Thursday, August 30, 2012
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Transition
Recently, I changed jobs.
In order to protect my ability to say whatever the hell I want without consequences, I'm going to cleverly disguise the identities of the companies. Lets just call them Flabazon and Bikesoft.
I showed up at Flabazon thinking everyone was a genius. I was thrust into a complicated software migration, not yet knowing that was a way of life in that department, and found out that my team has an "on call" that is always dealing with problems, and who gets woken up in the middle of the night by a pager. And sometimes the entire team needs to help. Then I was introduced into a complicated build system with the terrible property that any time one of its tendrils touched your project, nothing would work until you completely integrated your shit with the entire build system. I spent years developing the skills to fight that battle. Working at home was extremely difficult. It took a lot of investigative work, charming the IT department, and buying a $1000 laptop from Apple to get a situation where I could work from home effectively. In three years I never managed to get email on my phone or even be able to respond to pages on my phone. Work was so boring I spent considerable portions attempting to find a polynomial-time solution to 3-SAT, just to keep my brain from dying. I should have been programming regularly, but work was so tedious that by the time I got home I didn't have the mental capacity to work on side projects. Also, the team that I was on was largely responsible for a business-logic level codebase, and for fixing other people's problems. Management came down hard on us because other people were not fixing their problems. The "other people" I refer to were often in other organisations and, knowing that we lacked leverage, completely ignored us and our escalations. I doodled through meetings, fought to hide my disdain for our position because I knew my brand new manager would chide me later. One of the things that my brand new manager told me was a business version of the alignment chart, where on the bottom you have people that lack ability, and on the top you have people have have ability. On the left you have people unwilling to learn, and on the right you have people willing to learn. He told me I was top-left: I had ability, but I was unwilling to learn. He talked as if this was supposed to be some kind of revelation to me. After being shoved off on the losing side of a team split because I happened to be familiar with some bullshit, I had actually spent the last least 2 years doing my best to remain strategically ignorant of all of the moldy, rotting systems I hated; I was sad only that I'd been caught. Flabazon's performance management system turned out to be different than what they presented at first...their "career management" sessions were really just masturbatory self-flattery that obscured the true machinery of the business until I got my foot stuck in it and couldn't move teams.
Then I left Flabazon and got a job at Bikesoft. At Bikesoft, my team owns platform level code. Platform level is the opposite of business-logic in that it doesn't suck and make you want to kill yourself. At Bikesoft, my primary job will actually be writing code, and adding features. In three and a half years at Flabazon I spent one month actually adding features to something. Now I will be doing it all the time! At Bikesoft, I am not a member of an unloved team with a revolving door of managers. My team has no "on call" and no pager duty. No one acts like you are committing a mortal sin for desiring to not be on call. On my first fucking day in the office, I had corporate email and calendar on my personal fucking android phone. It was painless, and took five minutes. Five minutes is 0.000643% of three and a half years. I don't know much about Bikesoft's build system, but it doesn't suck, and I've never really liked Bikesoft's software anyway, so I just gave in to everything and used it without complaining. The department I'm in functions much like a start up. My manager's manager told me, up front, before I checked in a single line of code, how their performance managment and promotion system actually works, so that I can make good decisions. Also I have my own office. I can close the door, and I'm actually not bothered by anyone. And I worked all day. All day. Like 9am to 8pm, and I still had energy left over. Also, Bikesoft is not super-fucking-cheap ("frugal") about everything. I have a computer that is actually powerful enough to do things like run software, and I have my own fucking office. At Flabazon, even the president of the United States has to share an office with someone.
I am certain that I will become frustrated and jaded about many, many things at Bikesoft. However, so far is looks like whatever my future frustrations will be, they will be new and completely different.
And this time, I know how to play the game.
In order to protect my ability to say whatever the hell I want without consequences, I'm going to cleverly disguise the identities of the companies. Lets just call them Flabazon and Bikesoft.
I showed up at Flabazon thinking everyone was a genius. I was thrust into a complicated software migration, not yet knowing that was a way of life in that department, and found out that my team has an "on call" that is always dealing with problems, and who gets woken up in the middle of the night by a pager. And sometimes the entire team needs to help. Then I was introduced into a complicated build system with the terrible property that any time one of its tendrils touched your project, nothing would work until you completely integrated your shit with the entire build system. I spent years developing the skills to fight that battle. Working at home was extremely difficult. It took a lot of investigative work, charming the IT department, and buying a $1000 laptop from Apple to get a situation where I could work from home effectively. In three years I never managed to get email on my phone or even be able to respond to pages on my phone. Work was so boring I spent considerable portions attempting to find a polynomial-time solution to 3-SAT, just to keep my brain from dying. I should have been programming regularly, but work was so tedious that by the time I got home I didn't have the mental capacity to work on side projects. Also, the team that I was on was largely responsible for a business-logic level codebase, and for fixing other people's problems. Management came down hard on us because other people were not fixing their problems. The "other people" I refer to were often in other organisations and, knowing that we lacked leverage, completely ignored us and our escalations. I doodled through meetings, fought to hide my disdain for our position because I knew my brand new manager would chide me later. One of the things that my brand new manager told me was a business version of the alignment chart, where on the bottom you have people that lack ability, and on the top you have people have have ability. On the left you have people unwilling to learn, and on the right you have people willing to learn. He told me I was top-left: I had ability, but I was unwilling to learn. He talked as if this was supposed to be some kind of revelation to me. After being shoved off on the losing side of a team split because I happened to be familiar with some bullshit, I had actually spent the last least 2 years doing my best to remain strategically ignorant of all of the moldy, rotting systems I hated; I was sad only that I'd been caught. Flabazon's performance management system turned out to be different than what they presented at first...their "career management" sessions were really just masturbatory self-flattery that obscured the true machinery of the business until I got my foot stuck in it and couldn't move teams.
Then I left Flabazon and got a job at Bikesoft. At Bikesoft, my team owns platform level code. Platform level is the opposite of business-logic in that it doesn't suck and make you want to kill yourself. At Bikesoft, my primary job will actually be writing code, and adding features. In three and a half years at Flabazon I spent one month actually adding features to something. Now I will be doing it all the time! At Bikesoft, I am not a member of an unloved team with a revolving door of managers. My team has no "on call" and no pager duty. No one acts like you are committing a mortal sin for desiring to not be on call. On my first fucking day in the office, I had corporate email and calendar on my personal fucking android phone. It was painless, and took five minutes. Five minutes is 0.000643% of three and a half years. I don't know much about Bikesoft's build system, but it doesn't suck, and I've never really liked Bikesoft's software anyway, so I just gave in to everything and used it without complaining. The department I'm in functions much like a start up. My manager's manager told me, up front, before I checked in a single line of code, how their performance managment and promotion system actually works, so that I can make good decisions. Also I have my own office. I can close the door, and I'm actually not bothered by anyone. And I worked all day. All day. Like 9am to 8pm, and I still had energy left over. Also, Bikesoft is not super-fucking-cheap ("frugal") about everything. I have a computer that is actually powerful enough to do things like run software, and I have my own fucking office. At Flabazon, even the president of the United States has to share an office with someone.
I am certain that I will become frustrated and jaded about many, many things at Bikesoft. However, so far is looks like whatever my future frustrations will be, they will be new and completely different.
And this time, I know how to play the game.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Whatevs
Wedding.
New job.
Portal 2 with girlfriend.
Books I should probably read
Website that makes me feel like the genius product of two superhuman uber geniuses
New job.
Portal 2 with girlfriend.
Books I should probably read
Website that makes me feel like the genius product of two superhuman uber geniuses
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Life Goals
1. Come up with an easy way to meet people, including, this time, people that are not girls. The psychological marginal cost of any particular night needs to be effortless.
2. Create income streams that are independent of my day job.
3. Excel at my day job
4. At some point in my life, own an Ocelot.
2. Create income streams that are independent of my day job.
3. Excel at my day job
4. At some point in my life, own an Ocelot.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Get Spotify without Facebook
Facebook is a service that I joined and continue to tolerate because girls use it. Since becoming a member I watched the site become public to non-college students that I didn't want to interact with, and then I watched redesign after redesign make everything less private while facebook tried to reach its tentacles into ever area of your life in an effort to turn you into a better advertising target. I remember a change they made to your "interests" category where every interest you had must be linked to a "page." My first interest listed was "girls" and unfortunately the page that ended up linking to...well facebook had a completely different idea in mind about what I meant by that, and I ended up leaving my interests blank. I ended up removing most of my private information and started offending people like close relatives by refusing to be their facebook friend.
I was able to maintain this careful balance between keeping my personal information safe and not looking like one of those privacy weirdos. When I noticed that the facebook app on my phone wanted access to my GPS location I quietly stopped using it. The damn thing crashed every 2 minutes anyway.
This balance was threatened when the people in my band decided that we needed to use some service called Spotify to organize lists of songs that we wanted to play. What is spotify? I don't know because it won't let you sign up unless you integrate it with your facebook account. In a perfect world a statement like this wouldn't need explanation, but since it does, I would just say that in general it is bad when two parties you deal with trade information about you behind your back. Anyway, I'm getting bored with this post, so if any of you want to use spotify, here is a handy link:
http://www.spotidj.com/blog/how-to-get-spotify-without-facebook/
[Edit]
Ok the german proxy is not working... :(
This proxy did work though:
http://www.4proxy.de/
I made it through the initial registration. When I selected the free subscription, clicking next returned me to the same page. However, I was able to go to the US site and log in! Fuck you Spotify, and Fuck you Facebook.
I was able to maintain this careful balance between keeping my personal information safe and not looking like one of those privacy weirdos. When I noticed that the facebook app on my phone wanted access to my GPS location I quietly stopped using it. The damn thing crashed every 2 minutes anyway.
This balance was threatened when the people in my band decided that we needed to use some service called Spotify to organize lists of songs that we wanted to play. What is spotify? I don't know because it won't let you sign up unless you integrate it with your facebook account. In a perfect world a statement like this wouldn't need explanation, but since it does, I would just say that in general it is bad when two parties you deal with trade information about you behind your back. Anyway, I'm getting bored with this post, so if any of you want to use spotify, here is a handy link:
http://www.spotidj.com/blog/how-to-get-spotify-without-facebook/
[Edit]
Ok the german proxy is not working... :(
This proxy did work though:
http://www.4proxy.de/
I made it through the initial registration. When I selected the free subscription, clicking next returned me to the same page. However, I was able to go to the US site and log in! Fuck you Spotify, and Fuck you Facebook.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
An Essay on the Weak Points of Sobriety Checkpoints
The theme music for this post is provided by Walk the Moon - Anna Sun.
Ever since I was legally able to both drink and drive I have striven to never mix the two, ever. Strategies like one-drink-per hour, or not drinking at all and enduring people whining at me (seriously, people who are drinking has the most deep seated insecurities I've ever seen when someone near them doesn't drink with them) were the bread and butter of my compliance with the law. My opinion of sobriety checkpoints was one of cheerful compliance since I figured mere innocence was enough to protect me. It was the same line of thinking that leads idiots to question a person's use of the 5th amendment.
All of that changed when a cop pulled me over and gave me a sobriety test while I was completely sober. And then, tonight, a youtube spree that began with my girlfriend sending me this somehow landed me on this crazy story. If you want to know more, your google keywords are "Couple Arrested For Asking Directions" although there is little information in the first page of google results (all I ever read) to follow up, corroborate, or cast doubt on the poor couples story. I had a friend with a similar experience in Camden, New Jersey, though so the only thing I question is whether the Baltimore cops are just as--I'm not going to finish that sentence. Anyway, one thing led to another and I found this surprising piece, and, well one thing led to another a second time and suddenly I was reading instructional PDFs for law enforcement agencies performing field sobriety tests, looking for weaknesses. I found one.
The rest of this post--actually this entire post--is written in the context of brainstorming possible elements of works of fiction which feature vigilantes performing illegal acts which vehicles. Nothing written here has any connection with what anyone might do or have done in real life.
Being sober is not the magic bullet: if you read the single-glass-of-wine story, the comparison between the sober woman's account of the bullshit tests, and the officers written account of the bullshit tests vary widely. This makes me concerned that no matter how sober you are, the officer performing the test might decide to fail you anyway.
Quick tip: verify which section of the alphabet they want repeated using alpha bravo codes. For example, if he says "start at D and go to S" then you can say "Ok I'm going to start at delta and end at sierra." Then the cop will probably be all like "NO I SAID S! S AS IN XYLOPHONE!" and then mark down that you were being belligerent and argumentative, but at least you can rest assured that there was no confusion about which letters of the alphabet you're doing. If there is one thing--only one thing--I remember from learning to fly, it is how to be damn clear about letters of the alphabet. But I digress.
The best weaknesses I can find with sobriety checkpoints lie in the chase cars. As anyone who thinks and reads about this as much as I do probably already knows, setting up a sobriety checkpoint requires a careful balance between the manpower required and the amount of traffic expected. They are optimizing for a certain expectation of human behavior. If you change the human behavior on a large enough scale, well, the sobriety checkpoint will experience the same scaling problems as a Large Online Retailer server that gets hit by an unexpected call pattern and tanks.
The chase cars are for catching people that try to avoid the checkpoint. The manual I just read makes it sound like there might be some kind of obligation for the police to put up a sign warning of the checkpoint in a place where you can legally turn off. Anecdotal evidence suggests that cops typically do the exact opposite of that. Whatever the case, these guys aren't clowning around. Cars, or perhaps motorcycles, are specifically designated for chasing people that wish to avoid the checkpoints. This is where things get interesting.
Because certain cops are on chase duty while the others are busy bothering people, what we formerly thought was one resource (X cops at the checkpoint) is now two or more resources (X chase cops, Y sobriety cops, Z traffic-directing cops). Based on the instructions I'm reading, it sounds like either it would be difficult to shift resources between roles, or switching resources between roles would cause immediate impairment of the service.
The weak link here is that the police are not expecting many people to avoid the checkpoint, because most people actually don't, which means that few cops will be allocated to the X category, and it will be easy to deplete that resource.
Depleting the X resource, unfortunately, cannot be done by one man. However, if a critical percentage of drivers, perhaps somewhere around 30%, all avoided the checkpoint by doing an immediate (likely illegal) U-turn when the flashy lights of the checkpoint come into view, that would immediately deplete resource X. This would mean that all of the chase cops would be busy chasing the cars that are turning around. One possible outcome is that they simply run out of chase cars, and anyone can get out of the checkpoint simply by performing a casual U-turn and casual speed-limited getaway cruise. Other outcomes involve officers being shifted from other duties. This would lead to traffic backing up, or to a high number of cars making it through without being checked. Both of these scenarios cause the checkpoint to fail.
So that's it, folks. The optimal move we as citizens can make at a sobriety checkpoint is to drive until it is visible and then do a casual U-turn. The downsides of this are that it only works if everyone does it, and you have to be willing to take the hit of an illegal-U-turn ticket, so there might be some tragedy-of-the-commons issues. I'm going to refer to the brave citizens performing the casual U-turn as "ninjas."
The effectiveness of individual ninjas can be increased by increasing the amount of time every cop must spend chasing them down. The goal here is to maximize wasted time and minimize damage to yourself, so an outright chase is not advised. The first opportune time to drag out the event is when they first signal you to pull over. Take your sweet time finding a safe spot, preferably wait until a public parking lot is available. Drawing out the "interview" is ill advised because the cops probably have more experience than you in that situation and as always, it is best to literally say nothing to them. Instead, the second opportunity can be accomplished when they ask for your documentation. Cops don't always ask for both your insurance and registration, but they usually ask for at least one, and that is the best time to grab all of the papers in your glove compartment and go through them in a painstakingly slow manner.
Remember, though, all of this only matters with the first cop who pulls you over immediately after you evaded the checkpoint. That is the chase cop. That is the cop whose time you must waste. If they switch off, and a second cop arrives to do the part where they try and incriminate you for drinking, its probably not worth it to try to waste his time. Just fall back to your typical sobriety defense...namely being sober and not talking to them.
Ambitious ninjas could optionally drive for as long as possible under the speed limit while the cop is following them. I was in a car with a girl who did this by accident; somehow neither of us noticed the flashy lights for a number of miles and the cop never turned on the siren. He was super pissed, but the girl, who was crying, did not receive an extra citation for not pulling over fast enough. Come to think of it...most of my pulling-over experience with that girl and all the times she got pulled over for allegedly speeding even though I, even as a passenger, thought she was driving slow. Anyway.
Oh shit...I hope this would go without saying...like I shouldn't even need to write it...like if this next part is a revelation to you, you should never do this...and you're probably too dumb to drive at all: don't give the cops any kind of clue, at all, that you are deliberately trying to waste their time. Also, don't give them any kind of explanation about why you did a U-turn. Literally, don't answer questions, unless they are asking about the location and status of your cars registration. I really hope this paragraph was not news to anybody.
Also just...stay the hell away from D.C. And Oregon. And New Jersey. And Baltimore, I guess.
Also, my second ticket that I got during vacation was done with a laser. So all of my daydreaming about fancy radar devices is for naught. Fucking lasers. I can't come up with a...oh hello. Apparently there are countermeasures. Probably highly illegal. I did just find this forum. You know...its times like this that I wish I could just marry the internet.
Oh ok these things are called laser jammers. I have some reading to do.
See also http://www.laserjammertests.com/
[Edit]
HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA.
[Edit]
http://waspeedingtickets.com/how-to-hire-us/
Ever since I was legally able to both drink and drive I have striven to never mix the two, ever. Strategies like one-drink-per hour, or not drinking at all and enduring people whining at me (seriously, people who are drinking has the most deep seated insecurities I've ever seen when someone near them doesn't drink with them) were the bread and butter of my compliance with the law. My opinion of sobriety checkpoints was one of cheerful compliance since I figured mere innocence was enough to protect me. It was the same line of thinking that leads idiots to question a person's use of the 5th amendment.
All of that changed when a cop pulled me over and gave me a sobriety test while I was completely sober. And then, tonight, a youtube spree that began with my girlfriend sending me this somehow landed me on this crazy story. If you want to know more, your google keywords are "Couple Arrested For Asking Directions" although there is little information in the first page of google results (all I ever read) to follow up, corroborate, or cast doubt on the poor couples story. I had a friend with a similar experience in Camden, New Jersey, though so the only thing I question is whether the Baltimore cops are just as--I'm not going to finish that sentence. Anyway, one thing led to another and I found this surprising piece, and, well one thing led to another a second time and suddenly I was reading instructional PDFs for law enforcement agencies performing field sobriety tests, looking for weaknesses. I found one.
The rest of this post--actually this entire post--is written in the context of brainstorming possible elements of works of fiction which feature vigilantes performing illegal acts which vehicles. Nothing written here has any connection with what anyone might do or have done in real life.
Being sober is not the magic bullet: if you read the single-glass-of-wine story, the comparison between the sober woman's account of the bullshit tests, and the officers written account of the bullshit tests vary widely. This makes me concerned that no matter how sober you are, the officer performing the test might decide to fail you anyway.
Quick tip: verify which section of the alphabet they want repeated using alpha bravo codes. For example, if he says "start at D and go to S" then you can say "Ok I'm going to start at delta and end at sierra." Then the cop will probably be all like "NO I SAID S! S AS IN XYLOPHONE!" and then mark down that you were being belligerent and argumentative, but at least you can rest assured that there was no confusion about which letters of the alphabet you're doing. If there is one thing--only one thing--I remember from learning to fly, it is how to be damn clear about letters of the alphabet. But I digress.
The best weaknesses I can find with sobriety checkpoints lie in the chase cars. As anyone who thinks and reads about this as much as I do probably already knows, setting up a sobriety checkpoint requires a careful balance between the manpower required and the amount of traffic expected. They are optimizing for a certain expectation of human behavior. If you change the human behavior on a large enough scale, well, the sobriety checkpoint will experience the same scaling problems as a Large Online Retailer server that gets hit by an unexpected call pattern and tanks.
The chase cars are for catching people that try to avoid the checkpoint. The manual I just read makes it sound like there might be some kind of obligation for the police to put up a sign warning of the checkpoint in a place where you can legally turn off. Anecdotal evidence suggests that cops typically do the exact opposite of that. Whatever the case, these guys aren't clowning around. Cars, or perhaps motorcycles, are specifically designated for chasing people that wish to avoid the checkpoints. This is where things get interesting.
Because certain cops are on chase duty while the others are busy bothering people, what we formerly thought was one resource (X cops at the checkpoint) is now two or more resources (X chase cops, Y sobriety cops, Z traffic-directing cops). Based on the instructions I'm reading, it sounds like either it would be difficult to shift resources between roles, or switching resources between roles would cause immediate impairment of the service.
The weak link here is that the police are not expecting many people to avoid the checkpoint, because most people actually don't, which means that few cops will be allocated to the X category, and it will be easy to deplete that resource.
Depleting the X resource, unfortunately, cannot be done by one man. However, if a critical percentage of drivers, perhaps somewhere around 30%, all avoided the checkpoint by doing an immediate (likely illegal) U-turn when the flashy lights of the checkpoint come into view, that would immediately deplete resource X. This would mean that all of the chase cops would be busy chasing the cars that are turning around. One possible outcome is that they simply run out of chase cars, and anyone can get out of the checkpoint simply by performing a casual U-turn and casual speed-limited getaway cruise. Other outcomes involve officers being shifted from other duties. This would lead to traffic backing up, or to a high number of cars making it through without being checked. Both of these scenarios cause the checkpoint to fail.
So that's it, folks. The optimal move we as citizens can make at a sobriety checkpoint is to drive until it is visible and then do a casual U-turn. The downsides of this are that it only works if everyone does it, and you have to be willing to take the hit of an illegal-U-turn ticket, so there might be some tragedy-of-the-commons issues. I'm going to refer to the brave citizens performing the casual U-turn as "ninjas."
The effectiveness of individual ninjas can be increased by increasing the amount of time every cop must spend chasing them down. The goal here is to maximize wasted time and minimize damage to yourself, so an outright chase is not advised. The first opportune time to drag out the event is when they first signal you to pull over. Take your sweet time finding a safe spot, preferably wait until a public parking lot is available. Drawing out the "interview" is ill advised because the cops probably have more experience than you in that situation and as always, it is best to literally say nothing to them. Instead, the second opportunity can be accomplished when they ask for your documentation. Cops don't always ask for both your insurance and registration, but they usually ask for at least one, and that is the best time to grab all of the papers in your glove compartment and go through them in a painstakingly slow manner.
Remember, though, all of this only matters with the first cop who pulls you over immediately after you evaded the checkpoint. That is the chase cop. That is the cop whose time you must waste. If they switch off, and a second cop arrives to do the part where they try and incriminate you for drinking, its probably not worth it to try to waste his time. Just fall back to your typical sobriety defense...namely being sober and not talking to them.
Ambitious ninjas could optionally drive for as long as possible under the speed limit while the cop is following them. I was in a car with a girl who did this by accident; somehow neither of us noticed the flashy lights for a number of miles and the cop never turned on the siren. He was super pissed, but the girl, who was crying, did not receive an extra citation for not pulling over fast enough. Come to think of it...most of my pulling-over experience with that girl and all the times she got pulled over for allegedly speeding even though I, even as a passenger, thought she was driving slow. Anyway.
Oh shit...I hope this would go without saying...like I shouldn't even need to write it...like if this next part is a revelation to you, you should never do this...and you're probably too dumb to drive at all: don't give the cops any kind of clue, at all, that you are deliberately trying to waste their time. Also, don't give them any kind of explanation about why you did a U-turn. Literally, don't answer questions, unless they are asking about the location and status of your cars registration. I really hope this paragraph was not news to anybody.
Also just...stay the hell away from D.C. And Oregon. And New Jersey. And Baltimore, I guess.
Also, my second ticket that I got during vacation was done with a laser. So all of my daydreaming about fancy radar devices is for naught. Fucking lasers. I can't come up with a...oh hello. Apparently there are countermeasures. Probably highly illegal. I did just find this forum. You know...its times like this that I wish I could just marry the internet.
Oh ok these things are called laser jammers. I have some reading to do.
See also http://www.laserjammertests.com/
[Edit]
HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA.
[Edit]
http://waspeedingtickets.com/how-to-hire-us/
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Making a Pass at Security
I didn't follow the TOR part of this guide, or even the TrueCrypt part, but I'm using the VirtualBox section to make a first pass at securing my computer now that my new employment will cause me to be in Windows a lot (Bleh).
http://www.cyberguerrilla.info/?p=3322
http://www.cyberguerrilla.info/?p=3322
No Direct Flights to Happiness
Between an apartment that is too hot to sleep through the night and some black mold that I've been cultivating in my bathroom for the past few months, I've spent the past few weeks on an off being sick. Ironically, whether I was sick or not I was still laying on the couch watching How I Met Your Mother, so who could tell anyway.
I had always wanted a month off between my last job and my next job. London, Russia, Legoland in California, Eastern Europe, Los Angeles, cross country road trip, whatever. Unfortunately, I didn't know I would have a full month off until halfway through it, and since I have a girlfriend who couldn't take a few weeks off last minute half of those places didn't matter anyway.
Instead, I planned a small road trip. Two days near Astoria and one in Portland. First day of the trip ran into a cop while passing someone in the left lane. Given that he was going in the opposite direction, I'm not sure how he thinks he knows how fast I was going unless he has a very fancy radar gun (possible). For the first time in a while I was nervous but quickly got over it. I had made a conscious decision to speed, especially on the long and drawn out routes that I'd chosen because they were curvy. I was actually speeding again before he was completely out of sight.
Then, on the way to portland, I drove as fast as I liked, excepting only for traffic that blocked my way. Very fast. It was nice. Nice curves. Anyway then I got to the slow part and was no longer going fast. A while later I see some cop on the side of the road outside of his vehicle and not holding a radar gun, staring directing at me. I glanced at him and frowned. Then he hopped in his car and came after me. This time I was not nervous, but I made one mistake. The first time he asked one of those gay entrapment questions I just glared at him silently, but after I handed him my paperwork he repeated the entrapment questions, and I was shaking my head thinking "no, fucker, I'm not going to answer that shit" however I think he took the head shaking as a definitive "no" to one of this stupid questions. Something about did I know we were in a "construction zone." Construction zone my ass. There were some cones on the side of the road and no other construction equipment for miles. He and his partner--maybe the cop that showed up in another car briefly--probably had some kind of ticket gig going where one cops spots them and the other pulls them over. I spent the next hour assuming that was the case and trying to come up with a way to waste their time if I was ever pulled over again. Rumors of Oregon cops being assholes about speeding were confirmed when he gave me a ticket for 73 on a highway. Any road trip I might do--like the one I almost planned all the way down to Legoland in California for the week--needs to cross this hellish state. I'd probably accumulate 3-5 tickets, or have to drive slow, before making it through. I don't like that choice. Anyway the cop like hesitated when he was coming back to my car the second time. Maybe I freaked him out by being completely silent and glaring at him, but who would shoot a cop after they have all your information and can prove you were in the car? It doesn't make any sense.
After the second stop I felt more chagrined despite not being nervous during the stop. It was partly due to the fact that the savings account I have set aside for speeding tickets is budgeted against one ticket every 2.5 months. I just got two tickets in a week, and they are for jurisdictions so far apart I am certain I am going to have to pay two different lawyers.
I have been surviving in Philly and Seattle by just being careful, but Oregon seems like another story. Oregon sounds like the horror stories I've heard about Ohio. It makes me wonder if I need to get a radar detector again. What I really need, I would think, is a device that measures that frequency and, upon receiving a signal of relevant intensity, automatically emits a jamming signal that would cause those devices to fail (and while we're add it, might as well jam whatever frequency they use for their radios). Unfortunately such a device would also have the side effect of interfering with air traffic control and also getting the FCC's attention real fast. Maybe we could put a cap on the top so the signals don't go up. I would also need a way to dispose/destroy it in case my car was impounded. Come to think of it, I'm never really going to have time to let my car get impounded just because I felt like playing road ninja, and according to news articles people who blog about doing illegal things usually get caught that way. Still, it would be a nice to have. I hate these fuckers with their flashy lights and their stern voices acting like they caught me doing something wrong. When I watch COPS or any show involving a car chase I always root for the person being chased, trying to analyze how the people fail based on the video. Guys with a lot more skill than me regularly get caught. The police fuckers just have too many resources. The best way to get away, it seems, is to loose them early on before they have a helicopter, and you have to do it by completely outclassing them and getting them to screw up before you do, which is incredibly difficult because these are trained professionals with extremely fast cars. Only high end sports cars can truly out run them on the high way, and if you take it off the highway, there are a lot of innocent people that can appear out of nowhere, and if they trap you for long enough the cops actually, apparently, just start shooting at you, which I think is unfair. One thing is for sure: my car is built for curves, and NOT top speed, and compared to their pursuit training, the best I can accomplish is to become an amateur rally car racer and google their training methods. Its a start.
Anyway this post was supposed to be about...whatever. This vacation sucks. Going on vacation alone sucks. I think I've done it--or at least I've had many adventures alone before--but this one just sucked. I'm in Portland alone on a Friday night and since I'm not single and everything interesting was probably closed the most exciting thing I could think of was to see a movie alone. Also it was a completely blue sky today but my phones fucking GPS unit couldn't narrow it down more than a five mile radius. I supposed I'll take that to heart the next time the cops look up my position without obtaining a warrant. Anyway, driving South on 101 was mildly pleasant, especially when I found a station playing Irish music, but I felt like I was just scouting for when I was going to bring the sportbike.
There is a column in Astoria that is a tourist attraction. The engineers who designed it decided that it should have a single spiral staircase all the way to the top, and that spiral staircase should make it really awkward for people to go up and down at the same time, which, it turns out, happens constantly at a tourist-frequented tower with only one staircase.
Despite the obvious problems with the tower I dreamed about having a secret agent girlfriend that would fly into Seattle. We would leave at 3 am from Seattle on a pair of motorcycles and ride the twisties to that tourist tower in Astoria and arrive as the park opens. In real life my girlfriend will never own a motorcycle and doesn't want to ride mine. Yet.
Anyway, when I think about where I want to be this weekend, besides the obivous illegal/expensive stuff like racing rally cars and riding sportbikes on highways in the middle of the night, where I would actually prefer to be is just at a party with friends. And I admit I haven't done everything I could to be with them. I didn't look that hard for a tech job back east because this opportunity on Seattle fell in my lap, and I didn't even go to Dan's wedding reception. Last I heard Dan and Jester are no longer friends because of wedding-related drama. For all I know Dan hates me now, which would be sad because he is one of my favorite people.
No matter what tickets I by, or hotels I reserve, or TSA agents I allow to pet my balls in the name of "safety," or destinations I find, or projects I think of, they all seem to suck without friends. I don't even like going to sit down restaurants alone. I may have failed to have a nice relaxing trip to properly de-stress before my new job, but I think I have at least discovered that the pursuit of fun doesn't work alone. This means that completely shutting people out when they become annoying is no longer going to work. So, either I am going to become way more friendly to people and start having fun parties, OR I'm going to finally go to Rally School even though its more expensive than flying.
One nice thing about this trip, though: my hotel in Portland has air conditioning.
I had always wanted a month off between my last job and my next job. London, Russia, Legoland in California, Eastern Europe, Los Angeles, cross country road trip, whatever. Unfortunately, I didn't know I would have a full month off until halfway through it, and since I have a girlfriend who couldn't take a few weeks off last minute half of those places didn't matter anyway.
Instead, I planned a small road trip. Two days near Astoria and one in Portland. First day of the trip ran into a cop while passing someone in the left lane. Given that he was going in the opposite direction, I'm not sure how he thinks he knows how fast I was going unless he has a very fancy radar gun (possible). For the first time in a while I was nervous but quickly got over it. I had made a conscious decision to speed, especially on the long and drawn out routes that I'd chosen because they were curvy. I was actually speeding again before he was completely out of sight.
Then, on the way to portland, I drove as fast as I liked, excepting only for traffic that blocked my way. Very fast. It was nice. Nice curves. Anyway then I got to the slow part and was no longer going fast. A while later I see some cop on the side of the road outside of his vehicle and not holding a radar gun, staring directing at me. I glanced at him and frowned. Then he hopped in his car and came after me. This time I was not nervous, but I made one mistake. The first time he asked one of those gay entrapment questions I just glared at him silently, but after I handed him my paperwork he repeated the entrapment questions, and I was shaking my head thinking "no, fucker, I'm not going to answer that shit" however I think he took the head shaking as a definitive "no" to one of this stupid questions. Something about did I know we were in a "construction zone." Construction zone my ass. There were some cones on the side of the road and no other construction equipment for miles. He and his partner--maybe the cop that showed up in another car briefly--probably had some kind of ticket gig going where one cops spots them and the other pulls them over. I spent the next hour assuming that was the case and trying to come up with a way to waste their time if I was ever pulled over again. Rumors of Oregon cops being assholes about speeding were confirmed when he gave me a ticket for 73 on a highway. Any road trip I might do--like the one I almost planned all the way down to Legoland in California for the week--needs to cross this hellish state. I'd probably accumulate 3-5 tickets, or have to drive slow, before making it through. I don't like that choice. Anyway the cop like hesitated when he was coming back to my car the second time. Maybe I freaked him out by being completely silent and glaring at him, but who would shoot a cop after they have all your information and can prove you were in the car? It doesn't make any sense.
After the second stop I felt more chagrined despite not being nervous during the stop. It was partly due to the fact that the savings account I have set aside for speeding tickets is budgeted against one ticket every 2.5 months. I just got two tickets in a week, and they are for jurisdictions so far apart I am certain I am going to have to pay two different lawyers.
I have been surviving in Philly and Seattle by just being careful, but Oregon seems like another story. Oregon sounds like the horror stories I've heard about Ohio. It makes me wonder if I need to get a radar detector again. What I really need, I would think, is a device that measures that frequency and, upon receiving a signal of relevant intensity, automatically emits a jamming signal that would cause those devices to fail (and while we're add it, might as well jam whatever frequency they use for their radios). Unfortunately such a device would also have the side effect of interfering with air traffic control and also getting the FCC's attention real fast. Maybe we could put a cap on the top so the signals don't go up. I would also need a way to dispose/destroy it in case my car was impounded. Come to think of it, I'm never really going to have time to let my car get impounded just because I felt like playing road ninja, and according to news articles people who blog about doing illegal things usually get caught that way. Still, it would be a nice to have. I hate these fuckers with their flashy lights and their stern voices acting like they caught me doing something wrong. When I watch COPS or any show involving a car chase I always root for the person being chased, trying to analyze how the people fail based on the video. Guys with a lot more skill than me regularly get caught. The police fuckers just have too many resources. The best way to get away, it seems, is to loose them early on before they have a helicopter, and you have to do it by completely outclassing them and getting them to screw up before you do, which is incredibly difficult because these are trained professionals with extremely fast cars. Only high end sports cars can truly out run them on the high way, and if you take it off the highway, there are a lot of innocent people that can appear out of nowhere, and if they trap you for long enough the cops actually, apparently, just start shooting at you, which I think is unfair. One thing is for sure: my car is built for curves, and NOT top speed, and compared to their pursuit training, the best I can accomplish is to become an amateur rally car racer and google their training methods. Its a start.
Anyway this post was supposed to be about...whatever. This vacation sucks. Going on vacation alone sucks. I think I've done it--or at least I've had many adventures alone before--but this one just sucked. I'm in Portland alone on a Friday night and since I'm not single and everything interesting was probably closed the most exciting thing I could think of was to see a movie alone. Also it was a completely blue sky today but my phones fucking GPS unit couldn't narrow it down more than a five mile radius. I supposed I'll take that to heart the next time the cops look up my position without obtaining a warrant. Anyway, driving South on 101 was mildly pleasant, especially when I found a station playing Irish music, but I felt like I was just scouting for when I was going to bring the sportbike.
There is a column in Astoria that is a tourist attraction. The engineers who designed it decided that it should have a single spiral staircase all the way to the top, and that spiral staircase should make it really awkward for people to go up and down at the same time, which, it turns out, happens constantly at a tourist-frequented tower with only one staircase.
Despite the obvious problems with the tower I dreamed about having a secret agent girlfriend that would fly into Seattle. We would leave at 3 am from Seattle on a pair of motorcycles and ride the twisties to that tourist tower in Astoria and arrive as the park opens. In real life my girlfriend will never own a motorcycle and doesn't want to ride mine. Yet.
Anyway, when I think about where I want to be this weekend, besides the obivous illegal/expensive stuff like racing rally cars and riding sportbikes on highways in the middle of the night, where I would actually prefer to be is just at a party with friends. And I admit I haven't done everything I could to be with them. I didn't look that hard for a tech job back east because this opportunity on Seattle fell in my lap, and I didn't even go to Dan's wedding reception. Last I heard Dan and Jester are no longer friends because of wedding-related drama. For all I know Dan hates me now, which would be sad because he is one of my favorite people.
No matter what tickets I by, or hotels I reserve, or TSA agents I allow to pet my balls in the name of "safety," or destinations I find, or projects I think of, they all seem to suck without friends. I don't even like going to sit down restaurants alone. I may have failed to have a nice relaxing trip to properly de-stress before my new job, but I think I have at least discovered that the pursuit of fun doesn't work alone. This means that completely shutting people out when they become annoying is no longer going to work. So, either I am going to become way more friendly to people and start having fun parties, OR I'm going to finally go to Rally School even though its more expensive than flying.
One nice thing about this trip, though: my hotel in Portland has air conditioning.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Fuck you, google
I want a phone exactly like the galaxy s2 except it lets you disable the useless charge notification.
It's like having your alarm clock wake you up when your towel is finished drying in the bathroom.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
[fiction] Fifty Thrones of Shade Part 4 (note: filthy language)
Ned
My ladytown was trembling like Vanessa Feltz's diesel-powered vibrator. I awoke the next morning with my shame portal still trickling. I thought it was over but his pink tractor beam had other ideas. Now, I've seen more helmets than Hitler, but the sight of his eight inches of throbbing pink jebus made my minge mucus froth like a slug in a salt mine. After having my gaping clam cavern slammed, he then proceeded to plow my vintage golf bag. The unrelenting orgasms from his huge penis killed Ned Stark and something about fucking my crusty fuck trench made me come so hard, I began sweating like a dyslexic on Countdown. Seriously countdown was capitalized when I copy and pasted it...idk whats going on.
Leaving my panties sunny side up on the floor was the least of my worries as Ned Stark died and his wensleydale wand slid deeper into my fart valve. The mixture of corn-eyed butt snake and cock custard in my ring piece created the delicious rectoplasm that he was so fond of. It was bliss having his ocean's 11 inches* shoved inside me again; stuffing my chamber of squelch with a lightbulb just didn't get my tuna canal spritzing like it used to. There was ectoplasm slobbering from his bald avenger and I was wetter than a well diggers arse. We were ready for more. I awoke the next morning with my shame portal still haemorrhaging and Ned Stark dead. I thought it was over but his cumtree had other ideas.
It was bliss having his slut slayer shoved inside me again; stuffing my moose knuckle with a footlong fudge bullet just didn't get my sperm socket spritzing like it used to. The mixture of stink pickle and creamy load in my fudge factory created the delicious bbq sauce that he was so fond of. This paragraph has benefited my life far more than Game of Thrones ever could. Leaving my panties sunny side up on the floor was the least of my worries as his bald-headed yogurt slinger rammed deeper into my other vagina. I awoke the next morning with my tampon tunnel still oozing. I thought it was over but then Ned Stark died. There was cock custard weeping from his thrill drill and I was wetter than a spastic's chin. We were ready for more.
Seriously though, as mush as we love to make fun of this, whoever wrote the original 50 shades novel MADE BANK. Stephen King can make fun of her; we can't. In fact, this is similar to hating bands like Nickelback: if you haven't made a shit ton of money from all of the books/albums you sold, you really just look pathetic when you complain about how popular they are.
Note: That last comment does not apply to people who hate Gay of Thrones. Those people are AWESOME. I think we should form a club.
Note: a careful and studied study of this porn generator accomplished by clicking the button a few times has revealed that every generated paragraph depicts anal sex. I think I could write a better generator. Naturally, we would need more than some tawdry Markov chain algorithm. Please. At the very minimum we would need a database, and a way of expressing the actors involved, as well as the cross-product of actor-gender combinations with the constraints of [0,1] males and [0, INFINITY] females. Add a simple name generator--easy. Build in a module to calculate a couple hundred sex positions--I mean you could boil down every possible sex position in the universe into probably less then 5, but people seem to think that moving the girls feet somewhere counts as a new position. So we'll need a way to textualize position descriptions and position changing descriptions. Each position will probably need a bunch of tags that can help match against a database of metaphors. Can retrograde wheelbarrow be compared to launching the apollo missions? The computer must know. You guys do realize that when I link you to xkcd comics I expect you to have already made the connection in your mind that I made an xkcd reference and I'm only linking you so that you know I know it was an xkcd comic and you don't have to tell me xkcd made a comic of that, right? Anyway, thats the ten thousand foot overview. I think this would make a great interview question.
*technically, this is still more consistent than any two episodes of Star Trek
My ladytown was trembling like Vanessa Feltz's diesel-powered vibrator. I awoke the next morning with my shame portal still trickling. I thought it was over but his pink tractor beam had other ideas. Now, I've seen more helmets than Hitler, but the sight of his eight inches of throbbing pink jebus made my minge mucus froth like a slug in a salt mine. After having my gaping clam cavern slammed, he then proceeded to plow my vintage golf bag. The unrelenting orgasms from his huge penis killed Ned Stark and something about fucking my crusty fuck trench made me come so hard, I began sweating like a dyslexic on Countdown. Seriously countdown was capitalized when I copy and pasted it...idk whats going on.
Leaving my panties sunny side up on the floor was the least of my worries as Ned Stark died and his wensleydale wand slid deeper into my fart valve. The mixture of corn-eyed butt snake and cock custard in my ring piece created the delicious rectoplasm that he was so fond of. It was bliss having his ocean's 11 inches* shoved inside me again; stuffing my chamber of squelch with a lightbulb just didn't get my tuna canal spritzing like it used to. There was ectoplasm slobbering from his bald avenger and I was wetter than a well diggers arse. We were ready for more. I awoke the next morning with my shame portal still haemorrhaging and Ned Stark dead. I thought it was over but his cumtree had other ideas.
It was bliss having his slut slayer shoved inside me again; stuffing my moose knuckle with a footlong fudge bullet just didn't get my sperm socket spritzing like it used to. The mixture of stink pickle and creamy load in my fudge factory created the delicious bbq sauce that he was so fond of. This paragraph has benefited my life far more than Game of Thrones ever could. Leaving my panties sunny side up on the floor was the least of my worries as his bald-headed yogurt slinger rammed deeper into my other vagina. I awoke the next morning with my tampon tunnel still oozing. I thought it was over but then Ned Stark died. There was cock custard weeping from his thrill drill and I was wetter than a spastic's chin. We were ready for more.
Seriously though, as mush as we love to make fun of this, whoever wrote the original 50 shades novel MADE BANK. Stephen King can make fun of her; we can't. In fact, this is similar to hating bands like Nickelback: if you haven't made a shit ton of money from all of the books/albums you sold, you really just look pathetic when you complain about how popular they are.
Note: That last comment does not apply to people who hate Gay of Thrones. Those people are AWESOME. I think we should form a club.
Note: a careful and studied study of this porn generator accomplished by clicking the button a few times has revealed that every generated paragraph depicts anal sex. I think I could write a better generator. Naturally, we would need more than some tawdry Markov chain algorithm. Please. At the very minimum we would need a database, and a way of expressing the actors involved, as well as the cross-product of actor-gender combinations with the constraints of [0,1] males and [0, INFINITY] females. Add a simple name generator--easy. Build in a module to calculate a couple hundred sex positions--I mean you could boil down every possible sex position in the universe into probably less then 5, but people seem to think that moving the girls feet somewhere counts as a new position. So we'll need a way to textualize position descriptions and position changing descriptions. Each position will probably need a bunch of tags that can help match against a database of metaphors. Can retrograde wheelbarrow be compared to launching the apollo missions? The computer must know. You guys do realize that when I link you to xkcd comics I expect you to have already made the connection in your mind that I made an xkcd reference and I'm only linking you so that you know I know it was an xkcd comic and you don't have to tell me xkcd made a comic of that, right? Anyway, thats the ten thousand foot overview. I think this would make a great interview question.
*technically, this is still more consistent than any two episodes of Star Trek
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