You're in Vegas right now? Dan and I are getting in tomorrow night (don't worry, we're not flying all the way there for me to crash a penis party... my friend is getting married...) and I am already worried about passing out when I leave the airport. haha. Hopefully 105 with dry heat won't feel too much worse than 100 with damp heat like it was for a month here...
Since its repair earlier this week, the urinal in the men's bathroom makes a sad, almost War of the Worlds-esque (www.youtube.com)sound every time it flushes.
I now use that urinal almost exclusively.
Lets take cancer cells from a leukemia patient, modify them using HIV as vector, reprogram to fight the other cancer cells like some kind of drunken Irishman, but still have a long life and ability to proliferate wildly just like cancer cells...
I know its been all over the news but this shit is not only astounding also pretty damn cool, but if you read the second to the last paragraph of the abstract it is a little funny/terrible.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1106965 (www.nejm.org)
Not me biking this time, but:
Lady: (crosses Northern Lights on her bike going north at the C Street intersection. Stops briefly at the NW corner to wait for the perpendicular crosswalk)
Josh: (driving, southbound on C Street, windows down, singing at the top of my lungs) "...You're a heart-shaped box of springs and wire / You're one badass fucking fractal!"
Didn't realize what that might have sounded like until about a minute later.
Edit: Jonathan Coulton - Mandelbrot Set (www.jonathancoulton.com)
Hey all. I have four things to ask, the first & second being the most important. Josh, can you make my username "T$"? I mean seriously, why is two characters too short?
Thirdly, what personal finance software do y'all use? And how much do you like it? Megan and I are trying to figure out what's good and what's not.
Thanks for the help, and Josh, you seriously need to look into those first two questions.
I knew that's what it was used for across all sorts of browsers and OS's, that's why I asked if I could have that if he got T$.
Your database files don't have an "ignore this cell" key input like Excel does? If you add an apostrophe before any input in any cell in Excel, no automatic formatting will be used and the cell is ignored by formulas.
Indeed it does make use of escape characters (ka-chow!). The problem is how to deal with them going in (how do you ensure that everything going in is properly "escaped"), and how to deal with them properly coming out (do I print "\$" when I output to HTML, or do I print "$?").
There are utility functions that escape the characters correctly. It's going back through the idkfa codebase and ensure that everything that was escaped is then unescaped upon being outputted to the web browser.
Investigating... Ah.
The four character minimum was so people would have hopefully more meaningful names than "abc" or "-". Granted, an infinite number of meanings can be applied to a symbol, but four symbols seemed to be a reasonable number, if a little arbitrary.
Second, and more damning, is that "$", and a number of other keyboard characters (&, *, %, #, @, semi-colons, etc.) have "special meaning" in most of the idkfa backend and frontend, such that including those characters can do subtle and potentially destructive things in the hands of the careless or the malicious. I skip the problem altogether by trying to limit usernames to the simplest of character sets. I am a lazy programmer.
Conversation in the break room:
Josh: (fills up Nalgene bottle with a portion of water from the 190F water tap, starts swishing it around)
Coworker: "You done?"
Josh: "Yeah, sure, go ahead. Just going through the sear cycle."
Coworker: "What?"
Josh: "Oh, just putting hot water in it... Someday I'll run it through the dishwasher, but for now this should be enough."
Coworker: "Ah." (starts filling up soup cup with 190F water)
Josh: (swishing water around in bottle)
Coworker: "See you out there."
Josh: "Yep."
Can we talk about 4? The newest Beyonce album, duhsies. So I listened to it when it came out, and was mildly amused by the shoulder-ography in the music video, but wasn't particularly pleased with the album as a whole.
I've been working a lot in the Beyonce ouvre from Destiny's Child to the present for a B medley in a show I'm working on. Back in the Destiny's Child days, like EVERY song was a hit. And B'Day is half #1 singles and half songs that could have been #1s if there hadn't been so many other contenders. Dangerously in Love, same thing. But Sasha Fierce and 4 seem to have progressively fewer and fewer hits, and this is distressing to me.
I've been relistening to 4 and I'm obsessed with a few songs: Love On Top is GREAT, in that old school 80's R&B way. Also, no jokes about the title and me, please. Best Thing I Never Had sounds like it should be in the musical In the Heights or something, which could be good or bad depending on how you see these things. And Run the World is a pretty good song in the style of Single Ladies. I mean, it's no Single Ladies, but its trying.
Anyway, is this a good album? I can't decide. Sometimes my love for B and her voice just overshadows the fact that the songs aren't amazing. Does anyone care about this besides me?
Battlestar Galactica on Netflix = hours of awesome
Netflix price changes = $$$ of not awesome
Battlestar Galactica = Gypsy from MST3k
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| From BattleGypsy (picasaweb.google.com) |
You can do it!!! Good luck! (and like one of my friends said in college, these are the sorts of things that always end up getting done somehow. Sometimes you look back on it after and you have no idea how exactly you got it done. But it got done.)
Though, on a side note... one thing that worked for me when I was in a similar boat with my thesis was printing out the entire damn thing and cutting every paragraph apart and then physically laying them out on the floor in the order that I wanted them to be in the final paper. It looked pretty psychotic but it helped. haha.
So I need advice...the analyst we've hired to augment our team sits in the cube next to mine, and we have low cube walls. It is not uncommon for him or I to pass the lunch hour (any time from 11am to 2pm) by eating at our desks. I have no problem with the sights/smells of such.
However, I do have a problem with the sounds this generates. My coworker eats loudly. He smacks his lips together, and often eats with his mouth open. If he is shifting food bits around in his mouth, I hear every saliva laden swirl.
Might anyone have any suggestions on how I could potentially let him know that his manners at mealtimes are lacking? I'm shocked that his mother lets him make it through a meal with his current habits.
Help!
"I can hear everything that happens in your mouth. Everyone can hear everything happening in your mouth, because it is open when you put food into it. I'm telling this to you because it is fairly obvious that you do not realize this."
(emphasis mine, feel free to be creative)
Consequently, is this person at all in the Information Technology field? If so, I chew with my orifices closed because I believe in upholding the social contracts that keep civilization from crumbling. If coincidental but justified tragedy were to befall him, I'd gladly interview for his position.
I have been in this situation before and definitely fully appreciate just how annoying and distracting it can be. I think if you've never been stuck working next to someone who does this, it's hard to understand how much it impacts your entire day. There was a guy who shared a cubicle wall with me in my job right out of college who would chew so loudly that I could hear every single thing going on in his mouth. And it wasn't even just during lunch time that I had to deal with it. He would chew ice non stop all day long. I mean, constantly. I have no idea how he even had teeth left! I never did figure out what to do about it other than shooting him really dirty glances and making comments to my friend across from me about how I was having a hard time hearing the person I was talking to on the phone. If I had had the guts to do it, I think I would have liked to have taken him aside one day and just very kindly explain to him that a lot of us in the office were bothered by how loud his mouth habits were. But I never did work up the courage and I left that job anyway... Good luck with whatever you end up doing!
I've said it before, I'll say it again. They know not that we already run the world, and take our services for granted, and mock us. We must remind them. http://idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=1107&msg_id=1116
I do monetize my passions. That's what I do at work when I'm not bored and working on idkfa :)
I understand your meaning, though. I do have a business license (though, I think it expires sometime soon), so theoretically I can pursue whatever kind of crazy things I want. It's just a matter of finding something that's interesting enough to work on that somebody wants to pay me for.
reading this (socceralaska.com) i think of this blog post (link takes you to socceralaska.com blog post.)
Ouch. Sounds like they got screwed on that. Kinda curious as to how their "web design team" wasn't able to finish the fight, but a lone "IT professional" will be able to. (Not to discount the skills of said IT professional, but I worry about them going forward when the current system admittedly doesn't meet their needs).
Hope it works out. Let me know if you hear anything else.
from Soccer Alaska's homepage:
"Welcome back!
We listened to your feedback and have brought back our old site! We are still working on some improvements, but will stick with this framework because it works! As we continue to restore functionality to this site, please let us know if you have trouble. Need to access the version 2 site for some reason? It's still available here (www.socceralaska.com) for the time being, though all registration and rostering should be done through this site."
Slight violation of the idkfa rules, but I feel it's worth it:
Erik: man, the woman at the coffee place told me how many shots she's been giving me (I tip her fairly well) in a tall, she's putting in almost 3 shots
Josh: holy shit
Erik: yeah, I'm like drinking straight espresso apparently no wonder I almost shit my pants every time I get a coffee from there
Josh: lolol it's like your entire GI tract contracts at once
Erik: fire everything!
Josh: ahahahaa
So I got a new (used) bike, a Jamis Aurora Elite Touring Bike, circa 2008:
Somewhat bizarrely, until yesterday I had never really ridden a "road bike," or really any configuration of bike aside from a mountain bike. Taking one of my usual loops around my area, what usually took me 45 minutes took me about 35 instead. Which is to say that I was going scary-fast with what seemed like minimal effort, and hadn't even reached the end of my gears yet.
A thing that struck me as strange was the grip on the handlebars. Gripping vertically seems strange for me, and even a little tiring, given that I've been placing my weight on my wrists, and now my weight is on my thumbs. Additionally, the brakes seem in a weird place, and maybe even a little out of reach for what I'm used to, but it might just be that I haven't found the right place to settle.
Also, while I was thinking the gear changers would be familiar, not having the little indicator numbers on the gear changers is weird. For some reason, this is something my brain wants quantified. I'm going to have to get used to switching without looking down to see which gear I'm in.
I got my first ever road bike earlier this summer, too, and had a lot of the same issues/discomforts. Now I like it more than my mountain bike! I still enjoy going biking on the trails and such, but it is SO nice to be able to go so fast without much effort. I ended up getting used to most of the things you listed above, but the only one that still bugs me a bit is not having the numbers on the gear changers.
The other day I rode my mountain bike around and actually felt awkward and uncomfortable on it compared to my road bike.
Riding around last night, I was feeling like I was getting more winded riding my road bike than I would have riding the same distance on my mountain bike. I guess it makes a little sense: slightly different muscle groups being worked with the different handlebars and different, er, stride? Stroke? Yeah. Or perhaps given a new maximum speed I'm expending more energy maintaining that higher power output.
That, or maybe it's just that I can now hear my breathing, whereas before it was drowned out by the angry buzzing of my mountain bike tread.
Riding around on a road bike after being on a mountain bike is a pretty neat feeling. So much less drag, way better pedaling efficiency, more gears, more places to put your hands.
But if you ride on a lot of crappy pavement you'll immediately notice that mtn bikes are way more comfortable and cushy, and to some degree just more comfortable all of the time. And the brakes just seem like they're in a much more convenient place as well, I hate the brake lever placement on road bikes.
No matter, if you ride any kind of long distances road bikes are the way way to go. So much faster.
Why you gotta be a bitch like that. Can't you just save up and buy both? A good backpacking tent is nothing, go get the REI halfdome 2 that shit is cheap. Cruise craigslist or ebay for a decent mountain frame and work your way to the top piece by peice, boom done you have both.
But seriously the trails around hilltop are pretty awesome and there are a ton of trails all through bicentennial/far north park that kick ass. You would do fine with a decent hard tail, maybe a 29er if you wanted. But most stuff up there isn't so crazy you need a super high end bike right off from the start.
And the REI halfdome is an awesome tent, very light and spacious, very inexpensive plus you get REI's return policy. You could even use that thing all year if you keep out of high wind and heavy snowfall. If you want something a lot more sturdy and rowdy enough for winter snows and the like I really love my REI arete 3 ASL. It's damn near the lightest double wall 4 season you can buy, but will cost you a fair bit more. Though I think I may even have an pretty nice old lightweight dome tent you could have for free, if I make up up for Big H's wedding I'll try to dig it out for you if you want it.
That might be an interesting project. Now you got me thinking about building a mountain bike.... that would be pretty awesome.
As for the tent, I ponied up $150 for the UL backpacking tent that is what I believe to be the same tent Libby and I have used in the past. Tried and true. Although I kind of wish I had read this post before I bought the tent, as I would certainly not be opposed to free over $150, given my current situation. I guess I could always just return it, if it's not a big hassle to dig this old dome of yours.
So now that you got that sweet ride you'll join me on this (fireweed400.com) next summer? I want to do the 400 but I think I need to start small and do the 200 first.
Huh.
That would be interesting. And hellacious for somebody that only rides ~12 miles a day, or has only ridden more than 3 hours once or twice. There's also that unless I get into winter biking, I'll only have my exercise bike and Star Trek to keep me in shape during the winter months. I'd have to devise some other way to stave off atrophy.
The exercise bike probably isn't a bad way to spend a lot of hours in the saddle, its not the same but still its usually just the sitting on my ass for lots of hours that kills me and not the exertion. You could always see if you can put your actual bike seat on your exercise bike just to keep the sittin parts in shape.
Back in middle school and parts of high school I used to ride from my folk's place along the old seward, up rabbit creek road, over on hillside, then back down huffman to get home. It was just over 11 miles with some good hill climbs in it. Anyway, you can make loops and all kinds of variations of commutes without too much trouble there.
The rules are pretty interesting on the 400, for team or solo. You can't leave valdez without a pace/support vehicle, and between 12 and 5 am your pace vehicle must drive behind the rider and keep them within the beam of the headlights at all time. If riders pass one another their pace vehicles have to make the pass as well, which seems kind of awkward.
I don't know how the switching of riders would work, I personally would want to do a lot more than 5 miles at a time, but that tactic probably works pretty good if you're doing the time trial race. I'd probably just ride to be out there riding. Otherwise maybe every 25 miles or so would be a nice switch, that's about 1 to 1.5 hours of riding depending on terrain.
Oops I was wrong, they did the 4x200, not the 4x400. In previous years they did longer distances at each time, but it still wasn't anything excessive like 50 or 100 miles at once. The 5-mile tactic was so they could keep fresh legs on the course all the time because they were trying to win the race.
There is a bunch of rules so that no rider can have any physical contact with the support or pilot car while on the road, and the car has to be behind the rider so that the rider can't try to draft off the car.
Travis I suppose would be the ultimate source on this, but I think the support vehicle can stage riders every 5 miles. When the rider comes up to the pass-off the new rider gets up to speed, tagging the new rider is not necessary only an overlap of the front/rear tire for a second to count. The old rider then hops in the support vehicle which moves into the next position for either restocking the rider with food/water or next rider drop-off. Support vehicle and pilot vehicle can be the same on the 200, but on the 400 there has to be two, since the pilot car always has to follow the rider, but that's only for the hours of 12-5am after which point it can do double duty again. Though I would guess on these longer relay races you would want two cars most of the time anyway just to keep an eye on the rider and also get the next riders ready.
I was thinking about doing the 200 mile as a solo event, I mean still ride with people but not do it as a relay. The 400 would be pretty rowdy though it'd take me a solid 30 hours to complete, if I could complete it at all.
yep, JD described it pretty well. One person on their bike riding and the other riders (and a driver, or the driver could be a rider i suppose) in the support vehicle, with the other bikes on a bike rack on the vehicle. When not on a bike you're in the support vehicle eating and drinking water and hanging out with the rest of the team.
At work we have this vacation book that gets passed around. It is passed around in order of seniority. Being that I'm one of few employees that haven't been here for at least fifteen years, I'm pretty much the last in line for deciding any vacations for the upcoming year. Just in case I needed to be reminded of my place. Youngin'.
Pawing through the year, red marks on everything already, I noticed that for my section there were no dates taken around the celebration or observation of Harry Potter's birthday. Plus, as sort of a nice thank-you for our tireless services, we get an extra day off during the week of our birthday. So I signed up for that week. So I have a week off. During which I have no plans. Which is exciting.
For that week I usually stay in town for the Potter parades, but for this auspicious year I was thinking of doing something else with my time off. Folks were talking about epic camping and/or fishing trips. I was reminded of this race. Or rather, reminded that I wanted at some point to do a lengthy bike trip. Well, to try, at least. There's the whole getting in shape thing. And I'm not even sure I have the right gear. Or the right bike. Or really where I would want to go. But there have been enough summer days peeking over my cubicle walls to the sun shining weakly through tinted windows to make me want to try.
Thought I'd put that out there. I understand that generally, nobody has that kind of time. Or interest. Or energy. And even if they do, it's just a big production.
Anyhow. That's my plan. Now to figure out how to implement it.
That's a not great way of doing leave time. We have everyone submit leave time at the same time for the upcoming year. And then decisions are made based off a number of factors, including seniority. However we make sure the same person doesn't have all the "good" days off (around holidays, spring break, etc) every year or even twice in a year. We have two support staff, the most senior person doesn't get the week around Thanksgiving and around Christmas off every year, we make her alternate. Otherwise it really sucks and you can have someone whose been there a decade but is still the low man in seniority and has never had Christmas off.
So boo bad management practice. But yay for an epic bike trip!
I have a very strong love/hate relationship with my job: I hate being in the office - I want to throw my achingly slow computer out of the window and punch people in the face until they sobbingly promise to stop being complete dumbasses. When I'm out in the field, however, I forget about all the bullshit and redtape. ahhh fieldwork, how I love thee...
Nifty places the U.S. Government has paid me to travel to:
Akutan
Unalaska/Dutch Harbor
Grayling
Kianna
Kotzebue
Noorvik
Upper and Lower Kalskag
Nome
Sand Point
Kaktovik/Demarcation Bay (in 2 weeks)
Had an interesting failed mountain climbing experience this past weekend. Me and this guy I've been climbing with attempted the south face of Mt Stuart, 9415'. The trip ended up being much bigger than I thought as we originally planned for a fairly easy eastern approach (Blue line) but we ended up tackling the south face (black line).
We hiked in Saturday evening and made camp in a valley at the base at about 4100". Got up at 3 and was on the trail at 3:30am to try to get the best snow. Most of the slopes were a sustained 45-55degrees of snow, broken by bands of rock that were closer to 70-80degrees and were fairly technical requiring roping up and leading sections without our packs. Then hauling our packs up on the tail end of our ropes behind us. On the upper portions of the mountain the snow steepened to about 70degrees and we had to start belaying and setting pickets for every pitch. Around 1pm and only at 8300' we decided it was time to turn around and get back to camp seeing the summit slip away from our reach time and skill wise. This meant down climbing on those 70degree snow slopes which at first we did free (sans ropes) but after hitting some really sketchy rock sections we started setting up belay stations and would spend most of the rest of the way down going 25m at a stretch, maybe 50m if we switched leads every time.
Here I should say that we were on some of the scariest terrain that I have ever encountered. This climb was 10 times more difficult on skill, energy, and mentally than Rainier or any other hike or climb I've ever been on. It took us another 9 hours to get back down to our tent, with only 1 minor fall down on the lower slopes where we had switched over to glacier style travel with just the rope between us and no running protection. My partner fell and slid about 30', I tried to hold the fall but it drug me down and I managed to stop the slide partially by arresting with my ice axe and partially by aiming for the gravel scree at the edge of the snow field and using my body dragging in the dirt.
Took us an hour to pack up camp and we headed back to the car around 11:30pm. Climbed the 2000' to the top of the pass and descended another 2500' to the parking lot. Got back to the car right after 3am monday morning, just shy of 24 hours of pretty solid climbing, 19 hours of which were spent on the mountain. Katy was expecting my to call no later than 7pm sunday night and didn't hear from me till around 4am monday. So she had already contacted the state patrol, who was going to send out SAR at first light to try to find us. Finally got home at 7am and said fuck going to work.
Easily the most epic and insane trip I have yet undertaken. Many parts of it were scary, I don't want to repeat that again. Though part of me would love to attempt that route again some day with more time, and maybe a planned bivuac on the mountain somewhere. I learned a hell of a lot on that climb, a lot about my own fears, a bit about my strengths, and a lot about how much my climbing partner can take before he breaks, which was right at our last scramble up to the ridge before dropping down into the valley where the parking lot was.
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| From Drop Box (picasaweb.google.com) |
This picture isn't mine, but shows the mountain pretty good as we did see it. It's probably taken from around 6200' and doesn't really illustrate how big this mountain actually looks from the ridge. The blue line was our original route up, and then after changing our ascent, the route we wanted to take down but never got to. The black line is our way up and the red line is our decent.
My route was only 1 horizontal mile, pretty awesome to behold.
When you come down for Oktoberfest this year, and you will fly down I demand it, we should actually try for something back there on a day hike. I did Cashmere mtn (picasaweb.google.com) the weekend before which is 8500'. It tore the shit out of my feet, but it was a beautiful and worth while hike, very reminiscent of O'Malley peak.
On behalf of the Scared Scriptless members:
THE BLUE SHOW!
Adults only improv!
Must be 21 or older and comfortable with everything that makes being a grown up so much fun, including but not limited to; swearing, off color humor adult themes, more swearing, adult situations, a lot of #$%&ing swearing and adult content.
Friday July 22nd 8pm
Snow Goose Restaurant, 717 W 3rd Ave
Tickets are $9 at the door or in advance through CenterTix.net
Credit Card sales only accepted through CenterTix.net
Scared Scriptless Improv presents a night of improvised comedy like no other.
As always, the scenes and situations are made up completely on the spot with audience suggestions. Because of the subject matter you must be 21 or older to attend this event.
Check out more event info on our Facebook page
Call Scared Scriptless Improv at 310-1973 for more information and for group rates (10 or more people).
In the Ninja Pirates soccer game Sunday night, the score was still 0-0 at the half. It was either downpouring, drizzling, or sprinkling rain throughout the ENTIRE game, and everyone (including me, but I didn't tell anyone) was not happy about a rain game. Continuing my habit of finding something/anything/everything to talk about to encourage people to step up their game, I told the team at halftime, "GUYS - Seriously. If we score a goal in this half, the rain is going to stop. I swear!"
My team was disappointed to find out I was lying to them. I keep telling them that if they hadn't scored a goal, they would have never proved me wrong!
