Some Guy

dirty chemistry

2008-05-17T00:14:40Z

Now who didn't make this sign with their fingers as kids? It's about chemistry, not sex! Whod've thunk?

Boobie humor

2008-05-13T19:13:02Z

From vegandragon (via twitter). Don't let the kiddies see this tho, because there's nothing more damaging to children than boobies (aka food, to a baby)

Blast knuckles!

2008-04-25T00:08:30Z

Ooh, I gotta get me some of these!

fair game

2008-04-22T21:33:04Z

We're recruiting at work and since we're not a "sexy" company the candidates we get seem to be the ones who couldn't get hired anywhere else. (If you know anyone good, introduce me and I'll split the referral bonus with ya.)

But one thing I see alot, and it really pisses me off and can spoil me impression of an otherwise decent candidate is when they put stuff on their resume that shouldn't be there. If you say that you know perl, don't say "Oh, I just used that in school" when I ask you about it. If you include "Master's Thesis: A Method for Generating Finite Improbability using Brownian Motion" then don't say "oh that was so long ago, I don't really remember it" when I ask about it. It makes you look really bad.

Another thing that annoys me is "2005 - till date". when the fuck is "till date"? 'Cause an awful lot of people stopped working then...

Reading is educationamal!

2008-04-22T20:17:35Z

Another book you never knew you needed: The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification.

A must-have for anyone with a passion for shopping carts and a love of the great outdoors.

good times

2008-04-14T20:38:46Z

The last few days were good. We went up for a late-season x-c skiing trip on wednesday. We got these cute little "toddler snowflake skis" for the kids and I still have my old skis (which, after talking to my parents I learned thwe I got them when I was 12 ... damn, didn't realize I'd had them so long!) after fixing my broken boot from the last trip (Gorilla Glue gets my seal of approval.) It was a cool little cabin, and we could ski and sled just out the back door. Definitely encouraging us to plan for more serious trips next winter.

Then on friday, after spending the morning skiing and sledding we headed home, making it in 3 hours flat with virtually no traffic. And at home the weather was a gorgeous 75+ degrees! If we'd had the sprinkler on, then kids would have been running around in it.

Saturday I got to play board and card games (Kung-Fu Fighting, Robo Rally, Chez Geek, maybe there was something else in there) with the guys, and sunday we went to a little wine tasting picnic. I need more 4-day weekends as relaxing as this past one! The whole thing with being home and not having to be anywhere is soooo nice... it almost makes me want to work harder so I can retire sooner. (Almost.)

Ah well, nothing lasts forever and today its back to the old grind...

movin' up in the world!

2008-04-01T20:17:56Z

I finally got my very own office, with a door and everything! Ok, so it's not from a promotion (it's so we don't lose the office to the other group) but it's still a door!

Bait and Switch

2008-03-31T18:13:13Z

I hate buying plane tickets.

This summer we're traveling out to Cape Cod to visit my folks. So we went to go buy some tickets now rather than waiting until the last minute. After a few minutes of poking around we found a pretty good fare, $267 pp round trip. We checked a few more itineraries and then decided to go back to that one.

And it's gone.

I'd understand if we were buying tickets for next week or something, and we waited overnight ... but this is 3+ months from now, and it was maybe 5 minutes later.

And now, when we go to the "best fare finder" it tells us all kinds of great fares, and when we click on it it changes to "sorry, the best fare has gone up, it is now $610" or some crap like that.

I read an essay by some guy analyzing the ticketing software for the airlines, and he found that it is insane. For a flight from San Francisco to Boston, there are something like 10 thousand different ways it can be booked (routes, fare rules, restrictions, personal favors you must do for the CEO, and so forth). Is anyone really surprised that the industry is in trouble.

for the want of a minute...

2008-03-26T00:43:29Z

ever have one of those days when you would have saved yourself a whole lot of trouble if you'd left just 5 minutes earlier?? :/

whodunnit?

2008-03-25T21:56:48Z

If you try to kill yourself but are rescued and you assault the person who rescued you and someone comes to aid the person you are assaulting and kills you in the process ... is it still a suicide?

Walker, Texas Ranger

2008-03-24T06:43:57Z

I don't think the brooklyn one is quite right...

Whisky. Tango. FBoFW. ???

2008-03-21T23:11:32Z

I accidentally ran across How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?

The introduction:

I think constricting anus 100 times and denting navel 100 times in succession everyday is effective to good-bye depression and take back youth. You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway. I have known 70-year-old man who has practiced it for 20 years. As a result, he has good complexion and has grown 20 years younger. His eyes sparkle. He is full of vigor, happiness and joy. He has neither complained nor born a grudge under any circumstance. Furthermore, he can make love three times in succession without drawing out.

In addition, he also can have burned a strong beautiful fire within his abdomen. It can burn out the dirty stickiness of his body, release his immaterial fiber or third attention which has been confined to his stickiness. Then, he can shoot out his immaterial fiber or third attention to an object, concentrate on it and attain happy lucky feeling through the success of concentration.

If you don't know concentration which gives you peculiar pleasure, your life looks like a hell.

Fortunately, I only read about the book here, but even so, knowing that it exists makes me shudder in terror.

The "H" is for healthy!

2008-03-21T19:38:54Z

New Marlboro H Cigarettes - now with 50% less cancer!

Who is the boss of you?

2008-03-21T19:16:55Z

Since none of you reading this are programmers, I can freely bash programmer idol Paul Graham without getting flamed.

Paul's writings are generally more philosophical than technical, are fairly well thought out, and usually make some good point. However they typically take a somewhat extreme viewpoint which can be summarized as "The way I do things is the only right way, and any other way is a waste of time."

His latest essay, "You weren't meant to have a boss" displays this viewpoint quite well. His argument is that people, and in particular programmers, have evolved to work best semi-independently in small groups, and that large corporate structure by necessity removes the remotest possibility of working independently, and the only way to lead a fulfilling existence is to start your own company and be constantly creating new things.

As usual, much of what he says rings true, although overstated. Hierarchical organizations do have a tendency to displace individual initiative with corporate dronedom in an amount proportional to the size of the entire organization. People are at their most creative individually or in very small groups.

However, his key - unstated - point is that this maximum freedom, maximum creativity mode of operation is necessarily good, necessarily good for everyone (or at least for all programmers), and not living this way is unnatural and stifling and we should just feel sorry for them. Boo fucking hoo for me.

Maybe not everyone is meant to be creative. Maybe there are some quite skilled programmers that are really good at realizing ideas and putting theory into practice but maybe aren't so good at coming up with new ideas or new theories. Or they're just not interested in doing so. Maybe some people are uncomfortable with risk. Or they choose to express their creativity in different ways. In prehistoric hunter-gather tribes I'm sure there was the flamboyant hunter who was the best at jumping from tree to tree and enjoyed the art of the hunt and was really good at it (right up until the day he got gored by a woolly mammoth - really, what was he thinking??) He was creative, living free, expressing himself, realizing his potential. But that doesn't make him any better, any more important, than the guy who stayed back at the camp cooking up the gamey bits the hunter brought back into a nice yummy stew, or the womenfolk who patched up his wounds after his hunt, or anyone else. Point is, different people do different things well, and the reason society works is that we understand that we are better off working together at the things we do best.

Yes, there is something to be learned by trying new things. A well-known piece of managing advice is to delegate the things you're good at, so you can get better at the things you aren't good at. But if that's not what you want to do, that's ok too.

The way I see it, you should be doing what makes you happy. If you want to start your own company and that would make you happy, go for it. (If there's something I can do to help, or if you think I'd make a valuable part of your team, drop me a line.) If you'd be happier working for UltraCorp because you aren't worrying about being able to pay your electric bill next month, that's fine too. And this works both ways - if you're not happy at UltraCo because of the stifling atmosphere and you are longing to do your own thing, then quit and do your own thing (and you're not as trapped as you think you are.) If you founded your own company and are being incredibly creative and productive but are not happy doing it, then get out - realizing your potential as a programmer is not the be-all end-all of existence. (OT: is there a lyrics or tab site anymore that doesn't suck?)

One last thing - Paul says "a programmer working as programmers are meant to is always making new things." This is like a gardener who only plants new things, but never weeds. Who cares that the old stuff is crap, look, here's new stuff! Jamie Zawinski (jwz), another well-known and admired programmer (and who I think is more deserving of the admiration, not least because he is arrogant enough to quote an anonymous slashdot user who called his writings a mass of 'self-righteous bullshit") calls this the Cascade of attention-deficit teenager model of programming. And I think he's got it right. Programming - or whatever we happen to choose to do, be it painting, music, bricklaying, sitting in a bar drinking, or whatever - has its fun parts and its not-so-fun parts. We can't just take the former and forget about the latter and claim to be doing the whole thing. New does not equal better, and it especially doesn't when it goes hand-in-hand with incomplete.

"Yay, I founded my own company, I'm wild and free!" Great, now finish the job, and don't just leave a trail of inspired, half-finished crap in your wake before quitting that and going on to the next "wild and free" thing.

Ok, so my arguments aren't completely well-thought-out, coherent, bla bla bla. When you shoot from the hip, sometimes you end up with a sucking chest wound. (And yes I realize that metaphor makes no sense. See "shooting from the hip.")

Ch-ch-ch-chia!

2008-03-20T20:49:13Z

Is there anyone in your office who deserves a Chia Keyboard"?

Makes a perfect gift!

Lucky me!

2008-03-20T20:21:40Z

Got stopped by the cops last night on my way home from work for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign. (And also for 'proceeding out of turn', as he said the guy in the other direction was at the intersection first and should have gone, but I'm not so sure he was actually at the intersection yet.) Got off with just a warning, almost certainly because by the time the officer actually pulled up behind me I was in my own driveway and getting ready to go into the house (the stop sign was at the end of my street). I guess cops might feel a little overbearing writing someone a ticket in their own driveway.. In any case, I'll be a little more careful next time (to check if the cop is sitting there first, if nothing else).

And a hypothetical question - the whole stop took less than a minute; if he had actually stayed any longer (i.e., written me a ticket), would I have been out of line to ask him if my kids could come outside and say hi to the policeman? :)

Nitpicker, me?

2008-03-20T00:27:42Z

Workish e-mail exchange.

Them: Please review this html design for correctness.

Me: Ok, there's A, B, and C. I realize these aren't huge issues, but I'm pointing them out and trying to be constructive.

Them: For A, your technical judgement is wrong. We're UI designers, so we know how your servers should work. B must be a problem with your system, we've never seen anything like that in our testing. C isn't part of the specification, so we'll ignore that it's broken.

Me: For A, no, my judgement isn't wrong, yours is because of this, this, and this. And don't tell me how to run my servers. For B, ok, yes it did turn out that it was a system configuration problem. It seems like a pretty common issue that could come up on lots of user's computers, so what kind of sucky testing are you doing that you've never seen anything like it. And isn't spotting this kind of flaw supposed to be your entire job? You should have immediately guessed what the problem was if you knew what you were doing. For C, yeah, I understand it's not part of the spec but it would be nice and I don't think terribly difficult. Oh, and while I'm looking at it, this part definitely IS in the spec and is broken. Go fix it.

Don't fuck with me. I do know what I'm talking about, and I'm not just telling you this shit for my health.

RPI, yo!

2008-03-14T18:28:41Z

Everyone knows that Second Life is the beginning of the matrix, right? No Agent Smith yet, but a research group at dear old RPI created an AI for Second Life with the intellectual capacity of a 4-year old. Apparently this puts it in the top 25% of Second Life players.

Tetris, reduced

2008-03-14T01:13:43Z

If plain old 2d tetris doesn't get your blood pumping like it used to, try the ultimate: 1-d tetris! You can even play it while working!

Warren Buffett, will you be my friend?

2008-02-26T18:55:41Z

This is a great quote from Mr. Buffett at a Q&A session a few weeks ago.

Emory:

How do you define happiness and what about your life makes you most happy? When you make good on an investment, do you allow yourself to enjoy that success by getting excited - and on the flip-side, when an investment turns down, do you find yourself equally disappointed - or do you try to remove emotion from your work, as much as possible?

Buffett:

I enjoy what I do, I tap dance to work every day. I work with people I love, doing what I love. The only thing I would pay to get rid of is firing people. I spend my time thinking about the future, not the past. The future is exciting. As Bertrand Russell says, “Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.” I won the ovarian lottery the day I was born and so did all of you. We’re all successful, intelligent, educated. To focus on what you don’t have is a terrible mistake. With the gifts all of us have, if you are unhappy, it’s your own fault.

I know a woman in her 80’s, a Polish Jew woman forced into a concentration camp with her family but not all of them came out. She says, “I am slow to make friends because when I look at people, I have one question in mind; would they hide me?” If you get to be my age, or younger for that matter, and have a lot of people that would hide you, then you can feel pretty good about how you’ve lived your life. I know people on the Forbes 400 list whose children would not hide them. “He’s in the attic, he’s in the attic.” Some of them keep compensating by joining board seats or getting honorary degrees, but it doesn’t change the fact that no one will give a damn when they are gone. The most powerful force in the world is unconditional love. To horde it is a terrible mistake in life. The more you try to give it away, the more you get it back. At an individual level, it’s important to make sure that for the people that count to you, you count to them.

Interesting stuff. Read the whole thing here

Subsistence Farmer Woes

2008-02-25T19:05:02Z

We got our planter boxes installed. They look gorgeous (I'll post some pictures of them at some point). And we had the existing irrigation rerouted so it can water our veggies ... and we find that one of our lines has a leak. Right underneath our brand new concrete patio :( We're hoping it won't be too much trouble to fix (and that it hasn't undermined our patio or anything already) but we may well end up needing to tear up a corner to get to the lines.

In better news, we got the first of our trees, a 4-in-1 apple tree (I think it's gala, fuji, golden delicious, granny smith). We should have that planted this week and we'll see fruit in maybe 2 years.

subsistence farmers, unite!

2008-02-11T20:03:23Z

We're putting in a couple of large vegetable beds in our front yard so we can make better use of our space. Before they went in we didn't really appreciate how large a 6'x6' box really is. Hrm, that's gonna be alot of veggies. And alot for us to keep on top of. I'll y'all know how it goes after a few months...

Don't click this

2008-02-07T19:19:30Z

Don't look at this picture unless you like pain. The kind of pain that gets into your head and won't leave. The kind of pain that makes you wonder if we all deserve to be here at all.

http://www.photojournalism.org/2007%20images/web/contest/singles/source/spot_news1.htm

Please tell me I'm missing something

2008-02-05T23:22:33Z

I'm usually quite happy with my cynicism, but I was pondering a few differences between typical left-wing and right-wing thinking, and well...

Which is the greater wrong, for a person to be denied his right to vote, or for a person to cast a fraudulent vote?

Which is the greater wrong, for a person to not get a government benefit (i.e., money) that they need, or for a person to get a benefit they do not need?

Which is the greater wrong, for an innocent person to be punished for a crime they did not commit, or for a criminal to go unpunished for a crime they committed?

My belief is that if you picked the first choice for those, you are liberal or left-leaning, and if you picked the latter choice you are conservative or right-leaning.

The common thread in these is the difference between harm being done to a single person who is not you and harm being done to everyone (by way of diluting the value of your vote, stealing from the community pool of money, or endangering the public) which includes you.

In other words, the conservative/right-wing belief system holds that it is better to hurt someone else then oneself, or "who cares what happens to someone that I don't know, as long as I get mine".

Now I am a cynic and a liberal, but this conclusion is a little bit too over the top for my taste - I prefer to believe that people are generally better than that, regardless of political stripes. Am I wrong here? What is the flaw in my analysis above?

Lummox Flumite!

2008-01-29T19:39:21Z

Luminoso!

Didja ever notice that Harry Potter magic spells are just latinized versions of Gummi magic? Just sayin...