NY Times: Chaos and gunfire hampered efforts to evacuate the Superdome, and, Superintendent P. Edward Compass III of the New Orleans Police Department said, armed thugs have taken control of the secondary makeshift shelter at the convention center. Superintendent Compass said that the thugs repelled eight squads of 11 officers each he had sent to secure the place and that rapes and assaults were occurring unimpeded in the neighboring streets as criminals "preyed upon" passers-by, including stranded tourists.

 

Note the line about tourists tossed in. People aren't human in New Orleans unless they're from out of town. That's flat out because the people of New Orleans are poor. Imagine how quickly that superdome would be empty if it was full of tourists!

 

CNN: Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands. "Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," Brown told CNN.

 

That's Bush's FEMA appointee. He also says: 'Things are going relatively well.'  I guess it's never too early for spin and damage control. Most of the people who didn't evacuate probably couldn't. They had no transportation, and were too sick or old to go, and with no state structure in place to move them, of course they're going to die. 

 

If you're reading this you have at one point or another worked for a manager who was just flat out incompetent. I mean someone who just always seems to let you down. Doesn't the current president feel like that to you? Let's quickly recap the hilights of his presidency, and his responses. This isn't even a discussion of concrete action, it's just a matter of leadership:

 

1. Chinese defense aircraft and US spyplane collide and China holds American soldiers for a while. Bush does next to nothing to get them out.

2. 9/11. Bush reads a children's book while everyone in America is trying to figure out what the hell is going on. It's falls on a MAYOR to take charge of the situation and reassure the American people? What would Trump think!

3. Bush's own war in Iraq grinds the bones of over 1500 American soldiers. Bush pays nothing more than lip service to them. Enforces policy keeping the impact of their deaths almost completely out of the media.

4. Indonesian Tsunami. Bush at first doesn't acknowledge it. Then offers ludicrously tiny amount of support. Only after days and under crushing international pressure does he finally an amount of support that is not utterly embarrasing.

5. Hurricane Katrina submerges a whole American city. Bush, shocked that this happened despite it being on a list of top three predicted major disasters in the US (including terrorist a major terrorist bombing in NY), does nothing at first. Promises money in the future, and claims everything is going well and that 'we'll get to you eventually'. Thousands live in lawlessness and squalor.

 

If he was your employee, you would so fire his ass, wouldn't you?
-

08 28 2005
Since we moved to the city, I pay almost no attention to the maintenance or upkeep of my car. I don't wash it. I don't check the oil. I don't fret over it. Maybe because I have nowhere private to futz with it. I also seem to have less interest in doing so. Got a new bike helmet today. It's fancy. My old one, held together with glue by design and tape by necessity of said failed design, finally kicked the bucket. Aren'tcha glad ya know?
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08 17 2005
Unlockable adult content. All the rage in politics lately. So, here's the thing. Isn't the V-Chip, which all these fools who hate video games also support, exactly unlockable adult content? The steps to unlock are identical (1. get on the internet, 2. go find the cheat for your particular TV/game, 3. go rot your mind). The only function of ratings and systems like the V-Chip is to keep the simple children away from adult content, because the net-savvy will crack it anyway. In fact nearly all media-related security schemes seem to have the same effect. You can keep Jim-bob and your grandma out (hi grandma!), and the other 75%. But there is 25% that knows enough to get in. So really you're just restricting your audience and doing double-damage to everybody else (they don't get the good stuff, and they have to pay more for what little they do get to finance these ridiculous, flawed, security schemes).
-

08 17 2005
What is so challenging about using cruise control?
-

08 17 2005
Not much posting lately. Working too much.
-

07 30 2005
I fell off my bike mountain-biking on Whidbey Island on Saturday. I think I clipped a stump that was hidden in the brush alongside the trail. I was going neither particularly fast, nor riding particularly aggressively at the time. It was quite a suprise. One of those moments where 'everything happens so fast' and I 'didn't even know what hit me'. All the sudden I was in my best superman pose, flying over the handlebars, the ground rushing up to meet me. I landed on my elbows and chest, with my legs more or less tangled in the bike behind and above me. I inverted my back a bit. At that moment, the back stretch felt pretty good (I remember thinking "wow, that part felt great!"), but of course, with the back, nothing is predictable. So, now my back is tight and I'm oofing and complaining like an old guy. Walking with perfect posture, cuz that feels the best. Eh, I needed to go see a chiropractor anyway.
-

07 30 2005
Generic product review: Sunglasses for driving. Where have you been all my life? The only downside with glasses is that I feel even more distant from my fellow drivers, less tolerant of their behavior, and more likely to treat them like the scum they really are (just kidding).
-

07 30 2005
Korea has been churning out some good movies recently! A lot of them are campy knockoffs of already-cheesy hollywood movies from the 80's and 90's, but the Koreans do them better, funnier, more modern, and cuter.
-

07 30 2005
Hyundai's new Sonata looks pretty sweet. Funny thing: in Korean movies, it seems like every car is a korean car (I never seem to see a Japanese car). I'm pretty sure I want my next car to be a large-horsepower hybrid. That Accord Hybrid looks pretty good, but it's still too early for them. In the next 5 years, everything will likely become hybrid and the prices and availability will become more realistic. What are we gonna do with all those batteries though?
-

07 30 2005
I'm sure this is covered on one of those silly 'movie flaws' websites already. In the movie Speed (thank you cable tv), of which I watched some today, when Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are on the subway train. Keanu tries to pull the emergency brake, and it doesn't work. His solution? There's a bend in the tracks ahead, so he accelerates the train to try to intentionally derail it! Uh, why not just decelerate the train? I feel dirty now for talking about Speed, ai...
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07 29 2005
Thatcher updated his rants with a cool Jury Duty post. Pretty interesting stuff. I can totally imagine Thatcher in that Gene Hackman / Dustin Hoffman runaway jury movie. Can't you!
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07 21 2005
For the first time in my life I have a bit of a commute to work (20-35 minutes, depending on direction and day). I actually like it though. It puts a solid division between work and home, instead of just having them bleed into each other. They feel like two totally different worlds. Now, if only it were a train-ride instead, so I could just relax, instead of dodging fools.
-

07 21 2005
Over an over again, when helping people solve a problem, I'm shocked by how little they understand the problem they're trying to solve. How can you hope to fix something with a spotty understanding of it?
-

07 21 2005
Working at Zipper I'm finally getting a solid feel for assembly. Sure, I understood it before, but I had only done little toy problems with it. The closer I get to the hardware, the more clear and real the whole programming experience becomes.
-

07 12 2005
Things that have not worked out:
Archos Jukebox MP3 player: too big, 6GB too small.
2001 Honda Civic EX 4D: Never buy a car in its first model year. Squeaks, rattles, twitchy steering, front tire spinouts in the wet, loose driver seat, dim spot in console, ridiculously-tiny 5th gear (4000 rpm at hwy speeds!).
Eh, there's more, but I'm in a good mood, so I'm not gonna talk about bad stuff.

Things that have worked out:
Dell D810 laptop: wide, fast, bright, easy-typing, 7hrs with expansion-bay battery. Ugly though!
Canon S30: good, solid camera, though a bit too big
Dell 2001FP: big, bright, works great as a TV
NEC 3500A DVD burner: Quiet, fast, good burns.
Planex Bluetooth mouse: small, works on lots of surfaces, better than most corded optical mice I've used.
Cheap Ikea height-adjustable computer desk (not super stable though)
-

07 12 2005
Saving money is vastly easier living in Seattle than in was in SLO. Can't quite figure out why. I expected the opposite. I expected the big city to eat my paycheck, but no.
-

07 12 2005
For all its patriotic bluster, America cares more about whether our politicians get blowjobs than commit treasonous acts.
-

06 19 2005
My Dell LCD monitor has two bright green LED's on the front (power and input selector). Bright as all hell. What is the point of that? Thank jesus for black electrical tape. Same thing with my Civic. The master switch for the cruise control is this super-bright green light that shines in the corner of my eye. Who designs these things?
-

06 19 2005
Old School was not what I expected. It was actually kinda good.
-

06 19 2005
I spent all day today getting my Stumpjumper ready for some impending off-roading action, after 8 years of humiliation as a commuter bike. Got some big nasty knobby tires. Eliminate the scary creak from my seatpost, swap out front and rear with a new set from EBay (where else can you find good replacement shifters for a 1996 bike?), new handgrips. The next thing I need is to replace the stem... needs more length. Then I'll go pound it silly with Jeff and determine if I want to spring for a front suspension, so to speak. I realized I'm that guy who's out in his driveway working on his old car. Strange.

Not having a bike stand doubles or triples bicycle repair time.
-

06 01 2005
Cell phones in this country are stupid/lame/huge/expensive. Some of the motorolas look great on the web, but go check one out at bestbuy. Yikes.
-

06 01 2005
I wonder if anyone reads this. I kinda feel like nobody does. I'm having blog-reading withdrawl too. Nobody I know other than Charles who's got a blog is updating it. People I know who should have blogs don't. Whine whine, complain complain.
-

06 01 2005
Most tourist attractions are better at night. If it's open at night, go at night.
-

06 01 2005
Taipei 101 is four times taller than the space needle. Taipei 101's elevator gets to the top in half the time of the space needle's elevator. The Taipei 101 elevator is an other-worldly experience. I highly recommend it.
-

06 01 2005
The roof of my civic looks super-bizarro. That big tandem rack, and now two single-bike racks. I don't feel so weird in Seattle though. Lots of people here have kayack racks and other strange stuff sprouting from their cars at all angles. The Seattle REI is neat if you've never been. They have a little 'forest' in front of it. If you go in the wrong way, you find yourself lost in the woods, trees and waterfalls, in downtown Seattle. Kinda fun.
-

06 01 2005
The tirerack.com website is the best place to find good tires for your car (even if you don't buy there). Huge reviews / survey section. I'm looking for new ones because my civic has an icky habit of spinning the front tires at highway speeds if I hit the gas and the road is wet. Quite freaky when it happens. Why am I slowing down? Cuz I'm burning out like some camaro-owning idiot.
-

06 01 2005
Don't ever let the movers pack your stuff.
-

06 01 2005
The XBox360 and the PS3 are probably stackable (one concave, one convex)! Just make sure you by them in equal numbers +/-1.
-

06 01 2005
First day of work at Zipper! I don't really write about work in specifics here. First days are so surreal. So odd to be a super capable person, and to have to 'start over' just because you don't know the codebase. So odd to try to figure out who knows what, if anything, who to talk to, who's in charge (my favorite is staring at someone who could be a tester intern or a programming lead, and not knowing how to approach them). Theoretically I should approach them as equals, but that's not possible when smacking technical issues about.
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05 29 2005
Ah, beautiful Seattle. There is so much I want to do, but I can't do everything at once. Rainier, the coast, kayaking, hiking, biking, camping, eating, music, surely more!
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05 14 2005
Our last few hours in SLO. Talking with Marian last night, we agreed that neither of us regret living here. There were times when I definitely did regret it, and thought I made a mistake in my choice of place to live. The brain is a twisted mass. The feeling of living in a place when you know you've gotta leave soon is totally different from the feeling when you're thinking about living there for 10 years. Anyway. Where we're going is a great place (Seattle!), so I'm happy. Now just gotta get 17 foot U-Hual + trailer carrying civic up 1000 miles of coastline.
-

05 14 2005
Yup, the XBox 360 is an inverted banana. What does microsoft have against the rectangle exactly? Let the marketing begin!
-

05 11 2005
Moving sucks the sucky suck.
-

05 07 2005
The fun is over and the toys put away. The bags are packed, and we're getting on ready to leave. The only happy thing is that we'll be back!
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05 06 2005
Visited the observation deck of Taipei 101 today. It has a massive stabilization sphere in it. Quite impressive.
-

05 06 2005
In Taiwan there is no limit to who you might see riding a full-suspension bicycle.
-

05 04 2005
I hope the leaked Xbox2 pictures floating around the net aren't representative of the final hardware. If they show something like that on MTV (where they're expected to unveil it in a couple of weeks), the MTV crew will have a rough time not laughing their milk out their noses. Not that it matters for US sales. The big publishers are totally behind Xbox2, so it's going to do well in the US whether consumers like it or not. Americans bought the original XBoxes, despite (actually, these are people who buy Cadillacs, so maybe it's because of) their hideous design... anything is possible. Sometimes I think that's why it's called the land of opportunity... the opportunity to sell crap to people who refuse to know any better. Next topic!
-

05 03 2005
Ever wonder how good a $10 cup of tea is? Not too suprisingly, it varies!
-

05 01 2005
After almost getting run off the road a few times in the mountains, I realized that when driving in Taiwan, you must appear slightly threatening at all times. You're safer if you stray over the double-yellow line into oncoming traffic once in a while, just to let them know you mean business. Driving at the outer-edge of a curve, while a safe step in the US, is no good here. If an oncoming driver sees you doing that, they feel free to use up the space you've left them, and you'll find yourself pushed ever closer to the edge. Driving here is old-school negotiation. You must first try to get much more than you expect, and then back off until you get what you really want.

The first thing to understand about driving in Taiwan is that nobody gets pissed off. You are not a person, you are simply a part of a moving system. Someone might be briefly frustrated, but it won't last long. People do not do anything quickly (no sudden swerving, braking, etc), so you always have time to react. It's okay to do pretty much anything to another car (cut them off, tailgate, merge into their lane side-by-side with them) as long as you do it gradually.

Cars in Taiwan never maintain anything like a constant speed. You'll get passed by someone going 20mph over the speed limit, then shortly thereafter you'll pass them going 10 under, in open traffic.

In southern Taiwan, the only driving rule that is followed is that no one turns right on a red light. However, cars frequently run red lights (they're just a 'suggestion' to the locals. I never ran one, because I'm a boy scout).
-

04 22 2005
I dropped my Canon S30 today. From chest height. Onto asphalt. It's a little bashed on the corners (and the corner of the lens!), but it still works fine!
-

04 22 2005
I'm now going to cost you hours of your lifespan: http://www.pbase.com/photos/random.html. Just keep cliking on 'Give Me More' until you find something you're interested in. Only want to see photos from canon cameras? http://www.pbase.com/cameras/canon. I'm pretty sure pbase is the coolest of the image sites. Everyone is always talking about flickr... but after using pbase I can't imagine why.
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04 22 2005
I watched a few minutes of Spirited Away in an electronics store here in Taipei, in Japanese with Chinese subtitles. I found it to be more enjoyable that way. There's something clumsy and unpleasant (though utilitarian) about American English, and apparently that can taint a film even through the subtitles! Even though I'm translating the Chinese subtitles to English in my head, the movie is still better without than with english subs (perhaps I'll try watching it with no subs, and just guess the meaning from memory and context). This realization also jives with my great enjoyment of Totoro, another Miyazaki great (perhaps his best). I've only ever watched that on an old VHS that we inherited from somebody, and it is also Japanese with Chinese subtitles. Sometimes I wish I knew Japanese if only because most great modern pop media (graphic novels, animated films, soap operas) is in Japanese. Sigh. Korean would be good too. Mandarin is useful for me because of my family, but there's not that much that I want to read or watch in it.
-

04 22 2005
I DO NOT recommend removing those 'Centrino'/'Made for WindowsXP' stickers from your laptop. However, mine were quite easy to remove (slip fingernail underneath, pull very slowly). No sticky residue. No walking corporate whore advertisement (plus the dell lackeys put one of mine on kinda diagonal, which was more annoying than words).
-

04 22 2005
I DO NOT recommend editing your registry. That said, these are essential to un-suck windowsxp:

1. Turn off god-aweful balloon popups:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"EnableBalloonTips"=dword:00000000

2. Nuke the start menu delay:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"MenuShowDelay"="0"
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04 22 2005
We're moving to Seattle soon! Hooray!
-

04 22 2005
Not a leaf falls in Taiwan without someone commenting on it. If you make a mistake, you can expect to hear about it. If you aren't doing something exactly right, you can expect to hear about it. Heck, even if you are doing it right, but people don't understand it, well, you're gonna hear about it then, too. On the other hand, when you're out and about on the street, people care much less about what you do. No dirty looks. You can be more free to act however you want, wear what you want, and no one will threaten you.
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04 18 2005
I so should have waited to by my laptop until getting to Taiwan. Here, you can pick up and touch and feel the laptops before buying them, and pretty much every laptop you could want is available to look at. You can go to the 'IBM' stand and see all the IBM laptops. You can go to the 'Acer' stand and see all the Acer laptops, etc etc. American shopping choices are so limited. You just can't compare the Best Buy experience to this.
-

04 17 2005
Taiwan is so different, but so the same. I find myself with almost no desire to take pictures this time around. Maybe when we start going on trips I'll feel like taking more. I think my desire to take photos in general has kinda fallen off lately. At first I thought it was for lack of interesting subject matter (bored with SLO geography). Now that I'm in Taiwan though, I'm not so sure that's it. Maybe I'm just out of the habit.
-

Suffice to say there were a number of problems. I'm sure Sager is a great company and I was just unlucky. Things that went wrong:

Things I (almost) couldn't have known:
1. Taiwan is where you want your laptop made, not China. Buy a Chinese laptop, get:
1a. Keyboard sqeaks
1b. AC adapter cord connection to laptop loose even when plugged in properly. Bumping it can make it fall out or (worse) stay in but not be properly connected
1c. Creaky right wristpad (frog-like noise every time I rest my hand on it!)
1d. Creaky right touchpad-button, which only happened once it got warm
1e. Shipped with CPU locked at 600MHz in bios (fixable, but annoying)
1f. General creaky-ness and flexyness of the case. Just feels like it's gonna break when I pick it up.
2. Bad luck: DOA DVD-RW

Things I could have known, had I tried a bit harder:
1. Keyboard is tiny for a laptop this size. See the backslash key above. See the (useless) speaker to the right of it? Laptop-makers: DO NOT FUCK UP THE KEYBOARD. There is nothing hard about a keyboard. Make the layout exactly like the current dell inspiron keyboards (ie: minimially different from a standard windows 104 key keyboard). Or, if you want to be clever, take that exact design, and curve it like the Asus Travelmates. Those are nice keyboards!
2. Giant ugly battery sticks out the back, unbalances the laptop when carrying.
3. Hot! Really hot under the wrists and through the touchpad. Very bizarre to feel warm convection around the fingers. Hot on the legs while web-browsing!?!?
4. Fan comes on every few minutes when running off AC. Really annoying. And that's just web-browsing.
5. >1GB is too much memory for a laptop. 512MB is plenty. Why? Hibernate! When windows hibernates it just does a raw write of ram to the disk. When it wakes from hibernate it does a big read off disk into ram. in both cases, it'll be twice as fast with 512MB than with 1GB. And, you'll never get close to using a gig of ram in a laptop. Be serious.

Things I was very happy about:
1. Fast! 2.0GHz Pentium-M is the shit. Actually it felt pretty damn fast even when it was throttled to 600MHz.
2. 100GB 5400 rpm seagate screams. Feels faster than my desktop HD.
3. Screen just about perfect for me. I'm really picky about screens. This one has good horizontal and vertical viewing angles, and pretty good color. It's WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) widescreen. About perfect for a laptop I think. For programming I can put all the debugging stuff to one side. And the text is big enough to read for web-browsing, etc. No glossy coating. I think those re just a gimmick anyway. Why would you WANT glare?
4. Built-in webcam.
5. Sager and DiscountLaptops.com service! Really excellent. It's the best I've been treated by a merchant (online or off) ever, even through the return process (yep, returned the laptop!)
6. Built-in gigabit ethernet.
7. Wireless is god.

So, now I'm anxiously awaiting a WSXGA, Dothan or Sonoma-based, reasonable-keyboard, reasonably-good-looking, ~2000.00 notebook with gigabit ethernet, and a >=100 5400 rpm drive, made in Taiwan. Perhaps somewhere in the flood of Sonoma laptops this year, something will do it for me. Asus M6bne was so close! So sexy, but no WSXGA and control key in the wrong place!
-

01 18 2005
New CPU in the PC. AMD Athlon 64 3400+ (2.4GHz). It really screams. Much faster than our work PC's (P4 3.06GHz with Rambus (shudder)). I really didn't expect it to be this fast. If you're currently around the 1GHz mark, I highly recommend it. Nice quiet Zalman heatsink on it. All I hear is the power supply. Just 512MB of RAM for now. No reason for more unless you're running a lightmapper or something.

-

01 18 2005
Happy new year! The refrigerator is still running. Actually that short fried the whole motor too, so we just bought a factory-direct oem replacement. Works nicely. Nothing quite like cold veggies to make your day.
-

11 30 2004
Success! Our 3 year old modelo-del-cheapo refrigerator (Maytag == Shit! 10-foot pole! Avoid!) is fixed. This after having a 'technician' come look at it a few months back, tell me "you overfilled your icetrays, you fucking moron" (okay, so I embellished), and proceed to blowdry the freezer compartment for 10 minutes and rip a $120 hole in my wallet. This after the refrigerator stops working again, a week before Thanksgiving, with guests coming. This time, determined not to give some fuck a dime to blowdry anything, I blowdry it myself only to have it stop working a few hours later. This after ordering $140 worth of replacement parts online (WWW.PARTSELECT.COM BABY!), only to have the one part I really am most interested in (the fan motor) be backordered and not arrive until a week and a half after Thanksgiving. This after the arriving motor is for the wrong refrigerator series! Yes, refrigerator models have sub-series. Cocksuckers. Fortunately, I decide to go ahead and take the old fan off and maybe try to jam the new motor in there somehow. When I find THIS:

That, readers, is our good friend the electrical short. Yes, the arc-hole goes through to the adjacent peg. That, my friends, I can fix in 10 minutes with NO parts whatsover. To make matters worse, the exterior of the fan plug had a big nasty brown burn spot on it. To make matters worse, that burn spot was there when the 'technician' took everything apart to blowdry it. I am speechless and cannot continue, so I will stop.
-

11 24 2004
I'm so disappointed with food in San Luis Obispo. Perhaps I'll make a little San Luis Obispo Restaurant Guide to tell you all about it. I try to be optimistic and not complain so much when eating lunches out with my coworkers, but that doesn't work. I end up complaining anyway. The thing is, complaining about it in this town does nothing. There's nowhere else for you to go in town that's good. On top of that, there is no critical mass of people here with taste. If there were, none of these restaurants would survive. It's almost a california town with Ohio-suburban taste (though not quite that bad, at least there's a decent mexican place here).
-

11 03 2004
I got off work at 9:30PM and it felt EARLY! That can't be good. One of the most frustrating things in my job is ambiguity. I have a task to do. I could spend days on it or minutes. Finding a good way to do it can make the 'minutes' solution much better than the 'hours' solution. It's amazing what you can squeeze out of unwilling code if you bash on it hard enough. I had this vision today of myself running all over my code like it's some crazy finninky machine, smashing different pieces with a hammer until it all works. Of course, then there are other days, where I feel so smart because everything is working so well, and new features are easy to add, or better yet, already working and just need to be tweaked to do the right thing.
-

11 03 2004
As promised: Well, the American people have done it again. Good job, nitwits. You voted for someone almost as dumb as you are. Actually, it's mostly the fault of you tools in Ohio. And god knows we shouldn't have depended on you.
If you look at the map there was nothing surprising about yesterday. Everyone knew it would come down to the battleground states, and it did. Now we really will find out if this country can take for more abysmal years of Bush. Now it's a matter of watching as his broken, backwards policies end up hurting his constituents as much as I think they're likely to.
- 11 03 2004
I've got some nice harsh words in store if Bush wins. In fact, I'll probably post a variation of them even if Kerry wins, because they're still true. It sounds like basically every thinking person in this country is considering a quick exit to somewhere not so dangerous. But despite the tone of the news media, which had me convinced of defeat last night, it's not over yet! Ohio is close, and there are over 250,000 uncounted provisional ballots. As Kos notes, 85% of those went to Gore last time. If that happens this time, and most of those ballots are valid, Kerry would take Ohio.

I quote the only sane thing posed on the Drudge report, ever: "Count the votes".
-

10 21 2004
The new Ford GT is gonna sell a shit-ton of the new Mustangs (also retro, but so obviously just the 2K4 Mustang with what looks like a shoddily-bolted-on retro body kit?). We're gonna be knee-deep in them. I think the GT styling is fucking awesome, and I want one... that's coming from someone who knows full well that any Ford product will only bring you recalls, repairs, headaches and poor build quality. Still, I hope it forces all the other manufactures to rob their closest for good-looking stuff. This might just make up for the travesty that is the modern Ford Thunderbird. I want to see a Chrysler Roadrunner and a Chevrolet Corvette Stingray (but make them look good this time you fools). Still none of these cars is reliable or built well enough actually buy, but they sure are nice to look at.
-

10 17 2004
If you don't have time to keep your finger on all the various news outlets, this is the best crib-sheet out there for you. It's really, truly good: New York Times Endorses John Kerry. This is the same New York Times that help lead the mindless march to war in Iraq, that printed poorly-reviewed nonsense from conservative hacks, and continues to do so. These people, even these people understand that Bush must go. If Bush were an employee, any responsible employer would fire him for incompetence on the spot if even a fraction of what is in that op-ed is true (and it's all true).
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10 16 2004
A cropped photograph is a lie.
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10 14 2004
Since the first presidential debate, the only polls that consistently show Bush even with Kerry over sample Republicans by 8-12%. This despite the fact that historically there is more Democratic turnout that Republican. Perhaps the poll-takers are anticipating more dirty tricks this time around? Private voter-registration companies shredding hundreds of Democratic registration forms is a good way to start.
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10 14 2004
So, the Democrats have swept the debates. Kerry has won all three of the presidential debates. Edwards won the vice presidential debate as well, even though he was the underdog. The first and last presidential debates showed Kerry to be the clear winner. The second debate and the vice presidential debates weren't so lopsided, but no serious person could contend that the Republicans did better. Across America, their hope is that Americans will vote despite what they've seen, and that's a distinct possibility.

The electoral college has got to go. I think Democrats would let it go. The only way this is going to happen, though, is if Republicans lose the race for president a couple of times while winning the popular vote. My feeling is that any time the public is split 50/50, there is a pretty good likelihood of this happening. People like to say "well it's only ever happened three times." My question in response is: how many times has the public been split between just two candidates, and split evenly? Why would you want to virtually guarantee conflict and distrust by bringing up a flaw in the system at the very time when people need to be assured that the system they're participating in works properly.
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10 13 2004
Tonight is the last presidential debate. So uninteresting. Perhaps someone will make it interesting for us.

How can a person deeply concerned about ethics support Bush, exactly? Would you want your spouse or child to act like him? I can understand not supporting Kerry (he's pretty much a regular politician, who spins just enough to stay alive). But I really can't understand why so many people who otherwise claim to be all for virtue and all against vice support Bush. Are they really willing to sell out their principles just because he says he's for virtue and against vice?
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10 08 2004
Wow, Kerry beat Bush again! I really wasn't expecting Bush to fall apart like he has. I feel like American is getting to see him in just the way that smart people see him: as largely a sneaky, simple fraud. We'll see.

The various (hideously unscientific) online polls are pretty interesting. They're so easy to game and skew. In the last two debates, they've started with wildly drastic democratic leads (CNN tonight started with an 80/20 split saying Kerry won the debate), then they equalize out a bit over a day. This surprises me for a few reasons. For one, the Democratic astroturf game is so much less organized than that of the Republicans. Also, I've always heard that more tech-savvy people are Republican (probably piggybacking on the while male demographic). What explains this wild disconnect? Some voting bots? The numbers aren't small either: 500,000 to 1,000,000 votes!

Now it's time for the reversal test: Imagine if Kerry did as poorly in these first two debates as Bush has done. Just imagine the viciousness. The big-iron media has had to hold all their attacks because the wrong guy is slipping up. Imagine their response if Kerry was blinking twice a second, if he was sweating, if his eyes were darting all over the place, if his answers just didn't make any sense, and he kept admitting to the audience that he 'just didn't know how to respond' or 'couldn't understand' what the other guy just said, even though the audience understood it perfectly. Kerry is doing better than Bush despite the continuing double standard against him (Smart Republicans will support Bush no matter what. Smart Democrats want to support Kerry no matter what, but are very likely to voice doubt of their candidate, because they're bright people who understand that open criticism of yourself is healthy and good).

Best quotes of the night (http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004c.html) from the great embarrassment of our time:
"We've got battling green eye shades."
"Need some wood?"
"I'm human."
"I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land. "

Gosh we're gonna miss him!
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10 06 2004
Dick Cheney is the mastermind behind the Bush administration? Before last nights debate I could have believed that, at least casually. Let me rephrase. Before last nights debate, I could have believed that Dick Cheney was behind what appeared to be the awesome strength of the Bush administration. Now I see, even deeper, how he's possibly behind the ridiculousness and ineptitude of the Bush administration. If he's so cool and powerful, he should have absolutely crushed that upstart Edwards. Instead, the best the conservative voices have been able to muster so far is "it's was a draw." My god man. The leader of the free world comes to a draw with John Edwards. It really is time for something new.
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10 06 2004
How ridiculous is it when people say "war is hell" as a way of justifying war. It's as if by redefining the consequences of war as an abstract concept (hell) that no one gives any deep thought to, let alone has an experience with (you been to hell lately, or seen any pictures or accurate descriptions?), that not only gives us some insight, but indicates that we understand war, and we're all on the same page about it. We're not. For a moment accept (maybe you don't, in which case, go ahead a skip the rest of this hypothetical) that morality is roughly transitive. In a good clean war, the ideal is that lots of enemy infrastructure and soldiers are killed (a decisive victory has always also included dramatic civilian casualties, but lets leave that aside for now). Property destruction is taken very seriously in the west, but it's not such a big deal in the first order. However, willful killing in this country is worth a life sentence or the death penalty. Perhaps we could re-arrange war (this is a thought experiment, remember) so that there's not so much killing in it. Let's replace it with something that society doesn't give you the death penalty/life in prison for, like rape for example. Let's be clear. Murder and rape are both a really big deal, but mis a bigger deal than rape. It's worse. It's more evil. It's more destructive, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.

What do you think the consequences would be if the 10,000 - 20,000 iraqi soldiers who've been killed in this war were in fact not killed, but were raped instead by American soldiers? We almost already know the answer to this. A few were, and the results were just short of catastrophic for this administration (they only survived the storm by pretending they didn't have anything to do with it). Why is that shame not every heavier for murder on the battlefield, especially how surgical and lopsided it has been in Iraq? I blame the media, but not the way you think. Murder on television and in movies is so shamefully clean, while rapes are depicted roughly accurately (his is true even in print media). This is not the fault of people making movies and TV shows. They want to put that stuff in. They want to show the gore, or to depict the reality, to connect to the audience and show the last ounce of life drop out of a man and hope go out of his eyes, with his guts in his hands and shit in his pants. They're simply not allowed to.
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09 05 2004
Two people. One bike. 4.5 hours. 101 degrees. 80 miles.
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08 25 2004
There was something I was going to write here a few days ago, then I got lazy and didn't. Then I noticed other people expressing the same or similar thoughts. A little strange. One is Krugman, who asks: "How have they been able to get away with it? The answer is that we have been living in what Roger Ebert calls "an age of Rambo patriotism.". Charles mentioned it too here on 8-21-04. Anyway, the phrase that popped into my head, it's even short enough for a bumper sticker, is: "Down With Patriotic Fellatio". Now, of course fellatio is a good thing, and there's no reason to insult it by putting it next to patriotism. Bill O'Reilly's bluster and posturing is just cuz he's got it in so deep he's choking on it. There's been a lot of talk lately about 'true patriotism' and this notion that 'true patriotism means doing what is right for your country.' This is a nice arguing point, and maybe a good way to win over undecided voters, but it's not really true. Patriotism is, and has been for some time, exactly what you think of when you hear it: flag-waving, excuse-making, thin-thinking pap. It's an easy way out for people who want to feel good. Patriotism is loving your country... no, patriotism is being in love with your country. Being in love with a concept (yes any concept, even or perhaps especially a seemingly good one), which is all a country really is, is a very dangerous thing. Doing what is right for your country is is not patriotism, it's responsibility. Patriotism is cheering for your college football team (something fun indeed, GO DUCKS!). Responsibility is fighting to make sure your school budget doesn't get eaten up by the football team, even though you dig football once in a while.
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08 09 2004
I like Chris Eska's "Doki-Doki" short movie. PBS runs it once in a while. It seems you can get a DVD of it priced very reasonably here (there's a tiny spoiler on the 'buy' page, but who cares): http://www.chriseska.com. I'm a bit of a sucker for Japanese and Taiwanese nostalgia (though not pop culture directly). If you've waited for hours on the tarmac at Narita airport during a thunderstorm, or went out at 9PM to pick up movie from blockbuster and buy deep fried delights from a street vendor in Taipei, you'd be a sucker for it too. Then again maybe you are even if you haven't done those things. Good lord there are moments I just want to sell all my crap here and move to Taiwan. Not so easy, though. Or is it?

At the very least I gotta brush up on my Mandarin. It's really going to rot at this point, esp the writing. It pisses me off that I have such a hard time talking to my wife in Mandarin. It's some ridiculous pride thing or something. For the life of me I can't nail down the reason why. It just never seems casual enough, then when it is casual, I get this deer-in-the-headlights feeling, then all I can do is smile and look dumb. Most of the time though, I just think I'm being a big baby about the whole thing. Wanting to talk to her, but feeling truly and deeply uncomfortable doing so, is truly one of the most bizarre sensations I've ever felt. It persists over time (years!), and it operates at a really low level, like a phobia or an allergic reaction. I've said this many times before, but the best way to learn a foreign language is by talking to a child who's a native speaker of it. They talk nice and slow, they don't judge you (at least not in any way you'd care about), and they don't mind repeating themselves over and over. Maybe when I have kids of my own, they can help me learn. The problem is, it'll be me teaching them Mandarin, not the other way around.
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08 09 2004
Today I did something you should never do: I cursed at one of my possessions: I said to my 1994 Specialized Stumpjumper, "Get out of my life!" To some extent I was performing for my coworkers and myself (stupid), and blowing off that ultimate-frisbee head rush. The history of the StumpJumper is as follows: I first had a Specialized Hard Rock, which my mom bought for me. I rode that 10 miles a day (round trip across town to school). It was the bottom of the line Specialized, but I was fast on it. That was 1992 or so. I loved that bike. It was Champagne colored, and I remember riding it when I first got it. Senior year in high school, I wanted to upgrade. I was working summers doing landscaping, so I had enough money to buy the bike two steps up: the Stumpjumper. When the bike arrived, I was very happy. I rode it, and it accelerated like a motherfucker. The problem was, the front gear was too damn small. So you hit top speed immediately, and top speed was not fast. However, I just spent a bunch of money on it, so I really wanted to like it, and I convinced myself to like it (then I spent the next year riding it with that little nagging feeling that something was 'off'), while the Hard Rock disintegrated, alone, in the back yard. I dragged the Stumpjumper to Oberlin college for 2 years, where I used it a small number of times, but hid it under my bed most of the rest of the time. One cold Ohio winter night, I rode across the (tiny) Oberlin campus to pick up some hot wings. On the way back, water froze in the bottom bracket. The whole thing froze solid. That was an early warning sign that I had to get out of Ohio. Back at the University of Oregon, I decided it was just too slow, so I informally traded it with my mom's (hah, pink/purple!) Specialized Crossroads. The Crossroads had huge diameter tires, and at least it was fast. My mom modified the Stumpjumper to be to her liking. After some years, I wanted the Stumpjumper back, so we traded back. My mom always liked that bike more than I did. I felt guilty for taking it back... I should have just left it with her. The thing was, it was the first bike I had paid a bunch of money for, and the stupid capitalist part of me couldn't let it go because of that. Eventually I put a bigger front sprocket on, but it's still too slow and heavy. I moved to San Luis Obispo after school, and the Stumpjumper came with me. I ride it to work (a mile and a half or something, almost a shame to ride at all, but much better than driving). It's really just such a damn slow bike for me though. The way to go is really road bikes. Now we have a hot Tandem road bike, so smooth, fast, stable and comfortable. The mountain bike thing just ain't cutting it. I ask you, where did all my energy go? Into moving fat ass tires that weight a million pounds, and pushing wind away from the profile of me, practically standing vertically cuz the bike's a little too small. Yeah, so I told the bike to get out of my life. The last road I cross on the way home from frisbee is a 4 lane (2 each way) / 45 mph limit monstrosity. I pull over to the curb and stop to get a good look before committing to the crossing (there's no room for error here, I actually look each way for a good 5 seconds to be sure). All clear, I pound on the pedals, and get mostly across the street. Then, the gears feel wrong. I shift, but nothing happens, just odd sounds (like I got some junk stuck in the gears). I ride down the embankment (as usual) into the condo parking lot, stop, and check it out. One of the little guide gears on the rear derailleur is all stuck in the chain! It has come off. I limp the bike back to my garage, and spend the next two hours hunting down the broken pieces, and fixing the thing. You think it heard me? You damn well bet it did. Anyway, now it's all clean and shiny, and I'll be a little more respectful toward it.
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07 12 2004
No one from my past has an obvious online presence. How strange. It seems like the web is slipping back to being a 'techie-only' medium. For a while there everyone and their mother had a web page. Now I think most of those pages are gone. I hope someone saved a copy! That's a lot of history to lose. I think those of us who were around 10 years ago when the web was just getting started will start to feel genuine nostalgia for those days very soon. Everything about the web was weird and wild and new. Even now there are whole aspects of the web that are very mysterious to most people. That's a cool thing.
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07 08 2004
If you're gonna brush your teeth once a day, doing it in the morning is probably the worst possible time. Why do people do it that way? To get a 'fresh, clean feeling' in the morning. Fair enough. Mouthwash can do that. Brush at night, and use mouthwash in the morning. Even better, stick the mouthwash in the shower, then you'll never forget it. Hah!
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07 07 2004
I'm agonizing a bit over getting a set of clipless pedals for the tandem. I'm sure I want them, but one set of shoes + pedals runs 200 dollars. I must investigate alternatives. I also really want a set of aerobars too. God damn the bicycle arms race. When is enough enough?
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07 03 2004
Is your refrigerator not cooling, but your freezer works fine (like mine was)? Before you blow a wad of cash having a repairman come fix it (like I just did), instead, make sure there's not a bunch of ice built up in the duct from the freezer down to the refrigerator (like mine had). 10 minutes with a hairdryer could have saved me $118 today.

Loose-rules ultimate frisbee is considerably more fun than by-the-book frisbee. The 10 second count is way too long, and side-outs and end zone out-of-bounds are dumb. I wish I could throw farther, run faster, and jump higher.

I bought a 10 dollar bottle of Banana Boat (a brand I generally dig) spray-on sunscreen today. What crap. For one thing, it's still white and oily, and it doesn't 'spray,' it just squirts out in a roughly straight line. But the worst part is that it's got some nasty chemical in it (probably to keep it more liquidy). It's really gross. Why is it so damn hard to do sunscreen. Here's what you do:

1. It should be in a spray bottle.
2. It should have the consistency, appearance and smell (lack of small?) of water. Once it soaks into your skin, there should be no detectable residue on the surface.
3. It should be actually waterproof. I don't get this. If the shit sunk into your skin, why do you also need waterproofing? Lame.

A couple hundred years of chemistry. Trillions of dollars of chemical research. And they can't deliver such a simple thing. Lazy fuckers. There's too much money being spent making prescription drugs that people don't need and building military hardware that gets us nowhere. Take care of your body, play nice, and make me some god damn sunscreen that works.
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07 02 2004
Saw the new Spiderman movie. The action sequences were really well executed. The intermissions between them were just long enough to whet my appetite for more action, and just short enough so I didn't want to leave. They didn't do that annoying action movie thing where there's a ton of action in the first 20 minutes, then an hour of old people holding hands on the beach, then 10 minutes of action at the end. It was Action, Drama, Action, Drama, Action, Drama, Action, Drama. They treated humans like playthings, which is really great in a movie. People are so high and mighty about themselves (oh, we're the most advanced species on earth... oh I could beat a mountain lion in a cage (heh... sigh)), but there's always a bigger guy, and nothing makes the heart warmer than seeing people who previously thought they were the top dog, suddenly come face to face with the reality they they're the loser. The sound was great. The theater actually had it turned up loud enough. The picture was sharp. It was one of the best theater experiences I've had in some time. Highly recommended. The flaws it had were tiny, few, and far between.
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07 01 2004
Everyone seems so eager to know about John Kerry, but not that eager. I think that's helping him at this point. For all the punditry and posturing that this election is a referendum on Bush policy, in the end I don't think it will be. I think Bush will have a hard time looking relevant next to Kerry, because of the height disadvantage. Look for Bush photo-ops to place him on very high podiums, and try to make him 'look tall' the closer we get to the election. My point was, in the end, everyone already knows where Bush stands on everything. There are no surprises. You're either with him, or you're with the terrorists. By the end, look for this to be a referendum on proposed Kerry policy. Should be very interesting. Since the morning of September 11th, I was convinced the election would be a Bush landslide. A big part of me still thinks it will be, unless John Kerry can appear to be some kind of superman. His ability to raise money in a hurry has been very impressive. He has actually raised very close to the same amount as Bush at this point (180m v 250m). Maybe wealthy donors are just easier to come by these days... Of course everyone knows the truth: if you're in business, you're gonna hedge your bets, just in case Kerry does win. Hence, he'll get corporate support in return for guarantees of middle-of-the road economic policy. It's funny that they would worry, since Democrats are quite pro-business these days. I suppose, though that they're pro-business enough to realize that you don't even get an exec's attention unless you bring the transfer of money into the discussion. It must burn so badly for the big execs that the big money from a hot economy is, in the recent past, something only Democratic (or slightly left-of-center, economically, like Reagan was once sense was knocked into him properly and he rescinded his silly tax cut ideas) presidents have been able to deliver. Surely this has been the most tepid economic recovery in American history. Especially after the economy tanked so damn badly. We had so much headroom to grow, but it has taken four years so far, and it's slow, measured improvement. Yet, execs still like Bush. He talks like them, thinks like them, acts chummy with them, is really one of them in a genuine way. Yet for the life of him all he can offer is tax cuts... an incentive that is so unbelievably small for the ultra-wealthy... and so transparently a manufactured issue, designed to give politicians with no quality policies to propose, some thing to talk about. Tax cuts. Who actually believes that a multi-millionaire gives a crap whether their taxes are 50 grand higher or lower? About as many middle class people who as gave a crap about a 200 dollar tax rebate. If tax cuts hurt rich people in the short run as much as they hurt them in the long run (hard to make money with a poorly-educated populace, shitty infrastructure, nearly third-world patterns of reliance on personal transportation), maybe they'd just go away. Advanced nations the world over (including this one, at times), have illustrated amounts and levels of progressiveness of taxation that work to promote growth, technological superiority, and yes, even national pride. After all, what is a tax but a donation to your country, to make it better. Sadly, people (as a whole now, not just Americans) are not smart or far-sighted enough to voluntarily donate (hell, people the world over can barely save their own money!), forcing taxation to be compulsory.
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06 24 2004
Over half a terabyte of hard drive space in my home PC. What is the world coming to. I wonder if a big enough sun spot could fry all the hard drives on earth. That would suck.
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06 13 2004
I found myself watching PBS's American Experience puff piece on reagan a couple of days ago, and I realized something. When you're choosing a president, a huge considerations is: "what is this guy going to do with the opportunities that are presented to him?". In the puff piece, it appeared that reagan was offered nearly full nuclear disarmament of the USSR, in exchange for the US promising not to pursue SDI (Star Wars). It is widely believed that reagan was the only person on earth that though SDI would work... and he missed the opportunity for full nuclear disarmament just to hang on to SDI. How sad.
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06 13 2004
The idea of running a government like it's a business is a sad joke. You know business people are trained to be dishonest. No matter what you believe about the current administration, there are two undeniable facts:
1. They run the government like it's a business.
2. They're going to lie to you to get you to buy what they're selling, and they feel not an ounce of shame in doing so, nor feel the need to hide the lie.

The only question is whether you care that you're being lied to.

Now, it may be true that Americans don't really mind being lied to... we're certainly conditioned for it. We don't even hear lies as lies anymore. We just assume everything is a lie, because we're lied to in print and on screen all day every day. People are stunned when they see any depiction of reality in either medium (witness the powerful pull of 'reality television'... itself a lie. I want to see a show about how the crew of a reality tv show functions. Instead, someday we'll get a reality tv show where the contestants have to successfully film the participants in a second reality tv show...). September 11th blew the mind of everyone in this country, because reality dropped in for a moment. Not to worry, we replaced it quickly with the lie that a little flag-waving will help.
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06 13 2004
No one expects a business person to be honest. I'm not sure anyone ever did. It's a counterproductive business decision to tie yourself to honesty. I've been told more than once that business people "really want to make a good product," "care about what they do," and "have their customers interests in mind". All true, on some level, I'm sure. However, making a truly good product is hard. It's much harder than it looks. It's so hard, in fact, that I believe essentially all business fail at it (quick, name the last thing you bought that was not seriously flawed in some way... either partially defective, or just absurdly designed an implemented in some sense?). In order to survive, businesses must lie to sell their products. Now, in a vacuum, there's nothing wrong with that... that's just business. But just because that's how businesses survive today does not mean that the public has to let them do it tomorrow. The public is armed (with laws and government), exactly to protect against that kind of stuff. Why not use that power?
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06 13 2004
People who think things work, just because those things have worked for them so far, are just infuriating. That makes pretty much everyone infuriating on some level. The sad conclusion is that if you're a generally optimistic person, you just don't know enough.
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06 06 2004
Ding Dong! The Witch is dead. Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch!
Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead.

Wake up - sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed.
Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead. She's gone where the goblins go,
Below - below - below. Yo-ho, let's open up and sing and ring the bells out.
Ding Dong' the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low.
Let them know
The Wicked Witch is dead!
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05 11 2004
Far as I can tell I'm doing a pretty good job at work. I sure hope so, cuz there's not a thing else going on.
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05 10 2004
WiFi to my silent mp3 box hooked up to the stereo. Internet radio all the time. Sweet, sweet bliss. Does everyone write a love poem to their WiFi network when they first get it? Need more speed. Need strong encryption. I see they're working on wireless Firewire. Happy day.
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05 9 2004
Played ultimate frisbee today and got a nice callus on my left big toe. Went to practice my walking skills (on stairs no less), slipped, and fell square on my phone-wielding left elbow, simultaneously punching myself in the face. Ripped that callus halfway off. Bled all over the place. It's nice to lose a little blood. Feels like getting clean again. On the other hand, it's messy. Limping like a fool.
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04 28 2004
Got Kuro spayed. Unfortunately she's a bright and strong-headed little cat. She's pretty much shredded her stitches, and figured a way out of each restraint we devise for her. Last night was the worst. Up all night last night making sure she wouldn't chew her own guts out. Poor beast. Anyway, a trip to the vet this morning to get her some some more stitches to eat. They try to get you to put this 'E-Collar' on her. E for Elizabethan... yah. Makes her walk around backwards like a crawfish all night, and utterly uncomfortable. This is one of those many times I feel that mankind is pretty unadvanced: "Here's a loop of flimsy sharp plastic to prevent your cat from eating herself... have at it!". Seems like there should just be a 'glue' that goes on over the wound that they can't get off. Why is that so damn hard? The sad part is it probably exists, but some greedy executives, running a company heavily subsidized by taxpayer money, won't make it cheap cuz they don't have to. Could someone list me the benefits of state sponsored capitalism again? I keep forgetting.
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04 11 2004
Two little words. FIXBOOT. FIXMBR. Suck it down boot sector virus. Suck. It. Down. Thank you MS for not dropping the ball on Win2K. It is choice. Two little words bring my machine back to life. What a way to unwind, dealing with the prospect of losing 'it all'.
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04 10 2004 Part 2
So, naively, maybe QT6 is better. Except their download points me at f'ing iTunes... yep. Sure. Eventually QT6 installer is on my desktop. Install. Type in serial. Hit okay. Error -2343something. Ok. Error -2343something... Okokokok whatever. Typical slipshod Apple programming. Ah, a pristine desktop. Quicktime would like to reboot my computer. Aren't we past that too. Fuckers? You don't need to boot my PC. Fuck off. Reboot anyway. It is Apple after all. Go take a leak. Return to my machine. It looks just exactly like this, right down to the black background, and not counting the quotes:

"
99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99
"

Oops. This should not be happening to me. Sure LOOKS like someone is writing zeroes to my hard-drive! Or maybe nines! All my digital photos! To quote Bloom: "Oh Sweet Fucking Jesus!" Hit the kill switch. Sweat. Reboot. Just printing more 99s! Oh happy day. More panic. Relay the news to wife. General despair. Install 2K on an old spare IBM drive, and survey the damage. Shockingly, things still seem to be there! Maybe the virus writer was an idiot and chose to try to destroy my HD with VB calls or something : P Two big lesson for you Win2K people out there though (okay for me, not for you, or maybe for you if you want to listen):

1. If you use windows security to password protect directories, that data is encrypted, and you LOSE it if you lose that install unless you export the certificate. So export the fucking certificate and keep it somewhere. Did you hear that? 30 seconds of pain to save you a fuck-ton of pain down the road.
2. So obvious that no one does it until something like this happens to them: back that ass up. We're talking Firewire800 external drive. In one of the KMart fireproof boxes, or even better, stored off-site. What would be nice is a combo: a fireproof encloser with power/FW800 cable to the outside. FW800 works with a super-long cable. That would be great! Too tired tonight to deal with this shit. Surely more tomorrow...
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04 10 2004 Part 1
Fiddled with coding some 1D/2D perlin noise for a few minutes today. It's amazing how good it looks, even when it's totally broken. Sure, it looks 'better' when it's all done properly, but not that much better. Cubic interpolation is so much better looking that cosine interpolation it hurts. I doubt it'll be noticeable for non-visual applications though.

Honestly, is Apple even capable of writing software at all? Quicktime 5 routinely 'crashes IE' (that is, Quicktime dies and takes IE with it) on my box. C'mon guys, software is so beyond this 'hard crashing' thing... honestly.
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02 28 2004
The 'friend' for Epsilon mentioned on 01 07 2004 has been acquired! After much driving to Cambria and back, we finally picked up a tiny black lady ball of fuzz. She's looks just like Epsilon at first glance. Epsilon is far from comfortable with "Kuro" for now, but hopefully things will smooth out in the next few days. This is a seriously calm kitty. Nerves of steel. She seems to trust us utterly.
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02 23 2004
Amateur(ie: water-cooler-style or televised-debate-style) political arguments seem to just devolve into intellectual pissing contests. It can be entertaining, but it's frustrating too. The problem is this: the fact that the more convincing person is the one who knows more tends to cloud the issue of who is right. Of course, it's often the case that the person who knows more is also the one who is more right, but it's easy enough to construct situations where that is not the case. Here politics needs to become more like science (great, now you political science professors out there are all happy). I mean that in the following way: we need to be able to agree on the results of political actions, and we need to be able to agree on whether certain choices were right or not. This seems like it can't be as hard as we're making it out to be (though in the end it probably is). There are some very dedicated people that spend a lot of time researching political events, and some of them write down what they do. One problem is that the format is almost always a book format, so it takes a lot of time to plow through it all. Another problem is trust. Politics is so driven by deception and spin control these days that no one who possibly has anything invested in politics or how politics potentially translates into money can be trusted to speak the truth. This leaves us with just a couple of sources of truthful material: academics working without subsidy, and freelance amateurs. Ouch. The problem with this situation is that academics, particularly those who aren't being paid to produce a particular result, tend to form a uniformly liberal group (then there are those who are paid to produce an opinion... who seem to me to produce opinions roughly in alignment to the money invested. Clearly that system is working). And then we have freelance armatures, and they just don't know a goddamn thing about how it all fits together. This group includes pretty much anyone any of us is likely to meet who has a political opinion, as well as myself and probably you too. Sure, we have some spot knowledge. I know a lot about Y, and you know a lot about X. And we both know a little bit about what the other person knows, but those things don't really overlap, so we end up arguing over (say) X, which you know about... but someone I know and trust told me that it's most definitely not X, and that people who say it's X are either trying to dupe someone or are already duped themselves. You then try to do the same to me about Y, and we get nowhere. And it wouldn't be so bad except it keeps happening again and again.

What the left needs is more rightist academic thinkers who they can trust. I haven't lost faith that they exist... but I still haven't found one. Everyone's an insider of this or that field, or used to work for this or that industrial bloc, or is paid to produce such an opinion, or frankly is just in the same confused category as myself... where a lot of stuff is just conjecture. Basically I want to see a conservative equivalent of Noam Chomsky (this hypothetical person, as far as I can tell, doesn't yet exist), then I want to see an epic debate between them, just to settle some of this crap once and for all. I realize this is pretty problematic, because no respectful conservative puts any stock in Chomsky. So, what the right needs is a version of Chomsky on the left who was successful in business, but didn't inherit anything and is not a lawyer. This line of reasoning is just depressing.

Maybe the answer is to be more algorithmic (one way out of a depressing topic is to fantasize about things that just aren't gonna happen any time soon). We'll all agree piece by piece on certain fundamental and obvious rules, then feed them into a machine that is capable of producing high-level logical constructs from a bunch of simple rules (hah!). Then we'll use it to solve our arguments. We'll argue 'till we're blue in the face, then type our argument this crazy political logic device (I admit, that's the hardest part), and it'll tell us which side of the argument most satisfies the set of constructs we agreed upon. We can also use it in a wider combinatorial space, where we allow the rules we agreed upon to vary, particularly if altering certain rules will produce results that are known to be true, since it's good to expand the set of rules we agree upon. We all trust machines, right?

Anyway, for the near-to-mid future amateur arguments will be won or lost based on whoever is more expert at their spotty knowledge. Maybe once data is easier to carry around, present and summarize, arguments will be easier to make: "see, Y really was the better answer, it was debated by Q and Z and the body of reliable data supported it. Here's a summary of that data." Won't that be the day.
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02 18 2004
Product reviews on the web are just in a really sorry state. The only products for which there are good reviews are digital cameras and CPUs. How can this be? Here are things I want to see good reviews on: laptops, inkjet printers, printer media, computer monitors, keyboards, home stereo, cars, and outdoor equipment. Maybe there just aren't enough enthusiasts out there yet for people to take that work on themselves. Maybe bandwidth is too expensive (someone explain to me why exactly it's necessary to pay someone for bandwidth again? It really shouldn't need to cost as much as it does). The largest stumbling block for product reviews seems to be evaluating the actual product produced or the features supplied. I simply don't get why it's so hard.

If you're reviewing an inkjet printer, you gotta make high resolution scans of the printer output and show them to me! You gotta talk about how it performs on all kinds of paper! You gotta tell me how many prints you can make before the ink cartridges run out! You gotta give me detailed analysis of the driver software (like, does it remember your settings, or does it just fuck you and forget them every time, but instead give you a 'feature' to make profiles that you can click on every time you try to print, and make them hell to get to and use (you hearing me Canon?).

It's not like people aren't trying. The are some decent printer reviews on www.photo-i.co.uk, but there aren't enough up-close samples of the output, and they gloss over the media and driver issues (which are significant once you start using the thing). Some photo sites offer quickie printer reviews (www.steves-digicams.com), which are really more just annoying teasers than anything else (a whole review with NO samples of output? SHAME!).

So here's an idea: goofy people like me do 'home-reviews' of their products, using a set of templates provided by a master site. These reviews get digitally signed by a paid review-reviewer (It costs 20 bucks to submit a review or something, with reasonable refunds for scenarios where it's close but just needs a few tweaks). This reviewer just makes sure the review is generally good and follows the template... would be about 20 minutes of time each. Then if it needs to be done on the super-cheap, these reviews could reside in a simple P2P exchange (each review would probably be about 5 mb of jpeg and html data or so). One big thing: these are not 'user reviews': short, vacuous, generally worthless ramblings of people who either got defective hardware and want to bitch about it or just upgraded from something 10 years old and are blown away by the new technology (which is invariably ass compared to other new items in its class... but how would they know!). Constructing the templates is the hardest part, and it's really not very hard. A dedicated person could do it in a couple of casual weeks. Any reasonably able techie with a digital camera and scanner who's spent an afternoon yelling at their hardware could smack together a decent review. Then the rest of us (and those of us already bought crap from someone else) will know what else not to buy next time.

Some requirements for such a scheme:
1. No product photos of less then 1024 x 768 pixels! That's a minimum! We have broadband for a reason, why not use it.
2. Lots of pictures. Lots of close-ups, and shots from every angle. Check out www.dpreview.com and www.steves-digicams.com and www.imaging-resource.com (for their camera reviews only!) The close ups are key. QTVR can be put to good use, even though its a very boneheaded and inefficient way of doing what it does.
3. Follow the templates. The templates will make it clear whether the reviewer has taken a close look at their product.
4. The P2P mechanism. Obviously the achilles heel because it seems to require writing software. I admit to knowing next to nothing about P2P implementation though. I do know that there's enough P2P software out there to get the job done already, so something modified for this purpose would be pretty easy.
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02 17 2004
Parents need to start taking email addresses into account when naming their kids now. The most common automatic email address is the first letter of the first name combined with the last (up to) seven letters of the last name.
Some rules:
1. If you're dealing with a common last name, you better get a unique-lettered first name. Being jsmith23 is not nearly as cool as being zsmith.
2. Beware of accidental word formation! I can't think of any off hand, but I'm sure there are a few embarrassing combinations.
3. Classy combinations can be a good thing if you're talking about a last name that supports it.
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01 07 2004
Every morning when I go to work I leave my kittycat at home and I feel sad. She needs a friend. I think after Marian gets back, we'll pick up another cat so Epsilon isn't so alone. Wish I could take the cat to work with me in the meantime. Hopefully a cat is like a person, and a little stress will make her stronger. That Paso Robles earthquake freaked her out quite a bit.
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01 07 2004
A private journal and a public set of notes like this are two very different things. It's probably unhealthy to have public notes, but not keep a private journal. Public notes are really an importantly-small, almost always proper subset of what one would put in a private journal.
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01 07 2004
Just returned from a vacation to Taiwan. It's fun how small the US seems when you're outside of it. It is rarely in the news (yes really! rarely!), so you can pretty much ignore it altogether if you want. Obviously, you're not looking at the US every day, cuz you're not standing on it. It feels like it's just another small part of the world somewhere, but with a disproportionate amount of power, and a president that makes people around you shake their head, grin, and look at you with eyes asking "why". As an American, sometimes I get the gut feeling that this country is so good that everyone is trying to come here, and when I'm here, I can sometimes understand why so few Americans ever visit another place. The fact, however, is that there are quite a few other places in the world with features far better than what is available here. The questions are: what do you want, is your country providing it, and if not is there a chance it could provide it if you fight for it (taking your other commitments into account)?
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11 20 2003
Charles wrote about the Nova String Theory special yesterday. I saw it as well, a few weeks ago. If I remember correctly I thought it was interesting, but generally a waste of time. As someone who knows nothing about string theory, and next to nothing about quantum mechanics, I thought it would be a nice gentle introduction. Frankly it was nice and gentle, but way too long for the point it was trying to make. Physicists really need to give up on the whole 'analogy' thing when trying to explain anything to the layperson beyond classical physics and go straight to the math (math for the layperson you ask incredulously!), or just tell people directly: if you won't do the math, you aren't going to get much out of it at all, instead of giving them the false hope of understanding it by relating to common experience. I'm not saying physicists should use analogies at all... because they're quite fun, and they keep people from quitting and going off to do something else, but it's pretty lame to rely on them exclusively. Anyway, I'm still sick, so maybe this is just the brain fever talking. Frankly, I think I'd like to see a Frontline String Theory special. Cue gritty shocking footage and gritty deep-voiced-guy, prepare for an almost-deep-enough investigation (you watched Commanding Heights didn't you?) into!!! "Tonight on Frontline: String Theory, fact or fiction." Anyway, the very best thing about the Nova String Theory show is that it didn't ruin any surprises for me... I still have a chance to learn what String Theory is and have that wonderful feeling of getting it for the first time. Time to find a good book.
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11 20 2003
Sick for the last three days. The most annoying thing is that I feel almost good enough to go do stuff, but whenever I try to do anything big, I feel like crap. But, my wife took me out for a nice drive to the ocean for a sunset, then up to the local In-N-Out for dinner. Made me feel really great for some reason. To me there's something incredibly cool about a girl who can drive a car with a manual transmission. Machines just totally equalize the whole gender / physical strength thing. Now if only we had giant transforming robots...
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11 03 2003
From my desk at work, I can hear the rain on the roof. It's a really good, unique sound... makes me want to go run around outside in the rain.
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10 31 2003
A rented apartment is a temporary place. Sometimes I feel nostalgic about apartments I've lived in in the past, and on the occasions I've had to drive by an old apartment, I feel a strong but distorted connection to it... like it's still mine in a way, but someone else has taken it from me and put their own stuff in it. I just had that same feeling about the apartment I'm living in right now, even though I'm still in it. It was quite strange. On a totally unrelated note I'm pissed because I pay one-thousand two-hundred and seventy-five dollars a month... Forty-three bucks a day for a place with a furnace that doesn't work, and banging on it hasn't helped. I'm even more pissed that I don't know enough about the hardware to fix the cursed thing myself. Does this look broken to you?

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10 28 2003
This country should just take the education system from a country that works reasonably well (there are so many examples. Taiwan is one), and try copying it. All you have to do is run it as a pilot project here, with guarantees that if it exceeds the performance of the current system in an appropriate set of measures, that we ditch the current system and switch. What's so hard about that?
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10 28 2003
Many schoolteachers and parents claim they're training their students to be critical thinkers. I'm pretty sure most Americans have a feeling for how to apply critical thought effectively, but believe that to do so is impractical. Here's how I think people usually do it:
1. Filter the information by source. If you like the source, trust the information somewhat. If you dislike the source, distrust the information somewhat.
2. Latch onto the first few stories you can think of that are related to the issue, and use those to put it into human terms. Maybe go find a few such stories.
3. Develop an opinion based on those stories, and combine it with your own instincts.

Honest critical debate would take days of research and formulation, and frankly, people by and large just aren't going to do it. Knowing that makes arguing with people even more frustrating, particularly when you're pretty sure you're right.
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10 25 2003
I had a lot to say until I got this page set up.
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