Whaley's Journal

NFL Predictions for '09

2009-09-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

I made some wacky picks earlier right after this year's super bowl ended. I'm going to amend a few of those and give my full predictions before the year begins:

Playoff Teams:
AFC East: New England Patriots
AFC South: Tennessee Titans
AFC North: Baltimore Ravens
AFC West: San Diego
Wild Cards: Pittsburgh Steelers
Houston Texans

NFC East: Washington Redskins
NFC South: Atlanta Falcons
NFC North: Green Bay Packers
NFC West: Seattle Seahawks
Wild Cards: Minnesota Vikings
Chicago Bears

Worst Teams:
AFC: Denver Broncos
NFC: Detroit Lions

Super Bowl: New England over Atlanta

Awards:
Coach of the Year: Mike McCarthy (Green Bay)
Offensive Player of the Year: Michael Turner (Atlanta)
Defensive Player of the Year: Patrick Willis (San Francisco)
Offensive Rookie of the Year: Percy Harvin ( Minnesota)
Defensive Rookie of the Year: B.J. Raji (Green Bay)
Comeback Player of the Year: Fred Taylor (New England)

What Football Doesn't Teach You - Unlearning What I've Learned

2009-07-02T07:58:00.000-07:00

"It's not just a game. Football teaches you about life... <insert points to support this claim>" - this was the typical line of rhetoric I heard from various coaches throughout the entirety of amateur football career which spanned three years of high school five years of college (red-shirt year, included), four head coaches, five positional coaches, three strength coaches, and numerous other folks in authoritative coach or coach like positions. You know what, these men were mostly correct. I have Brian Aldridge and Wayne Jackson, my varsity high school head/position coach respectively to thank for teaching me how not to quit when I wanted to walk away after the first two weeks because it was too hard. That's a lesson that rare few things can teach a human being, and grueling competitive sports is one of them. I most definitely wouldn't be at this point in my life without their help. There are other various and similar lessons I learned as a player that have been pivotal themselves as well.

But there are lessons that just really don't apply to real life the way that coaches would have you believe they would. One must keep in mind that a coach basically has his or her paycheck in the mouths of a bunch of kids running around, so anything that can be said or done in order to demand near complete submissiveness to their goals/visions is necessary. Team sports just happens to one of those rare activities where maintaining such order is paramount to the success of a team. This applies to football even moreso, as cowboy behavior very rarely results in positive results. As a result, football players are trained to do exactly what they are told, to a tee, in a near militaristic format. Any subordination or even questioning is met with physical punishment in the amateur ranks (in the form of extra running, conditioning, etc. etc) and with fines in the professional ranks. So essentially, a collection of football players who perform well as a team and are regarded as good team players, for all of our brawn, strength, and athleticism, are really nothing more than a bunch of subservient sheep. It's necessary for the job...

I personally just happened to be a prototype example. I sucked it up and didn't question anything regardless of whether it made sense to me or not. I was referred to as a "very coach-able athlete". I took it as a compliment then. It is still somewhat of a complement now. But now that I'm out of that business and working as a full time employee in private enterprises, the equivalent statement would label me as a "company man", a "yes man", a "stooge", or even "a very political worker", since I automatically did anything anyone with authority requested of me and agreed with what they said. In other words, the perfectly coachable football player is just a warm bodied replaceable pawn not able to voice constructive criticism and objective thinking in the grand scheme of thing - an absolutely horrible attribute to have.

The fledgling years of my professional career were stifled as a result of this. Granted, I have done quite well given my age and background - way moreso than I would have ever guessed while still in high school/college - but I could have been much, much better and contributed much, much more had I let myself not been the passive receiver of dirty work and random oddball tasks for the longest time only because I was subservient and just happened to be a hard worker and good at what I do.

See, despite the fact that I got the work done, the marketplace doesn't provide even rewards based on how long or how hard someone works on the necessary but relatively lower profile tasks that require moderate to lower skillsets when compared to high level, highly skilled and critical work that knowledge workers today must perform to provide value (nor should it!). Said differently, those performing the menial work can be replaced, just like the labor of the wonderful employees behind the counter at your local <insert franchise here>. Those who are able to develop ideas, organize people, and even do the work when absolutely necessary due to their advanced knowledge/skillsets will always be most valuable because they are the irreplaceable ones.

But how does one develop such skillsets? It's certainly not able to be accomplished when one is mired in menial tasks. But how does one not get bogged down in menial tasks that someone else finds convenient to shuffle off to them? By dissenting! By learning how to constructively refuse to get bogged down in the work and contributing to the creative processes and decision making that has to occur in getting work done instead of just sheepishly accepting the work that one gets assigned by a superordinate. Sure, some amount of work still has to be done - the rubber has to meet the road somewhere, but that should be a shared burden and not to be carried by one person or one set of people who blindly accept it.

It was not until the last year and a half or so until I started to force myself to do this after getting run ragged during a grueling march to finish a software release in early 2008. I was accepting every possible menial task I could because that's how I was wired up to think from all of those years of having subservience beaten in to my brain and I thought this was the best way to contribute to the success of the project. At the end of the day, the launch itself happened, but was full of flaws. This was not my fault. The reality of it was that no matter how hard I worked or how many of me there were, the same result was imminent. It was after this point I started speaking up. I started questioning my managers and my VPs. I spoke my mind. I disagreed with people without the proverbial fear of getting benched or having to run stadiums... and this amazing thing happened - I found myself involved in alternative ways to do things, being asked for my own opinions and designs on how to implement things. I eventually helped make things better at this particular workplace *and* for myself because I started dissenting, sometimes outright refusing to do a few things because they did not make sense.

Fast forward a year later and I've already been promoted twice since the start of that aforementioned project, and I'm not so bogged down in work that I can't spend time sharpening my brain with new things related to my field. Had I kept the the same mentality I had that actually made me a successful football player, I'd probably be laid off, burnt out, or both by this point as just another code/systems monkey that can be replaced later, if needed.

"Think for yourself; question authority", said Timothy Leary. That's one vital life lesson that you will never ever learn from football. In fact, I learned and thought the exact opposite to a fault. Thankfully I was able to unlearn what I had learned...

The Power Of Delegation

2009-02-21T06:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had some delivery guys from Best Buy carry a new clothes washing machine I recently purchased up to my 2nd floor where the laundry closet it. It felt great, because neither myself or Kris needed to lift a thing other than a credit card out of my wallet and a pen to sign my name.

We moved relatively recently from a condo to a townhouse. In our youthful stubbornness, we decided we could handle the move ourselves without any outside help, excluding her parents helping us with organizing and packing up the kitchen and clothes. In other words, we we were going to tackle the big and heavy stuff ourselves. That worked out alright, effort wise, for the beds and a few random smaller pieces of furniture. It was not quite as nice for the bigger things. We nearly broke Kristin's back carrying up our couch and one of the chests we have. I myself was dog tired and lost productivity for the Sunday/Monday that we moved. But we got the job done without paying a single mover a dine.

What was the net amount of money kept after doing the job ourselves? In hindsight, probably -$400.

Despite my former college football player frame that might be conducive to manual labor (read: lifting heavy stuff), I make my living as a software engineer - a job that only requires mental lifting. I get paid to produce what my mind tells my fingers to type. Considering that particular line of work requires me to 1) stay constantly abreast of what is happening in the industry 2) learning new skills almost daily and 3) work on current projects, every minute of my time that I can spend or every ounce of energy that I can conserve in order to do one of those three things carries monetary value. In hindsight, it would have been a hell of a lot easier to just pay movers to handle all of that big stuff while I geeked away at my machine or reading a book.

The old me would have probably tried to find a way to pick up my new washing machineand carry it in myself, based on some stubborn pride and inkling that I could save some money. Instead, I let the movers tote it in, for about half the cost that my hourly wage would probably be were I earning one, whilst I worked away yesterday afternoon staying focused on my task.

Delegation is a beautiful thing, and something I need to learn to do more often.

Five Wacky NFL Predictions for '09

2009-02-13T06:39:00.000-08:00

I am waiting for massive svn commits to go through to our central repo. While that is going on, I figure it is time for a troll worthy post of wacky things I am going on a limb to predict to happen in the NFL in '09. I have absolutely no legitimate insight behind these predictions, for what it is worth.

Plaxico Burress will be the Comeback Player of the Year

Tom Brady's comeback will be underwhelming and he will not be one of the three QBs selected to the AFC for the pro bowl.

One team in the NFL will make the playoffs with a losing record. There is a 99% chance this team will come from the NFC West or NFC North. There is a 30% chance it will be the Arizona Cardinals with Matt Leinart at QB

For the first time since 1986 (Lawrence Taylor) the NFL MVP will be a defensive player. I am going to be really bold and predict that player to be Mario Williams of Houston.

Super Bowl: I have <drumroll /> the Washington Redskins over the Baltimore Ravens. It will be given a stupid label such as the Beltway Bowl.

Contact in NFL Non-Contact Drills? Big Suprise There...

2009-02-08T07:24:00.000-08:00

I just watched this story on Outside the Lines this morning on ESPN.

The gist of it is that there were several season ending injuries that occurred during a Houston Texans mini-camp due to contact. The NFL stipulates there is to be no contact during mini-camps, in which players do not wear pads. Apparently this is a big surprise to folks - not so much to me.

Guess what sports fans... this happens in college football also - and mostly for the same reasons. Coaches want contact in drills because it is the only way you can train a player to get better at live tempo and live speed. They are also told that for certain practices you can not have contact. But they get around it.

You line up offensive and defensive players who, if you've read Dark Side of the Game you'd know, really don't like each other at all, whatsoever, despite being on the same team. The natural tension, plus the fact guys are trying to win starting jobs and roster/travel spots almost guarantees players will still go 100% live even though they do not have pads on. If you have a boy scout player who does not go hard during one of these "non-contact" sessions, all a coach needs to do is point how that player is being lazy or is being a "pussy" and that situation is immediately remedied to the coaches liking. It's all social engineering, and football players are typically ants who will bitch about it, but not question it at the end of the day - as was the case with all but about Texans players from the aforementioned story.

The solution here is either to a) get rid of non-contact practices all-together as one commentator on the show pointed out or b) stipulate and enforce that if there is a non-contact practice that offensive players and defensive players CANNOT be involved in the same drill with each other, thus minimizing any chance of their being live contact.

Oh how do I get that creativity back?

2009-01-31T06:07:00.000-08:00

As a child, I was an extremely free spirited, imaginative, and confident boy with nothing that restricted my thought. Unfortunately during this period of time I had the patience of a gnat and could not sit still to save my life. Fast forward a good 20 years later and the reverse is true. I have managed to establish a decent amount of patience - in some cases almost monk-like (a recent 2 hour traffic jam didn't even raise my blood pressure one iota). However, I have lost that free spirited and imaginative nature I once had.

The lack of creativity in my adulthood was no more pronounced than last night when I sat out to start working on a development project again for the first time in a good year (my current day job doesn't require any actual application development). What I discovered was that I did indeed have the patience to sit firmly in my chair and focus and work for several hours at a time... what I did not have were the bursts of imagination and fearless mental exercising that resulted in massive amounts of fun as a kid. Some of it is fear of making mistakes; some of it is also being restrictive in my thinking where I essentially sandbox myself in to doing things a certain way.

After performing this bit of a self reflection this morning, I am now convinced that the key to really being productive in life for me is going to be centered around maintaining the patience that I've established as an adult and allowing my brain to not be bound by what I think I cannot do. That is of course easier said than done. I would be interested to hear what others do to let their minds think freely.

Perhaps it is time I start checking out some neuro-linguistic programming.

Nintendo's Evolution to Simplicity

2009-01-13T14:05:00.000-08:00

Here is a neat article detailing briefly how Nintendo has introduced simplicity into their video games and consoles and what they might be doing in the future.

I can definitely say that I have taken a similar turn in my thirst for games. As a teenager and college student I was an avid player of Final Fantasy games and first person shooters (notably the Quake series)... each very complex games in their own distinct ways. Nowadays, I just want to pick up a game and play it for an hour or so just to relax or have a game to play with my girlfriend. Nintendo's games fit this bill. Heck, my girlfriend can even play the new Madden on the Wii with its All-Play controls.

Potential Super Bowl Scenarios

2009-01-03T19:56:00.000-08:00

This years NFL playoffs provides potential for some very intriguing Super Bowl match ups. I write this now as San Diego is driving in the 4th quarter, down by three to Indianapolis, so that game is very much still a contest. However, with Arizona beating Atlanta, we lose the potential for a rookie QB/head coach matchup between the Ravens and Falcons with Ryan vs Flacco and Smith vs. Harbaugh. But... here are some other matchps:

Colts vs. Giants - The Manning bowl (and also the last two teams to win a Super Bowl)
Chargers vs. Giants - Rivers vs. Manning (if you recall, these two were traded for one another in the 2004 draft because Manning would not play for the then putrid Chargers).
Ravens vs. Giants - Rematch of the 2000 Super Bowl
Titans vs. Giants/Panthers - Kerry Collins a/g either of his former teams
Titans vs. Cardinals - Kurt Warner to play a/g the team he (barely) beat for his lone Super Bowl win
Falcons vs. Chargers - Michael Turner's former and current team (Falcons are already eliminated, so this will not happen)
Steelers vs. Cardinals - Ken Wisenhunt would be coaching against his old team

Can anyone else think of any intriguing matchups?

Study Shows Games may be Good for Aging Brains

2008-12-23T06:05:00.000-08:00

Here's a big duh article for me, but perhaps not for the rest of you:

Study Shows Games may be Good for Aging Brains - 1up.com.

This study, which shows playing video games helps older folks with their cognitive abilities (memory, reasoning, multi-tasking) really is no surprise to me. I attribute much of my own development of problem solving ability to playing video games. I might get knocked for saying it, but I always thought well designed, interactive, and engaging video games with a good story and lots of problem solving to typically be superior than your *average* book¹ for brain development and always superior to television or movies.

Most video games worth their salt, say something like the more recent Legend of Zelda or Warcraft III), are full of multiple branching decision points, cause and effect scenarios, quick decision making, and reinforcement of quick reflexes - albeit with your mind and fingers and not your typical functional muscle groups. You can not get this from the sedentary activity of being fed a movie or passively turning the page of some standard piece of fiction in which the words on the pages are never changed.

¹Note that I said your average book. Even the best video games can't supplant good literature when it comes to enriching your noggin.

The importance of Defensive Tackles

2008-12-22T05:45:00.000-08:00

The Sunday Night game last night between the Carolina Panthers and the NY Giants was further proof that having very good defensive tackles is a must to be a good football team in the NFL - or anywhere, for that matter. I have observed the downfall of the how stout the Jacksonville Jaguars defense was last year compared to this year after the departure of Marcus Stroud. Last night, it was the Panthers who were exposed after Maake Kemoeatu was unavailable. Their defensive line, while still above average, was vastly undersized and it showed. Poor Charles Johnson, a normally decent and young productive DE was force to play three technique some last night and got completely road-grated on the last two runs made by Derrick Ward by the Giants right side of their O-line. Not really his fault... guys at 270 pounds or less should not be asked to play in a three point stance on the interior of NFL defenses. Overall, it was a great game, but the lack of an presence at the DT position of Carolina was ultimately their downfall last night.

Yes... I play World of Warcraft

2008-12-14T10:00:00.000-08:00

And... I have been playing it for about three weeks and I play on average, about one hour a day (probably one or two quests a day). The very last post before this one involved new statistics on the demography of video game players that should shoot a hole through any stigma we as a society should have on playing video games. More specifically I have noticed, there is an even larger stigma on players of massively multi-player online video games - stigmas and stereotypes that these people are loners sitting in their parents basements who have quit their jobs, eat Doritos all day and are completely unproductive members of society. Yup, just like football players are all misogynistic, violent, dumb brutes...

I like destroying stereotypes with my own actions personally and a side-effect of my playing this game is that I am helping defeat yet another stereotype - the WoW player.

For me, I just wanted a fun game to play during my downtime each day and was getting tired of playing Warcraft 3 (did I mention I love the Warcraft mythology :P). So I picked up all of the games on a discount over Thanksgiving and started playing. I have a level 14 Drawf Priest and enjoy just logging when my girlfriend is busy on something and I'm not busy, completing a few quests, joining a quick group if needed to help with a quest, and then log off after an hour or two or when my girlfriend is ready to hang out or if I have real work to do. It is a great game to play casually, and in fact caters itself toward the casual player with increased experience for those who have been offline for a period of time.

The cool thing about the game is that it has TONS of ever growing content and probably will not get old for a while with me. But all in all, I just think it is downright fun and enjoy the time I do spend playing it.

Time to Erase the Stigma on Playing Video Games?

2008-12-09T08:20:00.001-08:00

It still does not fail that when I mention I play video games in my spare time as way of relaxing and using my brain to be active in doing fun thing I get odd looks from my significant other, family members, and friends.

Perhaps it is time I show them this research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The major stats:
60 percent of adults ages 30 to 49 are gamers
50 percent of women are gamers
23 percent of adults age 65 report playing video games

That is astonishing and also validates that video games are becoming just as much of a way for people to have fun than the more commonly accepted sports watching or dinner/movie crowd.

Eliot Spitzer: Break up the Banks

2008-12-04T08:31:00.000-08:00

Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York who resigned after engaging in less than honorable activities, is apparently now writing for Slate. The first article I read of his really resonated me - read it here. It basically discusses his opinion on our bailout of the banks. What is his thesis? We ought to make them smaller and keep them smaller so that the failure of one or a few huge monotholic entities does not put us into crisis mode much like we are now and also encourages them to be competetive.

I could not agree more with his assessment.

Jaguars Fail

2008-12-02T17:25:00.000-08:00

I am now a Jaguars fan this year. I liked the team very much last year - they were a huge, imposing ball control team that played hard and gritty and smacked you in the teeth.

I became an official fan now after moving to Jacksonville and attending three games. However, this is an unfortunate fact now as the Jags really do not look like the gritty team they were last year, winning only one game against the Lions since my move. They seem to be anything but gritty, actually. I will forgo badmouthing them too much - the media and other local fans do enough of that already. I know what it feels like to bust your ass for a not-so-good team and still hear fans still jeer your team and newspaper columns talk about your lack of effort and skill as if the welfare of millions of people depended on it. It is hardly deserved, but it is what it is.

You see, the Jaguars still look like they play hard, but they look entirely dysfunctional doing it... and they aren't imposing at all despite the nice physical stats on their roster. It is as if almost anyone who had confidence on that team has lost it by this point.

Personally, I just hope they keep the next two home games entertaining and we see reduced ticket prices next year :P I will still remain a fan.

Die Circuit City, Die!

2008-11-29T03:31:00.000-08:00

I tend to have a somewhat contrary viewpoint when it comes to a certain economic conundrum we all find ourselves in. Even to this today I remain a bit of a right wing, laissez faire, free(er) market kind of guy with little government intervention. I hate the bailout package. I believe companies who perform and make bad decisions poorly should be allow to die and allowed to die hard. Now without going into the sensitive issue of when those companies actually happen to be commercial banks that are responsible for lending the U.S citizenry money and keeping track of our virtual tender, I'll describe one company I'll be happy to see fade into the abyss or get swallowed and consequentially transformed because it sucks and deserves to lose - Circuit City.

Growing up as a video game playing and heavy metal music loving teenager near Jacksonville, North Carolina, I was pretty elated when we actually got a Circuit city. It was essentially the super-store for the combination of my two high tech loves in my little part of the world.

But in going to that particular branch store in Jacksonville, I either didn't realize, or witness the decay of, the quality of their customer service. I never put much stock in to shopping atmospheres or service quality when making purchasing decisions until I get fed up with Wal-marts who pepper you with employees who speak with poor grammar, always look scraggly, maintain dirty and dingy looking stores, and somehow seem to attract legions of mothers who feel compelled to bring their less-than-five year old children to the store who can do nothing but pierce my ear drums as they cry at the top of their lungs¹. As I've come to find out, Circuit City is sort of the Wal-mart of electronics retailers. Here are the features I've observed in each of the 4 or so Circuit City's I've set foot in for the last 5 years (Jacksonville-NC, Charlotte, San Jose, Emeryville):

Staff who are very sassy and don't' talk to you as if you actual are a customer in their store
Staff who ignore you, continuing what piddly conversation they are engaged in with a co-worker when you are looking their way to ask a question
Stores that are cramped
Shelves that are disorganized
Dingy looking floors
Prices that are starkly *higher* than competitors (most comparisons I've made have been at least $5 every time in a direct comparison to Best Buy).

In that list, number 6 is excusable if Circuity City maintained a competitive advantage elsewhere. Unfortunately Circuit City does not have any competitive advantage whatsoever. It is like the company is fully aware they suck and do nothing to separate themselves from the competition - or do they realize how bad they are? Earlier this summer Circuit City basically gave contract extensions and raises to a sizable chunk of their mid-upper management to make sure they stuck around. It is as almost if the C-level guys in that company WANT to positively reinforce negative behavior.

The final straw came for me this past summer, as I took a bus to the Circuit City in San Jose, which was right off of a bus stop, to pick up a pair of headphones and a case for my Sansa Rhapsody mp3 player. The items were a relatively paltry purchase, but still a purchase nonetheless. I walked to the unattended check-out counters expecting a worker to disengage from a conversation they were having with other colleagues (it was a slow day and they were all shooting the bull with each other). I stood for about 1.5 minutes waiting on one of them, when it dawned on me that I'm either not standing where they expect me to check out (despite there being a counter with a cash register/POS terminal turned on) or that they just didn't flat out give a hoot whether I bought anything or not. I could have spent a fraction of calorie's worth of energy to walk up to one of them and ask where I needed to check out, but I decided not to. I could not fathom giving my money to a store with such porous of service when there are other competitors who I'd rather see get my money. So I voted with my feet and with my dollar, walked 1/4 of a mile to a Best Buy, made my purchase (and *gasp* the workers there actually smiled as they helped me there) and I've been doing the same ever since.

So to Circuit City, I hope someone eulogizes you when you die or get swallowed up. It will not certainly be me.

1. Those babies are probably all crying as they too do not want to be in Wal-Mart.

Thanksgiving Hangover

2008-11-28T07:47:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving dinner rocks. Remorsing over my belly the next day... not so much. Periodically I'll do an evaluation of myself and realize that I'm starting to get a little bit out of shape and inactive. It just so happens that this time it occurs the day after I stuffed myself with a good 4,000 calories of food through the 24 hour period.

But oh was that pecan pie good! Now it is time to go run it off :)

My Book Meme Post

2008-11-13T08:39:00.000-08:00

Using aerobic activity to help you get cut up makes sense.

The rules for this meme thing are :

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open it to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

This excerpt came from The Encyclopedia of Body Building by Arnold Schwarzenegger, which just happens to be the first book on my book shelf - followed by a few tech books :)

Economy Trimming a Good Thing?

2008-11-08T06:17:00.000-08:00

Perhaps our little economic downswing will give us a chance to trim the fat. All of the media focus, as I've seen it, has been on the housing/mortgage collapse which has in-turn sent our banks into a huge downward spiral with the rest of us bailing those lending banks out. I've got relatively strong opinions about it, but the end result is that some of the banks that took these risks die out or get bought up (already happening), the banks who managed it well come out on top (read: JP Morgan Chase, etc.), and that perhaps we get some sane legislation that keeps future risky loans (of any kind!) from bouncing around like hot potatoes. I love capitalism, but you can't let it run completely unchecked - or so my reading of Thomas Sowell tells me.

After reading the weekly Vanguard Economic report, I'm a little further convinced our downswing might do some good after all. I'll let this section of the report do the talking:

Productivity in the nonfarm business sector increased 1.1% in the third quarter, a bit better than expected but below the 3.6% growth rate in the second quarter. The Labor Department's preliminary data showed that hours worked fell significantly more than output. The surprising rise in productivity during an economic slowdown may indicate that businesses are more nimbly managing their workforces. "This shows the economy was weakening well before the financial events of late September," Mr. Aliaga-Diaz explained. Unit labor costs increased more than expected (at a 3.6% rate in the third quarter compared with a decline of 0.1% in the second quarter), but analysts are not concerned about inflationary pressure from wages. On a year-over-year basis, productivity gained 2.0% and labor costs rose 2.3%.

Essentially, what this tells me is that businesses themselves are also trimming the fat and as a result, will probably become more profitable and eventually more competitive globally. I've actually observed this personally myself at my own employer, and I welcome it.

While he probably delivered it poorly, when John McCain delivered his line during the campaign that the "economies fundamentals were strong", I don't think he was being insincere, just perhaps narrow-minded. Large business outside of the financial sector seem to be doing A-OK to me (I'm still buying stock right now, fwiw) - their balance sheets are fine. It's the balance sheets of the consumer that are out of order. Unfortunately this means less spending power for the consumer which will ultimately result in less revenue for businesses, and most likely price drops. But this also has the inverse effect of making our exports more attractive, which is a trend I'd LOVE to see happen. That prediction along with that report from Vanguard actually makes me optimistic now for the longer-term.

Obamania omgzwtfbbq! Tax the Rich!

2008-09-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I don't watch enough youtube at work, but I just don't get Barack Obama. In one segment of a speech, he's talking of taxing those who have enough/too much/are rich/or [insert adjective to describe someone who's done well enough to earn a decent living for themselves], and in another segment wants America to be a "place where trying is enough to get you ahead".

Did I miss something in the segue here? Why on earth should I be arsed to "try" to "get ahead" if getting ahead means he thinks I ought to be taxed out the wazoo to support the livelihood of everyone else still "behind". And yes, I put "behind" in quotes there as America, to my knowledge, still remains the only country I'm aware of where being in the lower class really just means you have basic cable television and a DVD player on a 30+" inch television instead of the full satellite package with HD and the NFL Season Ticket package - which most "poor" folks will probably buy anyway even if they can't afford it because Americans in general have no financial restraint.

The problem as I see it is two-fold: 1) income taxation, and especially the progressive variety, is a subpar taxing mechanism if "fairness" is what is sought after 2) Americans in general have a mentality that they deserve more than they've earned and that others should pay for their lifestyle and/or mistakes. Obama misses wildly on acknowledging these two things as problems.

My own personal jury is still out on McCain and Barr... but Obama's appeal to populism just makes him look stupid and pandering to me.

Regardless, best case scenario now is that we get Ron Paul as a candidate in '12 :P

Apparently I'm Not Cuil Enough

2008-07-28T09:29:00.000-07:00

I just read on Wired that an ex-googler started her own search engine called Cuil (pronounced "Cool").

I kind of view search engines the way I view irc clients or text editors... do we really need another one?

Perhaps. The founder, Anna Patterson, reckons the search engine space still needs competitors since the way we search for things on Google hasn't really changed in the last 10 years and she doesn't suppose Google will change it. Perhaps she has a point. I was intrigued by other search engine efforts, such as Eurekster, which allowed you to create your own topical search engine - something more personalized. However, Google Personalized Search is somewhat doing this already - it's just not as overt and Google is also building quite a profile on your account in doing so.

Regardless, if Cuil wants to be a competitor, I'd reckon it first needs to find me. A search for "jason whaley" revealed no hits, despite Cuil's boasting that it is indexing more sites than Google. A search for "jason whaley" on google reveals pages about me in 4 of the top 10 hits.

TF2 Hitboxes

2008-07-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

Turns out there's a cl_lagcompensation variable in TF that actually makes shots to the rendered model (and not the separated hitbox) connect. Check it out in this video.

Wish I knew about this while i was still playing.

Code Blog

2008-06-25T01:34:00.000-07:00

I didn't make a post regarding this or provide a link, but I separated my tech/geek stuff out into another blog and am using this blog for journal type entries. Here's a link to my tech centered blog.

Working Late as an Early Bird

2008-06-24T08:31:00.000-07:00

I just woke up at 8:20 AM and I feel like utter crap. The reason why this is that I was up until 2:20 AM yesterday morning helping support another staging launch for some stuff that's going out into production on Wednesday night at 10PM. The duration of this launch sequence is going to be something like 8 hours, so essentially on Wednesday night, my work day is going to be from 10PM to 6AM Thursday morning - and potentially beyond if stuff goes awry (and it always does in some fashion).

So not only am I trying to support the testing work we are doing right now. I'm also trying to brace my body for the all-nighter. Staying up into the wee hours of the morning for work is not something this body is accustomed to. I'm the kind of guy who's up at 7:00 AM every morning and in bed by 10 PM. So now I have to get my body trained to do nearly the opposite.

Normal observers might just suggest I drink a ton of coffee. The problem however is that I believe I can already tolerate the affects of caffeine - I can drink three small cups of coffee at approximately 7PM and still fall asleep by 10PM. Such a strategy involving the hot and black magical potion won't work.

Instead I'm just trying to ease myself into it. Last night I was up until 2AM. Tonight, I may force myself to stay up until 4AM. By tomorrow night, I might be able to pull it off and still maintain some semblance of mental acumen.

Wish me luck!

George Carlin Passed Away

2008-06-23T08:46:00.000-07:00

Carlin was easily my favorite comedian of all time. I'll miss his stuff. I guess it's cliche to do a tribute, but here's my two favorite skits of his taken from You're All Diseased:

On Children:

On Religion:

Smiley Faces

2008-06-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

I have many problems. Here's two of them:

I sometimes get in a foul mood for no apparent reason
I really dislike signing those point of sale credit card swipes using the little fake pen and the small screen which renders my already porous handwriting completely discernible.

Being the problem solving individual that I would like to think that I am, I came up with something today while at Trader Joe's to help with both problems; from this day forward, instead of signing with my signature on any POS screen, I'm now going to sign with just a simple smiley face, as I did today. Unfortunately the clerk wasn't very amused. However, I was very amused and felt much better afterwards.

:)

Texas Tea

2008-06-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

I woke up a bit early this morning, and decided to actually read some news... something I do not really do much any longer. I found a quick article over at CNN Money on today's (6/19) oil prices.

Two observations:

Probably no matter what we do now with regards to our own oil consumption, the United States is no longer the sole consumer of the world's oil and cannot single-handedly drive the price through its demand of oil. A bit ironic that this is one negative that has come about by the rise of the other global economies, which we thought would indirect positive effects on our economy. This is one case where it seems to have a negative indirect effect.
In roughly 2004, I recall stories on NPR news that were reporting the phenomenon of $50 a barrel for oil as remarkable and spelled doom for us all. the current price as of today, roughly 4 years later, is $134.

Introversion to the Max?

2008-05-09T18:58:00.000-07:00

So, here it is Friday night at approximately 7:00 PM. I got home from work about 6PM and sat in the hot tub for a little bit. After decompressing a small amount, I then go on to what any fun friday night would be for me. That is assuming the same position that I've been all day, hunched in a chair and desk over my laptop and working on something. The project de jour tonight is a weechat plugin I've been itching to write. So now that I have a free Friday night, I think I'll do just that.

About that Resolution...

2008-04-27T15:00:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted on this blog. In fact, the last post I made was in regards to something that was keeping me busy this entire time.

This something would be my Master's thesis; which on April, 11 2008 I successfully defended it.

So now that my graduate school work is out of the way and have met my major resolution for the year, it's on to hopefully even bigger and better things. The timing couldn't be better, really. As soon as I stepped into my apartment after arriving back in the Bay Area from Charlotte, I kicked into high gear with work related stuff, and it feels like I haven't left high gear since. We have some major roll-outs to complete before mid-late May, and since I'm now the build and release guy for this project, along with being the random ops "please fix it" guy, who knows if I'll get a chance to breathe. It's a good thing I got that thesis out of the way so now I can really focus

One of my New Year's Resolutions

2008-01-02T18:11:00.000-08:00

I normally don't do resolutions. In fact, this is the first year in the past five or so that I remember making resolutions for. I'll spare writing out the full list. Only I am privy to those.

The one resolution I want to speak of is finishing my thesis. I should be done with graduate school. Alas I am not. I come home from work each evening and don't put in the required effort - using the excuse of not wanting to stare at a monitor for longer than the 8-10 hours a day I already do during the day jobs that I've had while I've been working on it. So my resolution is to get kicking and finish this thing. I'm no longer going to be a faineant. I've got to crank it out.

Inconsolata

2007-12-22T21:06:00.000-08:00

So, after getting pissed off looking at the Monaco font all the time in Mac OS X, I figure it's about time to find a fixed-width font that I wouldn't mind using day in and day out for my terminal and text editors. I quickly found this font, dubbed Inconsolata, that does the trick quite nicely.

First Good Use for Second Life

2007-11-27T07:13:00.000-08:00

To be honest, I couldn't think of a single genuine good use for Second Life that couldn't be accomplished better through some other means - until I read this story on eWeek.

People with severe paralysis could find new opportunities from shopping to doing business or making new friends in the virtual world of Second Life by just thinking about it, if experiments being conducted by a Japanese university bear fruit.
In a recent demonstration, Junichi Ushiba, an associate professor at Keio University and head of the project, showed how electrodes attached to the scalp can pick up the electrical changes associated with brain activity.
The data can be interpreted by a computer, allowing a user to manipulate his or her online persona, or avatar, around the streets of Second Life without using a keyboard or mouse.
"When people are paralyzed, of course their lives become restricted," said Ushiba, as a graduate student took a virtual stroll through the historic streets of Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital, without moving a muscle.
"But with this technology we can interpret their intention to move, allowing them to go shopping in Second Life or even set up a business."

How cool is this? It's affording an opportunity to people unable to move and operate in a virtual world, one meant to somewhat mimic the real one that we with four fully functional limbs take for granted sometimes, in very real ways. A development like this is something that warms my heart and makes me glad that there exists intelligent people in this world who are making things that can genuinely enhance the lives of others.

Nightmare Before Christmas... goofy glasses and all

2007-11-11T13:06:00.000-08:00

Well, the title isn't completely accurate; watching a 3D movie now requires a set of glasses that do not have a red tint on one side and a blue tint on the other. The semi-nauseating headache you receive from wearing them is still slightly the same.

Aside from that, the experience was a good one. I have never seen The Nightmare Before Christmas before and I'm not much into musical style entertainment, but I enjoyed myself. It's a fun little story that explores the concept of a character stricken with ennui over what his life amounts to, tries to be something he isn't, screws up the process royally, but redeems himself at the end - remaining completely oblivious to the disaster he may cause in the process because he is so blinded by only his positive fantasies about what he wishes to be. Even the musical parts of the movie were enjoyable.

"You can't fit a square peg into a round hole" - this is the thought that stayed in mind for the entire movie. Well that thought and "boy I forgot the headache these glasses can give you".

In Rainbows

2007-11-10T16:08:00.000-08:00

So I took advantage of the "pay what you want" cd from Radiohead. I didn't pay a dime before my download. After listening to it nonstop for the past three days, I think I'm going to go back and drop York and company about $20... it's that good.

The Beginning of the End?

2007-10-10T08:32:00.001-07:00

First, it was Radiohead. Now it's Reznor.

Less than a month after publicly calling executives at his music label unprintable names, rocker Trent Reznor has signaled that his days of working for a record company are over.

The only official member of the band Nine Inch Nails, Reznor announced Monday that the group is now "free of any recording contract with any label." Representatives from Reznor's music label, Universal Music Group, were unavailable for comment.
Reznor provided few details in a note on the band's Web site about how the group plans to proceed, but his announcement raised hopes among fans that he will follow the lead of British band Radiohead, which last week announced it would handle sales and distribution for its upcoming album, In Rainbows without the backing of a label.

I hope this becomes the new model for music distribution. Basically, the RIAA is really good at screwing the musician, and wants to be really good at screwing us, the consumer - by underpaying artists, for their wanting to continue overcharging us for physical media which contains said work, and wishing to encumber any digital formats of music.

So instead of fighting the machine that is the RIAA, why not just completely take it out of the picture? I love the direction that Radiohead is going. Their CD comes out today and they are making it publicly available for everyone to download - no charge necessary, but you can pay for it if you wish. Just for their willingness to make this gesture, I think I may drop them $20 - twice as much as what I would pay for the CD through Rhapsody. This is how I want my music distrubuted and I want to see the artists receive all of my money for making it, and not some power hungry behemoth of a middle-man.

Now I'm just waiting to see what direction Trent goes here... and waiting to see how many may follow suit.

More Warm-Fuzzies from those "protecting" us from Terrorism

2007-10-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

More stuff from Bruce... I'll copy/paste this directly from here:

In a telephone interview, Fischvogt also told me, "we received word from the pilot about the suspicious activity before the flight landed." Fischvogt explained that when Flight 518 landed, it sat on the tarmac for 45 minutes before FBI "took jurisdiction," boarded the plane and arrested two people. DHS and local law enforcement were also present on the tarmac but "FBI took over the sight and the situation," Fischvogt said.
"Wait a minute," I asked, "The passengers were stuck inside the plane with two bad guys for 45 minutes before law enforcement boarded the aircraft?" I wanted to make sure I heard Fischvogt correctly.

"Yes," Fischvogt confirmed.

Consider the agencies present 24/7 at the federalized Raleigh-Durham International Airport: FBI, DHS, (TSA & Federal Air Marshal Service), Joint Terrorism Task Force, ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) and airport police. And yet it took seven law enforcement agencies some forty-five minutes to put a single officer on the plane to counter the threat and secure the aircraft?

My analysis is that the delay was caused by FBI and DHS fighting over who had jurisdiction; protocol over 'acts of air piracy' are a constant source of bickering between the two agencies and have been the subject of at least one DHS Inspector General's Report.

Guess I need to go earn millions of dollars now so I can own a personal jet - which prevents me from ever having to put up with any of this tomfoolery.

Letting yourself be terrorized

2007-09-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

Here's a post from Bruce Schneier (which was gathered from some other blog) on how the Iraqis have shot themselves in the foot trying to prevent terror-by-chlorine.

So think about this the next time you have to walk through airport security and ponder how much time/money/effort is being spent to protect you on a flight. And while the negative effect airport security is an invasive and costly inconvenience that pales somewhat in comparison to an outbreak of cholera... the principle is still the same. Societies and governments are changing their behavior in direct response to the *prospect* of terrorism - which is precisely the goal of terrorism. It's sad really.

Patience is a Virtue

2007-09-12T09:03:00.000-07:00

I was hanging out on irc this morning while reading the news, trying to help a friend, who is also a newbie out with a java programming question. Well, more accurately, I was standing on the side while the rest of the channel was telling him to go RTFM. My friend wasn't flustered, but was eager to want to learn everything right away.

...and someone pasted this link to the channel.

I've been struggling with this same thing in my head for... well actually for as long as I can remember. It doesn't matter if it was football, learning how to code, attempting to date women, performing research, or almost anything that requires some amount of patience. I get so easily frustrated when things don't happen immediately.

Case in point, my junior year of high school I was starting on an undefeated varsity team and was miserable because I thought I wasn't playing well. I wanted to be the best and I was upset that I wasn't. The reality of it is, however, is that it was only my 2nd year of playing football and such an expectation is unrealistic. Same thing occurs in my third year of college football. I was ready to quit because I thought I sucked. The reality was I had only started 2 games the year before and still had much learning and physical growth to do before I could be where I wanted. Once I finally relaxed and I did my thing over the next two years, had fun playing ball, and the end result was a few awards that went my way.

But the point here is not personal gratification. The point here is that things take time. I've been hacking on a Master's thesis that has taken me nearly a year (and it's still a crap shoot as to whether I can still crank it out in time to finish this semester). Is it because I suck at it? No... it's because I've only just started to try doing research-type things and I'm learning very slowly as I go. I get upset about it very easily when writer's block hits or when something I try doesn't work, but that's only because it doesn't happen right then and there like I'd wish it would.

My best friends have pointed this out to me as well. I can only work hard and let the rest take care of itself. You can't force life to bend at your will. You can only work at it and take what's given to you. This morning was yet another reminder of that... and somehow I'll have to keep reminding myself that everything worthwhile that I'm going to do is going to require patience and time.

The Good News about App State

2007-09-02T09:50:00.000-07:00

I found out some good news about App State this morning that has cheered me up. Well, it is good news to me, at least.

After reading this article from Pat Forde on espn.com, it has come to my attention that the infamous South Carolina Miss Teen USA contestant is planning on attending ASU... you know the one that provided this 50 seconds of hilarity:

So maybe, just maybe, I can take some solace in the fact my alma mater has the relative one-up on my arch-nemesis in academics for the time being, even though my old team has some catching up to do in football.

Could this have been a worse day of college football?

2007-09-01T23:46:00.000-07:00

I believe not:

Appalachian St - 34
#5 Michigan - 32

Alabama - 52
Western Carolina 6

*sigh*

SugarCRM succeeding using open source as a business model

2007-08-27T08:28:00.000-07:00

Proof that OSS can be monetized: here's TFA.

Turn off those automatic updates...

2007-08-26T08:20:00.000-07:00

because Microsoft WGA is broke! Doing an update before the problem is solved could invalidate your legitimate copy of Windows.

I would poke more fun at this, but seeing as how I only run windows at the moment (on my work machine and my sole personal laptop... I own no desktops atm), I really can't jeer at this too much.

Crunchtime

2007-08-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

The irony of the last post is that taking my work and everyday life seriously and not partying hard is precisely what got me to this point in my life. And in order to sustain my pattern of upward mobility, and by upward mobility I don't necessarily mean monetary status, I'm going to have to keep it up.

So here's the background - I've got to finish work and writing on a thesis if I want to complete my Master's degree. The thesis is the only requirement I have left. My original goal for completion was May of '07, which obviously didn't happen. Now, this Summer hasn't been the most productive season for performing research work and I've spun wheels the entire time. Basically, I keep tweaking and adding to my little API to work with the Netflix Prize dataset, which one day I'll release to the public as an OSS library once the degree is finished. The work I've been doing to my API/code should, in theory, make experimenting with the dataset easier. The problem is that I've been doing all sorts of tweaking and no sort of experimenting.

Now it doesn't help that I've been working full-time jobs for nearly the entire time I've been working on the thesis (the lone exception was about 2 weeks I spent at my parents' new house helping my Pops with odds and ends). Chances are strong I will probably continue to work full-time too. But, I don't want to be in the business of making excuses. So now it's mid/late August and I've got roughly 2-3 months to wrap this thing up and get something near final written up.

So with that said, I probably won't be very accessible for a while, at least until I get near a finishing point. Instead, I'll be throwing down the coffee and getting my butt in gear to finish this thing and make a contribution to research... and obtain a Master's degree :)

Working too much

2007-08-10T07:40:00.000-07:00

Great little opinion/blog over at c|net on working too much.

Flash Sucks?

2007-08-08T08:42:00.001-07:00

According to this guy, flash sucks because it's apparently a usability problem for users. He may have listed other reasons, but I don't know what they are because I stopped reading after the second paragraph:

The ironic thing about Flash is that its use is so frequently self-defeating. Flash is often used in an attempt to make sites more user friendly. But replacing familiar browser components with custom Flash garbage only hurts usability. Consistency is imperative for a UI — users learn how to do something once, and can apply that knowledge in tons of places. But with Flash, overzealous designers try to “fix” what they see as bad interface models by creating custom Flash crap. This sucks.

Hmmm... I wonder if this guy has ever used Youtube. You know that INSANELY popular video website that is easier to use than automatic car door locks? And guess what, the video player Youtube uses is built on Flash! The problem here isn't the technology, the problem is the implementation of said technology. Your random movie promotion website might get extremely obnoxious with their use of Flash, but that doesn't make it a technology that "sucks".

August is now officially my favorite month of the year

2007-08-07T06:46:00.000-07:00

Two Reasons:

Football season is beginning - teams are in training camp and the anticipation is mounting
I no longer have to attend training camp

Does Wired pay attention to research?

2007-08-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

Hey Wired, you mentioned that you want social networks to be open to the greater web, solving the problems of the content found within large social networks being closed to the rest of net (MySpace and Facebook, in particular), right? So how on earth could you write that article and not even consider, let alone make mention of, the Semantic Web as one of way doing it? It's simple... the web is not going to be able to establish the complex and open relationships Wired is so quixotic about without an implementation of the contents of the Semantic Web. I find it foolish to even imagine such a thing be widespread, and usable to general public without it.

California's Secretary of State takes it to voting machines

2007-08-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a summary from the NYT.

Basically, the Secretary of State of California, Debra Bowen, had some Cal-Berkley security researchers go to town on the voting machines being produced by the top three electronic voting machine vendors and every single one was cracked, and very easily.

It's really simple if you ask me... voting machines are completely unreliable and so amazing vulnerable right now to being attacked to rig our elections. We need a paper trail as part of electronic voting machines so that our elections can not be completely stolen. Here's a bill currently sitting in Congress that may actually address this.

Southern California

2007-08-02T19:19:00.001-07:00

This past weekend, my friend Kristin came in to town. We rented a car and took off down Highway 1 south and drove all the way from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles on Highway 1. For some reason, all of my friends who have never visited California think of it as nothing but sunny beaches and bikini babes, etc. etc. But driving Highway 1 south of Santa Cruz was anything but sandy beaches. It basically rivaled, and I dare say exceeded, the Blue Ridge parkway in terms of its beauty.

We stuck around for a night in Northern L.A. and drove around Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and Hollywood for a morning - enough to say we've been and have seen what it's all about. We were essentially being tourists. We then took off to Santa Barbara for the rest of the weekend and did some major relaxing and ate some great Mexican and Indian food, as well as drinking lots of really good coffee. Santa Barbara was by far one of the coolest towns I've ever visited. Extremely clean and relaxed downtown, sits on the beach, lots of great little restaurants, and not very crowded at all.

I may have some pictures soon. Of course, I still live in the stone age and use disposable cameras for all my pictures, so you'll have to wait until I finish the roll and then go get all of them developed. One day I may invest in a digital camera just for this purpose... or not :)

Michael Vick is either a liar or a masochist

2007-07-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

Michael Vick is lying to us. But pleading "not guilty" to charges of being associated with dog fighting is not his lie. Instead his lie came in the form of a written statement his lawyer read aloud to reporters today. Here's the quote, which I will paste below and bold out the part that is a fib

Today in court, I pleaded innocent to the allegations made against me. I take these charges very seriously and look forward to clearing my name. I respectfully ask you all to hold your judgment until all the facts are shown. Above all, I'm sorry my mom has to go through this most trying time and the pain it has caused my family. I also want to apologize to my Falcon teammates for not being with them today at the beginning of training. There is nowhere I'd rather be today than in camp with my team.

So either Michael Vick has proven himself as a blatant liar, or perhaps he is just a masochist - because no man, unless he enjoys self-torture and masochism, would ever make a comment like Vick made today and be truthful about it. Training camps are hell, and there is something seriously wrong with you if you can't think of a better place to be than in a training camp.

NBC reckons file-sharing should be stopped entirely for.... corn farmers

2007-07-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

Before I start my work day, I figure I'd share this quick tidbit from Ars Technica.

Despite the overwhelming subsidies corn farmers are receiving these days for producing ethanol, NBC reckons peer to peer file sharing (and other types of 'illegal' downloading of content) should be stopped wholesale by content filters as central locations (ISP's for example) and justify their stance by stating that corn farmers are suffering because popcorn isn't being bought in the theater.

Are you kidding me?

Transfer at 15Gbps over wireless

2007-07-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

From TFA Dr. Dobbs article:

Georgia Tech scientists have demonstrated extremely high data transfer speeds with a wireless technology utilizing an ultra-high-frequency part of the spectrum, near 60 GHz. The transmission works only over short distances, with 15 Gbps transfers at 1 meter, 10 Gbps at 2 meters, and 5 Gbps at 5 meters. This sort of data rate would allow for the transmission of an entire DVD in seconds.

How neat is that? I typically don't get very excited over hardware and networking type things, nor do I know a great deal about them, but that has amazing potential.

I thought this why we all own personal computers in the first place.

2007-07-21T15:32:00.000-07:00

Here is how the new One Laptop per Child initiative is starting off.

Another Great Buddhist Quote

2007-07-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.

- T.S. Eliot

The secret to relieving anxiety is...

2007-07-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

Weightlifting. I've recently discovered for about the 30th time in my life that it's a bit hard to let your mind drift off and dwell on things that get you down while at the same time attempting to handle a 225-lb bar bouncing up and down off of your chest, which never goes more than 3 more feet away from your neck. Not to mention getting "the pump", as Arnold so eloquently describes here:

Playing with the big kids

2007-07-18T06:56:00.000-07:00

I was waiting on an elevator yesterday to take me up to the 15th floor for my normal lunch+research work routine where I overheard a conversation between a more than middle-aged man and a younger Asian woman. Both looked fantastically well to do.

In this conversation I was subjected to overhear the conversation whether I wanted to or not, and it turns out I actually didn't mind. The middle-aged man was playing the role of the wise mentor with the younger lady playing the role of the learner - well, she was at least nodding her head a lot and agreeing.

I couldn't gather much about the context as I only eavesdropped on the conversation for approximately 2 minutes, but it sounded like the woman was on a tough assignment at work, had a bad meeting, or was just discouraged for whatever reason. So the older man was off sharing the wisdom, trying to encourage her.

So as lame as this picture sounds painted, I heard something profound come out. The man began by trying to explain sports analogies and how sports can relate to everything in life. I've only heard that whole bit a million times from my football days, but he continued on talking about little kids playing sports. He said (paraphrased), "you know how the kids who are good in sports become good in sports? It's not by playing constantly, although it helps. It's by playing constantly and also playing with all of the older kids. You see when you play with the kids who are already bigger, faster, and stronger than you, it forces you to play that much harder and to focus that much more to even be on a level playing ground. But over time, your skill accelerates and you catch up to the older kids in skill and you will be miles ahead of your direct peers. The same is true in everyday life. If you want to get better, then play with the kids who already further ahead in the game than you".

There are so many parallels here for me, I 'd have trouble listing them all. For example everyday I walk in to work here feeling a bit overwhelmed by the talent and brains of those who work around me. But to put it in perspective, I can learn from them, learn how they think, what they study, how they approach problems etc. etc. And that thought, and I've had it several times before, keeps me going despite my own personal complexes of not being good enough. But now I have a great sports analogy to explain it by, relate to it, and share with others.

Smokeless Bars

2007-07-11T07:46:00.001-07:00

I've discovered very quickly that one of the neatest things about California are the smokeless bars. Bars have typically been a loathsome place for me - places filled with loud, obnoxious smoking alcoholics who infect the place with nicotine laden clouds. So much to my surprise, the same is true not on this side of the country. California prohibits smoking in any public building (iirc) and thus there is no smoking in the bars. What this seems to translate into is a) a much more pleasant experience of actually having a clean place to hang out and drink a little booze, and b) the attraction of more 'normal' folks in the bar (read, people who wouldn't normally populate a bar due to the aforementioned reasons I used to hate them). And as a result, I am now someone who doesn't mind hanging out in a bar.

Phone Based Spin on Social Networking

2007-07-05T07:17:00.001-07:00

Here's a new site that is attempting to bring social networking to the phone: Ccube.

For an overview of what it is about, here's the transcript of a Marketplace piece covering Ccube.

Neat concept - but I don't see this flying for three reasons.

First, it's not free. Yeah, it's only 7$ for some 250 minutes of talk time and there's some sort of free trial... but again, you are actually having to shell out some dough for the service. Part of the reason MySpace and Facebook succeed is that they are free and rely upon advertising revenue as their business model. By charging for the service, a critical mass will not be gained, which is necessary for a social network to succeed as a business model.

Secondly, this spin on social networking relies on finding people with similar interest, but who will be complete strangers. Again, in this contrasts MySpace and Facebook, which are mostly built from connections to friends who already know each other and then some FoF's (friends of friends). Sure there is "cold-calling" in these social networks, but the result of a cold-call in the web based social networks is just an email message from "RndmGuy123". However, this service is going to have your personal phone ringing with actual calls from whoever "RndmGuy123" and no one else. Empirical observation of how discriminating most folks are with having random people call them leads me to believe this model will not work well.

Thirdly, it won't lead to anything viral. Because connections are made through the phone and not through a computer system, it will be difficult to propagate things across a wide network. So you can kiss those viral marketing techniques that work so well on MySpace good-bye for this service - which means little to no ad revenue for Ccube. Here's a quick bit on viral marketing if that last sentence didn't make much sense.

Buddhist Daily Mediation

2007-07-04T08:21:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of amidabuddha.org's Daily Meditation, I give you a very profound Buddhist thought of the day:

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Fail-Safe X.org Coming to Next Ubuntu Release

2007-06-29T08:13:00.000-07:00

Basically, X.org (the typical graphical display portion of most Linux distributions) will have a fail-safe configuration and better graphical configuration options in its 7.3 release. The new Ubuntu release should have this included also.

Here's a link from ArsGeek

Libertarian Case for Free Software

2007-06-25T07:06:00.001-07:00

Typically Free / Open Source Software gets associated with being communist like in nature. A prominent Libertarian columnist states otherwise, that FOSS demonostrates many Libertarian principles. Very interesting.

Here's the article, courtesy of www.theserverside.com

Knocked Up gets a little knocked down for not considering alternatives.

2007-06-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

And by alternatives I mean the *gasp* "A" word - abortion.

Here's the article.

The article is completely out of scope. Knocked Up is a comedy - and apparently a very good one. Abortion is about the least funny thing you can bring up in conversation, let alone a movie. In order for this movie to meet its goal of making people laugh, no one in their right mind would include nor want abortion as a theme in this movie. If a statement needs to be made about women's choices in unwanted pregnancies, looking for a comedy film to do it is completely misguided and criticizing it for such is just being opportunistic.

Want an alternative to fuel? It's not coming without even higher energy prices.

2007-06-20T21:33:00.001-07:00

Finally, I found someone in the mainstream media who shares my opinion on this. That is of course if you consider NPR mainstream media.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2007/06/20/PM200706206.html?refid=0

Blood Diamond Made My Eyes Bleed

2007-06-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

so bad… what kind of movie shows you kids massacring villages with guns and doesn’t even make you feel emotional about it?

Here is Blood Diamond in a nutshell:

Leo DiCaprio is some diamond smuggler from Zimbabwe who is in Sierra Lione trying to run a deal. His accent is convincing (I assume it is anyway since I’ve never met a Zimbabwe native), but his character is not. He gets busted, runs into a character played by Djimon Hounsou in jail during a government raid of a RUF diamond camp, in which he was placed after being captured and separated from his family. While there, Djimon discovered some huge diamond and hid and Leo finds out about it and wants to retrieve it to pay off debt and make out like a rich bandit. Somehow he convinces Djimon’s character that he can help find his family in exchange for the diamond with the help of a character played by Jennifer Connelly, who is a reporter and apparently has some sort of sexual and compassionate connection to Leo’s character – although that was unconvincingly acted out also. This is very disappointing, as I was on such a hot streak with Jennifer Connelly flicks lately like Dark City and A Beautiful Mind.

After TONS of moments involving Hollywood’esque blow ‘em up scenes in which the characters narrowly escape by their chinny-chin-chins (and part of me wanted Leo’s character to get hit since he is the most unlikeable protagonist I’ve seen in the past two years), Leo and Djimon a) find the diamond b) find Djimon’s family c) rescue Djimon’s son after the two had a confrontation one could have predicted 2 hours before it happened in the film. As a final resolution, Jennifer Connelly's character, again in an unconvincing sequence of events, reveals to the public a scandal of the diamond company responsible for encouraging diamond smuggling.

Here are the problems with this movie: it has bad characters and/or acting, tries to be a (poor) adventure movie in which the conflict is centered on unlikeable or barely likable characters instead of focusing on a real problem going on around them, is horribly predictable, and is totally a Hollywood production. For a movie to close the credits telling of the strife of civil war and children soldiers in Africa, it really should have been telling a story about that instead of following around a greedy prick. And to top it all off, the movie was 2 hours and 20 minutes!

My advice - don’t waste your time. If you want to see a movie that documents the strife in Africa and presents a cogent story alongside it, go watch The Last King of Scotland (even though it is set a bit in the past).

This also marks the first time that MovieLens has really disappointed me. It predicted Blood Diamond at 4.5 stars out of 5. I give it 2 out of 5 stars.

Recommending the Amateurs

2007-06-17T17:07:00.000-07:00

A newspaper columnist from the San Jose Mercury News pointed out something so obvious to me that I had not been able to put my finger (and mind) on it before. Here's the original article .

Finding great writing in the blogosphere or great music on MySpace isn't an impossibility - it's an engineering problem. Imagine a system that filters content based on trusted friends or people with tastes similar to yours, or finds it by scanning your favorite music site or blog. It's a complex technical challenge, with companies from Microsoft to Amazon struggling to crack the code. But Keen's idea that the only way to hear great music is to buy whatever the four mega-labels are selling at $17.99 per CD is absurd.

This is probably the biggest opportunity in the new Web 2.0 online world - a world that is centered around communities and user driven content. Intelligent filtering is required so that among the vast see of user submitted content, the best of the best may be brought out. But the catch here is that I don't believe you can leave it up to the things that are most popular. For instance, it seems every time I turn around, some section of digg has a story about the Lolcats on one of its main pages (main page, technology etc.). While it seems this internet cultural phenomenon is popular, it doesn't do me any good and I'd love to see this stuff removed from the digg news I read. This is where personalization of content comes in. Reddit.com is trying to perform this very thing - but personalization is required in all domains, and not just popular websites. It is needed for Youtube, for the Blogosphere, for podcasts... for any content really that the everyday user of the internet is producing - the amateurs being referred to in the article. The garbage needs to be weeded out from the quality stuff, but for the internet to be truly useful, the 1% that is quality can't be decided by popularity alone nor by a central authority - rather things must be made available based on the individualized tastes of the person consuming all of this content.

I'm Here

2007-06-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

Me, my laptop from which I am typing this post, and two bags of luggage made the full trip across the entire Estados Unidos via three Delta airline flights from Jacksonville, North Carolina to San Jose, California.

First impressions? I'm really not adept at giving those, but I will attempt it anyway. The first thing I observed was how spread out the city was. It reminded me a bit of Jacksonville, FL. A decent sized center city but not overwhelming and very spread out, but still dense in the sense that the residential areas are tightly organized. The downtown skyline was surprisingly short... and I've come to find out this is so because the airport is so close to downtown building height restrictions have been placed on the what would be skyscrapers. This still doesn't stop the Adobe building from being simply massive, as it covers what looks to be 3-4 acres of land and still rises a good 30 stories in the air.

After checking into the hotel I took a stroll around town on my two attached wheels (read: feet). The first thing I saw that just made me think "wow, this is cool" was a collection of 50 or so skateboarders in a parking lot, all just having what looked to be a really fun time. I then proceeded to head toward the Willow Glen area to check out a potential residence (as of the time of this writing, I still haven't moved into a place). To get there, I, for the first time, took public transportation by myself. It wasn't bad... a little bit of a wait but I can live with it. Willow Glen was a nice little area - it felt like a small older suburb than part of a large city, containing lots of small stores and restaurants. I will most likely be moving into a place there this weekend.

All in all, I like it so far, based on the less than 24 hours I've spent here. I'll give more updates as I've experienced more.

That's What They Get For Speculating.

2007-06-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

So, CNBC has a contest that pays out 1 million dollars to the stock picker who picks the best stocks over some short period of time. I don't even pay attention to it because a) I don't have the time b) it's a practice in pure speculation and recklessness. And as it turns out, those who who did waste their time in gambling on what a bunch of people in Wall Street thinks a company is worth have been gamed. It turns out there is a bug in CNBC's contest that is allowing contestants to change their stock picks after trading hours retroactively, thus giving a few knowing contestants a huge advantage.

In the meantime, I'm giggling because I spend 3 minutes a month feeding my index fund which has been gaining a fair 7% increase since I started... allowing me to focus on real problems instead of gambling on some speculation game.

Kibbles and BITS

2007-06-10T08:06:00.001-07:00

Admittedly, I'm not much of a hardcore programmer, I've never done any real work with bit manipulation. So this morning I figured I'd learn by actually trying out those operators in Java that operate on bits... you know, all of the operators they will never use unless you are doing some real low level hackery. It turns out, that it bit manipulation isn't really that hard. Here's a quick main method that demonstrates, briefly how all of those bit manipulations work.

Edit: I just realized that using the <pre> tag causes the text to disappear into the void in my Blogger template. Here's a quick link to a pastebin where I placed the code:


public class Bits
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
/* ~ switches all bits to their opposite value (all 0's become 1's and
 * vice versa.  5, which is 00000101, is switched to 11111010, which is
 * -128 + 122 = -6 (the first bit represents the sign via two's complement.)
 */
int x = 5;
x = ~x;
System.out.println(x); // -6



/*
 * -, or Unary minus operator to switch the sign of a primitive.
 * -5 is 11111010 in binary, but when the unary minus operator is
 * applied, it is changed to 00000101, which is a positive 5.
 * This works as expected on double values also.
 */
x = -5;
x = -x;
System.out.println(x); //5

double y = -5;
y = -y;
System.out.println(y); //5.0



/* << x =" 5;" x =" (x" x =" 127;" x =" x">> is a signed right bit shift.
 * 5 is 00000101.  A shift to the right equals 00000010, which is 2. THe
 * last 1 bit pushed off to the right is lost.
 *
 * -128, or pushed one to the right is -64, ALL bits are pushed to the
 * right, but the sign is retained.
 */
x = 5;
x = x >> 1;
System.out.println(x); //2

x = -128; //111111111 11111111 11111111 00000000
x = x >> 1;
System.out.println(x); //111111111 11111111 11111111 10000000



/*
 * >>> right unsigned shift bit.  Moves all bits, regardless of whether
 * the bit is for the sign, to the right.
 */
x = 5; //00000101
x = x >>> 1;
System.out.println(x); //2

int z = -128; //111111111 11111111 11111111 00000000
z = z >>> 24;
System.out.println(z); //00000000 00000000 00000000 11111111



/*
 * Bitwise and, &.  Keeps only the 1's present in both sets of bytes
 */
int a = 1; //00000001
int b = 3; //00000011
int c = a & b;
System.out.println(c); //2 or 00000010




/*
 * Bitwise exclusive or, ^.  Any bits that differe a converted to 1's.
 * All the rest are 0's
 */
c = (byte) a ^ (byte) b;
System.out.println(c); //1 or 00000001




/*
 * Bitwise inclusive or, |.  Any bits that have a 1 between the two
 * values are converted to 1's.  The rest are 0's.
 */
c = (byte) a | (byte) b;
System.out.println(c); //3 or 00000011
}
}

Sunday Morning Blogging

2007-06-10T05:19:00.000-07:00

Welp, I've got 5 more days until I'm flying west to California. And that couldn't come sooner really. For me this move is akin to staying in a foreign country for a while. As the date has moved closer, it has really settled in that I am really going to incur a huge change of lifestyle. Yeah, I previously knew this to be the case, but there is something about having an event just about to happen to really have a mental and introspective effect on you.

But I welcome it. After living and getting a bit tired of Northeast Charlotte and living in the extreme rural area of North Carolina with my family, I believe a chance in scenery will be excellent. I'm a bit tired of failing to understand someone because of their horrendous southern accent, or not being around a culture of technically inclined people. I doubt I'll have that problem out there (although I'm sure my share of problems will come).

So come Wednesday or Thursday I'll pack up two large suitcases and my laptop bag and then haul off to Jacksonville, NC to leave from the (very small) airport and make me way across the country for, at least, three months of a new life.

Device Warns You If You're Boring

2007-06-07T03:48:00.000-07:00

Check it out.

Simply put, it's a device being developed at MIT, geared primarily towards folks with autism who have a difficult time interpreting non-verbal signals and social interactions, that will vibrate a small computer when it detects that the subject being observed is uninterested or bored. It does so through a small high definition camera that can be attached to, for instance, glasses that continuously reads the facial expressions of who is being looked at. Using a series of machine learning techniques, the device can be trained to determine what facial expressions or series of facial expressions represent certain moods and can clue the person with autism in to what the next person is communicating with their facial expressions.

Neat Stuff.

Before we let in the world's best and brightest...

2007-06-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting perspective on importing high-tech immigrants delivered by former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich: read it here.

I'll agree with Reich on the fact that we would be better off, in the long-term, by focusing on improving the math and technology education in this country to solve our labor shortage in highly technical engineering jobs. I however disagree with his assertion that we do so by increasing the salaries for those jobs. While doing so would benefit my personal cause, if I step back and think holistically, I believe it to be a bad idea. By just simply increasing wages, what you encourage is tons of people swamping the field who may not ultimately love the technology they work with - only studying the profession only to cash in on the monetary rewards. Just think back to the late 90's when the kids were storming CS programs to cash on in the IT boom. The result was a plethora of students hitting the marketplace for IT jobs who hated working in IT but were after those late '90's wages. Of course, the wages didn't last and neither did the boom in CS enrollments. The same would be true now if the only solution we can conjure up is increasing salaries.

Instead, if we really want to encourage our youth to follow careers in engineering and computing fields, we really should be focusing on rewarding and fostering success in math even at the earliest ages. Instead of subjecting the bright kids to the mundane, rote practice of performing simple math that grocery store clerks might use day to day until hitting basic algebra in the 7th or 8th, how about providing special school programs for exceptional students and those students who show a keen interest in math. Foster their interest and success in math - don't bog it down in the mundane until they lose interest in, like 99.5% of all students do in the current public education system.

Of course, this would actually mean funding public education. I guess we would actually have to work on handling that part of it first, huh?

Python to the Rescue

2007-06-05T05:17:00.001-07:00

After dinner and finishing some up some edits to the abstract of my thesis last night, I gave my sister a quick call just to say hello. It turns out that she was finally just getting around to finishing some statistics homework that was due at midnight. She asked if I knew how to perform standard deviation calculations and if I'd give her some help on her homework. I gladly volunteered, knowing that I could quickly use either some of Java library for the Netflix project or whip up something in Python really quick to calculate standard deviation calculations for her.

Of course, my sister knew how to calculate standard deviations. But when I arrived at my sister's house, I discovered she was attempting to calculate standard deviations and also construct box and whisker plots all by hand (which means tons of meaningless work on paper). Since her stats book was using a regular standard deviation formula and my Java library was using population standard deviation I quickly whipped up a function in Python that would perform standard deviation the way she needed it. While I was at it, anytime we needed to create box and whisker plots, I shoved an unordered set of decimal numbers into a Python list, ran sort() on the list, and we could calculate the 5 number summary in no-time... much better than her sorting sets of 20 numbers by hand.

Of course, it turned out that my sister had roughly 25 of these questions for me to help with and so I was helping her with homework until roughly 11:30 at night. I now type this a bit groggy eyed since 11:30 is a wee bit past my bedtime and I'm feeling some small effects from it this morning (especially since my parents Shih-Tzu's felt like trying to wake me up at 6 AM).

But nonetheless, chalk up another success story for Python, the best tool I've found for getting quick and dirty work accomplished.

I ditched the White Room

2007-06-02T10:18:00.001-07:00

Welp... I suppose I should rename the blog since I no longer live in a white room.

In fact, I've lowered myself to depths of being a 25 year old male living with his parents... but only temporarily. But this of course means that I no longer live in the white bedroom I was renting from a two story home in Charlotte. Instead I am 4 hours away from the queen city, spending a couple of weeks with parents before I begin my adventure to California. But the bedroom here is some beige color, and I really don't feel like changing the name to The Beige Room. Some new name is in order. If any of my 3 readers have any ideas, shoot 'em to me before I come up with something (un)clever.

I also realize I haven't really said too much about California. I'm taking a three month internship with Pricewaterhouse Coopers in San Jose working on some special internal IT projects. That's a quite a change from my previous life of residing in North Carolina and nowhere else. But I look forward to the adventure. It's the valley that I'm moving to and I'm quite psyched about that. It'll be intimidating in that it's pretty much the tech Mecca of the United States (and maybe the world?), but that's also part of the fun of it too. I'll talk about my experiences there a bit more once I'm out there.

In the meantime I'm visiting with my parents for a couple of weeks back in eastern North Carolina where I'll be taking the time to hack on my thesis and hang out with my folks before I distance myself from them by some 2,900 or so miles. Since they have already informed me they won't be doing any traveling to California, I better take this chance to enjoy time with them since it may be a long while before I see them again.

I own a 128bit Integer!!!

2007-05-09T04:48:00.000-07:00

My life can end peacefully now. I'm now the proud owner of a 128-bit integer that no one else can use or post legally due to restrictions in the DMCA. Here it is:

AC B4 E4 35 B6 1F A2 92 BC DC 4E F9 A8 36 0F D6

You can own a 128-bit integer yourself too. Get your own at Freedom to Tinker.

If none of this makes sense, please read this wikipedia article and this legal primer from the EFF in addition to clicking the Freedom to Tinker link above.

A haiku for Charlotte

2007-04-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

Charlotte with pink hair
Enchantment at its finest
I'm left mesmorized

Lost In Translation

2007-04-23T17:19:00.000-07:00

I watched Lost in Translation last night. I'm amazed I did not watch it sooner, since after all it does feature one of my favorite actors - Bill Murray. Before viewing I didn't know anything about this movie other than that it is supposedly one of the best performances, if not THE best, by Bill Murray. The last couple of times I tried Bill out was for The Life Aquatic and Broken Flowers, both of which I found too uninteresting to finish. So I gave Bill a chance to redeem himself on this one.

After popping the DVD I was first introduced to a curvy white butt in pink see-through underwear. Sort of a pleasant surprise. Without opening credits, I had no clue whose butt that was.

After the first 5-10 minutes or so I felt like I was watching Broken Flowers again. It was obviously not the classical wildly funny Bill Murray that I have loved in the past. But it was funny from the get-go with some of Bill's more subtle comedy, which is what Broken Flowers lacked.

And then the "woah" moment hit me. A scene in the elevator had the aforementioned girl in the same elevator as Bill Murray (in which they did not speak to each other). I thought to myself, "is that... Scarlett Johansson"? With a quick lookup on IMDB I quickly verified that was indeed her. As an aside, I consider Scarlett to be the most attractive woman alive after seeing her in Match Point, which was the only movie of hers I had previously seen (outside of about 10 minutes of The Island). But seeing her in Match Point was enough to convince me. But its not just the looks alone. She seemed like a good actress in Match Point, very much unlike other bombshell actresses. This movie would further that opinion... greatly.

So I've been introduced with two characters who don't know each other and the movie goes roughly 30 minutes in without any real interaction between the two. Do I feel cheated? No. It was an extremely nice build-up in which you really were given the opportunity to understand the background, personality, and strife each character is going through without the complication of any relationship they might have. But I knew they would become intertwined at some point. And the result was simply amazing. The relationship between their characters, Bob and Charlotte, was easily the greatest male-female relationship I've ever seen in a movie. And yet it was done with so little dialogue and so little physical contact - the eye contact in the Karoke scene, the conversation in the Sushi bar, the gentle placing of Bob's hand on Charlotte's foot as they both fall asleep. Bob and Charlotte understood each other, looked up to each other, confided in one another, and could communicate with each other with words and possibly just with their expressions alone. All of these things were lacking from the pragmatic relationships that both had with their spouses.

The movie struck a personal chord with me also. The theme of their relationship echoed some of what I've felt too... the longing for a person that understood you without hearing you speak, the hollowness and seeming inescapability of a current relationship. I really felt close to Charlotte, in particular. The character has roughly the same age as I, is a strong willed person, but doesn't know what their role in life is yet and struggles almost every minute with it. Scarlett played that role perfectly, in my opinion. There wasn't a moment in the movie that you weren't convinced she was a brilliant but lost soul.

This one gets 5 out of 5 stars from me!

Facebook will outlast and defeat MySpace

2007-04-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

And I say this without even having used facebook as a member (I've only seen others facebook pages).

Facebook will defeat MySpace for two simple reasons:

Facebook just simply looks nicer. It has a clean, easy to read, easy to navigate interface. Myspace on the other hand has horrible navigation, a poor color scheme, a homepage that is rife with advertisements, and plagues user pages with even more ads, most of which are the annoying "draw your attention with flashing colors" ads that have almost given me seizures. As best I can gather, MySpace gets used because that's where everyone else is at. Once the masses get tired of the ads and discover something that is much easier to use and more pleasing to look at, I can't imagine they will stay at MySpace.

Facebook is developer friendly. Facebook have already created a slew of API's for developers to use (see their developers page and have also even open sourced some of their former proprietary in-house code for everyone to benefit from. MySpace? They apparently can't even keep their own developers, supposedly because no single development project can occur without being directly driven by something advertisement based. That looks like a real winner there Tom. What this means is that Facebook will be able to evolve. It will be extensible. Myspace will only see development effort when Rupert Murdoch's media machine wants to launch more ad bombardments at the internet community.

The End of the Album

2007-03-26T15:48:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has an article that discusses the end of the album in favor of singles.

I'm kind of saddened by this. Granted, I'm all about the market deciding what should be sold and at what price, but what this effectively means is that the music landscape may change forever. No longer will music be enjoyed as a compilation of songs artistically sewn together to form a near hour long melody of expression. Instead, all music will exist in the wham-bam-thank-you-mam quickee format that pervades the radio airwaves today. While some bands like Tool and Radiohead, as the article mentions may still have demand for their full length albums, the net result is that generations will now be brought up to appreciate only singles and not full bodies of work. I for one think music quality will degrade as a result. Music will be all about entertaining a mass of people for 4 minutes at a time, instead of enthralling the listener for hour blocks of time.

I'm Trendy Now

2007-03-24T09:38:00.000-07:00

Yup, I finally succumbed to the trendiness that is portable music players. Except I didn't completely fall head first into the world of the chic iPod. Instead I picked up a new Sandisk Sansa. I bought this primarily because I didn't want to shell out a premium price on an iPod... I bought my Sansa e280r for $199, which has 8GB of storage, can do video, images, has a tuner, and a voice recorder. Also, I can just mount it linux and write music directly to the player, instead of being forced through some type of audio library manager. It also integrates with Rhapsody, which at the time I didn't think was a big deal, but I've just realized that as part of the subscription I have I listen to practically anything and download it to my Sansa. Albeit I don't own it, which kind of stinks and I can't use the music freely, a subscription is only ~$15 bucks a month... which is how much just a single cd costs anyway. So I figure it's not a bum deal.

Now, compare all of this to similar iPod model, which ties me to iTunes (or gtkpod) to do anything, and costs ~$250 for 30GB of storage. It was pretty much a no-brainer for me.

Ouch!

2007-02-19T18:05:00.000-08:00

Today was not a good day for the ol' body. It was so bad of a day that I ended up in the hospital for four hours!

I prepped myself this morning for a wonderful game of basketball today. Lately, I've been in the mood to play lots of ball. Ive been doing over lunchtime to play with a bunch of staff members at my place of work in some pickup games. I pretty much stink at basketball, but I've gotten to a point where I can play a half decent game, setup some screen and rolls and rebound well. It was a fun way to exercise. I was really looking forward to today.

So we start - the very first play on D I do a good job against a dribble penetrator and we get the ball. I then gobble up a rebound and then turn it over after trying to dribble (I'm not graceful enough for ball handling apparently). Then back on defense the fellow I'm guarding has the ball and is working underneath the hoop. I jump up to block his shot and then it happened... I landed on my right toes.

You see the human foot was designed to landed the balls of your feet or the heel. When you land on your toes on one foot, the ankle pretty much contorts off to one side or the other and a sprain occurs. In my case, at least a sprain, a broken tibia, and possibly some torn ligaments. I'll find out more later after I visit an orthopedic doctor. But boy did it hurt. I let out a nice explicative for the rest of the gym to hear immediately after it happened. Within 30 minutes, although I could walk on it, my foot had swollen to the size of a baseball. So it was off to the emergency room I go. For my effort I got to talk with some cute nurses, receive some X-Rays and prescription for vicodin, which I haven't filled (yet).

And I lay here now in my bed, ice on my ankle and pretty much confined to remain stationary for at least a week and possibly 6 weeks depending upon how badly I've hurt myself. It really stinks, because I was enjoying basketball and I was getting into a great routine with lifting weights. Now I'm on the injured reserve.

Clinton Curitis - Election Fraud Whistle Blower

2007-02-10T05:49:00.000-08:00

I happened across this video on Google Videos (it was actually linked from digg:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5173816754727816515

For anyone who isn't aware of the risks associated with electronic voting machines, I implore you to watch this. This is a testimony from Clint Curtis, formerly an employee of Yang Enterprises who was a developer for electronic voting machines and is of him testifying in front of what looks to be the Florida state Congress. He pretty much reveals how easy it would be a for a person seeking (re)election to a public office to rig the vote using voting machines. The most important point he makes is that such attempted to fraud could be negated by using a paper trail of votes.

Of course, you should probably take what Clinton says with a grain of salt. He did end up running against the very man he accused of election fraud, Tom Feeney.

I'm Dreaming of a White February 1st

2007-02-01T16:04:00.000-08:00

Yup, the white stuff fell from the sky today in droves. Well, somewhat in droves at least given I live in the mid-south. It was enough snow to cover the ground, build up on my windshield, to encourage all of the college kids to go sledding down a hill on whatever piece of cardboard they could find... and to cancel work! Unfortunately, I didn't get that last message until I rolled up at 7:45 this morning. So I stuck around till lunchtime, mostly reading documentation and spent probably an hour catching up on the latest happenings digg/slashdot/del.icio.us. I then decommissioned my 2nd workstation and gave myself two monitors to work from on my primary development machine, so now I get see what life is like with double the pixels to work with.

By the time I finished this, I broke away to the coffee shop for a change of scenery, a few cups of decaf (I switched... breaking the addiction)) and a nice environment to hack on my thesis a bit. I had to throw together some scripts today that would allow me to run some local tests on my full dataset, so that took a decent amount of time. I read and took notes on another paper and submitted an abstract for the paper I am currently writing to an Artificial Intelligence conference.

As it approached 5 PM, I decided it was time I finally got that oil change in my car that was putting off. So I get that taken care of and low and behold they have wireless access in the car maintenance shop I was in. So I fired up the 'ol lap warmer and hacked on generating some cluster predictions. And after leaving I find myself sitting in my red chair running those predictions and listening to my Grand National on Pandora.

So all in all, a relaxing day and productive today - rarely are those two combined. Perhaps it was the snow. I guess I'll know by tomorrow since it will surely all be gone!

Giving a Raise by not Wearing a Suit

2007-01-17T16:51:00.000-08:00

A novel idea indeed! I really don't care much for the Dallas Mavericks. But I love Mark Cuban. His latest blog entry against wearing suits is another reason why I love him. The fellow hits the issue on the head perfectly. Wearing a suit is simply done to meet the status quo or to give off an impression of some sort. It's pretty pointless and it's uncomfortable. I've always thought that wearing a suit is a tell-tale sign that someone is trying to hide something - either ineptness, or trying to hide their substance behind a visual impression. So again, I say Kudos to the owner of the Mavericks.

My First Democrat Gripe

2007-01-13T06:46:00.000-08:00

Before I get into the jist of this gripe, I knew it was going to happen all along had the Democratic party gained control in the House and Senate. It's a necessary evil (and it will be come an irraidcable evil if either Lieberman or Clinton happen to be our next president).

Tennessee Senator wants to ban Girls Gone Wild commercials from television.

Yup, instead of Senator Doug Jackson focusing on real issues, like the rest of his party, he instead thinks posing legislature to remove what he considers filth from the airwaves.

"People feel like, as they sit in their living rooms, they just have to surrender; there's nothing that can be done."

"Most people and most parents in the state of Tennessee will cheer this bill because they know as long as (cable companies) are making money, it will only get worse," he said.

What Doug Jackson is failing to understand is that the cable companies wouldn't run these particular ads unless the companies purchasing these ads weren't making money enough to purchase the ad time- which indicates that "most people" (and I would even say most male parents) are watching this and wouldn't cheer this bill.

If Doug Jackson or any offended person/parent has an issue with what's appearing on their television they have three options:

Turn the channel
Supervise your children's television viewing
Throw away your television

So, in short, stop trying to dictate what can and can't be viewed on MY television over the cable/satellite packages I'VE subscribed to, all because you don't want to see it. You (and "You" can be any legislator) have the ability to exercise free will over what you watch and so do your constituents. Spend some time on real issues, not this moral posturing.

Back From the Dead

2007-01-06T07:31:00.000-08:00

Time for a resurrection. This is the first post in months here. It will be brief.

The holiday season was a good one that now has me shaving my face with an electric razor, wearing new clothes, and playing a bit of Final Fantasy XII here and there when taking breaks from the job and my thesis.

In the beginning of the year I made a Super Bowl prediction of Indianapolis vs. Dallas. That prediction still stands a chance of coming to fruition, as both teams are in the playoffs. However, both teams have been floundering as of late - one team can't stop the run and the other can't stop the pass and one team has a cocky schmoe at QB who can't hold a candle to Drew Bledsoe and should have never replaced him. It's not Bledsoe's fault the Cowboys O-line is a substandard pass blocking Oline and that playcalling often 4-5 man routes with minimal blocking. I'm eagerly anticipating watching Romo throw the Cowboys hopes away in the playoffs just like he has in the past two games. Besides, it's looking like neither of the two teams will really make it out of the first round, let alone make it to the Super Bowl - Indy's D pretty much blows.

Now that I've blathered on for a few lines, it's time to go back to the thesis. Peace.

The Socialist - Coming to a Senate Near You

2006-10-12T02:03:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article in CNN about a socialist politician without party backing who is leading in the polls in Vermont. While the prospects of someone with a socialist mindset does not exactly excite me, what does excite me is the fact that someone who is not a member of the stagnant, complacent, and hulking Republican or Democrat party is a serious contender for a seat in the Senate. The simple fact that the man declined the Democratic nomination for the Senate race, instead choosing to run as an independant speaks volumes to me - it means we might actually get a free thinker in the Senate... someone who doesn't tow the party line and owes allegiance to no one but the state he represents.

Precisely as I expected....

2006-10-05T16:16:00.000-07:00

It did not take very long for me to reach a point where I lost motiviation to write about things on a frequent basis. I think I lasted a good month before I ran out of literary steam. Nonetheless, I'm back for another quick episode - more than likely to be followed up by one in two weeks :)

Right now I am typing this message from a Gentoo live CD environment which I am using to re-install Gentoo. During an Ubuntu update, my X.org windows systems got hosed for the second time in a month due to some update with nvidia drivers that the Synaptic update system forces on me. Ubuntu, for all of its niceness and user-friendliness, really makes it a pain in the ass to get under the hood and configure some things. Thus I couldn't figure out how to make apt or synaptic keep from installing nvidia upgrades. And during an upgrade which I didn't realize an nvidia driver update or nvidia module update was occuring, I blindly accepted the upgrades and upon the next boot.. BAM!... no more window system for my Ubuntu Linux install. Besides, I was to the point where I was getting so spoiled by a fancy GUI for everything that I was becoming ignorant with the command line and all of the CLI utilities. So I think this will be a good change again.

In other news, Beck came out with a new CD. It rocks the boat immensely. Not a single bad song on the CD. The jewel case cover itself is blank, but the CD comes with oodles of stickers in which you can create your own cover. It is a pretty nice gesture from the musician to give the listeners some liberty in and artistic rights in something they purchased. Did I mention the music f'n rocks too?

Anyway, back to my Gentoo install. Cya in a couple more weeks (hehe.)

Thank This Man For Taking Inaction

2006-09-27T05:09:00.000-07:00

Interesting recollection and praise of a Russian missle command officer by the name of Stanislav Yefgrafovich Petrov. Read about what he didn't do here: http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/categories/security/589/remember-the-forgotten-hero-who-saved-the-world.thtml.

It's Not An Aristocracy

2006-09-27T02:16:00.000-07:00

That last post was casting a halfway positive light on Bush. Since I do not want to be considered someone actually supports our current representatives in government, allow me to write critically now about the executive branch's attitude that oh so pisses me off.

So apparently an internal intelligence report was leaked from the White House that contains statements and supporting evidence that the war in Iraq has actually worsened terrorism.

Well, thanks for leaking that out, but it doesn't exactly take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that one of the roots of this Jihadhist movement is the West's, namely my country's, inability to keep its nose and troops out of the business of the rest of the world in an aggressive manner. So the fact that we toppled what was a 'stable'¹ government and tried to artificially inseminate a representative democracy into a land that doesn't know how to think holistic has lead to even more radical violence against the citizens of the region and increases the threat level of terrorism to my country, the organizer of the whole affair, should not surprise anyone.

But no, actually making that type of information public would apparently "create confusion in the minds of American citizens", says George - http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terrorpol27sep27,0,490186.story?coll=la-home-headlines.

What exactly do we have to be confused about? Can the American public not take information our own government has and form our own ideas and opinions about that information? After all, this is a representative democracy, George. By that very nature, you and your branch are merely an extension of us. So why is information good enough for you not good enough for us and could be "confusing" to us as your citizenry? This is not an aristocracy. This country should not be run with this type of elitist attitude that imperative information to help make decisions gathered by specialists whom our representatives deem apt for the job should be kept in secret up in the ivory tower. The whole model depends on openness, not some man in a suit saying "trust me/us". The executive branch wants us to believe that the war in Iraq and all other sorts of legislative matters (e.g. the Patriot Act) are effective in fighting terrorism - but we as citizens have no proof, just the word of men in suits and no open information. It is a complete antithesis of a democracy.

OK, so Iraq was a dictatorship - and I think dictatorships are crap. But that country is a quasi-anarchy now without hardly any enforcement of law.

George Makes Federal Spending More Transparent

2006-09-26T13:53:00.001-07:00

And in other news, I just passed a pig on the side of the road with appendages that look slightly like wings...

No, in all seriousness, check this link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060926/ap_on_go_pr_wh/budget_online

It looks like Congress and George have finally decided to make some parts of the United States federal government transparent to its citizenry. Personally, I never thought I'd utter the words 'George (Bush)' and 'transparent' in the same sentence without the qualifying words 'lack of, but apparently this is true. Kudos to the federal and legalslative branches of government for actually passing a bill like this which makes information on just what our money is going to more open. A transparent government is a *Good Thing* and is critical in a representative democracy in which those in power should be merely extensions of us.

I personally have berated Bush for signing military spending bills that have been earmarked with so much pork that I figured him to be an absolute coward when it came to monetary policy. At least this is a step in the right direction. It doesn't sanctify him of his past fiscal errs in my eyes, but it is a positive. It is also a positive for the entire legalslative branch, that they could even eek out a bill like this. Now we just have to wait to see if such a system can even see the light of day - it scheduled to come online in Jan. '08.

George Makes Federal Spending More Transparent

2006-09-26T13:53:00.000-07:00

And in other news, I just passed a pig on the side of the road with appendages that look slightly like wings...

No, in all seriousness, check this link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060926/ap_on_go_pr_wh/budget_online

Thom Yorke

2006-09-20T18:52:00.000-07:00

For anyone who likes any type of progressive music, listen to this CD: found at Amazon/CDNOW. For anyone not in the know, Thom Yorke is the frontman for Radiohead. The Eraser is his first solo stint.

I've been listening to this non-stop for about the past 4 days. Pretty much fits my mood at the moment, which is somewhere near a half-melancholy, a good mix of ennui, a small dash of despair, and a collective thought stream of "what the fuck"'s. Nevermind the fact that Thome wrote some outstanding music. I don't think there isn't a good song on the CD, either musically, structurally, or lyrically. Of course, these days, anything that has an electronic root to it and has heavy and quickly paced bass/percussion combined with a melodic high pitch pretty much rocks my boat. But nonetheless, I think it is pretty darn good. At least give it a listen.

Beer Me.

2006-09-19T15:49:00.000-07:00

The past few days have been beer filled. On Friday night I hung out around a nice warm outside fire with my homegirl Katrina, my homeboy Bill (affectionality referred to as the King of Billarus), Bill's fiancee Naomi, and one cool ass dog. I started on some extremely smooth organic beer whose name alludes me. Then I was sipping on some of Katrina's homebrew - Raspberry Wheat. It was a great sweet beer. A bit too sweet to drink more than a bottle, but perfect for a 12oz sipping.

Saturday night was Samuel Adams Octoberfest night at Pesci's after the Western football game. Octoberfest + Jackass: The Movie = fun times had by all.

Sunday night was a Corona with Pizza.

Monday was null on the beer. Everyone needs a day off eh?

And today was a couple of Newcastles for happy hour followed by some more pizza.

So after these past few days, I've come to the realization that beer is the savior of mankind for a) tasting good b) feeling good c) going so damn well with Pizza! In fact, I like it so much that I am proposing a new "WAR ON TERROR" strategy. If we hope to solve the problems in the Middle East, start shipping the beer. And I'm not talking about cheap Budwieser bullshit... send over the Samuel Adams and some Rolling Rocks. That will end terrorism in a fucking heartbeat. Even beer may enlighten those without much rationality.

Black People Know How to Worship

2006-09-10T06:47:00.000-07:00

I observed an interesting dichotomy this morning. After scarfing down some breakfast, I began flipping through some television channels in hopes of finding an NFL show on early in the AM - it was approximately 8 o'clock. My hopes were not realized.

But on the way from ESPN to ESPN2, I passed over two particular channels that caught my eye. The second one probably wouldn't have caught my eye had I not viewed the the other channel first. I didn't bother to check what station the first channel was as I did not stay tuned in for over 20 seconds. What I saw on that first channel was some slick haired, make-up pasted, pale white guy with a microphone set hanging from the side of his head down to his mouth, crying and blathering something about him, those present, and those viewing not being worthy in the presence of the christian god. I typically breeze directly over these programs, dismissing them as the normal "strike the fear of the heavens into your heart, make you feel like shit for being an unworthy lowly human being without the ability to function daily without the presence of a deity through your television set so you keep coming back for redemption" type sermons that are quite present on the evangelical programs that pervade the Sunday morning airwaves. But this guy was crying. He looked so pained, so uncomfortable.... and a bit fake. I didn't have time to analyze this last observation as I didn't stick around long enough to verify either way. I began channel flipping again.

So before I arrive at my next destination on the roadmap of cable television, I flipped past BET. For those who have not been introduced, BET is the Black Entertainment Television network. I flippped past, saw some gospel for .5 seconds, and flipped the next channel. Then my brain synapses began firing with odd activity. A observation arrived in my brain based on the split second that my eyes received visual input from the television that displayed BET. "The people who were on, they were smiling", I thought to myself. I flipped it back. I was treated to what looked like a rock concert. Everyone in the congregation was standing. There were many people, in the vicinity of 10-15 near the podium - a rather colorful podium, but one that was not crafted in such a way to give of an air of divinity. All of these people were moving, half dancing, clapping, smiling, and glowing with eyes wide open as if they were completely enjoying themselves. The chorus was doing much of the same. The preacher, if you could call him that since I did not hear much preaching and instead heard someone speaking word in rhythm to the upbeat, almost hip-hopish gospel music playing in the background, was more animated than anyone else. It actually looked... fun.

What a novel concept, fun in church. Something I never experienced for sure. Then the prospect of a contrast and comparison hit my mind. I tried to find the original channel of the pasty white dude I found earlier. When I finally discovered him again about 40 seconds later, he and three other people were sitting down in chairs, all with their heads bowed, their backs as straight as a 2x4. The pasty white man would continue to say a series of 4-7 words within some sort of pledge, pause, and the other three individuals would repeat them in a monotone, assimilated borg, type manner. The appearance of joy or happiness was completely absent from their faces or body languages. The scene was about as dogmatic as one could imagine - so much so that I would wager money that if the pasty white man had said "My cat's feces is quite tasty" then the other three probably would have repeated that too!

I flipped back to BET one more time. No longer was the "preacher" the focus of the camera. Instead someone else off to the side was singing. And they were singing very loud and proud. And the congregation was clapping with the beat, swaying to and from in rhythm. Most everyone still kept the smiles on their face. The lyrical content was about "Thanking God" - which even further contrasted the two programs. The way the group on BET went about worshipping was all about thankfulness and appreciation for the blessing they have. There was no notion of being unworthy of God and all other sorts of demeaning things to the human soul, just thanking. And a very joyous and gracious thanking at that.

So based on this little 10 minute episode on my Sunday morning and my experiences in churches here and there, I am beginning to become convinced that black people know how to worship. The worship is one that brings joy to their heart and to their faces. The other show was just further evidence of my strengthening opinion of the general state of predominiately WASP christian churches, that is they tend to be a dogmatic setting of conformity for only the sake of confirming and giving off a perception of piety so that others opinions of them and their morality are not lessened. Not much joy, or so I observe, is really created from that.

But as with pretty much all things in life there are always exceptions to the rules and counter-examples to observersations. My family goes to a church populated with only white people, but it is an extremely nice community, has a very humble preacher, and no one gives off the 'holier than thou' stigma that so turns me off from organized Christianity. I'm also willing to wager that there many churches at are predominately non-white that are just as dogmatic as what I have just described.

But for this morning, the black congregation won my heart on how to worship.

Perfect Weather

2006-09-07T16:19:00.000-07:00

It was 5 PM. I went home from work early to start my jog before dinner time. It was a cool 70-something degree afternoon. The sun was not out. I ran a slow pace. But it felt awesome. Best weather I've felt since I've been in this city. Several people were outside in my neighborhood, either walking their dogs or throwing the nerf football around. Apparently they thought it was wonderful outside today too. I wish all days felt like this.

One More Day

2006-09-06T16:26:00.000-07:00

Until the opening of the NFL Regular Season. Hallelujah!

Now all of my Sundays will be spent pathetically glued to the television with periodic gazes to my computer monitor to check the Fantasy Football scores.

This year, I am going to make some predictions. Maybe I will come back later in the year and see just how accurate I was. I'll pick how each division will finish, who the playoff teams will be, who will play in the Super Bowl, and who wins it.

AFC East

Patriots

Dolphins

Jets

Bills

AFC South

Jaguars
Colts
Texans
Titans

AFC North

Bengals
Steelers
Ravens
Browns

AFC West

Chiefs
Raiders
Broncos
Chargers

NFC East

Cowboys
Giants
Eagles
Redskins (sorry Pesci)

NFC South

Panthers
Falcons
Saints
Buccaneers

NFC North

Vikings
Bears
Lions
Packers

NFC North

Cardinals
Rams
Seahawks
Niners

League's Best Record: Panthers

League's Worst Record: Titans

Playoff Teams:

AFC: Patriots, Dolphins, Jaguars, Colts, Bengals, Chiefs

NFC: Panthers, Vikings, Cardinals, Cowboys, Falcons, Giants

Superbowl: Cowboys over Colts

(Note: All of these picks were just pulled straight from my ass and involve minimal logic)

The Astro Creep

2006-09-02T16:23:00.000-07:00

It has been nearly 48 hours since I took a wet walk from my house over to the Ampitheater for a rushed concert. The summer of concerts ended this week with our finale: Godsmack and Rob Zombie. I was much more thrilled about the latter than the former - and my excitement was realized and justified.

Now, aside from the fact that Rob Zombie really can not sing worth a damn compared to most of metal counterparts, his ability to put on a show so far has only been bested by Nine Inch Nails¹. In short, I was treated to about an hour long of Rob running around on stage and jumping from box to box screaming and screeching out lyrics from most of his new stuff. I'd say probably the best performance was of Never Gonna Stop, which I personally think is his best song since he disbanded White Zombie. Other songs in the set list were American Witch, Devil's Rejects, Foxy Foxy, let it all Bleed Out, House of 10,000 Corpses, Thunder Kiss 65 and More Human than Human (i think the last two songs are obligatory for him to play). The whole time the band was on, there was video being played, most well put together clips of old horror flicks, Japanese anime, cheesy Japenese sci-fi, and scenes from the two movies he has directed. All the while, there are a couple of scantly clad women dancing in the background perfectly to beat of each song. While More Human than Human was playing the huge 10 foot tall robot made an appearance and danced on stage with Zombie. It was quite the spectacle. Zombie also did a cover of a cover, performing Marilyn Manson's rendition of Sweet Dreams - John5, a former Manson guitarist now plays for Zombie, so I do not know if this was his doing or just something that Zombie is initiating himself. Nonetheless, it was a pretty well done cover. Now if only his show would have lasted longer than an hour.

Godsmack was good. Sully sounds good live, and the band themselves sound better live than on CD. I'm not a big Godsmack fan, but I still enjoyed them. Highlight of the show as a performance of Shinedown during the "encore"².

I do not exactly have the most concert experience, really only seeing about 5 shows, but NIN still takes the cake by far. Trent Reznor and his production are pretty amazing live.

I guess it is mandatory that a band leave the stage 15 minutes before they are scheduled to be done, to fake like they are done, and then give an "encore". It is kind of cool, but terribly predictable. I'd rather just see bands just play through and stop the fake drama.

There is a thunderstorm outside. I guess I better buy tons of bottled water and flashlights!!

2006-08-30T15:47:00.000-07:00

This afternoon was marked by a heavy thundershower in my area. Apparently this is only a sneak preview of the torrential Wrath of God storm that is Tropical Storm Ernesto. Or so the media wants me to believe anyway. Since Sunday or so, 50% of the news that I have heard revolves around this tropical storm that is creeping up Florida and should be hitting Georgia and the Carolinas soon. Tropical Storm? Yeah, it is something to be taken seriously. But hearing how some media outlets have forcast it, you'd swear Jesus Christ himself were coming back down to earth to bring about rapture and the subsequent end of the world.

It sickens me really. Ever since Katrina, anything weather related has been so senationalized to the point where I'm convinced news outlets WANT a disaster. Just watch the Weather Channel and observe how a routine thundershower in Kansas turns into a life threatening race and battle against nature. You see, disasters create such a scene that people will tune into the networks to find out every last detail about them. But how does those media outlets garner those ratings when their is no disaster - through mass hysteria and paranoia. Ernesto is no different... and neither will the next potential hurricane, or the one after that, all the way until we have reached Zacharius or whatever in the hell they call the Z lettered hurricane. Media wants to profit off of the prospect of or actual devestation of human lives, and I'm quite tired of it.

Long Time, No Type

2006-08-29T15:27:00.000-07:00

Well, again it has been awhile since I've posted again. I won't be scant on the updates this time. I do have exciting things to talk about.

First, work has been pure craziness over the past two weeks. One of the downsides of working at an educational institution is that the workload tends to multiply exponentially at the beginning of a major semester (Spring/Fall). This Fall has been no exception. The integration work I performed over the Summer was successfully deployed without much of a hitch - a few snafus while it was going into production, but has been smooth so far. But another migration has caused problems in the system I administrate and we have been picking up the pieces ever since.

I started class a couple of weeks ago as well. Fittingly enough, I am taking a course in system integration. So far it seems outstanding, as we are only two weeks in and we are discussing design patterns used in integration (e.g.: Facade, Adaptor, and the Observer pattern that I am familiar with). If the first couple of weeks are any indication, this may be the best class I will have taken in my graduate career thus far.

In the leisure department, this week is a week of concerts. This past weekend, I hauled off with my boy Pesci and his friend Bill for a 311 concert. This is the second straight year we have seen 311. Last year 311 played better, but the show was much better this time. The opening act was a reggae/rock band named Pepper which was very excellent. They reminded me of Sublime a bit The second act was The Wailers, of Bob Marley fame. They performed all the typical hits and they were outstanding. I probably danced around more at this show than any other I've ever been too - albeit it was "white boy trying to be Rasta" dancing. But it was fun nonetheless.

On Thursday, Pesci and Bill come down this way for a Rob Zombie / Godsmack show - definitely a change of pace from what we just witnessed.

Male Pattern Baldness

2006-08-20T17:04:00.000-07:00

I am afflicted with male pattern baldness. And it is running its course quite rapidly through my scalp.

A year ago today I had a small bit of a receding hairline and slightly thinning on the top. No big deal for someone my age really. Now after washing my hair, I can literally see 10% of the skin on the top of my head showing. When I lift my widows peak hair, I see very few dispersed hair roots still intact. The crown on my head now has approximately two hairs left.

So I have three options really (no, getting hair pulgs is not an option). 1) I can start rubbing in the minoxidil. 2) I let it run its course and just have hair on the sides and the back and let the top be bald. 3) I shave it all of right now and go Mr. Clean.

I'm leaning toward #3 right now. I'd rather have no hair than some at all. I also don't want to put any more chemicals in my body than I really need to. For the meantime, I'll keep the hair I have for as long as I can. But I have the clippers and the razors ready to be used soon enough.

22,000 Students in Indiana Using Linux

2006-08-17T03:26:00.000-07:00

Here's the story from CRN

So for all of my teacher friends, or anyone remotely involved in education (read: you have a kid or know a teacher or administrator), please pass this along. Running schools costs tons of money. Any way in which costs can be cut so that more money can go towards needed educational materials is worth it. And trust me, Windows is not needed. Children need to use a computer in schools for exactly two things: writing and research - two completely platform agnostic activities. So why pay a license to Microsoft to use Windows when a Free, and potentially easier, alternative exists.