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July 11th, 2009
12:52 am
It's been a while since I've had anything seriously worth posting.
(EDIT: and man, does it show that I haven't written anything of significance in a long while. I need to get back in practice.)
Crash changed that. I'm amazed that some people complained that this film won Best Picture.
( Homesickness, industrialized society, and other assorted ramblings. You've been warned! )
Tomorrow's California Extreme. I'm terribly excited about it. It opens at 10:30a, so I'm aiming to get there at 10. It's at a new locale with longer hours. This means that lunch won't be Peggy Sue's, but somewhere else that's a short expenditure of time away. Hopefully that means lunch will actually be good -- the second day of CAX is always a bit hard because you've been eating the same fries the whole weekend and they're only passable at the best of times.
People trying to find me ought to have no trouble, as usual.
I'm overdue to hit the sack. Good night folks.
EDIT: added more to this. I feel much better about it now.
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July 6th, 2009
10:50 am
Ok, reshuffling dates somewhat. I now have 8/28-9/14. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) lishd & gorthok are only free on the weekends apparently. Does anyone have any weekday time?
I think Portland people might -- speak up if you don't.
I think lishd and gorthok are only free on 9/5 and 9/6, so those dates are theirs unless there's a conflict.
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July 5th, 2009
03:51 pm
Man, this has been a sleepy weekend.
Plans for Seattle have kinda solidified, but I still haven't heard from a couple of people.
stonesundial and gemmi999 came up on Friday. We had lunch briefly and went our separate ways.
philled2thebrim came by to feed my BSG addiction -- we're getting close to the end. Right thereafter, stonesundial kicked in my door and filled the rest of the time with Rock Band, Star Trek, and The Wizard of Speed and Time.
The Wizard's run never fails to bring a big goofy smile to my face.
Today: Entertain myself in spite of the unfortunate knowledge that I have work tomorrow.
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July 3rd, 2009
06:39 pm - Travel plans
I have two weeks to take off because of work and I'm going to take them off in a row. I'm thinking that I'll drive up to Seattle on 8/29 and hang out there until 9/6 or so.
After that, I'm going to Mississippi to hang out with one of my oldest friends in the world. I'm thinking I'll fly out there 9/7 and come back 9/13 or so.
lishd: Does that work for you?
gorthok: Do I need to make another friggin Gentoo system and hack up another kernel for you?
anarchodandyist: How do you feel about a visit on the way to or from Seattle?
childlike_fancy: Are you going to be free? I'd love to see you, darlin'!
cmoog: I think you're in Seattle these days -- you're hard to keep track of. Up for a visit?
nyankoframe: Frankly, I owe it to see the cats, but seeing you won't be too shabby! Feel up to it? I'll even let you take me around the Evil Empire.
rockanachronism: I missed you last time, so here's tons of notice. This time it is on like a high score attempt on Donkey Kong, yo!
philled2thebrim: Could you wumpus sit during that time? Please please please? With a cherry on top?
Anyone else between San Jose & Seattle that I'm missing, speak up!
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June 30th, 2009
04:23 pm
Fair warning: The time to pre-register for California Extreme has almost passed.
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June 29th, 2009
11:00 pm
So, one thing I've been meaning to write about: the death of Michael Jackson.
There's three reasons why it's of interest to me. The first of which is that while death tends to be a very emotional topic for people, it's rare you see the sort of outpouring which happened when Jackson died. Secondly, I'm very interested in public perceptions of people -- especially people like Jackson who essentially never had a life that wasn't in the public eye.
Thirdly, of course, I was a fan of his music. A very long while ago, I had the pleasure of meeting him at the Sherman Oaks Galleria -- the very same Galleria which Frank Zappa made famous.
I used to hang out with a musician who used to play gigs in Lancaster every so often -- he lived across the street from us. Inevitably, as we were packing everything up, we'd start bullshitting with the other musicians and the regulars who were still hanging out at the bar. One of them once said to me that "C'mon now. Everyone loves Michael." -- I wasn't so sure. This was during his second trial and there wasn't a whole lot of positive sentiment towards him.
Ultimately, the response that people had to his death proved it. It's magical when people feel the need to gather for an event like that. They gathered outside the hospital where his body was -- not because they'd see anything, but because they felt that they had to be around other people.
To be honest, I'd forgotten about all the things that his music had accomplished until then. It seems almost quaint now, but he was the first black artist on MTV.
Anyway, as one might expect, there have been a lot of jokes about the child molestation charges. Our criminal justice system is by no means perfect, but it's better than most of the alternatives. Jackson was definitely a weird character -- spending that sort of time in the public eye puts me in mind of a certain South Park episode to say nothing of his upbringing.
Still -- if a man is subject to two criminal trials and acquitted in both, shouldn't we pronounce him innocent?
There's exceptions to be fair -- O.J. Simpson, for example, spent at least $4 million for his defense in the criminal and civil charges of the murder of his wife. That behavior smacks of wealthy patrons buying indulgences from the Catholic Church. We preserve the right of anyone to be defended in a trial, but could anyone demand the defense team that O.J. had? It's partially that reason which makes it seem like a miscarriage of justice -- that and the DNA evidence against him.
But there really was no such evidence against Jackson. Do we believe it because he was weird? Certainly anyone who looked through the auction catalogue of effects from his ranch would think he was a bit off kilter.
Is that why we've indicted him in spite of what the justice system says?
To be honest, I don't know. But I am glad that -- in whatever capacity it exists -- he's at peace.
Postscript: I found out about his death when I came home from work that day. A friend of mine had commented on Rachel Maddow and I was persuaded to see one of her shows and judge her brand of journalism for myself. As it happens, it was pre-empted by the coverage of Jackson's body being taken to the morgue. One clip they kept showing was the transfer of his body from the helicopter to the coroner's van -- something that Keith Olbermann commented on: This otherwise larger-than-life celebrity had the same end that we're all fated to have at some point.
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10:32 pm
Well, let's start with the simple bits. The other day I was on my way home from work. There's a very annoying stretch on the 680 right after the 101 interchange. Coming North on the 101, there's three lanes. The #1 lane goes onto the 680 S/280 N, the #3 lane goes onto the 680 N/280 S, and the #2 lane gets its choice of where to go. These lanes split off and typically, I'm in the #2 lane because of what happens next.
Once you make the split, a lane that's transferring from the 101 S joins in to your left, so now there's three lanes that are joining onto the existing 4 lanes of the 680 N. After the merge, the #7 lane drops off onto an exit. Not too much longer, the #6 does the same. There isn't much notice, so people slam on their brakes and try to negotiate into the traffic that's on going. This causes quite a jam.
So because of this, as soon as the lane from the 101 S comes in, I swap into it, putting me in the leftmost lane of the ones merging. That puts me out of the ones that are mandatory exits. This lane merges in with the #4 lane shortly thereafter -- and for a little bit, it's a double-width lane. As soon as it does that, I skip over at least one lane to the left, so I can avoid the general confusion with the people who are trying to force their way back onto the 680 N. It's a strategy that works a lot better than the alternative and since this is my daily commute, I try to work that out with the fewest kinks possible.
Well, I was going to do that just fine on Friday, except that some chick in a big black 4x4 was in the #4 lane. She was a ways behind me, so I kept a decent distance from the car ahead of me, and settled in on the double width portion, keeping on the right hand line.
Apparently, she was Italian and saw that there was room to pass, despite the fact that we were in the same lane at this point. She is a Bay Area Driver after all (and I swear that acronym is no coincidence), she zips around me on the left side of the lane, but she can't get a full car width ahead of me while maintaining her distance...
which puts me in an awkward spot because I'm about to merge right into her!
Grumbling, I applied my brakes and started to slip in behind her. But while checking my blind spot, I noticed something in the roadway -- it turned out to be a white bag with what looked like branches in it and it was in line with my right tire. I couldn't simply slip over to the right because of the people who were trying to avoid getting off of the 680 and I couldn't go left because of the chick who's sitting right next to me and completely oblivious of the drama unfolding.
In the end, I was a little fortunate -- I had just enough room that I squeezed within a couple of inches of her car while trying to slow down enough to slip behind her. Just enough to avoid the bag.
People ask me all the time why I miss LA and I answer that I miss the driving down there. They're usually taken aback by that -- everyone's heard that LA's just one big freeway, right? The difference is that in LA, everyone's so used to that, so they leave a decent amount of space and they don't go zipping around trying to get a car length ahead of people as a result.
This instance -- which had a decent chance of ending in an accident -- would not have happened in LA. It is, however, the sort of insanity which unfolds on a daily basis down here. The lot of these hybrid-loving, health-food-munching, tree-hugging lot of empty-headed hippie leftovers need to learn to *fucking* drive.
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June 26th, 2009
04:54 pm
Because I'm not done with how funny c3 can be. This was in a channel populated mostly by bots. Foghawk was the only real person in this conversation:
16:48 -!- Foghawk [spasm@hide-2EE2FD70.dsl.chcgil.sbcglobal.net] has joined
#bots
16:48 -!- mode/#bots [+v Foghawk] by tooly
16:48 <+JohnHenry> wilkommen Foghawk
16:48 <+Foghawk> hallo
16:48 <+BackAtcha> soup?
16:48 <+JohnHenry> 69
16:53 <+JohnHenry> That means in the future I'm going to have sex! With a woman!
16:53 <+c3> Your mom is a means in the future
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June 24th, 2009
09:58 pm
So, I have this perl bot called c3. It started off as cabinet and I've been renaming it by major versions. Some are anxiously awaiting it becoming c4.
Anyway, it all started with this:
<+Stopper> i wish i had a bot that did nothing but mangle people's comments into lame "your mom" burns
<+cerise> Stopper: Give me a sec
Quickly, I hacked up a module using NLP and loaded it into c3. This was followed by responses to people like:
18:46 <+c3> Your mom is a right
18:46 <+c3> Your mom is a hahaha
18:46 <+c3> Your mom is a spin
18:46 <+c3> Your mom is a trip
18:46 <+c3> Your mom is a mom
18:47 <+c3> Your mom is a insane head of yours
18:47 <+c3> Your mom is a single time
18:48 <+c3> Your mom is a glass of beer
18:48 <+c3> Your mom is a much win
18:48 <+c3> Your mom is a man
18:48 <+c3> Your mom is a woman
18:49 <+c3> Your mom is a yes
18:49 <+c3> Your mom is a mother
18:49 < c3> Your mom is a more fun than a bucket of backatcha
18:50 <+c3> Your mom is a royale with cheese
I unloaded the module and tucked it into another module where it could be a bit more controlled. This was followed a day and some odd later by:
19:16 < jercos> cerise: thought: "Your mom is a Ping Timeout", "Your mom is an
Input/Output error", "Your mom's connection reset by peer"
19:16 < c3> Your mom is a connection reset by peer
19:16 < jercos> see? hilarious.
and another set of hacks...
22:01 -!- Marenz [~anonym001@hide-49AA4A98.superkabel.de] has quit [Client exited]
22:01 < c3> Your mom is a client exited
which spawned this conversation:
21:34 <%kremlin> Your mom is a good name for a band.
21:57 <&cerise> I'd dig it.
21:57 <&cerise> I should name my work station "your mom"
21:57 <&cerise> In fact, I think I will.
21:57 <&cerise> "I'm going to go look that up on your mom"
21:57 <&cerise> "Hold on a sec, I need to test this on your mom"
21:58 <&cerise> "Here, I'm going to upload that to your mom"
And, you know, I think I will. That's the kind of silliness desperately needed at my workplace.
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June 22nd, 2009
01:46 am
Work is the curse of the sleeping class.
stonesundial came over. We planned on seeing Up, but that didn't quite go as planned for technical reasons. End result: We came back to my place and spent a great deal of time on my couch watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Vietnam episode of Top Gear.
I got Ghostbusters. It's amusing me so far, but it annoys me for all the usual reasons that first or third person shooters bother me.
Yesterday, I went to see aatheus's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in San Jose. Lots of things about it were good, but more than anything else, it reminded me that Shakespeare in almost any form is always better than you expect it to be.
I caught aatheus after the play -- which turned out to be fortunate. His car keys went missing!
After a frenzied search, it was determined that his car keys were just gone, so I offered to drive him home. We made a brief detour for pho in Mountain View and hung out at his place for a bit.
All in all, a nice social weekend.
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June 13th, 2009
01:21 pm
This comic makes me very happy:
EDIT: duh. .gif, not .html.
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June 12th, 2009
12:36 pm
You poor bastard, nekojita!!!
Pittsburgh just won it, 2-1. Both Pittsburgh goals scored by Talbot in the second period.
Man -- I'm so glad Detroit didn't catch up in the third, even if they deserved to.
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June 10th, 2009
03:16 pm
I ripped this awhile ago, but it's important to put it out here again:
Ray Bradbury at the 2007 Festival of Books
It's 53M of ogg. And worth it.
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June 9th, 2009
08:40 pm
PITTSBURGH FORCED A GAME 7 FOR THE CUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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June 8th, 2009
02:10 pm
A cow-orker brought me a new hat today. It is a taqiyah, though he termed it a "tubeteika" which is what they call them in Kazakhstan. I had been wearing a Tudor bonnet, but that is -- literally -- old hat.
Speaking of which, we have a new person occupying the cube across from me named Lynn. I suspect she's Korean, though born here. That's based partly on appearance and partly because she didn't say anything about the shodÅ which meerkat made for me. She seems nice enough, so I'm helping her find her way around.
(We're really bad about that here...)
I had a fantastic idea for a follow-on about the secret project. I need to talk to someone about it and I'm trying to decide who that should be.
I had my mind set on hanging out in SF this weekend -- but it didn't happen. Not only lack-of-parking-phobia, but also a lack of anything interesting to do there this weekend. My trivial amount of research through SF weekly suggested projectile vomiting Asians (a britpop DJ at a club where I've had...shall we say...negative experiences) and drag queen ballroom dancing.
Y'know...tempting...but I decided to say no. Call it weakness of will.
Instead, I went to see Up with billstr(). That was good for a few reasons. Firstly, he's being slowly debachelorized. Secondly, he works too hard. He's been a little too responsible for my tastes, but he's even more so now. SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! We yammered for a while. I taunted him about married life. I miss hanging out with him.
Up was good. It was about as good as Wall-E -- which is to say that it's a good film, but it didn't blow me away. I think it suffered slightly in 3D. Disney's implementation of 3D got really blurry when there was fast action. It's fairly obvious why if you think about the physics of watching a film like that, but unfortunate. I think Pixar is starting to become formulaic though.
The last playoff game was disappointing. Detroit won 5-0, so Pittsburgh has to win the next two. I suspect that Detroit is going to end up pulling out a game 6 win tomorrow night in spite of my hopes. Alas.
Welp, that's enough for now. I have rock band to go to!
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June 6th, 2009
08:23 pm - To the moon, Alice!
In spite of a worryingly successful campaign to destroy the moon, the Japanese sent up a moon probe fitted with HD cameras and someone went and put the video on the web.
It puts me in mind of a simulator that I think of every so often and write code for. One of these days, I must find the time to put it in a stable state.
EDIT: By chance, I just came across a perfectly charming film. Return to the Secret Garden -- intended as a sequel to the book.
Also, Tera is sleeping under the table with a paw on my foot and Meg is sleeping half on the blanket next to me and half in my lap.
I think my cats are trying to tell me something...
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June 4th, 2009
11:42 am
At the beginning of the second, the score was tied.
A few minutes in, Detroit was up 1-2.
A few minutes beyond that, Pittsburgh tied it.
Seven minutes later, Pittsburgh is up 4-2.
This is why I watch the NHL playoffs.
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May 30th, 2009
12:45 pm
Working late last night, so I accidentally slept until the start of the third period tonight, so I missed the first three goals, but saw the last one and the attempts at the end of the game. I'll say this: I keep hearing people talk about Crosby and Gonchar, but whenever Malkin steps on the ice, it is electric.
Anyway -- I'd been thinking that I really needed a nice long thoughtful LJ post. As it happens, a couple of my friends obliged by giving me something to think about.
A long while ago, I remember my sister going to see the movie "Seven" -- it's about a detective who is tracking down a serial killer who kills his victims by an extreme version of each of the seven deadly sins. What I especially remembered about her coming back was her complaining about how sick the movie was. Furthermore, she thought it reflected upon the writer -- I mean, you have to be pretty sick to come up with this stuff, even if you aren't doing it.
Well -- that might be a bit extreme. The way that a lot of artisans ply their trade is through fantasy -- allowing people to live things that aren't realistic or aren't likely to happen to them. We have this natural curiousity towards these things.
I remember hearing of an author having trouble explaining herself when inquiring about some of the realities behind imprisoning and torturing someone.
So then, the question is, what is the difference between someone with the potential to do something distasteful when we judge them through the lens of their writing?
Well, in the case of this author, she's someone I know. I know her to be an all around good egg, so there's a certain amount of trust lent to her character.
Among my virtues, one would not find "political correctness" ascribed to me. I make light of the world and I expect others to make light of me. The last thing I want anyone to do is take me seriously. Just ask anyone who makes the mistake of calling me "sir". *shudder*
G. K. Chesterton once wrote that the reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly. I aspire to not merely fly, but soar among the stars and the sky.
Won't you join me?
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May 27th, 2009
12:15 pm
DAMN IT! Red Wings just ended one of the best games this year. 2-1 in OT. That's the end of Chicago's season -- I was really hoping they'd make it through.
At least Pittsburgh made it. I'm glad to see them in it. Hopefully, they'll finish off Detroit in the Stanley Cup Finals.
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May 19th, 2009
06:57 pm
Well, apparently, the results aren't so bad if you screw up the ball trick.
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