Just Go Ahead and Groan, Now...

I wonder what they call it if you're not on time to a special education class?

Megamind (Short Review)

Ok, so, I've gotten used to setting a lower bar for Dreamworks animated features than I do for Pixar animated features. I mean, Pixar tends to be story/characters first and animation second (yet still manage to be top-notch on the animation) and Dreamworks tends to be story/characters as a reason for featuring animation. Dreamworks is also known for every movie featuring the Dreamworks animation smirk.

So, perhaps I went into Megamind with the bar set lower than I might for another CG-animation feature. That said, it was a surprisingly decent flick. Some really good animation (and some really subtle effects, too) and I don't really recall seeing "the smirk". The story was decent and you could reasonably empathize with the characters. Lots of decent slapstick and a decent amount of "for the grownups" jokes and sight-gags. And, in a break from recent movies, Will Farrel was acting as a character rather than as the caricature of himself he usually plays.

Oh... And it was yet another movie that does absolutely nothing to dispel the "creepy gingers" stigma.

Decent Sports Weekend

While they didn't win both of their weekend games, the Flyers managed to take three out of four possible points (one win and one overtime-loss)

The Eagles won their game.

The PSU Nittany Lions managed to bring home JoePa's 400th win.

Comm Errs at the 7Eleven

Most mornings, I need breakfast to get my day going. Overall, I try to get my breakfast at home, as what I can put together there tends to be better for me. However, some mornings, there's either not the time to put something together or there's not ingredients. On those mornings, if I'm actually working at my cubicle, I will either stop in at the 7Eleven near my office or one of the McD's on my commute-route.

Today, was a 7Eleven day. Most days, when I avail myself of 7Eleven for "food", I either go for the Jamaican spicy beef patties or one of the small hotdogs. That morning, there were no small hotdogs - only the large and jumbo dogs and corn dogs. So, I opted for one of the beef patties.

I paid for my stuff, got in my car and headed onward to my office. Upon getting my laptop set up, I commenced to opening my 7Eleven "bonanza". Much to my chagrin, my spicy beef pattie was, instead, one of the unwanted ginormous hotdogs. Oh well. At least I was only charged for the patty rather than the uber-dog. Still: : how does "spicy beef patty" get translated as "gargantuan hotdog", 7Eleven?

Does It Fly?

The best kind of poo is flingable-poo

Daylight Savings Time

It's too early to be this dark. Fuck you, time change.

Poor Advertising

The only message I can take from the new Mobile 7 commercials is that the phones suck too much to get engrossed in using them.

Act of Holiday Charity

I think for Christmas, I'll give all the street-people bluetooth headsets so that at least it will LOOK like they're talking to someone.

Illiterati

It strikes me that, since I've stopped traveling, I've pretty much stopped reading books.

Prolly Not A Coincidence

Just discovered that the color of blue that Penn State designates as the official "Penn State Blue" is the same as the official shade of blue used in US flags: Pantone 282

Weekend Go "Poof!"

Awesome is: trying to do some work over the weekend only to find that the server you need has failed.

Choices: I Has Them

I don't know which is worse: that the cats broke a $25 wine glass or that someone left it where it could be broken by curious cats.

Social Recursion Error

It seems like the less I go out, the less I want to go out. Given protracted breaks in socializing, when I do make the effort to be social, so many things elicit the "yeah, that's why I stopped going out" feeling.

Creepy Gingers

"Dexter" does nothing to dispell the whole "creepy gingers" thing. Seriously.

Then again, it seems that few gingers do.

Smile!

Today, while having after-work pizza and beers, my coworkers noted that I don't smile much. I noted, "I smile when I'm happy." I figure they're capable of "doing the math" on that one.

Terms Seldom Heard

I haven't heard the term "penny-dreadful" in years, but woke up with the term stuck in my head for the past 3 days running. Worse, I keep running into the term in my Stumbles and other random places. Weird.

Work Complaints

In general, when it comes to being asked to do things at work, I keep my complaining (to the requestors) to a minimum. However, when I've previously done something and fully and completely executed that task, I do get vocally cranky when asked to REDO those efforts. This is especially so if there's no reasonable justification for the redo-request.

Argh.

Such a Quandary

Today, I came home from work to find that "Sex in the City 2" was playing on my A/V system. Now, I knew that Donna had planned to watch this cinematic atrocity, as she'd IM'ed me, at work, to ask if she could get it via OnDemand. I'd agreed under the assumption that she could get the watching of it out of her system and that I'd not be exposed to it.

What I didn't know is that, not only is "Sex in the City 2" the story of over-the-hill New York whores, it's also of epic duration. I'm not sure, but I think that Lord of the Rings had a shorter running time.

As A result of this, I came home to find Sex in the City 2 playing on my TV. Ultimately, I couldn't decide which was worse: coming home to find Sex in the City 2 on my TV or what father time had done to those shrews (painfully rendered in HD). Granted, Sarah Jessica Parker was never easy on the eyes, but, combine that horse-face with the ill-effects of the passage of time and rendering in HD... It was not a pretty picture that I found waiting for me on my TV.

Shortcuts

At the end of the day it's easier to write patch for /etc/init.d/winbind than to debug requisite SELinux policies.

Commuting Disaster

Today was, apparently, infrastructure Armageddon day. Within a couple miles of my house, there were two water main breaks (one in my neighborhood), a utility pole down and miscellaneous construction projects. In the end, it took me 47 minutes to go just two miles of the 19 miles I have to cover to get to work.

The traffic snarls also very clearly illustrated just how many assholes like to use my neighborhood as a cut-through to get from Telegraph road to Kings Highway (or the reverse). It also illustrated how many people use both my neighborhood and the next subdivision over to get from US-1 to Telegraph Road.

Ugh. What a nightmare.

All the obvious cut-throughs make me wish the entrance roads to our neighborhood(s) were like some of the streets I saw in Amsterdaam (you have to have a card-key or get authorized by one of the neighborhood residents in order for electronic roadblocks to be cleared for you).

Carriage Crunch

Maryland: Please fix River Road at the intersection with Kenilworth Ave. My car shouldn't bottom out because the tire ruts are so deep.

Good In Theory; Practice, Not So Much

First, let me start by saying, I don't have a problem with the underlying concept of equal pay for equal work. It's truly a noble concept. However, it's also very simplistic. It ignores a number of realities so that it can foster the idea of victimhood.

For starters, how does one define "equal"? I mean, outside of assembly-line-style work, how does one objectively define and measure equal work. Most jobs I'm familiar with are inherently subjective in their value.

It's really not a question of gender, race or whatever criteria you want to use. It's a question of how do you determine your basis for equality.

Even if you can, somehow, determine that two workers are producing equal work and have equal qualifications, other factors complicate it. Say that I, as an employer, have two positions that I absolutely have to fill. Say that I find two objectively equal candidates two fill those two positions. Say I offer a $60,000/yr pay rate for the position. Now, let's say that job-candidate "A" thinks, "well, $60,000 is more than fine for my needs: I'll take it!". Now, let's say that job-candidate "B" thinks, "I ain't doing that job for anything less than $70,000/year." As established before, I, as employer, absolutely have to fill both positions. So, if I want candidate "B", I have to offer him $70,000/year. Candidate "A" has already accepted $60,000/year. Am I now obligated to offer candidate "A" a $10,000/year bump to match the offer I've made to candidate "B"? Personally, I don't think an employer should be required to make such an offer (and it has nothing to do with the gender, race, religion, sexual-orientation, etc. of candidate "A").

But, whatever. I'm not some talking-head on TV. I'm not some politician trying to score points/votes with certain sectors of the population. I'm just some guy who's trying to ensure that I am always able to demand a given compensation rate without having to worry that a potential employer will need to say "no" because making a given offer-size to me would require them to extend the same offer to others who'd previously not required or requested it.

At the end of the day, I tend to think that, chances are, if you're crying about equal pay for equal work, you're the one who's unwilling to assert your value. Your unwillingness to demand your worth shouldn't impact on my ability to get what I think my worth is.

Configurational Oops

So, at work, they're setting up a database that needs to be replicated from one part of the country to another. No big deal, there's dozens of methods for doing so.

Unfortunately, it's so infrequent that one sets up such configurations, that, some small things aren't at the top of your head when you do. In this case, the flag that says to the software "both sites are already identical, just declare them synced and only sync what changes at the source site from this point forward."

In and of itself, forgetting this flag isn't inherently horrible. Instead of being instantaneously synced, you have to wait for the devices to do a zero sync. Where it becomes problematic is if you have a LOT of zeros and NOT a lot of bandwidth to ship them.

An initial replication sync of 17TB takes a LOOOONG time if you've got a 5MB/s session limit on the WAN. Specifically, at the rates we were seeing, it was going to take 45.862 days to do that initial sync. The WAN bandwidth was several Gigabits, but, those session limits were a motherfucker.

Oh well. Nothing to be lost by burning-down and redoing. Certainly, it would take sufficiently less time than to do that zero-sync that it's worth re-doing.

Bleah.

Resisting Temptation

Its hard not to scream "IM THE JUGGERNAUT, BITCH" when hammering away on Juggernaut in Halo's rumblepit mode.

Alternate Pet Uses

Grumbles isn't so much a cat as a really good fart-muffler. He insists on sitting as close to me as possible. Frequently, this means that he situates himself such that he's right at my ass.

Stupid cat.

I Don't Need Another Wii

Look, I already have a Wii (I didn't want it, but the wife insisted that she'd use it for exercise stuff rather than the dust collector it's become). I don't particularly care for it. The user interface is cloyingly awful. I don't want or need cutesy avatars. I don't want or need saccharine sound effects for everything that happens on screen. Least of all, I don't need what was previously a serviceable interface modified to be a less-well-executed version of an interface I already hate. Whut. The. Fuck.

Poorly Executed Code Push

So, today, Microsoft released the new XBox update. Unlike prior updates, they provided no update grace period. If you didn't install the update, you couldn't use any of your Live services.

Now, back when Live was pretty much exclusively about playing multiplayer games online, this kind of thing would be merely annoying, but otherwise not too much of a problem. Nowadays, where services like Zune music and video, Last.FM, NetFlix Streaming, Twitter, FaceBook, etc. all rely on being able to log into XBox live, you're kinda SOL if the service is unavailable to you.

There's also a LOT more people using the services in late 2010 than there were several years ago. So, if you're going to demand people upgrade, you need to ensure that they can upgrade in an easy, timely manner.

Microsoft utterly failed to do this. From the time I got home from work until I was able to get a successful download, it took me over 90 minutes. Now, this was 90 minutes of attempting to connect and download. Unfortunately, the XBox update method doesn't allow you to simply queue-up an update request, walk away, and let things happen unattended. No. You have to make the request, wait for the request to succeed or fail, then acknowledge the next action.

Because of the way they pushed the code, they had MILLIONS of people all trying to upgrade at once. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't use anything like BitTorrent to distribute updates, nor do they seem to use their "cloud" services to spin-up additional update servers to meet the sudden demand-spike (or, if they do, their "cloud" services are utterly sucktackular - even if they don't, you assume that they do, and it makes their "cloud" services offering look horrible, one way or the other). That means that, each time you request the update, it's a crapshoot on whether it will succeed. So, if you lose that crap-shoot, you can either immediately try again or come back sometime later and make another attempt.

Back when XBox live was just a gaming service, coming back later was the normal choice. Now that it's a control-center type of service, coming back later means that a lot of things you might want to use are not available. So, you have to try again ...and again, and again and again... All because their update utility wasn't designed with queuing features.

Seriously, Microsoft, this whole thing was a debacle. It makes you look like amateurs - both in your gaming service and in other things you do. You might want to rethink how you do future code-rolls.

I'm An Information Pack-Rat

Some people hoard things, I hoard data. At least data doesn't take up much in the way of physical space.

To give you an indication of how much I hoard data, I have emails and Usenet posting from the mid-90s. I'd still have my college email from the late 80s if I hadn't lost it in a filesystem failure a number of years ago.

Still, being a data hoarder can be useful. I've got a project at work that may benefit from some documentation I wrote in 2005 and some scripts I wrote in 2006. Addiction justified!

Of course, hoarding anything isn't terribly helpful if you don't know how to find the stuff you've kept. Fortunately, for now, I have a memory that's far above average. So, in that mass of data, I usually know how or what it was stored under so I can set up an appropriate search.

I Like Outlook, But...

Ok, yeah, I said it: "I like Outlook". Me. A UNIX-guy and very much a non-fan of Microsoft. But, still, gotta appreciate when a tool's got useful features. OutLook's always had a fairly decent advanced search utility.

What gets me, though, is, as good as the functionality is, it almost seems like Microsoft doesn't want you to use it. While they continue to keep it in Outlook, it seems like with each succeeding release, Microsoft tries to make using the advanced search tool more and more difficult (to find). Each time I upgrade to a new version of Outlook, I have to play "find the find tool". And, each time, it feels like there's more and more hoops to jump through to get to it and to use it. Ugh.

Halloween Good (!) Cheer

I guess a Halloween isn't complete with a good, stupid-inducing drunkening. Nothing like hearing people stumble their way into the house because they're stumbling-drunk. Well, I guess being woken in the middle of the night by their drunken stumbling to the bathroom's pretty high up on that same, "shit that really fucking annoys the hell out of me" list.

Nothing I love more than waking up as furious as I went to bed. Others' chronic drunkenness is rage-inducing. Having to witness it just before bed tends to leave me in a bad mood. Not terribly conduscive to sleeping. Even less conduscive is being woken by drunken stumblings. All in all, it results in waking up in a rather foul mood (and that's on top of the "oh, fuck: it's Monday" mood).

Thanks. Love starting my day just as pissed as I ended the previous one.

Mixed Blessings at Halloween

Ok, so, I live in a decent-sized neighborhood. Certainly, this neighborhood is rather much larger than the one I grew up in. There's also a fair number of families with children in this neighborhood. Yet, each year at Halloween, the number of trick-or-treaters that show up are rather low. Each year, there's more leftover candy than there is candy given out (we like to provide a variety, so we get a bunch of different candies). Invariably, you have a predictable progression: young/new parents with very young children for the first hour. Older (pre-teens) for the next hour. Teens, invariably not in costume, to close out the evening. Throughout, you also have the "drop-off" kids.

The "drop offs" are invariably kids from PG county. You can tell that they're from PG county by the license plates of the vehicles. I can only guess that they don't recognize/have Halloween in Maryland, as all of the drop-off vehicles seem to be MD-plated. Generally, you'll see them get dropped off at some corner, and then the driver of the vehicle speeds away at a speed WELL above what's prudent for the occasion or even just the speed limit. I guess it's ok to drop your kids off in the neighborhoods with the good candy and risk mowing down the kids that are already out.

Overall, Halloween is such a non-occasion. It seems that the only people that really go out for Halloween are the adults with the various Friday and Saturday night drunken-slutfests ("ho ho ho" isn't so much what Santa says at Christmas but what you can point and say as you watch the parade of "I only feel like I can get away with dressing this way one time of year" tartlets.

Now, as a man, I certainly appreciate the eye candy. So, I'm not using "ho" or "slut" in a pejorative sense. It's more an expression of frustration at the whole state of affairs where Halloween is way more for adults than it is for kids. It's just "lame" (to borrow a term from when Halloween still seemed to be popular with the pre-adult set).

Cheating?

What's up with the duplicate player names on multi-player matchmaking in Halo: Reach online?? Something about it that just doesn't "smell right". It may be nothing, but something makes me assume that people are cheating. It's always a tad disheartening when you notice that, of the 16 people on a game roster, there's only three "real" gamer tags (your own, plus two and all their clones). WTF.

Oh well: I always go in and submit an "avoid" review when I see them. Even if they aren't, strictly, cheating, I don't like playing games with people like that.

Xbox Live/Halo: Reach Bafflement

Why is "good connection" even a search criteria on Xbox Live? Shouldn't that just be a given? Sure: put me on the shitty server, instead.

Woke Up With a Hankering...

This morning (sorta: it was still about three minutes to noon), I woke up with a taste for yesterday's leftovers. Donna had made a pasta dish of our last, big tomatoes from the garden, wheel-pasta, salami and some other assorted stuff. Was damned tastey and was looking forward to it.

I came down to look for it in the fridge and didn't find it there. Instead, I eventually found it on the kitchen island where it had been sitting since yesterday afternoon. Granted, it was covered, but I was still a little shakey on eating it.

So, I had my morning pills and grumbled my way back out to the living room to sit down and stew in my no-breakfast-having hunger.

Donna came down and said, "no, I left it out intentionally. There's nothing in it that would spoil and refrigerating would have screwed up the tomatoes." So, we both had a bowl of it. I'm not dead yet and feeling no noticeable ill-effects. So, maybe it will be ok.

Seems an Odd Design Choice

Ok, I fully admit that I'm a nerd and that I often times overthink the technical details shown in movies. It's especially hard for me to overlook computer-related gaffs in movies, given my profession. That said, this is more of what seems to be an architectural gaff in the Star Wars universe. Specifically, the design of the Deathstar.

In the "New Hope" (i.e., the real first Star Wars movie ...that came out when I was seven), the interior structure of the Deathstar was never really clearly spelled out. Yeah, where the Millenium Falcon gets drawn into the docking bay, it seemed to show that at least parts of the Deathstar were oriented in the stereotypical, lazy sci-fi, "there's a universal 'up' direction". However, they never really explicitly stated that the entire station was laid out in the same orientation. It's as logical to assume that the docking bay was oriented that way for functional reasons and that the rest of the Deathstar (at least, 'the rest' that wasn't also docking bays) might be laid out differently.

However, in "Revengeturn of the Jedi", it becomes fairly clear that the entirety of the Deathstar is laid out with a similar orientation:

Deathstar from Return of the Jedi

Looking at the picture, you see that it appears that the interior is made up of stacked, horizontal layers and that the layers are stacked parallel to the equatorial trench. Basically, given a spherical outer shell, the interior structure is stack-upon-stack of circular deck plates oriented along a central, virtically-oriented axis. That is, it's a giant layer-cake design with a spherical outer shell.

Now, to a hack sci-fi writer like George Lucas, this kind of layout might make sense. As a hack, you don't think about things like "how does one put artificial gravity into this kind of structure" (after all, you're too busy trying to imagine what energy-beam weapons sound like in the vacuum of space). To someone like me, and you wonder "how do people stay anchored to the deck they're moving about on?"

With the above type of design, I can only think of a couple ways that the occupants are able to stay anchored to the deck-plating an walk in a way that approaches "normal":

• There's some gravitic-force at the bottom-most part of the Deathstar that exerts a pull all the way to the top-most part of the Deathstar.
• Each deck-plate has a gravitic material that has a very localized effect, but is sufficient to keep deck-occupants walking relatively normally
• The deck plates are made of ferrous materials and everyone's shoes have magnets in them.

Each of the above seems a pretty silly supposition and a horribly thought-out design choice.

• The problem with a gravitic force rooted at the bottom of the Deathstar is the diminishing force of gravity, the further you get from the gravitic source. One would expect that, with such a design, gravitational pull would be highest in the lowest decks of the station and nearly non-existent in the topmost part. I guess that makes a sort of sense if you're using the upper reaches of the station as machinery or docking space for space ships. However, the scene with the Millennium Falcon demonstrates that at least some of the hanger space is at the station's equatorial region. The drawing above also seems to indicate that the upper reaches of the station doesn't contain the kinds of voids one would expect in a region used for the docking of spacecraft.
• The problem with per-deck gravity generators is "how does one limit the direction of the gravitational effect". What I'm saying is, if I've got a gravitic force in my floors and a (presumably equal) gravitic force in my ceilings, how am I not being pulled towards the ceiling just as much as I am the floor? How are the forces not canceling each other out, leaving me suspended equidistant from my floor and ceiling. As far as I'm aware, gravity is a force that acts equally in all directions from the gravitational source. While there are theories about monopole magnets, their existence hasn't been proven, yet, and I don't know that there's an equivalent theory for gravitational directionality.
• Of the three, the ferrous deck-plates is about the only thing that makes any kind of sense. Your anchoring force is very localizable and is easy to make consistent throughout the entire station. Down-side is, with magnetic shoes, I gotta think you still suffer the whole gamut of physical health problems you do with extended deployments on real life space stations (bone loss and muscle-mass loss and the like).

Maybe there's other anchoring technologies I'm not thinking of (beside the "it's some kind of wondrous alien technology" reason that a hack would use to defend his "art").

To me, a more logical design for a spherical Deathstar would be some kind of "concentric shells" design. Basically, a design reminiscent of an onion. That way, you could have a gravitational force at the station's core. Alternatively, you could simulate gravity by way of the station's rotation (this really only works for wheel or ring-style structures, however). It would fit with the whole central reactor core design. If you had some kind of artificial singularity (which, given the kind of power you'd need to be able to generate a planet-annihilating beam-weapon, makes sense), that could act as your gravity source. A gravitational core would also make sense given that "spherical" is the natural shape of celestial objects that have sufficient mass and gravity. It would probably minimize the demands to evenly distribute structural loading (whereas,with a bottom-sourced single gravity source "layer cake" design, creating a sphere shaped station would be a purely aeshtetic play. The location of the gravity source would tend to make exert a non-uniform pull across the station meaning that you'd have to put a lot of complex engineering in place to maintain a spherical shape and not make the station "fragile").

Bleah. Yeah. I overthink this shit.

Best Costume Idea Evar...

Genius, I Tell You

Consummate Hacks

Every year, I get the "joy" of listening to the Pittsburgh Penguins home commentators because of NHL Center Ice. For whatever reason, NHL Center Ice seems to prefer to use their broadcast feed when showing Penguins/Flyers games. I can only guess that the Pittsburgh broadcast has a lower carrying cost than what Comcast-Spectacor charges for their broadcast. This would make a certain sense, given that the Comcast production is a lot more professional: better video quality, better camera operations and commentators that are a lot less extreme on the "blind homer" scale.

On the plus side of the horror that is the Pittsburgh-based broadcast team: having the Pens' home commentators calling the game is extra sweet when the Pens lose.

Full Evening...

This evening we partook in the following:

• Dinner at Maggianos (18:00-20:00) for their Virginia Wine fesitval dinner.
• Voodoo Ball at the Loft (22:30-02:20)
• Home to complete two daily challenges on Halo: Reach. (03:00-04:30)

Full evening. I'm thinking Saturday may be less eventful.

How Low Can You Go

No matter how far you lower your standards or expectations, someone will always come along who fails to meet them.

Old Pictures

You know you're looking at an old picture if it's a picture of Michael Jackson ...and he actually looks black in it.

Then again, what does it say about my age that I can still remember when Michael Jackson still looked black.

I Ain't That Bad

At least I'm not the only geek that sometimes takes things too literally...

So, this guy decides to be a little to literal on the whole "cookies dough" icecream thing. Now, I'll admit to having thought of doing things like this. Just never saw the point in actually carrying it out. Usually, the thought-exercise is enough. But, in the days of teh intarwebz, ya always need something to put out there.

Hmm... Maybe I should do less thought-exercises and more real activities? I mean, I really do need a hobby. Maye if I actually started acting on my more ridiculous thoughts, I'd be less bored. Who knows: might even be ale to turn it into a revenue-stream.

Not Much of a Prize

Commercial just ran for some random contest. The "prize" was a copy of Sex in the City 2 on BluRay or DVD.

How the hell is a DVD/BD of "Sex in the City 2" considered a "prize"? If that's your "prize", it ain't that good of a contest, eh?

Halloween on Price Is Right

So, today was this year's "Halloween" episode of Price Is Right. Drew and the rest of the cast dressed up like the cast from Wizard of Oz.

Now, if I recall, correctly, Price Is Right shoots it's episodes several days or weeks before actually broadcasting them (much like all the late-night shows are shot in the mid-afternoon or early evening). This means that, if they want audience members and/or contestants to be in costume, people have to be dressed up not on Halloween.

I know that Price Is Right sells advanced tickets, but, I imagine there's a lot that are sold "at the door". And, that aside, more than a few people in the audience are people who are non-local and are just taking the opportunity to get on TV while on vacation (thus, probably haven't packed costumes with them).

For the tickets sold in advance, they could print on the tickets "Halloween broadcast: please dress up". However, I don't think that's the case and, even if it was, probably wouldn't result in a great number of people dressing up at any rate.

Judging by the costumes, I'd say that most, if not all, of the costumes are show-issued. It looks like women who are cute and fairly petitely or slenderly built are given the option of wearing costume store tart-ware (sexy-cop, sexy-firegirl, sexy-nurse, etc.). The rest of the people are given Halloween-themed Price Is Right T-shirts, offered makeup and/or accessories. Given the number of non-svelte Price Is Right audience members, the makeup, t-shirt and/or (non body size-specific) accessories are the most flexible way to get the largest number of people "in theme".

Speaking of "non-svelte"... At the end of the show, they gave everyone a 5lb. Hershey's Chocolate chocolate bar. I wonder how many of the recipients already had "the diuhbeetus"?

I'm Lagging the Game?

So, I've been using XBox Live, lately, to rack up points on Halo: Reach (overall, I prefer to play online firefights). Most of the time, it's a pretty good experience with good, solid, stable, speedy servers. Other days... It's occasionally choppy and laggy.

Today, for the most part, it's been pretty good. I had one game where there were four of us playing. Ever so often the game would lock up and one player in the list would be shown as having a bad connection to the server (it was the same player, each time).

A couple games later, I was matched up on a map with just one other person. The game was kinda herky-jerky. The other guy starts whining about how laggy the game is. Starts whining that I'm causing the lagginess and that he's never had a laggy game before. Eventually, the tool quits out (presumably out of frustration). I was able to tell pretty much exactly when he quit - not because the quit notification but because the game pretty much immediately smoothed out.

Here's the deal: I have Verizon's FiOS with the 25/15 package. I'm not hurting for bandwidth. After the game ended, I went to my laptop and pulled up SpeedTest.Net:

So, I'm not getting the full download speed. But I'm getting more than my sold-level of upload bandwidth. In either case, I've got better than 15Mbps in each direction: this is more than enough to support online multi-play on XBox Live. Combine this with the server speeding up after bitchboy-bailed and it seems fairly obvious who the source of the lag was.

Guess ECW Wanted More Air Time

On the one hand, I'm bummed that Caprica got cancelled. After all, I really liked Battlestar Galactica and the story/universe its writers put together. Caprica also showed similar levels of production value and was fairly story-driven. I really wanted to like Caprica. Unfortunately, I just never really did.

The show always came off as a little too emo and a little too unsubtle. It was like the writers of Dawson's Creek were trying to tackle the issues of religious extremism and big brotherish responses. That's why, after two episodes, I started referring to it as "Dawson's Cylon".

I guess on the plus side of the cancellation, there'll be more room for RASSLIN' in the schedule!

Tough Beans

Leaving jelly beans too close to the A/C vent kinda sucks. It's pretty much the exact opposite of the pleasure of eating jelly beans that have softened in your hands.

Survival Strategies

In the face of a zombie apocalypse, isn't the best survival strategy to hole-up with lots of slower friends?

Dear "Senator Barb":

So, were you on the front lines fighting for gender-neutral car insurance pricing? Or, more likely, because you're not being penalized and men generally don't whine as much about "fairness" as women, you sat quietly on the sidelines whenever pricing practices for auto insurance came up.

Nice pandering, by the way, "Senator Barb". Hopefully, enough of the men in Maryland realize "with people like her in office, my wallet will be raided to make things cheaper for some protected class."

Bringing Back Harvest Gold

Why is it that, when I hear the Fed talk about "quantitative easing", all I really hear is "inflation" (or, more likely, "stagflation").

New UPS?

Got a call from the wife, today. Apparently, everything plugged into the decade-old UPS was dark. Further, attempts at resetting the UPS failed to result in a return of power to the attached devices. So, I went online and looked around for a new UPS. I found what looked to be a decent one for $193. Unfortunately, when you added in shipping, it would have been $325.

Now, there was once a point in time when I could justify that kind of money for a UPS. Indeed, the UPS that had, apparently, died had once set me back nearly $800. However, it was providing power backup and conditioning for several computers that I was using to perform web, mail and file service out of my basement.

I'm not doing that, any more. Mostly, I just need something to keep my fileserver and my VOIP-stuff online. Thus, spending for a like-kind replacement just doesn't make sense.

So, I left work and dropped by MicroCenter on the way home. Picked up a consumer-grade 1350VA UPS for half that total outlay. Got home, swapped in the new UPS and everything's back online. Sadly, I couldn't leave well enough alone. So, be for tossing it out, I decided to see if I plug it in and see if I could get it working again. Plugged it in, clicked on the startup toggles and it sprang to life. Best I can figure is that, when lugging the 75lbs. beast upstairs, I had hit the circuit-breaker button. At any rate, it's still working, but, I don't feel like lugging it back downstairs and remounting it. So, out in the closet it went. Still just chapped that I wasted time and $160 at MicroCenter when I might not really have needed to.

Egads!

An old boss is being quoted for a news article. I think I just died, a little, inside. At the risk of burning bridges, this is a person that I most definitely did not respect. I don't know anyone working under him that did. I mean, there was just a lot about his behaviors (at least during that time period) that were illustrative of how not to be a good boss.

Gotta Love "Technicalities"

Hooray for being a pedestrian at 137KPH!

Negative Impacts On Shopping Districts?

If your on-street parking rates are so steep I need a credit card to use them, I don't need to shop in your city.

Seriously, it really makes me wonder what municipalities are thinking when they jack parking rates in retail enclaves. At the end of the day, I've got a bajillion options for spending my money. Even if I actually liked the shopping experience (I don't), I can get it elsewhere if you give me cause. I can go to another shopping center or district that has cheaper or free parking. I can go online and not even have to get out of my PJs.

Good Ideas™, Trivialized

Ok, first, let me start by saying that the idea of a sex-offender registry isn't inherently flawed. However, like many things that start out as "Good Ideas™", the execution frequently makes a mockery of the original idea. If the original idea is to provide a warning to people about rape, molestation or similar potential, why include other, non-relevant and (worse) trivial infringements in the same category. At the end of the day, is a sex-offender registry really worth having if you can get on it for taking a leak by the side of the road?

Gormless

So many wonderful words in the English language. At the moment, I favor "gormless".

Mental Driftage

Ok, why did mudkipz just randomly float through my brain. Tenuous grasp of sanity, I tell you. My brain needs sanitized.

So You Got Stopped...

It really always makes me wonder what the point of getting pissed at a cop that just pulled you over is (note that I'm assuming the cop was courteous and professional during the encounter). For things like traffic violations, it's not that the cop is picking on you, it's that you did something they could site you for. You did something stupid - either out of poor habits, lack of knowledge, distraction or inattentiveness. The point is, you did something citable.

Overall, I just don't get being pissed at a cop because he nailed you for being stupid. Be mad at yourself, for being stupid.

Mostly, I don't get what the point of wasting the time yelling at the cop is. It's not going to get you out of the ticket. It's really only going to waste time that you could otherwise be using elsewhere. I got better things to do than waste my time trying to convince a cop not to cite me.

My Heart Bleeds for You, Potomac Greens

It's a damned shame that you might have to pay for a Metro stop just to serve your neighborhood. I mean, sure, it's reasonable to expect all Alexandrians or Fairfax County residents to subsidize you getting a new convenience. I'm sure that, being able to afford million-dollar luxury townhomes means you're too strapped to pay for things that benefit only you.

Didn't you read the fine-print on your purchase documents that told you you were part of a special tax-district? That's what a special tax-district is: you're subject to very localized taxes to pay for the things that benefit just your local area.

Has There Ever Been a Question As to Biden's Ass-clownery?

"Every single great idea"?? Yet more proof that this ass-clown should never have been allowed to hold any office that impacts the public at large. Too bad that holding national public office has become less an exercise in stewardship of the public good than it has self-enrichment.

Bullying's Like Art or Pornography

Sure, bullying ain't cool. But how does one *objectively* determine what it is? Seems a lot like defining art or pornography. All seems rather nebulous. It all seems like we're on a slipery-slope when we try to protect people's feelings and self-esteem. Remember: it's not the obvious cases that are going to be the undoing of us all: it will be the enlargement of definitions to include the smallest of slights.

Dietary Guidance?

If I had psychic octopus sushi, would it improve my gambling performance?

Stupidity Tax

Pretty much, that's how I look at moving violations (and similar fines). Mostly, you get nailed when you're doing something stupid, being impatient or just being inattentive.

Today, I got hit with a stupidity-tax by way of the Fairfax County police department. I was leaving work and my GPS alerted me to a major traffic problem on my usual route home. So, I took its suggestion and went a "back way". Unfortunately, not being familiar with it, I ended up "being stupid" and got nailed for it. Apparently, in Fairfax County, if you pull onto the shoulder before the lane markings officially designate it as the turn lane, it's a violation (specifically, "passing on the shoulder").

Oh well. Should be interesting to see how much fifty yards costs me.

At least the cop was really cool and professional about it. Given the horror-shows that are other local jurisdictions (I'm looking at you, PG County PD), it's nice to know that your local police act like professionals. Too bad the twat who got pulled over with me had to turn into a whiny bitch. As it was, from request to pull over to issuance of citation, I only lost six minutes of time - less time than what the GPS said getting stuck on my normal route would have cost me. Dunno how much time she was going to waste trying to fight a ticket she surely deserved.

Why I Love Shell-Scripting

For those times when you have a text file of host to IP bindings, it's easy to see if you need to add shit to your DNS servers. You can write a script like:

for i in `cat hosts.txt`
do
   HOSTIP=`echo $i | cut -d : -f 1`
   FOUNDNAME=`echo $i | cut -d : -f 2`
   DNSNAME=`dig -x ${HOSTIP} | egrep -v "^;" | awk '/PTR/{print $5}'`
   if [ "${DNSNAME}" = "" ]
   then
      DNSNAME="#NOT_IN_DNS#"
   fi
   printf "%-15s%-40s%-40s\n" ${HOSTIP} ${DNSNAME} ${FOUNDNAME}
done

That gives you output that looks like:

192.168.90.24    labserv1024u.labzone.net.        labserv1024u.labzone.net
192.168.90.3     labserv1003u.labzone.net.        labserv1003u.labzone.net
192.168.90.20    labserv1020u.labzone.net.        labserv1020u.labzone.net
192.168.90.6     labserv1006u.labzone.net.        labserv1006u.labzone.net
192.168.80.20    #NOT_IN_DNS#                     labserv3014u
192.168.80.19    #NOT_IN_DNS#                     labserv1301u
192.168.90.130   labserv1130u-90.labzone.net.     labserv1130u.labzone.net
192.168.7.73     labserv1073u.labzone.net.        
192.168.90.26    labserv1026u-90.labzone.net.     labserv1026u.labzone.net
192.168.90.27    labserv1027u-90.labzone.net.     labserv1027u.labzone.net
192.168.90.21    labserv1021u.labzone.net.        labserv1021u.labzone.net
192.168.2.132    labserv3132u.labzone.net.        labserv3132u
192.168.7.188    labserv1188u.labzone.net.        labserv1188u
192.168.2.131    labserv3131u.labzone.net.        labserv3131u
192.168.2.240    labserv3071u.labzone.net.        labserv3071u
192.168.10.13    #NOT_IN_DNS#                     labmgr13
192.168.90.18    labserv1018u.labzone.net.        labserv1018u.labzone.net
192.168.90.7     labserv1007u.labzone.net.        labserv1007u.labzone.net
192.168.90.10    labserv1010u-90.labzone.net.     labserv1010u.labzone.net
192.168.36.73    #NOT_IN_DNS#                     labserv1073u
192.168.36.72    #NOT_IN_DNS#                     labserv1072u
192.168.7.73     labserv1073u.labzone.net.        labserv1073u
192.168.90.16    labserv1016u-90.labzone.net.     labserv1016u.labzone.net
192.168.90.25    labserv1025u.labzone.net.        labserv1025u.labzone.net
192.168.90.19    labserv1019u.labzone.net.        labserv1019u.labzone.net
192.168.90.2     labserv1002u.labzone.net.        labserv1002u.labzone.net
192.168.90.4     labserv1004u.labzone.net.        labserv1004u.labzone.net
192.168.36.71    #NOT_IN_DNS#                     labserv1071u
192.168.7.186    labserv1186u.labzone.net.        labserv1186u
192.168.90.9     labserv1009u.labzone.net.        labserv1009u.labzone.net
192.168.90.8     labserv1008u.labzone.net.        labserv1008u.labzone.net
192.168.90.17    labserv1017u.labzone.net.        labserv1017u.labzone.net
192.168.90.1     labserv1001u.labzone.net.        labserv1001u.labzone.net
192.168.90.5     labserv1005u.labzone.net.        labserv1005u.labzone.net

Then, you just grep for the "#NOT_IN_DNS#" lines and update your DNS servers to reflect your host table file.

Verizon's Still Got a Few Kinks to Work Out of FiOS

Ok, first, let me start by saying that when Cox advertises saying that their customer service is better than that for Verizon FiOS, this is not just marketing, it's verifiable fact. I had Cox as my video and internet provider for several years. So, I had several occasions on which I had to call them. I've now had Verizon for a little over eight months and I've called them more than I called Cox over the entire multi-year period I had their service.

Each time I called Cox, I was able to quickly navigate their call-tree and get a human on the line within a matter of a few minutes. Each time I've called Verizon, it takes at least ten minutes to get through their damned call-tree, and then you wait another 10-30 minutes just to get to speak to the first human in the chain you inevitably have to talk to.

Notice that I say first human. Each time I've called Verizon, I speak to a minimum of two people. Worse, with each hand-off, I have to go through the whole drill of "no, I don't have Verizon phone service" and provide alternate identifying information so they can find my record. Now, why, when they transfer you, the next CSR doesn't have all your info come up on their screen as part of the transfer process is beyond me. With Cox, I generally had a warm hand-off; on those occasions where I didn't, the next representative at least had all my info already on their screen.

Now, I was calling this time because, when I went to turn on tonight's Flyers game, I was met with the "you don't subscribe to this service" screen (and told to call their 800 number to change that). So, I called in. It took just shy of ten minutes to navigate their call-tree just to get to the point that I could be put in a hold-queue. I then spent just shy of fifteen minutes waiting for the first CSR. He got on the phone and we did the whole "find the account" dance. He locates my account and informs me, "that programming option's not on your plan. Does your set-top box not offer you the option of adding it?". I reply, "no, otherwise I'd not have called in." At which point, I'm informed that I'll have to speak to someone in their subscription/add-on services group and that I should, "please hold".

Another six-plus minutes passes on hold. As expected, the CSR that answers has us go through the whole no Verizon phone service dance. Ugh. He finds my account and then looks through it. Apparently, last winter, when I got my FiOS service, it was already at the halfway point of the season. My NHL Center Ice package only for the second half of the season. That half-season package was set to auto-renew in January. I start to laugh at how awfully moronic that was. I then ask him to go ahead and try to get the full-season package added and the half-season auto-renewal removed. It takes him another four minutes to navigate his computer systems (why is it every time I call a CSR organization, they always say "sorry, my computer's being slow"?). He gets the change sorted out. Unfortunately, it will take a minimum of 20 minutes for the change to show up on my set top box, and might even take until midnight for the change to take effect (depending on my market).

Whatever. I was already 40+ minutes into missing the game I wanted to see. Judging by the Flyers' web site, I wasn't really missing a game I wanted to see (they were losing 2-0 to the Columbus Blue Jackets by this point). Maybe, by the time I next tune into NHL Center Ice, it will be up and running on my set top box and will be showing a game I'll be more happy to see.

So, uh, Verizon: you get yet another big, fat "F-" for this customer experience (as you did for the four, prior incidents). And, that's an "F-" by way of comparison to Cox, who isn't exactly known for being top of the heap for customer service.

Bunny: it's what's for dinner.

Tonight was our seventh anniversary. Each year, we either go out for dinner or Donna cooks up something special and serves it on the good china and silverware.

Rosemary Rabbit with Chanterelle Mushroom Risotto

Tonight, Donna made an herbed-rabbit and chanterelle mushroom risotto. The china and silverware is my (great grand) Uncle Harry's. Got it a number of years ago when my grandmother Ott went into her rest-home. My Uncle Harry had given them to her when he went into a rest home in his late 80s (he died several years ago at the age of 105). So, that's some old stuff, as it had been gifted to him when he'd gotten married.

Lusers

The problem with turning systems over to users is that, invariably and inevitably, they fuck them up. Worse is turning systems (any technology, to be honest) over to privileged users. Unlike regular users, privileged-users have immense powers to fuck things up in ways that normal users don't. And, in the end, because you can't think down to their level, it leaves you scratching your head wondering just what the fuck they did and why it occurred to them to even try to do it that way.

Opt-Out

Not sure how much faith I place in it, but NAI's website/tool supposedly allows you to opt out of targeted adverts.

I Think I'm Going to Be Ill

On the best days, working in an office is a trial. Then, you add in things like Mondays. Toss in horrible personal hygiene of co-workers. Throw in the noise associated with open office plans (i.e., "cube farms"). Take it all together and add in other annoyances and it's really a wonder that "going postal" isn't a daily occurrence.

Now, I like to think I'm fairly tolerant. I may bitch about things (a lot), but, I mostly put up with it. Then again, as a wage-slave, "what are ya gonna do". I also like to think that I'm fairly hard to shock or even surprise. Still, the personal habits of co-workers is always a source of amazement and, all-to-frequently, disgust.

Today is a perfect case in point. After my morning caffeine-infusion, I had to go use the bathroom. Mtn. Dew is great for waking you up, but it runs through you faster than an equivalent volume of beer does. My first trip to the bathroom, I was met with what would (mildly) be called and "unpleasant aroma". However, I was able to at least get in, get my business done, wash up and get out. Unfortunately, the quantity of this morning's Mtn. Dew was such that I needed to hit up the facilities again around an hour later.

This time, the lone urinal was in use. So, I had to resort to the sit-down stalls. I saw feet under the door of the first stall. I figured that accounted for the increase in the lovely aroma. That is, until I got to the other available stall. As I approached and was about to work my fly, I noticed a fecal stalactite hanging from the bowl of the toilet.

Disgusted, I thought to myself, "I'll hit one of the other bathrooms". So, I went upstairs to use that one. Unfortunately, I got there and the smell was even worse than the bathroom on my cube's floor. Again, feet visible under the door of one of the stalls, lone urinal in use. So, again, I sought out the remaining sit-down stall.

Whut-the-fuck: "Shit soup". Whoever'd made that mess couldn't be bothered to flush. Either that, they were in such a panic from what had just come out of them that they'd simply bolted and left it to brew.

So, I headed to the basement to find urinary refuge, there. Fortunately, that was clean. I can only guess that the authors of the prior fecal-crimes had yet to find that particular outlet on their rounds.

Note that I say "authors". As I said on Twitter, "I refuse to believe this morning's restroom atrocities were the work of a single, prolific author. Must have been a foreign foods fest in DC." However, in retrospect, I don't know which prospect is worse: that there's one person responsible for the multiple, heinous acts (and probably still skulking about, readying another "gift") or that more than one person could be that foul. Ugh.

Stuck in My Head

Too much gruntpocalypse on Halo: Reach leaves you shouting "SHAZOOK! SHAZOOK!"

Good Food; Bad Website

I love Stachowski's products, but their website is rubbish. I mean, I'm pretty sure it's put together by the guy who runs their market stands. Nice guy, but, clearly not a graphic designer or marketer by trade.

You Call This a Snack??

Ok, clearly I've gotten old. I'm sitting here in a house full of sweets and junk:

• there are left-over homemade cupcakes that Donna made for a party, yesterday
• there's a couple of fruit hamantaschen with my name on them
• there's a similar number of rugelach waiting for me
• there's part of a bag of Jelly Belly jellybeans
• there's two boxes of assorted gumdrops
• there's even a mostly-full bag of Cheetos sitting on the end-table, next to me.

But, what did I end up having as a late afternoon snack? I had the below:

Sunday Snack

That's some slices of french baguette for dipping in the extra garlic hummus and a plate of vegetables (tomatoes from the garden, cauliflower from the farmers' market and pickled peperoncinis). What the hell am I thinking??

Bad Sports Day

My Eagles lost. The Deadskinz squeaked one out. The Ravens managed to not embarrass themselves with Buffalo. With the way the day's going, the freaking Cowpats will probably win, tonight.

I think it all really started to go to hell when, what looked to be the second TD scored by the Bears' defense was voided from a dead-ball foul (Deadskinz had let the play clock expire before snapping). Just before that got turned over: it was starting to look like the Bears were getting their shit together and would win; the Eagles were ahead; the Ravens were behind.

Fuck. I was really hoping the Bears' D would have more points than the Deadskinz O. Damned dead-ball foul.

I'm Not a Good Sport

In fact, in many sporting contests, I express my outcome preference in terms of who I'd rather see lose than who I'd rather see win. I mean, when it's not one of my teams (Flyers, Eagles, any PSU team), I generally don't care who wins other than how it best helps my team(s). That said, there are certain teams that I almost always want to see lose (Redwings, Penguins, Senators Cowboys, Redskins and pretty every college team that isn't PSU). There are also certain players that I take great joy from seeing lose, and, by extension, the teams they're on (I'm looking in your direction, T.O.).

I live in the DC Metro region. I don't like any of the teams here. Unfortunately, absent spending several $100s per year to see my teams, I'm stuck watching the local teams on TV. Right now, as I write this, I've the choice of the Deadskinz or Baltimore. I have a hard time caring about Baltimore in any way. So, I'm watching the Deadskinz. Now, I pretty much hate Chicago and its teams, but... Go Bears (beat the Deadskinz).

I Don't Get Advertising

I get that makers of products have a need to make potential consumers aware of their products. I also get that there's this belief that any attention is good attention. I don't agree with it, but I get that some people believe it to be true. Personally, I don't know why you'd want to start a potential business arrangement (which is what a decision to purchase is) off where parties to the transaction are pissed off. I mean, me being pissed at someone or something doesn't typically encourage me to become involved with them. So, whenever it happens, I always wonder, "do websites (etc). really think that obnoxious, loud, multimedia adverts are a good way to encourage return visits (or ad clicks)?"

Wish Granted

Often times, when reading news about particularly stupid behavior, I wish that stupidity was painful. Perhaps if it were painful enough, people might act less stupidly.

Today, I was pleased to Stumble upon this article. It shows that, sometimes, stupid *is* painful.

Petty Joys

If I won the lottery, I'd wish for enemies so that I might use my wealth to continually smite them. Well, maybe not, but it strikes me as an amusingly petty thing to do or want.

Jinx?

Sometimes, it feels as though my favorite sports teams do their best when I don't watch them. When I go to see my teams play live, it seems that, more times than not, they don't really put forth a good effort and frequently lose because of it. While winning's always better than losing, I always want to see my teams bust their asses to at least try to win. Unfortunately, it just seems that the best efforts I see from my teams are in rebroadcasts rather than in either watching live or watching a live broadcast. Could never figure out why this was.

A Night Out

So, come the 25th, it will make seven years since we stood up in front of our friends to celebrate our marriage. Things haven't always been great - particularly lately - but, it's still a milestone that should probably be celebrated.

This week, got an email from a local restaurant we like. Apparently, they're having an evening where they're doing a tie-in to the local, Virginia winery scene (or whatever). Basically, it's a prix fixe meal with a fixed, multi-course offering of food and local wines. Donna likes wines and food from this restaurant, so, even though the event happens a few days after our anniversary, we're going to go and use that event as our celebration.

Yesterday, I called the restaurant to reserve seats for it. Sometimes, events like this you have to specifically request ahead, not just seating, but intention to participate. I'm hoping that this isn't one of those ones that you needed to reserve your intent. The reservations woman, on the phone, seemed rather unclued. It's a tad unsettling when calling to make reservations at a restaurant and the person on the phone doesn't seem on the ball. I don't know whether we just have reservations or whether we have reservations for this event. Hopefully, if it's just the former, then we'll still be able to order for the event once we get there.

Splatter-Fest

The car chase scene in Surrogates is the only good part of the movie... It's like something out of Grand Theft Auto.

I Can Do But Not Watch.

First-person shooters (FPS) are about my favorite class of games. I can play them for hours, enjoying the shear mindlessness of the activity. I can play them alone or in some kind of split-screen mode.

Oddly, if I have to watch someone else play, I get motion-sickness almost immediately. Don't know whether it's because a lot of the people I see play don't play particularly smoothly or if it's the lack of control of the action I'm focusing on that causes it.

Unfortunate Similarity

I've mentioned this many times, online, but don't recall whether I have on this particular blog: I have epilepsy. Seizures are both a frightening and interesting experience. I mean, they're an experience that, if you knew that you could limit them to when you wanted them, might make an interesting alternative to getting high. Unfortunately, their occurrence is random and rarely happen at times that are anything close to when you'd actually appreciate one (e.g., you'd not want one while driving or operating heavy machinery, at work or other public activities).

At any rate, sometimes, when I play Halo online, I get stuck with a really laggy server. The herky-jerkiness of it creates a distortion of the normal reality/experience of the game. Sometimes, it's almost reminiscent of the fractured reality one experiences while having a seizure.

Are The Constants Really Constant

I use StumbleUpon ...a lot. It's a great way to kill time and to find random, sometimes nifty stuff out on the internet. Included in my StumbleUpon interests profile is "science". So, I frequently get pages about various physics, astronomy and other scientific postings (NASA's photo of the day rocks, by the way). At any rate, this morning, a page about astronomers viewing light from 13 billion years ago showing them the early times in the universe.

Now, this is kind of interesting. I mean, being able to see what the universe looked like 13 billion years ago and how it differed from today. Unfortunately, it always makes me wonder, "how is this even possible." Don't get me wrong: I get the basics of radio telescopes, visible light telescopes and the like. So, I get that they're able to see this shit with these really complex, expensive and sensitive tools. No what it is I don't get is that physicists tell us that the speed of light is the Universe's speed limit. Physical objects simply cannot exceed the speed of light. That as one approaches the speed of light, mass, essentially, becomes infinite (and a whole bunch of other stuff that only makes a very tenuous amount of sense). So, it confuses me how we could see light transmitted 13 billion years ago.

I mean, that light was transmitted from a distance of 13 billion light-years.That light has been speeding along for 13 billion years at the speed of light. If the Universe truly started as a infinitesimally small pinpoint of something and expanded from there, how did I, as a physical being sitting on a physical chunk of rock beat that light here? Having mass, I would assume that, according to what the scientists all say, in the space of 13 billion years, my chunk of matter can't possibly have traveled 13 billion light years from the Universe's origin point.

Ok, so, maybe the distance is additive. Perhaps, since the universe's beginning, where I am, now, is 3 billion light years from the Universal origin point. And, perhaps that light was, somehow, emitted something 10 billion light years from the universe's origin point, but 180° in the opposite direction of me (whatever that means in an N-dimensional Universe) - for a total travel distance of 13 billion light years. Now, I'm not going to ask how the light emitters got to be 10 billion light years away, since light is usually emitted by thing that have mass, but any way. Why ask for that to make sense any more than any of the other things do.

In my head, it seems to tell me that the numbers just don't add up. Either the speed of light isn't constant, that the speed of light isn't a hard-limit, or that the 13 billion year old light didn't take a direct path to get here (indeed, it'd have to have been pretty circuitous).

Meh... Makes my head spin. Probably makes their spin, too, but, they're all stoned out of their gourds, any way, so they can just go with it.

Waking up because your dreams have left you too angry to stay asleep isn't the best way to start the day.

What Were We Thinking?

This list reminds me of many 21st birthday parties during my time at PSU. For some reason, birthdays (particularly 21st birthdays), bachelor parties and other such transition-celebrating events seem to take a punishment aspect to them. Oh well: it's not a good drinking binge if someone isn't showing their lunch by the end of the evening and well on their way to a painful wakeup the next day.

Vested

How best to keep someone in the game? Make it so they can't afford to drop out (or, just think they can't).

Can't Set the Bar Low Enough

I have very low standards for my fellow man. Unfortunately, humans never fail to disappoint. Readjusting the bar doesn't seem to help. No matter how low you set the bar, someone's going to go sliding under it.

It's like that whole "if you try to make something idiot-proof, they'll just come up with a better idiot" thing.

Identifiability

If you're a woman looking to not be pestered, I'm not sure why you'd use your mike on open XBox Live play. Female voices are fairly identifiable. The moment you speak in an open channel, someone knows you're female. If that person is the type who's going to pester a woman, you've just told them who to pester.

Dear Mike Wallace (& CBS):

No, actually, you *can't* beat depression. You can manage it, but it never goes away.

Policy Madness

There's a lot of policies, requirements, etc., out there, that come from "Best Practices" and Good Ideas™. In my line of work, where I run into this, a lot, is with security policies.

Best practices indicate that longer passwords are better. After all, guessing a password of N length requires X number of guesses, but guessing a password of N+1 length requires exponentially greater. So, from a mathematical basis,there's merit to this best practice.

Best practices also indicate that passwords should be changed frequently. After all, given sufficient time, any password of any arbitrary length can be guessed. If you know how fast guesses can be made and the total guessable set size, you have a strong, mathematical basis for setting a password change interval.

Unfortunately, day by day, computers get to be much, much faster. This means that, day by day, an automated attack can be conducted much, much faster. To combat this, you can up the password length and/or complexity requirements or shorten your password lifetimes.

And, that's all great from a "Best Practices" standpoint. Unfortunately, "Best Practices" generally only consider things like machines, not humans. Humans are in no way uniform. So, it's hard to set the kind of mathematical constant that makes it easy to formulate a "Best Practice". Thus, the human component is generally left out of the equation.

Sadly, this means you end up with security "Best Practices" that fail to figure in the fact that humans' memories for long, complex strings tend to be lacking. It fails to factor in that humans like to cheat or otherwise use crutches or mechanisms to assist them with a task. So, yeah, you can say, "Best Practices require that you set a fifteen-character, multi-character-class string as your password and that it be changed every thirty days." But, when you do so, you ignore the human component. You ignore that most people either can't remember such strings unaided or that, if they can, it will take them time to do so. That leaves cheating. And, if your attacker knows the types of cheats used by the humans your policies govern, they can exploit those cheats.

For myself, I find that I can usually come up with a mnemonic or other "cheat" that helps me remember things. Unfortunately, it frequently takes me several days to come up with that cheat. Often times, by the time I've really started to remember my password, it's time to generate a new one.

Unfortunately for the security types, most people have to resort to more exploitable cheats. And then... You're as bad off or worse by enforcing "Best Practices". Sometimes, you have to find a better "Best Practice" - one that factors in more of the limitations (particularly the human limitations).

Advantages to Emptiness

The advantage of never having known faith is not having the capability of losing it or having it destroyed. Granted, there's a certain emptiness to such that existence. Granted, I sometimes envy those who have the comfort of their faith.

I can even recognize some of the journey that people like Julia Sweeny went through. It's pretty much the journey of my life, just I started a little further down the path. Somehow, at the end of the day, though, Sweeny seems to have ended up at a different place than I did - possibly a better place than I did.

Exercise for Adults

Sometimes, I think if Golds were more like a McD's play-land, I might actually be interested in exercise. I mean, any time I pass by one of those jungle gyms, ball pits or even Moon Bounces, I regret that I grew up. I mean, they were fun. And now, due to age and size, I can't use them. Not fair.

In fact, I sometimes wonder how much money I could make if I rented out adult-sized "moon bounce" things. I know I'd rent one for my parties. I gotta think there's a market for providing entertainment for "big kids". All you have to do is look at paintball, lasertag and other places to know that's true..

XBox Live

Ok, so, I deactivated my FaceBook account (sorta wonder how long they leave it re-activatable). As a result, I'm sorta out of contact with a number of people, again. Then again, I don't have to worry about how my various random musings are being interpreted - well, other than when some people forget that not everything is about them or that not every statement has any real value beyond comic-relief. But, I digress...

At any rate, buddy of mine (former roommate and best man at my wedding) recently got Halo: Reach. We've kinda drifted apart ...life does that. I'd previously tried helping him wire his house for Ethernet so he could get online and we could start playing games again (figured, gametime was easier that sorting out busy family, work and social schedules). Alas, his XBox wasn't in the part of the house we wired. It was in his man-cave, not in the living room with the big TV and the network drop.

Argh.

So, when he told me he got Reach, I asked if he was planning to get his XBox hooked up. He hemmed and hawed, so, I informed him "you're getting your Christmas present early" and got him a WiFi adapter and XBox Live Gold membership for his system.

Finally he's online and we were able to game. Now he just needs to get a headset!

An Incongruity

I was, somehow, utterly un-shocked to hear Matt Cooke's name mentioned in the same sentence as the words "cheap shot"

You Might Be a Douche, If...

...you have VTEC or Honda as any part of your online userid, screenname, gamertag, etc. Frankly, if you have any "prized possession" as how you identify yourself. Frankly, if the best you've got to define yourself is some material item that you bought to fill some hole in your being, you lack real identity and you're never going to fill that hole.

I think that, were I in a position to do so, I would redesign the marriage laws.

DC Music Scene is Lame

I moved to the DC Metro area in 1993. It's a smidge over 17 years ago, now. In that time, I've seen DC go from being a mediocre music city to being a horrible one. Many clubs have died and the ones that remain aren't what they once were. Worse, the crowds that were never the liveliest ones, to begin with, have become completely lame.

Tonight, we went to see the Halloween Hootenany at the Post Pavillion. It's never been one of my favorite spaces - as you have to drive up to Columbia to get to it and it's not terribly well run (seriously: the power is out to one of your box offices when there's all these people doing WillCall or buy at the door??) or laid out (stuffing a second stage onto the slant of the lawn seats was pure brilliance, by the way).

Alice Cooper was awesome, if barely contained by his control-garments (kinda reminiscent of the OLD Elmer Fudd cartoons). But, for doing the schtick for fifty years, he's still rockin' out. Still well worth seeing if you like theatre-rock.

Rob Zombie put on his usual excellent show. It's been years since I've seen him, but he's still a balls-out performer.

Unfortunately, the crowd was completely and utterly lame - even by the low expectations I have for DC crowds. My buddy, John, had gotten us tickets in the pit. Now, it used to be, if you were in the pit at a Zombie show, you were coming home sweaty and bruised. Tonight, I came home neither. People were more concerned about being able to take digital pictures, stealing the (dozens of) balls fired out into the crowd and just not being bumped to even consider getting into the music enough to raise a sweat or any welts.

As I'm standing there in this total buzzkill of a crowd, all I could think was, "do you think Rob Zombie likes that, instead of  dancing or moshing, people at this show just stood around like statues with digicams in their hands?"

And, to be honest, I don't get the whole digital cameras thing. I mean, yeah, take a few snaps so you have something to remind yourself of the show. Just remember, though, that: A) you're not a photojournalist; B) the pix you're taking with your crappy cell phone camera or consumer-grade digicam are going to be horrible; and, most importantly, C) while you're busy dicking around taking pictures, you can't really get the full feel and enjoyment of the show. So, all those dark, blurry, color-smudged "photos" you're taking are going to, at best, evoke memories of half of the experience you could have had. Congrats.

I guess this all just really shows my age. I'm old enough to remember that, if a guy was holding something over his head at a concert, it was a woman, not a digital camera. I'm old enough to remember that, if you were down in the pit, you were there to be part of the experience: not to take pictures; not to not be jostled; not to be a human statue.

Perhaps, what's saddest of all about this is that, at 40 years old, people in my age group (and older!) are more into the shows than the idiot twenty-somethings. All I can think is, (big-time) "WTF".

Good Sports Day

Eagles win; Phillies win; Deadskins, Cowpats and Ravens all lose.

Fuck You, Falcons

Nice, dirty-hit, Falcons: shot to the head with your helmet on a defenseless player. Classy. Hopefully, the league will fine the hell out of you. Then again, the league really only plays lip-service to the whole head-injury thing.

Has It Just Been Veiled Outsourcing?

So, apparently, Germans are getting cranky about their un-assimilated aliens (much as other European countries and the US is).

Now, German chemical and other countries have long been accused of helping "rogue-states" with their WMD programs - be the chemical or nuclear programs. Hell, even the recent Stuxnet work was targeted at German-manufactured PLCs in Iranian nuclear reactors. Perhaps this has been a way for Germany to develop nuclear expertise and weaponry to provide a measure of plausible-deniability about their own nuclear ambitions. Perhaps the Reich will rise again (this time, ready to leave their opponents as radioactive parking-lots)?

Nah. While conventional war-making can be profitable, if you destroy your markets, you've no place left to sell. And, at the end of the day, Germans are big into commerce.

Food for the (Mentally) Feeble

I've been to McDonalds. When you're broke or just in a hurry, it's not a bad option. The food's utter shit and you feel awful, the rest of the day, after eating their food, but it's still an option.

Unfortunately, you have a non-trivial percentage of people who eat there regularly. I think that, not only is it killing their bodies but their brains as well.

Then again, I consider how stupid the average person I run into is, and then have to remember that "average" is a mid-point on a statistical spectrum. Clearly, the woman in this article falls somewhere on the dumber-side of that midpoint.

As I said, I've been to McDonalds. And, not just one of them, but pretty much all over the US, parts of canada and even Europe. They're all pretty much the same - construction-wise. While I don't generally like using public restrooms, sometimes, nature's call is a bit urgent, and I've had to relent. Any of the McDonalds' restrooms I've had the misfortune to use (most public restrooms, actually) have been pretty much the same: flimsy, lightly-constructed aluminum doors and walls, lightly anchored to the floors and walls, with ill-fitting locking/latching mechanisms and just barely clean enough to pass local healthcodes.

That said, the injuries reported in that article just don't seem reasonable. The stalls, themselves, even if they completely collapsed on her, don't contain enough weight/materials to cause those kinds of injuries. And, she's not claiming a total collapse, only that the door came off and fell on her. So, unless she was at some medieval-themed McDonalds where the stall doors were constructed similar to the drawbridge on an old castle or keep and a 500lb gorilla was jumping up and down on that door as it laid atop her, I have my doubts on the veracity of her claims.