Weiserthanbefore

New Coffee Shop

2010-12-30T14:59:00.002-06:00

I tried out a new coffee shop today. The sign on the door says "Fusion Coffee & Company", but the web site says "Capana Coffee". Either way, very nice shop, nice big fire place in the middle, and friendly staff. They have a cool roaster out for display too. It's only a short drive, so I may have to frequent it.

Update: Their web site says they will be opening a new shop in North Liberty which is very close to my house (easily within walking or biking distance.) Nice. The wife is going to love the fire place!

Traveling is Learning

2009-11-01T14:08:00.001-06:00

A few observations:

The ticketing agent told me NorthWest is going "green" by only printing one boarding pass, no matter how many hops there are on the trip. That seems to directly conflict with their "burn an ass-load of jet fuel" policies, but oh well.
The pilot is sitting next to me waiting to board the plane... and he's reading the pilot's manual. Should I be concerned?
Dramamine and Meclazine are not the same thing. Mental note: read the bottle before you put the pills and water in your mouth. Another mental note: it's very difficult to discretely spit out pills into an airport trash can. Pointers will be appreciated.

I'm off to a great start!

15 Things That Make Me Blog

2009-04-02T20:16:00.003-05:00

Time to brain dump. This is what happens when I don't blog for a while. I make no claim of immunity from my observations below.

The economy is bad. It has been worse, much worse. We (as in the over-consuming, fat, lazy, intrinsically entitled people that we call US citizens) caused the problem. We need to fix the problem, which is proving difficult given our token characteristics I just mentioned. It isn't going to fix itself. The government isn't going to fix it for us. We have to dig in and get to work... all day... every day. If you have the chance to speak to or read about someone who lived through the great depression, you'll find yourself in the midst of a reality check.
At what point does someone become intrinsically entitled to something, especially when it comes to money, work, status, cars, lawsuits, and the like? Is that possibly an oxymoron? It should be. Where did this idea come from. Unless you were born with an 11th toe or a tail, you pretty much started off on the same standing as everyone else. Whey you die, you have no entitlement, because there is no more you. Everything in between is what you make of it. You are not entitled to a job, a certain pay grade, health insurance, or even housing or food. What you are entitled to is the opportunity to play by society's rules to gain the things that society values. If you choose not to play by the rules, that's fine, but don't expect society to (and in pains me to even use this phrase any more) "bail you out." If you don't like your society, find another one. If you can't or won't, learn to deal with it. We all have problems.
There is no such thing as a religious child. They don't grasp the concept of religion. By extension, there is absolutely no such thing as religious specificity for a child. It's absurd. Saying that he or she is a "Catholic child" or a "Muslim child" or was born a Hindu is simply naive. Claiming that children can somehow be born with a pre-defined religious view is highly unlikely, given that all children just so happen to believe in the same religion as their parents until they reach the age of high reasoning. This is true of biological or adopted children ... this kind of logic drives staticians crazy.
Plastics suck. Plastics are the devil. Somehow they have been branded as a much cleaner alternative to glasses, woods, and metals. Where do plastics come from? Oil. Where do plastics go when we're done with it? A small portion is recycled, but most ends up in trash, landfills, and eventuall rivers and oceans. How long does plastic take to naturally bio-degrade? We really don't know, because it hasn't happened to any plastic that has ever been manufactured. The first plastic cup that was ever used is still with us, so is the first plastic grocery bag, plastic pen, plastic water bottle, and anything else that has the word "plastic" in the title. Sure, it breaks down into smaller pieces, causing issues for smaller and smaller forms of life, but it has yet to bio-degrade into its original components. How much is out there, well, see for yourself: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/22431379#22431379
Buying water is quite possibly the closest we come to insanity each day. Municipal water is safer and cleaner than bottled water, requires no plastic bottles, no fossil fuels to transport, and is already paid for by your and my tax dollars. Do us all a favor and use a drinking foundain, or at a minimum, just refill your old plastic water bottle from the tap.
Stop buying stupid shit. You know what I'm talking about. Just stop it.
Our primary and secondary education system is unacceptable. The workload is far too light for most students. No Child Left Behind is so silly that I don't even know where to start. There is far too little emphasis on the fundamentals: math, science, and grammar. We do not reward teachers in our society. We do not have a common (as in national) curriculum. We aren't keeping up with global trends in education. Parents are not demanding enough of their children's or children's teacher's performances.
This little love-in called "the healthcare system" needs to be squashed. Healthcare providers, HMOs, Insurance Companies, lawyers, and politicians are all part of one big gang bang while the patients and familes barely hold the rank of assistant fluffers. Patients that spend most of their time trying to kill themselves via tobacco, tanning, and french fries are part of the problem, as are patients that go to scientific health care institutions and expect miracles, but these really pale in comparison to the freakiness that's going on in the next room.
Stop complaining about the cost of gasoline, stamps, milk, and other basic items. For what they actually provide, they are amazingly inexpensive. If the USPS suddenly disappeared, how much would you charge to deliver letters anywhere in the country for someone you don't know? Have you ever walked a mile carrying four full bags of groceries? Try it, and then reconsider the cost of a gallon of gasoline, which could carry you, your groceries, your family, and a half ton vehicle your original mile plus another 20 or so. That plastic bottle of water in your plastic grocery bag probably cost you as much as the gallon of gas anyway.
If you're having trouble "making ends meet", perhaps you need to re-evaluate where you have placed your ends. Bitching about no money to ride the bus or buy bread doesn't say much when you have a cigarrette hanging out of your mouth. Ranting about gas prices doesn't have much affect when you're in the process of purchasing a lottery ticket.
Does anyone else find it interesting that our congress had time to inquire into the deeply troubling and obviously endangering precidents set by the Major League Baseball steroids scandal in 2006, while minor issues such as the war, healthcare, social security, our education system, and our dependence on foreign oil were pushed to the side? Seriously!? Pause, take a deep breath, and think about this for a good 5-10 seconds. The lack of responsibility is staggering.
Data access (internet, cell phone, etc.) in the USA is terrible. We have more unused fiber optic cabling than we know what to do with, but a significant portion of the country can't get anything better than dial-up networking with long distance charges. Here's an idea... put our tax dollars to work tearing out the legacy phone system and providing fiber to every house in the country. It creates jobs, provides free and open knowledge to the masses, and is sure to offer a much needed jump to porn sales.
Think before you talk. Don't just think about the words that you're going to say, think about what they mean to you and what they will mean to the recipients of the words. In particular, think about the differences in what they mean to the two parties involved. If there are any differences, stop, and reconsider.
To disagree with someone is not the same as to argue with someone. Just because someone holds a different view/belief/opinion than you do does not mean that they are assaulting you or that you need to defend yourself. Along these same lines, if you are arguing something that can not be proven, you need to re-evaluate your core reasoning skills, and/or quote possibly your medications. An argument that can be proven always trumps an argument that can not be proven.
Stop spending so much time trying to conform. If it feels good, it's probably okay. Unless you're mentally deranged, then not so much.

Now that I have that off my chest, I can start blogging about happy things again.

The Baby Has Arrived!

2008-09-03T15:32:00.003-05:00

We'd like to introduce Collin Christopher Weis to the world! Collin was born on 9/1/08 at 11:46pm, weighing in at 9lbs 2oz and 21" long.

See him here.

Thanks to everyone for their ongoing encouragement and support. We (all three of us) very much appreciate it!

Conversational Beer

2008-08-14T19:35:00.003-05:00

I find myself judging cities by only a few deciding factors, usually consisting of their airport quality, general cleanliness, and roadways. I used to judge cities by the general look of the people that inhabited them, but I found that far too depressing, so I moved on. Today, I've decided I'm going to start judging new cities by the conversations that I listen in on. It's probably just a phase, and I'm sure I'll resort back to something far more shallow and simple, like the smell of the hotel lobby, or the percentage of women with above-size tops, but for now, I'm sticking with my conversation idea. As a side note, I had a brief jaunt with using hotel room quality to qualify an overall city, but I found it to be far to disgusting to consider and unusually a-typical. One dark curly on a remote control, and suddenly a dream excursion in a mountain village became second rate to a Motel 6 in downtown Indianapolis. But, I digress....

The conversation methodology poses two problems for me:

I have to listen in on conversations that I have no business hearing, and
I have to explicitly not react to things that are said as part of this conversation

It ends up that problem 2 is far more difficult to overcome than 1. First off, given the right surroundings, 1 isn't a problem at all. Sit at any bar in any restaurant, and you'll quickly be able to pick up on several conversations, made audibly clear through the wonders of alcohol. I also have no remorse about being busted for listening in. After all, who the hell am I to the others involved? If they don't like it, they can shut their cake holes.

The second problem is far harder to cope with. People say some really stupid, but funny, things when they think no one else is listening. Here are a few gems I heard tonight.

Patron to bartender: "That cork is really stuck." Bartender back to patron: "Creme Brule?"
Patron from local geography: "Boulevard Wheat is an excellent local micro-brew." Patron from west coast: "Uh huh." (This one nearly made beer shoot through my nose.)
Patron: "Can I have one of your wings?" Other Patron: "I'm got burnt ends."
Patron: "Oh my god, you're so awesome!" Other patron: "I know, I know!"
Patron: "Why did this come with two spoons?" Bartender: "One of them is mine."
Patron: "I don't play any sports, but I know a lot about them. I just don't agree with how people stand behind their local teams... (long pause...)" Other Patron: "(pause...) (blink..., blink)"

Based on this, I'm going to write off my most recently traveled city as "drunkenly naive", which is a good rating in the grand scheme of things.

A Deviant With A Toothbrush

2008-08-05T22:10:00.002-05:00

I was buying a toothbrush and socks at a local store tonight. I was waiting in line, behind a family with some small children who were in the process of checking out, and ahead of a short young woman who had a few small items and no cart. The family in front of me was purchasing a variety of thing, including a young girl's pink ballerina costume. Had this been late October, I wouldn't have thought this to be particularly odd, but being a 90+ degree in early August, I decided to ponder on possibilities for the use of the costume. Was it an impulse purchase to keep a grumpy daughter happy? Do people in Kansas dress very differently than people in other states during spells of high temperatures? Was this girl actually a ballerina and had traveled great distances with her family to give a performance, only to realize, much like my situation with my toothbrush and socks, and she too had forgotten a vital piece of equipment.

I was almost starting to make sense of the situation when another checkout isle opened and the woman behind the cash register announced that her isle was open. This generally leads to an awkward moment between the people already waiting in the nearest lanes. Who has the right to go to the new isle? Who should stay? Can one pass another person during this unexpected lane change? When is someone committed to an isle and not allowed to change?

These are issues that everyone ponders when this situation arises, but this is not what concerned me about this particular instance. Rather, it was the comment that the short young woman standing behind me posed after I quickly said "go ahead" to her, implying that she should go ahead of me in the new isle. She quickly responded with "No, no, you go ahead, errr...., Ummmm..." I must have had a confused look on my face, because she felt the need to explain her indecision. She said she didn't know if the pink ballerina dress, already on the counter ahead of me, was mine or not, so she didn't know if I would want to move to the new isle since I was arbitrarily committed to the existing isle.

This was deeply concerning. She actually considered that the pink ballerina dress belonged to me, the guy standing in line in business attire, holding socks and a toothbrush. I can only imagine, while standing behind me in the isle for several minutes, what she was thinking of my intended use for the dress. Did I have a daughter in need of a dress? Was I some kind of a fashion designer looking for inspiration? Was I a horrible social deviant with intentions of doing terrible things involving a pink ballerina dress, a package of socks, and a neon green wear sensing medium bristle toothbrush?

I chose the latter, as it was the most fun. I simply said, while quickly moving to the newly opened isle, "Oh no, not for me. I prefer purple ballerina dresses with my socks." I paid, walked out of the store, and didn't look back.

When Money Flows Like Water

2008-08-05T21:22:00.005-05:00

I recently watched a documentary titled Who Killed The Electric Car and also started reading/listening to The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria. I know that's a lot of heavy input, but after finishing up the most recent David Sedaris book, I felt the need to give a little back to society. I'll spare you my reviews, but they both provided me with a large number of facts and figures that I had not known or considered before. As a sample:

China is big... really big, yet despite their huge economy and impending world dominance, their GDP per capita is still quite low.
The US is the largest consumer of almost everything, but the largest producer of very few things.
Wal-Mart brings in almost 8 times as much money as Microsoft each year.
If you were to combine the work forces of GM, Ford, and General Electric, they do not come close to matching the work force of Wal-Mart. What does this say about our culture and values?
Hundreds of years before Columbus's voyage to the new world, China had far more ships than did Europe, their ships were vastly larger, and they were technically superior in almost every way. Why did China not discover the new world instead of Europe? Chinese leadership at the time virtually made sailing illegal for reasons apparant at the time. That seemingly simple choice may be the only reason China is not the single dominant super power in the world today.
As a country, the US is one of the most arrogant and hypocritical entities in all of history. The fact that we are despised by so much of the other countries of the world is not at all surprising.
The electric cars of 25 years ago are still superior in many ways to equivalent modern concept vehicles. What happened?
Over 20% of our nation's electricity is generated from nuclear power plants, which are far more green than coal burning plants. Far less environmental and direct damage to human life has been produced by nuclear power plants than almost all other types of energy generation in the last 30 years. Why then, have no nuclear plants been built in the last 30 years while hundreds of coal burning plants have?
Hydrogen fuel cell cars, while being promised as a "within 15 years" reality for the past 30-40 years, still consistantly fail to be cost-effective solutions and have virtually no fueling infrastrucutre. Why then is this the technology that almost every politician focuses on as the transportation enerty source of the future?
Purchasing water in a bottle, of any sort, is stupid. Unless you happen to live in a place that has unsafe drinking water or none at all (which means you most likely don't live in the United States), there is no excuse for drinking bottled water. The actual water is less safe, not at clean, far more expensive, and about as anti-green as one can be. The cost of fuel that is wasted in the United States simply by shipping bottled water across the country in one year is staggering. How staggering: analysts estimate the the amount of money wasted by drinking bottled water rather than tap water in the United States in one year is enough to provide basic potable drinking water sources to almost everyone in the world within the same amount of time. Think of that the next time you walk past the drinking fountaing and blow $1.29 on a 20 oz bottle of water.
Evian, a popular bottled water vendor, is NAIVE spelled backwards. Those French are tricky. ;-)

Anyway, you can do what you want with this, but it's certainly food for thought.

The Vegetables Are Speaking To Me

2008-07-24T21:12:00.002-05:00

So far today, I've knocked out two certification exams, three customer calls, multiple email messages, the debugging and resolution of two customer-related issues, one flight, and a bunch of people watching. I still have to cover three states, 2hrs of flying, a drive home from the airport, probably a cold beer, and then a short sleep before I start the motor again tomorrow morning. Oddly, I don't feel like I've accomplished much today. I blame the 12-hr old airport sandwich I just ate. I thought it strange of the lettuce to be talking to me. The dancing I would expect, but not so much the talking. Hello Ms. Tomato!

Ohio, Wars, Floods, and Happy Babies

2008-07-24T20:29:00.002-05:00

I've always liked the Cincinnati airport. It's small, quaint, generally very busy, but also unusually easy to navigate and action packed with people for the watching. People watching is really the thing that I like to do most in airports. Very few other places offer such a variety of emotions. Confusion, aggression, love, disappointment, joy, dismay, and many other can be seen just by sitting in a chair and watching the people walk through the terminal.

Seeing as how my airline seems to have lost our flight crew, we're now delayed over 90 minutes on the last fight to small town Iowa.. Seriously, I'm not making this shit up. (Side note... my emotions after this announcement resulted in partial insanity and possible physical brain damage.) So, I decide to get a little exercise and start slowly walking up and down the rows of people, just for the social fun of it. Here are some of the highlights:

A slightly older woman, wearing one of those hair pieces that looks like a doiley, was busily knitting a very intricate thin piece of cloth. If I didn't know better, I would think that she was knitting the raw materials to actually make some kind of a shirt. This woman either has an abundant amount of self control and dedication, or she's a business traveler and knits the raw material for clothing compaines in her delay time at airports. Based on my experiences flying over the past several years, I'm banking on the latter, and I'm willing to bet that The Gap is too.
A young woman, extremely tan with a hair cut that only a beautician would attempt to wear each and every day, was sitting in a chair, eating something. I'm not sure what she was eating, because I was distracted by her low cut brown strapless dress... sans bra from what I can tell. I chose to observe this until I saw fit to move on.
A young woman, extremely tan with a hair cut that only a beautician would attempt to wear each and every day, was sitting in a chair, eating something. I'm not sure what she was eating, because I was distracted by the nasty glare and scowl she was radiating in my general direction. I saw it fit to move on.
A young man, obviously in the army based on his garb, was having a deep conversation with a middle-aged gentleman about a recent war-time event he happened to live through. Most of the people around the men were listening in, intently, as he quietly, almost cautiously, attempted to tell the story. It was obviously very disturbing to him, and at one point, he started to cry. When it comes to american men and women and the war(s) our administration continues ramming down the throats of americans, as much as you despise the war, remember that these are real people, just like you and me. Hate the game, don't hate the player.
A very young woman, looking like someone out of one of those craptacular high school california beach drama television shows, was sitting and reading US Weekly while a small swarm of men eye-balled her. Given her advanced reading level and her seeming peace with the ogglers, I don't think this is anything new to her. Seriously, who attempts air travel in a high heels and a one-piece strapless bar dress? I'm not complaining... I'm merely asking the question.
A very large woman, holding her daughter while the daughter drinks milk from a bottle. In and of itself, not very strange, but the daughter appeared to be in the 3-4 year range of age. I'm certainly no parenting expert, or even a parent at all (at least not for the next 4-6 weeks), but I think that when your child starts to understand the individual letters on the yellow labels around the formula cans, it's time to star the weaning process. (Bonus side note: weaning is a word that is both funny and used far too infrequently. I award myself 5 extra points for using it correctly.)
A man sitting near me, entering in page after page of accounting data to his computer one index finger keyboard click at a time. He mentions that he recently lost several weeks of digital records in a flood, along with his wife's business. He was "happy to be doing this" after seeing what others in the area are having to cope with. There is certainly something to be said for the midwestern work ethic and general demeanor. It's always refreshing to see it when traveling, and so often overlooked by those that live along side it each and every day. A trip to the east coast doesn't cure many things..., but this is one of them.
My personal favorite: a woman, traveling with three children, all under the age of ten, a stroller, diaper bag, and all of the fixins. She is holding her youngest, a young boy, probably around 1yr old. The boy has a cell phone placed to his hear, and he goes back and forth between laughing, listening intently, and speaking baby gibberish, with the occasional phrase resembling "dada". The look on his face is priceless. Technology, as cold and complex as it generally seems, sometime allows wonderful things to happen.

Flipping the Mathematical Bird

2008-07-23T21:16:00.004-05:00

I believe that when it comes to problem solving, the following can be said:

There are many incorrect ways to solve a problem, even if the outcome is correct
There are very few correct ways to solve a problem, often only one

That being said, I pose the following 5th grade math "word problem." The important thing to note about this particular problem is that there are at least two obvious ways to figure out the solution. One is the right method, the other, although technically correct, isn't nearly as eloquent. I'll make the numbers easy, and if no one figures out the right method to solve the problem, I'll make it known in a future post. Here we go...

Two trains are heading straight toward each other on the same set of tracks. They are currently 100 miles apart and each is traveling at 5 miles per hour. There is a bird that continually flies back and forth between the trains as they approach each other. The bird flies at 20 miles per hour. How far will the bird have flown when the trains meet each other?

Notes:

Don't worry about the physical/logistical details... you're missing the point
Don't cheat by reading other people's posts (at least not until after you have come up with your solution)... you're missing the point
Don't Google it... you're missing the point
If this takes you more than a few minutes, you're not using the right method to solve the problem
If you start writing down lots of calculations on a piece of paper, you're not using the right method to solve the problem
This can easily be calculated in your head
Mathematically inclined people tend to choose the wrong method to get the solutions

The moral of this is that being smart, intelligent, or some kind of a genius in a given area doesn't necessarily mean that you know the best way of solving a problem. Often, simply a different view of a problem, even if naive, can still yield the right methodology. The real problem is getting smart, intelligent, and/or genius-types to accept that their method is not the best.

Random Questions From The Recent Past

2008-07-19T12:56:00.005-05:00

Just some random questions/concerns I need to voice:

Why do people constantly refer to themselves in the 3rd person online? Facebook status messages, IM away messages, out of the office messages? Is the goal to trick others into thinking that the system somehow posted the message on your behalf, and that you, the author and object of the message, somehow are unaware of your current status? This sounds like a serious mental condition to me.
Why do people constantly goof the tense of the verb "forget?" I hear this all the time: "What is your name again? I forget your name." Shouldn't it be "I forgot your name" instead? Are you actively forgetting the other person's name as you are speaking, or did you more likely forget their name at some previous point and are now simply making this known to another person, thus requiring the past tense of the verb. At least use a modifier to make it correct: "I always forget your name" or "I always forget things." Again, the lack of differentiation between past and present is either a serious mental condition, or a remnant of far too much time travel. You be the judge.
Why do people tap on soda cans before opening them?
Why do people still insist of generating paper documents and mailing them through the post office, requiring paper, time, and fuel to deliver? Email seems to work pretty well.
Along those same lines, why is it secure and good practice to fax a document, sign it, and return it via fax, when emailing a document, printing/signing it, and then scanning/emailing it back is not secure? Last I checked, most fax machines don't have biometric security mechanisms.
Why do most retail stores, banks, airports, etc., have a well defined area of space between the current person being waited on at the counter and the rest of the line that is not to be occupied by any person other than in passing? What could possibly be going on that requires a 10ft front-to-back safe zone, while still quite happily allowing another person to stand two feet to the left/right so they too can go about their business? Last I checked, sound has a way of progressing in all directions, not much backwards. Is this a fundamental misunderstanding of basic physics, or something more?

Talk amongst yourselves. ;-)

Coding the Past

2008-06-25T22:39:00.003-05:00

Errr.., moreso code form the past. I found some old code snippets (C, Python, Perl, Java, Bash) I wrote many years ago and decided to put them online just for S&Gs. You can look at it here.

http://www.weiserthanbefore.com/source_code/

Happy reading.

A Flash of White

2007-11-30T15:03:00.001-06:00

So, I'm sitting at home, working out of my home office, and a man drives by in a white minivan, stops shortly after he passes my house, backs up, parks alongside the curb, and proceeds to ake a few pictures of my front porch area. He then drives off, never to be seen again.

Should I be concerned?

Technologies To Be

2007-08-06T20:58:00.000-05:00

Every so often I have an idea for new technologies that have yet to be created or conceived. I usually forget about them right away, only to see them being sold by some big company a year or two later. Not all of them are revolutionary ideas. Actually, most of them are probably things that lots of people have though about, but no one has taken the time to create. Anyway, here are a few of my ideas...

An OpenSource NDMP library, complete with bindings to common scripting languages (Perl, Python, etc.), and client / server packages. The API should be simple to understand and program against, despite NDMP's underlying complexities. This would give other OSS software packages, such as Amanda, the ability to backup various different platforms using a standards based protocol. It would also eliminate the need to purchase outrageously priced client agents from the big-name backup software vendors. I personally think this would be an outstanding project for Google Summer of Code or even a graduate level course in software engineering.
The personal VoIP phone. Much like a cell phone (or possibly even as a feature on a cell phone), this phone has the ability to attach itself to Wifi or LAN networks, register itself with some sort of a public VoIP provider service, and send and receive calls free of charge. For whatever reason, despite the fact that people send email, IMs, and various other forms of digital communication free of charge each and every day, these same people think they have to pay by-the-minute for voice calls. It makes no sense.
A centralized global database for contact information. I know, I know, invasion of privacy, junk email, identity theft, spam, blah blah blah. Get over it people. If someone wants to track you down and/or send you something, they will find your contact information, so why not make this a useful feature. The idea is that someone keeps an online database of contact information for everyone, and companies such as banks, magazine publishers, and utility companies are required to actively monitor this single source for changes in your contact information. If your email address changes, they know it and automatically change it in their systems. If you move to another city, everything gets automatically re-routed. If you're going to be on vacation in France for two months and want all of your snail mail, email, and phone calls to be routed to a different location, you can simply log into a web site for this big database of contact information and enable this. I don't think people or businesses should be required to use the database, but it would benefit both to do so.

Anyway, that's all I have for now. In case you didn't read this, just wait a few years and I'm sure you'll know what it was all about.

Three Mental Puzzlers: An Explanation

2007-07-09T21:32:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that these three mental puzzlers are quite horrible to think about. But... there is a point to all of this.

Basically, scientists performed some very interesting research by asking these three puzzlers to a sample set of people and observed their brain responses to each. The results were as follows:

The first question tended to invoke activity in the portion of the brain that is responsible for making decisions based on logic.
The second question tended to invoke activity in the portion of the brain that is responsible for making decisions based on emotion.
The third question invokes both the emotional and logical decision-making portions of the brain. Furthermore, it invokes both of these regions much more intensely than either of the two previous questions.

This alone is fairly interesting, but the researchers found that the final puzzler actually caused a third portion of the brain to become highly active in addition to the other two. This is a highly evolved portion that is only found in humans and not in other primates. It is what gives humans the ability to arbitrate between possible solutions that seem to internally conflict. If something is logical but emotionally challenging, or illogical but emotionally pleasing, this part of the brain makes the final decision. Test subjects who were able to make the "logical" decision to the last question were very active in this portion of the brain, while subjects who couldn't make a rational decision tended to have much less activity in this portion of the brain.

Take it for what it's worth, but it's good to know that at least most humans can make more advanced decisions that our simian brothers and sisters!

Three Mental Puzllers: Question #3

2007-05-13T20:52:00.000-05:00

This isn't meant to be a trick question. Given the following dilemma, please explain your choice of one of the two possible outcomes.

Scenario :

You are in a village in Vietnam during the Vietnam war. You and your entire village of 16 people are hiding in some brush. Heavily armed enemy forces are marching along a path that runs near enough to your location that they are able to hear any significant noises.

Question:

Knowing that the enemy will kill everyone in your village if you are discovered, and also knowing that one of the 16 villagers is your sick infant child who currently has a very bad cough, will you smother and kill your child in order to keep it quiet, thus saving the other 15 villagers, or will you do nothing, knowing that your child will make noise, causing all of the 16 villagers to be discovered and killed?

Bonus Question:

If the child was not yours, but rather the child of another villager, would it change your decision?

Too Good Not To Post

2007-05-11T20:36:00.000-05:00

For those of you who don't know my brother (no, not that one... or that one...)

http://www.myspace.com/nvrgnadi

Here's a preview, Hawkeye style!

And Now For Something Completely Different

2007-05-11T20:20:00.000-05:00

As a break from the recent seriousness of this blog, some random funny pics...

Three Mental Puzzlers: Question #2

2007-05-03T09:23:00.000-05:00

This isn't meant to be a trick question. Given the following dilemma, please explain your choice of one of the two possible outcomes.

Scenario :

You are standing on a walking bridge over a single set of train tracks. Far to your right, on one end of the track, you see 15 people performing maintenance on it. Far to your left, on the other end of the track, you see a train rapidly approaching. Standing next to you on the bridge is a pedestrian. You are too far to visually or audibly notify any of the 15 individuals working on the track.

Question:

Knowing that the train will eventually hit and kill all of the 15 individuals on the track, do you push the pedestrian off of the bridge and onto the track, knowing that the train will hit and kill this person and stop prior to hitting the other 15 people, or do you allow the train to continue and kill all 15 laborers?

Three Mental Puzzlers: Question #1

2007-04-03T20:42:00.000-05:00

This isn't meant to be a trick question. Given the following dilemma, please explain your choice of one of the two possible outcomes.

Scenario :

You are standing on a path near two sets of train tracks. Far to your right, you see one track with 15 people performing maintenance on it. Far to your left, you see another track with 1 person performing maintenance on it. Striaght ahead, you see a train rapidly approaching on the track with the 15 people. Next to you is a track switch lever that would allow you to divert the train onto the other track with the one person. You are too far to visually or audibly notify any of the individuals.

Question:

Knowing that the train will hit and kill all of the individuals on the track that it travels on, do you pull the lever and cause the lone laborer to die, or do you allow the train to continue on its current track and kill all 15 laborers?

A Greater Than Desirable Day

2007-03-22T21:32:00.000-05:00

All in all, it's been a pretty good day.

I had the chance to eat some awesome barbecue at Wabash BBQ. It' s a little hole-in-the-wall BBQ joint about 30 minutes outside of Kansas City in rural Missouri. The pictures on the web site make it look like a "classy" establishment. I assure you, it's just as dodgy as any other good BBQ joint, but the food is just as good. I would highly recommend the brisket, althouth the pork was quite tasty as well.

I got finished up with this week's work a little ahead of time, allowing me to bump up my flight tomorrow and hopefully be back home at a reasonable time. It's always nice when you go into a week of "unknown" work and end up with a hard-fought success. It certainly makes the job rewarding.

I cought a flick tonight: Wild Hogs. The movie isn't going to win any awards, but it was funny to see the mix of actors/actresses working together, and Marissa Tomei is never hard to watch. There were some hilarious scenes, especially during the credits. John McGinley is a comedic rock star!

And..., as probably the best thing that happened today... Steve Alford is leaving the University of Iowa to coach at..., well..., I don't really care, so long as he's not at the U. of I. any more. Good riddance! Now maybe I can start enjoying basketball again!

The Rhubarb Conjecture

2007-02-19T21:36:00.000-06:00

I realize that we've recently had some nasty weather in the central Illinois area, and I completely understand that when the weather gets bad, roads get bad, and accidents happen. Snow drifts, white outs, black ice... they can all cause accidents. What I don't understand is how, when the weather gets bad in this part of the state, classical physics stops applying to drivers and their vehicles.

Take Newton's First Law of Motion. In a nutshell, it says that an object will keep moving at a constant velocity in a straight line until some other force acts upon it. In the case of a moving car, if the car should happen to hit a patch of ice of a bunch of snow while traveling a normal highway speeds on a straight stretch of highway, it should continue to move in a straight line and, if anything, slow down a bit. To better illustrate, here is a diagram of how a vehicle should react when sliding on ice:

This seems simple enough. But what happens when classical physics start to break down? What happens when quantum mechanics become relevant? What happens when black holes, space-time continuums, and nuclear interactions play into the equation? Can we even begin to explain these complex interactions in a mathematical or scientific context? At this time, we can not. What I can offer is to diagram this complex reaction as I witnessed it this morning while driving on a rural highway in central Illinois. Keep in mind, very minimal amounts of wet snow (less than 1") were involved. No known external forces were acting laterally on the vehicle:

It can be seen that the car clearly dis-obeys Newton's first law by proceeding not in a straight path, but rather in an irregular path ultimately placing the vehicle at an arbitrary location, known locally as "in the rhubarb."

I will continue to write more on the Rhubarb Conjecture as time goes on, as I feel that empirical evidence will show that the effect can be witnessed in other environments, such as the running paths of our nieghbors' dogs, or the shopping cart isles at Wal-Mart. Until then the Rhubarb Conjecture will remain just that, and not a law.

Still Kicking

2007-02-18T19:41:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm still kicking. I have to apologize for my hiatus from blogging. I'm going to make a valiant effort to get back into the swing of things. Since my last post, a few things have happened...

The holiday season came and went. It was a good celebration all around this year.
Work has been crazy kinds of busy, but it's a good kind of crazy. I really like my company and my job, which is refreshing given my last work experience.
I've been doing a lot of traveling. Most recently, I spent a week in Houston, TX.
The weather in central IL has been a little nasty for the past few weeks. Lots of snow, ice, and wind. Apparently, our cat doesn't care for snow drifts, as she didn't see the humor in her little outing yesterday. ;-)
When the temperature is above 10 degrees, I've been smoking bigger and better things. My most recent adventure was a pork shoulder, which I smoked for around 19 hours. It was awesome.
As usual, I've been reading lots of tech books. I finished up the "Gimp" book, and I'm almost done with "Open Sources 2.0". Also, per a co-worker recommendation, I'm reading through "Peace, Love, and Barbecue" in my free time. This book rocks! I highly recommend anyone who smokes/barbecues to read this book.

Let the blogging begin!

Oh Deer!

2006-11-07T19:26:00.000-06:00

The deer in Central Illinois are either explosive, suicidal, or just plain stupid.

I'm not sure why, and I don't exactly know what it means, but in here in the flatness that is Central Illinois, vehicles don't hit deer on the roadways; rather, they seem to cause deer to explode. Growing up in Iowa made me all to accustomed the not-so-random deer "near-miss" while driving. It was a nightly ocurance around dusk in the fall. I learned quickly that I needed to actively look out for them at all times when driving. It was not uncommon to see a deer carcass laying along the side of the road or in a ditch somewhere, nor was it uncommon to have to break to not hit one.

What I didn't see very often was what can only be described as a "splat" mark on the interstate that is the remnant of a once live deer. This is what we have in Central Illinois. I have some theories as to why this is:

Deer don't get hit at all. They seem to become so frightened at the sight of an oncoming vehicle, they they internally combust and explode. I propose this is caused by the Illinois varieties of corn and soybeans, which seem to be grown more for energy purposes than consumption in modern times. Apparantly an 86-octane ethanol blend in a deer that is scared $*%@-less causes an explosion and resulting mess all over the highway. I haven't had time to test this theory to scale yet, but given the soybean content of our cat's food, and the concentration of "funk" that seems to be eeking out of her butt on a regular basis, I think it's just a matter of time before all of the data is in.

Deer are suicidal. How do I know this? Well, the other night when I was driving home from a recent football game, around 11:00pm , a deer walked, not jumped or ran, out into the middle of my lane on the highway, stood straight up facing me head-on, and attempted to bite the big one. I was moving along at around 75mph and I didn't see him until my low beams met his eyes, which was far too close to have time to think. I know it was a "he" because he had a large rack of antlers... and because it was obvious his nagging deer-wife was the one who drove him into his current state of being. Anyway, my hand managed to make the car swerve violently and recover just in time to avoid the creation of yet another deer "splat". I say my "hand" because I'm not convinced my brain had anything to do with it, which I guess is a good thing, but maybe not either. This marks the third time I've had to put the car against an impromptu driving test. So far, its record is 3-0. If I don't write another blog for a long long time, the record has probably become 3-1. I'm reminded of a movie...

Deer are stupid. I really have no way to back up this idea, but given the number of stupid people in the world, I see no reason that there can't be equally stupid deer. Most people can't walk and talk at the same time, and they only have two legs to control, whereas a deer has four. Of course, deer don't talk either, but maybe they're doing something else that is dually perplexing, like chewing gum, sniffing for food, or being shot at.

Or, is this all just some kind of a conspiracy hatched at the North Pole by the big man in red and his 8 elitist deer (Reindeer that is) in order to continue the hard-fisted rule of Christmas sleigh-pulling dominance. Hmmm.... talk amongst yourselves...

Go Hawks!!

2006-09-22T13:19:00.000-05:00

Check it out. The frappr thing is pretty cool!

http://www.herky.net/
http://www.frappr.com/herkynation

How 'bout 'dem Hawkeyes!

Flying out where the buses don't walk

2006-09-13T17:56:00.000-05:00

I wish to give a quick summary of my recent traveling experieces:

Plan 1)
To fly from Dallas/Fort Worth to Peoria during mid-afternoon
Result 1)
I spent the night in Atlanta (don't ask)

Plan 2)
To fly from Peoria to Omaha on a late-afternoon flight
Result 2)
Camped out in O'Hare for 6+ hours and ended up arriving in Omaha around midnight

Plan 3)
To fly from Omaha to Peoria on a late-afternoon flight
Result 3, in progress)
The flight is already delayed an hour, and the one other guy in the terminal decided he needs to sit right behind me and talk loudly on his cell phone. Prognosis: not good.

Flying in the United States, as of right now, is slightly less than desirable. Unless it takes more than 8 hours to drive somewhere, you are probably better off renting a car or working on that space-time transporter. Or, and this is my personal favorite, lighting a bunch of candles, sacrificing some chickens, humming, and getting lit on $6 airport bottles of beer. Note: it is not advised to try to hum while drinking $6 airport beer; sacrificing chickens while drinking $6 airport beer can be oddly rewarding.

Result 3 Update)
The flight has been pushed back another 30 minutes.

I have to believe that there is a better mode of transportation in this country. Perhaps I should look into Amtrak, or Greyhound, or maybe just take up ultra-long-distance hiking. Really, how long could it take to walk from Peoria to Omaha???

Shit... gotta go... my chicken just ran off.

The Chronicles of Aspen: The Bike, The Bus, and The Superhero

2006-07-26T11:42:00.000-05:00

Tuesday in Aspen was action-packed with blog-worthy incidents. I've decided to list them below in order of increasing impressiveness.

I started off the day with a road trip up a mountain on a bus with a bunch of different people. We got to the top of the mountain, took some pictures, and biked back down. The guide for the "tour" was a middle-aged woman who was extremely bubbly and knowledgeable about outdoor activities in Aspen. She made the trip a lot of fun. The concerning thing about the trip was not so much the bike ride down the mountain, but the inability of others to understand the fundamentals of biking. I realize that not everyone bikes on a regular basis, and that "new" multi-speed bikes of today may be confusing to someone who isn't used to a mountain-class bike, but seriously people... after 3 miles of biking, how can you not figure it out??? We had to crawl down the path because others in the group (all but about 4-6 of us) had no idea how to properly brake and/or shift a bike. Maybe I'm off my rocker on this one, but if one is going to sign up to go biking in the mountains, braking and shifting are probably two skills that one should invest in learning prior to the outing. Just an suggestion from someone who knows nothing.
After the biking trip, I decided to catch a bus back to the hotel. Now, I don't claim to be a guru when it comes to deciphering the intricate coding schemes and labeling conventions that is Aspen's public transport documentation, but I felt fairly comfortable that the shown bus route would get me to my preferred destination with little chance of error. To help you to better understand, I started my journey at the bottom-right of the square on Main St., and I needed to stop at my hotel somewhere between the Castle Ridge turn-off and the Aspen Highlands Ski area. The entire route is only a few miles long, so I figured if I missed my stop or was on the wrong route, I could simply ride back to where I started and try again. ..... Fast forward two hours .... I've been sitting in the same seat on the same bus for two hours now. I don't exactly know where I am in the wonderful state of Colorado, but I feel closer to Denver than to Aspen. Apparently I mis-read the map (obviously a result of my lackey map-reading skills). I missed the part where the bus doesn't stop and the Aspen Highlands Ski Area and instead continues on for another 3 hours in a direction that can only be described as "directly away from Aspen." So... I got a 4 hour tour of Colorado aboard a hot and bumpy city bus. At least I know where to find a mall and a Wal-Mart in Colorado now.

Given this incident, there are a few things I would like to make known to RFTA, the public transit organization that services Aspen and areas "directly away from Aspen":

Maps are only useful if followed correctly. Seems obvious to me... not so much to the RFTA.
The big displays on the front of the buses aren't a whole lot of good if they consist of acronyms that are a maximum of three letters in length. Example: "X CMT/RP/AVH/Mrn." I've since learned that the "X" at the beginning means "express route" and is a completely different (yet mysteriously undocumented) route.
Not everyone is trying to screw RFTA out of $0.50 by lying about their ages. The time the bus driver spends arguing about a rider's age costs way more money than it's worth. Get over it.
If a bus should happen to be changing its route while there are riders on the bus, it would seem customary for the riders of the bus to be notified of said event. Lack of doing so may cause riders to become mildly concerned and non-complacent (non-complacent: a state of mind between the states of 'contemplating how to kill a bus driver' and 'if I jump out of the door now, am I more likely to be killed by oncoming traffic or by rolling off of a cliff'.)

And finally, the most impressive thing of the day for me occurred when waiting for the bus the spawned the previous topic. An entire group of 4-6 year old children was crossing the street, accompanied by a few adults. I assume it was a summer school/camp sort of organization. All of the kids had on standard Aspen attire: designer jeans, name-brand sun glasses, Rolex watches, diamond jewelry, etc., etc.. That is, all of the except for one. I like to think of him as the chosen one. It was obvious great things were to come of his life. He'd possibly become a brilliant CEO, a Nobel prize winner, or one of the most honorable humanitarians this planet has ever known. This was made clear by his desire to stand out, his need to differentiate himself, from the other children. Did he do this by wearing more expensive clothes? Not likely. Did he dress himself in full business attire? Certainly not. Could he even see where he was going? Doubtful. Was his outfit one that would define him as an individual? Absolutely. It takes a true leader, a "chosen one", to dress himself in a full-blown Spider Man costume, for a short park outing on a 85-degree day in Aspen. It is obvious this individual is going somewhere, even if it requires a supervisory hand to lead him, due to lack of proper vision through a poorly designed costume head-piece.

Seriously... it made my day.

The Clowns Have Landed - Twice

2006-07-23T23:49:00.000-05:00

There is only one thing better than flying into Aspen on a Sunday evening... and that is flying into Aspen twice on a Sunday evening. Apparently a tiny ran shower and a pilot who forgets to check the gas gauge before leaving Denver will cause this. I think we were about two minutes from touching down when the pilots pulled up the landing gear, pegged the throttle, and b-lined back to Denver. Fun shit, especially for the passenger by my side, who already had her face buried in a barf bag. Oddly enough, one needs to put both the mouth _and_ nose in the bag to achieve maximum efficiency.

I was witness to the standard pains of flying yet again today, but I was able to add to my list of annoyances.

Anyone involved, associated, or any way affiliated with PartyLite candles should not be allowed to fly unless they sign a contract disallowing them from talking about how difficult it is to sell candles, how good they are at said selling, and/or any other facet of the candle industry. Seriously people, get a freaking life... and a real job. I'm sure that yesterday's PartyLite convention was mind blowing and an all-out hoot, but seriously... get a fucking life. Unless one of your candles has found itself jammed into my temple through a freak candle-lighting accident, I couldn't care less. Two hours of my life on a plane that I will never get back. Well, not quite two hours. I spent a good 15-17 minutes contemplating whether I could stick a left jab between the two seats in front of me, and about 30 seconds deciding if it was morally correct and/or warranted. At least my priorities were straight.
If you're a flight attendant... freaking do something. I don't care what it is. Gather trash, offer some water, clean the damn bathroom. Just don't sit in the empty first class seat reading the latest smut magazine to hit the shelves. At a bare minimum, fix your makeup. Just because you're flying into new destinations all of the time doesn't mean the circus has to come to town with you.
What part of the "fasten seat belt" sign is so hard to understand? Seriously!? When the little light comes on and the clown-faced lazy-assed attendant announces that everyone must be seated and buckled up, what happens in some people's minds that makes them think that any of the following things are appropriate:

Getting up and going to the bathroom
Letting your kids run wild in the cabin
Standing up and walking around to stretch your legs
Digging through one of your 15 bags to find a useless piece of clothing that you suddenly and desperately found the need to wear

And finally, when placing the standard-sized roller-bag in the overhead bin, how freaking hard is it to understand that you put it in wheels first, as far to the left or right as you can? People really don't understand this. Maybe it was all the Tetris I played as kid, but come one people, we aren't solving the freaking DaVinci code.

Anyway, I'm in Aspen now. I'm sure I'll have more rants once tomorrow begins.

Don't Jack With The Banana Bowl

2006-06-20T21:28:00.000-05:00

Those of you who know me well know I have a mild case of OCD. I'm aware, and I'm okay with it. I've learned to accept that things that don't bother other people have the ability to make me all kinds of crazy.

There are a few of these tendencies that I've been made aware of recently:

All clothes must be hung on hangers so that all of the clothes and hangers face the appropriate direction when hung in a given closet. This varies based on the closet, which leads to a kind of test hanging process every time I stay in a hotel.
I'm a creature of habit. Things have to be done in the same order every time they're done. The more often I do something, the more I have to adhere to the habits. Screwing with my showering habits can ruin an entire day for me. I don't think having to shampoo my hair, then wash my face, then rinse everything, in that specific order, is too much to ask. After all, who would rinse their face before shampooing anyway. Craziness.
I'm big on things being symmetrical. For instance, I see no reason that the bowl of bananas on our kitchen can't be perfectly centered on the island. This only seems logical from a safety perspective. The safest place for the bowl IS the farthest from any given edge, which happens to perfectly center the bowl on the table. If the bowl should move, I find myself centering it again. First, on one axis, then the other, and finally a re-check of the original axis. I've also found that the bananas can't be parallel to any particular axis. This goes against my general rules of symmetry, but I see no reason to try to make a bunch of bananas look symmetrical. It's just not aesthetically pleasing.
There is no substitute for a properly molded pillow. It takes me months to get a pillow to the shape and condition that I prefer. This isn't really all that odd given the freakish size of my head. It would seem reasonable that a head so demanding in size should demand a very particular pillow layout. There are benefits to a static pillow arrangement though. The concept rules out silliness such as pillow fights, the random pillow fluffing, and changing of pillow cases. I fear the day that I'm forced to purchase a new pillow, so I actively try to not bring about such a day by not drooling or vomiting on my current pillow; sacrifices I find worth making.

Apparently, the OCD is all up it my junk when it comes to formatting paragraphs as well, because I couldn't end this post on a bullet point. Weird, I know. Probably the weirdest thing so far in this rant.

Storage, Vacuums, Automobiles, and Smarter Thinking

2006-06-20T21:27:00.000-05:00

Warning: What follows is will likely be nerdy and full of techno jumble, so if you're so inclined, read on.

Everyone seems to be so freaking wound up about the next big thing in science and technology: quantum computers, hybrid cars, fuel cells, space elevators, and face transplants. Maybe it's because I'm cautious, or maybe just plain old cynical, but I get far more excited about an old thing that has morphed into something great. These things are not really disruptive or sustaining technologies in and of themselves, but rather innovative improvements to existing and common items. Allow me to offer some examples:

The Dyson Vacuum

Most people have heard of a Dyson vacuum. It's the cool yellow (or purple) vacuum that you see in stores all of the time now. It's expensive, quite trendy, and supposedly is the first vacuum to not lose suction over time. It is still a vacuum cleaner, just as the previous several generations used, but for several reasons, it's a better vacuum. It has far more suction than a regular vacuum, has a very intuitive design, and is easy to maintain. It looks nice, runs quietly, and is almost fun to watch because of how it displays all of the dirt and debris that you are sucking up. Is its integrated telescoping wand as "cool" as something like a computer-driven lawn mower? No way. Does it work, and work well? Quite so. The moral is that it's not a new kind of a magic oobie-doobie floor cleaning device, but rather a series of very directed and well designed improvements on an existing technology. Take that Hoover (who, by the way, refused to buy the technology from Dyson when he offered it to them.)

Network Appliance

Okay, this one isn't for any but the computer storage savvy, but it is a prime example of my point. Network Appliance started out as a company that created NAS storage servers. They did nothing but serve up file shares to Windows and NFS clients. Nothing all that cool about that, especially given that there are a million other vendors who claim they can do it better (including Micro$oft, but that's another rant...) Anyway, they've added features over time to make a common appliance into a world-class storage device. I'm not talking about some kind of a new processing engine or a new whiz-bang memory technology that blows away the competition. I'm talking about taking existing storage hardware and making it work more efficiently through better software technologies and better design. WAFL, RAID-DP, and Data ONTAP in general, are just a few examples of ways NetApp has made a common device into something much, much better. Again, they didn't re-invent the wheel, but they sure as hell got it to spin like no one else. Compare the NetApp line of products to anything that EMC, HDS, HP, IBM can offer, and I challenge you to find anyone that is being smarter about how they use and manipulate storage. Sure, the uber-high-end stuff from the big vendors might perform a little better (well, maybe not either...), but I challenge you to find anyone that is being as smart about how they design, innovate, and package their product.

Hyundai Motor Company

We all know who this company is, or at least anyone who has watched any commercials on television in the past several months. Hyundai is a foreign auto maker that makes, generally, fairly average vehicles. Yes, the new Sonata and Azera models look pretty slick, but in general, the cars are not super performers, ultra-efficient gas sippers, or anywhere close the pinnacle of luxury or style. So, why do I think that the Hyundai compares to the Dyson vacuum and Network Appliance? It has to do more with how the cars are manufactured than the cars themselves. Hyundai, in addition to trying to keep costs down the traditional way, have decided to automate as much of the assembly process as possible, much like other manufacturers. What they have done differently is that their goal was not to decrease costs by replacing workers, but to decrease costs by increasing the precision and quality of the vehicles. The more mechanically and electrically precise a vehicle is, the more that the assembly process can be automated. The transverse is true as well: the more an assembly process can be automated, the more precise the end product will be. Similarly, workers are dedicated wholly to jobs that are not well suited to automation, such as engine assembly, some electrical work, and overall control of quality. By putting the right tools in the right place, a more precise and qualified car is produced at a lower price. This also has a wonderful second-order effect: if a car is ultimately of better quality, it is less likely to fail. This is ultimately what allows a company like Hyundai to sell a high quality family-sized sedan with a 10-yr/100,000 mile warranty for under $20,000. Traditional American car companies have a lot of work to do to compete with this kind of mentality.

So I'm left with a question. Should a company/individual strive to make a better product, or should they strive to make a product better. After some pondering, I feel that continually making a product better by means of smart thinking will ultimately end up in a better product, so I don't think they're necessarily exclusive. I do think that the definition of "smart thinking" is something that I can not begin to understand other than by example. Better ask Dyson, NetApp, or Hyundai if you want a good answer to that question.

Flying with Stars

2006-05-09T11:41:00.000-05:00

As an add-on to my previous post, on my next flight from Phoenix to San Jose, we had a lead flight attendant that was, by far, the most... ummm...., welll..., flamboyant shall I say, flight attendant that I've ever seen. It was hay-larious! I realize San Jose is very close to San Francisco, but this was too funny. This guy looked, acted, and sounded (and I'm not just making this up... there were other witnesses) just like the following famous actor...

Flying is not meant to be this fun.

Jesus and my sister-in-law's lost twin

2006-05-08T22:05:00.000-05:00

On my flight from St. Louis to Phoenix, I had the opportunity to sit next to two very unique individuals: a young woman that is most certainly the long lost identical twin of my sister-in-law, and Jesus. Here is the evidence, an actual picture I managed to take with my cell phone. I apologize for the picture quality... the plane ride was bumpy.

This in and of itself is quite strange..., but what really threw me, is when Jesus started making out with my sister-in-law's long lost identical twin like it was the start of the old testament again! I'm not just talking about a random peck on the cheek either. I'm talking about full-up face sucking during takeoff, landing, and everything in between.

In the true and tested words of Clark Griswald: "Russ, he may boink her."

As a side note to this article... while browsing the web for background information on Jesus (yes, I always research my articles) I happened upon a little site called JesusDressup.com. See for yourself. It's way too funny to even attempt to describe in a blog!

Gulliver and the Chocolate Factory

2006-05-03T21:31:00.000-05:00

"Holy shit dude... Those are some little people." -- Gulliver from Gulliver's Travels.

Okay, maybe it's not a direct quote from the book, but it's close enough.

Here are some highlights of the season:

We won one (yes, only one) game.
We didn't come in last place.
I jumped up to block a spike one time and got hit by the ball somewhere between my elbow and my shoulder, so I must have had my "ups" that night.
I jumped up to block a spike one time and somehow got caught in the net.

Yeah, we didn't have a freaking chance. Sure, it would have helped if we didn't suck at volleyball in general, but there's only so much one can hope for when the average team height is 3'8".

Oompa loompa doom-pi-dee-daah...

Why I'm so screwed up

2006-04-17T20:38:00.000-05:00

To help the masses understand why I'm what some would call "playfully odd", and others "jacked up in the head", I'd like to assert a portion of an email I recently received. It's an email (slightly edited) from my mother regarding Easter weekend. Now, I'm not saying that my upbringing made me into the person that I am today, but with stuff like this going on, nurture has a bit on nature.

Background: Not much to say here, other that that my mother, father, and my mother's parents all live on the same farm (be it in separate houses.) My mother often refers to her father as "grandpa". The rest you'll pick up from the context. Keep in mind as you read this... this is a typical of the situational oddities I often found myself and the rest of my family in as I was growing up.

----
Local news on the farm: every shrub on the west side of the house except one
has been pulled out so it is bare. Last fall they had to put a new gas line
in and destroyed the shrubs so now they are gone. I don't know what I'm
going to do; maybe leave it blank. If I knew how to e-mail you pictures I
would. Don't know how yet. I'm still reading manual. I went to get the riding lawn mower
out of mom's basement garage. Andrew's motorcycle was in the way so I thought
I could move it like a bike. Not true, as they are really heavy. Well, it
fell on top of me and I was pinned under it. I yelled for mom but she
couldn't hear me so I finally pushed and pushed and I got out from under it.
Knowing me I injured my leg but still crawled up the steps. I thought gasoline was
leaking out so I thought I should get my husband to lift it up. I called up to the
barn, but the phone system in the barn it doesn't work. Finally mom
heard me and opened the door to the basement. I had the basement garage door open and the cats went down the
stairs and out the open garage door. Mom started screaming as the cats went outside, but she ignored me
and went flying down the basement steps to find them. I crawled to
mom's car got in opened the garage door and started to back out. The wild
cat went flying up the wall of totes in mom's garage. I tried to shut the
garage door but the opener is broke so I left it open. I drove to the barn
honked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No one ever heard the horn so I crawled out and got to
the barn door and yelled for my husband. I was in so
much pain. He helped me get back into the car. He checked on the
motorcycle. It was not leaking gas and there was no damage. We couldn't get the
basement garage door down because there was no electricity (don't ask, grandpa
wired it.) So they had to pull it down manually. Mom was still looking
for the cats. Grandpa came inside from the farm. He goes into the kitchen starts cooking
a hamburger and mom yells for him to come down and catch the cats. You know
grandpa... he says they'll come back on their own. Mom is upset about the cats, I have ice on my leg and now we have a hamburger burning. My husband comes in the kitchen. I tell him
to check the hamburger it was a little burnt. Grandpa catches the cats
and comes up from the basement. All of a sudden he remembers he was cooking
It's burnt and now he's yelling "those dam cats burnt myhamburger!" Well we
found the cats, grandpa ate his burnt hamburger, and mom went to her office. While I have ice on
my leg Bailey calls. She tells me her tire on her car when she
was driving to work blew. So I told her to get a hold of Kevin and he could
change it. At the end of the conversation I found
out she hit a rut in the road and blew 2 tires on the driver's side and all
she has is a little donut. So Kevin took over, got the car hauled to Wal-Mart
and bought 2 new tires. S o now the car should be fine.
----

Yeah, I know... it's a wonder I made it to high-school. If nothing else, I find it extremely odd that both my sister and myself have fallen victim to massive holes in the earth while driving in this past year. Concidence, or Fraggle conspiricy? You be the judge.

Words, Jobs, and Diseased Hookers

2006-02-07T20:40:00.000-06:00

Needless to say, a lot has happened. I'm not exactly sure how, or when, but it has happened. A trip to Vegas... Christmas with the family(s)... and a new job. Oh, it has most definetly been happening.

So, as I was staring out of my 6th floor hotel room window at the 5th floor indoor pool (you got me!?), I realized that with all that has happened since my last post.... there's really not a whole lot I can rant about. Sure, flying still sucks, my left-back wheel still wobbles on my truck from two accidents ago, and people still seem to walk around in this world as if their heads are detached... but is there really anything to rant about? Have I become so copacetic with life that I have nothing else to post to my own blog.

Oh.... I think not.

It occured to me the other day that there are two words in the english language that I don't really care for, and one that I find to be very fitting. No, they're not common slang or slurs commonly heard when dealing with Microsoft products, but rather three words, all beginning with "p": precocious, pontificate, and pretentious.

Precocious - I don't care for this word largely because I don't really know what it means. I think this is mostly because no one else knows what it means either. People go on and on using it incorrectly, so I really have no way of knowing what the proper definition of the word is. Resorting to a dictionary is out of the question as well.

Pontificate - Anyone that actually uses this word in regular speech qualifies under my next word, end of story.

Pretentious - This is a perfectly fitting word. It means exactly what it sounds like it means: arragonce to the highest. (see "One who uses the word 'pontificate'") Not much else to say here. It's just one of those words that sounds exactly like what it means. It rolls off the tongue like a grape off a fork.

Okay, now that I have that off my chest... onto some things I've learned by transitioning from one job to another. The items below appear in not particular order:

Not all managers are detached from reality, but it sure seems to help when it comes time for promotions.
Ir-regardless is not a word, no matter how high your job ranking. Ass.
Most of the people in the private sector don't know what they're doing. They're just winging it like the rest of us.
Open-book accounting and general candor in the workplace are two ideals that every company should strive toward.
Business cards are kind of empowering... unless thay have your personal cell phone number on them.

And, to sum up this completely random and sprawling rant, I'll leave you all with one piece of advice. When in Las Vegas, do not, under any condition or pressure, go to the show "Jubilee!" Trust me, you're better off spending the $80 on a disease-ridden hooker. At least diseased hookers aren't men who run around in nothing but oversized Grecian nut-cups and sandals. Even if they are, at least you'd get a little something for your $80. I think I'm scarred for life.

Claustrophobic Geese

2005-12-12T20:41:00.000-06:00

From time to time I find myself pondering life's more difficult questions; not the simple questions like "is there a God" or "where did we come from," but much more in-depth questions that can make a person weary from thought. To better illustrate, I will offer some samples:

"Can a blind person suffer from claustrophobia?" -- Really, if you can't see your surroundings, are you aware enough of them to understand that they're invading your personal space?
"What's the difference between coincidence and irony?" -- Sure, we can all read and understand the definitions of the words (well, maybe not all of us... some of us do live in Indiana...), but in real life, do we really know the difference. Can there be an ironic coincidence? How about coincidental irony? Sounds a bit suspect to me.
"What does a person say when driving a car after realizing she's about to be hit by a large passenger jet rolling into the street?" -- "Oh shit!" comes to mind, but the more humorous observation of the situation would be of the passenger's response, harshly interrupted from reading a book or newspaper.
"Why is it that the older a person gets, the more he notices that geese, and ducks to some extent, really have no idea where the hell 'South' is?" Maybe it's because I'm getting a little smarter every day, or maybe it's because geese are getting dumber, but I'm fairly certain that they just fly around until one of them goes "Hey, it's warmer here, so let's keep flying." Heck, for all I know they're all jacked-up on whatever they just ate in the Wal-Mart parking lot. That shit would mess me up to.

Anyway, you get the point. I have a lot of other things that I think about during the day, but they usually get me far too wound up to begin this late in a blog. For now, I'll settle for my lesser thoughts, even if they are of claustrophobic geese that fly into airplanes. Hmmm..., a goose flying into an airplane that's on the ground. Coincidence, or irony?

And now a word from our sponsers...

2005-11-23T17:47:00.000-06:00

In case you haven't noticed, I added advertisements on the top of this page (via Google AdSense) with a few hopes in mind:

I can hopefully make a few cents every time my loyal readers click on one of the links
It's technically _very_ geeky and cool
It's quite interesting to see what Google thinks, based on my blog entries, the readers might be interested in.

So, I strongly urge you to reload this page a few times just to see what Google comes up with. Some of the ads are hilarious given my recent postings. Have fun!

Highway to Hooters

2005-10-10T20:09:00.000-05:00

My truck is a physics experiment waiting to happen. It is a magnet for the intertially challenged. It's an exercise in momentum, friction, and operator error. There's nothing wrong, odd, or really even damaged about my truck. (Actually, since my last little venture into the realms of Newtonian experimentation, a good portion of the truck is brand new.) So why is it that I find myself in these odd situations? Do I have poor driving habits? Is it my truck's chameleon-like (or better yet, cephalopod-like) blending abilities with its surroundings? I don't think so. I largely believe that the source of my displeasure and quite too-often adventures lies in the complete ineptness of Peoria drivers. Allow me to explain.

Prior to moving to Peoria, I had been in... wait... let me add them up.... ZERO accidents. This includes all of my driving career, which has consisted most of late teen and early 20's driving mentality; not exactly the "glory years" for male driving records. Since I've been in Peoria, I've caused or have been at fault in... wait... still processing.... ZERO accidents. So, you're probably asking, "So Chris, how is it that you've found yourself in two accidents (discounting the time the earth opened up and nearly swallowed my entire car) in less than 18 months?" Well, it has a lot to do with yet another syndrome that I will coin and describe:

PDS (Peoria Driver's Syndrome): A syndrome predominately affecting the decision making parts of the brain causing irrational, sporadic, and lemur-like driving mentality. The causes of PDS are still largely a mystery, but general consensus is that the proper mix of driving conditions (just enough traffic to cause significant accidents, but no so much that one has to concentrate, dwell on, or be remotely concerned with, driving) can trigger PDS-like symptoms. How does one know if he/she has PDS? Following is a non-exhaustive list of symptoms that have been observed in natural environments:

You put on your cell-phone earpiece before you put your keys in the ignition.
You drive 30 mph over the speed limit on a dark, hilly, residential street, cross over the center line, collide with a small pickup truck before smashing head-on into an oncoming vehicle.
You store various makeup parafanalia on your sun visor.
You approach a small pickup truck from the rear, stopped at a major intersection, neglecting to properly calculate necessary deceleration and change of momentum required, thus creating an illustration of the first law of classical physics. This is especially true if you are a female, on your way to ICC, and you have the physical appearance that both the left and right lobes of your brain have somehow detached themselves from your nervous system and have found themselves lodged, quite prominently, as two bulging lumps on your chest.
You eat breakfast, feed your entire family, balance your checkbook, and perform Kegal exercises while crossing over a construction-ridden bridge on your way to work
You're from Indiana.

The cure for PDS is still an area of great scientific debate. There are radical views that extensive training, probationary periods, and fines will resolve symptoms associated with PDS. In practice, most believe a more Darwinist approach, in which the problem with simply "work itself out."

As for my own personal views...

Yeah for Darwin!
Seriously, how do you miss an entire vehicle sitting at an intersection?
Having a good body doesn't make up for PDS in any way, shape, or form, but it can't be a bad thing either, can it?

Hiking the Halfway House

2005-08-07T21:41:00.000-05:00

It has been a while since my last posting. It's not that I haven't had things to blog about, but moreso that I haven't had time to get it done. Probably more importantly, all of the things that I really want to blog about may or may not be career-limiting, so I will opt to keep them to myself. Cowardliness, right up next to cleanliness. That being said...

I took a trip to Starved Rock State Park this weekend, located somewhere between Chicago and Peoria (a.k.a., BFE Illinois.) The state park itself was interesting. I learned a few fun facts about native Americans, halfway houses, and sandstone. I really don't need to know or remember any of these facts, but I'm sure they'll find a place in my very limited and broken mind, most likely displacing other less important memories, such as my phone number or login password. Those of you who know me can vouch for the shortcomings of my memory. I'll try my best not to disappoint.

These cool tidbits (tidbits, a word only practically useful when describing pieces of information or sliced pineapple) of history were interesting and all, but the hiking itself wasn't anything special. The park itself had some cool trails, and I had an okay time hiking them, but it was, without a doubt, the most commercialized and processed state park I've even been to. If Joan Rivers were to develop a park, this would be it. Dirt and grass covered trails? No way. Almost everything is paved. Tricky hikes up steep hills? Nope, just use the wooden stairs. The freakin' lodge at the center of the park was nicer than any house I've ever lived in. Don't even get me started on the bathrooms.

But what was really interesting..., what really made the day for me..., was the co-mingling of two different peoples: Chicagoans and Peorians. Ying and Yang. Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. It became very apparent that these cultures were, at best, a sociological split unparalleled by any previous culture. From the ritzy to the trashy, from the sweat-stained blue collar to the gold-lined white, it was a potpourri of idiocy.

A few concrete examples might help:

The two metrosexual men who were bickering over how to get the appropriately angled photograph of a canyon wall. Not the opposing canyon wall, but the one underneath the ledge on which they were standing. Had I not known better, I'd have thought to have finally found the long lost escapees of the not-so-well-known "Elton John / Lemur" cross-breeding experiments of the late 70's.
The strange parallel tracks on the trail, obviously left by some species of buddy-traveling Midwestern snakes, that led to a family, consisting of two young girls, a mother and father, and a baby in a stroller. This alone is not very interesting at all, but picture the father wearing a sweat drenched wife-beater, the mother in some sort of a tube-top which emphasized her abundant post-pregnancy waistline more than here bust, together carrying a stroller down a sandy, root-interlaced, and awkward stairway. Insert into this the father grumbling about how he would never do this again and the mother, in a perfectly trailer-trained dialect, screaming at the two girls to slow down or they would be left behind.
The Asian couple that were, I presume, trying to teach their young 3-4 year old boy a lesson. This consisted of walking well ahead of the boy, making him scream with fear and anger, while trying to run over a rough trail, regularly tripping and falling. Oh, for added affect, this particular trail bordered one of the several ravines in the park.

All in all, I think I only saw around 2-3 individuals or groups in the park that were there to both enjoy the scenery, and were prepared to make the necessary hike. I thought I came prepared with a pair of Merrels and a dromedary bag. I was obviously wrong. What I really needed was a over-tightly fitting shirt, a child obviously too small to be hiking, and some sort of a mechanical device that doesn't fair well on rough ground... possibly a wheeled laundry sorter. Then, and only then, would I have been truly prepared for this trip.

OTMS Syndrome

2005-07-19T21:20:00.000-05:00

As of today, the Illinois "Mega Millions" lottery is $145,000,000. That's a lot of money, and I can appreciate one's willingness to want to purchase a lottery ticket, in hopes of cashing in on even a small portion of the total. Sure, the statistical chances of winning a state-wide lottery are minimal at best, and the government is sure to rape the winner for a good 30-50%, but I can still, with a little imagination, understand a person's quest, even their seeming necessity, to drop a fair amount of coin into some lottery tickets.

That being said, I've never seen a person, so unwittingly, painstakingly, and detrimentally drop an amount of "coin" into lottery tickets as I did tonight. Perhaps it's the engineer in me, or just my general demeanor of striving to get things done quickly and efficiently, but in one simple and drawn-out act, I was forced to rethink a significant number of notions on which I had come to rely.

The act which I'm about to speak, by an unknown and surprisingly small individual, was really a combination of two things that consistently defy reason. These two things are really only a few symptoms of a much more complicated, widespread, and contagious syndrome, which I will coin as 'OTMS' syndrome; Oblivious To My Surroundings syndrome. Other common names for this syndrome are No Fucking Idea What I'm Doing syndrome, Why Is Everyone Looking At Me syndrome, and the somewhat recursive and misused Holy Shit, I Totally Missed That Red Light... Let Me Call You Back syndrome (misused because it's both a slang name for the syndrome and a symptom of the syndrome.) I will discuss these two symptoms below.

Symptom #1: Mis-preperation of monetary funds
This is the repeatable, yet always unforeseen, ability of a given person to act surprised when a cashier, teller machine, clerk, or any receiving entity, asks for compensation after a given transaction has taken place. In simpler terms, it's the person at the grocery store that acts surprised when the cashier tell him or her the final amount, and reacts by digging for a checkbook, asking for the current date, painfully signing his or her name, following with gem comments such as "who do I write the check to" and "how do I spell that?" It's quite obvious that this is a staggeringly obvious and representative symptom of OTMS. Note that this symptom isn't limited to check writing. It can quite often be seen in its alternative modes, such as neglecting to "slide card at any time" despite being obviously instructed to do so, or in it's somewhat rarer but more interesting rendition, "I really want to get rid of some change." The latter is a sister-symptom to the much more disturbing symptom I witnessed tonight, which I will explain later, but not before a little more background.

Symptom #2: Surprise and disillusionment at the dismay of others without remorse
Generally a follow-up to the first symptom, this is the momentary ability of a given individual to look both abruptly alerted and enlightened to the fact that they recently were involved, either partially or solely, in an incidence of OTMS. This momentary glimpse into the obvious is followed by a period of non-remorse, although usually very brief. Again, in simpler terms, after symptom #1 has taken place, the person becomes very surprised and taken back by all of the others who are patiently, often pensively ("pensive", meaning "possibly plotting a way to bludgeon said person with a bag of still-waiting-to-be-purchased melting ice"), waiting. After this quick glimpse into the known, the obvious, the sane... he or she usually recovers with a genuine smile, and a complete lack or remorse. The person then leaves the scene of the incident, leaving everyone else in dismay, and an absolute and universal belief that this person suffers from OTMS.

These are only two symptoms of OTMS, but they give significant background to understanding the events that took place before me tonight. Now, after proper preparation, I offer the shortened transcript:
- Man purchases 20 lottery tickets.
- Man pays for 20 lottery tickets with change.
- Man doesn't add up change to pay for 20 times the cost of one lottery ticket, but rather creates 20 piles of change, each perfectly matched against the price of one lottery ticket, only to fall short on the last pile, argue with the cashier about the shortage, and resort to using some of the readily available cash in his pocket.
- Man turns around and acts surprised to see 8 people waiting in line to pay for gas, soda, melting bags of ice, chance to lash out, etc.
- Man smiles and walks away, having no idea the torment he caused one particular line member who only wanted a cold gin and tonic on a hot day.
- The amount of torment caused to others is still unknown.

The really depressing thing, the part that I'm struggling with, is that this guy, this textbook OTMS survivor, is now over 20 times as likely to win the $145,000,000, and I'm left with a watery gin and tonic. My only hope is that someday this guy tries to purchase a firearm with piles of change from a highly stressed an inpatient individual.

Fraggle Linguistics

2005-07-09T20:19:00.000-05:00

It's funny how some terms have very different meanings depending on their context. Take for instance the phrase "a hole in the earth." Very recently in my life, this term was used in two very different and confusing ways.

So, we're driving through rural Illinois late Friday night (as one does), going through one small town after another. Now, I'm from a small town, and I know what "rural" is all about, but some of these small Illinois towns are just one step up from podunk/BFE Missouri (which is, of course, still several steps up from anything associated with Indiana.) Setting aside the origins of words such as "podunk," I'll continue with my story.

When driving through one particularly small and "he got a real pretty mouth, ain't he" kind of town, I made the comment "this place is one big hole in the earth." It was fitting given the situation, but no one really thought anything of it.

Fast forward 10 minutes. We're driving through another small and slightly less scary town. Someone else in the car mutters in an increasingly loud and quick tone, "giant hole iN THE EARTH!!". I was thinking in my head that this person was right on with the comment, although mildly redundant. Right about in the middle of that thought...

WHAAAMMMO!!!

...the car drops into a giant hold in the earth! I'm not exactly sure how I missed it, but apparently there was an entire chunk missing out of the highway. I'm not talking a pot-hole or divet either; I'm talking about a full-out chunk of pavement that stood up and got the fuck out of small-town Illinois! Hell, I half expected to see a Fraggle pop up out of the hole.

The good news is that I managed to keep the car on the road. The bad news is that the car seems to be a bit "uppity" ever since the incident. I can't blame it; I'd be pissed too.

So, I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned here, but I don't know what it is. Maybe it's that I shouldn't go driving in BFE Illinois late at night. Maybe it's that I should better analyze speech patterns while driving. Or, maybe it's that I should concentrate on my driving rather than spending significant amounts of time contemplating the arrival of fictitious creatures that live in deep-deep-dark-dark-deep-dark pits.

Not much happening

2005-06-27T20:31:00.000-05:00

In light of the stories about shark attacks on the west coast of Florida, my recent trip to Ft. Lauderdale and subsequent drunken midnight swim now seems to be one of my lesser ideas. Granted, I didn't go way out into the ocean where the sharks like to feed. I also didn't go swimming on the same beach where a shark attack happened the day before. Call me a Darwinist, a cynic, or just a master of the obvious, but if you swim in waters where ill-tempered fish are swimming around biting people's legs off, you've got what's coming to you.

On a separate note, I'm drinking my first glass of Caffrey's tonight. Apparently it was smuggled into the U.S. from the Canadian border, kind of like in the movie "Traffic." Well, maybe not, but it makes the beer taste fresher. Anyway, I had very high expectations for the beer, but I can't say that they were all met. It's not that it was a bad beer by any means, but when compared to a Guinness or a Wexford, it wasn't all that and a bag of chips. Just goes to show that a beer's worth is directly dependent on the quality of the situation where it was consumed in mass quantity. Why else would anyone drink Busch???

Not much happening right now. We'll see what tomorrow brings...

The world is no longer flat

2005-06-22T21:04:00.000-05:00

Introduction. It has come to my attention recently, a fact so staggering, so mind shattering, that it has caused me to question my system of beliefs and morals. It is a fact, among few, in the highest classes of intellectual context. Topics such as love, religion, and politics all pale in comparison to this single, daunting, and fatally absolute truth:

Some people don't know when they're going to fart.

Now for those of you that are dismissing this as a childish editorial on par with the classic novel "Everyone Poops," I urge you to continue reading.

Definition. Yes, I have learned that some people don't know when they're going to fart. It's really not something that I've thought all that deeply before. I had assumed that everyone else was just like me, in which any given fart, or "element of flatulance" if you will, came with a certain subset of unplanned, but quite definite and noticeable, warning signs. Now I'm not even going to attempt to list out the entire set of warning signs, as the list is neither definable nor appropriate for public reading, but I think it's safe to say that anything from slight intestinal ramblings to flat out assus explosus ("explosion of the ass") qualifies. Regardless of the warning signs, the important point here is that the warnings, regardless of their origin or magnitude, always preclude any given moment of flatulance. This is a known fact. No one has come out and stated it, nor has anyone challenged it. I'm fairly certain no studies have been done on it, and I'm not even convinced anyone has thought about it before to the level of which it has disturbed me. Yet, in one quick sentence by a well-educated and strong-willed person, one short burst of words, my constant and never changing view was shattered. My world was no longer flat.

Denial. This just can't be. There is no sound reason to believe that an event as powerful and memorable as farting can "just happen." It goes against science, and I don't want to be the one to go against science! Yet still, I've been re-assured that this can, and quite often, does happen. It can't be! I refuse to take this as truth, but I find myself wondering how else to know for sure. There's no baseline for testing something like this. It's unthinkable. Even if there were a baseline, how large would the sample set have to be? How would it be precisely monitored and recorded? How could false positives such as bean dip or tainted pancakes be accounted for? Proving or disproving this is simply not feasible.

Acceptance and reflection. Okay, so I can' disprove this fact. Yes, it goes against everything I know and believe in, and yes, I'm basing all of this on one person's portrayal of the truth, but I am a logical person, and if I can't disprove something, I can't say that it isn't true. The truly disturbing portion of this little intellectual discovery of mine is really a second-order realization: if some people can't foresee, acknowledge, and possibly prevent something as elementary and obvious as a brewing fart in its stages of pre-release, what other things are people not able to notice, predict, or prevent? More importantly, is the converse true? Am I missing something that everyone else understands and accepts? As an example, something that I think about from time to time: do wombats spontaneously combust becoming projectile rodents, causing imminent death unless quickly avoided by means of an acrobatic leap to the left or right? What if I'm the guy that gets killed by the flaming wombat? Folks will hear about it on the evening news offering me the same level of pity that they did to the woman who was, apparently unseen and unpredicted by her inner thoughts, burned by hot coffee she had just purchased from a fast food restaurant. They'll say, "What a dumb shit. How could he not see that coming? Hell, it had flames shooting out of it."

Closing. The world is no longer flat... random and unpredictable flatulance is everywhere... and I will be on the lookout for flaming wombats.

A day of new things

2005-06-13T19:55:00.000-05:00

Today was a day of new things for me, or at least a day of realization of new things; some good, some bad.

I'll start off with the bad: Tequiza beer. Don't be fooled, this beer is _not_ the light tasty summer beer that it pretends to be. Damn marketing people. They put it in the cooler right next to Corona, a delightful beer, and sell it as "Beer With Blue Agave Nectar And The Natural Flavor Of Lime." Beware this beer! It tastes as though someone took half a can of old-ass Tecate, about two cups of sugar, and a cup of that nasty lemon/lime juice that comes in a fake fruit-like looking containers and mixed it together in an old dirty Sunny Delight bottle. Oh yeah, it's that good. I'm not really sure why I bought it anyway. I think it's because I wanted Corona but was too lazy to cut up limes. Actually, thinking back on it, I'm pretty sure that was the reason. Well, I've learned my lesson... Oh, and just when I thought the beer couldn't get any worse, I read the label on the bottle, and noticed the words "Anheuser-Busch, Inc". Those lying, deceiving, tasteless bastards from Missouri. It's a good thing that Indiana still, by far, wins the all-time shittiest state contest, or Missouri might be in the running.

On a slightly geekier note, I downloaded and tried out Fedora Core 4 today. Actually, I'm using it to type this blog right now. It's clean, has some nice apps/tools, and has an impressive changelog. I need to poke at more of the details, but so far it looks good.

My last item for the day comes from the land of television... As I'm sure you've all noticed, you can't watch more than a few minute's worth of television without seeing an add for a new drug. What used to be Nike and Chevrolet commercials has now turned to Celebrex and Viagra. I'm not saying that this is good or bad, although I don't really care for commercials starring impotent men, but I do find some of them to be hilarious. It started off a few years ago with the long list of possible side effects. You know, may cause stuffy nose, blurry vision, anal leakage, bleeding eyes, etc. Makes me want to run out and start popping pills right away! Anyway, I heard a commercial tonight for a drug called Premarin, "for menopausal symptoms." The disclaimer for this particular drug was absolutely hilarious. I don't mean to be insensitive to anyone who has had to live through the disclaimer that I'm about to mention, but come on, get real. "For women who have a uterus, estrogen may increase risk for uterine cancer." Does that seem odd to anyone else? That's like saying "for men who have a heart, crack-cocaine and Red Bull may increase risk of heart attack." Do they really have to go into this level of detail for a 30-second commercial? Are they really so enthralled as to state the obvious? Who is honestly dumb enough to take this drug and miss the obvious; that not having a uterus qualifies them as being void of uterine cancer! Need I start a conversation about Darwinism? Again? Holy shit people, we're way past the age of enlightenment, so start acting like it.

Aptel, errr, Inple

2005-06-12T15:56:00.000-05:00

Another big announcement recently in the IT world: Apple will stop producing PowerPC -based systems and will begin using Intel chips.

I will dispense my wisdom.... now.

There are so many things wrong with this that it makes my kidneys hurt. I'm by no means a Mac bigot, and I don't even really mind running OSX on Intel chips, but I do have a problem with how this is all being done.

First of all, why Intel chips? Why not AMD? Intel is so in bed with HP, Dell, and Microsoft, that Apple isn't going to have a chance getting anything out of them. Just think what's going to happen if/when OSX on Intel starts to take off. Well, first thing is that "dancing" Steve Ballmer from MSFT is going to send off a "We need to talk" email to his butt-buddies at Intel. Let's face it, it's not about the hardware any more, and it hasn't been for a long time. It's about the software. Even if you have quantum-computing speeds in your processors, if you don't run Windows, Linux, or OSX, you've got nothing, end of story. Point being, anyone who thinks MSFT's ties to Intel aren't going to affect the bottom-line of Apple's hardware are smoking the wacky-tobacky. AMD would have been such a better choice. They could have had a good 64-bit hardware implementation, a great inter-CPU bus system, and a supplier who is willing to work with you, rather than against you. Above all, there would have once again been some competition in the CPU market. This move isn't going to help AMD all.

Secondly, what in the hell is Apple thinking telling the public that they're completely switching architectures. "Oh, don't worry, keep buying Macs. The minor CPU changes won't affect anything." WTF!? I don't know about you, but as for myself (someone who was just about to buy a new Mac, and also works at a photo company), there's no way I'm buying anything new until the x86 stuff is out and tested. What a load of yak dung. This is why hardware companies don't release anything about new products until they're actually selling/shipping. I don't anticipate Apple hardware sales doing much of anything but plummeting into a deep dark pit (say hello to Sun while you're there) until the x86 boxes start to ship, and even then, I'll be waiting until things stabilize. In the mean-time, I'll be working on my OSX alternatives. Timing is everything when it comes to operating systems. Release quickly, release often, release features. Screwing with this is suicide.

Thirdly, what's the incentive of buying Apple hardware any more? Why not a Dell box running OSX? Are they going to cripple the OS so that it can't run on anything but Apple x86 boxes? Are they ready to support the vastness that is the "PC hardware" world? Good frickin' luck! I like Apple hardware as much as the next guy, but I would only ever consider buying a Mac because of its cool looks and OSX, and there are limits to each of those considerations. Cool looks are worth, at most, a few hundred bucks to me, and probably a lot less as other vendors are now trying to sell boxes that look "cooler." So really, what does Apple have left? OSX? Sure. How much is it worth? No idea. To me, not a whole heck of a lot. It's BSD with a nice GUI.

I don't know. There's a lot about this that seems wrong to me. It makes me wonder if there isn't something else going on. I'm not the first person to speculate, but maybe this is just a precursor for Intel's buyout of Apple. Even Intel isn't stupid enough to think that hardware can drive the computing market. If they did think that, I'm sure the Itanic pooch-screw has ridden them of the idea. If Intel owns Apple, they can ship "cheap" hardware that's running underneath a finely tuned OS. They can implement the latest-and-greatest architectural "standards" easily and quickly. It's very similar to the old-skool UNIX implementations (Sparc/Solaris, PA-RISC/HP-UX, Alpha/Tru64, etc.) where the hardware vendor was the software vendor, except this time they're doing it in the user-space market with "standard" hardware and an "open" operating system (quoted words being used very liberally.) For Intel and Apple, this is a good thing. For everyone else, a very bad thing. Why this will never happen (smoothly, if at all)? I'm sure Dell, HP, and Microsoft might have a little something to say to Intel if/when they buy Apple, and it's not going to be very cheery.

Ah, what a twisted web we weave.

Suntek, errr, Storun

2005-06-12T15:19:00.000-05:00

Big news in the IT world this past week. Sun announced their purchase of StorageTek. As usual, I have lots of thoughts...

STK, the good side of the force. I use STK equipment, and for the most part, it's rock-solid. They're support is decent, and their tape libraries are second-to-none. I think they're a well-established company that will continue to be so over the next 10 years. Backups aren't going to go away, so as long as they keep with the technology, they're good to go. And then there is the other side of the force, Sun. Scott McNealy (aka "Darth") and gang are a bunch of babbling morons. They have single-handedly taken a once great enterprise giant and made it into a smoldering, festering, pile of sun-roasted silicon. The fact that they're still selling _any_ server hardware can only be accounted to vendor lockin. Their low end systems can't even come close to touching modern x86-64 systems, and their high-end stuff is, well, ummm, reliable? Not that HP is the poster-boy technology company when it comes to big iron, but despite they're sinking Itanic, their high-end stuff is bitchin-fast in comparison to Sun. Slowlaris is a joke in itself. Sure, it serves a purpose, but Solaris on x86? Get real. The OS ain't all that without the proprietary hardware underneath it. And as for Solaris 10 saving the day, well, I don't consider whiz-bang filesystems (yet to be released of course) and hugely complex profiling tools to be the definition of a great OS. Sure, they help cover up the stench of the other OS issues, but only so much can be done. And don't even get me started on the "Solaris 10 is free" issue. What a mess. Oh by the way, Sun supports Linux, err, wait, no they don't. Oh, just in, they support Linux again, but you'll have to pull teeth to get them to sell you hardware that doesn't run Solaris 10. What a freaking joke.

So, my take on this is that Sun is, and has been for the past few years, doomed. Once they lose their install base to Linux and Windows servers, they're done. Support profits only work when there's something to support. Unfortunately for STK, despite they're great products and loyal customer base, I think the amount of "suck" that Sun brings to the equation is enough to pull down STK into the black pool of nothingness that they've become so comfortable with. (FYI, for the definition of ruining a good product by bringing in too much "suck", see a company by the name of "HP".) My advice to Sun employees/users: step into the current decade and stop sucking. My advice to STK employees/users: never underestimate the power of the dark side. Watch closely, and get ready to run far and fast.

Thoughts of Hiking

2005-06-07T21:45:00.000-05:00

Some days the issues of work, life, and their interaction wears on you. It's good to have an outlet, which is partially what this entire blog is about.

I really enjoy hiking. I wish I had time to do more of it. I've always wanted to take off on that month long hiking trip, to hike somewhere where no one has before, for that reason specifically. I read a story in Backpacker magazine tonight titled "The Unbearable Lightness of being Scott Williamson." Wow. What a story. And what a good job putting the story into words. It was somewhat about yoyo'ing the Pacific Crest Trail (Mexico to Canada and back again) in one season, but the real point of the story was to understand what a hiker thinks about when all alone. Steve Friedman, the author, nailed it on the head. I was tempted to throw on the boots and the Arc'Teryx and head for the hills.

Get the issue (May 2005), read the story, and understand.

Non-Preferred Customer

2005-05-30T20:56:00.000-05:00

So I did a little traveling out to Connecticut last week. Connecticut is an interesting place. After leaving from Laguardia in NYC and driving north, I found that the just from the city to trees was quite abrupt. One minute I was driving through the Bronx, the next I was driving through a bunch of trees and reading the "Welcome to Connecticut" sign. Strange.

Another strange thing was the traffic. I expected NY traffic to be much like Chicago traffic. Happily, it wasn't. Sure, there were lots of cars, and even a few wackaloons driving oversized vehicles, but the traffic kept moving. This is much better than Chicago. Driving is Chicago is like trying to get thousands of sausage links to pass through a drinking straw: it's just not right, and do you really want the mashed goo that comes out of the other end? Another interesting insight about the drivers in Connecticut: the ration of suburban, soccer-mom, women drivers to oversized luxury SUVs on the road is nearly 1/1. Watching some 30-year-old woman try to park a Hummer in a grocery store parking lot with two screaming kids in the back and an ongoing cell-phone conversation is amusing to say the least. The discerning part of it is that these monster vehicles completely go against science. That's right, Darwinism goes out the window when soccer-mom Sally gets behind the wheel of a vehicle capable of hitting a whale broad-side while only temporarily causing the DVD player in the back to skip over a few frames of Shark Tale. Ironic, or just a coincidence? I don't know, but I don't want to be the person that goes against science, and neither should you, so our only hope is that soccer-mom Sally plummets into the ocean after pegging the whale, drowns, and is slowly eaten away by plankton. Maybe not Darwinism, but certainly just, and border-line ironic.

Friday rolled around, and it was time to leave Connecticut and head back to the Midwest. Two hours from Laguardia to O'Hare and then a quick 28-minute hop to P-town. Leave at 2:30pm EDT, get home at 5:30 CDT. Simple enough, right? Wrong. My motto always has been, and will continue to be, "Beware O'Hare!" How true. I won't bore you with the petty details, but I think it's important to pull out a few bullet points:

Any airline that has an unstaffed customer-service desk should win the oxyMORON of the year award.
Flight attendants will lie through their teeth to get you to believe that someone, just inside the terminal, at the boarding desk, actually cares or knows enough to actually help you in any way, shape, or form.
I'm not a preferred customer.

Some of this requires a bit more elaboration...

I'm at O'Hare, running on O'hare time (2-3 hours behind the rest of civilization, trying to get on the "next" flight), standing at the United Airlines customer-service desk, irately reading the sign stating that the customer service desk is "closed." Okay, I can cope with this. Sitting on the runway in NY for two hours was way worse than this, right? There's got to be another customer-service desk, correct? After myself and the other 100+ passengers tap some guy wearing a United shirt for the answers to these questions, we find ourselves leaving the terminal, passing through security, in hopes that the ticketing counter will be able to help us find any flight to get us home.

I'm standing in front of two massive ticket counters. One is for preferred customers, the other is for, well, non-preferred customers, which is an interesting topic in itself. (Anyone who says that class system isn't live and well in the U.S. is full of it!) The line for the preferred customers is non-existent. The line for the non-preferred customers is nothing short of amazing. If there was no roof over our heads, I'm certain that astronauts from space would rank us next to the Great Wall of China as one of the few man-made objects that can be seen from space. Oddly enough, despite the number of people in the two respective lines, the number of tellers to service these people seems to be inversely proportional. 8 tellers for 1 preferred customer. 1 teller for hundreds of non-preferred customers. I say to myself, "Self, you need to go over to the preferred customer line and demand that they get you on the next flight, since they managed to screw the pooch on the original flight anyway."

Fast forward to 10:oopm, CDT. My plane lands in P-town, a good four and a-half hours late. I'm tired, still quite upset, and fairly certain that I'll be cavity searched if I ever attempt to fly United again. Needless to say, despite my fairly grounded emotions and generally level demeanor, I managed to vocalize my thoughts to the "official" guarding the preferred customer line at O'Hare in such a way that the man quickly turned, walked away, and gave an unofficial notification to the security guards that they had a "looney" on their hands. And why not... I was obviously a non-preferred customer. Why should I expect anything else.

Great, now I'm all pissed off about the situation again. Stupid United; no talent ass-clowns.

Re-post, Snoop Style

2005-05-22T20:56:00.000-05:00

On account of the lackluster reviews regarding my last posting, and largely because the majority of society doesn't care, I've decided to prove my resourcefulness, and re-post the book review, but this time with a little help from Gizoogle. I can't take the credit for the translation, but it's too funny not to post. A shout out to BW in IC; this is all you!

Book Review: Linux Kernel Develizzle

I read a lot of technical books . Relax, cus I'm bout to take my respect. Oddly enough, tha only bizzy review I've posted is on a non-technizzles book like a tru playa'. This is probably coz tha average person really doesn't care `bout techie books, especially tha kind I read . Hollaz to the East Side.

Anyway, of all tha books in this genre that I've read, there is probably only `bout 3-7 thizzay I'd rizzank as "very good." Call me picky, but I thizzink there is an overabundance of shizzay non-fiction books out there... D-to-tha-izzon't even git me started on fiction.

At some point, I need ta create a list'n of mah favorite all-time books, but fo` niznow, I'll only offa up mah latest "very good" find. Oddly enough, I didn't even kizzle tha book existed until it caught mah eye at B&N.

The bizzy is titled "Linux Kernel Develizzles written by Robert Love. No, he's not a piznorn star, but he's tha equivalent of it in tha ballin' community now motherfuckers lemme here ya say hoe. Anyway, if this homey ever quits his job/hobby as a kernel hacka ( n fo` everyone rhymin' out `bout tha word Brotha I strongly suggest you takes tha opportunity ta learn tha difference between a Playa n a Gangsta ) he needs ta become a technical hustla. Humor, detail, content, it's all here. It's by far, tha best Linux kernel book I've read, n probably tha biznest applied Pimpin' Systems" literature as well cuz I put gangsta rap on tha map. If only I would have had this wizzy I was tak'n mah C.S. classes cuz I put gangsta rap on tha map. Poser 1 fo shizzle: Tannenbaum n tha "dinosaur" book . Ya fuck with us, we gots to fuck you up. Pimp 2 dogg: Robert Love n some real kernel hack'n

As a side note, I thought about Gizoogling this post, in essence double-dawg Gizoogling my original post, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Book Review: Linux Kernel Development

2005-05-18T21:41:00.000-05:00

I read a lot of technical books. Oddly enough, the only book review I've posted is on a non-technical book. This is probably because the average person really doesn't care about techie books, especially the kind I read.

Anyway, of all the books in this genre that I've read, there are probably only about 3-7 that I'd rank as "very good." Call me picky, but I think there are an overabundance of shit non-fiction books out there... don't even get me started on fiction.

At some point, I need to create a listing of my favorite all-time books, but for now, I'll only offer up my latest "very good" find. Oddly enough, I didn't even know the book existed until it caught my eye at B&N.

The book is titled "Linux Kernel Development," written by Robert Love. No, he's not a porn star, but he's the equivalent of it in the programming community. Anyway, if this guy ever quits his job/hobby as a kernel hacker (and for everyone freaking out about the word "hacker", I strongly suggest you take the opportunity to learn the difference between a "hacker" and a "cracker") he needs to become a technical writer. Humor, detail, content, it's all here. It's by far, the best Linux kernel book I've read, and probably the best applied "Operating Systems" literature as well. If only I would have had this when I was taking my C.S. classes. Semester 1: Tannenbaum and the "dinosaur" book. Semester 2: Robert Love and some real kernel hacking. That would have been truly great.

For those of you in the know, it's all about 2.6 and everything kernel-related. The coding is all out of the kernel and is clean and readable. The appendices could be mini-books in themselves. I highly recommend this book to system administrators, kernel hackers, device driver writers, or anyone else who just wants to learn about general OS concepts. For the rest of you, which is pretty much everyone, I apologize for this post.

The Woodchuck's Dilemma

2005-05-18T21:01:00.000-05:00

I distinctly remember my trip to Showbiz Pizza when I was a little boy. I'm sure most of us remember our first trip to this fine eating establishment, but probably not for the same reasons as I do. First of all, I was more interested in the pizza than in the games and rides. Secondly, and probably directly associated with my first comment, I spent a large amount of my visit stuck on the mini Ferris wheel.

How does one get stuck on a 3 ft. radius Ferris wheel you ask? Well, as I alluded to earlier, it may have had something to do with me weighing as much as a 16 year old, while in reality only being about 7 or 8 years of age. I think it's quite safe to say that I wasn't what one would describe as "under-fed" or "scrawny" as a young boy.

Now, being "husky" wasn't all bad. It came with its advantages:

Better cost/visit ration at all-you-can-eat restaurants
No bullies really messed with me
The ability to survive long stints of Midwest cold weather
The knowledge that I would be the last survivor if ever lost on an island with no food

That being said, none of this seemed to matter when I was stuck, a good 48" in the air, in the mini Ferris wheel basket. Apparently the little motor in this thing wasn't rated for "gravitationally gifted" individuals. To add the final touch to the situation, despite the motor giving up, the stupid circus music continued to blare. Oh yeah, everyone watched as they pried my fat ass out of this silly little basket. "Look at the fat kid," they exclaimed. Quality memories.

Anyway, I diverge... The *other* memory I have of Showbiz was the game where the little woodchuck sticks his head out of one of about 18 holes, and you have to beat it down with a big mallet before he ducks away again. This goes on for a minute or so, and depending on how many woodchucks you've clubbed to death (great game for children, obviously), you will receive tickets so you can go a buy a $0.02 plastic whistle that tastes like plaster and doesn't work.

Fast forward 15+ years. Every day, just as we all do, I experience things that just make me cringe. Seeing as that no one else seems to care (or cares but knows better), I feel obligated to ask the question: "What the %!@?" ... Why do I do this? I'm not totally convinced I know. I feel, if for no other reason than curiosity, obligated to question; obligated to challenge the accepted.

In doing this, I've begun to see some sad but true parallels. Every day, I stick my head out in hopes of happy things that woodchucks tend to hope for: peanuts, certain breakfast cereals, other sexy woodchucks, etc.. Yet, much to my surprise, what do I find??? What could possibly happen when I stick my head out of my little hole??? How about some fat kid with a mallet bludgeoning me to death! Trust me, it hurts. And really, how many times do I need to go through this before I learn my lesson. When will I be content with my own little hole? Well, 15 years after wielding the mallet myself, there are still Showbiz Pizza restaurants, certainly lots of fat kids, and mallets to spare. Every day is just a different fat kid and a familiar mallet.

Maybe tomorrow will be the day I find my peanuts. There's only one way to know for sure...

The short, short version

2005-05-16T21:52:00.000-05:00

In the interest of trying to make up for several weeks of lost blogs, I'm going to give the short, short version...

Tucson: Nice town, rather flat, lots of good looking women, slower pace of life.
New Ford Mustang rental: Crappy car to drive, but sure does look nice on the outside.
Software licensing: Sucks. Oracle sucks more than most.
Dual-core CPUs: They rock, but not enough to counter Oracle's Micro$oft-like licensing.
Watching 100+ doctors, physician assistants, and technicians graduate: impressive.
Watching my wife win an academic award for being one of the top four students in her P.A. class, at the number two program in the country: one of my proudest moments ever.

Okay, so a lot more has happened than these bullet points, but it's all I can remember for now. I'll be back in Tucson this weekend, but hopefully I can keep the posts coming. Nothing like a flight ("beware O'Hare!") to get the creative juices flowing!

Optical Calculations

2005-05-16T21:26:00.000-05:00

I managed to screw up my glasses over the weekend. I'm not sure how or when it happened, but considering the overall amount of alcohol I drank, I'm not surprised. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if I had implants and a tattoo of the name "Bubba" on my ass after this weekend. I decided to pick an eyeglasses "shop" out of the yellow pages. I called them, made an appointment, and went on with my day. Actually, I proceeded to go online and check out the places that my insurance company covers for optical just to make sure I didn't get screwed... Needless to say, a few phone calls later, I had an appointment at some other place. Funny how Wal-Mart seems to be the blessed optical care company by my insurance plan. I had to look long and hard to find the place that I did, knowing that their service and quality had to be better than Wal-Mart's. Ha!

...

Fast forward to my drive home after my eye appointment. I had a lot less money than I had when I left for the appointment, a firm belief that my insurance plan's suggested "discount" on eye care products was more of a tease than a reality, and that all is lost when it comes to basic math skills in this country. Is $139.00 + $ 39.00 really that hard to calculate? Must be, because my little eye-glass-selling friend, whom I'll refer to as Pythagoras, was thoroughly confused by this trying mathematical proof. I watched him jack up the calculation, with the help of a calculator and computer mind you, three times, insisting each time that I wasn't understanding their pricing model. Obviously it is beyond me. Who am I when compared to Pythagoras, the guy who sells eyeglasses?

Baseball in Vienna

2005-04-28T19:51:00.000-05:00

Last night I purchased the Billy Joel Complete Hits Collection, and loaded it onto my iPod. I did this for a few reasons. First, I'm a huge Billy Joel fan. He's quite possibly my favorite artist in the genre. Second, I used to own a 2-CD set of his and I (along with my good friend BJW) loved to listen to it, but I've sense lost it, and I was bitter. So, I bought this big collection of songs. I listened to most of the first CD last night while dinking around my apartment. It was very much like the 2-CD set I once owned. I meandered though the second and third CDs while at work today. More of the same (which is a good thing.)

Tonight, I went for a walk. I wasn't particularly excited about going on the walk. It was a little cloudy and rain was a possibility, so I put it off until around 7:00. At this time, I got bored enough that I put on my slightly shrunk U. Of I. sweatshirt, blue Smart Wools and sandals, and I headed out, grabbing my iPod of course.

So I'm walking along, listening to the 4th CD, and I discovered that the whole CD was done in a small, personal, non-concert style. It reminded me of the VH1 Story Tellers shows that I used to get sucked into when I still had cable. About halfway though my walk, I came to the part where Billy Joel is asked, "Why Vienna?" Despite my appreciation for Billy Joel's music, I had never heard the song Vienna, so I didn't fully understand the question. Billy went on to discuss how, historically, Vienna was a place of cross-roads; a place of continuance. He learned this when he went to visit his father, who lived in Vienna, and noticed an old woman, probably 85-90 years, who was sweeping the street. He asked his father why she was doing this, and his father lightly lectured him on how this woman was happy, and she was serving a purpose. In most countries outside of the United States, elders are respected. They're not put into retirement homes, out-of-sight, out-of-mind, but rather treasured as a resource. They are useful.

After explaining all of this, he gets to his song, which is about going too fast through life, trying to squeeze everything out of it before getting old and useless. The moral of the story is "Vienna waits for you." Slow down, enjoy life, and come to realize that you will still be useful and respected in old age.

As this song was playing, I walked by a father, playing a game of big-red-plastic-bat baseball with his children and some of the neighbor kids in front of his house. None of the children could have been much more than 10 years old. One of the younger kids mis-threw the ball and it landed near me. I picked it up, threw it back to the father, and noticed how happy he seemed. They were all happy. The kids were laughing, the father was smiling, and I found myself smiling as well. It seemed to coincide with the music perfectly, and with life in general.

"Slow down, you crazy child. You're so ambitious for a juvenile, but if you're so smart, tell me why are you so afraid." ... "When will you realize Vienna waits for you?"

I continued walking. Actually, I extended my normal route to over twice its length. It was one of those joyful and surreal moments in a persons life, and I was happy.

Thoreau goes to New Lenox

2005-04-26T20:33:00.000-05:00

I spent last weekend in New Lenox, IL, with a bunch of friends. What a blast! I've got some random pics up in the gallery, but they're not all that good. Nothing wrong with the people in the pics, but more-so my complete lack of graphic ability (funny considering where I work, really.)

Living alone for almost a year changes a person. Sometimes, while sitting in my uncomfortable round chair ("round" because I can't spell pa..pa..zon..., er.., whatever), I think of myself as Henry David Thoreau. Sure, I don't have a little shack in the woods like Thoreau did, but if I adjust the lighting and don't open the windows, my apartment starts to smell like an outhouse. This is, for my purposes, close enough to a wooden shack to make it real. I'm all about keeping it real. Next step, start writing horrible books about walking, or rather, in my parallel life, keyboarding.

Things That Make Your Day

2005-04-15T09:32:00.000-05:00

So I'm reading through automated logs this morning, and I come across an email address that cracked me up....

nacho@ihispanic.com

It's the little things... ;-)

Don't Bite The Hand That Feeds

2005-04-14T20:42:00.000-05:00

So, I'm going to be out of the city/state for the weekend, so rather than cook something at home and have nasty leftovers when I get back, I decided to make a quick run to my local Arby's. Now, I don't like to frequent such restaurants any more than possible, but I've been to them enough to know that I shouldn't expect much. Yet, I find myself asking for more...

So I drive up to the order wall thingy. Of course, I was hungry, so I was drawn to the big sign on the top of the order wall thingy. The sign read "Double Cheddar Combo, $6.39", or roughly the same. I was so excited about the hot flowing cheese in the picture that I barely even noticed the price. Anyway, I decided I could use two large cheese smothered piles of roast beef, along with some fries and a drink, so I went ahead with the process of ordering sed meal. In a monotone voice, the man on the other end replied, "We don't have the Double Cheddar Combo."

Now, half of me thought that I should just order something else. Arby's has lots of tasty treats. I'm sure I could find something to suit my needs. But no, my little daemon sat heavily on my shoulder, so I opted to argue. I believe my exact comment was "Then what does is this big sign on top of the order wall thingy that says "Double Cheddar Combo, $6.39" all about?" Yeah, that's right... Fuck the system! Viva la resistance! Oh yeah, I'm a bad ass. ... The man replies back with the same thing again, so I chose to continue in our battle of wits...

[ 10 minutes pass ]

I'm driving away, feeling confident that I've won the battle. I got my "Double Cheddar Combo". Oh sure, it I had to order every part of it individually and pay almost an extra $1.30 to make it happen, but I won! I proved that it could be done. I overcame the evils of corporate America that is Arby's.

And then something hit me... I had just argued, and won, over the entity that prepared the food that I was about to eat. Sure, I got what I wanted, but did I get a little something extra? Maybe a little extra flavor that I wasn't expecting? This bothered me considerably for the next 2-3 minutes while driving home. Did I pay $1.30 extra for a reason? Who really won? How does one quickly and thoroughly sift through a cup of cheese sauce for foreign objects? More importantly, what about foreign liquids?

Yeah, it bothered me until I drove past a convertible with some hot chick sitting in it, at which point I totally forgot about the entire ordeal. Good thing too, because I was almost home. I ate my well-earned food and was happy. However, if this is my last post on this blog for a long time, send a coroner to my apartment, and a legal team to Arby's.

One Good Book

2005-04-12T20:43:00.000-05:00

Very recently, I've been reading the book "Winning", by Jack Welch. (Actually, I've been listening to it, mostly because I'm a super-geek and I love my iPod.)

Anyway, I'm not normally big into self-help or mentoring books, but this guy was the all-star of General Electric for years, so I think he might have an idea about what's going on.

So far, he's covered three general concepts:

The top HR official should have at least as much power and respect in an organization as the CFO.
Employees should be broken into the top 20%, the middle 70%, and the bottom 10%. Resources, rewards, and terminations should be dealt with according to this model.
Candor is the "biggest dirty little secret" in any and all businesses, across all demographics.

The first concept is certainly shocking, but after listening to what Mr. Welch has been able to do by empowering HR within GE, I'm sold. It's a completely different way of thinking about HR, but it makes perfect sense.

The second concept makes perfect sense. Give rewards and resources to the company stars, and fire those that are going nowhere. The middle 70% is more difficult to deal with, but the general idea it to treat those that show star "potential" as stars, and those that don't, as the converse. This feeds quite well into the model of empowering HR.

The third, and in my mind most powerful concept, is that without candor, great things can not be achieved. I won't do any justice to his point by trying to summarize it here, but needless to say, it's a brilliant solution to a staggeringly large number of workplace issues. It's something that I need to be absolutely set on achieving in my work life, and I need to demand it from my co-workers as well.

He also went on to talk about how difficult it is to hire a good worker, especially good leaders, as well as how there is no good way to fire a person. However, having an empowered and capable HR department and detailed work review process will make the reasons for firing an employee known long before the final day comes.

So far, I think this book should be a must-read for anyone that works in a medium to large corporate environment, especially for leaders and managers. For everyone else, I would most certainly still recommend it. I'll try to keep updates coming and I complete more of the book...

"Dilbert", "Office Space", "The Office", and "Chris's Life!"

2005-04-12T19:41:00.000-05:00

Three illustrations of my life:

Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad, but I can honestly, in any given day, think of at least three instances of how my life parallel's one of these. I don't know if it's overly depressing or way too funny, but it always makes me laugh (in that "I'm going craaaaazy" kind of way.)

I'll depart with a quote:

Peter Gibbons: You see Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's another thing, I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Porter: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

"You see Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care." Quality!

Don't Teach Me How To Think

2005-04-06T22:04:00.000-05:00

So, I was reading the following short story tonight...

Angels on a Pin A Modern Parable
by Alexander Callandra
Saturday Review, Dec 21, 1968.
Some time ago I received a call from a colleague who asked if I would be the referee on the grading of an examination question. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed he should receive a perfect score and would if the system were not set up against the student: The instructor and the student agreed to submit this to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.

I went to my colleague's office and read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer."

The student had answered: "Take a barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."

I pointed out that the student really had a strong case for full credit since he had answered the question completely and correctly. On the other hand, if full credit was given, it could well contribute to a high grade for the student in his physics course. A high grade is supposed to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try at answering the question I was not surprised that my colleague agreed, but I was surprised that the student did.

I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said no. He had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on. In the next minute he dashed off his answer which read:

"Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop that barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then using the formula S = ½at², calculate the height of the building.

At this point I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and I gave the student almost full credit.

In leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said he had many other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were. "Oh yes," said the student. "There are a great many ways of getting the height of a tall building with a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer and the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building and by the use of a simple proportion, determine the height of the building."

"Fine," I asked. "And the others?"

"Yes," said the student. "There is a very basic measurement method that you will like. In this method you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units. A very direct method."

"Of course, if you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of 'g' at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference of the two values of `g' the height of the building can be calculated."

Finally, he concluded, there are many other ways of solving the problem. "Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: "Mr. Superintendent, here I have a fine barometer. If you tell me the height of this building, I will give you this barometer."

At this point I asked the student if he really did know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think rather than teaching him the structure of the subject. With this in mind, he decided to revive scholasticism as an academic lark to challenge the Sputnik-panicked classrooms of America.

Okay, so the moral of the story is obvious, but it really hit home for me. I can't even begin to count the number of times I seriously considered (or went through with) answering test questions in this way just to prove that I don't have to conform to a poorly written question or an expected answer. I'm not going to lie and say that I got full credit every time I did this, but quite often the argument itself was worth it, especially if the professor was reasonable and willing to admit defeat (when called for.)

I've formed a few ideas around this, which may at first seem to be conflicting:

Educational institutions should not attempt to teach anyone how to think
Educational institutions should teach everyone how to learn

Now, it will be argued that teaching someone how to learn and how to think are one and the same, but I don't think this is a fair assessment at all. They're not equivalent ("apples to oranges"), and even if they were, they're certainly not correlated. I know several people that are much greater thinkers than I am, but possess much less learning ability, as well as the converse. I personally don't believe it's possible to teach someone how to think, at least not on such a large scale as an overall education. I have nothing concrete to this point, but the complexity of even understanding how another person thinks makes teaching them a new way of thinking quite daunting. Just ask any husband and wife that have been married for any considerable time.

Teaching someone how to learn is not a cake walk either, but I believe it can be done, if as nothing more than a guiding sense. I'm not talking about "study skills", "reading habits", or "note-taking shortcuts." I'm talking about the general philosophy of learning. I'm by no means an expert on learning, but I've done a little of it in my lifetime, and I expect I'll do a little more before I'm done.

So, how does one go about teaching someone how to learn. Well, if I were the professor, I'd offer this little gem of wisdom:

"No one is going to teach you anything, so you must become able and willing to learn anything."

Yes... I'd teach them that they can't be taught, but they most certainly can learn. Think about this until it makes sense. When it does, you'll find learning things becomes much easier.

Git 'er Dun (or fess up)

2005-03-22T20:38:00.000-06:00

If you tell someone you're going to do something by a given date, I feel you should be required to do one of the following:

Get the 'something' done on time
Have the huevos to fess up to not getting your shit done

There's nothing that I hate worse (well, maybe some things, like cats, or Indiana) than people that say they're going to get something done and then conveniently "forget" to mention why it's not done.

There should be come kind of a common social penalty for this. I'm not sure what, but it should be creative. Maybe you should be forced to drive to work on a moped for a week (those of you who don't live in the Midwest won't appreciate this), or possibly be made to stand in front of a stone wall and have to dodge fast-moving projectile rodents??? I don't know, but I'm sure I could think of something.

Anyone have any ideas?

A glimmer of light

2005-03-17T19:03:00.000-06:00

It's so nice to meet people that just "get it." In the past week or so, I've met several people that really do get it. Not just technologically, but moreso from a management and personal standpoint. They understand people. This sounds generic, but it really is a pleasant surprise. It's like a breath of fresh air that was well overdue. I'll leave it at that. ;-)

Hurry up and wait (or don't)

2005-03-15T09:13:00.000-06:00

Being bought-out, as a company, is not a fun thing. Many of us have gone through this, but this is my first experience with it, so I'll make some comments on it.

First of all, I'd love to know what goes on at the higher-levels during the post-buyout discussions. I'd like to think that there are lots of talks about org charts, management shifts, project plans, etc.; however, it seems that private jets, warm sunny beaches, and little drinks with umbrellas are more likely what's going on. And that's fine. If I paid out millions and millions of dollars for another company, I'd probably take up drinking myself. The downside of all this is that no one else knows what they're supposed to be doing. Heck, I'm not even sure who my supervisor is. Everyone is closing doors, whispering secrets, and trying to downplay the whole situation. My group can't continue on any of the "pre-buyout" projects we were working on because most of them are probably going to get changed (at best) or completely dumped (at worst.) I'd be more than willing to start working on new projects, but without a manager/supervisor to give me some direction, it's hard to know what's going on at all. AFAIK, all purchases have been put on ice, so new hardware/software toys are out of the question too (although I did manage to sneak in a few servers somehow???)

The long and short is that after months of auditing, reports, and hard work, we have this huge new company and tons of resources to work with, and absolutely no idea what we're doing or who is doing what. It's frustrating.

In addition, there are a few things I've noticed during the whole process. Some of these I knew before, some I didn't.

It's every man for himself. Loyalty goes out the door when things like this happen.
Everyone's job is up for grabs. No one is safe.
Some jobs are safer than others. The title "manager" seems to be a petri dish for growing the "reasons-I'm-useless" virus.
No matter how many times "new" people say they have an open-door/phone/email policy and that they're glad to answer any questions you might have, they're people just like you and me, held by the same logical and political constraints, so don't expect any more than you'd be willing to offer.
It never hurts to have an out, and you can't expect others around you to be looking for one as well.
In the end, no one really knows what's going on. It is a work in progress.

So, for now, I'll wait (or not) and see what is going to happen.

A Perl of Wisdom

2005-03-10T08:24:00.000-06:00

A funny quote one of my friends sent me. For all you techies out there:

"Perl is an OK operating system, but it lacks a lightweight scripting language"

Defining "on-call"

2005-03-05T19:04:00.000-06:00

If I hear one more person bitch about how bad the "on-call" is in their line of work or how horrible (or cool in some cases) it is to carry around a pager, I'm going to lose it! (Not just "get upset" lose it, but "put on a bunny suit and try to catch pickup trucks with my elbows" lose it!)

On-call sucks... we all have to deal with it in some form or another, so frickin' get over it people! If anyone thinks that their on-call duties in jobs like accounting, journalism, or public relations are so bad, then I encourage you to enter into the world of a systems administrator that manager 24x7 global ecommerce sites. Computers don't rest, and neither do a certain percentage of people around the world at any time of the day/night. I deal with it at that level, so the rest of you can too. Furthermore, to stop tooting my own proverbial horn, think of what "on-call" means to people like fireman, military peronnel, the Red Cross, etc. Do you hear firemen bitching that they have to get up every time a call comes in? No! Why? BECAUSE IT'S THEIR F%$(#*G JOB.

In the words of my brilliant little sister: "Shut up and deal!!!"

The 80 / 20 Email Heckler

2005-03-01T18:46:00.000-06:00

The 80/20 rule is so true, regardless of the situation. Work, troubles, car accidents..., you name it.

I witnessed the rule in its full glory today. We all have difficult people that we have to deal with every day. Some are worse than others. Well, I have "that one guy" that consistently goes out of his way to make my life miserable, which is quite odd, considering I go out of my way to avoid

Anyway, because of my place of work, email is so prolific that people seem to use it for everything and anything. One thing that I have learned for certain is that email is quite possibly the worst medium for general argumentative discussion evveeeer! You can probably guess where I'm going with this.

I'm officially labeling my argumentative co-worker as "the 80/20 email heckler ." The really funny thing, and I find this to be true of most email hecklers, is that they generally fall into two category of persons:

People that are very intentional and succinct with their words
People who pretend to be this, but really have no idea what they're talking about

The first class of person tends to be very mechanical, planning, and generally, correct in what they write. These are the people that take 30 minutes to write a paragraph-long email. If you try to call these people on their email statements, they don't hide behind them or deny them, the stand along side them and rationalize their thought process. These people are reasonable.

The second class of person generally takes 30 seconds to wing off an email, giving it no thought for things as simple as spelling or grammar, and certainly no sight into the political or emotional ramifications of their words. Remember, there is no "good" way to represent empathy in an email, which is why satire, jokes, and the like need to be kept to a minimum unless they're blatantly obvious (which is a topic in itself) or the recipient of the email knows you well enough that they understand what you're trying to get across without paying too much attention to your words (and even this fails most of the time.) Furthermore, if you call people on their statements, they'll deny them, alter them, and make it painfully obvious that the real content of the email boils down to "I don't understand what I'm writing or reading, I don't particularly care for your interaction, so I'll cower behind an email in hopes that I can prove how much more important I am than you." I.e., these people are unreasonable.

My solution: boycott email, revert to this device called a "telephone", drink heavily, and watch Office Space, quite possibly the greatest movie ever!

Viva la resistance!!!

Something funny...

2005-02-28T21:34:00.000-06:00

Funny...

I need a picture

2005-02-28T20:21:00.000-06:00

It's now obvious to me that my picture sucks. It's not so much that it makes me look like a drunk, or that it's not a particularly flattering picture of me, but moreso that it's not large enough to know what I look like. Really the only reason I chose the picture was because it's an optical illusion: since the glass is so large, it makes me not look like the freakishly large man that I am.

By the way, in addition to being a great birthday (so I was told, I don't really remember) the margarita was great, and I got an A on my "Music of the Latin and Carribean" report, which was the dual-purpose reason for frequenting the wonderful "El Ranchero" restaurant.

Ahhh, what a good idea...

Head Hunters, and why no one should have to work at McDonalds

2005-02-28T20:10:00.000-06:00

Head hunters are strange people. They call offering these great positions that I'm nowhere even close to being qualified for. For those of you who have seen my resume or have ever engaged in a technical conversation with me, I am in no way qualified or morally allowed to do administration of Windows servers. I mean, seriously, what are they thinking!? It's my belief that if I can get call after call to be a Winblows administrator, no one should ever be working at McDonalds. Using the head hunter logic, every 14-year-old should be operating heavy machinery or working in a pharmacy.

Seriously, I just don't get it. But then again, I don't get much...

New Site

2005-02-25T09:42:00.000-06:00

Okay... I moved the site to a new location: http://www.weiserthanbefore.com/blog

All I have to say is that google rocks and they SFTP idea is way cool!

First Post

2005-02-11T10:55:00.000-06:00

Fist Post!!!! Bruuuhaaahaahaaa!