Story Archive - January 2004
Pontificating about the Posse (01/31/2004)
The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.
- St. Augustine
Why is it am I not up in my hometown hanging out with my friends this weekend? That's the question running through my mind right now. Over the past couple weeks there was an increase in gathering-related chatter on the wire. I just decided to be a contributor and not front the event. I watched it fade away to nothing. Why is that? How many of them are sitting at home right now thinking, "man, I wish I was hanging out with my friends."
I don't get the boys sometimes. I don't get why it seems that vast majority of time if I don't step up to the plate and make something happen then nothing happens. "You're a lynch pin Jordan." Bah! I suppose when we're talking with strangers, I tend to be the one looking at their shoes instead of mine (This is a reference to a hilarious oft-plagiarized quote about groups of people known to be introverts). Yet, among my high school friends there are amazingly more proactive and social people than me. Make it happen! It's not hard guys! You all want to see each other!
Maybe it was growing up with all the CiTs and MUPTs and stuff that I went to. When you enjoy the company of other people, the actual event that's occurring is more of an excuse to gather than a reason. I just don't understand the dynamic that makes interest without realization occur, this dynamic where no one else seems to jump forth and spearhead any of these initiatives. If someone had simply said, "Let's hang out at 18th and Capital for a couple of hours," I totally would have braved the two hour commute each way to get a chance to see them.
Instead I'm doing my standard nothing-better-to-do (TM) Saturday: geo-caching, library, Zocalo, writing, FFX-2, reading and other such things. Not that it's a bad thing. It's a lot of fun! But I mean guys, come on!
Speaking of them flaking. I recall _way_ back during our first year of college I pioneered and effort to generate a mix-tape where we all donated a couple of songs. It took a decent amount of badgering, but it happened. This was in the days before digital music, so it involved me having to gather together the CDs (or tapes from Chris) from all my friends and putting it together on tape. It happened, not because everyone was interested, but because I was willing to _make_ it happen(I recently re-gathered all the songs digitally for a nice walk down memory lane). So, many years after, there was some pressure from the guys on me to repeat the effort. I was amazingly busy at the time and suggested someone else spearhead it. I remember a quick half-assed effort that occurred and died off into oblivion. I smacked my fist against my head (this is the sign language for "dumb") much like I'm doing right now as the random patrons here stare at me. You lazy lazy boys. LAZY!
Immersion -Level 3- (01/29/2004)
Alder woke up to the sound of the children's cartoon theme playing from his networker. He had the complete collection of title tracks for the old weekday afternoon cartoons and the device picked one at random when calls came in. The intent of the esoteric rings was that when he was in public, another equally esoteric person might recognize the ring and comment on it. This would break the social awkwardness and perhaps allow the two of them to become friends. It was one of the many overly complex schemes Alder had to increase the chance of meeting other people. It rarely worked.
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Polar Bears (01/29/2004)
For by my faith, senor, the poor man is incapacitated from showing the virtue of generosity to anyone, though he may possess it in the highest degree.
- Don Quixote
Last Saturday I was at a birthday party (that mostly involved cards and wine) for one of my environmental-wacko friends. Like all good friends, they asked for no presents. Still, I love to break that rule and donate some money somewhere in their honor. For them, I remembered that the Defenders of Wildlife organization allows people to adopt struggling animals! She is now the proud parent of a polar bear named Snowflake! I think it arrives in 2-4 weeks and I don't know where she's going to keep the thing in her apartment. I hear polar bears require really big litter boxes. Snowflake is also somewhat disgruntled and enjoys mauling people who drive SUV's (because it contributes to global warming and destroys his habitat).
Tone Deaf (01/28/2004)
"How nice the human voice is when it isn't singing." - Rudolf Bing
I got Apple's new iLife 2004 suite, and I've been playing around a lot with GarageBand. My first project was to mix my own version of Billy Joel's Piano Man. I can play the piano parts (without the fills or other fancy stuff) if I get multiple takes trying to do it. I can play the harmonica part. I certainly know the lyrics. So I was throwing this all together and recording when I came to the most amazing discovery. I am astoundingly tone deaf when I sign. I tried to do a verse a couple dozen times and was just awestruck at how horrible I am.
Sure, I can tune my saxophone by ear, but I can't get anywhere near the note I want to hit while singing. I really tried! I even added a vocal track into GarageBand and piped through the headphones while I sang to try and make it really easy. Guess what. I'm absolutely without a doubt aweful. Wow. I'm still in shock. Not that I expect to be good, just that I never realized my singing can cause people's ears to bleed. I promise to never mock the horrible singers on American Idle again. I'm right down there in the bottom with them. Wow.
Anyway, here's a link to the first couple minutes of my rendition of Piano Man without the vocals. It's 344kb.
Shooting Free Since 1994! (01/27/2004)
You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I zoomed in to one of my company's San Francisco properties today. It's the one I theoretically have been working in for over four years now. Though, if I run the numbers, I'd wager I only spent about two years of working time there. How I often miss the days I was working fulltime at 101 California. Due to various lease shuffling going on, this may have been my last trip to this place where I managed never to spend the night. Here's to you building! May you continue your proud history!
Attention people at TOEFL: Please automatically fail anyone using the word "upgradations." Thank you.
Hotel Bars and Women (01/26/2004)
I'm a simple man. All I want is enough sleep for two normal men, enough whiskey for three, and enough women for four.
- Joel Rosenberg
I saw Lost in Translation at Flicks the other night. I can only shake my head. I happen to know for a fact that sulking over whiskey in a hotel bar while on a business trip has a very low probability of causing exceptionally attractive and intelligent women to mingle with you and make your travels more bearable. Trust me on this on. I have conducted rigorous field research.
Self Delusion (01/26/2004)
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
- Thomas Jefferson
One of the greatest benefits I've discovered from trying to post my thoughts is that it causes me to think through them more clearly. I spend a lot of time at night awake rolling over thoughts in my head. (Aside: It takes me at least an hour before I fall asleep at night. There was a report in one of the science magazines I read that shows a correlation between people who take a while to fall asleep and a slightly shorter life expectancy. But the way I see it, if you get an extra hour awake each day, you get roughly an extra month of waking ours in a year, so over the course of a lifetime waking hours tend to balance out in the long.)
Still, reminiscing to yourself in a half-conscious state is different than trying to roll your thoughts into a cohesive pattern to express them to others. One of the things I find most worthy of note is the thoughts I have that I know friends or family would be entertained by, but I'm hesitant to divulge. For example, I was thinking about what the stupidest things are that I've done in my lifetime.
I came up with a pair of truly foolish things I did during my teenage years. Both were caused by peer pressure. I realized moments into the event that it was dumb, and yet because the other person involved seemed to think it was okay, I suppressed my urge to put a halt to it. I have to wonder if they were doing the same thing. That's how mobs work, right? Everyone is suppressing that little voice telling her it's wrong because everyone else seems to think it's okay, so even though everyone knows it's wrong everyone acts like it's okay.
Even though I know that a lot of my friends would love to hear anecdotes from my teenage years, I've been hesitant to post them. A little struggling told me that the reason I didn't want the world to know was because I didn't want my parent's to know. The knot of tentativeness was coming untied, but more struggling was needed. I really wasn't sure why I cared if my parents know. These are events that occurred when I was a teenager. They are over and done with. These are events that I completely acknowledge were stupid.
It's that false image of me that my parents have. It's one of those don't ask don't tell things. Sure, my parents are realistic enough to accept the fact that I did some dumb stuff when I was younger. Yet, since they don't know precisely what those things are, they can create a false image of that little boy that's slightly better than the real thing. So if they read those stories, that imaginary boy gets a little more tarnished. So, now I'm in my mid-twenties and I still don't want to disappoint my parents by breaking a fantasy that know is a fantasy by telling them I wasn't quite as perfect as they know I wasn't. Crazy, isn't it?
Card Games (01/25/2004)
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
- Oscar Wilde
I spent yesterday at my friend Kelly's birthday party. I played a game of cribbage where I kicked ass (by just a few points where the order of scoring made the difference). I played a game of Euchre where my partner and I kicked ass (by one point). I played a game of Hearts were I kicked ass (easily winning by three points). Sure, winning takes skill. But winning while obeying the Family Rule (TM), that takes MAD SKILLZ!
Man, when we spend a few hours for a birthday party drinking wine and playing cards, we must be getting old.
Mars Poses Emminent Danger (01/23/2004)
My vision is to make the most diverse state on earth, and we have people from every planet on the earth in this state. We have the sons and daughters of every, of people from every planet, of every country on earth.
- Gray Davis
My fellow Americans, the Mars rover Spirit is having difficulties communicating with Earth. This is a clear sign of aggression by our counterparts on Mars. The only acceptable action is to quickly act with the U.N. to get a resolution stating there will be dire consequences if the Martians do not repair our rover. If communication remains faulty, the U.S. should launch a pre-emptive strike against this obviously hostile force. We will remove the Martian regime and spread a peace-loving Democracy to the rest of the Solar System. God bless.
Immersion -Level 2- (01/22/2004)
Excerpt from "Introduction to the Corporation - Birth of the Wired"
With each introduction of tools and abstractions making it easier to develop complex computer systems, developers inevitably add a new level of complexity to the problem. Since their inception, computers have been able to do menial and repetitive tasks with overwhelming speed. The limitation in the simplicity of the task is not inherent in the machine itself. It is a flaw in the machine's creator. It is the simplicity of the language humans use to communicate with it. The machine hungers for knowledge and new capability, we are merely not yet smart enough to feed it.
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More Cards! (01/21/2004)
Boy do I love getting new cards! I can't imagine if I actually tried to keep all these things in my wallet. This quarter has to be "The Coolest Flicks Pass Ever (TM)".
The Math (01/20/2004)
If you can't do the math, then get out of the equation.
- "The Math", Hilary Duff
I was cleaning up some of my old college files. I came across my Midterm for Math 111, Abstract Alegebra I. Man I used to be smart.
"The only time we may use the division algorithm and remainder as a test of ideal membership is when we have a Groebner basis of a polynomial ideal... to do an acurate test one could simply construct a Groebner basis from this one using the Buchberger Algorithm..."
"We know by Dickson's Lemma and the definition of a Groebner basis that the monomial ideal <LT(I)> has a finite basis..."
"Sorry. Taking off points for minor troubles isn't really partof my job description. It's one of the perks."
Hardware Optimizations (01/19/2004)
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
This weekend's two attempts at geo-caching were failures. There is an important rule. Never go searching for the cache when passerby's who aren't "in the know" are about. I rolled up at the first park in San Lorenzo and there were a pair of people walking their dogs. I sat on the swings for a good twenty minutes. They didn't leave. So I left and went to another cache slightly farther away at a nearby trailhead. It was right next to a commercial construction building and there were workers busy working on Sunday on a three-day weekend. Work on Americans. I grabbed myself a nice frosty at Wendy's and went back to the first park. It was empty for about five minutes, and then those two dog-walking freaks came back! It was around an hour since they had first arrived. They weren't playing with their dogs; they were just walking in circles around the perimeter with them! MAN! I suppose there's the far-flung chance that they were also geo-cachers just waiting for me to leave. Bah.
I upgraded my PC's hard drive a weekend or two ago. I went from twenty gigs to one hundred and twenty gigs! I find the best way to run hard drives is sitting on top of boxes slightly outside the open case. Don't you? When all was said and done, I had two left-over screws that were clearly screwed into something when I started. I call that hardware optimization.
The motto of Discover magazine is something like, "Brining you Science through Pictures." Here I give you "Jordan's Life Through Pictures" because I know the world is filled with lazy and illiterate people.
Accents (01/18/2004)
"When someone with a rural accent says, "I don't know much about politics," zip up your pockets." - Donald Rumsfeld
There are a lot of accents in America. From the south, to Boston to the valley, people have divergent accents. Some people will ax you questions while others get their car warshed or like, totally, like surf on tonar waves!
Ever noticed that news reporters all seem to have the non-accented American accent? I remember back in psychology class reading about various studies that showed that the average English speaker finds, on average, that people with unaccented American accents seem more intelligent then people with the various other accents. Interesting study, eh?
People online have accents as well. A good portion of my inter-personal communcation is through text. It has been for around fourteen years. (That's a scary thought in itself.) People online have accents as well. Some are 3l!t3. Some r 2 lazy 2 type n stuff. some dont use the computers punction or capitalization. Others are busy constructioning new vocabularizations about agreeance and unagreeance.
And I've come to the conclusion that the unaccented online accent sounds more intelligent. What accent is that? I mean, spellchecker and grammar checker is built into just about everything. People have to have some level of intelligence to be able to use a computer don't they? Typos caused by fast typing are one thing, clearly purposeful incorrect grammar? Yeesh!
Come on! This is from a business e-Mail I got recently. "There r few probs that r common with both methods.."
Why don't you just... (01/17/2004)
Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.
- Mark Twain
There's a word for it in the Dune Chronicles. The concept is memories that can't help but to be remember. Often, these memories are nothing special, but they are for some reason particularly unforgettable. I have a good portion of "why don't you just" memories with my parents. You know, when they would do something in some that I thought was particularly complicated, and my little mind had the simplified solution.
When they got home from the office and would immediately go and change clothes. "Why don't you just wear something comfortable to work, and then you don't need to change when you get home in the evening." It seems like such a simple idea, doesn't it? I get it now. I take off the collared shirt when I get home. I hate those stupid shirts.
"Why don't you just pay the bills the moment they arrive, then you don't have to worry about remember to do it on the right day of the month?" I tried that concept and failed. My mail piles up, often for weeks, before I take the time to go through it (bills included). I thank technology for APS.
"Why don't you just wash the dishes the moment you finish with them (like the coffee mug), and then it's not a pain to clean them." Sure, good idea, but there are three unwashed coffee mugs sitting in my sink right now.
Should I have known better? No. I was a punk kid. They're all good ideas though!
Geek++ (01/16/2004)
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
One of my big Christmas presents was a rain check for a new super-duper phone. I picked the one I wanted; the Handspring Treo 600. It's got it all! It's a Palm, plus a phone, plus a camera! It's got Bluetooth so that I can sync with my Mac and even use it to dial into my ISP from my Mac from anywhere! I've been calling the wireless store weekly asking if they were in stock and the store kept telling me to call back the next week. Well, finally, they told me that Handspring is on backorder, and they don't expect to receive a shipment for a couple months! WHAT?!? Then they told me if I placed an order through the website, I could probably get it in a couple weeks. So I placed the order. Now I'm all anticipatory. I will not longer need to carry around my Palm and my phone, cause it'll all be in one neat device. Plus it has that built in digital camera so I can take sneaky pictures of people when they don't expect it and violate other's reasonable expectations of privacy! SWEET! I totally here that the item is imbued with a +2 to INT!
Immersion -Level 1- (01/15/2004)
"Wake up Alder."
As the disembodied female voice filled Alder's apartment, his eyes slowly cracked open. It was dark in his apartment. The window shades were all closed. Blankets nailed to the walls served as a second line of defense against the outside world. It was always dark in Alder's apartment. The only illumination was the unnatural glow of terminals scattered throughout the room. He looked over at the clock and read the time. It was seven in the evening; he had over an hour before he was supposed to meet Elisa for dinner.
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CiT from Afar (01/14/2004)
Sure, I can't go up to Sacto for all the various TCR inspired coffee events, but a few cameras and some iChatAV can do wonders...
My Good Buddy Wil Wheaton (01/14/2004)
What?!? How dare you accusing me of exagerating when refering to Wil as my good buddy! We've totally traded emails! You can even verify it against his PGP signature!
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
I *have* thought about calendar stuff. I may modify some of the phpwebsite calendar code and work it into my own site, at some point in the future.
Thanks for reading,
Wil
Jordan combined 1s and 0s thusly:
> Wil,
> curious if you've ever thought about putting up a calendar about the
> future public events you're engaged in. The number of times I've seen a
> "My movie X is on TV TONIGHT!" or "Come to my signing TODAY!"... but
> it's always the day AFTER... cause I'm not checking your site 3-4 times
> a day. Silly me.
>
> -jdr
- --
"The administration has made homeland security a political issue. The president consistently uses terror for political gain . . . John Ashcroft's Justice Department is all about hype and not reality."
- -Ivo Daalder, former National Security Council director for European affairs.
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=87zO
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Pirating (01/14/2004)
Even pirates, before they attack another ship, hoist a black flag.
- Gen. Bela Kiraly
Hmm... I make this argument a lot... I was making it to a friend just the other day. I think it's so convincing, I almost believe it.
Software piracy is theft. When someone pirates software, she is taking a product that doesn't belong to her. Yet, if software piracy is theft, and morality tells us theft is wrong, why do so many people participate in this form of theft? I guess my bitter view of the world should lead me to assume that everyone out there is immoral. Still, I'm not sure most people who steal software view it as immoral. I'm not sure they're wrong about it that either. I think it's because down inside of themselves they've reach an understanding that not all theft is immoral.
What makes theft immoral? What is the root cause of the taboo we place against the theft of an item? It all revolves around the fact that a thief is depriving someone else the rightful use of an item. That's how rights work, right? I have the right to do anything I want so long as it doesn't tread on the rights of another person. When an item is stolen from a person, there is a monetary loss associated with it. You've hurt that person.
Yet digital piracy is a different from the standard form of theft. There is no physical product that is taken from another individual. The thief hasn't deprived another of anything. In fact, in most cases the owner of original copy has willing given it to the other person.
Many people who pirate a piece of software are acquiring something they would never buy on their own. The thief is acquiring a piece of software that they do not need. The software is merely a luxury.
If she were unable to find that piece of software illegally, then she would still never buy it. This is poignantly true for the tech savvy out there. We don't need to buy an operating system because we can always run Linux. We don't need to buy a product like Microsoft Office, because we can always run Open Office. For the majority of what we do, there is a decent free software alternative.
So, if the thief would never purchase the software, then that means that there has been no potential loss caused to the software company. In fact, the software maker has a gain from this theft. The person is now going to tell others they use the product. The product is going to gain market share. The product is now more likely to be purchased.
So, under the condition that a person illegal acquires a copy of a piece of a software that they would never buy, no person has had harm committed to her, no consumer is deprived of a physical item, no vendor is deprived of a physical item, no vendor has lost a sale. I suppose the conclusion is that software piracy can be mostly moral in limited cases.
Don't start pointing immoral fingers at me either! I paid retail for Panther. I paid retail for War Craft III. I paid retail for Quicken.
Apolitical (01/12/2004)
"言わぬが花" - Japanese Proverb
I was called a "freaky liberal" today. It meshed well with someone's comments over the weekend that I am a "stupid right wing republican." It feels good to be labeled sometimes. I will say, proudly, that I am not a registered democrat. I will say, proudly, that I am not a registered republican. I will say, proudly, that I am not a registered independent. I will say, proudly, that I am not a registered green. I will say, proudly, that I am not a registered libertarian. I will say, proudly, that I am registered. So what the heck is left? The world may never know.
I love politics. I love that the issues are so amazingly complex. I love that people can dedicate years of their lives to researching the best possible solution for many of the problems out there. I love that the average American can form an opinion on these things that they staunchly believe to be the correct opinion. Yeesh!
I have few political opinions. The issues are just too complex for me. Sure, it's okay to be arrogant if you truly are better than everyone else. I'm not. I have no doubt that these politicians (or at least their staff) have spent a lot of time really researching and figuring out the right way to go. I have no doubt that most of that is beyond most Americans. Americans, far too busy and/or stupid to really understand the issues, form opinions based on the knowledgeable summaries of others. Of course, those summaries tend to have an agenda of proving one purpose or another. So it all comes down to whom you believe really. Each side of an issue is going to put forth an argument that supports them. There's rarely lying going on. There are just so many facts out there, that nearly any opinion can be proven.
Sure, the republicans tend to be all about having less government and letting people take responsibility for their own actions and the welfare of their fellow humans. I think it sounds like a great idea. But wait! We've got a few thousand years of historical data to show us that people don't take responsibility for their own actions and the welfare of the fellow humans.
I remember a wonderful debate recently when California passed laws basically requiring anyone under eighteen to wear a helmet if they are riding anything with wheels. How is that the government's responsibility? It's not! Clearly, the parents should be taking responsibility for their child's safety. Clearly, the parents don't take that responsibility. So then what? It's just tough luck to be the kid who has parents that aren't keeping him safe? It's so complex! IT'S SO COMPLEX!
Whatever. I take responsibilities for my own actions. I do my best not to put restrictions on other people's actions when they don't affect me. Of course, we all know the damn butterfly on the other side of the world affects me. I can swing my fist around. I know that my rights only extend to the end of my knuckles, and you rights began where they meet you face.
Resemblence? (01/10/2004)
Subject: Master and Commander
To: "Jordan"
So I don't know if it is just me, and it could be, but I saw Master and Commander the other day and I swear you look like 1st Lt. Thomas Pullings as played by James D'Arcy
look at the simiarities, striking
really, I had no idea that you liked sailing, let alone acting. Just thought you should be aware of you hollywood doppelganger.
<snip>, tropics
Personally I think Mr. D'Arcy looks more like my brother in that particular photo. Plus, he doesn't look that much like either of us in most of his other photos. Still, I've yet to see the movie,
Geo: Caylie Cache 2 (01/10/2004)
We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness.
- C.S. Lewis
I had another successful geo-caching hunt! It's a pretty fun sport for the simple little parks around here. Someday, I'll get ready to brave one of the harder to reach a cache that requires some amount of hiking. Still, hitting these simple parks around my house is great. What I find most amazing is that basically every park near my house has a geo-cache in it. If you don't cache, think of all those caches out there in the world near places you've been that you never knew about. My first cache find was at Manor Park, where I've played roller hockey for years. It amazes. I'm amazed.
So now I've found two of the three caches I went in search for. The cache that I couldn't find, the hider went over to look based on my clue, and the cache has vanished. So it was either washed away by the winter rain, or some unscrupulous person stole off with it.
New Cards! (01/09/2004)
I'm a proud member of the rabble.
- Benjamin Netanyahu
I love getting my new membership cards in the mail. Especially the ones that are really pretty. It's only my second year in the Sierra Club, but they've done a good job making pretty cards for those two years.
I also got around to get a new PADI diving card. I've had the Junior Diver card since I was around fourteen. As much as I liked it, it's nice to have a newer card with a newer picture and all that jazz.
And heck, I love excuses to use my scanner, ya know?
Conversations (01/09/2004)
Suicide is man's way of telling God, 'You can't fire me - I quit.'
- Bill Maher
"Do you have some free time today?"
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH. No."
"I need some help with Java security stuff."
"I need some help with Microsoft Commerce stuff. How does it feel to need?"
"I'm sorry, I was looking for Jordan. Not the sarcastic bastard I seem to have found."
"I'm sorry, Jordan committed suicide earlier this week."
"Ohh.... I'm sorry to hear that. Can I have his Mac?"
"No, he asked that it be buried with him."
"Damn..."
Cloak and Dagger (01/08/2004)
Gaudium et veritate
- St. Augustine
I saw him sitting in the corner of the bar. He had that perfect spot where the shadows fell over him and you could barely see his face. His lighter flickered under the table illuminating his hand enough so I could see the motions. He had flashed the rights signals.
I tried to be casual. Fear was washing over me, but I managed to stand up, wipe back the sweat and approach him. His look was menacing as I sat down at another chair at his table.
"Do you have it," he asked me intently.
"I wouldn't be here if I didn't."
I slid the disc across the top of the table. I couldn't tell for sure, but I think the faintest hint of smile appeared on his face. I picked up the small scrap of paper, tipped my hat, and left. I had to fight back the urge to skip on the way out.
Proposals are Hard (01/06/2004)
Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.
- Mark Twain
Today marked the last day my clandestine house guest was around. Now they are gone the number of photos involving me giving the camera the finger should greatly reduce.
I've been working hard on stuff I don't like too much... well.. working hard, or hardly working? You be the judge.
All this work has made me little behind in my reading too...
Bitterness and Meta-bitterness (01/07/2004)
Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.
- Kurt Vonnegut
My brother comment that after reading through my comments about the world, he decided I sound like a bitter old man. I heard one of my cousins comment over the holidays that she was bitter. There's all this bitterness out there in the world?
I suppose my bitterness can better be expressed as disappointment. Or maybe it's best described as frustration. There is a level of respect, kindness and basic human decency that I expect out of everyone in the world. It's that expectation that leads to the problem. When people violate what I consider to be the simple rules of communal behavior, I take it poorly. I'm bitter, because I see it more often than I should. Really, considering we're all human, and these are the "basic" rules, I should never have to see it. The fact that I do makes me bitter.
What's worse, I'm bitter about that. The fact that people violate these rules makes me bitter. The fact that people make me bitter makes me bitter. It's this crazy form of meta-bitterness; it's being bitter about being bitter.
Now a quick story holidays, but retold by my good friends Patroclus and Mr. Squirrel.
Patroclus: How do you like the holiday season?
Mr. Squirrel: I don't like it very much. I hate having to stand in all these long lines of people trying to get gifts. I'd rather be doing other things.
Patroclus: Well, you just need to change your attitude. I remember when I made the realization that everyone else in the world is a potential friend. You should look at everyone else standing in line as a potential friend. Why not strike up a conversation with them?
Mr. Squirrel: I have enough friends. I'm too lazy to make more friends. I mean, it's like every piece of furniture out there is a potential piece of furniture I could put in my apartment, but why would I want to? If I took home all the furniture I saw, or even just one piece from everywhere I went, my place would just be cluttered with a lot of stuff I don't really like.
Patroclus: It's a good thing that people aren't pieces of furniture then.
Mr. Squirrel: I think it's an unfortunate thing. I tend to like most pieces of furniture.
Peanut Gallery (01/02/2004)
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
- William James
A new feature on ChaosServer! I have added (drumroll please)... THE PEANUT GALLERY!
What the heck is that? It's some wonderful cgi to allow the posting of comments by people. Why? Well, I get a healthy amount of e-Mail messages and IMs from friends, but they, wanting to inflate their egos, want my friends to also see their sheer brilliant responses.
So post away. I'll warn you, Tripod doesn't have the fastest CGI processing out there in the world.
The Peanut Gallery
Genius Bar (01/02/2004)
What the heck did you do, hold this over a burner?!?
- Ian (Apple Genius)
*snap* *crackle* *pop* Then I smelled smoke wafting up from where all my electronics are plugged in. I looked over just in time to see my lovely apple power cable, specifically the white box transformer portion, conjuring forth the faintest licking of blue flames.
I'm sitting at the Genius Bar in Apple's Palo Alto store now. They were impressed by the black singe marks on my cable. My battery is charging up nicely on a spare adapter, so I'm glad there was no damage to the machine. Just a few minutes from now and I'll be able to walk out the door.
More computer customer service centers need wireless networking so that bored people waiting to be helped can find something to do.
New Years (01/01/2004)
After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
- Cato the Elder
My New Years Toast #1 (Given to 1980's Dallas Dhu)
Here's to us, and those like us.
The world has few of men like us.
Of men like us, 'tis often said,
They have big hearts, strong hands, and smart heads.
Of men like us, 'tis often said.
Such a shame, they're mostly dead.
My New Years Toast #2 (Given to Champagne)
May your liquor be cold.
May your woman be hot.
May all of your crimes, go off uncaught.
I made scantly four new years resolutions last year.
- Get my wisdom teeth out. - Success!
- Stop traveling for work, or leave work. - Looking successful.
- [Scene Deleted] - Technically success, but realistically failure.
- [Scene Deleted] - Technically success, but realistically failure.
So, what are my new years resolutions for the year 2004?
- Go to the dentist!
- Continue non-traveling for work, or leave work.
- [Scene Deleted] - It's close to #3 from last year, but I've refined it to remove the technicality.
- Recruit a large squad of friends to bug Adam incessantly until... he knows what.
Current meatspace coordinates: 38 degrees, 39.506 minutes N latitude 121 degrees, 30.147 W longitude
