cardboardutopia

lol

2008-08-27T20:26:55Z

stuff and things

2008-08-27T15:54:20Z

I was goofing around with my hand/glasses and my wife said she thought it looked like Clark Rockefeller.

I'm going to try and start taking more pictures (the above does not count), along the lines of the "picture a day for a year" thing that you see a lot of on Flickr.

In college we had to do some huge number of sketches of the same object to try and get creative new takes on it. I suppose the point of a photo a day is a similar sort of thing, in that I'm not sure I can think of something to do every day.

In the end, I'm going to be taking many more a day, and really just uploading one a day, which is not necessarily from that day. Cheating?

Suggestions/ideas of things to get started on?

I'm bringing my camera to/from work with me, and will try different lenses each day. So I guess it is a matter of what I see - so far on the way to work this morning, I saw a guy painting on a famous fence/house near me and wanted to get a picture of it, but didn't have the nerve and walked right by him.
That's not making for a very good start.
(the house is clearly owned by someone who has done a whole lot of acid and the fence is painted with his thoughts/ramblings - sort of like my blog, except he does it in housepaint on a fence)

So awesome. This guy bought some aerogel and plays with it, documenting it (including where/how to buy).

WANT
Although I think I would have more fun building it than I would using it, since "using" in my case would surely mean "constant crashing".

The police in Cambridge have Panasonic ToughBooks in their cars. I have seen multiple officers sitting on side streets playing solitaire on them.

I wanted to ask the officers more about them - like what they use them for (I assume looking up plates and/or info about people), how they get an internet connection (cellular? if so, what happens when they drop a signal?), how they like them, etc

But I figured that much like walking up to a police officer and asking him about his gun, those are probably not things one should do if you want to avoid issues.

So wrong.
I don't know the whole story, if there is more to it than from that CNN link, but it seems that this guy survives two tours of duty in Iraq, and then comes home and works in a prison where he guards 100 inmates and is not allowed to have a weapon or armor (and by that, I mean non-lethal) and is stabbed to death by the inmates.
He was allowed a radio to call for help, which clearly is not enough.

I wonder if they could train self defense with radios - I know that some police forces train for fighting with the big MagLite flashlights - perhaps the same with a big radio (assuming its battery pack is hard/heavy enough to injure someone and/or block knives).

This has been a chilly August. I've given up on wearing shorts for the rest of the year.

Chick Magnet

2008-08-26T14:53:57Z

http://yearbookyourself.com

Although I may have to defer to Clampants FTW:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clampants/2789634386/

Cheating the lottery

2008-08-22T13:18:54Z

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,408544,00.html

Basically this husband and wife team have won $350k in the lottery - two times each. They are now claiming they have a formula to predict the lottery.

So how long before we find out that these people have cheated with someone and their "formula" is backfitting to cover up their cheating. If they said "we's just real lucky, ya hear?" everyone would call foul. But no no no, he's an *accountant* and therefore he can figure out a formula - ohhhhhh.

If you were going to cheat, do it so that you win smaller amounts and stay off the radar, and then build it up over time, and distribute it over as many people as you can to avoid suspicion, but as few as you can to avoid running into people mentioning it to others.

Talking to the news about it is probably not so great a strategy.

**Note that in the comments it is pointed out that I am probably an idiot and can't read.

wow. wow. wow.

2008-08-20T14:49:03Z

Holy crap.

http://www.thethousand.net/archives/2008/08/1932.php

That page talks about how significant Michael Johnson's 200m record is - just far and away from everyone else.

And then Usain Bolt broke it last night.
http://www.nbcolympics.com/trackandfield/news/newsid=239399.html#bolt+strikes+twice+with+another+wr

I can't wait to get home and watch this.

Wow.

zoom

2008-08-19T17:26:32Z

I once read an article about the expected "final" records we could expect to see for humans at certain distance racing events (running).

The article was stating it based on known rates and abilities to clear generate/clear the chemicals required for movement over a given distance.

It makes me curious about the equivalent for sprinting events, as the recent 100m at the Olympics has completely changed how fast I thought the limit was for a human.

Awkward

2008-08-18T17:03:43Z

You don't know where that chip has been
(poker)

Beyond the pressures of societal norms, are there any rules in place in Vegas in regards to fondling your (or presumably those of anyone else for that matter) balls and then touching cards/chips on the table?

I was discussing some of the main differences of internet poker with a friend when this thought occurred to me.

stuff and things

2008-08-18T14:33:08Z

Olympic Fever
I love the Olympics. Specifically the sports I can easily relate to, so swimming and running really.

Track 100m finals with a new world record when I really didn't think they could make much progress in it any longer... wow. He smashed it and wasn't even trying for the last 20m, it almost looked like he would turn around entirely and face his competition.

I actually saw that in a high school race and there was a debate as to whether it was against the rules. I argued that it actually would be harder than running forwards, therefore it offers no advantage, and therefore should not be against the rules as long as the person stays in their lane.
It ended up being that the guy then immediately hurt himself, which was amusing. He had set the national record that year, but failed multiple times go get a high enough SAT score to get into any college to play football. Rumors were flying that he was 21 and still a senior in high school.

The marathon was interesting - I swore that when the winner pulled ahead at like 16 miles, that her form did not look like she could keep that up beyond the 20 mile mark. But then she won. Her form from the hips up was pretty awful (although her hands were not crossing her midline, so at least she wasn't wasting energy on torso rotation), so I would love to see her VO2max readings, as I imagine they are quite high.

Vroom
(poker)
My new laptop, even though I picked the slowest processor available, is still faster than any of my other laptops. This is nice.

Finally have the bulk of the data from my old laptop that I wanted, moved to the new laptop. Around 2k hand history files. I brought over the actual database, but brought the HH files as well since I knew I was missing some spread over all of my laptops.
I still have to track down a few more tonight.

Play 3k hands yesterday, and basically none on Fri/Sat, and had an up evening yesterday (although PokerEV showed that I was running well under expectation due to bad beats, which is nice to still have an up evening despite that).

He watches

2008-08-16T02:07:45Z

I am setting up my new laptop and have the desktop for it.

The screen is odd in that it is very bright, but the contrast is weird - pictures look odd, certainly sections are more noticeable than others.

Eye Tracking

2008-08-15T19:46:00Z

My new laptop has been delivered, although I'm at work and the laptop was delivered to my home, so I can't play with it until tonight/this weekend.

It has a built in camera on it, so I can try to program something I had been wanting to toy with, which is eye tracking software.

Hopefully getting the raw data out of the camera is relatively easy.

Previously I have had webcams, but having it just built right into the laptop is about as easy as it gets.

coinflip

2008-08-15T15:48:52Z

IT emails really feel like some people have a coin out when deciding where the capitalization should go.

Things that shouldn't be all caps, but within any given email frequently oscillated between all caps and not include:
MAC (as in Macintosh, not as in Media Access Control)
WEB
INTERNET
PASSWORD

I can only assume that they don't want to be too predictable, and so they are randomizing their approach to this. Harder to get reads this way.

stuff and things

2008-08-15T14:16:54Z

Savings!
(car insurance)
Progressive has been allowed to enter the auto insurance market in MA. Their ads suggest things like "we will save you fuckloads of money."

I received the bill for an upcoming year of insurance from our current provider and decided I may as well price out Progressive as well. From their ads, I learned that this would be a whitewashed experience, and they would also show me the quotes from dozens of their competitors, and I would be told the news by a very unattractive woman (both physically and just generally as a person). Which just so happens to be exactly how I like to shop for my insurance.

I filled out some web forms and then they told me my rate. It was $300 lower than what I currently pay. I started looking into it more and then noticed the fine print... said rate was for 6 months. So say I pay $1000 per year now, and their rate was $700 for 6 months. My "savings" was $400 on my current plan compared to theirs.
But the way they frame it at first glance looks like it was $300 savings were I to move to their plan.

I'm torn between whether or not this is extremely shady, totally brilliant, or me being incapable of reading properly.

Commence Smashing
('puters)
I ordered a laptop from PCs For Everyone! (which seems to be far superior to PCs For Nobody!) and they told me they should be done assembling it by the 18th. But then yesterday they sent me an email saying "HAHA KIDDING" and they shipped it out - it will be delivered today.

So for those of you growing accustomed to the way my life works, this is pretty much the ideal time to start betting on things like:
1) will the box contain anything at all?
2) will I be charged correctly?
3) how long before the item breaks?
4) when the item breaks, will I be at fault?
5) bananas!

Fucking Party Animal
(woooo)
I went to bed last night at 9pm.

You cannot stop me. Your only hope is to try and contain me.

NERRRRRRRDS
(glasses)
I have an eye appt today and I will likely be getting new glasses. I purposely selected my current glasses to look nerdy, but now am considering alternatives.

I'm going to ask them what they have in terms of Bootsy Collins styled glasses. Because, generally speaking, he's my main point of reference for style.

stuff and things

2008-08-14T14:28:43Z

Toon
(meme)
Ever since I was a kid, people have told me I have a cartoonish look about me.

This site lets you create little cartoon/manga pictures of yourself, and mine came out looking pretty close to what I really look like. Perhaps partially due to me being pretty toonish looking already.
.

Can't blame him for reraising
(poker)
For the past 4 times I had raised pre-flop, this guy reraised me. I am playing on a machine without stats or a HUD setup on it, so I am going by regular table observations, and it seemed that this guy wasn't reraising all that much, so I was just folding given that most of the time when he was doing this, I was not holding much (a suited ace and maybe a weak rundown with it, when on the button).

But on the 5th time, I figured he was fucking with me, so I saw the flop.

It wouldn't really be worth posting if I didn't flop the nuts and then have him runner runner quads on me.

I am not sure which I find more amusing, the hand he chose to reraise with, or the fact that he went all in on the flop.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3043790

Standard
(poker)
This one is your standard PLO full house into quads.

I played it very passive/weak on purpose, as this table is full of retards and they will call down anything to the river, so getting all of my money in earlier was not as critical.

Had I shown the strength of my hand preflop, I am 100% positive the outcome of this would have been exactly the same.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3043963

Add to the stack
I have a stack of ideas that I'm always ... not doing. The last one to get pulled from the stack was MovieStamper, which DreamHost then broke and I've been too lazy to move off of their servers and/or fix.

But, my latest addition to the stack is an idea to basically do something along the lines of pokerhand.org, except show the equities for each player on each street with the data as well. And in addition to storing it and displaying it on the site, also have a converter for forums/blogs/LJ.

I would only do it for Hold'em and Omaha to start with, assuming I ever actually do it.

The execution is the easy part - finding the time is the hard part.

That and the name, as I'm not sure what is even available that would be appropriate. Although I do own "ijustshitmypants.com", which I think might go nicely.

stuff and things

2008-08-13T20:25:51Z

Spewing Nonsense
I wrote out a whole treatise about my theory of "he who cares least, wins" and then decided against it. Not against the theory, but just about writing it all here.

Fascinating.

Keys
(lazyweb)
These are the keys to my building/apartment. I can do a web search and find the Indala one (or at least the company), but I cannot find anything about the other one (the black one on the right).

I'm curious if anyone knows anything about them. I'm curious how my door works, and don't really want to take my door apart to figure it out. (or rather, I *REALLY* want to take the door apart to figure out how it works, but would rather not break my door in the process)

Economics of Apathy
My car insurance is up for renewal and this year I can now use Progressive in MA. I went to their website and without looking into a line-by-line comparison yet, it would appear that I could save $300 a year switching my car insurance to Progressive.

So now it comes down to whether the time and hassle required to switch makes that $300 worth caring about.

Similar to the laptop issues I am going through, and whether dealing with incompetent service departments to get them to act on a warranty is worth it, over just buying a new laptop.

New laptop

2008-08-13T13:55:56Z

My laptop died again last night, but this time seems to be more permanent.

Ordered this from PCs For Everyone (which turns out to be in MA, not too far from here, so that's good if there are issues).
Jetbook 9730PX ( My System August 12, 2008, 10:49 pm ) ( $1223.00 )
15.4" 1680x1050 - Intel® PM45 Express Chipset - GeForce 9600M GT
Dual-Core Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5850 2.16GHz 667FSB 2MB Cache
2GB PC6400 800MHz DDR2 SODIMM
80GB 7200RPM Serial ATA Notebook Drive
Super-Multi Drive (DVD RAM)
Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN Wireless Adapter
Microsoft Windows XP Professional with SP3 (32-bit)
Notebook 1 Year Warranty

As barebones as I could get with as high a resolution as I could get.

Due here sometime in the next week or nine.

In the meantime for poker, will be single tabling on my little laptop, collecting stats but not using any HUDs.

That sounds like a bad thing

2008-08-12T14:28:57Z

This laptop:
http://www.mtechlaptops.com/specifications/mtechd900c.htm

It supposedly has "Glare Type".

I don't know what that is, but it sounds bad.

Lazyweb: the laptop again

2008-08-12T13:43:58Z

So I've mentioned this before, but I have a ThinkPad T60p that is unhappy with its time on earth.

Last night it was working fine, and then when I picked it up, it turned off and refused to start again.

I fiddled with it and eventually got it going again. I don't know if said fiddling with resulted in the successful booting, or if it was a heat issue and sufficient time had passed for it to cool and therefore boot again.

When it booted, everything was jerky. I had "solved" this in the past by removing the devices from the Device Manager and then restarting and then removing them again (as it reinstalls them on each boot). I think I long term solved this by removing them from the bios checks on start, but I can no longer get into the bios on it.

I got into the ThinkPad diagnostics on it and they all said it was fine (other than the "hardware log" which I'm not sure matters). But the laptop is most certainly not fine.

It is still under warranty, and it is the warranty where I can do pretty much anything to it and they claim they will fix it under that coverage.
What I didn't count on (stupidly, as always), was that the repair people would be unable to ... repair.

The last time I brought in the laptop, I told them what was wrong with it, suggested the areas I would look, and then took the hard drive out and went to leave. The removal of the hard drive seemed to blow their mind and their basic reaction was that the reason it wouldn't work, was due to not having the hard drive in there. I explained to them how I could rule that out, and then then returned the laptop to me a few days later with a new keyboard.
It seemed odd to me that all of these issue would stem from a broken keyboard, and sure enough, the issue is still there.

So, I have several lazyweb questions:
1) Should I bother to keep bringing my laptop in for them to look at, in the hopes of ever getting this resolved, but in the meantime introducing more stress and frustration into my life? Or should I say that the several times I have already had them do work on that warranty make it worth it and just get a new laptop instead? In a few places I have found laptops for around $700 that would meet my needs, so I can treat them as disposable and assume that I will need a new one every year, and it will still be cheaper than my ThinkPad.

2) Where is the best place to get an inexpensive laptop if I don't at all care about it being new, good, or having any bells or whistles? It used to be that Toshiba, HP, Compaq, some Sonys, and Alienware all just rebranded generic laptops - I think they might have been Acers. So you could go to a place that would just sell you the generic one cheap. But I am unable to find that now. I can find used/refurbished ones on UBid and there are some less expensive (older) ones on Amazon as well.

As for the stats I'm looking for:
1) CPU: do not care at all - it just has to be fast enough to run the OS, a poker client with 4-12 tables up, and PokerTracker (or an equivalent - which means also PostgreSQL) - if it ran cooler, that would be nice
2) size/weight: do not care at all given that I will not travel with this, it is merely so that I can play poker in the living room where our TV is
3) network: don't care at all, just any of the LAN wireless protocols as they are all fast enough
4) CD/DVD: would actually prefer if it did not have one at all - I have a USB one that I can use if need be, otherwise it is just something else that would break
5) screen size and resolution: I don't care what the screen size is, but the higher the resolution the better - this is really where the cost comes in, in that I would prefer something 1600 x WHATEVER and even 17" laptops trend towards having ~1400 x WHATEVER.
6) RAM: 2GB should be fine
7) OS: XP Pro/Home (or Linux and then I will run VMWare) - this is difficult with any new laptop as it seems they charge you more to remove Vista - I could use Vista, I just don't want to given that I would then need more CPU and RAM, for no reason at all
8) HD: anything over 20GB and ideally 7200RPM or faster.

Of those, XP Pro, the screen resolution, and a "fast" drive are all what would drive up the cost. Otherwise, it should really be a cheap setup - and even then, if I could mix and match, that would be a pretty cheap thing to accomplish.

So if anyone has suggestions, I'm listening.

UPDATE:
Thinking that people who are into Linux would be thinking similar things to the above, I did a search and found this page for laptop resellers who support Linux:
http://mcelrath.org/laptops.html
Which in turn lead me to this site which seems to allow me to configure a laptop pretty close to my limited specs:
http://www.pcsforeveryone.com/

Haven't checked the other links yet to see if any of the prices are better, as this one currently is still looking to come out expensive enough that I'm not sure it is worth it.

Seemed a bit daft, him being a guard and all

2008-08-11T21:25:08Z

I'm having a difficult time trying to explain to a user that she does not need to click "Deliver" on her Quarantine Summary and then delete each quarantined item, as that would then defeat the point of the quarantine.

The more I try and explain it, the more I seem to confuse her.

Incidentally, the more I try and explain it, the more I want to repeatedly hit myself in the face with the claw side of a hammer.

Around the world

2008-08-11T19:47:35Z

These images of the Olympic ceremony remind me that while watching it, I felt like I was watching the coolest Daft Punk video ever.

stuff and things

2008-08-08T13:52:19Z

I'll try and add "(poker)" to the start of any section that discusses poker, so that all of my friends on here who don't care about that can immediately gouge out their eyes on that line and not have to endure the rest.

Similarly, "(clown rape)" will be about... well, I actually don't post much about that.

We had the same opinion
(poker)
The other night I sat down at a table on PS and glanced around the seats and saw my new favorite poker name: "mountainjew".

I played a few hands and then looked back at that seat and saw it was actually something else ("mountainjav" or something), which I found extremely disappointing.

That said, I'm signing up on a poker site as "mountainjew" today. That name is awesome.

They are one thing.
(poker)
Last night the tables on PS went dead (not literally, but for whatever reason nobody was playing by midnight EST, which you usually don't see until 2am, esp on a Thursday and on). So I went over to FTP and proceeded to about fall out of my chair at how horrible the play is there. I see the horrible play on PS and think "wow, these guys are bad", but the guys on FTP were putting on a show.
(This is low limit PLO, $50 - I only really play NLHE these days in SNGs and tournaments. Otherwise I'm pretty much just PLO.)

Fortunately, as you always want to anytime you play against someone playing 97/35/1, I ran really bad.

One guy was pushing in every third hand. This is a new strategy that I hadn't previously considered.

He started pushing on a hand where I had single suited aces, and I knew he would be getting it all in with this super secret elite strategy, so I just let him do all of the work since there was nothing I needed to do.
The flop came AKx, and yay the river was a K. He held KKxx.
Fascinating.

The month of August has made for really funny graphs, assuming you think wild up and downs are funny.

The poker gods are having their way with my sweet sweet ass. It reminds me of taking a steak and waving it in front of a dog, when he jumps up, you sometimes let him wrap his mouth around the steak and get a taste, and then you just punch him in the face until he falls down. Then commence waving the steak around again.

I'm the dog.

Boom
(guns)
The Box O Truth is fun. It is basically like Mythbusters, except with a really narrow topic range. Shootin' stuff.

GPG, .Net, Windows, and the server

2008-08-07T19:46:43Z

So, since I just spent far too much of today trying to debug this, I figure I might as well write a quick note here in case someone else in the future wants to find it via Google.

If you are looking to access GPG in VB.NET via the System.Diagnostics.Process command, and running into issues where you can do it via the command line, but not in the code - here are some things to consider:
Command Line Syntax
If you are a human at the console, and you had a file "banana.txt" that you wanted to encrypt for your friend Joey Jo Jo, you could type something like:
"c:\program files\gbu\gnupg\gpg.exe" -e -a --always-trust -r JJJ_PUB_KEY < "SOMEPATH\banana.txt" -o "SOMEPATH\banana.asc"

There you are telling the command line to run GPG from its install location, you want to encrypt something, you want it in armor/ASCII format, you don't want to have to answer any questions about trust, the recipient is whatever you have as the name in your keyring for Joey Jo Jo, and then the in and out files.

But there are multiple ways that you can do that, and .Net's Process apparently doesn't like the above way. So you should instead do something more along the lines of:
"c:\program files\gbu\gnupg\gpg.exe" --armor --always-trust -r JJJ_PUB_KEY --output "SOMEPATH\banana.asc" --encrypt "SOMEPATH\banana.txt"

This says the same thing, but in a way that's right down to earth, in a language that everybody here can easily understand. The ">" in the first one potentially was making the code unhappy - this one does not have that, does the same thing, and works in the Process command. YAY.

Location, Location, Location. And Permission
GPG will see what user you are doing this as and go to your directory in Documents and Settings, in the Application Data folder there is a gnupg folder and it will need your keyrings.

If you are doing this on the server in a web app, then it is unlikely that it will be looking in the same directory as when you are physically logged into the console. One easy (*cough* this is not necessarily the most secure or smart thing *cough*) way around this is to copy your keyring folder that you know works, over to the user folder that will be accessing this - or if you are really daring/careless, into the Default User or even All Users.

Make sure in the permissions (Security tab) for the folder, the user that your web app is running as can do all kinds of crazy shit to that folder. You could be careless and wild and give everyone full access to it.
I don't recommend any of these things - but you can get pretty careless and wild if you want in testing, and then slowly lock it down after you get the thing working - it helps rule out some of the area causing issues - but don't toss it to production wide open. Or do it, I don't care. Whatever.

As for how to use the Process command and the exact code for that, there are plenty of examples out there for that, you pass in the (full) path to the gpg.exe as the first parameter, and then the second is the "easily understood" command line in the above, and it works (assuming your webserver's user has access to all of the directories we are looking at in the above).

Hopefully this saves someone a lot of the swearing that I got done today.

stuff and things

2008-08-07T15:15:03Z

My turn
(poker)
I one outed a guy. My bad.

I had As9s8h7d on the button (or CO?), was limped to me, I raised the pot, one of the blinds called, one other caller, flop comes A99. The blind had AAxx and decided to slowplay it, and me having an A and his behavior (and the InterPoker avatar) didn't think I had much to worry about. So betting was all me and then the river is a 9.

Fascinating.
(He took it remarkably well.)

Tilt
(poker)
I saw a number of players last night who try and put others on tilt, but their style is so unimpressive. They essentially just call out people at the table and use slurs to try and get them riled up. The one who was the most offensive was also the one most comically bad.

That one was calling me fat, which was fine by me. I didn't respond since I had stacked him and didn't want to discourage him from changing styles.

On another table was a dude who I had seen a night or two before who was stacked a few times against a talkative guy. He had been talking trash and then shut up once the guy stacked him a few times. Last night I guess he recognized me from that table and was calling me out, and he had position on me and was using/abusing it.
He stacked me at least once where we both had big hands and I got the worst of it, not a big deal, and he was egging me on to try and get me to tilt. But doing it in the abusive way that I find silly, so I ignored him.
About 30 minutes later of him talking trash to everyone and especially me, I chatted an apology to him that I hadn't been watching the table, but saw he was doing much better than the other night and saw he was talking to me - I apologized for not seeing it sooner and then asked him to repeat everything he had said, as I needed to get caught up.
Then just went with the "agreement" method to deflate his taunts, given that if you call someone fat and they agree with you, there isn't really much to argue about there.

Unfortunately the table soon disbanded, so I never got to catch up - another time.

Null
(work)
The cursor screenshot turned out to be a null character that I suspect was getting inserted during the process of emailing the file (not zipped, which sometimes results in file corruption between Exchange and some other mailhosts).

It is resulting in some amusing conversation back and forth between us, in a depressing sort of way.

This may get interesting.

2008-08-06T21:42:15Z

To date, the funniest/dumbest thing a user has done in the IT world around me, was confuse the scanner and the shredder.

As it turns out, it was not confusing the object in terms of what it does, but in terms of what it was called. In the end it was shown she truly meant to shred the object, and the error was in calling it the scanner.

But this new one potentially ranks at least as high, if the person is making the error I think it (the error) is, but it is potentially another misunderstanding. So far the path to figuring this out is really pointing towards Epic Fail.
It also is potentially hurt by a language barrier and therefore potentially character mapping differences in our OS (so that would mean I'm actually the retard).

But I'm fairly certain that someone sent me a screenshot of a data file and they are disturbed by an extra character in the data. They were kind enough to circle the character in the screenshot.

The circled item on the screenshot is their cursor.

I haven't yet asked them if the character blinks in and out of existence, given that not all systems do that depending on the setup, but I did ask that they send me the file in question.

So... they sent me the screenshot again.

I tried to send a clearer request for the actual file again, and am waiting on this.

My guesses so far:
1) the character is their cursor
2) the character is an EOF that their character set is rendering as a bar on the screen
3) same as #2, but a newline
4) magic and/or the work of the devil

We have had many amusing discussions with these people, but I don't really feel right going into more detail on here about it, but it has lead to a whole lot of forehead smacking and smirking on at least one side of the conversation.

stuff and things

2008-08-06T14:43:26Z

As Big As A Whale!
Someone in the architecture firm's office next to my office sounds exactly like the lead singer for the B52s.

Cleanliness is Next to What?
So I have a skin condition that comes and goes, and recently I thought I could actually attribute it to "excessive lamb intake" (is that a great album name or what?), but after not eating lamb for some time now and still seeing this flare up again, I think it is not a food allergy - or at least not lamb.

So on the good side, I am going to eat a lot more lamb for lunch now!

On the bad/gross side, I have a new theory as to what may cause it. My coffee mug.

I drink black coffee.
Coffee is, in my thinking at least, merely a colloid. You have little bits of coffee bean floating in water. Enough for about 2 calories per cup, which is very close to not being there at all.
Those 2 calories are basically from whatever proteins survive the brewing process and some oils.

Since I don't add anything to my coffee, and since I'm putting scalding hot water in the cup each time I drink coffee... I was previously not terribly concerned about my coffee cup's cleanliness. I drink the coffee, I leave the cup sitting there. When I want more coffee, I put more coffee in there, drink it, and then go back to leaving the mug on my desk. There will be some leftover water/coffee in the mug due to surface tension, and then the water will evaporate off, leaving behind little bits of coffee bean.
It is a clear coffee mug (this one), so over time I can see the build up from this.

Were I to add milk and/or sugar to my coffee, I would be greatly concerned about this practice as either of those would be happily feasted upon by any number of Nasty Things, and my mug would quickly get funky.
I would not trust even the scalding hot water to kill whatever is in the mug, as it would still be in there when I drank the coffee.

Perhaps irrationally, since I just drink it black, other than looking gross, I didn't really care that my coffee mug has stains on it.

But now I am noticing a trend:
The nastier my cup gets in terms of noticeably having consumed many cups of coffee and been left to sit for N days, the more my skin issues flare up.

So now it is another issue of whether this has any correlation to my skin or not (as the lamb apparently was not).

When I had previously attributed this to lamb and stopped eating lamb, I also (same day in fact) taken my mug home and run it through the dish washer.

I can test this easily enough by cleaning my cup regularly now and watching the skin. If I continue to do that and the skin flares up again, I can likely rule this out as well.

If it is related to this, I am curious as to what would actually cause it.
I would guess either some sort of mold/yeast (as they are shown to cause the skin issue), or the oils in the coffee bean remnants going rancid and... whatever that entails (I don't know anything about rancid oil - which incidentally is a fantastic pickup line).

Dragged a comb across my head
Woke up late again today due to my clock having the wrong time.

It seems to be slowly losing time, which I would assume is either due to a faulty/dying battery not supplying enough power, or a faulty crystal in the device that is not vibrating correctly.

The fact that it sometimes works leads me to think it is the battery and the crystal is fine.
Unless its casing, the crystal, is broken which then leads to moisture from the air getting on to it, causing it to vibrate at different rates - more humid and it slows down. The reason for that consideration would be that it seems to slow time differently - it doesn't always slow down at N minutes per hour, but instead N varies.
Also, were the battery dying, I would suspect to see systemic impact - in that the display and any lights on it would also decay, not just its time (if anything, I would expect the time to not decay and the display to be the first indicator of battery death).

I've had this clock for ages and always marvel at how long the battery lasts in it, and its previous battery deaths never showed this behavior.

Unfortunately, I think it is time for a new clock/alarm. This one has served me very well.

Broken laptop? Check. Broken phone? Check. Broken travel alarm clock? Check.
It would seem that I'm surrounded by broken electronics.
Given my proclivity to bang on things, this does not surprise me - but the clock is an outlier - I have never treated it with excessive force.

Man Boobs

2008-08-05T15:11:23Z

One of the reviews on iTunes, describing why Lady GaGa is so great, says it is because she strips at her shows.

I found this interesting because I nearly wrote the exact same review for Blues Traveler.