Resistance is futile (if < 1ohm)

What I've Been Writing

2006-04-21T08:21:06Z

Over the past few weeks I've been reminded by more than a couple of people within my sphere of influence that my blog has been relatively (okay, completely) dead for the past... wow, couple of months, I guess. Granted that at one point I was writing an entry nearly every day, it's got me thinking about why I was able to write so much back in the day and yet never find the motivation to do so now. I could come up with the usual excuses, I don't have anything to write about, or I don't have time, or what not, but those never seemed like the key reason behind why I haven't written much at all in my blog this semester. It wasn't until last night, as I was plodding away at my fifth and final hardware lab report for my digital design class, that it hit me: my creative-writing (more on that in a minute) energy has been poured into lab reports, modeling assignments, documentation at the College of Nursing, and other writing-intensive things. So, where has all the writing gone, you ask? (I'm reminded of an old commercial for Hershey's Cookies n' Creme chocolate bars, way back in the day... where the kid would open up the cookie jar and exclaim, "But where have all the cookies gone?!" after which the 'announcer' would butt in to say, "Into Hershey's Cookies n' Creme bars!" Random? yes. Pointless? probably. Amusing at this time of night? most definitely.) I'll try and explain as best I can.

First of all, I haven't forgotten my blog completely. Yes, it's gathered some dust, but it's still something that I want to write in often. I still come up with ideas, usually as I'm trekking around campus between classes (of course, by the time I reach my next class, and subsequently a piece of paper to write down said ideas, I've moved on to other things), and I have started a number of different blog entries only to leave them lying half-complete and never to return to them again. In fact, I've started more than one "mini-series" and made significant headway into them, after which I lost interest and left them until I find motivation to finish them. Both of them were Starbound related, and I had made outlines and everything for them, and had made it more than halfway through the first one, with more than enough content to finish it and do it complete justice—however, my ADHD kicked in somewhere there and I lost interest completely in finishing it.

Part of the reason, at least at first, that things were quiet was because I was (and still am) planning to restructure my blog and finally move it to my domain and Wordpress. While I need to just bite the bullet, setup Wordpress with the default layout and start using it, I decided I'd do something a bit more bold and attempt to do it "right". 37Signals would appropriately butt in here and add that I need to "get real", somewhat like they did to the beaver overthinking his dam (a beaver after my own heart, if I do say so myself). In the process of doing it "right," I'd be writing a Wordpress plugin that synchronized my LiveJournal and Wordpress the way I felt syncing should happen (no such complete plugin exists, else I'd just use that). It also involved splitting my blog at least three ways—into FutileOhm, a.k.a. my lengthy ramblings about whatever I feel like similar to what it is now, more Starbound/Church oriented writing about my experiences therein, and then random comments/blurbs/links/etc. that I find. The latter of the pieces is due to the fact that a lot of the time I have short ideas that I'd love to blog about, but they don't warrant a full entry on my blog. So, they sit in NetNewsWire (which conveniently saves tabs between web browsing sessions, which has proven as much a blessing as a curse), gathering dust, until I stumble across them a month or two later (no lie), realize that they're just taking up precious real-estate on my NNW tab bar, think to myself "oh yeah, I was going to blog about this..." and then close them. This usually happens during one of my periodic "cleanup" phases in which I attempt (often with great futility) to go against my pack-rat ways and get rid of stuff I'll never use again. Clearly this refactoring of my blog has yet to happen, so maybe it'll become my summer project. You know, because I'll have so much more time this summer when I'm working 40-hours a week on top of being at church or church-related stuff every day except Friday.

Enough of what I've been wanting to do though. The fact is, my classes this semester have been very demanding on my writing skill, as was my job at the College of Nursing during the month or so before I left. At the CoN, after telling my boss I was leaving, I was basically asked to document the programs I'd written and scripts I'd made and what not. I absolutely loved doing this—writing about something I've created and put effort into and know inside and out is something I thoroughly enjoy. I spent about two weeks writing documentation for the various projects I'd worked on, giving it to my boss and coworkers to experiment with, test, and critique, rinse lather repeat. It was intense. Well, any writing is intense for me, but this was even more so because I was on a deadline and I wanted to make sure it was understandable and complete before I was off the payroll. I got it done with time to spare, and while I miss that job, it was good to finish up there in order to make more time for Starbound, which was getting the short end of the straw more often than not when things got busy.

As my job at the CoN drew to a close, I figured I'd have some more motivation to write given the amount of writing I'd been doing the few weeks prior there. This wasn't the case at all. You see, around this time is when two of my classes kicked into high gear and started requiring me to write reports or projects in what has been ever-increasing volume. The most writing-intensive class I'm taking this semester is my CSE120 class, Digital Design Fundamentals. Basically, it starts with "this is a 1, and this is a 0, and they are not the same thing" and ends with us simulating the logical design (using logical AND/OR/NOT/etc. gates, binary switches, etc.) of a 4-bit microprocessor, complete with, well, everything that's needed to make a microprocessor that can perform logic and arithmetic automatically based on instructions and data stored in its ROM (don't worry, that sentence would have flown right over my head too before taking the class). Starting the second week or so of the course, we've had a lab report due every week, each of which has been of greater complexity than the last. Half of them were in the hardware lab, using wires and chips and logic trainer board things to build circuits, and the other half are simulation labs, where we build the circuits on the computer and test them that way.

My first lab report was 1 and 1/2 pages (not including the title page), whereas my last simulation lab report was about 11 pages long, minus 3 pages worth of graphics/tables. This is all single-spaced, so when you do the math you realize that's a lot of writing to have to be doing every week. It's not fun, sarcastic, witty writing either. Instead, it's technical writing about the guts of nice digital circuits, huge tables of 1's, 0's, and X's which are used to build said circuits, and pretty pictures of the simulations of the circuits themselves. (If you're curious as to what my writing style looks like when I'm writing dense, technical stuff using lots of fancy jargon to describe the guts of pieces of a microprocessor, check out one of my sim labs.) That said, I still thoroughly enjoy writing the lab reports for that class. They're enjoyable for me because the subject matter interests me, and as I said earlier, I like writing about things that I created in detail and explaining every last detail of them. That's precisely what I do for the lab reports—I build the circuit in the hardware/software lab, test it, and then write about it. While it's tedious, it certainly accomplishes what it's meant to do, and as a result I know the inner workings of everything I've built in that class pretty much by heart. Print the report on my nice, HP Soft Gloss Laser Presentation paper using my recently-acquired color laser printer, and you're left with reports that have received very high grades overall. Which, in turn, makes it worth my effort... the fact that I could spend two hours less and get a grade a few points lower (still an A) on each one doesn't make the extra effort I put into writing them—creating pretty tables, perfecting each simulated circuit in LogicWorks and tediously exporting it to PDF before plopping into InDesign—any less worth it.

My CSE class isn't the only one in which I've had to apply my furiously-longwinded writing skills, however. The other class this semester which has taken it out of my writing energy is my ECE100 Intro to Engineering class. Because growing up as the son of an engineer and realizing that everything I do, say, write, or make is grossly overengineered in itself is not enough to prove to ASU that I'm an engineer by blood, I am required to take a class which rivals 7th grade science with Mrs. Pate (heh, remember the guinea pig? rusty spoons? good times) in pointlessness. When we're not enduring hour-long lectures in which our "professor" (who's rarely there anyways) or TA sit and ramble to us in broken English about how thinking things through before you do them is actually a good idea, we're typically either making fun of said lectures in our groups (my group is the only reason I go to that class) or being assigned worthless assignments that somehow are supposed to teach us how to become engineers. Contrary to the writing I do for my CSE class, the writing I do for my engineering class is extremely witty, sarcastic, and bitterly-amusing. I don't think anyone in that class takes any of our assignments or "modeling projects" seriously, I just happen to add my own little spin in order to retain my sanity.

Take, for example, our second "modeling project". The prompt we were given is that this guy, Tom, gets home from a basketball game and wants a cold beer. However, he was stupid and short-sighted enough not to put any of his beer in the fridge beforehand. And, his freezer's broken. So, we had to figure out how long it'd take before Tom could finally relax with a cold one and further destroy his liver. One of my favorite quips (which my audience here will most certainly understand, at least) was one of the "assumptions" I made about the given problem:

Tom has no quicker way to cool his beer, but can occupy himself on MySpace (his pride and joy) while his beer is being refrigerated

Ah yes, there's just something so refreshing about relating any guy named Tom to the Tom of MySpace. If only we could be as cool as Tom.

As the semester wore on, my writing got less and less serious, as I realized that I could pretty much write whatever I wanted, so long as I had enough big words to confuse our TA into thinking I knew what I was talking about. When our third "modeling project" was assigned, I couldn't help myself. My introduction to the report follows:

Tom’s stuck in a rut... again. Now that he’s sober after his basketball-induced drinking binge, he realizes that his final exams are in no less than 10 days and that he is at risk of failing both his French and Calculus classes, which would completely destroy his chances of becoming an NBA draft pick next year. This not only entails excommunication from his girlfriend and the majority of his NBA-bound friends, it could mean the loss of a limb—not to mention his inheritance—upon breaking the news to his parents.

Upon realizing the imminent consequences, Tom decides action needs to be taken to ensure his knowledge of both French and Calculus will earn him at least a passing grade. To do so, he will have to utilize the language lab to improve his understanding of French, and hire a tutor to help him out with Calculus. Because of the successful solution to his beer-cooling dilemma, he has decided that engineering students should be utilized to over-engineer his conundrum in order to ensure he can earn passing grades on both of his critical final exams.

It gets better though. Today was our "final exam" in our engineering class. Basically, we were given yet another "modeling project" type thing, except this time it was to be solved by our groups and had to be typed up in class. I wish I had a copy of it, because ours was absolutely hilarious. Essentially, we were asked to come up with an "IT solution" to the traffic problems around ASU's campus. By "IT solution", it meant that we couldn't just build a bridge or widen the roads or otherwise normally engineer the problem, instead we had to use "Information Technology" to ease traffic congestion. Not content to just tweak the light timings a bit (the lights in downtown Tempe are exquisitely timed as it is, which is a topic for another time, I should think), we engineered our own solution that was something to the effect of this:

Due to lack of foresight in implementing Tempe's infrastructure when planned 126 years ago, large amounts of construction are now required to add additional infrastructure needed for future projects and as such traffic congestion around ASU has become a problem. In order to solve the traffic congestion problems around ASU, raw data from road sensors* and satellite-based real-time traffic monitoring which is already in place and collecting data, will be fed into our extremely complex and technically advanced traffic-flow modeling software which members of our IT department have been developing over the past 15 years. This modeling software will take control of the traffic lights and segment cars into functional groups, which will then be routed through the grid accordingly. To augment the dynamic nature of the supercomputer-powered traffic-flow system, automated, mobile barricades, manufactured by Tom's Barricades and currently in the testing phase, will be controlled by the supercomputer as well in order to dynamically adjust traffic flow based on current needs. For example, a large group of northbound traffic on Rural road may warrant three lanes being allocated for traffic flow northbound and only one being used for southbound traffic. When the funeral procession, traveling southbound, arrives five minutes later, the supercomputer will adjust the barricades accordingly, paying homage to the dead by moving them to the sides of the road and placing them into their 'bow' mode as the procession passes, functionality specifically added to the barricades complicated programming algorithms for such a purpose. In order to create room for the ~$4 billion supercomputer cluster that will need to be built near ASU, the Manzanita dormitory complex will be leveled to make way for a state of the art supercomputer facility to be built there. While many in Tempe may mourn the loss of a historic building such as Manzanita, the iconic design of the supercomputer facility, itself designed by a supercomputer in Tokyo, will bring Tempe's architecture into the modern age and will complement the Tempe skyline.

Although promotion of the current bus system in Tempe could provide a plausible solution to the problem at hand in a much more cost effective way, the engineers involved with the project believe that the busses are worthless, and thus such an option was not even considered.

If you couldn't tell, everything after the asterisk definitely utilized our creative license. And yes, pretty much everything I said there went into our report, including the destruction of Manzi (oh what a glorious day that'd be) and the automated barricades, complete with a function to make them bow as a funeral procession passes. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Whatever the case, the point I'm trying to make is that my creative writing has been expressed elsewhere and as such I'm just out of creative-writing juice by the time I get home and have finished my homework, etc. I'm hoping that this summer I'll once again be doing much less writing, and will thus have more energy to write here once again. Writing takes a lot of energy and work. Heck, just typing this entry has taken me the better part of three hours... and I could have said a lot more than I did. If you're not convinced (unlikely at this point), one of my favorite bloggers who I've mentioned before, John Gruber, has left his job in order to pursue blogging full-time. So, blogging can be a full-time career if you make it one. While I'd love to do that, obviously I can't right now, and thus I'll do my best to keep updating my blog when I can with my insight into strange, trivial, and interesting topics that most people wouldn't have noticed anyways.

Pick on Nick

2006-02-15T19:11:25Z

Lately, I've been feeling the need to write something profound; something that will shatter the norm and leave my mark on society. I could comment on the continued growth of communism on Rural Road, or try and extrapolate further on the University narthex, but those topics have been done to death elsewhere, so there's no need for me to continue my ride on those bandwagons. No, it's time for something different. It's time, my friends, to pick on Nick.

While the profundity may never surpass that of the original gem I wrote a few months ago, I have been slowly stockpiling ammunition and analyzing his every move (cameras? what cameras?) in order to provide a robust, unbiased commentary discussing the nuances of my good friend Nick.

On being too polite

Believe it or not, there is such a thing as being too polite. Politeness is, in its simplest form, a tradeoff between a small sacrifice of one's own convenience in order to increase someone else's. By all means, being polite is important (particularly for a sprightly young girlfriended lad such as Nick) but there comes a point when such politeness becomes overdone. Opening and holding the door for someone is an admirable gesture of kindness that Nick seems to have mastered well; however, part of holding the door and expecting others to proceed through said door whilst it is being held only works if the kind and gracious door holder knows when to walk through a door someone else is holding open for him, instead of attempting to encourage said door holder to enter before him, which, were he holding the door, he would refuse to do. Confused yet? Good. Me too.

You see Nick, politeness is something that has to be given and taken, all at once.

On giving and taking

Speaking of giving and taking, part of being an upstanding, respectable American citizen is knowing when to take without giving back. Clearly, it's the American way—had we not taken what was rightfully someone else's, we wouldn't have a country, much less large stockpiles of nukes in North Dakota. Sometimes you have to be arrogant, selfish, and willing to take what people put in front of you—there's no better way to make the founding fathers proud.

Sadly, Nick hasn't realized what it means to be a true American yet. You see, he tries to be too nice—often harboring the impression that he has to somehow repay those who generously bestow things of monetary value upon him. Things like, say, food. Every real American knows that if someone pays for your dinner, you politely thank them and smirk, knowing that you can spend your hard-earned money on items less essential to your survival—beer, drugs, hitmen, and other crucial-but-less-necessary items. Nick, it seems, has not discovered his genuine American potential, and as such acts foolishly when such a situation arises. When the generous benefactor finds, to some dismay, Alexander Hamilton resting on the back seat of his car, he can do nothing but wonder whose money was left in his car. Upon realizing that the money was left intentionally as a reimbursement, this benefactor wonders why his monetary extensions are under-appreciated.

Upon being questioned about this unfortunate series of events, Nick responded, "It was either me or Teddi. And Teddi steals money out of wallets, she doesn't give." Exactly. You see Nick, Teddi has realized her American potential and has embraced it with open arms. He was, of course, referring to another incident in which the previously mentioned benefactor was standing in line at a posh fast-food establishment quite near the heart of the Chandler ghetto (yes, believe it or not, such a thing exists). Upon opening his wallet to prepare money for the impending transaction, Teddi quietly reaches over, grabs a $20 bill, and pockets it, all the while resuming normal conversation. The astute benefactor, having prepared in advance for such a beneficiary, thinks nothing of it. That, my friends, is a quintessential example of doing things the American way.

On succumbing to temptation

One can't enumerate the virtues of Nick without mentioning his endeavors on the world wide web. The most notable of these is, of course, his MySpace. Nick was, back in the day, allied with me in my hatred of MySpace—however, it seems the teenage drama nirvana became too tempting for him to resist. It all started with a picture, and from there things took a distinctly downhill trajectory. It's safe to now say that Nick has been fully brainwashed by MySpace, and leave any further conclusions to the reader.

On walking a fine line

Lastly, it is hard to ignore the fine line Nick walks between being normal and—to use the popular term of the day—Brokeback-esque. Recently, Nick was caught raising his hand when the ever-present "who's gay?" question arose. To further incriminate him, just this past weekend, while sitting at a far less posh fast-food establishment a fair distance further from the Chandler ghetto, he quite brashly informed someone sitting nearby that his fly was undone. The victim of Nick's outcry, confident in his fly-zipping abilities, calmly responded that it was, indeed, zipped completely. I can only begin to question the train of thought that led to him looking at such an area long enough to make such a comment.

Furthermore, I'll let the comment below speak for itself:

As the great Jon Botsford said, "the only thing Nick has going for him on that front is his girlfriend."

And with that, I leave you to derive your own conclusions about the ubiquitously lovable Nick.

First Day Back

2006-01-17T17:22:01Z

So, it's my first day back at school, and I'm proud to announce that I'm already bored out of my mind between classes. I've been on campus for a whopping two and a quarter hours now, and already I've had some interesting experiences and observations to share with the world. Scary thought, eh?

The University Drive Narthex

I miss the days of yesteryear, when our church threw the word narthex around as if people actually knew what it meant. The narthex, for those who weren't around then or have simply never heard the word before, is the tiny room thing that sits between the lobby and the sanctuary. Think of it as a combination usher hangout, sound/light buffer, and de-pressurization chamber (for those really powerful sermons). It really serves few other purposes, aside from connecting the cry room and the kitchen to the sanctuary.

Today as I was walking from my car to class and waiting to cross University at the dual crosswalk just west of the bridge, I realized that the two crosswalks form a unique traffic phenomenon. You see, these two crosswalks are spaced as if they were at an intersection; however, no street intersects University at that point. So, you have traffic lights and crosswalk signs that act as if there's a complimentary set of lights and signs that don't actually exist. The inherent problem, of course, arises with yellow lights. People attempt to run the yellow light and make it past the first crosswalk, at which point they realize that there's a second crosswalk. By this time, of course, the light is red and large, unruly mobs of students are attempting to cross the street. As a result, the car is stuck between the two crosswalks in this dead space, feeling stupid for trying to run the yellow light and making a fool of itself in the process. This phenomenon reminds me of the narthex—you can make it in one set of doors but you still won't be home free, so if you try to squeeze in as they're closing the outer doors, so as not to appear late for church, you're still stuck having to open the second set, and as a result you gain nothing. Thus, I've decided to start referring to the space between the two crosswalks on University as the University Narthex. I think it's a fitting name...

Some people...

The other lovely experience I had today was in my first class of the semester—CSE 120 (Digital Design Fundamentals or somesuch) at 7:40 AM. I arrived about 15 minutes early and joined the growing handful of people waiting outside the classroom, which was locked. At 7:30, the door clicked, and the card reader next to it changed from red to green. I thought that was pretty cool, namely that the door automatically unlocked for us, and we didn't have to wait for a professor to show up. The room itself consisted of about 50 computers, weird little Dell things with decent flat panel monitors, at angles facing inwards in pairs of two at tables. I sat down and class started, and a little while later this guy comes in and sits down in the chair next to me. After uttering a few rather loud complaints about how he "froze [his] [expletive deleted] off getting there," he tried to log on to his computer and wasn't able to because it wasn't working. Instead of moving to another seat, he asked me if he could get on the computer in front of me real quick to look something up. Of course, me being me, I let him do so, and after taking about 5 minutes to just get logged on to the stupid thing, he proceeded to look up his schedule. All of this of course was happening as the professor was lecturing, which was mildly annoying.

Upon seeing his schedule he muttered a few more expletives and as far as I can tell proceeded to drop/add a class from his schedule, and then write down his other classes. Okay, I thought, he's almost done. Not so. Then he logged on to Facebook, and started updating his info on there. Lovely. A few minutes later he finished, mind you without logging off of the computer, and I figured my nightmare was over. Later, of course, he asked to borrow a pencil to use for the pre-test thing we were given. With nobody else around to give him one, I felt obligated to, and as is to be expected I never got my pencil back. Argh, how annoying.

I'm a programmer, dangit

My job has been interesting of late. I still enjoy work 95% of the time, but lately I've been a little frustrated with my role relative to the others working there. The big thing I've been working on lately is a big logon script in VBScript. My hatred for VBScript aside, I made good progress on the script, learning how to interact with SQL Server 2000 and ADO in the process, and I pretty much have it complete now. The frustrating thing for me though was the fact that my boss gave me pretty tight deadlines for getting the script done, and would then proceed to ask me to do menial tasks like set up computers or troubleshoot people's problems. While I'm technically paid to do just that, it bugs me because not only are there two other people now who do that full-time (and are much more efficient at it than I am), but when I get distracted from programming it takes me a while to get back in "the zone" and program efficiently again. Thus, every interruption I have usually halves my efficiency for about thirty minutes afterwards. Given that I'm usually only at work for a few hours at a time, that's a major chunk of the day gone, especially when the menial tasks take a good thirty minutes to an hour to complete themselves.

Personally, I believe that if you're going to ask me to program, let me sit and write a program without interruption. When I'm done, you can have me do other things, but if you want my program done well and done right, you'll leave me be. I guess I live in an ideal world though...

Only the best

2005-12-06T09:50:49Z

It's nice to finally be at the point where I have the money to buy quality products and in the process support things that I feel are worth supporting. Over the past couple of years, I've started realizing that most of the time (there are notable exceptions) you get what you pay for when it comes to, well, pretty much anything. In the process, I've become someone who'd rather use the best tool for the job, and will pay a price to do so. I'd rather pay for something that I know will help me achieve my greatest efficiency and productivity levels than settle for something that just gets the job done.

The best example at this point is probably my camera. As I've mentioned before, I splurged and bought the Canon 20D over the Digital Rebel XT, primarily because the 20D just felt nice in my hands, and was a few hundred dollars more expensive. At the time, the fact that it felt nicer in my hands, and was better than all of my friends' XTs (bragging rights are always a plus) was reason enough to spend the extra money, which at the time I had an abundance of. It was worth every penny though, for reasons I never would have imagined I'd care about a few months ago. Take, for example, the framerate. The 20D can shoot 5 shots a second, versus the XT's 3. "That won't really matter, I don't really shoot sports or anything anyways," was my reaction to that. However, had I not had the 5fps 20D I probably wouldn't have snagged what's probably my favorite picture I've ever taken. If it's not evident from the picture itself, he was swinging around the pole and then let go, and I got about three frames of him falling away, the best of which was pretty much perfect. That was a situation where milliseconds made the difference between a good shot and a phenomenal shot. (Of course, Costco's 12x18" enlargements for $3, combined with their free ICC profiles and accurate color calibration, make a great picture even better). There are other things about the camera which have proven more useful than I ever thought they would too, but that's been the most notable one so far. To me, that picture is worth the few hundred dollars extra I paid for the upgrade to the 20D.

On a similar note, I've learned since getting my camera that the lens you use affects the quality of the pictures you take far more than the camera does. I've mentioned lenses before, but the difference between my current lens and the kit lens that came with my camera is like night and day. The 50mm f/1.8 Mark II prime is Canon's cheapest, lightest lens... it costs about $70, and is made of somewhat cheap-feeling plastic that explains the $70 cost. Optically however, this lens is absolutely amazing. It really is crystal clear sharpness-wise, even wide open, not to mention it's gorgeous bokeh (background blur) and its f/1.8 (read: FAST) minimum aperture. Why would Canon sell one of its most optically brilliant lenses in a cheap plastic housing for less than $100? Simple: 50mm is the equivalent of the human eye (the best way to envision this, is that if you're looking through a SLR camera with a 50mm lens and you open the other eye, things will be the same size in both eyes), and is probably the most common focal length prime sold for any camera—in photo last year, we used 50mm primes pretty much exclusively, for example. One of the biggest advantages I've found with using a prime over a zoom is that it forces you to use your feet to zoom instead of standing in one spot and zooming with a lens. It makes me think about the composition of the shot itself, the angle, framing, etc., more because I can't just stand and follow a subject, I have to physically move closer if I want to zoom, for example.

Mind you, the 50mm f/1.8 lens isn't the highest quality or sharpest Canon lens available (there's a 50mm f/1.4 lens that sports USM and a metal mount, for example), but it does the job for me and as of right now serves my needs perfectly. On the other hand, my dad could really do with a large focal range, telephoto lens for his train pictures (yes folks, he sits and takes pictures of trains... it's supposedly quite relaxing, and I'd much rather do that than say, sit and fish all day... but that's probably because my dad enjoys it). There are numerous zoom lenses with a 70- or 75- to -200 or -300 type range that Canon sells, however the only one that's less than $1,000 which hasn't gotten mediocre reviews is the 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS lens, which Canon introduced in August of this year (as opposed to the 50mm prime, which has been around for over a decade, I believe). It runs about $650, give or take, which is steep when you could essentially buy two point and shoot digital cameras for that price (and nice quality ones, too), but given its reviews and the 3rd-generation IS, I think it might just be worth springing for. We'll see though, we'll see...

Another fine example of things I get anal about quality-wise is paper. I've learned that the paper you print something on can make a huge difference in a person's initial reaction to whatever it is you're printing. When it comes to schoolwork, it may not objectively increase my grade, but it certainly has the benefit of a subjective grade increase. For those of you who don't know, I'm a printer/font/typeography/etc. nerd, and it bugs me when something looks awesome on the screen and then doesn't look as great on paper. The quality of paper can make a huge difference in quality, especially when you're dealing with laser printers. Yes, you can buy a ream of beige-ish (when put next to a truly-white piece of paper, at least), light-weight paper for less than 1¢ per sheet, and it'll still work fine in your printer, and for something like research or what not which doesn't really matter (a.k.a. there's no grade, money, business deal, etc. attached) it's great, and dirt cheap. But when it comes to representing your work, which you've put time and effort into, isn't it worth a dollar or two to print it on paper that's as good a quality as the work printed on it? Currently, I'm addicted to HP's Soft Gloss Laser Presentation Paper. It's very bright white, you can print on both sides with no bleed through whatsoever, and it just feels nice. It truly is soft-gloss... it's not matte but it's not photo glossy either... it's just glossy enough to make text and graphics pop and to feel really nice in your hands. When you pick up something printed on this paper, you immediately say "ooo" (unless you've felt it before), and subconsciously you think, "if this is good enough to print on nice quality paper, it's probably worth my time." Instant brownie points, before the person even looks at what's actually on the paper itself. And the best part is, it was only 10¢ a sheet... I bought a box of 200 sheets last year (to use with Hodge's Color LaserJet, which I truly miss), and I've still got a good 50 left, after printing photo fliers and Centanni presentation notes and pretty much all of my essays, etc. on it last year and this semester. If you have a laser printer, buy some... if nothing else, you'll have teachers pulling you aside and telling you, "I love this paper, it just feels so nice." I'm convinced it actually affects my grades on papers, maybe not significantly, but enough to make it worth my while by far. Besides, it's nice to stand out from the crowd and be unique.

There are numerous other instances in which you get what you pay for, but there are other notable things where buying on teh cheap (intentional misspelling of 'the', for those who might jump at the chance to correct me) gives you just as much quality as you need. Computer memory, whether it's RAM or flash memory (CompactFlash, etc.) is usually good enough no matter how cheap or free it is after rebate or on sale. I just bought 2x512MB memory sticks for my G5 (finally bumping it to over 1GB of RAM) for $30 a pop at CompUSA on Blue Wednesday (a.k.a. the Wednesday before thanksgiving, which as far as I know doesn't have a color associated with it, so I took the liberty of making up my own, because colored days are always better, especially around Black Friday). Despite being some brand I've never heard of before, they worked like a charm, even in my relatively-picky-about-RAM G5. I was happy.

CD-Rs are also better bought for <5¢ a pop, because usually even the crappiest brands work fine in CD players and obviously will work just fine in computers. I remember when my dad used to refuse to buy CD-Rs unless they were free... when Thanksgiving rolled around, we'd stock up on free CD-Rs (usually after rebate, but who's counting?) and be set for the next year. This year, however, there were no such deals, which was very disappointing. Thankfully, we still have a good 100 left from earlier this year, and given the rate at which we now use them (maybe a couple a month), they'll last us a goodly while.

As for why it took me a week to crank out my thoughts on this subject, especially given my promise last week to finish it "tomorrow" and the fact I had it pretty much half-written that night too... beats me. It's probably because I enjoy keeping all my avid readers in suspense. Or more simply because I didn't get a chance to sit down and type for a contiguous period of time. Either way, now you have it.

Going Broke Saving Money

2005-11-30T06:15:20Z

One of the websites (dealnews) my dad visits on a regular basis during his incessant deal-searching has the wonderful and so-very-fitting slogan, "How to go broke saving money." That's how I feel today... I'm out ~$250, but I saved about that much (arguably more, if you count the extras I got) in the process!

My first purchase was the Adobe Creative Suite (v2.0, of course). As a result of my recent photography endeavors in which I've become increasingly pleased with the quality of my camera combined with my wubbly 50mm prime (if you have a Canon EOS camera and don't have one of these lenses yet, get one now; worth every penny in a number of ways), I figured it was finally time to plunk down the $400 (plus tax) for the student edition of the Creative Suite, seeing as I use Photoshop and InDesign frequently enough now to warrant buying them, and having a legal copy of the whole suite is just a good thing in general. So I walk into the ASU Computer Store, grab a CS2 box, and bring it up to the counter. "We actually have a version that's $190, with some limitations, for students only behind the counter if you'd like," says the guy behind the counter. "Okay," I reply. Turns out that students are entitled to buy one copy of the Creative Suite, minus the printed manuals (bummer... heh), that's licensed through Adobe's "Student License" program for $190 instead of the usual $400. After signing away my soul (well, not really, I asked lots of questions to make sure I wasn't signing into some gimmick, and indeed I wasn't), I paid just over $200 for software that retails for $1,200 (gotta love student discounts). AND, wait until you hear this... by registering online with Adobe, I got a free font! Not some cheesy font either... Adobe Garamond Premier Pro, in all of its OpenType glory =D (which—for those of you who think fonts are things you download for free on 101freefonts.com or what not—would set me back a cool $300 if I bought both the font itself and the Opticals). That was really exciting.

My second purchase wasn't nearly as exciting (it's not often you get a $300 font and pay $200 less than you expect for something), but it was a deal if I ever did see one. You see, I let my friend Patrick "borrow" my Sennheiser HD477 headphones when I helped him build his computer a few months back, and I have yet to see them again. If I went over to his dorm and pounded on the door I'm sure he'd give them back, but I figured I'd buy a nicer pair and just have him pay me $20 for the pair he has instead (he was planning to buy some, and he said he'd pay me for them if I bought a new set). I initially went looking for a pair of HD497s, which are the next model up. Turns out Sennheiser's released some new models in the same line, and I was intrigued, and wondered whether they were worth the extra money. I finally settled on the HD485, because of their improvements over the HD4x7s (single cord, better frequency range, etc.), and started looking around for a deal. The cheapest price I could find was on Target.com, which after tax and shipping was basically the same as everywhere else ($80 or so). I found a 10% off coupon on dealcoupon, which knocked ~$7 off the price. Then I remembered I had a $25 gift certificate (from Hodge, I believe) as well... so when I got home I applied that and ended up only having to pay $50. That was good enough for me, so I purchased them and that was that.

I feel accomplished!

My first "real" program with the potential to be used by a user base larger than two or three people went "live" yesterday. The reason I enquote "real" is because it's a pretty pitiful excuse for a program (it doesn't do much), and by "live" I mean it technically can be downloaded by nurses to use at home, although it hasn't been thoroughly bug-tested yet and no big announcement telling all of the nurses to switch has been made. It does however work, and it works pretty darn well if you ask me. Given that I'd never touched Visual C++ or MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes, I believe) before, I feel pretty accomplished that I produced an application that works and does so relatively elegantly. I'd post a link to it, but it's useless if you're not part of the College of Nursing.

I still don't know what I think about Visual C++, the Win32 API, and MFC. The reason I ended up coding it in C++ as opposed to C# is because I had to avoid using .NET, given that the app will be installed on any number of home systems of people who don't know what the heck .NET even is, much less have the framework (or the broadband connection to efficiently install it... it's upwards of 20MB, which is suicide for a modem... unless you're Pasta, in which case you scoff at 20MB and keep nagging your parents to get broadband while you leave your computer downloading overnight). So, the only real choice was C++ and MFC, which is good and bad in itself.

I like C++ in general because I like C, and there's something about automatic memory managed languages that rubs me the wrong way (*cough*IhateJava*cough*). The problem with using MFC is that you have to dig around for the documentation, because most of the results returned on MSDN are for .NET, unless you search for an MFC method/class specifically. Of course, the MFC/VC++ documentation is inconsistent, incomplete, and generally lacking when it comes to the functionality I use (of course... obviously the documentation-writers were out to get me), which doesn't help much. MFC is also showing its age, and thus doesn't always take well to the automation that Visual Studio .NET (2003) tries to impose upon it. (I have my own opinions about Visual Studio's automation, but that can wait for another time.) My 1337 CodeWarrior skillz paid off, however, and I beat it into a halfway-decent app, which I then pretty much rewrote because of the server crash a couple of weeks ago.

Here's how it works (for those curious, which is probably nobody at this point, but that's their problem, not mine =P ): It presents a username and password login screen for the nurse. They enter their credentials and click the OK button (or Cancel to quit). The program then pulls a list of drive letters and associated shares from the internet, which it parses. It mounts the first drive (the Z: drive, in this case), and then either continues mounting drives or handles updating itself, if an update is available. If it finds that there is a later build available, it spawns an "updater" process, quits, and then the updater process copies the new version over the current version, and launches the new version, at which point the user starts over and can mount their drives. There's a simple status window as it's mapping drives that tells the user what drive it's trying to map. When it finishes, it tells the user what drives it mapped, and quits.

The app weighs in at ~270KB with MFC linked in, which is nice too—small = good. So far, it works exactly as expected, with the exception of a stupid regex error that made it initially not parse share names with spaces in them... that was a two-character fix though, so all is good now (and the autoupdate worked like a charm too).

So, I feel pretty accomplished... it's nice to have an application "ship" with your boss's approval.

Too smart for my own good?

Lately I've been wondering whether I'm too smart for my own good. Not because I think I'm smarter than anyone or because I claim to know everything, but because, given the situations I'm in at school, work, and church, I feel that some of my "potential" goes to waste. I don't believe I'm the only person in this situation—I think a lot of the time that people are stifled by the lack of resources/people to execute their ideas. I've just been realizing this recently, at work and church especially, and it makes me wonder what would happen if more resources were available to me.

Take work, for example. I have a pretty good idea of what it would take to migrate our domain to Active Directory over the course of one weekend or so, with few glitches along the way. This would solve so many problems we face in IT on an almost daily basis that it's not even remotely funny. Not to mention it'd put to work our dual-Xeon machines that are currently just sitting around doing nothing but idling and wasting electricity and take the load off of the 1.6ghz desktop machine (a.k.a. no redundancy whatsoever and probably the cheapest components money [or lack thereof] can buy, given that it's a Transource box) that's acting as our Secondary Domain Controller and the old decrepid Pentium (II?) machine that's now acting as our Primary Domain Controller. The list goes on and on from there, but basically we'd be using a Microsoft-supported operating system (Server 2003) on still-waranteed machines with still-available components.

Why can't we just bite the bullet and migrate then? Because for two people (me and my boss) to migrate an entire domain seamlessly in 48 hours is not nearly enough time, given Murphy's law and the fact that we have so much other crap going on that we can't plan how we'd execute it or do any sort of testing therein. If we had a few more full-time IT staff, I think we'd be able to do it and do it well, and 99% of the nurses wouldn't notice the difference.

The same goes for an integrated login script-a-majigger. I know how to implement one, and given a few weeks of time to sit and design, spec, and implement code for it I'd produce something that fits our needs to a 't'. However, given the daily distractions (video editing that needs to be done yesterday, P: drive migrations, server crashes, other miscellaneous tech-support problems, making changes to the drive mapping application), it'd take me months to produce something that's up to my boss's standards (which is good... I'm glad he has high standards, because the crap that some of the previous faculty there created is causing us nightmares to this day).

Church is kinda the same way. I have a billion ideas for improving the sound system, streamlining worship, improving the room, etc. all of which we potentially have the budget for... however, I've realized that Starbound doesn't have a good salesman (or saleswoman, but for laziness' sake I'll say salesman). What do I mean by that? Well, between Brandon, Anthony, and I the number of good ideas that exist is pretty overwhelming. None of us can take any of these ideas and say, "okay, we're gonna do this, this, and this... it's gonna cost this much, and it'll take this long." Well, we can do that, but it takes us months, instead of minutes like it potentially could for someone who's got that sort of a mindset. The reason I say we need a salesman is because we need someone to take the ideas, make the trivial decisions, and pitch it to Vince or the elders or whoever so that we can actually put our ideas into action. We currently spend too much time trying to perfect our nascent ideas and not enough time just doing them.

So, all of these potentially good ideas go to waste, and then we end up scrambling at the last minute, or Vince ends up just doing/buying something that isn't really the ideal solution, and we end up "eh" about the whole thing. It's nobody's fault, and there's nothing we can really do about it (as hard as we try, we will never be as good as a "born" salesman would be).

Anyways, just more random observations which you probably knew to some extent or another and are now wondering whether you cared to have fleshed out by yours truly.

Expect more tomorrow (*gasp* intriguing, isn't it?)... I started rambling about a couple of other topics but figured there was enough for one entry here already. It's fun to keep everyone on the edge of their seats, too =).

On Driving - Part 2: The Roman Grid System

2005-11-28T02:21:38Z

It's been a long time coming, this one has... as the saga continues, I'll provide a bit more background by touching on my thoughts about the foundation of the system of roads in Phoenix—the "Roman Grid System"—and my thoughts on why it's a blessing as well as a curse (mostly a curse, however).

To start with, the only reason I refer to what Wikipedia calls the grid plan is because of a humorous fellow named Nick Roser. Indeed, he may not have been the most intelligent bulb in the shed, but he had the most amusing names for the weirdest things. Any time we'd get going in Centanni's class last year about driving, he'd bring up two topics: the annoyances of women drivers (which I won't touch on here), and the shortcomings of what he always referred to as the "Roman grid system" of road planning. Indeed, his name was accurate... quoting from the Wikipedia article above:

The grid plan was a common tool of Roman city planning, based originally on its use in military camps known as castra. One of the most striking extant Roman grid patterns can be found in the ruins of Timgad in modern-day Algeria. The Roman grid is characterized by a nearly perfectly orthogonal layout of streets, all crossing each other at right angles, and by the presence of two main streets, set at right angles from each other and called the cardo and the decumanus.

Figure 1: My to-scale rendition of the Phoenix Metro Area

The grid system works well for the type of area (metropolis, if you want to get specific) that Phoenix is. Namely, it allows expansion in any direction—you just add another road parallel to the furthest road out there (chances are, at this point, said road already exists) and you instantly have more space to build. You can instantly direct people to any new development nearby, because they already know where this road is (or they know it's "somewhere *motions with his hands* out that way") and because it intersects all of the other roads we're familiar with, they can use squareulation (hey, triangles give us triangulation...) and common sense to get there. If road B is closed (see red x on Figure 1) you can go around by taking its parallel (road A, obviously) and you'll still be headed in the same general direction. In fact, you can also take roads C or D, 'cause those go the same way too (fancy that!). You can get pretty much anywhere any number of ways (I'm sure that number could be calculated, but contrary to popular belief I don't have the means nor the desire to do so). This has numerous advantages, the most notable of which being that if there's traffic on Z on the way home from ASU, you can take Y and get there just as fast ('cause there's less traffic on Y, due to its odd-numbered index in the alphabet).

Thus, the grid system is all well and good... until you start introducing things like, oh, public transport. In an ideal world, you'd have a bus that runs up and down every street, thus you'd have the A bus and the B bus, etc., and everyone would be able to get from any point O to any point P on the grid by taking a maximum of two busses. This is of course very inefficient (as is Bogosort, a sorting algorithm that is akin to "attempting to sort a deck of cards by repeatedly throwing the deck in the air, picking the cards up at random, and then testing whether the cards are in sorted order"—completely irrelevant, but funny nonetheless). So, you decide to run busses on weird routes throughout the city that are determined to be most heavily travelled (wow, that makes two words—bus(s)es and travel(l)ed—in one sentence that can be spelled two ways... unless you go by that weird book that Urban always referenced, in which case there is, supposedly, a right and wrong way). This works alright, except that Angry Chandlite, III, thinks he lives on one of the more traveled routes in Phoenix (when in fact he lives in the boonies, somewhere near Carley's house...), and therefore demands that his cronies vote for someone to legislate that buses should run only to places in the boonies and not along routes that are actually more popular (heh, popular Phoenix bus routes... how oxymoronic).

Therein lies the greatest shortcoming of the grid system of city planning, the inability to create useful systems of public transportation. By that, I don't mean that a subway system to get around Phoenix or what not wouldn't be helpful, but that it'd still be inefficient in the long run.

On second thought, that's not the greatest shortcoming of the grid system—the lack of roundabouts is. Roundabouts have to be the coolest thing about driving, period. I mean, aside from stock car racing, what else allows you to go round a circle as many times as you'd like (typically less than once, of course) simply because you want to? Not to mention the consistent flow of traffic and the ability to route traffic from more than two cross streets efficiently. Unlike traffic lights, roundabouts allow traffic to come from all directions and can handle intersections between multiple large and small roads (including dual carriageways) effortlessly. And, if you're smart and crafty enough, you can combine multiple roundabouts into a Magic Roundabout, in which traffic flows counterclockwise and clockwise, and is just generally awesome in itself.

So class, what have we learned today? Well, we've learned that the Roman Grid System is bad because you can't have roundabouts. Or good bus routes.

I love my job...

2005-11-16T09:19:46Z

I was fretting yesterday because I only worked 10 hours instead of my usual 12 last week (because I took Friday off), and therefore I have(/had) to work 14 hours this week to pull my usual 24 hour twoweekage. Well, I ain't frettin' no more, let me tell ya.

(For those of you who are worrying because this isn't about driving... it was either this or nothing for the next week, so I figured I'd continue my driving saga at some later point and amuse you now with my day today.)

I shattered my previous record of how late I stayed at work today... my previous record? 8PM. The new one? 1AM. Yes, that's right, I worked 12 hours today... 12PM to 1AM with roughly an hour for dinner while my boss went home to grab the NT Server Install CD. So, I was on campus from around 7:30 yesterday morning until 1 this morning... a cool seventeen and a half hours for those who can't count right. What the hell happened, you ask?

Well, let me explain.

I got to work and heard my boss explaining to someone else that we were trying to recover the Z: drive. The Z: drive is where the nurses keep all the stuff that they work on with other nurses (as opposed to the P: drive, which is their own personal crap), and happens to be the drive that the Dean works off of exclusively. Lovely how that works, isn't it? I asked what happened, and it turns out that nurmain—our primary domain controller and the file server that hosts profiles, P: and Z: drives—had crashed. It had frozen and wouldn't boot properly. So, everything else I was working on suddenly became not so important, and I started to tackle the problems with nurmain.

Let me tell you a bit about nurmain. She's a beautiful beast, if you like beastly things. Her specs include:

Dual 300mhz Pentium processors

Two massive power supplies that supply upwards of 300W a piece

Five or more gigantic 120mm fans

The marvelous Windows NT Server operating system

Lots of other joyous crap that is prone to fail at any given time

Oh yes, I'm sure you're incredibly envious that I get to work with such a powerful machine. Did I mention the half-an-inch thick coating of dust that got all over my nice creme shirt? Yeah, that was fun too.

Anyways, my boss called Microsoft, and got what you'd expect from a company when you ask them about support for an operating system that's 6? 7? 8? years old... "Windows NT? We don't support that. Time to get a new server." Dell's support said basically the same thing.

So, we were pretty much on our own.

Long story short, it turns out the RAID controller had gone bad. This wasn't just any RAID controller either, it was an über-card (12" PCI card, for those not in the know... absolutely massive by anyone's standards). How did we figure this out? Well, by hitting our heads against the wall for a long time before finally trying my original idea (my boss is very smart, but I tend to get lucky when it comes to these sort of troubleshooting situations) and throwing the über-card into another PC, using just nurmain's backplane and another computer to access the drives themselves. Once we did this and realized that it crashed that PC as well, we swapped it out for another RAID controller (from the server which we also got fixed today, thanks to a long but productive call to Dell support) and it worked like a charm. Upon trying to put this newer RAID card in nurmain though, we realized that it was just too new or nurmain was just too old, so when I left we had Server 2003 installing on a PC with the RAID card in it, with a SCSI cable sticking out the back that was connected to nurmain's backplane. I call it nurfranken meself (it's late, so I find it amusing...)

That pretty much sums up my day in the windtunnel (Natalia and Jessica Bender, among one or two others, will get that reference). I'm amused also that this all came about on the day I happened to only get 3 hours of sleep, but hey, who's counting?

My words to the wise for today: Wub your backplanes, and they'll wub you back (ahahaha, I'm so punny... I didn't get it until after I wrote it too, believe it or not... guess I really do need sleep).

On Driving - Part 1: The Saga Commences

2005-11-04T18:32:26Z

Ah yes, driving. It's that thing we love to hate... "if only there were decent public transport," we say... only to consider it a huge inconvenience when we find ourself without a vehicle for an afternoon. There is a solution to this problem: nuclear weapons. I say we start over and build Phoenix from the ground up around multiple public transit systems (just like I think we should build ASU from the ground up again with a 1 mile x 1 mile underground parking structure underneath it), however that may spark controversy so I'll leave that debate for another more appropriate time.

I've decided to write an n-part series about my experiences while driving over the past year or so that I've actually been driving (I only got my license last November). My driving experience is almost exclusively contained to Tempe and Chandler. From my house, ASU is an almost straight shot down Rural and church is an almost straight shot down Ray—both are arguably the most main roads in Tempe and Chandler respectively.

So, I've decided to pit Tempe and Chandler against each other, picking out the nuances of the Tempinians and the Chandlites who frequent my commutes. Why make semi-amusing names for the people of Tempe and Chandler respectively? It makes them seem less human when I poke fun at their horrible driving. And yes, we live in Arizona, so the drivers in both cities inherently suck from the outset.

In this saga, I will refer to four distinct entities: Tempe, Chandler, Tempinians, and Chandlites. Tempe and Chandler will refer to the city itself, and anything that's dictated by the government. This includes traffic light timings, road conditions, road work, and anything else that drivers themselves have no control over. Tempinians and Chandlites (aren't those great names?) are the drivers themselves, complete with inherent stupidity.

I have compiled my thoughts over the past couple of weeks (I've been meaning to write on this for about a month now), and I decided it was time to devote all of my blog-worthy energy towards this topic, so for the next couple of weeks (or until I finish the series, basically), I'll write on nothing but driving. So, sit back, relax, and brace yourself for an overly analytical look at something we all take for granted.

General Observations

Having made upwards of 100 trips up and down both Ray and Rural in the past few months, I've realized some glaringly obvious differences between the overall driving experience in Tempe and Chandler:

Light timings: To put it simply, Chandler needs to get its act in gear and take a lesson from Tempe. Tempe's light timings are impeccable; sometimes I wonder whether Chandler's lights aren't controlled by a potent combination of preschoolers and DDR-like traffic control mats (how's that for a mental picture of Chandler's traffic control center? wouldn't surprise me...). Nine times out of ten (depending on traffic), I can drive on Rural (or McClintock) from Warner to University and not miss a light. In fact, when there's relatively few Tempinians around, one can set his cruise control at around 48 and not take it off until he has to turn onto Knox six and a half miles later. Tempe's light timings are consistent and very, very accurate. Chandler, on the other hand, may as well not time its lights at all. There is a groove that will get you through two or three lights at once down Ray, but that's only granted that you can get into that groove and stay at about 50mph the whole time. The thing that bugs me most about Chandler's lights is that when you are sitting at a red light and it turns green, there's about a 95% chance that you'll miss the next intermediate light(s). The major lights are relatively well timed, but when you bring intermediate (a.k.a. between major intersections) lights into the equation all goes to heck very quickly. One of the later installments of the driving saga will touch on light timings exclusively, but that'll give you some clue as to how I feel about that.

The Optimal Lane: I have the firm belief that driving anywhere can be quantified based on a handful of variables and that patterns emerge when doing so, but one of the things that bugs me about Tempe is that the Optimal Lane Theory that I developed in driving to and from church before I started commuting to ASU on a regular basis falls flat on its face. Here's the basis of my theory: when driving on a two-lane road (with a shared middle lane and/or separate left-turn lanes), the left lane will always move faster. This is because of the middle lane's functionality—anyone turning left should not slow down traffic behind it (significantly, at least), because they can join the left-turn lane and wait to turn there. Similarly, people joining traffic from the left have room to accelerate to nearer the flow of traffic before joining, thus reducing the number of times traffic in the left-hand lane have to slow down. On three-lane roads, the center lane should be the fastest. This one's more obvious—if you're in the center lane, you're not turning left or right, so the center lane should just be through traffic exclusively. If only Tempinians realized this...

More to come

Obviously, there's much, much more to come; the two topics I touched on above just scratch the surface of what I have to say. Any comments are welcome, and I'm very interested to hear anyone else's personal experiences driving in either or both city... or some other city in the valley which has its own quirks and annoyances.

So, the saga hath begun... exciting, isn't it?

The Goose Is Getting Fat

2005-11-01T17:20:02Z

Ah yes, November... it's arrival can only mean one thing: *sings* Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat. Please put a penny in the old man's hat... *hums to himself*

Anyways, it's a typical Tuesday morning in the library after English class (which only finished 10 minutes early today, believe it or not), so that means all of the ideas I've compiled over the past few days will get written about.

Peterisinsane.com

I guess I should mention first that Nick actually wrote in his blog. Mind you, he didn't write more than a few sentences, but it's a start. In his first entry, he mentioned contributions towards the purchase of peterisinsane.com; I saved him the trouble and just bought it for him right out (gotta love $2.99/yr domains from Yahoo). Of course, this caused some panic when I sent him a text saying he now owned peterisinsane.com for the next two years. He called me up and asked, "How much did that cost?! That must have been expensive, right?" to which I replied, "It was less than I make in an hour." He asked, "how much is that?" and I said, "it was $6." Somehow, he misinterpreted this dialog and understood it as being $6 an hour for two years... so at this point he was going insane. I reassured him that it was $6 for two years, calmed him down a bit, and that was that.

So, as soon as peterisinsane.com makes its way through the system and registers in your local domain servers, you should see some sort of placeholder for Nick's website. What exactly he'll put there, I don't know, but I intend to help him out and I'm sure he's open to ideas if you have any. I'm just still amused at the fact that peterisinsane.com actually exists, and I think the ensuing amusement will be well worth my $6 investment. Where Nick will find time to actually put anything up at his website I'm not entirely sure, but hey, he's got two years to make good use of my investment, and with free hosting and a free domain, I don't think he'll be in any sort of hurry.

Hmmm....

I got an anonymous comment a day or so ago in response to my Shipwrecked entry in which I mentioned blogs that I enjoy reading. The comment said this:

Subject: John Siracusa
Although the FatBits blog just started a month or two ago (Ars had no staff blogs at all before then), John Siracusa has been writing for Ars Technica since 1999. You can find a list of his articles here:

http://siracusa.home.mindspring.com/john/articles/ars

In particular, his Mac OS X reviews are widely viewed as the best (or at least the most thorough) on the web.

There wasn't any notion as to who wrote it, and it got me wondering: who is this mystery reader? As far as I know, the only friends I have who would read John Siracusa's writing have LiveJournal accounts (Bryce, possibly Evan) or would sign their name when posting an anonymous comment. Given the fact that it was early in the morning and I had nothing better to think about, I started speculating. Was it just someone random who'd stumbled across my blog and knew about FatBits? Was it Siracusa himself, reading what others had written about his blog (which is easy to do thanks to Google BlogSearch)? The world may never know.

Blog readership

The mysterious comment combined with an Alertbox article about blog usability—which I stumbled across via Joel On Software—got me thinking about my blog. Currently, my known readership consists of a fairly large subset of my friends (both from church and school), my mom (and most likely my dad too), Brian and Liz and others from the homegroup, Mrs. Centanni and Mrs. Urban (both of who have hit the site at least once, however they may never return for all I know), and other people who have some connection to me through my sister or otherwise. Overall, that's a much larger list than I ever expected I'd find regularly reading my blog, so I'm happy as-is. I often wonder though whether people who have no clue who I am ever read my blog, whether frequently or once-off because they stumble across it. Currently, I'm okay with just the people I know reading it, because I don't think it's really worthy of going "mainstream"—I write about too large a variety of topics and tend to have way too many personal references which people who don't know who I am wouldn't get (a.k.a. the whole Nick thing).

After reading the usability article, I realized just how many of those rules I break on a regular basis (or just as a result of this being a LiveJournal), but I wonder whether or not I would gain readers on anywhere near the scale that, say, Daring Fireball or Joel on Software does/would if I did follow the rules. I think that moving to my own site, where I'll have a WordPress (and therefore have inherent integration with the blogosphere) and the ability to have an "about me" page, not to mention no ties to LiveJournal (as nice as it may be) will automatically gain me a bit more credibility and potential readership. But I wonder, will I ever hone my writing enough to compete in the big leagues? To get hundreds or thousands of hits a week? A day? Will I ever have huge debates and flame wars popping up in my comments (a la any big blog that discusses controversial issues)? Will I ever have more comments than I can count on my fingers for a given post? Once again, the world may never know... but I'll keep wondering nonetheless......

Hacking up Hell

2005-10-30T01:11:50Z

Don't worry, I'm not coughing up fiery ash or anything... I can explain the title, just give me a minute...

Great hackers

I've been reading The Best Software Writing I by Joel Spolsky (of Joel on Software fame), which is basically a collection of essays written in the past couple of years about software, development, programming, and other related matters. If you've ever programmed on any level, or consider yourself nerdy on any level (Tall Brian, I'm looking at you), I'll let you borrow the book when I'm finished reading it as it's well worth the read.

One of the more interesting things about this book is the fact that it's a compilation of writings that you can find on the internet for free—it's the comments and intros written by Spolsky that make the book worth the money, and that makes it a fun read because you're not reading one person's writing the whole time.

Whatever the case, one of the essays in the book is Great Hackers, by Paul Graham. He doesn't mean hackers in the sense you're thinking ("i'm gonna hax0r ur computr and delete all ur filez" comes to mind), but instead he's referring to software developers, also known as programmers. Graham outlines the characteristics of the programmers who revolutionize software, and who program because they love it, and therefore write good, efficient, and robust code.

I think the thing that affected me most is that a lot of the characteristics he mentions I can relate to... I'm not going to sit and list them all (because I'm too lazy to read through it again right now), but I could definitely see myself fitting the role of a "great hacker". Of course, a great hacker would never say he was a great hacker, so maybe I'm just misleading myself, but I like to think that I might someday become something like that.

On the other hand, I started looking at other programmers I know, most notably our DBA at work, in this light. Our DBA is definitely not a great hacker, and it aggravates me on some level that he's writing code that is inefficient and quite possibly very insecure and he doesn't even know it. A few days ago, he was working in ASP.NET and trying to get some HTML stuff to render correctly, and he was basically just guessing and checking as to how HTML actually works. He didn't even know proper HTML tag syntax, much less simple things like what a TR and TD do. It bugged me that he gets paid to do this full time and he doesn't really even know what he's doing—he relies on VS.NET to create the HTML for him, and then just hacks it until it works. That's not programming, that's modifying already poor code. Oh well, so it goes I guess.

My trip to hell (part deux)

Ah yes, hell. Seems like forever since I was last here... and by forever, I mean six or seven months. Yes friends, I'm reading Dante's Inferno again, this time in our Human Event class as opposed to Centanni's (AP Senior English) class last year. Some of our discussion today was semi-interesting, I guess, but I really miss Centanni's Catholic spin on the whole thing, and the variety of sayings that suddenly became valid when we were studying it in her class. Almost instantaneously, any form of the word "hell" became valid in her class—which of course led to some very good times indeed in there. It was common to hear her say, "Go to hell! Oh wait... we're already there, aren't we?" or, "Life really sucks in hell, doesn't it?" *sigh* Centanni's class is very much missed.

More ohmpage things

I've been thinking a fair amount about my ohmpage, the design, layout, etc. the past few days, probably because I haven't been able to spend any of my free time actually working on it, so I just think about it instead.

Actually, I did get a chance to bodge something together, which is basically just a prettier version of my original placeholder page (*clicky*). Just doing something as "simple" as that made me realize just how much I hate HTML/CSS, or namely how much I hate IE's ability to follow standards. I'll let others handle the IE standards rants (links in no particular order, and of no particular significance except to provide boredom relief and to prove a point). It took me an hour and a half to get the simple page I have there to not look absolutely horrid in IE, and to look the same in Firefox and Safari. Actually, I take that back, it took one tweak to get it to look the same in Firefox and Safari, and about 10 to get IE to even render everything within the bounds of the background image. This is why it will take me months to get a decent website up, because I like things to look good and it takes forever to get them there.

Speaking of which, I've been thinking about colors to use for the site, and I'm thinking white (obviously), greys, and possibly pastel blue or green accents. I tend to like lighter colors myself (which, of course, is why my room is mostly dark green and dark blue—I know, go figure), and I tend to prefer very clean, simple layouts that have lots of curves and soft gradients to accentuate things. Because things like curved boxes and such take forever to implement properly with HTML/CSS, it'll be a while before I find a design I like, I think. I may however just say screw it, make a simple skin for Wordpress, and use that as my website until further notice. I haven't decided yet... if you want to help with the design, let me know =).

Typical Tuesday Tidbits and a Tenace

2005-10-25T17:18:49Z

I only have 20 minutes or so to write this, so hopefully I'll get it done and off before Human Event starts.

First of all, you did read that right, I used "tenace" in the title of this entry. Why? Because I was typing another word into Dictionary, trying to find another suitable t-word to complete my alliterative title, and for some reason it looked up "tenace" instead. For those of you who are unenlightened:

ten•ace noun – (in bridge, whist, and similar card games) a pair of cards in one hand that rank immediately above and below a card held by an opponent, e.g., the ace and queen in a suit of which an opponent holds the king.

So, now you know =P.

Turns out the paper I thought we had a rough draft due for today in English wasn't actually due, which is good, because I was lazy and only wrote a paragraph last night and called it my "rough draft". In fact, I missed practically nothing in English last Thursday when I decided to sleep instead of going to class. One of the nicer things about college, I guess.

"Never trust a man whose brows meet (don't worry I shave)."

I've decided to use E₁ quotes for my subsection headers in this entry, because I'm too lazy to come up with definite things to talk about, and they're funny. Ah yes, I miss AP Chemistry... too many good times.

Speaking of which, a question for anyone who cares to answer me (probably Tall Brian or Jessica Egen, unless the Kurbanator [a.k.a. Mrs. Urban, nickname coined by Evan IIRC] is reading this, in which case she'll jump at the chance): In the quote above, would you use "whose" or "who's"? Also, on a completely different note (but still related to grammar), would you say "Nick and I's baseball," "Nick and my baseball," or something entirely different? I know I said "would you say," but I mean correctly. I really should just go read Eats, Shoots and Leaves (great grammar nerd book), because I'm sure it'd answer both questions, but I'm too enthralled by The Best of Software Writing I to read about grammar currently.

"One over it!"

Ah yes, the solution to every chemistry problem in existence. And by that I mean that's the excuse we used when our result didn't match one of the multiple choice answers. And by the excuse, I mean that's what we did on every problem on the online quiz things we did in class, because we didn't want to do work.

I'm working in Adobe Premiere at work (go figure, yeah), and I must say compared to Final Cut (even Express) it's pretty annoying, to say the very least. Things just don't make sense whatsoever. For example, when you want to insert text of any sort, you have to create a "Title" file (which in itself is hard to figure out), which basically acts like a static image which then sits over your video. This is nice, except for the fact that the title editor is pretty useless in itself, and has way too many bells and whistles that no good video editor will ever use, and not enough core functionality to just make simple titles. Did I mention that doing video editing one on monitor with no sort of SD preview monitor is hard enough in itself? Yes, I've been spoilt by my dual monitor setup at home, but quite frankly having two monitors probably doubled my productivity when doing editing, and getting a SD preview monitor (a.k.a. a small, cheap TV from Best Buy which I output video through a camera to in real time) quadrupled my productivity. If any of you do video editing, I highly recommend investing in a small TV of some sort to use while you edit, because you edit very, very differently when you can see what it'll look like on a TV while you're editing. Because of the vast differences in color space and gamma between a computer monitor and a TV, it means you can get stuff to look great on the first try, which reduces the burn-watch-cringe-tweak-rinse-lather-repeat cycle significantly. This is especially true if you're doing color correction—which, if you edit videos with any sort of frequency and you aren't using color correction (or equalizers on your audio), please let me know so I can show you the wonders of simple color correction and equalization. It's these things that make a good video great.

"I licked it. And by I licked it, I mean I hit it with my hand."

Don't ask.

My ohmpage is back up and running, although it's still just a placeholder for my future website. I've been contemplating design and such, and I think I've nailed down at least somewhat what I want to do for it. I think to start with I'm just going to have my blog up there, unless I'm fascinated with mambo enough to throw that on there. I may set up a phpBB (ugh, just the thought makes me cringe) too, because IPB is just too darn expensive for what I need right now.

That's all for this morning... until next time, may your ohms be plentiful.

Thank Goodness It's Not Sunday Yet (wait... crap!)

2005-10-23T16:44:09Z

It's been a little while, and I apologize for my lack of frequent updates this week. As a result, there may be a few updates today, or at least a couple, because I've been thinking of things all week to write and I finally have time to sit and write them out. I started this entry on Friday morning, and I'm now just finishing it (Sunday morning)... so I apologize for the out-of-date title too, among other things.

My away message...

To those who may have stumbled across my away message on AIM at any point Thursday, I apologize for its... bluntity. It was just one of those mornings, and I didn't feel like changing it midday. On that note, however, I relate to you an anecdote in the form of a short dialog which hopefully one faithful reader (Nick) will get a kick out of... if you have no clue what I'm talking about, because you didn't see my away message or what not, just disregard the dialog and move on =).

[insert my away message yesterday here]
Nick's dad: You stepped in what...?
Nick's eldest younger sister: I said shoot! I swear!
*Peter is amused*

Yeah, that still amuses me to this day... all of eight days after the fact. I'm still amused that Nick's dad called me Gav(in) at least twice that morning too, but hey, he had every excuse to given how long he's worked with my dad through the church.

While I'm relating things that amuse me, I'm amused also by Logan's comments Thursday night. He asked me, "Are you on AIM?" to which I replied, "yeah ... starboundcanary." "That's what I thought," he replied, "but what's with that away message?" I apologize Logan, and everyone else, it was just one of those days. I'm back to normal now, I promise =).

My Thoughts on Microsoft Programming Languages

I've been learning, in bits and pieces, a couple of Windows programming languages over the past few weeks as a result of projects (mostly small ones) that I'm doing at work. I've dabbled in three languages now, and I will share with you my impressions of each:

VisualBasic/VBScript
I'm not sure what I think about VB still, because the concept is good, and for simple scripts it's a very easy and powerful language. We use VBScript for our NETLOGON scripts at work, to mount drives and install virus updates and tweak the firewall, among other things. I think that VB is much better executed than AppleScript (which I abhor with a passion, but that's another story for another time), in that it's easy to pick up, the syntax is English-esque, and you can do basic tasks without having to worry about much of anything.

The problem with VB is in its simplicity. There's no real defined syntax, so for someone who's unfamiliar with the language it's harder to pick up than more structured languages. It's also quite "unfocused", in the sense that it's kind of a smorgasbord of different APIs and stuff that don't always mesh well. I'm not familiar enough with it to know if that's true or not, but given the poor documentation and the fact that I feel like I'm throwing piles of mud together to make a bigger, dirtier pile of mud when I'm coding in VB(Script), I think there's some basis to it.

One thing that amuses me while frustrating me all the more about VB is the ability to do very "powerful" things without realizing their ramifications. The lack of decent syntax and type checking is pretty annoying too. Take, for example, our NETLOGON scripts. We have one script for each employee at the College of Nursing (that's where I work, if you haven't gathered that by now), which mounts their shares and printers and does a couple of other random things when they log in. This already screams inefficient, because having 250+ scripts makes changing one or two small bugs a huge find and replace task. Yes, it's easy to do in Perl or any decent text editor, but when it comes to something as crucial as these scripts we are weary even using something tried and tested, because of the potential for yelling nurses the next morning.

We have recently been migrating users' shares from one server to another, because of space concerns, among other things. In the process, we realized that these login scripts had a few major flaws that meant they never did what they were supposed to. What they were supposed to do is read a list of shares to mount (letters and respective paths on the network), check if the drive already existed locally, delete it if it did (just in case we, say, changed the path to the share when we moved them to a new server), and then mount the drive/share. Due to poor copying and pasting and a lack of attention when writing these scripts, however, they never deleted the old drives, meaning that the old shares were still mounted instead of being deleted and pointed to the new path. So, half of the core functionality of the scripts was missing. There should have been some sort of error though... right? Well, yes, there should have been, but at the beginning of the while loop that processed each share there was a nice statement that said when there was an error to go on to the next iteration of the loop. When I removed this statement, errors abounded.

So, long story short, I fixed the script, and as we migrate users we're fixing their scripts in the process too, so all is good now. I'm just amused that the scripts had been in place for upwards of a year, and had never worked correctly... yet nobody ever thought to blame the script for the problems we were having along those lines. Ah well, that's why my boss likes my work so much.

Anyways, enough about VB...

Visual C++
I'm going to comment on this one before I touch on my favorite of the three, even though I learned C# before I learned Visual C++. Mind you, I say learned and I mean that I learned enough to bodge (good, British word that) together something that works semi-decently. Visual C++ is an interesting language. On the one hand, I love C++ because it takes me back to the "good ol' days" of Dynamic Dave, and it feels powerful when you get something to work that doesn't leak memory. On the other hand, it's a PITA (Pain In The Arse) to make things work the way you want them to in C++, especially if you have no clue what you're doing.

Visual C++ is quite poorly documented too, which annoys me. Not to mention the fact that you're "supposed" to use the .NET framework these days, so searching for anything on MSDN is a PITA as well because most of the results are .NET-based and therefore useless.

Why then, you ask, am I coding in Visual C++ when I could be using .NET? Simple: Backwards compatibility. The program I've been working on the past week or so is one that has to run on faculty's home computers. This means that the chances of them running the most obscure version of Windows ever invented (*cough*ME*cough*) is very high. This guarantees that they most likely won't have the .NET framework too.

Overall, my experience with Visual C++ was a lot less painful than it could have been. I expected my head to be bloodier than it was as a result of hitting it against my desk/screen/keyboard, but it actually wasn't that bad. Of course, the fact that it took me three tries and a week to write a program that's all of 20 or 30 lines of actual code is beside the point. Not to mention the fact that I had to hax0r my way around to get it to do what I wanted. Actually, I had two hax0rz:

The dialog-based program hax0r: Basically, when you create a MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) application in Visual Studio you have to choose the "function" of the program. You have the choice between "Dialog Based", "Single Document", "Multi Document", and possibly one other I'm forgetting. The "Dialog Based" is the one I had to use, because all of the others had the fugly big grey workspace window thing, that all of the other windows exist in. This type of application shows a dialog which you design, and then when the user clicks OK or Cancel it closes the dialog (which destroys it) and as a result exits the program unless you do something else. This posed a problem for me, because I needed to get the username/password out of the dialog after OK was clicked. So, I overrode (what a weird word...) the function that runs when the user clicks OK, and ended up just hiding the window, showing another window, doing all my dirty work, and then destroying the initial window and ending the program. It's crude, but it worked like a charm.

The auto-update hax0r: Part of the program I was making was its ability to automatically update itself to the newest version. This of course causes a problem, as you can't overwrite a running executable because Windows puts an access lock on it while it's executing (this isn't Windows specific, Mac OS X does the same thing). So, what I had to do was spawn another process right before my program exited, and then have it remove the old program and copy the new one. Again, it works like a charm, and the nurses will never be the wiser.

C#.NET
I think C# is my favorite language of the three, because it's a good mix of Java and C and I personally really like the .NET APIs. As far as APIs go, .NET is one of the easiest to work with, because for the most part they work the way that you think they should work. This is how Cocoa (Mac OS X native API) works, and thus the transition from Cocoa to C# was very easy for me.

I'm not sure whether or not I love or hate C#'s automatic memory management. It's definitely one of the stronger points of the language—you're not stuck tracking down memory leaks or anything, which is always nice. However, I do feel out of control at times, and that's never a good thing for someone who was weaned on C++ and Objective-C. For the most part though, C# has treated me well, and I enjoy programming in it. I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture by now.

Alyssa's back!

I know I'm a little late at this point in saying this, but Alyssa's back from PA, which is quite exciting if you ask me. Just thought I'd tell everyone that.

Ohmpage randomness

Work on my ohmpage (a.k.a. my website, futileohm.com) has come to a grinding halt this week. Part of that is because I've been busy, and didn't have the greatest week, part of it is because my server's currently down this weekend because Bryce's company is moving and Qwest won't have their new location's internet up until Monday. So, once it's back up, I'll hopefully find time to resume work on it and get things moving at some point soon. I plan to switch to Wordpress sooner rather than later, because of the Live+Press plugin that will allow me to post on Wordpress and will replicate the posts here on my LiveJournal, and because until I start using it I won't know what I want. I'll ramble about my Wordpress tinkerings at some other point, I'm sure.

Evan is convinced that my "ohmpage is going to be the launchpad for our multibillion dollar creation". I wholeheartedly agree. What multibillion dollar creation is this, you ask? Well, he, Denny, Patrick, and I want to start a business and get rich, basically. We've realized that between the four of us we have the talent set to create something that will be a huge hit, we just haven't figured out what that is yet. Obviously, it'll be something every American needs but doesn't know they need... yet. As Evan put it, "like the Tivo, except without the R&D costs of something like that". Anyone who knows anything knows that nowadays, a good business can start with a blog... Jewelboxing is the quintessential example of this. So, check back in a few years, maybe by then we'll be looking to hire people like you to staff our growing empire.

In fact, I stumbled across this today and it only drives that point home further... Jim Coudal, one of the founders of the company that sells Jewelboxing, wrote an article called When You Are Your Own Client, Who Are You Going To Make Fun Of At The Bar? Here's a tidbit:

At SXSW this year, I answered the question “should my business have a weblog?” like this. If you need to make copies of documents you should have a Xerox machine and if you have information about your product or service that needs to be updated regularly then you should have a blog. But the really interesting question is this, “Should my blog have a business?”

The old idea is to create a product and go looking for a market. “If you build it they will come.” The minute we saw this equation from the other side we knew what we had to do. Without realizing it, we had already built the audience, now we needed to create a product for it. “If they come, you will build it.”

Everything else

If you haven't already, take the survey about Nick's girlfriend over on Tall Brian's (not King Brian, they're two different people... I get it now) FEARums. In fact, everyone should register and participate in the story telling and other randomness on the FEARums. Support a good cause. Of course, I personally am overwhelmed by the sheer number of different categories and forums that are on the FEARums, so I find it hard to decide what to read and where to post, but maybe the task will prove easier for people who aren't weird like me.

I have to get my programming homework done by tomorrow... for once I'm not weeks ahead of myself, which is kind of disappointing. In fact, I'm going to work on that now... in the hour or so before church starts...

Right and wrong

2005-10-16T17:10:29Z

I hate America's highway system. Actually, that's a lie, but yesterday I came pretty darn close to hating it. Why? Because Nick and I got lost. Not just lost even; really, really lost. Like, we-went-an-hour-in-the-wrong-direction lost. Rawr.

I learned a lesson yesterday though... there are two 101 South's, and only one of them is the right 101 South. What the frosty (close one, eh mom?) you say? Enlighten us, Google Maps:

Note the 101 on the right and the 101 on the left of the map. Also note the 101 going across the top.

Well, says you, it is the loop 101, isn't it? Yes, yes it is. But for those of us who are/were unenlightened to the fact that whether you go East or West on the 101 you end up headed down the 101 South, it gets very confusing. Suffice it to say that, for whatever reason, we ended up going West on the 101 (we were up the top of the above map, between the 51 and the 17, North of the 101), because it seemed like the right way to go (don't ask). We had taken the 202 to the 101 North, so the East and West didn't really make sense. But we ended up going West anyways. 20 minutes later, after realizing that In-and-Out doesn't open until 10:30 (we arrived at about 10:05, figuring it opened at 10), we hit the 101 South. "Finally", we thought... "I don't remember it taking this long to get here." Next thing we knew, we were in Peoria, more lost than we had initially thought.

Had we known our way around Phoenix, we could have taken the 60 to the 10 to the 202 and saved ourselves from being completely lost. But of course, neither of us knew this. So, we turned around and went all the way back around the 101 to the right 101 South, stopping at another In-and-Out on the way back around, which was now open because it was past 11 at that point.

So, the trip back took us a good 2 hours instead of the 30 minutes it should have taken, but oh well. We lived. And it was fun... yelling at Nick's siblings in the back, among other things.

Whatever the case, just learn from our mistake. There's a right 101 South, and a wrong 101 South. Just make sure you take the right one. It'll save you a long, boring drive to Glendale/Peoria.

I have more to write, but I am now bent on making a perl script to grab the latest nightly build of WebKit+SVG from the nightly WebKit page. Church starts soon too, so I should probably leave Java Hell and head that way...

"This has been burning within me for so long..."

2005-10-14T01:02:45Z

I need to stop spending money. I swear, the ~$2,000 I have left over from scholarships / working this summer is dwindling, slowly but surely, and my $120 a week just isn't filling it back up, especially given that I'm driving not only to ASU and back every day but I've been driving down to church (or Java Spot) daily too... so gas is being consumed much more quickly than it was a few weeks ago. What do I find to spend all of my money on? Well today it was a 20" Dell LCD monitor I've been drooling over for quite some time. It's widescreen, and it uses the same LCD as the Apple 20" LCDs do, so it's good quality... for $400, shipped free, with no tax, I think it was a steal, so I bought one. A couple of weeks ago it was my 50mm prime (which is sitting on my camera, waiting for an opportune time to be of use)... earlier this week it was a $15 Microsoft Wireless Optical Wheel Mouse (my Kensington mouse is showing some wear, and at $15, you can't beat it... I like those mice). You see, I buy things on sale simply because they're cheap and I might need them. The LCD is a different story, because I'd been debating buying one for months, and the 50mm prime is in the same category, but other things I just buy on a whim, which isn't always good. So, I'm going to try and stop spending as much and let my account regain the money I've been spending. Hopefully it'll work...

I have a domain... go me!

I bought a domain a few days ago, and finally got all coordinated with Bryce as far as nameservers and stuff goes, so it's finally working as it should. At some point in the (hopefully near) future, I will be transitioning my blog over to futileohm.com (don't worry, there's absolutely nothing there currently). Props to Tall Brian for the name idea (whether he intended it or not). If anyone gets a creative drive and has any logo ideas or site design/color ideas, let me know... no, you don't need to know how to make web pages or what not, but a drawing goes a long way and I can take it and make it into (decent) (X)HTML/CSS from there. Of course, if you want to design a whole page layout for me, that's fine too... but I want something that's really slick looking, so I doubt I'll have people randomly designing templates for me. I'm most likely going to set up a WordPress and slowly migrate from using my LiveJournal to using that instead. It'll take a while though, as I'll have to get comfortable with WordPress and such before I ditch my (now paid) LiveJournal for good. I may parallel them too for a while, so I'll have to see how I feel in a week or two when I actually get time to sit and think about the frivialities of it all.

Of course, this also means that I have (another) new email address as well: peter at futileohm dot com. Original, isn't it? You can use that email address, or my ASU one (peter dot woods at asu dot edu) or my Cox one too, if you like that one. I'm not sure which I'll send email from primarily, probably whichever one I'm in the mood for...

I just don't get it

I really just don't get the point of all these stupid (yes, they are stupid) survey/meme/whatever things that people spend a ton of time answering. What do you benefit from knowing that some random 13-year-old's logic determined you were a bed-wetter? Yeah, some of them are remotely amusing, but they still get old fast. Not to mention the fact that 95% of them are poorly worded and look like they were written by a 13-year-old—coincidence? I think not. If you're going to waste time doing something, please, for the love of God, waste it doing one of two marginally more productive things: 1) Write about pointless stuff that you hate for fun, or 2) Play a video/computer game. You're going to be killing brain cells anyways, so why not at least have a little bit of fun doing so.

The funniest of these online meme things, a.k.a. 98.793% of them, are so easily rigged that it's not even funny. The less the number of questions, the more obvious the answers too. And quite frankly, 92.78937% of users don't answer honestly anyways, so what's the point? (Yes, my statistics are genuine, accurate, and backed by multiple sources). If they were 100-question-long things with well-worded, original questions, I'd probably care a little more... what's that you say? Nobody would sit and answer 100 questions? Never! *sigh*, what is this world coming to?

Oh, and even worse than the meme things are the retarded "copy this and fill in your answers" things. YES! LET'S ANSWER TEH SAME QUESTNS OVR ADN OVAH AGIN CUS ITZ FUN LOLOLOLLOOLOLOOLOLOLOLLOOLZ. How about no. Even if you take one over it (E^2 still lives, somewhere inside each and every one of us), it's still no. A certain ex-girlfriend of mine has an affinity for these pointless wastes of everyone's time, and every time I read one I have to resist the strong urge to dive off a 7-foot stone ledge into a large frozen pond. Ugh, please guys... I can only read the same set of questions answered so many times (usually about .785 times, actually) before they get old. Very, very old.

In other news

I stumbled across this gem today, and found it amusing: Biblical Curse Generator. It is quite true to its name, producing humorous insults like:

I hope you will have more mother-in-laws than King Solomon, thou breaker of the commandments!

Take heed, O thou dabbler in abominations, for you will be plagued with gnats, flies and locusts!

Behold, thou shalt be kicked by an incontinent camel, O thou denizen of the underworld!

They're not particularly Biblical, but they're certainly more Biblical than, say, "Your mom!" or "You lying sack of potatoe skin wedges!" (Esub1 gets credit for that... long live E^2). I found them amusing at least.

If anyone wants to chip in some money to help Nick buy peterisinsane.com, please do. I told him he should set up his own blog on peterisinsane.com (actually, he suggested the domain name, I can't take credit for that) and that we should slander each other. 'Twould be quite amusing, if you ask me. If you know Nick, nag him about getting a blog, even if it's just a LiveJournal. He's a freaking hilarious kid, and much of what he says is blog-worthy. Those of you who know him would probably agree with me there.

I'd like to say a special thanks to Liz for her comment on my Nick entry. You definitely had me laughing the next morning when I saw it, so thanks Liz =).

I've been denied for two credit cards in the past month or so. Not that I have any sort of credit history or bank account longetivity, so I should have expected to be denied, it's just annoying nonetheless. Chase keeps sending me these "sign up for a credit card!" things, in fact one came the same day as my letter of denial from them. Rawr. I thought credit card companies tried to milk college students for all they're worth, but I guess I'm not yet milkable. Ah well.

Another day, another essay... until next time...

You should see the stars tonight...

2005-10-12T05:55:18Z

Without going into too much detail, I have a few things to say about my day:

If today wasn't proof that God exists, I don't think anything could be.
Char: your phone call totally turned my day around and put a much-needed smile on my face. Not that you'll ever read this, but props to you nonetheless.
For years and years (all throughout high school even) I longed to be someone people turned to when they needed a shoulder to cry on. Suffice it to say nothing beats the feeling of comforting someone like that... especially when it's someone you really care about.

On another note, I am now (as of a few days ago, even) an official paid member of LiveJournal, hence the skin change. Mind you, there is one even nicer looking skin, but it doesn't render properly in Safari (commies). Why did I choose that route? Because I support websites that I use, and the price ($5 for 2 months, or something like that) was more than bearable for the extra features (subdomain, skins, no nagging, etc). Just thought I'd let everyone know that =).

By the way, those of you who are my close friends who don't have a LiveJournal account *cough*TeddiNickAlyssa*cough*, I will occasionally write a personal entry which I'll restrict to very specific groups of people, so if you're interested in reading my personal entries go ahead and create an account and let me know what your username is so I can add you to my friends list and ensure you get to read some other entries too. I'm not condoning friends-only or anything of that nature, nor will I be stopping my public posts any time soon... just once every blue moon when I have personal stuff I want to write about, I figured those people who I'm close to may as well have the opportunity to know what's going on too. Carley and Natalie, you're already ahead of the game, so good for you guys ;-).

I usually don't post songs on here, but this is one of the rare exceptions... I originally associated this song with one of my close friends as sort of an inside joke, but the past few days it's taken on so much more meaning than it had before. So, here it is:

Stars ~ David Crowder Band
You should see the stars tonight
How they shimmer shine so bright
Against the black they look so white
Coming down from such a height
To reach me now, reach me now

You should see the moon in the flight
Cutting cross the misty night
Softly dancing in sunshine
Reflections of its light
Reach me now, they reach me now

And how could such a thing
Shine its light on me
And make everything beautiful again?

And you should feel the sun in the spring
Coming out after a rain
Suddenly all is green
Sunshine on everything
I can feel it now, I feel it now

And how could such a thing
Shine its light on me
And make everything beautiful?

And you should hear the angels sing
All gathered round their king
More beautiful than you could dream
I've been quietly listening
You can hear them now, I hear them now

And how could such a king
Shine His light on me
And make everything beautiful
And I wanna shine
I wanna be light
I wanna tell you it'll be alright
And I wanna shine and I wanna fly
Just to tell you now
It'll be alright, it'll be alright
It'll be alright.

'Cause I got nothing of my own to give to you
But this light that shines on me shines on you
And makes everything beautiful, again.
It'll be alright, it'll be alright.

Good Ol' Nick

2005-10-12T05:29:53Z

In response to his ongoing demands for me to mention him in my blog, I have decided to devote an entire entry to my good friend Nick Smith. To ensure that I don't get off topic or start rambling about anyone or anything else, I have decided to ensure that Nick is the only proper noun I use in writing this entry—that way, I'll have no choice but to sing his praises and give him the credit he deserves.

Everybody loves Nick...

... but I think the general consensus would be that everyone loves Nick's girlfriend more. Mind you, I know at least two people at Nick's church who don't like Nick's girlfriend, but who's counting, anyways? I've been close friends with Nick's girlfriend for a year and a half or so now, and she's definitely one of the people I admire most. Supposedly, Nick's girlfriend's married older sister was trying to hook Nick's girlfriend up with me at one point, because according to this sister, "[I]'ll be rich". I must say though, that I find far more amusement watching Nick's girlfriend's relationships from the sidelines instead of being involved directly.

Nick's girlfriend has to be one of the most amusing people on the planet. It doesn't matter what I'm doing or where I am, when Nick's girlfriend is around, I'm almost always amused (there are exceptions, but they're few and far between). Some of the most amusing memories I have of Nick's girlfriend are the times I spent helping her with her lab-science-that-deals-with-chemicals (that was a close one...) homework last year. Instead of doing the more reasonable thing and doing her homework as it was assigned, Nick's girlfriend typically put all of her homework off until the night before the test, when it was all due. When test day was imminent, Nick's girlfriend would call me up and ask when she could come over. I'd prepare the M&M's, and gear up for 3+ hours of studying and homeworking with Nick's girlfriend. It was great fun.

Speaking of Nick's girlfriend, she starts her new job today, as far as I know... I hope she enjoys it.

Nick is freaking hilarious

Nick's church's youth group's worship leader, on the other hand, is getting on my nerves. Surprisingly, Nick's church's youth group's audio/visual team is getting along quite well—Nick's church's youth group's band, however, is in shambles, at least in my opinion. The leadership, most notably Nick's church's youth group's paid worship leader and Nick's church's youth group's lead guitar player, are not setting anything near a decent example, and their leadership has been sporadic and quite inconsistent the past month or so, to say the very least. While I have my own opinions about this, I'm trying to keep them to myself, and I keep meaning to talk to Nick's church's youth pastor about how I feel, but have yet to find the time to bring it up.

On that note, Nick's church's youth group's audio/visual team is planning to take a camping trip later this month, to get away from things and as an excuse not to have to do sound one week. I'm excited about it, as are Nick's church's youth group's audio visual team's married staff member and Nick's church's youth group's audio visual team's only junior high member. Should be fun, says I.

Nick is a true friend

And so is Nick's equal-aged coffee-making friend who now attends Nick's youth group and works at Nick's girlfriend's previous source of income. Intriguing, eh? No, I've grown much closer to this girl, and she's awesome, to say the very least. Not someone I'd date, but that's okay, because she's a great friend nonetheless. She makes good coffee too, which is always a plus =).

Nick in a nutshell

So, there you have it folks... I think I've said pretty much everything there is to say about Nick. Doesn't he seem like an amazing guy? I think so. Whether you're one of Nick's close friends, or just Nick's youth group's audio visual team's only junior high member's mentor who happens to (humbly) sing Nick's praises in his blog (a.k.a. me), there's no denying that Nick's a fabulous guy.

Okay then... who's next?

=P.

Drained

2005-10-11T03:56:31Z

I started writing a lengthy entry this morning, but don't have the energy to finish it, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow. It sucks too, because I devoted an entire entry to Nick, as per his wishes, and it's coming along quite nicely. I'm completely drained though, and the smallest things (like driving) are taking it out of me. Until tomorrow, good night.

Compensation

2005-10-09T17:13:01Z

So, I didn't get a chance to write the past couple of days (I was gone on Friday from 9AM to 7PM, and by gone I mean not at home, and by I licked it I mean I hit it with my hand... you lying sack of potatoe skin wedges [don't ask...]). Hopefully today will be sufficient compensation though, as I have a list of topics I've been compiling over the past few days to write about, and I've actually written them down this time, so I'll remember them.

Talking of which...

Speaking of remembering things to write about, I've had a lot of people (meaning two or three) comment on the fact that I write so much every day. What's funny, for me at least, is that on an average day I actually blog roughly 5-10% of the ideas that I come up with while I'm not sitting in front of my computer or able to write something down so I remember. I typically touch on three or four things, and a lot of the time I'll either remember some of the better ideas I had after I'm done writing for the day or I'll remember them the next day, by which time they're out of date, so to speak. I usually have one or two major things that I think about throughout the day and then blog when I get the chance, but it is somewhat aggravating to me that some of the better ideas I have are often forgotten when I sit down at my computer to actually write. Oh well, so it goes.

"Mmmm, you got crackin' toast, Gromit"

The new Wallace and Gromit movie came out yesterday, and although I have yet to see it (I'm going tomorrow with the homegroup, I believe), I've heard it's quite true to the original, especially as far as Gromit's eyebrow expressions go. This is good, because I've been waiting for this movie to come for years and years now. You see, I saw some interview with Nick Park, or a making of Wallace and Gromit, or something of that nature (probably in England) a long time ago (we're talking 8, 10, possibly more years). At one point or another, Park commented that he was starting work on a full-length film, that'd be shown in the cinema. So, I figured within a couple of years we'd see this movie, and all would be well. Little did I know it would take this long, but everything I've seen about it seems to suggest it's been well worth the wait.

Not all is good in the world of Wallace and Gromit, however. We got the Wallace & Gromit in Three Amazing Adventures DVD (a.k.a. the first three "shorts", plus other crap, all remastered and shoved on a DVD), and I put it in to watch them with Natalie yesterday, expecting to enjoy reminiscing and watching them straight through, something I haven't done in ages (although I've heard them many a time, thanks to the homegroup's younguns who watch them religiously). A Grand Day Out was almost exactly true to the original, with the only noticeable change being the text at the start and the credits, which were simply put in a different font (I believe, at least). This is where the DVD's "true to the original" claim died a horrendous and jarring death by some combination of stoning, crucifixion, and burning at the stake.

First, they had them in the wrong order. After A Grand Day Out, A Close Shave started playing. Both Natalie and I reacted with a, "what the...?" Yeah. On the DVD box they're even in the right order (clearly The Wrong Trousers comes before A Close Shave... that's just common sense people), but on the DVD itself they're wrong. What the heck happened, people? Was there a catastrophic communication failure between the people making the DVD Menu and the people making the packaging? Was the guy on shift that fateful night at [insert some random company who makes DVD menus cheap for things like this] drunk? Stoned? Rolling? *sigh*. The world may never know. We did, however, stop the "Play All" function and play them in the right order manually, much to my dismay.

I'm sad to have to report though, that it got worse from there. The Wrong Trousers, often held as the best of the three, was ruined, probably as a result of communism. Yes, I would rather watch our old VHS copy of The Wrong Trousers in the crappiest VCR you can find on a TV with obscene amounts of ghosting which randomly turns off every five minutes than watch the version on the DVD. Well, says you, they can't have changed much, because they can only do so much without having to change the original video. If only you knew, says I. You see, sound makes a movie just as much as the video does, and they made some pretty significant changes to The Wrong Trousers. The most jarring changes were those that involved music. I think the most memorable, and the one that completely ruined the movie for me, was the fact that they changed the birthday card song. Gromit gets a musical birthday card, which plays (in a perfect birthday-card-sounding tone) Happy Birthday while he eats. Or, it did at least. On the DVD, it plays For He's A Jolly Good Fellow. Before I say anything else... who in their right mind would send someone a card that says "Happy Birthday" on the front and plays that song? NOBODY WOULD! Okay, now that I've gotten that off my chest, here's my speculation as to why they changed that and various other music throughout the movie: licensing issues. In fact, I'm almost certain this is the case, because indeed there is a copyright held on Happy Birthday. Communism I tell you. It just frustrates me that they released the original, most likely without any thought pertaining to copyright on such songs (because nobody cared at that point), but because they're re-releasing it they had to change the music.

The other major change I noticed was the way the techno-trousers sound. The sound at its core is still the same, but it's softer and easier on the ears. How does that make the least bit of sense? The whole point of the original techno-trousers sound was that it drove you up the wall... it was one of those subtle things that you don't notice until it's gone. At least they kept the burglar alarm sound the same, as if they'd changed that I probably would have had a cow last night while watching it. Yes, the sound really does matter that much.

A Close Shave, on the other hand, was still very true to the original—in fact, I didn't notice any changes in it at all, which probably means that, because of when it was made (much later than the other two), they figured it was good enough already.

Whatever the case, hopefully the new film will make up for their butchering The Wrong Trousers... I'm sure I'll get over it... some day.

Font nerdery

I am a self-professed font nerd. Yes, you heard me right, I love fonts, to the point where I can call myself a font nerd. Why do I like fonts so much? I don't know. I guess the whole concept of a font just amazes me. Most people wouldn't believe how much history there is behind the fonts they view and use every day... not to mention the amount of time, effort, and thought that has to go into every tiny nuance of every single font.

As anyone who has spent a moderate amount of time around me knows, I am very partial towards and against a number of different fonts. The most notable of these is my abhorrence of Comic Sans. Believe it or not folks, Comic Sans is not the only font you can use to make something appear "fun". In fact, there are many far more readable and better-designed fonts that look much more fun, youthful, or casual than Comic Sans does. Comic Sans is overused, overrated, and overloved. If you use Comic Sans, stop, please... else you risk me flying off the handle at you for using such a piss-poor font. An alternative like Marker Felt or Tekton or... pretty much anything... is worth the little bit of extra effort in the long run.

My hatred of Comic Sans stems from another, more fundamental pet peeve. I believe that if you have enough money to purchase a sign, create a logo, or print pamphlets or brochures or catalogs or what not, you have enough money to invest in a less-common, more original font. It doesn't matter if you run a small coffee shop or a multibillion dollar corporation, it's well worth the little bit of money (and, in the grand scheme of things, the cost really is miniscule) to purchase and use a font which you don't see every day and, more so, which isn't included with Windows. If you use an original font in your logo, your marketing materials, etc. then people start to associate that font with your business. This is a good thing. Think of it like free advertising, courtesy of the human brain's uncanny ability to associate shapes and figures with things. Not to mention the fact that an original font sets your business apart... anyone can make a logo in Comic Sans using Paint or Photoshop, but if your logo uses a professional-looking, expensive font (by expensive I mean an Adobe typeface, so $100-300, depending on the weights that are included) the number of people who can reproduce your logo drops significantly. It's worth it people, it really is.

As for fonts I have an affinity for, my favorite fonts have to be Optima and Warnock Pro (sans-serif and serif, respectively). Optima looks good on screen (or, good enough for me to use in Adium and XJournal), and Warnock is just incredibly readable on paper and yet has a very old and unique feel to it (the periods are actually diamond-shaped, for example). There are other fonts I really like, but those two are my favorites currently...

Roller Coaster Tycoon is addictive

I've started playing Roller Coaster Tycoon (the first one, as it's the only one that runs on my 233mhz Pentium II) again the past couple of days, and I must say it's still quite addictive. I never played it when it came out, except at school, because we never had a PC in the house to play it on. So, at the time I listened to my friends rave about the game, and pretended like I loved playing it as much as they did, even though I'd never played it. A year ago I found a copy of the original on Acquisition (by far the best p2p in existence), and I downloaded it and started playing at school on our 2k Server ('cause I had nothing better to do in Hodge's class) as well as at home on my 233mhz PC. It's a great game, and although it has its annoyances and nuances, it's a lot of fun to play.

Well, church is about to start, so I'm going to leave off there... I have a lot more to write about, however, so maybe later today I'll get to writing it, if not, hopefully tomorrow I'll finish up.

It's a beautiful day in the library

2005-10-06T16:17:20Z

Our 75-minute English 102 class most definitely lasted all of 30 minutes today. She handed back our first paper, assigned our second one, and off we went, basically. Oh, and we wrote in our journals about "the most interesting person you've met in the last 24 hours". Mine was Dave(/id?), the Blockbuster manager who I talked with at Java Spot last night while waiting for Alyssa. He was quite an interesting character, to say the least.

I was truly a part of the Legacy of AztecTV

I visited Corona again yesterday (for the second time this school year) for two reasons: AztecTV aired, and Mrs. Urban was a giant ball of stress. AztecTV, for those of you who didn't attend Corona and weren't around last year to hear me vent about it, was our TV program that last year won 3rd in the nation at the JEA/NSPA (Journalism Education Association / National Scholastic Press Association) Spring conference in Seattle. Last year, we kicked butt (mamasez I have to watch my language...). This year, however, the class didn't make, so it continued as a club, much to Mrs. Urban's despair. Suffice it to say the first episode was horrendously bad. Like, worse than the inside-joke-ridden crap they aired our Sophomore year. Much, much worse even.

You see, last year we set a standard as far as a TV program goes, but we happened to have the perfect smorgasbord (wow, spelled that right the first time) of students along with Mrs. Urban to keep us in line. You had your big-headed people (*cough*Gary*cough*), but they were balanced out by those who did some of the best work and rarely said a word (Ryan comes to mind). The other big difference was that the people involved last year knew how much work had to go into this, and knew that, at the beginning of the year at least, our best pretty much sucked. It was only by attempting to constantly improve what we were doing that we produced the caliber of product that was our March 9th episode (the one that garnered us 3rd place in Seattle). It took a lot of work, and we fell flat on our face a number of times, but at least we had a general sense of what people in general wanted to see.

Aethan Geiss (if I misspelled that, it was intentional), my friends, is not Gary Ruiz. You see, to be Gary Ruiz, you have to possess a number of qualities that what's-his-face doesn't possess. Things like:

A voice which makes people laugh no matter what you're talking about.

Opinions on random and stupid things which make absolutely no sense and do nothing but make people scratch their heads.

A friend named Alex Calleros.

Numerous other things I'm not going to mention for lack of time, space, and energy.

Whatever the case, AztecTV does and will suck until Aethan is no longer a part of it any more. Yes, I'm totally serious, and if anyone knows me I wouldn't say that about just anyone. I believe, however, that he is a plague that will drive the program into the ground, and in many ways already has.

The other thing that bothered me is that nobody gave a rat's patootie (aren't you proud of me, mom?) about audio quality. It was disgusting. Even the segments using mics were horrible. I know that our equipment may not be in tip-top shape, but even paying the slightest bit of attention in post-production can make anything of that nature hundreds of times better. One thing I learned last year (and hopefully taught Alex and Gary in the process) was that having good, clean audio can make even the most poorly-shot scene decent. This equipment is not expensive, nor is it hard to use, but it makes a phenomenal difference in the overall quality when you can hear what's going on. This is one reason that I think AztecTV was so good last year: nothing went on air without at least some equalization, and each segment was carefully matched with those before and after it so that there were no glaring audio level differences. It makes a huge difference, folks... and if you don't believe me, I can dig up March 9th again and show you what it would sound like had I not touched the audio... and then you can decide for yourself. If you're in the video production field in any way, shape, or form, and don't pay as much if not more attention to the audio you're capturing as you do the video, do something about it, or talk to me and get some tips as to equipment I've had good luck with.

"One more thing" coming from Apple

Apple sent out flyers to the media this week announcing some special event next week (I believe) to announce "one more thing". Speculation abounds. Will it be the video iPod? Will it be new PowerMacs? PowerBooks? A video-enabled AirPort Express? An Apple car? An Apple housing development? Is Steve Jobs announcing his presidential campaign? Is Apple filing for bankruptcy? You get the picture.

So, what do I think it is? Who knows. The Nano came out of nowhere, so it'll probably be something relatively mundane. I think if they were releasing major iPod updates (a.k.a. a full-on video playing iPod), they'd have done it alongside the Nano. However, I don't discount the possibility that the iPod will get video in some shape or another. I'm under the impression that it will be like the photo feature of the iPod though, something that can be used to play the odd music video but not the major feature of the iPod itself. We'll have to wait and see, I guess.

On a semi-related note, for those of you who are Mac fans to some extent or another, check out this Brief History of Microsoft (~20MB, QuickTime 7 required [H.264]). It's a hilarious rendition of Microsoft's history, narrated by a Mac Text-To-Speech voice (Victoria, I believe), and consisting mostly of amusing clips from Microsoft's past. I'm not here to say "teh Windoze sucks and teh Mac rulez!" but the occasional jab at Microsoft is appreciated, to say the least.

And now for something, completely different

I found this article yesterday on Slashdot, and found it quite intriguing. It talks about the signs of doom that often plague jobs in the tech industry and often are the bellwether (that one's for you, Mrs. Centanni) of being laid off or company bankruptcy. Thankfully, I have yet to notice any of the four signs he outlines, but they were interesting nonetheless, and I see potential for those things happening, although I think my boss is smart enough to know how to run a productive ship. Worth the read if you're involved with computers or technology at all.

I am thoroughly amused that there is a "Coalition To Get Timothy J. Smith To Run For Political office" on the Facebook. I wholeheartedly agree... Mr. Smith would make a great politician, but that's why I believe he should never run for office. Politics is shady business, and Mr. Smith is not a shady man. Heck, he dressed up as a pimp for Halloween a couple of years ago (if you know him, you'd find it funny, if you don't know him well, just trust me), he has hilarious blind-date-from-hell stories, he throws the best faculty end-of-year parties (at least, according to my sources that's the case), and who can mess with a nickname like T-daddy Smith? Not I.

I miss working with video. I love editing, especially audio, and miss being able to do that. Just thought I'd let everyone know. My G5 sits at home idling quietly acting as a print server 99% of the time now, and it's a pity really, because I used it quite a bit last year for editing video (especially for things like the senior video). I don't know where to look for video-editing opportunities, else I would go looking... so for now, she sits idle and makes a darn-good, if not cluttered, server for my LaserJet 1012.

Speaking of my LaserJet, that's something I need to write about sometime. I also need to finish my driving segment (too many references to Chandlites and Tempinians make it hard to finish off). I have plenty of other things to say too, but they've escaped me for the time being, so I leave you, as I myself leave my comfy chair in the lobby of Hayden Library.

Another disappointing entry

2005-10-06T05:52:29Z

I know, I know, I'm letting everyone down. I learned tonight that my mom reads this too, so sorry mom. ;-).

I think they might be canceling Top Gear, as they're rearranging Wednesday nights on the Discovery Channel. What fun! No. My world will fall to pieces if they stop showing that show at a reasonable hour.

In other news, the Colbert Report starts mid-October. Definitely going to be rearranging my sleep schedule (naps, anyone) to watch that after the Daily Show.

There's something else I wanted to write, but I completely forgot. So, I'm just going to mention that Alyssa makes me smile, and head for bed.

'night.

Shipwrecked

2005-10-05T04:21:55Z

I decided on the way to school today that if I ever learn to play the guitar (which I still hope to... some day), I'm going to learn the song Shipwrecked, by Pottery (Jars of Clay). It was a "exclusive bonus track" or something of that nature on one of their CDs a couple of years ago, and one way or another Jeremy (Blaker) ended up giving it to me, and it quickly became one of my favorite songs. It's simple—a guy singing and picking an acoustic guitar—but it's one of those songs that's in my vocal range and which I enjoy listening to and singing. One of the things I love most about it is that he sets the mood perfectly before the song even starts, when he sighs and then starts counting off before he plays. It's genius, I tell you. And just a great song.

Shipwrecked – Jars of Clay

He put it in a bottle and he threw it out to sea
But the tide would not surrender and it floated to the beach
So the message of apology his love would never see
He walked around that island all shipwrecked, and heavy

The scars of early childhood stood showing on his skin
A necessary enemy so healing could begin
From the message of apology his heart might soon break free
But for now he walks that island all shipwrecked, and ready

Low beyond horizon lines across the salty sea
A boat without a captain makes its way to some city
He prays that it would sail its course to lover or to kin
And fan a thirst for searching and finding him again

Finding him again
Finding him again

Okay, now that I've said that, one last thing before I head off the deep end of rambling:

I think a Natalie-style rant is best suited for this: To the girl in my English class, who faithfully sat next to me and talked to me the first few weeks of school, and waited for me after class... I don't know what exactly happened, but I do still enjoy talking to you and I don't bite, I swear. It's not that I really care, I just enjoyed talking to you, that's all =).

With that out of the way, I can begin:

Blogs I personally enjoy

There are a few blogs I frequent that I figured I'd share with everyone here. Mind you, they're all pretty nerdy/geeky blogs, talking about technology or programming or what not, but for the more technically-inclined they may provide an interesting read. I don't quite have a Blog Roll (yet), so for now this'll have to suffice:

FatBits — John Siracusa (don't worry, I'd never heard of him either) is relatively new on the Ars Technica blog scene (he started maybe a week before I started writing in here again), but what he has to say is quite profound. His commentary on Apple products and software is quite good, to say the very least, and provides an interesting perspective which I haven't seen matched anywhere else. Of particular note for any Mac programmers in the crowd (*looks around* damn, I thought there'd be at least one ;-) are his Avoiding Copland 2010 posts (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), which I found very intriguing given my background in Cocoa and such. If you're into that sort of stuff, it's definitely worth checking out.

Joel on Software — Joel Spolsky is one of the most well-known sources of goodness when it comes to writing about software development or anything related. His more recent articles haven't been as profound as some of his writing a couple of years ago. I particularly enjoyed his commentary on using Exceptions, and his article Making Wrong Code Look Wrong, both of which are good reads if you're into programming on any level.

Daring Fireball — I've mentioned John Gruber before, so I won't spend too much time commenting on him, however I must say he's freaking hilarious and very profound too.

Homegroup amusement

My parents' home group (the group of people they do bible study, etc. with from church every week) is thoroughly amusing, to say the very least. The fact that they are at our house nine of every ten Sundays for dinner means that I get to share in this amusement much of the time, which is quite fun, I must admit. This past Sunday I was putting the finishing touches on my human event paper when my mom pops her head in my room and says that (Tall) Brian, who's a Junior High (don't remember what grade, exactly) English teacher, is curious about my prompt and paper and would like to see them. At this point, I had already submitted it online (which made me nervous, because knowing me he'd find some glaring error which I then wouldn't be able to fix), but I forked it over and continued doing whatever it was I was doing at the time.

According to Liz, who I saw yesterday, my paper sparked quite a controversy among a couple of people in the homegroup (namely, Peter and Brian). Of course, given the fact that it's Liz relating this to me, I'm sure it was just a mild discussion, but I'm amused nonetheless. Peter ended up dropping in my room and talking with me about it, which was interesting, and I mentioned my blog which he then asked to read, which is how Brian eventually ended up putting me on his Blog Roll. Of note as well is Brian's blog, which is amusing in itself.

I'd started to write about driving and such things, but I will have to finish that tomorrow... I kind of lost my momentum this evening, and can't finish it the way it rightfully deserves to be finished.

Hopefully what's above will suffice for today ;-)

Just a tiddly bit

2005-10-04T06:14:00Z

I was going to write a fair amount tonight, but that all went to hell in a frilly, wicker handbasket when I went to Sonic with Natalie. To one-up her comment: "Natalie, has anyone ever told you how much you make me smile?" Ha! I win ;-). Really though, I know nobody else who can make my day quite like she does... day in and day out.

'Twas a sad day at the spot of java today, as 'twas Teddi's last day there. 'Tis a pity, really, but at least I have Alyssa there to keep me company and such. I started drawing parallels between my friendship with Teddi and my (emerging) friendship with Alyssa, and I think I scared myself pretty badly while I was at Java Spot. If you're wondering why that would scare me, feel free to ask, but I'm not going to ramble aimlessly on here any more than I feel the need to tonight.

Still haven't talked to Eliot (or Nate for that matter) in what must be weeks. It's weird, to say the very least.

Anyways, things which I will hopefully get to tomorrow:
Blogs I like (FatBits and JoS especially) and interesting tidbits from them
Why driving in England is so much better than driving here (from an unexperienced driver's standpoint, of course)
Homegroup amusement
Full sounding music
Other random crap, I'm sure

Goodnight all =).

Victory!

2005-10-03T02:54:07Z

I did it, the paper hath been conquered, and I'm still alive and seem to be breathing quite normally. Nobody's around (and by nobody I mean Natalie's busy, and Teddi's working, and the other people I'd have the remote chance of doing anything with are nowhere to be found), so the normal-length entry writing will return tonight, one day earlier than expected (exciting, isn't it?).

There's an abortion clinic on Rural?

Yes indeed, there is. They've got a two-for-one deal going through Thursday too, so if you're sitting on the fence now's the time to make a decision. (For clarification's sake, that last sentence was a joke). Of course, the only reason I know there's an abortion clinic on Rural is amusing in itself. You see, for at least the first few weeks of school, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday when I'd be headed towards ASU down Rural at between 9 and 9:15 or so I saw a couple of old men picketing this abortion clinic. The first time I saw them I said to myself, "interesting," however I wasn't able to catch a glimpse of what the signs said, and I figured they were just randomly protesting as old men have a tendency to do. I quickly learned that wasn't the case, as two or three times a week I'd see them out there, faithfully protesting with their pro-life signs. Now, I'm not going to get into how I feel about abortion, because the only political affiliation I hold on this blog is that which opposes communism, especially when it involves MySpace or Rural Road. Mind you, I will admit that the fact there's an abortion clinic on Rural never occurred to me before. It never occurred to Natalie either, meaning that it probably hasn't occurred to most people I know. I guess it just brings the issue closer to home... somewhere, in the back of my head, I knew there must be an abortion clinic in Tempe... I just never knew that I drive by it many times a week. One of those interesting things you never think about until something random and possibly amusing changes the way you think.

The Uncyclopedia is hilarious

I stumbled across the gem that is the Uncyclopedia earlier today, and I must say I had some great laughs as a result. A direct stab at Wikipedia, the Uncyclopedia attempts to bring humor into this world by letting anyone make fun of pretty much anything in any way they can. Some of the stuff is pretty bland, but there are a few priceless gems I've stumbled across (please note: I can't guarantee you won't be offended by the following links, so if you think you might be, don't click them =): Steve Ballmer, Pope, Mormons, Mormon, Windows, Windows Vista and last but certainly not least Jesus.

Cheap digital EQs aren't worth their weight in paper when printed

One thing that has somewhat frustrated me about iTunes is the absolute crap that it calls its "Equalizer". It's so bad, I have to enclose it in quotes, because it's hardly able to be called that. It should be called a muddifier, because all I've heard it do is make the music sound slightly better and about 10 times as muddy as it did before. What's crazy is that the cheapest, bodged together analog EQ would probably produce results exponentially better than even a decent software EQ. This is one area where I agree with the crotchety old men who compose most of the Pro Audio industry—analog is far better than digital when it comes to EQ, unless you pay out the rear for a really nice digital EQ. With the four band, dual-sweepable EQ with a fixed high and low shelf on our mixer at church (it's not really as über as it sounds, I promise), we can make music playing in iTunes sound hundreds of times better by simply adjusting one or two knobs... I've sat and tweaked iTunes for a good while before and the results either sound like crap or aren't significant enough to justify the extra muddiness added. I didn't realize this would be the case with my iPod too until I actually got one (the Nano) that has an EQ option on it. Not only does the EQ muddy up the music on the whole, it makes it distort on the low and high ends if you push it too loud, which is just crap if you ask me.

This has been exemplified (sorry, I used that word a lot in my paper) the past few days by the fact that the iPod adapter I put in my car doesn't have as good a frequency response as I'd hoped. Compared to the built in 6-CD changer, the low and high ends are lacking, to say the very least. I'm not sure if this is a problem with the Blitzsafe adapter, or with the HeadUnit in my car... it could be that the HU is simply designed for XM or what not and therefore doesn't have a full frequency range input. It could be that the Blitzsafe box simply isn't amazing quality (probably more likely). It could just be a fluke... I have no clue at this point. For now though, it's good enough, and I can't be bothered because my iPod plays fine, and still sounds relatively good even without the punch it had before. What I may try and do at some point is crack open the Blitzsafe box and figure out what's inside, with the hopes that somewhere between the box and the iPod (or the iPod and the box, for that matter) I can insert some sort of analog EQ that'll boost the lower and higher ends enough to regain that punch. Yeah, it's not perfect, but it'd do. It's a little frustrating, but again, it was definitely $80 well spent for that adapter, with or without proper bass response.

Other nightly randomness

Believe it or not, I don't really mind Windows 2003 Server, as far as Windows OSes go at least. It's not amazing, but it certainly isn't hard to use, and makes sense for the most part. It's easier to configure than any Linux distribution would be, and for an all-Windows environment it works quite well, even on our 500mhz server. I may expand on that at a later date, but suffice it to say that it's not as bad as NT Server (although that's not hard...).

I had to deal with HP's Disk, Library, and Tape (I think that's what DLT stands for at least) support on Friday, and I had a very pleasant experience, with them shipping the replacement tape library yesterday morning overnight. Just thought I'd tell everyone that little morsel.

My $20+ a week coffee habit probably won't be subsiding any time soon. Thankfully I have income, so that offsets it a bit, but still, I used to think people were insane for spending that much every week on coffee, and now I know how easy it is.

Chandler's on fall break already... that's craziness, if you ask me. I'm still a little bitter that ASU doesn't have a fall break, but I'll be laughing come Christmas, and next summer, so it hasn't affected me too much.

There was more I wanted to write, but I've forgotten it all now, so I'll leave it at that for tonight. Stay tuned, I'm sure there'll be another delightful treat tomorrow...

Sorry to disappoint

2005-10-02T01:46:56Z

I hate to disappoint my faithful readers (hey, I can dream can't I?), but I will break my longwinded habit that has been consistent for the better part of the past week and only write a little bit in here, for fear of jinxing my sudden ability to write coherently about the role of women in the ancient world, based on Genesis, The Iliad, and Agamemnon.

I did however happen to realize something today that I've known for a week or two now but had yet to realize. I'm quite surprised at how two specific relationships have changed my friendships and in the process have brought me closer to a girl and a guy who a month ago I would never have fathomed would be my closest male and female friend right now. Suffice it to say I probably wouldn't be blogging at all were this change not to have occurred. I'm just going to leave it at that for now, because getting into it would take too much effort and thought at this point, but if you want to know why I said that I'm more than happy to explain... after 5PM on Monday afternoon (when my paper's due ;-).

I also realized today that I've spent way too much on coffee this week, and that between my car repairs, my new lens for my camera (I finally gave in and ordered a 50mm prime late last night), coffee, and food I've spent over $500 in the past week, which is kind of scary to think about. But hey, when you're getting paid to go to school, why not?

Thank goodness it's not Thursday any more

2005-10-01T05:13:34Z

It's Friday, and I should be happy... however, given that I have this huge paper which I still have yet to start on, I'm not exactly looking forward to the weekend. Ah well, as they say in Slaughterhouse Five (I believe, at least), "So it goes."

Kudos to Bryce

Bryce has offered to host a blog for me if/when I get a domain name and such, and on that note suggestions for domain names are still very welcome (come on guys, you've gotta have something). Because of Bryce's kind generosity, I've decided to write a small Perl script that gives him much-deserved props:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Bryce is cool.\n" while 1;

Why the infinite loop, you ask? Well, because infinite loops are awesome. I always use infinite loops whenever I can, just because they're so cool. What's the address of Apple's headquarters? "1 Infinite Loop." So it must be cool.

However, when one runs this lovely script, a problem arises: it hammers the CPU (and, theoretically, the memory too) because all it does is output "Bryce is cool." as fast as it can. The only way to stop the program is to kill bryce, which is kind of a pity, seeing as he's a nice fellow who provided me with hosting.

So, if you see Bryce, make sure you extend my gratitude to him by saying: "Bryce, I'm glad you're not a poorly-written perl script, because I wouldn't want to make Peter kill you."

Okay, enough geek humor for one day...

And I thought high school finished last year...

Yesterday I arrived in my English class a little early, and when I did our professor was pushing an A/V cart (a.k.a. a TV and VCR/DVD player combination on a cart). This of course made me think we might be watching some clip from a movie or something to relate to the lesson. We started the same way we usually do, writing in our journal things, and a few people shared their assignments that were due, and then our professor did what I thought no college professor would ever do: she told us we're watching a movie. Yes, an entire movie, that has barely any significance in the scope of our class curriculum. The movie is Spellbound, which is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen, and is about spelling, so I guess it's semi-kind of-sort of related to English. We got through three quarters of the movie or so yesterday, so we're going to finish the rest up on Tuesday. I'm just amused and quite saddened that we're actually watching a movie in a college class. What is this world coming to?

In other news

My Invisible Shield arrived for my Nano yesterday, so it's probably best that my attempt to follow the instructions for the $.01 iPod Nano Case failed miserably. I put it on earlier too, seeing as now was just about the best time to be iPod-less for 24 hours... I didn't realize I'd have to use water to put it on, but it actually went on really easily, and I was quite impressed with how it worked afterwards.

That, however, doesn't matter at this point... because... I got my car back! Woohoo... finally! I'm gonna try and put my iPod doohickey in there tonight so that once my iPod's able to be powered on again I can listen to it in its full glory. It wasn't until today that I realized just how smooth the suspension feels in my car compared to our Rav4; mind you, the Rav is zippier and much more responsive, but I like my car better nonetheless.

Nightly news update

While I wrote most of this about 12 hours ago, it's now 10 PM and I just spent three and a half hours installing my iPod adapter in my car. I'll explain the process and nuances tomorrow or some other time, but it's installed, and it works beautifully (although I have yet to try it with my nano...). Good night =).