I'm getting restless.
I've watched 18 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation since I acquired it in the middle of last month. And I've made it a point to only watch ST:TNG when I'm on my exercise bike (which slows down my consumption considerably, but at least lets me feel halfway productive).
I'm restless because it's damn near biking season again. And while the exercise bike is nice, it's not the real thing. My bike is currently in the shop, being worked on by diligent and trained professionals (who told me that through overuse I'd effectively ruined the chain, cassette, and cables that are generally pretty critical to bike function). Once it's in better shape, I will have to venture out, even though 40F and muddy mess is less than ideal. But I'm looking forward to it.
I understand biking isn't everyone's thing. But it's a kind of exercise that I can do for hours and not get bored, angry, or frustrated. And granted, I've now been biking regularly for at least 3 years now, and whatever pains I suffered from a bicycle seat have long since faded from memory. Despite this, repeatedly, whenever I end up biking with other "cyclists," I end up being completely outperformed by people with even the slightest hint of athletic ability. But I still go.
I mention biking here at all because I wish more people would do it. You don't need a fancy bike, or fancy shorts. You just need a cheap bike and a helmet, items which often lay covered in dust in people's garages or crawl spaces. Anchorage has tons of trails, most of which connect conveniently to larger neighborhoods, and most thoroughfares have reasonable trails alongside them. You don't have to worry about looking stupid, or like you're new: everybody looks stupid and awkward on a bike. You also don't have to spend tons of time biking. It takes about half an hour to ride across town, and you generally don't have to deal with traffic. It's just a matter of deciding that you're going to bike to a place, rather than paying $4 a gallon in gas.
Also, just to be clear, I'm not asking for somebody to bike with (though I'm happy to go if anybody wants). You're free of any guilt for going biking. You're also free to manage your own time: if you have jobs, sports, whatever else that make biking an impossibility, so be it. What I'm saying is: if you've ever had plans to:
...Here's your reminder. Summer is coming.
As cold as biking in the snow might be there are ways to keep doing it anyway.
Most mountain bike tires have way more traction than is necessary for pavement riding and would actually perform pretty well on a plowed sidewalk on their own. If you are worried about traction and or stopping then you can make yourself studded tires pretty cheaply, though they will be heavy a leaded shit. Just grab a set of old tires and a couple of boxes of zinc screws that can be driven though the tire from the inside. If they screws are too long on the outside you can cut them off with a cutting wheel attached to a drill pretty easily. Its also best to pattern the screws towards the side of the tires rather than directly down the middle because you mostly need traction while turning and if you run the right pressure they'll have contact with the ground all the time anyway. When finished add a layer of duck tape to protect your tube from the screw heads on the inside and you're ready to rock.
Or you can splurge and actually order tires with the carbide studs which are lighter and may last a little longer. No matter I did the prior project a few years ago and those tires are gems on the few times I've had to use them. Granted my ride was less than 2 miles so I wasn't on them for a long time.
Also Josh, don't sweat needing a new chain, cassette, and cables. I have to replace mine plus the cable housing once if not twice a year. At this point I usually keep extras lying around all the time except for the cables which I always forget to buy some extra packs of.
I would be much more tempted to try winter riding if I didn't have to contend with cars. Even being lit up like LED Christmas trees, I'm not confident that Anchorage drivers are expecting/looking/caring about cyclists in the darker winter months.
Thanks for the hints on the studs. That might be a project if I grow a pair and want to bike next winter.
And completely unnecessary unless you actually want to do some trail riding in the snow, or be like those fucks who ride powerline all winter long.
I wish I could be one of those fucks.
The 9:Zero:7 at chain reaction is pretty damn sweet. I would build one up for myself if I lived there though I doubt I could/would ever spring for the titanium frame version.
I think I may trade my road bike in for something a bit more rugged. I almost used the 20% REI coupon on a novarra mountain bike, but I ran out of time and Libby really wanted drysuits. Anyhow, I ready to bike, although I've been jogging as of late. I'd give it another week or two, and I doubt the mornings will be frozen.
I did that last summer. That is use the 20% on a Novara bike. Seems like a pretty decent bike and I like the sexiness of the 29' wheels. "They" say the frame is a little heavy but it's fine by me. If I biked a whole lot more then I did it might be a problem, but not so far.
Josh was still kicking my arse last year on his old bike missing gears, but I figure he trains on his stationary at home for just such occasions.
Its the only way Erik, have one of each. A road bike Aaaand a mountain bike. You just can't really put good enough fenders on a mountain bike for road riding. Its not that I didn't love big red and put close to 2k miles on her last summer but dammit riding in the rain sucked. My new bike may be ugly and can only be used on the road but she sure can keep the water off me and the drop bars are nice since I have a head wind every night on my ride home. I feel like with fenders riding in almost anything is now possible.
Though last night I did eat it crossing some rail road tracks. My back tire slid out from under me and I got thrown pretty hard. Such is the life with slick tires and a less forgiving road frame geometry.
Sorry about the spill. Been a little nervous about riding on snow/ice since I bit it hard last April, almost breaking my hand.
I managed to get a decent rear fender (one that attached to the seat post, not the axle) for my mountain bike this year (after suffering a muddy ass all last summer). Now I just need something for the front. Stopping by the bike shop this afternoon on my lunch hour, gonna see if I can't find anything. I'd almost think just a wide piece of plastic would be enough, to keep most of the bullshit down, but I could be wrong.
SPDCA:
Dear Escalade Owner,
The Municipality of Anchorage deems it legal for a cyclist to be riding on any pathway, with the exception of sidewalks in business districts, including roads shared by other vehicles, provided that the cyclists are at the rightmost portion of the pathway that is safe and reasonable (exceptions to be made for dodging road hazards, animals, pedestrians, etc.).
So when I'm in the road for a few hundred yards because I had to dodge your pre-teen children blocking the walking path, you don't really have a legal basis to scream "SIDEWALK!" while doing your best Roseanne Barr impression out of your window. I understand if this is how you give back to your community, or show compassion to other human beings, or perhaps simply show your leadership ability by leading by example.
I hope wherever you were going was important. And I do appreciate you taking the time to get into the other completely empty lane so as to give me some distance. That is something.
- Josh
OOOhhh me too, I hate the non-blinker people.
And for your viewing pleasure: What I would do if I could. (www.youtube.com)
REI had a link to this, so I'm putting it out there. I'm sure you're already an expert, but I figure it couldn't hurt: How to fix a flat. (www.rei.com)
Keep in mind that May is supposedly Bike to work month. And something like the 3rd week of May is the bike to work week in Anchorage. Get ready for it.
Last summer for my own bike to work month I rode 600 miles, which placed me at number 100 in all of Seattle's commuters who kept track of such things. There was something like 23,000 participants last year. The top 20 guys all had close to 800-1000 miles if not a little more so I was pretty damn happy with my spot. This year I'm hoping to beat the 600 mark if only by 20 more miles. Actually doing the riding is the easy part, its the time it takes that makes it tough, oh yeah and the incessant rain sucks too.
Dead Space 2 Review:
Dead Space 2 is a good game. It's got high production value, decent writing / storyline, and is an impressive technological accomplishment. There are few horror/suspense/non-standard shooter games like Dead Space and Dead Space 2, and I appreciate when they're implemented well. I also appreciate science fiction storylines that don't insult my intelligence.
I will, however, probably never play Dead Space 2 again. Much like I haven't played the original Dead Space since I beat it some years ago. This is for two reasons: though additional playthroughs may introduce more frustrating and difficult gameplay, it won't introduce new gameplay, nor will it introduce any new story elements (at least, not without going the completionist route, wasting countless hours of life to get the super-special ending, if there is one, that I can just view on Youtube). At no point in either game are you given a choice about anything, you're either mowing something down, or listening to people going crazy.
The gameplay in DS2 is exactly the same as it was in DS1, except for maybe two or three additional monsters, which show up pretty few and far between. This means that if you had a strategy you liked in DS1, that strategy applies perfectly well to DS2. It also means that the weapons used in the game, while still fun examples of how industrial equipment can be used incorrectly, are the exact same thing. And, because the game has you stressed and frightened and clinging to whatever dear resources you've managed to find in monster's ribcages, you're not likely to explore outside of the standard fare. I played through almost the entire game sawing through horrifying monsters, which while efficient and satisfying, left me wishing I'd been given the opportunity to go at things a different way.
DS2 does, however, have some entertaining sequences. At one point, you have to launch yourself in a rocket-powered ejection seat at a planet, rather than away from it, all the while using your meager suit stabilizers to careen your way around space debris. It's fun as hell, but the sequences like this mostly exist towards the beginning of the game, and leave you at the end with about 3 hours worth of just dismembering room occupants, and then moving to the next room.
I'm not sure I'm sold on how DS2 changed its characterizations from DS1. In the first game, your game character, Isaac Clarke, is a non-speaking protagonist (the "heroic mime (tvtropes.org)," a la the Half-life games, the Dooms, the Quakes, some of the Bioshocks, Chrono Trigger, Portal, etc.), throughout which you never actually see Isaac's face. This works well, because not only does it project the player's own thoughts and feelings (mostly panic and fear) onto that of the protagonist, but because you feel like you're more fully interacting with the game through your actions, even if your game character isn't actually saying anything. It's also all the more unnerving in the first game because all you tend to hear from your character are grunts of pain when hit, labored wheezing when severely injured, and screams when you die.
And for some reason, in DS2, they decided to forego that, giving Isaac Clarke not only a face, but a voice, and considerable dialog. And in a game where you have almost no choice but to go forward, this meant that instead of reacting how I wanted to react to something, I had to instead listen to how somebody else decided Isaac Clarke would respond. The lines were believable, and the voice acting was very good. It's just a weird thing for them to change, particularly when it worked well in the first. I wonder if the non-inclusion of Clarke's dialog in the first game was more from a developmental effort standpoint, rather than a choice of the writers.
DS2 is a fun experience, even if it is extremely linear. As with the first game, it gives me an uneasy wariness around certain sizes of ventilation ducts. But like I said, I'll never be revisiting it.
Well, if everyone else at work takes 2 hour lunches to play cribbage, I'm entitled to work on idkfa during my lunch hour... and a half.
Implemented a caching system, sort of similar to what we had on idkfa v2, but with improvements due to some hard lessons learned previously.
Now I'm caching data sets. That is, rather than caching HTML output, I'm caching the data structures returned from the database. And I have two standardized functions to do so (encache, and decache), that support all of the parameters for caching, and those two functions can be used to cache anything (queries, HTML output, whatever I want, really). In addition, because I'm caching queries instead of HTML, I can make improvements using caching without having to worry about whether I'm being called from a normal page load or an AJAX page load (the auto-updating stuff). And being that I can apply caching to anything, and with some ease, I'm hoping to speed things up here in the future for idkfa users.
So far, at least for my kaiden user account, I've taken page loads from 300+ milliseconds down to 70 milliseconds. This is possible because I've been able to make things like generating the Discussion Item widget and Latest Posts widget take near to zero time to process, leaving time instead for more dynamic things like the seen/unseen queries, or the users online queries.
In the office this morning.
Coworker A: (to Coworker B) "Got my 1-C-3 free today."
("1-C-3" is key combo one uses to get the "Vanilla Mocha" coffee out of the coffee vending machine we have in our break room. It's the best that's in there. It's also just about the worst possible thing you can drink.)
Coworker B: "Oh yeah?"
Coworker A: "Yeah, they've got this thing on there, sometimes it'll give you the coffee for free, you put your dollar in, put in your selection, and it'll refund you money."
Josh: "That's, like, the most sinister psychological thing I can think of."
Coworker A: "Why's that?"
Josh: "Well, think about it. It's the exact same thing they do with slot machines: it's random, but guaranteed reward, so you have to just keep coming back, no matter how unlikely."
Coworker B: "Do people ever tell you that you just suck the fun out of everything?"
Josh: (sigh) "Yes."
Holy shit, I just realized I can advertise on idkfa!!!
Scared Scriptless April 9th Show - THEATRE SPORTS!!!
THERE WILL BE BLOOD!!!
Scared Scriptless is switching it up by giving the audience what they crave: a knock down, drag out improv grudge match between your favorite Scared Scriptless troupe members.
Come out to Snow Goose to cheer on your favorites so we can crown the ultimate improv team champion!
Saturday April 9th – 8:00pm
Snow Goose Theater
717 W 3rd Ave
Tickets are $9 at the door or online at
CenterTix.net , by calling 26-FARTS
For tickets at the door, the box office opens at 7:00 pm the night of the show.
For more information or groups of 10 or more call Scared Scriptless at 310-1973
Check out the event on facebook for the secret friend password and get $7.00 tickets. You can also use that groupon that’s burning a hole in your pocket.
Tickets are going fast, so get there early.
Thinking on some potential UI changes for displaying threads.
Currently, we view 1 post at a time, with slight indications elsewhere in the thread as to where the message is that you're viewing. I have it this way for a few reasons:
I'm proposing to find a way to display all posts, in their entirety (or at least, in their entirety without having to navigate to a different page), for the entire thread.
This is because in trying to reply to a number of posts recently, I've wanted to review something in a previous post in the thread, but I didn't want to navigate away from the page I was currently on.
Other threaded comment systems (see: Reddit) do something similar, but then sort by popularity, which is often pretty irritating if you're trying to read the progression of a discussion.
Anybody have any thoughts on this? Like the system the way it is? Wish it was different? Care at all?
do you mean something similar to the way email clients nest previous emails in a chain. Like gmail does for instance. I like it because it is in fact nice to not only review the previous post but others in the chain as well when replying. I currently just open up another tab and browse around in there if I want to look at something while replying.
A different system would be pretty sexy.
Similar. Definitely not the "message quoted in a message" type of thing, but something to the degree that it shows the structure at the same time it shows all of its contents.
What I might do is stick with the "classic" method of just showing excerpts on the Discussion Item pages, and then let people have a user option for the thread views.
Will have to figure something out for the seen/unseen functionality, though. Hmm.
Oy. It's looking like it was going to be pretty difficult to have alongside the current format.
I'd have to break a lot of things if I were to get this to work. And probably more than I'd care to fix in the long run. Maybe if I'm looking to redo the entire thing I could go at it with both of these things in mind, but as it stands, idkfa would be unusable until I figured it all out if I took this down now. Alas, my design could only go so far.
I did, however, find a way to adjust the aesthetics portion to draw a dotted line to give a better idea as to the shape/depth of the threads. I also added a few more characters to signify the latest and current posts (asterisks and the arrow quotes, respectively). At least that's something.
It's been slow at work, and I found a new way to approach this project.
Under Settings > Thread Display, I've added an alternative viewing options for threads.Effectively, this viewing mode addresses the cumbersome "one post to read per mouse click" people have expressed frustration towards. Now when you click "into" a thread (that is, when not just browsing an item, or looking at the stream), you'll see the full contents of the thread, rather than just the post you clicked on.
For this mode, I've also added "inline" comments, such that you'll have to click on "reply" in order to reply to a specific post, as you'll no longer be viewing one post at a time. The comments box should appear below the post in question, and you should be able to preview and submit from this comment box as well. Currently, you can only work on one comment box at a time, and drafts are disabled for this particular view (though, if you click through to preview mode, it'll come back).
I had to do some pretty drastic changes to the idkfa backend to get this going, and I'm not super confident that it didn't break things for either classic or the "firehose" view. I've done testing in a few browsers, but please let me know if you find something strange.
This is mostly for Erik and Aaron.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/allyoucaneat/2014637462_scott_simpsonhttp://seattletimes...ef_burger_man.html (seattletimes.nwsource.com))
This is the saddest day I've known in a while. There is very little I get as obsessive and excited about at food. The guy somehow found a way to my soul with his burgers. They were the type of food that I could not resist and always had to go back for more. I have probably been to this particular burger place more than I have ever been to any single other non fast food eatery in my whole life, which says a lot as this place was not cheap.
My most sincere condolences to all of his family and friends. He was a good guy and a great chef.
That is hard to say. A big part of the menu has always been the random burger of the day/week and this guy thought of some crazy shit. Hell my pic is one of their burgers if you wonder at how that stuff looked.
Most burger joints thrive on having their menu set in stone, the classics you know like Roadrunner has been doing for 40 years or like Lucky wishbone. But a place that constantly mixes it up and never really keeps but a handful of set burgers might suffer.
Maybe someone else in the staff has some real talent and this is a chance to step up. I will still eat that shit up because what is part of the set menu is damn delicious.
That sounds far too personal to continue in its same form - less of a burger joint and more of designer food in the form of a hamburger. I'm sure some stuff was hit or miss, but the fact that you could (speculation) go there on any given week and encounter something new is pretty rare. Here's to hoping the place retained the favorite recipes to at least keep making unique burgers. Otherwise that's a damn shame.
March 31st is Reddit's World Backup Day:
http://blog.reddit....-world-backup.html (blog.reddit.com)
Back up your stuff, people. Your hard drives are built by the lowest bidder, and have a measurable error rate per gigabyte of information read or written. It's just a matter of time. And I can't always fix it.
My work announces the 2011-2012 season tomorrow! Just thought i'd give IDKFA a sneak peak of a few of the more "titillating" shows. I'll post a full list with dates tomorrow just in case anyone wants to subscribe this year.
Broadways:
Fiddler on the Roof
Beauty and the Beast
Rock of Ages (its a musical based on 80's rock hits. movie in progress. and totally awesome.)
Other Stuff:
Broadway's Next Hit Musical (improv, and cheaper tickets that CCL)
Lily Tomlin
k.d. lang
Capitol Steps
Anything look good?
2011 - 2012 performing arts season:
k.d lang- September 16 & 17, 2011
Anat Cohen- September 23, 2011
Brasil Guitar Duo- October 1, 2011
Broadway's Next Hit Musical- October 6 - 8, 2011
Boston Brass- October 21, 2011
Fiddler on the Roof- October 21 - 27, 2011
Te Vaka- October 29, 2011
Sweet Plantain- November 4, 2011
The New Standards- November 12, 2011
The Nutcracker Ballet- November 25 - 27, 2011
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Holiday Show- December 9, 2011
Disney's Beauty and the Beast- January 12 - 21, 2012
Mike Garson- January 27 & 28, 2012
The Capitol Steps- February 3 & 4, 2012
The Blue Bear- February 10 - 12, 2012
Masters of the Fiddle- February 18, 2012
New Shanghai Circus- February 24 & 25, 2012
Imani Winds- March 9, 2012
Tito Puente, Jr. Orchestra- March 24, 2012
Lily Tomlin- March 31, 2012
A Raisin in the Sun- April 13-15, 2012
Bettye LaVette- April 28, 2012
Rock of Ages- May 15-20, 2012
Fiddling around with the idea of an icon to represent "Unread Messages In Reply to You." If you log in, I've currently got one working next to where it says "Welcome, [user name]."
(I think, I don't know, nobody's actually replied to me yet).
Currently, it shows the "search" icon if there are no messages, and the "reply" icon if there are unread posts in reply to one of your own posts. Clicking on the icon in either case brings you to the search screen which shows you the full results of the "Unread Messages In Reply to You" query.
Upon looking closer, had an innocuous order of operations bug. Basically, my seen/unseen stuff was only being calculated after page render, making the item counts, reply icon, etc., appear to still be unread even though you were reading your last read post.
Fixed that. That's for being part of the process.
It gets more complicated (www.php.net).
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| right | ! |
| left | * / % |
| left | + - . |
| left | << >> |
| non-associative | < <= > >= <> |
| non-associative | == != === !== |
| left | & |
| left | ^ |
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Still can't put this book down, sooooo good. About 55% through.
And Tyrion is my favorite type of character: you love to hate him. But he's portrayed really well as a pseudo-antagonist, just a unique little guy that mixes things up very nicely. Other characters are frustrating as hell, but man, that's like real life. Essentially, the book thus far is very believable, which is often difficult for fantasy novels to actually succeed at. Plus, it's intelligent, as it's kept me guessing. We'll see if these feelings remain the same as the novel/series progresses.
New Escape Characters article, "Project Management", Mar 28, 2011.
Much... much longer than I was planning. But maybe makes up for the fact that I didn't write anything in February.
Well, that is lengthy. And depressing at length, at that.
I'm somewhat surprised you haven't turned to online dating. It seems like a system you could appreciate: matching people based on similarity in a set of parameters. Well, maybe not surprised, because I guess that would take longing, which you seem to not have? I'm unsure. I wouldn't lose all hope, though. I mean, I don't really understand women, I just hate them. And that seems to work.
Eh, I made the mistake of taking a data mining course in college. They taught us the "problem of dimensionality," such that given an N-dimensional data set, doing comparison between two points on an N-dimensional space is less and less accurate or meaningful the greater number of N dimensions you have.
So when I hear "based on hundreds of points of criteria" as a marketing ploy for a dating site, I hear increasing rate of error in determining similarity between two data points.
But, you know, I hear they work for other people.
That's a silly way to think about the issue. Of course, the error in every measurement is compounded by errors in any related measurement, but these aren't really measurements we're talking about; they're opinions. There is no error in opinions.
It would be crazy to judge someone based solely on one factor of their entire existence. Sure, the more metrics you have, the more complex the matching is going to be; but then again, these people have made their lives out of looking at success rates and making connections (I would imagine not solely based on similarity). Theoretically, you might be right; but theory is oftentimes hard to match to practical reality.
What about those dating services that work on the idea that we find compatibility using physical features. Where two compatible people often have similar features. Maybe there is a neckbearded lady out there waiting for you, which might actually be depressing. Or perhaps a lady with awkward social skills and a utilitarian type of haircut and wears whatever glasses happened to match her budget at the time.
If nothing else the the first part of the angels comic may hold truth. Accepting that you don't need to understand attraction or emotional connection to maintain a relationship. And perhaps the willingness to accept attraction may exist towards you, regardless of frequency.
Yeah, well, you're a silly way to think about the issue.
I don't doubt they've got sophisticated heuristics based on millions of data points, well-anchored in practical reality. I just have zero confidence in said algorithms.
You also know well enough that I hate having to rate things numerically (How many stars, Josh? Just answer how many goddamn stars?), where this kind of thing should be right up my alley. I'm fairly certain the same applies here.
Also, you have to give them money.
"I just have zero confidence in said algorithms."
So, you're essentially throwing away all evidence to the contrary, then? It seems like you're saying, "I can see that these websites work. But they won't work for me. Because, although I admit that they have very advanced algorithms for matching people that seem to work, I am an outlier totally alien to their systems. They can never match me, I am the most unique of all humans!"
One thing you might want to factor into your analysis is that most people that use these dating websites probably describe themselves as socially inept (like yourself - no offense). Otherwise they would go out into the real world to talk to people.
Also, in another appeal to your rational side, you are working off of an incredibly small dataset for this entire conversation.
I honestly don't know why I'm arguing with you on this. Maybe it's because I hate to see my friends resign to failure with no reason to do so. We might all die alone, but no one should live alone.
Having done a little bit of online dating, I don't think most users consider themselves socially inept, or could even be called socially inept.
I think my poor experience in the online dating world is due to the fact that I was matched with only a total of 4 people across 2 different sites in a span of 6 months. A little disheartening, especially since I met with two of them and it obviously didn't go anywhere.
Save your money, J-Rho. Don't do online dating.
While the money invested might not always be a worthwhile investment (6 months might be a bit premature drop dead date, but not unreasonable), statistically it might be worth trying rather than reluctantly admitting defeat beforehand. Give it a whirl, Josh, I'd do the same if I didn't hoodwink drug convince Kristen to marry me.
I was being a bit facetious on the "sophisticated heuristics" part. And I don't live alone. I have plants. You've met them.
Here's more of what I mean. When they're doing comparisons, they're looking for similarities (with the same error-ridden N-dimensional similarity methods I was citing earlier). Upon finding similarities, they look at trending statistics (Human1.propertyX AND Human2.propertyZ imply SUCCESS with N% confidence level). They find these trends based on their previously determined relationship success data, but with anything statistical, it's only to some degree of confidence.
But here's where it bugs me a bit. The things they trend for isn't necessarily "SUCCESS." Not only can they rarely define such a thing (What constitutes a successful relationship? Weeks? Months? Marriage? etc.), but it's super hard to say whether people will be giving them accurate data after the fact. (www.pbfcomics.com)
Instead, the sites I've (briefly) looked at were trending/matching on "compatibility." Which sounds great in an advertisement, but what basis "compatibility" is determined from is never really revealed.
Maybe their process is reviewed by professional psychologists. Maybe by professional relationship counselors. Or somebody who would have any relevant knowledge on the subject. But if you're competing for the repeated business of lonely people, it's not necessarily in your best interest to generate successful relationships. And I bet a doctor's consulting fees are far greater than those of a programmer, or statistician.
EDIT:
I have also yet to see proof that geographic proximity isn't a better contributing factor than anything the dating cites trend on.
Well, my main point is you can't say it sucks for you unless you try it. Then again, my arguing assumes you would like some kind of companionship? So maybe we can stop now.
Also, I happened on a study from 2005. Says that chatting/emailing before actual dating increase the chance of further dates. But even more than that, gifts seem to work. Oh, women.
Just got done reading the latest article. Interesting stuff. I'm not asking this because I'm offended, but the article does bring about a theme (of which there are many) I'm interested in exploring:
Do you think a majority of your time with friends is wasted time?
The older I get, and the less beholden I am to social, familial, and professional obligations, I find that I am slowly becoming more like the ‘nerd’ that the author describes.
I’m sorry, friends, blind dates, even you, random girl at a bar. Your time may be better spent elsewhere. I just don’t understand.
I'll be honest, I'm not buying it. I think in your article you have left out a variety of key points surrounding your personality to enhance the ones that you value the most at the time of writing the article. You don't mention the amount of time spent with friends, the conversations had between them, the several instances of going out of your way due to the feelings of others. My guess is you don't mention them because it would take away from your objective.
As I said, interesting stuff.
Do you think a majority of your time with friends is wasted time?
Not the case at all. It's time I value immensely. But it's also time that, as the trends in the article mention (being increasingly obsessive and single-minded about my projects, etc.), it becomes more and more difficult to make such time. Which may sound bizarre: I get out of the house (sometimes), or have folks over (sometimes), or I go out and do things, with people, no less.
What's changed/changing is that it's rare now that I seek such things without external prompting. Given any significant amount of free time I have, I find myself cozily nestled/chained into projects, and even in breaking away from these projects they're often about all I can think about. It's only in things that are highly regimented, strictly scheduled, and arbitrarily controlled that I actively (as opposed to passively) participate in a social setting (see: Ultimate Frisbee, Weekly Movie Night, idkfa, etc.).
My apology you quoted above to friends, dates, and barfolk isn't because I feel that I am wasting my time in interacting with them. My apology is for what I described in the article: my inability to understand a series of key concepts with regards to dealing with other people. People trying to interact in regards to these concepts are met with confusion, pessimism, derision, or just plain rudeness. And that's not something that should be excused.
And as for omitting other redeeming qualities: In describing this misunderstanding, I may have made myself sound like a robot, but not to the degree that I'm misrepresenting myself (I'm a programmer, after all). And yes, my objective was to describe this trend, and to tell a story, and show people what code looked like, and as so, skipped the parts where I describe my other properties that aren't relevant to my misunderstanding. I was trying to keep it below 5000 words.
More just to confirm that I'm not the only person (jtnimoy.net) concerned with how computers are portrayed in popular culture. An article, with pictures, about the guy who was involved with the "computer-y" special effects in Tron: Legacy. And I can vouch: I do use some of the things shown in the movie during my day-to-day.
It's not my fault Mallory wouldn't let me in :-D.
Also did Libby srsly get drunk enough at my party to forget her phone in full plain view on my table? Because, apparently, I did most of the goldschlager myself. Or at least, that's what ive been told.
I was at work today (Sunday) and one of my coworkers said "Dave great party, dude." I didn't even know he was there.
So Colin Farrell is describing something to me. He hands me a pair of what look like sunglasses. I put them on, and notice something strange about what I see through the lenses. When I move my hand, it appears there is some delay between when I start to move and when I see the movement in the glasses, the delay becoming greater the more complicated of an action I perform with my hands (touching two fingers versus signing the alphabet).
"It's a time delay device," Farrell explains. "You put on the glasses, and you set your mind to a certain task. The glasses then fracture the universe, and you keep doing the task, and you're also freed of the task."
"The universe?"
"Well, maybe that's overly dramatic. More like it draws a line between you and now, and holds on to that line while you do something else," being no less opaque. "I'll show you."
He puts on the glasses, and starts on a chore, cleaning the toilet, I think. After about a minute, he puts on the glasses, which immediately vanish, but he keeps on working. I try to talk to him, but he doesn't respond until he's finished with the task, at which point the glasses reappear, and he starts talking to me again.
"See? I'm free to do other things, while I'm doing menial or unimportant stuff here."
"What other things can you be doing? You're not in your body, it seems."
"I have an entirely different life on the other side."
"Other side?"
He explains how the glasses create an entirely different universe, which he can live in without need or consequence.
A few minutes later, I'm talking with his daughter. She tells me how she hates the glasses and what they do to her father.
"How would you like it if half of the time you wanted to talk to your parent, they didn't respond because they chose to be somewhere else? Away from you?"
---
4:14am.
The dreams are sometimes this complex, yes. This one in particular was pretty hard to remember, especially because I didn't have the opportunity to write anything down.
Me remembering the dreams... well, it's like this: When I wake up, I remember a few ideas, images, bits that are mostly held together by feelings and a sense of things. The narrative I wrote for this one was what happened in the dream, but probably not in so many words. I remember Colin Farrell describing the things to me, I remember my hand gestures through the glasses, I remember basically him showing me an example, and I remember his family's distress because he chose to be somewhere else and not with them.
The rest I have to sort of work in there to provide a narrative that makes sense. It's me remembering the dream, and trying to describe the rest. There may be some artistic license, but I still had a crazy dream where Colin Farrell was a bad father.
Pictures from our Fairbanks trip this weekend.
 (picasaweb.google.com) |
| 2011 Fairbanks Trip (picasaweb.google.com) |
" 'Our blood is green, not red," one unidentified woman told the broadcaster, referring to the signature color of Gadhafi's regime. "He is our father, we will be with him to the last drop of blood. Our blood is green with our love for him.' "
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/20/134704978/after-u-s-allies-strike-gadhafi-vows-long-war (www.npr.org)
they're....romulan? vulcan?
So, considering the number of weddings coming up in this group of friends, I figured there must be others besides me in the midst of trying to find a wedding dress. For those of you doing the same, how is your hunt going? And by that, I actually mean, please give me advice because I can't find anything I like that doesn't cost an amount I am simply unwilling to pay!
I didn't have too much trouble luckily. My mom and I went out one day and started at Davids where I tried on about 10 dresses (only 3 were actual possibilities, the others were just me trying on types/silhouettes that I didn't think I wanted, but wanted to make sure I didn't like them). Personally, I didn't think the quality of those dresses was very nice, and for every dress I tried on there was at least one aspect that I really didn't like.
After that we went to Anderson's and I tried on 4 dresses. There were two that I liked quite a bit. We marked those two down and then a couple weeks later I tried them both on again and made my choice.
I went into the whole thing without too many expectations and not much of a picture in my head of what I wanted, so I was fairly easy to please.
As far as cost goes, the really low-priced dresses didn't impress me at all as far as quality goes - both in looks and feel of the material. The dress I found wasn't too expensive, but was a bit above what I wanted to spend. I was going to give in and pay for it, but luckily my Mom said she'd pay for it.
Anchorage really doesn't have very many bridal stores, so I didn't have many options (and I wasn't willing to fly out of AK just to look for a dress). Because of that I don't really have much advice as far as shopping around or trying to find a great deal.
Maybe you could try ebay (not the most sentimental way to find your dream dress but could save lots of money). If you already know one or two dresses you want you could search for them on ebay and probably find a decent price... Or find out when the new season of wedding dresses comes out, and maybe stores will have a sale to clear out some of the previous season's inventory.
I don't fall into the 2011 bride group, and it's been a while, but I also got my dress at Anderson's in Anchorage. The prices seemed reasonable, and the dress materials didn't seem super cheap.
In the lower 48, I have known several people who had good luck at Davids. I'm not sure if the selection is somewhat dependent on the year, and the specific store location (my gut tells me yes), but they were all pretty pleased with their dresses.
No, I stole the photo from somewhere, think it was in Washington, but Snowzilla exists in Anchorage: Snowzilla (msnbcmedia.msn.com)
Bought a new bike on Sunday. It's a Redline conquest sport, a cyclocross style bike.
I'm going to make some mods in the next couple of days like adding fenders and maybe a rack on the back and possibly some new handle bars (these seem way too narrow). This should be a pretty commuter friendly bike. I might also throw my current commuting skinny tires on there as well as disc brakes (for which the bike is already compatible).
Today was my first real ride on it and my second longish ride in a long time, a distance of almost 11 miles in just over 35 minutes or so. The ride is pretty flat with 1 big long uphill at the end. It feels way different than my other bike but its not bad, I just have to get used to it.
Ninja Assassin is over the top action throughout. Battle: LA I think had only one scene where I truly guffawed at the action.
Ninja Assassin was to display ninjas ASSASSINATING! Battle: LA was to display marines going "hoo-rah" and "FRAG OUT" and burninating aliens. Actually there wasn't much burnininating but I just wanted to use that word. They kicked some alien ass after some "lessons learned" after getting their own asses kicked.
For both movies, you don't go to them for a mind-blowing or a "thinking" sort of movie. You go to them to see action because youre a MAN. So, man up. Bitch.
