Tetris

I've come to the conclusion that not only this is game addicting and amazing on every level (though I am still struggling with the hardest stage), but it prepares you for a variety of common life tasks. Like what you might ask?

1. Packing a car. Especially if the car is a Focus or some other form of Smart/compact. I recently stuffed all of my belongings into my car and I can only owe my success to hours of my youth spent diligently developing my spatial skills.

2. Laying parquet flooring. It seriously just makes me a faster worker.

3. Laying out a suitcase.

4. Parking. I shit you not!

5. Unpacking your car/arranging your room. Sigh. The sad thing? It's proving much much harder to get my room set up than it was to pack the car. I blame my cat.

But in closing, all hail the 4-straight block!

Bah Humbug!

Honestly, people from New York City and Westchester do not have a clue how to drive in the snow. I think I always knew this, but the demonstration was helpful as I made a 4.5 hour trek in a nearly unbearable 7 hours. Let's review what not to do, shall we?

1. Brake suddenly - This isn't a skid demo for a tricked out race car. If you have to slam on your brakes, you're likely doing #2 or #3.

2. Follow so closely you can see what radio station the car in front of you is playing - Yes, I get it, you're in a rush. But your tires can't grip and you can't do more than 25 without flying off the road, so why don't you take it easy. Because when you smash that dude's rear end, guess who pays?

3. Speed - I understand the speed limit is 55, you no doubt have a cup of eggnog and Mrs. Claus waiting at home for you. Still, don't weave in and out of traffic. It spooks the other drivers and honestly, you need to learn the difference between a Corolla and a SnowCat.

4. Accelerate while skidding - Unless you have a death wish, which I don't. So, um, cut it out.

5. Any combination of the above - I hate you. Are you just randomly pressing buttons and pressing pedals to see what happens? Seriously, I see you in there. Close your sunroof and stop playing with your seat controls. Everyone knows heated seats feel like you messed yourself in your pants anyways.

Punk!

I am one, if the near month long absence is any sign. I mean not too many interesting things have happened. Oh, I do have a super cool piece of paper that says I'm a Master of a certain discipline. So that, you know, is pretty cool.

Right now I'm sitting at the wonderful Hop cafe, gorging on grilled cheese (best cold weather food hands down) and waiting for my boss to come pick me up. We're working on a kitchen/bathroom overhaul which promises to be pretty lucrative. And since I can't start really work in NYC until after New Year's, this seems like a god way to pad the coffers.

The only thing on my "Things I Hate" list right now: stray roofing nails. Why? They get stuck in your tire and force you to drive to a service station. For one thing, you sound like a percussion instrument being played by a dude who's jacked up on Stoli and Red Bull. The other thing is that everyone tells you have one, as you're driving!

I need a sign for those situations: I KNOW MY CAR IS SCREWED UP, I'M TAKING CARE OF IT!!!

En Fuego!

A bit of a ruckus today:
I'm sitting there grading, earning my big, fat TA paycheck when I notice a fleet of fire engines, ambulances (always thought "ambulii" might be a more fun name for them) and cops come tearing down the street and rush into the nearby business school building.
Apparently some dumb-ass I-Banker wannabe had one of those batteries in his Mac that super heats. So he's sitting there with it on his lap, freaks out when it starts to burn a hole in his crotch and does his best to get rid of it. By tossing it in the recycling bin. He then runs to find tech support, and in his absence, some of paper ignites.
Extreme heat + fuel = smoke + fire + PANIC.

Gotta say, a fun 30 minutes to watch from a high - up window.

Bond

Went to go see the new James Bond film today with some guys from school (yes, it was like a group mandate in a way). So of course I have to share my thoughts, but don't worry, I shall keep it concise and frill-free.
The movie was, overall, very solid. I'd say a B+ or a bare A-, but still it was exactly want I was in the mood for this afternoon. Now the "OMG new bond, so cool srsly" effect has worn off since "Casino Royale" but Daniel Craig is still an awesome bond. Yes, his range only spans from "brooding" to "brooding while punching someone through a glass window" to "brooding while brooding," but it does improve on Pierce's one specialty, which happened to be simply awful and corny.
The supporting roles were fine, I mean Judi Dench is always great and the female lead again was very talented. Plot wise, there really was none. Some sort of nonsense about geoterrorism, water shortages and a mysterious group called "Quantum" about which nothing is ever really revealed.
Still, very entertaining, easy on the eyes, and a good Bond performance. Very worth it for $5 on a Sunday afternoon.
Oh, and yes ladies, you do get to see a bit of Bond sans shirt. Enjoy the 30 or so seconds.

Hmmm

Disco parties tend to be interesting. Especially when engineers hold them. You expect to see the standard John Travolta, Disco Stu, Ben Stiller in Starksy and Hutch type outfits. You know, fake fro, shirt open, lots of chains. But damn, do we tech types go overboard. One guy had fake chest hair popping out, only to be shown up by another with real chest hair.

But the winner was the EE kid who came as the disco ball, complete with rotating outer shell and LED lights.

Sir, I doff my disco hat to you.

Pranks!

So this news is a day old, but I can't help but rant about how cool it was.

A very well tuned comedy group known as the Yes Men, along with the help of several organizations such as United for Peace and Justice (who organized the RNC protests in NYC) and CODEPINK distributed something like 1.2 million copies of the New York Times yesterday morning.

Not really a big deal right? Oh, except for a few things. One, the paper was dated July 4, 2009. Two, the motto was changed to "All the News We Hope to Print." Three, main headline was "Iraq War Ends." See below:If only, right? I like the part about the "Sane Economy" and the Maximum Wage law. Apparently a buddy of mine snagged a copy of this, so I'm hoping to read it. The rumor is that it looks and feels exactly like a standard NYT print edition, and they even wrote all of the articles going into it.

I figure half the people on the subway yesterday must have been a little confused. I wonder how many people got it and how many people swore to do less drugs in the morning.

Ahhh

So much work!

The Internet at Fortune Teller

So this is one of those head-smacking, "of course!" kind of ideas.

Google does a lot of cool stuff. Some of it involves browsers, some of it involves data mining, and some of it is also philanthropic. Like this cool little feature on google.org:

http://www.google.org/about/flutrends/how.html

It's been known for a while that the web is an amazing tool for sociology, demographic studies and anthropology. Ends up it's a great tool for predicting spikes in flu cases (and, god forbid, seeing a serious outbreak prior to it getting out of control). I mean, naturally if people get sick they want advice or remedies or what have you. So Google tracks certain keywords about the flu or ILIs (influenza like illnesses) and compares the frequency of the tag words with the historical data on flu outbreaks in the region the IP address originates. Insert some fancy statistics, regressions and hand waving, and Google can produce an estimate of the flu activity on a daily basis.

Put that all together and you have an eerily accurate tool that beats the standard data collection technique used by the CDC by nearly two weeks. It's just really really cool to see technology used in such an informative, but common sense manner.

End nerd rant.

It Came From the Sky

The world is coming to an end. I'm convinced. The evidence is below:

1. Got up this morning, bright sunny day. Went for a run, felt unseasonably warm.
2. Biked to work. Ominously cloudy.
3. Got into town. HAIL. Freaking hail. I have bruises. For serious.
4. Left work to go to class. Wind. Rain.
5. Arrive at class. Snow.
6. Hide in closet, in fetal position. Wake me when the next Ice Age starts.

Paper Ma-shame!

Man. Okay, weak opening pun.

So my Engineering School has recently gone manic, foaming at the mouth green. So much so that they cut the beloved gas/ethanol SAE Formula Race car we build every year so that all focus could be put on the Hybrid competition, for example.

Ranting aside, we also have a very cool system that tracks the energy usage of each building as well as the amount of energy the solar panels on top of the school are contributing. Pretty sad actually, it was bright and sunny this morning and the panels were pumping out a whopping 7 kW. The school was using 480. Damn.

The other thing they track is paper usage, and this is what pisses me off. Yesterday, a freaking SATURDAY, people printed 779 pages of paper. Today, it was 1,480. And I left EARLY. I mean really? Why do people possibly need that much paper? But I have an idea. It should track both the total used and the worst offenders (who aren't profs printing for class) so they could be ritually humiliated and judged by their peers. Mostly because I think it would be effective, but also because it would be fun to judge.

And one for...

This is how I felt this morning. Nearly didn't want to get up:

Okay okay

So I was a bit delayed. What can I say, I was so swept up with last night's festivities that I just lost track of time. Which is code meaning that I fell asleep at 12:30pm. Oy.
Anyways, on to the XKCD event. First thing, Nucci brought a Nerf gun. It only led to good times. Secondly, they passed out ballpit balls at the door, a la those you would jump around in when you were a kid. So first we gave Randall Munroe a round of applause. Then we pelted him with ballpit balls, which as he agreed is a step up from expletives. Oh, and then he was Nerf'ed (I have NO idea who did that) twice which almost caused him to fall off of the stage in surprise.
That was the first few minutes. What followed was a lot of fun. Some thoughts:
- The dude is really young. I didn't realize he was in college until 2006, so good for him.
- He's one of those somewhat nervous speakers who has the gift to channel said nervousness into hilarious comments and equal hilarious awkwardness.
- He really does have a phobia of raptors. Seriously. Some kids rigged up an R/C car with a little dinosaur on it and he damn near jumped on the desk. That or he fakes it really well.
- Lots of cute nerdy girls at Dartmouth. Wish I realized that when I was a wee undergrad.

In the end, it was mostly question and answer. I think that approach worked best, as all assembled were really nerdy/geeky and didn't want to be talked at the entire time.


So I'll leave you with this gem of an exchange:
Guy in Crowd: So how has your education armed you in your battle against the velicoraptor?
Randall: Hm. Good question. I suppose I do know Fourier Transforms really well. But they take a ton of time.
Guy in Crowd: How about a Fast Fourier Transform?
Randall: Damn you! You stole my punch line. That's it, you write the next strip now.
Guy: It'll be about utensils.
Randall: Um, wow. Nevermind.

I love getting nerdy jokes.

More to Come!

So the plan for today is to put up a summary and review of the Randall Munroe talk after it happens. I was considering live-blogging, but that would be just TOO nerdy and might adversely effect my ability to pay attention and enjoy to the fullest. And on the topic of enjoying it to the fullest, Friday Beers has been moved up to 4:30pm. Time for the nerdiest pre-game evar! More to come, like I said.

Odd

Normally I'm used to going without proper amounts of sleep for long periods of time. Alas, I'm now officially showing my age. Seriously, I try to get up in the morning to go running and I feel like a brick hit me. Either this damn cat is keeping me up too late or I need some more of something so nerdy that I won't mention, but helps me to breath.... right at night. Damn. I'm a dork.
So to go along with that (I figure I might as go whole hog), here's installment number two of Gile's amazing adventures.

Giles' Amazing and Thrilling Outdoor Adventure's Number Two:
Or, the Episode in Which Giles Realizes the Outdoors is REALLY Big REALLY Quickly.

So I'm getting things ready to go for Giles' next big day walking. I figure I need to get him out again, as he's been a bit of a punk in the last few days. Shredding towels, meowing all night, farting too much and more of the usual.
I opened the door and went to work getting his leash and harness together. Oh, did I mention he's a freaking cat? Yeah, need to throw that in once an episode. I grab everything, turn around and, my God!, the cat is gone. Like a fat man to free donuts he poofed out the door.
I panic a bit and swivel my head side to side but quickly spy him out the door. There stands Giles, face to face with the most fearsome of all creatures: a rake. I'm afraid he'll run off or something, so I sprint out of the house. And with all the grace of a wildebeest, I trip and fall off the stoop, ending up in an awkward lump on the grass, with my arms outstretched.
As I do this, Giles' grabs a rake spoke, bites it and gets smacked in the face when he lets go. So he runs down the driveway, sees a dumptruck, shoots 3 feet into the air and does a 360, runs back toward me, runs on my back and into the house, where he promptly slides into a wall.

Such is my life. I think I bagged me a dumb one...

...aaaaaand release.

So despite the fact that I was absolutely exhausted/near death from some sort of exotic illness yesterday afternoon, I managed to tough it out and watch the election (I'm such a trooper!). I think we all knew where it was headed, but there was still that background apprehension lurking that made you ask "What if..." Of course it was irrational, and the only "What if" that would have helped McCain last night was "What if the Lord Almighty descended upon California and said 'Yo, crazy Left Coasters, vote for McCain or I'm totally making it 12 degrees colder here. For realz!'"

Once every network simultaneously called it for Obama, it was less jubilation that I felt and more relief. No voter fraud, no controversy, McCain gave a fantastic and genuine concession speech, and the election was actually won ON ELECTION DAY. This morning, I have to say, I feel slightly more jubilant, but still a bit antsy. The country has to deal with lame duck Bush for a few more months, and I really do hope Obama lives up to the rhetoric.

In other news, Randall F'ing Munroe is coming to speak at my school! The mind behind XKCD, the best webcomic that infrequently mentions velociraptors and bondage, will be here on Friday speaking at Cook and then an after party at the student center. Which will likely be the nerdiest thing ever. Needless to say, pictures will be taken.

How Much Do I Suck?

Apparently, whatever a month would be on a one-to-ten scale. Although I did finish the bottle cap table, the pictures are proving to be a surprising pain in the ass to get out of my camera. It's like they enjoy it in there and would prefer not to, thank you very much.
So, being as I was depending on a site gag this post (either of said table or of my pale, recently waxed chest), I guess I'll have to regale you with the first in an series of stories. So without further ado, I present ye ladies and gentlefolk, "The Strange and Wonderful Journey of Giles, an Oddly Proportioned Cat." And yes, as a preface, I do sometimes put a cat on a leash and try to walk it. Got a problem with that?

Today's Episode: Day 1

Giles found himself pretty unhappy today. I strapped him into his harness, which elicited an immediate "MMRRRRORFFF MRRRRRR" of disgust and annoyance. Needless to say I was scared for my life up until the hiccup.
The goal for the day was to get him to follow me off the stoop and out into that terrifying real world and all of its noises, shiny objects and, the deadliest of all menaces, bird (cue musical foreboding.... bom bom baaaaaa).
The moment his foot hit concrete, he froze seemingly overwhelmed by world outside. His eyes were the size of quarters, his heart fluttering. Seriously, it looked as though he just stepped outside to look a 3ft tall rat right in the eyes. And this rat must have been vengeful.
So the bribery began. Like a Congressional lobbyist offering the rotund Senator from the great state of Virginia a free steak dinner for a "moment of his time," I coaxed the brave one out the door (seriously, this cat will never, ever die from curiosity) and down the steps.
This is where things go horribly wrong. A crow lands about 5 feet away from him. Like a greaser from the 1950s or some sort of neighborhood tough, it squawks what I could only assume to be insults about female members of his family. Giles freezes and growls. I tense, anticipating the cat was about to take himself a bit of a trophy.
WHIP.
The leash flies out of my hand and I spin around to see the cat sprinting back into the house, leaving a tiny trail of pee behind him. Pretty sure he slammed the door and locked it behind me. Little bastard.

End part one.


A special story for the wonderful Emma.


Oh, and here's a sight gag for you.

My Project

So I had big plans this weekend to redo the famous beer bottle cap coffee table mosaic. Basically Emma and I made a big chessboard/design on a coffee table we build and covered it with plexi/acrylic. Words don't do it justice.
When I moved I had to transport the table and, alas, despite my best efforts the caps came undone in tragic, dramatic fashion. Woe! So this weekend I had hoped to redo them. Then I got sick (see previous post). So now that I've recovered, it's time to get down to business and rock on this thing. Pics and details to follow.

Ouch

So I finally turned in my paper for my Master's project last Friday, which felt great to get out of the way. It was one of those papers that had a strict page limit. I think I did a good job, but it felt a bit ridiculous at times. I had a lot to talk about, and I found myself almost constantly making references to this or that appendix. Which led to what seemed to be an entire paper of references. Oh well. They got what they asked for. It's somewhere in Appendix A-14.

And now onto the ouch. Remember the great food in college? Great in that it was served in large quantities, was prepared for you and you purchased it with a card that had fake money on it? Yeah, I just got reintroduced to it today. Let's just say my stomach has rebelled. Violently. Like 1848 revolution style. Seriously, the Spring of Nations has occurred in my gut. I forgot two things in my hunger: one, the food is terrible. Two, it tends to remind you of its terrible nature repeatedly. Damn you dining services.

Happy Large Hadron Collider Day!

Well since I'm writing this the world didn't end today! That's actually a mixed blessing. I mean I have to endure 55 more days of pathetic political bickering on TV and I can't use the excuse that small black hole ate my final report for my Master's project. On the other hand, in a couple of months we might find out a whole ton about the Higgs boson, which is pretty damn cool in my book. Or we might not, which is equally interesting.
I love the wave of terror it caused, as well as the bevy of poorly researched editorials. And the pieces were great because they would quote 10 scientists saying that a tiny black hole forming in the collider would be about as likely as one forming randomly in your living room and then completely ignore it and rant about how crazy bad a black hole forming would be. I mean come on, worst case we loose Switzerland. And a bit a France. But just the boring bits.
Anyways, I'm ranting as procrastination. My paper really is due in 48 hours or so. So ahhh. Back to work.

EDIT: Freud would love that both this post and a major newspaper referred to it as the "Large Hardon Collider." I mean the mental images are ridiculous. 10 bucks says someone makes this a porno in the next 3 month.

Bikes can be a theme, yes?

I figured my first real post on this should be both on company time and force me to figure out how to put neat things like pictures and movies into them. That way when I run out of minimally cogent things to say I can at least put something suitably shiny and distracting on the screen.

So first: I bought a bike this weekend. I guess I need to give some background here. I live far enough from campus and work that I could walk, but it would be somewhat lengthy. At the same time it's close enough that I feel like a terrible person for driving. Clearly, a bike is the solution. I've moved past the heartbreak of having the bike I had while an undergrad stolen (sob), so I found myself a nice hybrid bike on Craigslist at a drastically reduced price. I believed this was because the seller was desperate for cash. She showed up in a pants suit and more jewelry I've ever seen. So much for that. So here she is (the bike):

So secondly, the RNC was last week and the one thing I didn't see much of was coverage of the protests that happened in St. Paul during that span. I suppose the news networks didn't want to encourage the anarchists that were randomly attacking buses and generally causing havoc. But there were legitimate protests too, that got labeled as radical fringe groups because of this. Apparently, the St. Paul cops took a page from the NYC cops in 2004, arresting first and asking questions later. No Guantanamo on the Hudson, but similar sweep everyone up tactics. So here's my favorite video. These folks were just trying to get to a concert and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. I understand maintaining order and such, but three people walking down the street with bikes does not an unlawful assembly make. Tell them to disperse or they'll be arrested. Give them time to clear out. Now you don't get to see what happened before the arrests, so if they were rousing rabble, well then fine. But I went to the groups website and while they were anti-Republican it seems they were really just there to see the sights and hear some music. Oh well. It's just interesting seeing 4 cops in riot gear standing guard over some girl in a sun dress.

This is a test...

More to see what everything looks like than to say something deep or meaningful (which, of course, will not be allowed on this blog).