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Fri, 27 Feb 2009

Get a Grip!

There is, in human society, an effect one might call "conservation of seriousness", whereby the amount of seriousness with which a person is taken is constant, and must be divided between himself and the rest of society. The more seriously a person takes himself, the less seriously everyone else will.

This, in my opinion, is why conservatives in the media always get mashed during "round table" discussions and the like. The liberals seem to know how to take the topic seriously, without believing so profoundly that they personally have to be taken seriously. It lets them "roll with the punches" as it were. The conservatives always seem to think that any attack on their argument is a personal one, and let anger take over long before it's warranted. Even when they're right, they still always seem to come off as blow-hards or buffoons.

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Sat, 15 Nov 2008

Are you trying to make me cry?

After my last post, I've gotten a couple of emails to the effect of, "Oh those people are nuts, but you should have shown the actual text from the bumper sticker, so we could all get it!".

Are you kidding? Really? The text I posted, "Dont speak english? Dont live here!" *IS* the actual text. There are at least two separate English faux-pas in that quote, in three places. If you can't see that, you've proven my point. The end is nigh...

I'm going to go cry now...

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Wed, 05 Nov 2008

Welcome to Ameriduh

I thought it was just an internet meme. I really did. Like everyone else, I just laughed when I saw all those pictures of obviously redneck folks protesting immigrants, or foreign languages in schools, or just Mexicans in general, apparently unaware that they had massive spelling and grammatical errors in their signs. I laughed because it was ironic, and a rare example of why stupidity and ignorance are so toxic.

Now I'm not laughing. Twice in the last week, I've seen anti-immigrant bumper stickers that were misspelled in real life. Not on trucks with gun-racks, but on 'normal' cars driven by 'normal' people. And I realized that we've already lost the war to drag America into a better day. We are living in the real-world downward spiral depicted in the movie "Idiocracy". The end is nigh!

Whatever your political beliefs, if America is at the point where a well-dressed man driving a $40,000 BMW is willing to festoon his bumper with a sticker reading "Dont speak english? Dont live here!", there is no hope.

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Sat, 25 Oct 2008

Tastes Like...

So I've been watching a bunch of those "competitive" cooking shows lately, and I have a suggestion. I think all the judging panels should have at least one porn star on them.

That may sound odd, but hear me out. These folks are being asked to tell the difference between food that tastes great, and food that tastes like ass. I submit that there is no segment of our society more expert in discerning the taste of ass than porn stars. Ergo, any food judging panel ought to include a porn star!

Or maybe I'm just being anal...

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Thu, 14 Aug 2008

Religious Wrong?

Can someone explain the anti-abortion, anti-birth-control people? I can see where you might think abortion is killing a person. I'm not sure I buy it, since I don't get my opinions from the crazed scribblings of 2000 year old desert hermits (i.e. I'd like to see some science one way or the other), but I get it.

What I don't get is that the same people who are so stridently against abortion are also the most vocally against birth-control! Wouldn't the one solve the other? Naturally, I have to question the rational faculties of people who are perfectly willing to murder a real person who might someday help someone kill a potential person (i.e. abortion), but aren't they just shooting themselves in the foot on this one?

Does their sick, perverted god really hate recreational sex more than murder?

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Fri, 08 Aug 2008

She Said Yes!

So I finally went and did it! I asked my girlfriend Sabrina to marry me, and she didn't run away screaming!

I designed the ring myself, and had stones from my mother's and grandmother's rings set in it. While we were on vacation on the Mayan Riviera this week, I had it delivered to our dinner table at the bottom of a glass of champagne.

I guess I managed to be romantical enough, 'cause she won't take it off, and keeps squealing "Shiny!":

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Tue, 29 Jul 2008

Dr Horrible

I don't normally post about this sort of thing, but I can't help myself this time. Check out:

Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog

A musical super-antihero live-action comic from Joss Whedon.

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Fri, 25 Jul 2008

Adaptation

If at first you don't succeed, you're probably using a Microsoft product.

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Wed, 16 Jul 2008

Home, Sweet Project

I've learned two things about assemble-it-yourself kits. First, the time they estimate on the box is usually just about right, IF you multiply it by 6. Second, whatever tools it tells you you'll need, always add a sledge hammer, a crowbar, and a bottle of asprin to the list.

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Fri, 04 Jul 2008

Boom!

Boom, boom, boom, boom! Just boom.....

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Wed, 18 Jun 2008

Technobabble

So I was watching a congressional hearing on Net-Neutrality the other day, when I realized that not a single person involved in the debate (other than the handful of mostly ignored experts called to testify) had even the slightest clue what they were talking about.

Technical terms in the hands of non-technical people are like machine-guns in the hands of monkeys. You might escape one without taking a hit, but end up in a room-full, and you're done for.

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Tue, 03 Jun 2008

Psychobabble

Of course cynicism is a defense mechanism! So is an immune system. Should I stop fighting off infections, too?

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Mon, 26 May 2008

Solipsism

If it really is all in my head, I have to say, I'm a little disappointed in my imagination!

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Thu, 08 May 2008

Rationality

I got an junk email the other day from someone trying to convince me that there must be a god, since DNA is too complex to have 'happened by accident', and is irrefutable evidence of 'intelligent design' (oh yeah, and as Carlin put it "He needs money!"). My first thought was a reasoned response pointing out things like "that's not how evolution works", "evolution and religion *could* both be right to some extent", etc., but after carefully considering the source, I crafted the perfect response. I didn't send it, but I crafted it!

"Your message was a real eye-opener. Your logic was so insightful, I decided to use it myself in my response to you. The sheer improbability of someone as obviously clueless about how the universe around you works as you are thinking you could convince me of your crazy-ass fundamentalist beliefs by means of such an 'incredibly effective' tool of persuasion as a mass junk-email is undeniable proof that there is, in fact, a consciousness of some kind that must have created you on purpose."

"Further, that being either has a sick and rather ironic sense of humor, or is an utter idiot. "

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Thu, 01 May 2008

Mayday!

I didn't plan it. In fact, I told you not to do it that way. I'll be damned if I'm going to miss my TV show to fix it for you now!

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Wed, 16 Apr 2008

Definition

Engineering is the art of reconciling what people want to hear with the actual truth.

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Tue, 11 Mar 2008

You Need Help!

You can tell that a counselor, therapist, or confidant is a good one if when you hear their advice, you realize "That's just what I would have told someone to do in my place. Why didn't I see it before?" There's always a part of you that only others see.

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Thu, 21 Feb 2008

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

The only people who keep an eye on what police are doing are other police. It seems to me that's roughly equivalent to filling juries with convicted felons.

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Thu, 31 Jan 2008

On Being Right

Don't get too frustrated if you are right 99% of the time, but no one ever listens to you. If you were right 99% of the time and everybody listened, you'd be crucified for that 1%.

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Wed, 16 Jan 2008

One Bad Night

The strangest thing happened last night. I'm a cold weather kind of guy. I sweat in a snowstorm. But last night, I woke up at three in the morning, shivering uncontrollably, and feeling colder than I ever have, except possibly for when I went to the hospital with the Norwalk Flu. I didn't feel sick, I was just unbelievably cold.

We have this big green blanket on our bed. In my head, I call it "the blanket of UGH!" because it always makes me too hot. Even on really cold nights, I usually end up peeling it half off my side of the bed, because I'm sweating. Last night I pulled the UGH completely over me, but it did almost nothing to make me feel warmer. I turned on the electric heater in our room, and set it to 80 degrees. Within ten minutes, it had achieved the desired temperature in the room, and I was still shivering.

In desperation, I went to the closet and got a terry bathrobe, and pulled it over me. I was STILL freezing. At that point, my shaking woke Sabrina up, and she took care of me. She checked my temperature (99, not enough to be a real fever) and went and found a big, fluffy quilt, which she folded in half, and covered me with.

At this point, I was in an 80 degree room, covered with a sheet, two blankets, and two layers of really fat quilt, and I was still shivering a bit. I did breath exercises to distract myself, and finally went back to sleep.

At six o'clock, I woke from a nightmare. In my nightmare, I was in the Sahara, trying to find shelter from the heat. I was riding a Camel, but just as I saw an oasis in the distance, my camel melted on the sand. I felt myself starting to melt, when I saw another camel, ran, and jumped on its back to get away from the horrific heat of the sand. He carried me toward the oasis a bit, while I swooned from the heat, before he too melted. Fortunately, I was apparently in a part of the Sahara littered with friendly camels, and I immediately found yet another onto whose back I could jump. Then HE melted. And so on, and so on, until after one melting camel, I happened to look down as I felt the sand begin to melt me, and saw that in fact it was the sand that was melting where it came in contact with me, not my feet. I knew now that I was what had melted my poor camel friends. I started to run for the oasis, searching for some relief from the heat, when I woke up to find myself sweating profusely under a heavy pile of bedclothes.

Sabrina took my temperature again, and found it at 100.2, but it immediately dropped into the normal range once I kicked off the blankets etc.

I have no idea what happened to me. I seem to have survived with no ill effects, other than a headache, and I don't appear to be sick in any way. My temperature is down to 98.2 (I run about 98 on average, rather than the 98.6 they yammered about so much in health class), so I'm definitely not fighting any bugs, and everything seems to be in working order.

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Wed, 26 Dec 2007

Ahh, the "Family Season"

If family is priceless, does that mean I can't sell them, only give them away? Well, even so, it's still worth it...

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Tue, 16 Oct 2007

Politics

How sad is it that the most profound comment on human nature I've ever heard came from the movie "Men in Black": "People aren't smart. A person is smart. PEOPLE are stupid, panicky animals..."

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Mon, 18 Jun 2007

Engineering

Engineering is the art of reconciling what people want to hear with the actual truth.

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Thu, 14 Jun 2007

On Optimism

Maybe the rats will evolve intelligence, once our species has collapsed under it's own stupidity.

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Fri, 01 Jun 2007

On Generalizations.

The often-repeated foolishness that generalizations are inherently bad is a myth perpetuated by people who don't understand what a generalization is. If you don't believe me, stick your hand in a flame.

What's that you say? Fire is too hot to stick your hand in? I could be wrong, but that sounds like one of those 'evil' generalizations to me...

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Wed, 30 May 2007

Observation

Never accept responsibility for a task unless you also get the full authority to perform it. Look up the term 'Scapegoat'...

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Wed, 23 May 2007

Observation

To paraphrase from Sherlock Holmes: When you have eliminated the optimal and the feasible, whatever remains, however idiotic, must be the way the customer wants it done.

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Mon, 21 May 2007

Unexpected Endorsement

I never advertise stuff, as a rule. However, I guarantee you will never find a website translation tool as funny as this one. Just type the full URL of the site you want translated (I used 'http://cnn.com/'), and prepare to bust a gut, Snoop-dog style...

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Fri, 18 May 2007

Chainmail

Hi, my name is Blaise, and I'm a chainmailler...

"Chainmail," you exclaim, "I hate that stuff, always filling up my mailbox!" No, not THAT chainmail, the kind you wear! If anyone's interested in it, I've just started organizing Northeast Maillefest 2007, a chainmaillers' festival held yearly out at Thacher Park. See details at NMF2K7.

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YAOOL

Popularity doesn't make someone an expert. Voting for a politician because some actor or rock star likes his economic policies is like choosing a car because your dog likes how it smells.

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Wed, 16 May 2007

Stuck In The Crankroom Again...

That title would be a really bad multilingual joke. 'Crank-room', built from the German word 'krank', meaning 'sick', and the English word 'room', meaning 'the spot I'm stuck suffering in for the duration of this microbiological invasion of my body'.

Summer colds are just the worst. It's astonishing how bad a mood I'm in. It doesn't help that the weather people say we won't see the sun again for at least a week! Maybe I'm solar-powered.....

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Mon, 14 May 2007

YAOOL

What is it the idiots know and the rest of us are missing, that keeps them getting promoted?

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Thu, 10 May 2007

Yet Another Observation On Life

You know, if Woodstock taught us anything, it's that not everyone looks better naked!

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Wed, 09 May 2007

YAOOL

True happiness is finding someone who is less of a fool than you are, knows it, and still loves you anyway.

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Tue, 08 May 2007

Why People Hate Medical Professionals, Part II

So, today I finally got to go back to my orthopedist to find out what the MRI showed in my shoulder. Good or bad, you'd think the news would have ended the story, wouldn't you?

Not so much, apparently. When I was escorted to the examination room, I asked the nurse, very politely, to give the doctor a message. I asked him not to even come in if he couldn't find anything wrong, just to have the nurse come in and send me home if that was the case. You might find that a strange request, but I just couldn't bear to to hear yet another doctor tell me I had yet another "chronic condition" (Translated: "It's all in your head, or unknown to science. Either way, there's nothing I can do for you, so come back in a month and tell me if it hasn't gotten any better."). I've already got 2 bad knees, a bad heel, and a magical exploding eardrum that fit that bill, and I really don't need another one to add to it!

Looking rather confused, the nurse left in a hurry. In about 3 minutes, the doctor came in. "Good news, even if it's bad news!" thought I. He told me straight out that they'd found some minor tearing of the cartilage in my shoulder. Then he poked at me a little.

After the twisting and prodding, he said the amount of tearing was small, and probably wouldn't need surgery, because, "It's the kind of thing people go through their whole lives with, without even noticing." My eye started to to twitch at this, and I asked the fatal question, "So then, is it what's causing my injury?". "Probably not. I can't see any cause for the specific symptoms you are describing."

After I was done strangling the bastard, I sneaked out the back door of the office.... In my head. In the real world, I asked him if there was anything at all he could do to help me. He gave me a script for some anti-inflammatory drugs, and said it. The very thing I instinctively knew he would, all along. "I want you to come back in a month if the symptoms persist."

Do you think there's a doctors' conspiracy trying to make me burst a brain aneurism, or do the fates just hate me????

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Wed, 02 May 2007

Why People Hate Medical Professionals

I went for an arthroscopic MRI the other day. What a lovely little slice of Hell that was!

Just for a little background, a few months ago, I hurt my shoulder. For no apparent reason, one night I picked up a pot and screamed in incomprehensible pain as someone drove a spike through my shoulder from front to back. It was pretty bad, and after an X-Ray and 2 months of physical therapy with no conclusive cure, my doctor sent me to an orthopedist. The orthopedist said he wanted an MRI. Then he said that he would prefer an arthroscopic MRI, if I would agree to it. Surprised at the question, I asked what it would entail that was different from just a plain vanilla MRI. He said, as nearly as I can quote, "They'll need to give you an injection first before they put you in the machine." Given the number of shots I've gotten in my life, some of them even radioactive (one before a CAT scan and one before a gamma-ray bone scan), I told the doctor it wouldn't be a problem.

So I went in for my appointment. I sat down in front of a receptionist, who plopped about 15 sheets of paper in front of me, each of them a form I had to fill out. One of them even had an essay question entitled "A detailed description and history of the injury". After twenty minutes of writing, I flipped to the next page, and was confronted by another essay question entitled "A detailed description and history of the injury". I answered this one "See other form. My shoulder hurts!" (Did I mention I'm right-handed, and I hurt my right shoulder?).

Anyway, my final exam complete and my shoulder aching like hell, they finally escorted me to a changing room and thence to what looked like an X-Ray lab. I was a little confused, since I thought MRIs were big round things they slid you inside, so I asked the nurse what the story was. She said "The doctor will be using the x-ray machine to ensure that the needle is positioned properly inside your shoulder."

INSIDE my shoulder!?!?!?!?!!

Apparently, my "injection" was actually a 10 minute proceedure where they pierce the capsule of the shoulder joint with a 3 inch steel spike attached to a hose that has a water-balloon full of saline solution at the other end, and then slowly inflate the joint, to provide better contrast for the MRI! That was a whole lot more invasive than anything I had expected, and I considered backing out, but that pain in my shoulder convinced me to go through with it.

As the nurse pulled the gown off my shoulder, I pointed out my tattoo there, and asked her just to be sure not to go through it with the injection, as I recently had it re-inked, and didn't want any scarring to mess it up. She looked uncomfortable, and left the room. Next thing I knew, I had two doctors standing in front of me gabbling euphemisms like "potential concern", "unusually large", "unfortunate placement", and the sort. I gathered that while the "injection" wouldn't damage my tattoo, that tattoo ink contains iron oxide particles, and any metal in the MRI could heat up and cause problems. I pointed out that my orthopedist had been looking directly at the unusually large, unfortunately placed tattoo in question at the very moment he sent me to them. They were amused. "Well, this isn't his specialty." I told them I hoped orthopedics was! They came to an agreement that I had a high probability of safety, but I should definitely speak up if my shoulder felt like it was burning, so they could shut down the scan.

So there it was. I would probably be OK, except in the possible event that their giant radiation machine set my skin on fire, but if it did, I should yell. I told them I didn't think I would have any trouble with that part!

At this point, I was really uncomfortable, and nothing had even been done yet. My shoulder was killing me, they were going to spear it a large metal rod, and then possibly set it ablaze with a giant electromagnet. Throw in that I'd now been sitting on a cold metal table for 20 minutes in a surgical gown that only covered the front half of me so that my lower extremities were numb but somehow still achy, and you've got what looked like the beginning of ONE MISERABLE DAY™. It was....

They got down to it. The doctor shaved the front of my shoulder (Yeah, they left that detail out too, go figure), and gave me an injection (the kind I originally expected) to numb the pain of the spike. Then he got to work. I looked away so as not to flinch. He told me I'd feel an uncomfortable pressure and a little pain. Then I felt an uncomfortable pressure. After what seemed like 10 minutes, but was probably 30 seconds to a minute, he said, "We're almost there." Then I experienced a pain so indescribably powerful I nearly passed out, as he punctured the exact center of the spot that had been causing me so much suffering for months. After I was done screaming, he said, "That's the worst of it."

Are you kidding me?!?!? That damn-well better be the worst of it, 'cause if it's not, and I ever wake up, you're going to die, you bastard! I'm bigger and stronger than you, and I only need my left hand to crush your windpipe!

My shoulder finally inflated and already feeling on fire, I was escorted, half naked and shivering (probably more from shock than cold) to a wheelchair, and told I had to keep my arm as relaxed as possible, and completely still at my side, because if I forced the fluid out of the joint, they would have to re-inflate it. That's right, they told me to relax, or else they would torture me some more. That little irony pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

I was wheeled into the MRI room, where a whole new set of people took over. My first observation after looking the machine over, was "I hate to say this, but my shoulders are wider than that hole you want to squeeze them into." Their response? "Oh don't worry, we'll fit you in." Eep! They gave me a set of earplugs, had me lay down, balanced precariously on a tray that just barely reached to the inside edges of my shoulder blades, and slid me right up to the machine, until the tops of my shoulders were touching the outside of the hole. "Did I mention I'm a little claustrophobic?" "Don't worry, you'll only be in there for 20 minutes or so."

TWENTY MINUTES!?!?!?!

They rolled me on my side and inserted my shoulder into some kind of shell to hold it in place, then rolled me back, and folded my other shoulder up onto my chest as they inched me over to one side, and then squeezed me just into the hole. Then they slid me slowly into the tube, packing my arms tight around my chest by wedging pillows in around me as I went.

At this point, I was in pain, my torso was completely immobilized, and my entire upper body was crammed into a space roughly the size and shape of an old-style metal garbage can. On top of everything else, I was beginning to have to fight off the irrational feeling that the sides of the tube might at any moment collapse in on me. Just then, the technician's disembodied voice came out of the aether, "How are you doing in there? Good?" Never in my life have I had to fight off such a strong urge to scream at someone. "I'll be better when we're done here." "OK, now there's going to be some loud noises."

At that moment, I learned what it must be like to have a garbage can placed over one's head and beaten by several people with baseball bats. Whang-a-da, Whang-a-da, Whang-a-da, Whang-a-da! Silence... Just kidding! Whang-a-da, Whang-a-da, Whang-a-da, Whang-a-da! And so on, for several thousand years.

Finally, they pulled me out. I was incapable of movement, deaf, and in pain, and yet I was happier at that moment than any I can remember. Then the tech came over and said "Now we just have to change your position so we can put you back in for the last two scans." I nearly cried. Then she tried to twist my poor shoulder around so that my arm was bent up and over the top of my head, and I did cry. Too late, I tried to say "No, that's what makes it hurt!" What came out was more like "No, thaaaaaAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH! *sob*".

Five more minutes of can-banging, and it was over. I survived. So help me, if they don't find what's wrong with me, I'm gonna round up every last doctor, nurse and technician involved in this process at gunpoint, stuff them into garbage cans, and beat the living daylights out of them with a monkey wrench.

My shoulder hurts....

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Tue, 01 May 2007

YAOOL

Tom Lehrer once likened life to sliding down a razor blade. Do you suppose the pool waiting for us at the bottom is full of lemon juice, or iodine?

Either way it's gonna hurt....

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Sun, 29 Apr 2007

YAOOL

There really are people worth listening to. I met one once.

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Wed, 25 Apr 2007

Vote With Your Feet

I hate corporations. I just do. I can't stand knowing that the person I'm talking to can be the nicest in the world, and do verything in their power to help me, and still screw me.

Two weeks ago, my cell phone broke. Everything still worked (PDA, MP3 player, etc.), but it couldn't connect to the Verizon phone network any more. Silly me, I called Verizon for technical support. Naturally, I got none, since they don't support the phone any more.

I decided to bite the bullet, and upgrade. I called back, and asked about their lineup of smart-phones. After I did some offline research, I picked one. I called them back and asked for a bottom line price for buying the new phone, and activating it on my account. The answer came back as "well, the phone costs x, and your new plan will be so much a month". I stopped the nice young lady to point out that I didn't want a new plan, or a two year agreement, I just wanted to attach the new phone to my old plan, which I was very happy with. The nice young lady then told me I couldn't use my old plan, because that plan was no longer offered.

Silly me, I tried logic. I pointed out that I had been sold my current plan with a guarantee that I could keep it for life. The answer? "That guarantee only applies if you do not change your service." I tried again. "I don't want to change my service, I want the exact same service." Her reply: "Well you're switching to a new phone, you see...". "But I don't WANT to change phones, just fix my old one." "We can't repair that model, it is no longer supported." And so on around the mulberry bush, ad-nauseam, through a supervisor AND a team leader (or whatever).

And there it was, the perfect scam. Apparently this "guarantee" I got was actually good for my PHONE's life, not mine. They had achieved the perfect synergy between apparently unrelated terms in a contract, such that in fact what it said in plain English was in fact not at all what it was saying.

Today I stand before you, a Cingular Wireless customer. I know they won't treat me any better, but at least I FELT like I won for a few minutes...

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Sun, 22 Apr 2007

YAOOL:

Never say yes the first time. It doesn't matter what the request is...

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RSS Newsfeed

This blog format is a little awkward, especially embedded in an iframe on my homepage. So to please frame-haters, I have now included an RSS feed too! You'll find a link to it at the bottom of the blog main page.

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Fri, 20 Apr 2007

YAOOL (Yet Another Observation On Life):

In my experience, the phrase "We have a problem" can almost always be translated to "I have a problem, and I want you to fix it for me!"

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Thu, 19 Apr 2007

Outsourcing

You know, I'm completely open to the idea of outsourcing. I don't see it as a real threat to American jobs in the long term. At least not in the tech industry, anyway. In my experience, working for the last decade or so with Corporate America, it's a self correcting situation.

Generally speaking, you get what you pay for. Yes, it's true that you can hire four overseas programmers for the price of one American programmer, but I've rarely if ever seen the output from those four programmers even equal, much less surpass, the amount of work produced by the one American programmer. In fact, it often takes as much or more effort expended by local resources to re-explain, fix and/or re-do outsourced work as it would have to simply hire locally in the first place, meaning that the outsourced worker was pure cost, with no benefit whatsoever! In those rare cases where you find an outsourced engineer or what-have-you who really knows his stuff, they quickly raise their prices to something comparable to the home-grown sort, and stop looking so cheap. You'll note that only larger tech houses tend to outsource. It's my suspicion that this is because in the larger houses, dominated by short-sighted devotion to near-term profits, a manager only has to look good on paper to get promoted out of his/her current position before the true cost of the outsourcing decision is realized.

Given this, I suspect that tech-outsourcing is actually a boon to the tech economy, because it means that start-ups and small shops, who have always been the great innovators of the tech industry, will always have at least one competitive advantage over the large corporations that are forever trying to squeeze them out of the new technologies and markets they create. And anyway, if it really does turn out, however unlikely, that India or Russia or South Korea or whoever CAN make developers of the same caliber who work for less pay, maybe it's to our benefit to consider that a challenge to improve, rather than unfair trade practices. Does that quarter-price programmer live in a five-bedroom house with seven televisions, or a one-room hovel with seven relatives and no running water? If the former, he's got us beat fair and square, and we need to re-examine how we do our jobs! If the latter, how long will he stay happy with that situation before he demands the higher rates he can earn, given his superior talent?

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Wed, 18 Apr 2007

YAOOL (Yet Another Observation On Life):

What you need to do is, stop paying attention to people who make statements that begin with "What you need to do is..."

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Sun, 15 Apr 2007

Retread Philosophy...

Alright, so the whole merging process stalled for a while there. For lack of a good way to squeeze in my "Observations" page, I'm just going to repost them here periodically, and sorta get double mileage out of them.

Thus, behold my first official observation on life:

#1 - Beware any statement or opinion referred to as "common sense". If enough people throw it around for it to be common, there's probably precious little sense in it!

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Sun, 25 Feb 2007

All together now!

Over the years, I've started and maintained blogs on five separate occasions, at least two of which were conceived and published on the internet before the term "blog" had even been invented. I've been trying to assemble all these disparate blogs I've made over the years and put them all together in a single blog space. So far, I've managed to merge four of the five. I'm not really sure how I'm going to shoehorn in the fifth, it doesn't really fit this format.

Sadly, as I am a very boring person, no one will ever read them but me, but at least I'll have this to organize my memories a bit when I am very old...

Who knows, this could be the attempt that sticks.

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Sun, 27 Aug 2006

This Is A Test

This is a test of the emergency "Shut the Fuck Up!" system. This is only a test. Had this been a real "Shut the Fuck Up!" emergency, you would have been informed specifically as to who should "Shut the Fuck Up!" and details of the flaming assholishness that caused the emergency. This system is maintained by the Department of Homeland Infuriation, in conjunction with a nationwide network of rational, intelligent people. All three of them.

In the event of an actual "Shut the Fuck Up!" emergency, all citizens are asked to use all available means to inform the person or persons deemed the reason for the alert to "Shut the Fuck Up!".

For example, any and all politicians merit a standing "Shut the Fuck Up!" alert, owing to their inability to accomplish anything that actually benefits their constituency, while spending enormous amounts of their constituents' cash and constantly running their mouths about issues they are not even remotely qualified or intelligent enough to have opinions on. Approriate actions to deal with this alert include:

• Spitting on the designated person or group in public whenever possible
• Repeated instances of "Shut the Fuck Up!" letters, emails, facsimile transmissions, and crank telephone calls
• Loud yelling of "Shut the Fuck Up!" at political functions
• Shooting or throwing of heavy objects at video screens displaying the designated person or group members

It should be noted that any citizens acting in response to this alert should, at all costs, avoid using their response as an opportunity to voice their own ill-considered or annoying opinions, lest they themselves become the focus of a subsequent "Shut the Fuck Up!" alert.

In extreme cases, the "Shut the Fuck Up!" alert level may be elevated by the Department of Homeland Infuriation to "Shut your motherfucking cake-hole, you insufferable, flailing asshole!". In the case of this emergency, any persons in the vicinity of the designated person or group should immediately head to the nearest blunt object, retrieve it, and beat the shit out of them. Extra points for high pitched squealing and/or brain damage resulting in the loss of speech faculties...

Thank you for your cooperation.

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Sat, 05 Aug 2006

Which came first, the Jesus-Fish or the Humorist?

So I have a few more bumper-sticker observations! Of late, I've been seeing lots of Jesus/Darwin/Evolution/Truth/Crazy-ass Religious Nut fish on my morning commute. While I have to admit I enjoyed the humor, until I was overexposed to the whole thing, I still can't grasp why there's an argument in the first place!

Any way you slice it, evolution and creation are one in the same. Whether you believe in a god or not.

Hypothetically, let's say for a moment that a god (ie creator and manager of the universe) exists. Let's stipulate further that he actually wanted to tell humanity about how he created everything. Even further, let's stipulate that for reason or reasons unfathomable to us, he decided that the best way to pass on that message was via one or more naked hermits living isolated in desert caves and eating bees to survive.

Given all this, we can see where so-called "creationists" got their story. Is it even remotely plausible that this prophet or prophets could have gotten the story right in the excruciating detail necessary to pass on the concepts leading up to evolution, much less evolution itself? Even if god spent a few years explaining the intricacies of how he engineered the big bang, set up the laws of physics, devised chemistry, caused chemical processes to give rise to biological ones, and used a results-driven eliminatory development process to arrive at his current release version of life, what would our hypothetical prophet have written down? Could he have possibly grasped what was being dumped into his head?

The wisest, most educated person on the planet 3000-5000 years ago couldn't have comprehended that data, much less our half-crazed, unbathed bee-eater! And even if he could have comprehended it, by divine intervention, how could he have possibly explained it to other humans? Human languages of the time couldn't even express the concepts needed to *develop* the language to explain it all.

Our hypothetical phophet would have had to fall back on the same techniques we use on our kids when they aren't ready for the full details of an explanation: "Because God Said So".

So we see that, regardless of divine inspiration, the bible's creation story cannot possibly be relied on as objective fact, but rather as an allegory used to simplify an explanation.

And that's only if god exists. Personally, I think religions are invented by power-hungry nuts who get off on telling other people how to live their lives....

Also, let's look at evidence here. Creationists have two pieces of evidence, a somewhat dubious book written several thousand years ago by our "prophet(s)", and the complexity of life. On the other hand, the theory of evolution is supported by billions of fossils, carbon dating, mathematical analysis, selective breeding practices themselves thousands of years old, and literally hundreds of reproducible experiments. Even if 90% of the arguments for both sides turned out to be false, the vast preponderance of observable evidence would still fall on the side of evolution.

Creationists who say that the sheer complexity and elegance of life are too great to have developed on their own still miss the point that our universe's most awesome wonder is it's inherent force to self-organize. Look for your god in that force, not in some silly self-contradictory myths written by people who could never have grasped the truths of the story they were telling anyway!

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Mon, 24 Jul 2006

God Bless America?

I've recently begun to realize that I do not, and may never have, lived in the USA. That is to say, not in the USA I had drummed into my head for oh so many years in social studies class.

That USA is about individualism, and freedom, and responsibility, and getting out of life exactly what you put into it. When some person or persons try to subvert those rights, they are an aberration, something to be rooted out so that our country can go back to the way things should be, not just something we have to live with. Looking back, I realize that that USA was an ideal, perhaps always more of a guideline than an actual state of being.

I sat behind a truck at a traffic light this morning that bore both a "God Bless America" sticker and a confederate flag. At first I barely noticed it, because both are so common, but then it occurred to me that even the combination is one I have seen many times before, and that stood out in my mind.

"Who are these idiots?" I asked myself. The confederate flag represents a spirit of rebellion against the very nation God is being ordered to bless. It is a powerful reminder of a dark time that nearly destroyed America. How could anyone ever possibly think these two stickers belonged anywhere near each other?

I pondered this dichotomy for a while, and I finally saw the light. This person's America and my America are two different Americas. His is an America that stands for a muddled mixture of machismo, pride and self-congratuatory superiority, none of which is inconsistent with either of his stickers.

All of which led me to a much more disturbing thought. How many different Americas are there? Is there one for every American who's ever lived? Did even the founding fathers really agree on what "America" was to stand for? After all, the politics of today certainly don't jibe with most of the founding fathers' stated beliefs. So-called liberals have half-built an America that gives a free ride to anyone who has a really good reason why life hasn't been fair to them, a concept that would have been anathema to our forebears. So-called conservatives have half-built a corporate police state where it's OK for the government to monitor our communications, reading materials, and financial data without even a cursory attempt at finding a good reason to do so, again things that must have Jefferson and Franklin rolling over in their graves.

Both sides regularly create rules and regulations that DIRECTLY contradict parts of the constitution and bill of rights, simply by finding the right judge to "interpret" what the original intent was. I'm pretty sure that if the intent of something like "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed..." was actually "...only people who work for the government may bear arms...", they would have written it that way! For all their horse-drawn-carriage and sailing-ship 'primitiveness', they were generally pretty good communicators. I'm also fairly certain that "no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause" was never intended to mean "unless the president REALLY thinks it's OK", or "Warrants? We don't need no stinkin' warrants!".

I've finally come to realize that despite the fact that I've always considered myself an agnostic, I let one faith slip through into my subconsious. I have always really truly and whole-heartedly believed in an America that turns out to be a complete fallacy! Certainly, my America is probably no more a fantasy than anyone else's, but it's not less, either. So now I begin what promises to be a long and painful process of re-examining America, and figuring out where I really live.

God bless America? Whose?

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Wed, 19 Jul 2006

Blog Material?

How is it, do you suppose, that so many bloggers find enough material to post every day? I certainly can't. Does anyone really live an interesting enough life that folks want to know what's happening in it that often?

I think I lead a fairly interesting life. I own a company, I've travelled all over the world, I'm a ballroom dance coach and competitor, I go latin dancing at one of the hottest new bars in town every week, I go swing dancing at a cozy little unknown swing club every week, and I've always got a party or the like on the horizon. For all that, most days, nothing happens to or around me that I could conceivably see being interesting to people who might read this blog!

Maybe that's why I never stick with these things, I'm afraid of boring people...

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Mon, 10 Jul 2006

Inconstant Gardener

So here's an interesting tidbit for all you yard-tenders out there. Turns out that Yucatan Red Cedar wood mulch doesn't just smell goood and look nice, it also permanently stains your skin a lovely brick red, after an hour or two's exposure.

Also, I must have gotten the 'special' deal, because one of my bags came with a lovely colony of little friends. They're about 1/4" across, most of which seems to be a heavy, dark grey armor, and seem to be of the arachnid persuasion, but I've never seen anything like them before. These things look like little crabs, and wave some nasty looking pincer-like mouth-parts at me when I go near them.

I think I'll just leave the front garden to them for the rest of the summer. They don't seem inclined to share, and they can't possibly do a worse job of tending it than I have...

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Sun, 09 Jul 2006

Minigolf, the hot new thing?

So when did minigolf become such a hot activity that someone decided it should cost as much as seeing a movie, anyway? Did I miss a meeting, or something?

Oh, and yes, the sun thing *was* just a trap. We got our asses handed to us by some bible-weather today...

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Sat, 08 Jul 2006

A sunny day in Troy?!?!?!

It's incredible! It's a Saturday, in July no less, and the Sun is out. I suspect it's a trick of some kind. Someone's trying to lure us into going outside so we can get rained on!

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Tue, 03 Jan 2006

Online Dating Alert!

OK, so just before New Years, I tried eHarmony. I found a girl. The computer said we are a perfect match. Then I met her.

I think I need a new dating service, one where you are hooked up to a lie detector while you're filling out the personality profile, and get 50,000 volts shot through you if you lie. I bet eHarmony would work great, if they added that feature.

And yet, I've got another date, tonight...

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Fri, 09 Dec 2005

Calamity

The woman I expected to spent the rest of my life with left me last week. I've seen it coming since before Thanksgiving, but somehow I just couldn't believe it would really happen.

The relationship people are wrong. Treating your woman right and devoting a big part of your life to her is NOT what women want. They want someone exciting, who will shit on them repeatedly and maybe slap them around a little. Oh, and don't buy into that bullshit about physical attraction not being important as long as you are truly in love, either. You can't, as the old song says, have one without the other, it turns out.

In fact, the WORST thing you can do is be best friends with your lover. If you do, once they've torn your heart out of your chest with a rusty spoon, they want to call you for support over how bad they feel about the whole thing.

I hate people.

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Sun, 13 Feb 2005

Old-school Comedy

We went to see Steven Wright at the Palace last night. What a show! After twenty years, this guy is still just as funny as the first time I saw him.

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Mon, 17 Jan 2005

Reality Strikes Back

Sigh... Back at work again. I suppose I can't complain, after a month off. It's good to own the company!

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Sat, 01 Jan 2005

Season's Gre...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Happy New Year! Big party last night. Sleepy....

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Sun, 12 Dec 2004

The Show

Spectacular Cake concert last night! A great time was had by all. Although, it probably wasn't a good idea to be out all night the day before having to buy and assemble a shed.

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Wed, 01 Dec 2004

Fun

Had my first trip to the dentist in 14 years today. It was about as much fun as a trip to the dentist! And they found a cavity, too. Grrr.

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Thu, 25 Nov 2004

Quickie

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Wed, 24 Nov 2004

Success?

I think I finally have this page up and running. Welcome to my construction zone...

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Mon, 22 Nov 2004

Cake!

It's official, we've got tickets to see Cake at Yule Rock on the 11th!

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Sun, 14 Nov 2004

Senior Storage.

We finally have my dad moved from his house on Long Island to his new retirement community in Saratoga Springs. God, I hope I never have to do this again...

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Thu, 04 Nov 2004

Happy Birthday To Me!

Today I celebrated ummm... the fifth anniversary of my 29th birthday. EEK! Got some really cool new tools, though, so I can't complain.

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Mon, 01 Nov 2004

The Beginning

Well, here we go. I'm probably never gonna keep up with this thing, but who knows. Hi everybody!

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Tue, 20 May 1997

BANKERS UPDATE!

The credit card I wrote that original check to.... the bastards charged me $20 for each of the bounced checks, too!

Watch here for an upcoming rant on the credit industry!

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Thu, 15 May 1997

Bankers

Is there anyone out there besides me who wonders what the rules for the banking industry are? Other than to line it's pockets at our expense, I mean. I can't believe that, in this day and age, an industry so blatantly monopolistic and self serving has escaped anti-trust challenges.

Think about it for a moment. Have you ever had a disagreement with your bank? Of course you have. Have you ever succeeded in winning an argument with your bank? Of course not. Have you ever moved to another bank because of such an occurrence? Probably not, because no matter which policy it is you disagree with, they all have the same one. Want to bank after 4 PM? Not in this country. Want a higher rate of return on your savings account? Don't bother, everywhere you go savings account rates are "calcuated at x% over the current federal lending percentage", and oddly enough, "x" is always the same number.

And forget about using your ATM card without incurring a fee. This is quite possibly the largest piece of bait-and-switch ever foisted upon the American public. For years, banks touted ATM's as the ultimate solution to after hours banking, convenience, and freedom from carrying dangerously large sums of money. After years of constant assault, we began to use, and eventually to rely on, these machines. We even bought into the concept of paying for our money when we went to a machine which didn't belong to our bank. Then one day, people began receiving notices from their banks saying that from now on, there would be a withdrawal fee even when we went to our own bank's machines. I, for one, began calling other banks immediately, only to find that all of them had instituted precisely the same policy at the same time.

Then came the day I bounced a check because an automated transfer from one of my own accounts went through only 23 hours beforehand, and 24 hours were required for the transfer to clear. Of course, I had no idea of this for two weeks, until they deigned to send me a notice, at which time I immediately deposited a check to myself to cover the bounced check for recashing, since I had already made purchases based on the ATM's balance without checking my check book. Two weeks later, of course, I received another notice that THE SAME check had bounced, since they attempted to recash it less than 48 hours after I had deposited this second transfer. According to the rather smug person I spoke to on the phone, this new extended clearance period was because I had used a check instead of an electronic transfer to deposit the money.

With all this, I might still have been able to control my temper had it not been for the fact that this $50 check had now cost me $30 in fees, and the bill still hadn't been paid; and to top it all off, with investments and savings, I had over $25,000 on deposit with this bank, but was denied overdraft protection on the troublesome account BECAUSE I HAD BOUNCED SO MANY CHECKS!

Upon contacting other banks, I found that all of them would have done exactly the same thing, so I had no hope of obtaining better treatment somewhere else. Maybe it's just me, but it seems more than a little coincidental that all prices and policies in the banking industry are precisely the same from one bank to another. In any other industry, this would be considered monopolistic price setting, and the Justice Department would crush them.

Perhaps the answer lies in that the banks directly or indirectly control a huge portion of all politicians' campaign funds?

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Sun, 05 Jan 1997

LAW ENFARCEMENT

Why is our law enforcement system so petty and ineffective? Hundreds of thousands of violent crimes are committed in this country each year, most of which go unpunished, despite the thousands of dollars each of us pays in taxes each year for the purposes of law enforcement.

Bearing this in mind, why is it that every two to three weeks, I am forced to wait a half an hour on my evening commute at a roadblock run by the police to check inspection stickers, tire tread, emissions, etc.? And why is it that some goober with a gun and an attitude is allowed to pull me over and drag me out of my car in a rainstorm in the middle of the night for no apparent reason, then issue my wet, frightened ass a ticket 20 minutes later because he said I hadn't slowed down enough at a blinking yellow light a few miles back, but wouldn't actually define what "enough" was?

Not that these things aren't somewhat important, but is this really an efficient use of law enforcement resources? Certainly the municipalities which extort ticket fines from the generally innocent, if unlucky, citizens trapped in these snares benefit monetarily, but do they ever use the proceeds to fund more law enforcement officers? On the whole, no.

So, what we end up with is a system where law enforcement officers, who's salaries are paid for by citizens and who should be out protecting citizens, are not only diverted to areas which do not benefit citizens, but are actually used to entrap those same citizens for minor infractions in order to forcibly take more money from them to help prop up local governments whose fiscal incompetence has left them woefully in debt.

I think I can safely speak for most people in saying that I DON'T CARE if my neighbor's windshield is a touch too darkly tinted. I DO CARE if someone is selling drugs on the corner!

Send Jimmy Bob and his cruiser driving up and down the streets watching for dangerous situations and crimes in progress, rather than interrupting traffic and harrassing innocent citizens.

The law is supposed to protect and serve the citizenry, not the government, and if we cannot expect the law enforcement system to prevent the crimes and harrassment which plague us, we should at least be able to expect it not to foster more harrassment and crimes perpetrated against us!

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