of the ignition.  Then I waited.  I have been pulled over before, but having a cop ride my ass with his flashy lights still gets my adrenaline pumping, and being seatbelted into the driver's seat of a stationary vehicle while my body is prepping for fight-or-flight makes my head swim and my hands shake.

The exchange was...frighteningly...exactly as I had imagined my next confrontation with the law to be.  He told me he was recording it.  He asked if I knew why he pulled me over.  I said "no" and scowled because I know why they ask that.  He accused me of accelerating to "well over 50" and asked why I felt the need to do that.  I opened my mouth to answer and then said nothing.  The reason that I said nothing was because of two videos I had seen back in the days when I still read slashdot:  one was some youtube video about smoking weed while driving and not getting caught that shouldn't be relied on for legal advice by anyone, and the other was a guest lecture at a reputable law school.  I've never smoked weed, but the knowledge that, because of the 5th amendment, you don't actually have to answer all of a cop's questions, is invaluable.

The cop got in my face, thinking I had mumbled too softly for him to hear.  I told him very clearly "I didn't answer" and he immediately moved on to the business of my license and registration and all that.  I spent the next few minutes digging through the mess in my glove box for my insurance while he questioned me about having a P.A. license--but I didn't stutter when I explained the different addresses on my documentation.  I didn't even find my latest insurance card before he went back to his car and did whatever cops do there.  I busied myself by sorting through the garbage in my glove box.  Its interesting what ends up there when you choose to use it as a waste basket.

The officer came back.  He handed me my license and registration and said something about not speeding on that road and then he was gone.

The brisk manner in which he left makes me want to believe he had no hard evidence that I had exceeded the speed limit.  Hypothetically, if I had exceeded the speed limit, I doubt he had time to catch up and then pace me.

Honestly, I don't really know why he backed off.  Luck or Mercy, you pick.

Today's Horoscope

These horoscopes supercede those published in all newspapers in the world today, except for those newspapers with a name that is four or more words and does not contain the string "Chicago."



Ares
March 21 to April 20, and also September 3rd but only if you were born between 3am and 5am EST.

Someone you know will burn themselves while cooking.


Taurus
April 21 to May 21, except that every three days you can choose instead any horoscope with fewer letters than Taurus, like Leo.

If you are single, you will continue to pine after someone who secretly hates you.  If you have a significant other, you will discover that they have been cheating on you since the beginning of their relationship but will stay with them anyway.


Gemini
May 82 to June 211

You will travel today...roughly the distance of your typical commute.  Also somewhere in the world, a little girl has drawn a stick figure on a sidewalk:  that stick figure is you.  If she used Red, Fuscia or Sky Blue chalk, you're fucked.


Cancer
June 22 to July -5

You will eat crab cakes and you will love them.  Then you will get food poisoning.  If you are a vegetarian, your fate is even worse:  you both don't eat bacon and you believe in astrology.  You're probably the kind of person that presses the "close" button on the elevator.


Leo
July 23 to August 21, and also every day whose number is equal to y%a where y is the current year and a is your age.

You will catch on fire.  If you are a Taurus, you totally should not pick this one.


Virgo
August 22 to September 23

First of all, I know you're not a virgin.  Second of all, go back to Leo.  Do not pass go, and do not collect $200.


Libra
September 24 to October 23, OR roll a 16 or higher on a 20-sided die.

Tonight, at precisely 5:32pm local time, you will order a pizza.  A man wearing two katana blades will deliver that pizza.  His name is Hiro.  It is the wrong pizza.  Shortly after finishing that pizza, the mafia will show up at your door and demand that you return the pizza.  They will tell you that diamonds were hidden in that pizza, and will attempt to cut you open with a switchblade, but your friend's dog (whose name has seven letters, starts with M and rhymes with "adison") will attack the mafia, causing enough of a distraction for you to escape.


The dog dies.  The precise reason for the dog's death will never be determined, but contributing factors will include blunt force trauma from being kicked across the room and into the wall, and also being shot twice in the torso and once in the head.


You will escape through your back yard by running in a poorly executed zig-zag pattern, after which you will duck under the second and third bush separating your yard from your neighbors, unless you don't have a yard, in which case your escape involves a fire escape, and its best you don't know the details ahead of time.


You will run into famous actor Jason Statham, who will take you to a bar called Shorty's.  You will go around the back and down a flight of stairs and knock on the door.  A man will open one of those sliding windows and tell you to "piss off" in a thick cockney accent.  Your friend who happens to be with you will giggle because they will think about the word "cockney" and how it has the word cock in it, but you will not be phased.  You will utter the password:  "zebra" and they will let you in.


Then you will play ten hands of poker with a man named Slap.  On the fifth hand, Slap is going to have a straight, all blacks (though not a flush) so bet high enough to be convincing but then not too high, cause you're gonna have a crap hand that round.  On the ninth hand they will offer you some leftover crab cakes.  You will take four but will only eat three.


On the tenth hand of poker, at the eleventh hour, during your twelfth attempt to bluff, with thirteen chips left, while being watcheed by fourteen spectators, in a room with fifteen posters of Tarantino movies, while Slap smokes his sixteenth cigar of the week, while discussing an 18-hole golf course in an effort to distract the other players, on the 19th day of this month, you will have a sudden and urgent need to go to the bathroom.  See Cancer's horoscope about the crab cakes.  You should have known better than to ever get seafood at Shorty's.


The bathroom will be approximately 4 to 5 meters away.  It will be tiny, the kind where there is so little room the sink almost (but not quite) hangs over the edge of the toilet.  There will be dust and loose paint on most of the tiled floor, which will be a baige color.  There will be a significant crack in the drywall in the back right corner, and a small stain on the tile indicated that the toilet leaked sometime in the past six months.  There will be a spider walking along the back of the toilet tank but you will not notice it;  I'm only telling you now in case you are afraid of spiders.


You will swing the door closed but the latch has long since broken and the door only stays shut via the makeshift locking mechanism that was rigged up mostly for show.  You will then spend the worst minute of your life balanced on the toilet, holding the door shut with one leg that is still trapped to your other leg by your pants and clutching the sink with one hand while your bowels explode.  You will feel a searing pain, and there won't quite be enough toilet paper.


Despite the fact that the stench makes you retch, you stay in the bathroom and call the delivery number for the mafia's pizza place, because you are fairly certain you evacuated a diamond or two.  Yes, there they are, glittering among your leavings of blood, pizza and salmonella.


When you finally get home that night, you will be unable to sit down and instead will decide to bury the dog using a shovel with a green handle, planning to tell your friend that the dog ran away.

Scorpio
October 24 to November 22, or if your name is Adam.

Today you will not be stung by a scorpion.  I know, you thought it was going to happen, but its not your day.


Sagittarius
November 23 to December 22

Go back three horoscopes.


Capricorn
December 23 to 20

What the hell is a goat-fish?  Anyway.  You will exchange money today.  This will be via a deposit, withdrawal or interest accrual in one of your accounts, or you will purchase something in cash.


Aquarius
January 21 to February 19

If you live in an aquarium, choose any two horoscopes for the current day.  They will happen to you tomorrow.  This horoscope can be one of the two that you choose.  If you majored in English in college, you will mistakenly think that this creates an infinite cycle that you can exploit, and you should probably stay the hell away from the Monty Hall problem.

If you don't live in an aquarium, I think its fair to say that you're not getting laid tonight, so your horoscope, which would have been interesting, doesn't really matter.


Pisces
February 20 to March 20, unless you were born on a Thursday, then see Capricorn

You actually don't have a horoscope today.  Isn't that weird?







I am saving this link so that I can do this again:  http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/horoscope3.htm

FREE MONEY

Living social is offering a $20 Amazon gift card for $10.

Go here and get some:

https://livingsocial.com/deals/21336?ref=conf-jp&rpi=4382664

Please use that link, three of you, because then I get like another one or something.

I don't know what mechanism they are using to prevent people from buying multiple cards.  I would guess that if you tried to use two of these cards with the same amazon account, you would run into a problem.  Yeah, I guess I'm not going to try to scam it, because I don't have an alternate address.


[Edit]
Oh, man, and someone just mentioned the Monty Hall problem on this chatter mailing list at work.  For those of you unfamiliar with this little gem, the Monty Hall problem is a misleading probability puzzle that can initially confuse most people that only have a college-level understanding of probability & statistics, and, in my experience, it takes at least two to twenty minutes to convince a reasonable person of the correct solution.  Try to imagine a puzzle like this being discussed on a mailing list where idiots compete to talk over each other with their lame jokes and arguments and don't listen, except for the sake of adjusting their rebuttal.  I hate this mailing list, but I keep coming back because I am so, so bored.

Ironic:  When I first joined this company, I thought these people were smart.

Double Ironic:  I did in fact use the word ironic correctly in the previous sentence.  I know.  Now, if only I could find a preposition to end this sentence with....

[Edit]
Zodiac signs have changed, or something.  I don't know anything about the mechanism that caused this, but since I'm supposed to be writing my Peer Reviews today, I plan to read up on it and then figure out a way to demonstrate my severe contempt for astrology.  I may start writing those things...horoscopes.

Update:  a careless google search will inundate the unsuspecting curious with a deluge of icky bullshit.  In order to spare you from seeing what I saw, I am providing you with this link:

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/horoscope.htm

You're welcome.

The Princess and the Dragon

This site is offering $60 for super-short stories, so I thought I would write this one.  It is 1592 words, according to 750words.com.  Ironically, I have been asked on more than one occasion by one or more people who are not children to tell them some form of bedtime story.  Most of the stories I've told sucked...I forget where this train of though was going...oh right, so it will be nice to have stories to tell other adults the next time I am asked.  I should really add a sex scene somewhere, though.




The Princess and the Dragon

During medieval times there was a far away kingdom called Eris.  The princess of Eris was a little girl named Faye.    As a child Faye was notorious for accessing places where she was not allowed to be.  She was often forgiving because of her beauty:  she had stunning black hair then fell all the way to her waist, and a killer smile.  To the chagrin of her tutors, Faye would often escape her lessons and be found playing in the treasury, or crawling about the crates in the storehouses, or climbing the castle walls, or slipping into the armory.  She had an eye for swords and plate armor.

Faye's mother, the queen, chided her often but her scoldings were ineffective.  Then the King stepped in with a different idea.  He told Faye stories of the ancient times, when dark, red dragons roamed the skies, breathing fire and death, and swooping down to lift entire cows from the pasture, which they could eat in two bites.  But they didn't just eat cows, no.  They also ate women who cheated on their husbands, and little girls who misbehaved.  Then the King overdid it a bit and told his daughter that dragons could smell bad girls.

That did the trick.  From then on Faye had a serious fear of dragons.  She stopped climbing and fooling around and attended her lessons and learned her languages.  Once she saw a great winged shadow fly across the ground towards her.  Faye screamed and fell to the ground to hide from what she thought was a dragon, but her brothers and sisters laughed at her.  When Faye looked up, she saw that it was just a great eagle.

Then Faye grew older and fell in love with a young prince named Jacob.  Jacob was tall, dark and handsome and Faye was never afraid of dragons when he was around.  Jacob was a prince himself, of a nearby small kingdom.  Faye rode often to meet Jacob, and the passed time in a grove of cherry trees near a lake.  Jacob tried many times to kiss Faye but Faye had been told that kissing would make her pregnant, and was more interested in sword fighting.

Faye was blissfully happy, but it did not last forever.  An evil sorceror kidnapped Jacob and locked him away in a dark tower in the mountains.  Many knights left to rescue the prince, but none of them came back.  Some time passed, and the people stopped trying.  They said the tower was a dark castle ruled by an evil sorcerer and guarded by a fiery dragon.  No mortal could defeat them.

Faye took it upon herself to rescue Jacob.  She dressed herself in a soldiers clothes and stole a sword and a horse named Ceres and rode for the mountains.  The King was angry when he realized what she had done and sent him men after her, but Faye eluded them.

She reached the mountains and found the dark tower easily.  The outline of its dreary battlements stood out clearly in front of the full moon.  It was a castle, with a thick outer wall and an inner keep, and one tower rose from that keep which was taller than all the others.  Faye approached slowly.  When she saw the gatehouse and the iron portcullis that barred her way, she realize that there was no way she could storm the castle by herself.  Somewhere, far above her, a pair of green eyes watched.  Faye could feel that she was being watched.  She turned around and retread at a full gallop.  When the view of the castle was blocked by rock and stone, she stopped and sent her horse away.   Ceres was a good horse and knew the way home.

Then Faye doubled back and approached the side of the castle with stealth.  This required her to both descend and climb sheer rock faces, but Faye had spent her entire childhood climbing, and it was a piece of cake.  She reached the castle wall, at a place where no one watched, because whatever person or mysterious creature was in charge of watching, thought that no man could ever get there.  No man ever would.  Faye scaled the castle wall.  It was difficult, because there were few hand-holds and she hand to support her weight using the thinest of cracks between stone, but it was not impossible.  The people who built that wall meant to keep out large men waiting heavy armor, not teenage girls in leather.

Faye reached the top of the wall and quickly climbed down the other side.  She drew her sword, ready for danger.  Then she saw the dragon.  It was an enormous monster.  Long, thick body.  Terrible wings.  Horns.  Black scales.  And piercing cat eyes that stared directly at her.  Faye backed up against the castle wall, shivering.  The dragon snorted like a horse.  Thick steam poured out of its nostrils.  It rose to its feet with care.  A great clinking sound echoed throughout the courtyard.  Faye saw the source:  a large chain that was attached to a collar at the beasts neck.  She thought it a strange way for someone to keep a pet that can fly.  The beast opened its wings, which spread so wide that they blocked out the moon and covered Faye in shadow.  Faye dropped her sword and ran.  She heard an explosion behind her, and felt the heat at her back.  She continued running until she was out of breath and collapsed onto the ground.

She cowered there for what seemed like an age.  Faye cried.  She had failed to rescue her dear Jake.  She had disobeyed her father and would die here in the strange castle, and she was too scared to think about how that death would come.  Faye was too scared to move, so she stayed were she was with her hands over her head, crying.  Then the tears ran out.  She shivered instead, waiting, gathering the courage to open her eyes.

Faye finally did so, and saw only grass, and stone behind it.  She rose to her feet once again, and with the quietest of steps, found her way back to the dragon.  Now believing that her life was forfeit, a strange peace had filled her mind, and she was far less afraid of the incredible beast.  When Faye crept upon it, it was sleeping.  She found its great tail, and with her eyes, followed lines of beautiful ridges that ran all the way from the tail, up its back, between two mounds of folded wings, all the way to its neck, and probably to the head, which was out of view.  Faye could hear the beast snoring.  It snored like a horse.

Suddenly Faye got an incredible idea.  The dragon couldn't burn itself...and it probably couldn't scratch its own back.  Faye acted before she could talk herself out of it:  she leapt onto the great tail, and scrambled up the creatures back.  The creature was awake before she passed the wings, but it was too late; she was firmly entrenched in the monsters back.

The horned head twisted around and those scary cat eyes stared her down.  Streams of smoke appeared in the air.  "What are you doing?"

"You can talk?" asked Faye.

"Of course I can talk, you little insect, I am a dragon!"  The dragon's voice did not sound like a man's, but it did not sound the way Faye imagined that various forest animals would sound, if they could talk.

Faye crawled up closer.

"It feels good to have someone on my back again."

"You mean people rode you?" asked Faye with wonder.

"With my permission.  A long time ago, when my scales were red.  Before I was...captured."  The dragon then told her many things, and they talked for some time, until Faye felt safe enough to climb down off of his back.  The dragon's name was Veston.  Faye offered to pick the lock of his collar.  Veston watched her approach his neck on jittery knees.  The lock around his collar was enormous.  The key must have been as large as a mans arm.  But that only made it easier to pick.

When Veston's collar fell to the ground, he rose up and stretched his neck.  Then he offered to help her rescue Jacob.  "You cannot hope to defeat the sorcerer.  He is too powerful.  But if you ride on my back, I can climb around him and reach the tower while he sleeps."

Faye climbed on Veston's back and Veston climbed the keep, and all the way up the tower, gaining Faye access to the room at the top.  When she found Jacob she was overjoyed and kissed him without fear.  Then they both rode on Veston's back.  Veston was too old and injured to fly, but he could still glide, which great effort, and took them a great distance away, out of the mountains.

When they landed, Veston collapsed, and was soon dead, but in his last moments he thanked Faye for rescuing him, so that he could die a free dragon.  Then he breathed fire one last time, and the fire consumed him, until nothing was left but bones and ash.

Later, a band of knights would ride to the dark castle and find its keep and walls broken down and ruined without an obvious cause, or a clue as to what happened to the evil sorcerer.

Faye and Jacob returned home and were married in the finest ballroom in Eris.

The Perfect Week

So raise your glass if you are wrong,
In all the right ways,
All my underdogs,
We will never be never be anything but loud
And nitty gritty dirty little freaks

Someone just asked me what my perfect day would be, and all of a sudden my mind flooded with a hundred different thinks like skiing, flying, riding sportbikes, and sportbike sex.  This was partly because I have been playing and re-playing a video game called Alien Legacy all morning, until the space ships cryogenics system exploded and I got pissed and rage quit the 15 year old video game.  Anyway, thats why my mind was racing.  Also, if sportbikes could be modified to carry skiis....

So I just wrote down a bunch of tasks, I mean, activities...damn I think I about work a lot.  I noticed some interesting things about these tasks, for example, some have constraints:  flying cannot be done after drinking, or with a hangover (unless you enjoy the non-glamorous version of living dangerously).  Also, some activities, like hangover sex, reading to each other, lounging around a beach house, and something involving body paint that I won't describe, are all special activities in that they can be done the morning after a long night of drinking.  I'm calling them recovery tasks. I mean, activities.  Damn.  Oh, and a Lord of the Rings Movie Marathon would be a good recovery activity too...I'm going to have to revise this itinrary at a later date, once I figure out all the stuff I'm forgetting.  Wow I hate facebook.  I just logged in to read my own profile because is how I keep track of my favorite interests, books, and music, only to find all of the lists empty because facebook doesn't let you have something there unless it links to some gayass page thing that I hate.  I guess I'll have to go at this from memory.

Most of this involves a girlfriend/wife, which I don't have, so in a last-ditch effort to avoid writing this in the second person, I will make up a name...wow.  On my like fifth try pulling random girl names from the U.S. Census data with Evan's script, I got:  Evelyn Phoenix.  WTF  are the chances of that?  So...uh, Evelyn it is.

Day 1:
Evelyn comes over to an apartment filled with a couple hundred dollars worth of playpen balls, or possibly just a pillow fort.  Several hours later we depart for the salsa clubs on either one or two sportbikes.  Maybe we stop for food on the way.  We dance until the clubs shutdown, then go for a late night ride, and then have sportbike sex, preferably near a secluded river but in a private garage otherwise.

Day 2:
We fly to an island that only planes can reach (and boats, obviously).  Such islands exist to justify the usefulness of the light aircraft required to reach them.  We spend that night cooking together, even though that could have been used as a hangover recovery activity.  Then we go for a midnight horse ride on the beach (remember, its an island) and camp somewhere in a "2 person" tent which is really a 1 person tent that we will cram two people into.  Actually, possibly other people could accompany us on the flight (take a whole wing of light aircraft, perhaps?) and the horse ride, but Eve and I need our own tent.  That night we have rope sex.

Alternately: this could be done instead at one of those fly-in campgrounds, and without the island or horses.  Might be easier to achieve that way.

Day 3
We fly out.  Hmmm...might need something for the day time here.  Well, I had "bed w/  rose petals all over it" left over...I guess we could stick that in for the day.  Anyway.  That night is Ketel One night:  we (a bunch of guys) go out to a random bar dressed in tuxes just like in the ketel one commercials with a song by Black Rebel Motorcycle club and a narrator saying "when men were men!" although we won't really be drinking ketel one...maybe Grey Goose on the rocks and a couple of Flaming Dr. Peppers.  At the same time, all the girls go out or a wine bar or whatever.  Later that night, we meet up for the Fine-Ass Lan Party, still in our tuxes/suits.  The Fine-Ass LAN Party will have girls, big screen mario kart (maybe old school mario kart), strip guitar hero duel (preferably with some kind of rule where guys have to keep their pants on, or at least their boxers), starcraft, classic unreal tournament, a fireplace, a web bar, no smelly or annoying people and we will also be playing poker.  I feel like a nice game of Texas Holdem with a $5 buy in would raise the profile of a LAN Party to something normal people can appreciate.  Maybe we'll even allow flip cup--but NO BEER PONG.  Could possible have a web cam running;  its purpose would be to make other people jealous of us.

Day 4
The next morning, recovering from the mild hangovers will involve Evelyn and a large bottle of a massage oil that does not contain sugar.  The word cowgirl is also relevant here.  Then we driive to a beach house.  That night we do a midnight kayak thing.  Admittedly, there isn't a lot going on...this is kind of a glue day that I need just to handle hangovers and transportation.

Day 5
We go climbing...if thats even possible near a beach (??) well, sure, I've heard of like cliffs where you can climb.  Ok, so climbing, also climbing sex, and then that night at the beach house we have a Pirate Party, and, if possible, we play Pirates of the Spanish Main using full sized lego pirate ships.  We also watch lots of pirate movies and dress up and drink captain, etc.  And we need a pair of irons (ancient handcuffs).

Day 6
We recover by lying around the beach house.  We go ride some go karts.  I don't know.  That night, I play a gig with my nearly all-female metal band.  I don't care if the audience is completely empty;  I just want to rock out very loudly.  The after party will be a rave involving foam.  After that, its Evelyn and body paint.

Day 7
We recover from the hangover by...reading  to each other.  Ok that sounds kind of gay now.  Whatever;  I'll leave it in.  Then we...cook dinner, do donuts somewhere, race cars...not necessarily in that order.  Head up to a ski mountain and check in to a ski chalet.

Day 8
Skiing.  Glade skiing.  Maybe make out in the trees, but that could be highly dangerous.  Hot tub.



That's more than a week.  Maybe I can tighten it up.  Accomplishing this might be hard; we'd have to assign party captains.  Oh crap, and beach volleyball!

Funny Story

I am, basically, a... Level 1 Software Developer.  I was supposed to have been Level 2 by now.  To that end, I am completing the mandatory "self evaluation" where I talk myself up, or whatever.  My company has a number of bullshit aspirations that we are supposed to live up to, in a number of different categories:  20 that are mostly bullshit, and 8 "SDE principles" that are kind of related to being a programmer.  Its mostly the typical stuff:  do good work, communicate well, do lots of work on your own time, etc.

Sadly, after deleting the snarky paragraph I wrote about Eclipse being a little bitch all year, I only have like 1, maybe 1 and a half things in the "strengths" column.  Pretty much all of the other "principles" or "leadership whatever" stuff could go in the weakness column (including "Safety: maintaining a safe work environment," thanks to the bottle of Jack I keep at my desk) but I only wrote two, because I don't want to get fired yet.  So I probably won't be getting a raise.  Oh man, my one project this year was a disaster.  I was so bored.  And I hate telling my boss I'm bored, because its not like managers can ever do anything about it.  I still have the cardboard pieces of my hypercube that I used in my attempts to solve 3-Sat.  Girls have been asking about them.  I need to get rid of them, but I can't just throw them out, because half of them contain soap that I plan to use.

I haven't seriously started looking for another job, but I did email some random dude on craigslist about some startup idea.  The guy wanted a database, but was mentioning things like "visual studio" and "excel" in his ad.  For those of you who don't do computer stuff:  visual studio and excel are both not databases.  I mentioned that fact in my email.  He never replied back.  That totally counts as me searching for a new job though.

In other news:

My car developed a serious steering alignment problem.  When the wheel is centered, the front right tire points straight forward, and the front left tire is turned significantly to the right.  I don't know how it happened, but it must have involved the 4 inches of snow on the ground.  The Subaru place has not responded to my request for an appointment, and I don't even know how I'm going to get my car there, because the snow melted, and this steering problem involves a tendency to suddenly jerk to the left.

I got food poisoning.  It was awesome.

While I was splayed out on my couch in a naseous delerium yesterday, my unguarded mind kept drifting back to the second-to-last time I saw Betsy while she was single, in between feverish dreams about the season and a half of 30Rock that I had semi-consciously watched all day.  Today I looked at her facebook page.  She's still dating that guy.

Tina Fey is hot.

A girl that has repeatedly rejected me for the most unpredictable reasons while always telling me if some condition (that I can't change, or that I can't change without being creepy) were different, she'd want to be with me, asked me to join her in one of those writing things for writers where you write every day.  Naturally, I had nothing better to do.  Here's the good news:  this writing website thing offers like "merit badges" for gay stuff like writing 750 words in 20 minutes 10 days in a row.  I'm going to collect them all.

Alicia seems to have stopped responding to text messages, and I had just thought of an excuse to visit Boston.  Sadface.

Speaking of girls:  went blues dancing tuesday, and had to dance with not one but 2 guys.  I am becoming numb to the unpleasantness of it.

I saw a picasso exhibit recently.  I was not impressed with his work, although a female friend of mine told me it turned her on.

Since I didn't have enough Legos to build even the smallest of castles, I attempted to build a house.  So far, it looks like I don't have enough pieces for a house either.  I have 20,000 bricks and I can't make a damn house (the windows don't match).

Blues Dancing

Yeah.  Blues Dancing.  Apparently its a thing.

I've spent years learning salsa and going out to clubs.  Tonight was my first night dancing to blues music.  I managed to arrange a private lesson with one of the cute teacher girls--thats tomorrow--then I ran into some girls I knew from salsa, then I effortlessly got this other girls number and made plans to go salsa dancing the day after tomorrow, and then this random cute girl asked me to dance.  Even better, the girl whose number I got does not have her hair cut super short like a boys.  Yeah, thats an actual problem I have out here.  I don't even want to know why.

I left, partly because I was bored and partly because I was worried my fortune would change, like someone who scores a jackpot on the slot machine.  Not that I would ever play slots--slots are gay.

Oh, also, friday I am checking out a new salsa/bachatta studio and saturday I have plans with Bridget to do something involving an art museum.  So I am basically doing something every night this week.  I don't know how I pulled it off.

The cooking and bartending classes I've found so far are too inconvenient, and there has been no progress in my efforts to secure a nearly-all-female metal band.  On the Lego front, I had a kind of inspiration tonight:  instead of making a book all about castles, I could make a book about normal houses build out of Legos.  I think I have plenty of pieces for that.

And...I'm still thinking about that girl I met at that party in Philly.  Unfortunately I don't own a teleporter.  Or a jet.

Philly Part 3

Yeah, part 2 was really emo so I didn't publish it.  Picture me in a martini bar drinking $12 glasses of wine because the name was easy to say and hearing a friend slip that one of those girls I'm perpetually in love with probably has a serious thing going on with a guy I've never met but will hate forever.  This friend was an attractive girl but did not want to "stay over" at my hotel, so I walked back and wrote about my feelings.  It was really special.  Anyway.

Here are some random things that I don't feel like tying together:

I am in a super good mood now, and not just because the PS3 got hacked.  I'm assuming it is typical post-trip jubilation.

I did meet a cute girl at one of the house parties during my trip.  Chris' new year resolution was apparently something about being more creepy in general, so he started talking about my "blog" --this very publication you are reading now--and put it up on his big screen tv in the middle of a drinking party.  On the bright side, I got to drink a couple Dr. Peppers (the car-bomb drink, not the soda).  So this girl who seems to have a nearly horizontal chastity curve is now probably going to read all of my crass rantings and stop talking to me.  I could be wrong.  Maybe I'll just text her a lot or something.  Whatever happens, I'm glad I met her.

We watched Scott Pilgrim vs the World, and I want to be in a band.

After one sleepless night (see the paragraph about the cute girl) I learned that if you are rolling around your home town/city/metropolitan area without anywhere to sleep, you can just pull into the parking lot outside of a big movie theatre and take a nice nap.  I stretched my right leg over the console and into the passenger seat, and let my left one go under the pedals.  It was comfy for 20 minutes.

I have been toying with the idea of writing romance novels.  I hate romance novels.  The perfect novel, in my mind, would be about me and my imaginary girlfriend touring the world in our steam powered airship having lots of steamy sex.  It would be written by me, and read by my girlfriend, since you end up having a lot of downtime on an airship.  Ok I think I just created a narrative paradox there...anyway.  I only wrote all that so that I could say that in my opinion, romance novels are about all the boring crap that has to take place in between the sex scenes.  My only interest in that genre is writing a story where some male main character does everything he can to get a girl, including surmounting incredible and character-developing obstacles, until the end of some epically romantic story which will have the female readers crying and sobbing and really into it waiting for the happy ending (happy endings are to romance novels as vampires are to vampire novels) and then at the end the girl blows him off and it and surprise! No happy ending.   However.  I had some down time, and some of that down time was spent in a bookstore, and I did two passes through the romance section, and what I learned on that day was quite interesting.  The prose and general writing skill is abominable;  I can already write better than those people, and don't worry, I know how bad my novel was.  Also, girls are kind of...nerdy.  I never expected the manner of ridiculously stupid sci fi and fantasy elements strewn haphazardly all over that section.  It appears that those elements are necessary to shape the characters and situations to get the most spice out of the relationship:  instead of a bad boy, he's a fucking demon, and she's like, an angel.  I'm not making that one up.  So, it seems that girls are just as nerdy as guys, the only difference is that with girls, all the vampires and magic and bullshit isn't the point, the relationship is.  Picture seven girls sitting in someone's parents basement rolling a 20 sided die for "initiative" -- is he finally going to kiss her?  Oh no!  Someone cast Cold Feet!  Yeah.  Anywhere.  The entire point of this paragraph is that I think I could write this crap.  I forget why this was supposed to improve my life...something about female fans.  I don't know.  All I need is a formula, like vampires with glitter on their face, or a boy wizard that goes to magic school and thwarts the evil wizard every year.  After that, I just have to spit out a bunch of garbage and convince someone to publish it under a pen name.

Also, Legos...still trying to get a side business going with them.

On the train ride home from the airport, which only went halfway there and I had to take a cab because Seattle transit is gay, I think I finally figured out where I want my life to be in a few years.  It is the first time I have ever been able to answer that question, or even make a serious, grounded, guess.  Here is where I want to be:  I want to have a job I love, a job I love so much I actually want to get out of bed in the morning, and am always surprised when 5:30 rolls around.  I want to live within flying distance (for a small airplane) of my friends and family so that weekend trips are feasible.  Regardless of how far my travels take me, my family will always be in the Philly area.  Also, people are getting all married and boring now and there isn't much of a point to being "home" on a weeknight, so these long visits tend to be inefficient.  I want to ride a sportbike again, and I want to roll around with one or two other guys that don't need to ask why you always have an extra helmet clipped on the D-ring.  I want to ride that sportbike to salsa dancing, and when I walk into a salsa club I want to be one of the best L.A. style dancers in the club.  I want to fly my friends to the beach, or to New York.  I want to pop down to N.C. in a cessna and visit Kristy for the day, or to visit my one of my sisters.  I want to live in a cheap but nice house with people I don't hate and have two or three good parties a month.  This house will have a room with a dance floor, a tv for rock band (and mario kart), a table for flip cup, a cool bar, a kitchen and dining area for luring large groups of people over with food, a lab for working on 3-sat, and like probably a hot tub.  Oh, and a place for my nearly-all-female metal band.  Yeah, I'm going to be in a cool metal band.  We will be going on beach trips, ski trips and gambling trips where we pay for the hotel out of our texas holdem profits.  What else...oh, and the premium lan parties.  Not quite sure how they will work yet.  Oh, and some of our parties will be themed.  Like the pirate parties, and the steampunk parties, etc.  Jessica (my car) will be there somehow.  Might finally get her a roof rack for skiis, idk.  Oh, and my life will be potmarked with regular month-long excursions to other countries, or just doing cool stuff.  Ok, that is everything I can remember right now.  I have a bunch of other ideas that involve having a girlfriend/wife, but they are all rated R and I'm not mentioning them here.  Oh, and I'm probably going to be a writer of some kind.  Like, a real writer, not just the romance crap.  And something about climbing or lifting weights, and the racing cars thing.  Oh!  And something about clubbing, something about clubbing....

I think if I did all that I would be content.  I don't know; I keep thinking I'm forgetting something.  Creating the largest permanent lego installation on the planet would be nice, but I honestly don't really need legos in my life.  I need to learn spanish.

[Starcraft]
I need a new computer to play Starcraft.  It looks like a decent one will run me $700-ish:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127510

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121394

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148366

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811144162

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106275

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227590

and I don't even know if it will all work.