It only took 10 hours (and plenty of cursing at QuickTime) to do it, but I now have a Mac OS X command-line tool that converts SWF to PNG.

And they said it couldn't be done. Bah!

I'll wait until I see more of the new Battlestar Galactica series, and re-watch the old one again before deciding whether or not I really like it, but I think I have to say that I like what I've seen so far.

They've made some rather significant changes in key aspects of the storyline (true to their word of "reimagining" the original series), but none of those changes I think really hurt the premise of the new series or gratuitously insult the original. Most of the changes (e.g. Starbuck being a woman, the relationship between Apollo and Adama and Starbuck, Colonel Tigh, Baltar's betrayal, among others) are just different from the original and serve only as a way for the new series to distinguish itself.

The biggest change I've seen - the Cylons being human creations and developing the series of infiltration sexbots is the one I think hard-core fans will find hardest to accept, and yet I think it's still a reasonably acceptable (and one that conveniently attempts to actually make a statement relevant to us: Playing God is Bad).

They didn't show enough of the Galactica ship exterior, but I'm not sure I like it in comparison to the original. It looks sorta-kinda like the original ship, but it's this sleek black thing.

What I did really like, though, was how they managed to recapture much of the original's feel - the printed messages, hard-wired phones, etc (which was as much a byproduct of the time Galactica was made in as anything else) simply by making the Cylons experts at computer infiltration and making low-tech stuff the necessary thing to fight against them. Adama's stubbornness shows quite well here.

The interaction between the military officers and the civilian government looks like it's going to be a fun conflict between those who know what needs to be done and those idiot civilians who want to do what's right, even though it'll get everyone killed.

All-in-all, the new Galactica looks like it's going to be worthwhile if future episodes continue to be as good as the premiere.

I've been whining for over a year about how my DVD towers were too unweildy. So I finally got off my ass today and went out and bought a bookshelf to house my DVD collection. Damn sucker was heavy; good thing it didn't come pre-assembled, so I could carry the pieces up to my apartment in several trips. Carrying unweildy 84-pound objects bigger than you are sucks.

I also found a nice lamp in the trash dumpster when I was throwing the bookcase's box out. The lampshade was shattered, so I left in the garbage, but otherwise, the lamp looks and works fine.

The top of my desk (which used to have two thirds of my DVD collection) looks so barren and empty now.

Run for your lives! The tribbles are attacking!

Batman and I, on our way home from work yesterday had some fun wardriving with his extended-range AeroCard in his laptop. Between our office building in DC and the Silver Spring metro station, we picked up 159 wireless access points, including about 80 along the stretch of Wisconsin Ave. between our office and 39th street.

The highlights:

• Only 49 had WEP enabled
  
• 36 were named 'linksys'
  
• Best name: "Daddy's lil' girl"
  
• Most cryptic name: "ts#^n9.0e8" (did they think this was a password field?)
  
• Exxon gas stations all have an access point named "SpeedStream"
  

Efficient software design is strongly related to properly applied laziness and procrastination.

It was brought to my attention that I haven't made an entry in awhile.

A hair fell off while I was showering, and stuck to the shower curtain. Noticing that it was longer than the distance between my elbow and tip of my fingers, I measured it with a tape measure. It was 21 inches long.

That is all.

This afternoon, two guys came to my door wanting me to listen to some speech they had prepared and rate them on their presentation as part of some job training competition or something. While I was attempting to shoo them away, one of them mentioned that I "look like Jesus", what with the hair and goatee. When I seemed non-plussed by this assertation, he went on to point out more specifically that I looked like Jesus in the pictures in church. I wonder if they expected me to be amused, honored, or complimented by their suggestion.

While I will admit that there is some resemblance, I don't think I look so much like the classical imagery to warrant people telling me I look like Jesus. Classical imagery of Jesus features a man with blue eyes (mine are green), a full beard (with a considerably less pronounced goatee), and shoulder-length hair (mine goes at least halfway down my back).

I'm not sure why this is bothering me as much as it is. It's a compliment to be told that you look like your deity, yes? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the last group of people to say I looked like Jesus were trying to twist it into a pithy insult when I got pissed that they were making a ton of noise by ripping a "do not disturb" sign off my door at college at 2 am.

(It may also be worth noting that both times I've been told I look like Jesus, it's been by beefy-looking black guys. I find this to be somewhat interesting in that given the location of the world Jesus originated in, his skin color was almost certainly darker than mine, regardless of the classical depiction. At the very least, he had a better tan than I do.)

Maybe I ought to just get a haircut...

This just in my mailbox:

"I am contacting you about cross linking. I am interested in dshadow.com because it looks like it's relevant to a site that I am the link manager for. The site is about high quality kitchen accessories and serving trays & platters.

I keep the web address confidential and will send it to you only if you give me permission to do so. Just let me know if it's OK, and I'll send you the web address for your review. If you approve of the site, then we'll exchange links."

(signature/contact info and opt-out notice omitted)

Quality kitchen acccessories and serving trays and platters aside (where do they come up with this stuff?), SpamAssassin has apparently never seen anything like this before, since it flags nothing wrong with this email. A quick inspection of the headers shows nothing out of the ordinary. In comparison to most spam I get, this is actually well-written, to to the point, and at least vaguely interesting. Most of the spam that makes it through SpamAssassin to my mailbox these days has the random dictionary words surrounding the message, presumably in an attempt to throw off SA's Bayesian classifier (which works for now since SA hasn't quite learned how to deal with those yet), so to see something masquerade so well as regular email is quite impressive.


The company in question that sent this email is a search engine optimizer, so they're up to no good anyway. But, still, wow. Those spammers are getting smarter...

(And ironically enough, this is going to make my website somehow more relevant for quality kitchen accessories and serving trays and platters...)

LOTR fans, Read This Now.

Predictions for the California Election Circus:

* A broadcast station shows Kindergarten Cop at 3 am (thus counting as "free advertisements" for Arnold Schwarzenegger's run for governor). Said station is then forced by the 250+ other candidates to show two hours of their crappy campaigns because of the FCC's equal-time ruling (which was applied to Ronald Regan too).

* Arnold loses because 50% of the votes are write-ins split among "Arnold Schwartzenegger", "Arnold Schwarzeneger", "The Terminator", "Conan", "Arnie", and "Ahnold".

* Arnold wins. His first action as governor is to sign an executive order requiring all California citizens spend one hour in the gym per day. (Which really wouldn't be a bad thing, actually...)

Given the annoyances I've had with the timesheet and leave systems at work, is it a bad thing when, after reading the staff email saying that there will be a staff meeting next Monday to introduce everyone to the "new timekeeping module", your first thought is, "Oh, my. This is going to be absofuckinglutely asstastically craptacular."?

I'm sure it'll be great in theory, and suck in practice.

I moved the kitchen tables back into the kitchen where they belong, and the coffee table back where it was in front of the couch. There is now a huge amount of space in my living room now. All Hail The Open Space!

Mini-review of the three movies today on the AFI Silver theatre's anime film festival. I'd do a spoiler warning, but spoiler warnings are needed only for things that have Plot, and but none of these movies has any non-predictable plot to spoil.

A Tree of Palme - A tree puppet, Palme, (who sprouts roots and turns into a grotesque tree if it's exposed to too much sunlight) self-animates so it can chase after its "mother" (who's dead). When he finally accepts this, he decides he wants to become human so he can be with Popo, a pretty yet quiet and abused girl he mistook for his mother. Afterward, insists she come with him so he can deliver some egg to a tree god so he can become human, and then the two of them can go to his mother's hometown. As part of wanting to be human, he kills Bambi and lies about it. In the end, the tree god dies and Palme decides he's not going to go with Popo after all and turns into a tree. Bad music, slow pacing. Boring and highly predictable at times, though I like the logo for the warriors of the underground tribe.

Spirit of Wonder - Scientific Boys Club - Miss China, the waitress and proprietor of the Chinese Restaurant, is shrunk from her normal height to be only a millimeter tall by a bumbling mad scientist. After she has lost all of her clothes (because the local black market provider/tailor can't make anything for a person smaller than three inches tall), she is restored. To be fifty feet tall. Before that, though, three boys form the Scientific Boys Club after learning of Percival Lowell's "evidence" of canals (and thus, life) on Mars. 50 years later, after flipping up Miss China's skirt twice to inspect her panties (red, then white), they build an airship and fly to Mars on ether currents, using calculations reluctantly provided by the wife (Wendy, who wrote a book they stole from her bookshelf on ether currents) of the son of one of the perverts (all drunkards, the son doubly so). Modesty aside, Miss China watches their UFO in awe from her bathroom window, nude, and very well endowed. Nonplussed since Percival was clearly lying, the Scientific Boys Club leave a plaque (dated 1958) on Mars for NASA/JPL to find with Viking 1's first photograph of Mars in 1976. NASA elected not to release that first photograph to the public. Slow pacing, boring, and predictable. Wendy should have dumped her husband, but didn't because that wouldn't have been predictable. Also because he knocked her up the one night he does get into bed with her (after his return from six months in America), but didn't know until months later on Mars because he never came home from the pub awake. The projectionist was apparently unaware of the second Miss China short after the "feature," so it was never shown. I might be tempted to buy the DVD just to find out what trouble Miss China gets into that results in the further loss of her clothing.

Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat In Space - Proof that all it takes to make a good movie is black and white animation, a really spiffy 3D cityscape with a robot catgirl riding an escalator up, and sprinkles of the word "fucking" when spoken in broken engrish by a cute catgirl who's the product of a centuries-old megacorp "Catty & Co." from CatEarth (which started out as a postal service, but later branched off into food, toys, jeans, and other unrelated industries) and Minervan religion. Oh, wait. No, that doesn't make it a good movie. Just a psychedelic monstrosity with a really impressive CG cityscape. Perhaps the end credits music engrish had it right, though. I could go for lots of beer, chicken and snacks about now.

I have successfully lost six pounds of weight in the last two months.

lilinthra, jnespuxah, Joe, and I went to watch League of Extraordinary Gentlemen today. Afterwards, we decided to have dinner at the Ruby Tuesday's at Snowden River in Columbia. While we have eaten at this restaurant before and have had good experiences, tonight was an exception to the rule.

We almost couldn't have been seated any faster. But that's about where things started to go wrong. It took over 15 minutes for our server to arrive (coincidentally, immediately after Ryan returned from inquiring at the front desk). He took our order, and disappeared. For a long time. He eventually brought our drinks, carrying two of them and having another waitress carry the other two. Then he disappeared again. At this point, I noticed that the person who seated us never properly set out the place settings - there was just a stack of napkins and silverware on the side of the table.

Our server reappeared after some time and took our order, and then promptly disappeared. I finished my raspberry ice tea and had to wait a long time for him to wander by so I could ask for a refill (with no ice). By the time he returned, Matt and Ryan had finished their drinks. I think he mumbled something about getting refills for them, but he never did.

At some point - I'm not exactly sure when - our appetizer dish arrived. Yum.

Also arriving - and not departing - were Ryan and Joe's used dishes from their trips to the salad bar. And the three empty drink glasses sitting on the side of the table.

Matt's soup arrived, before everyone else's entrees. I suppose this is to be expected - soups and salads are usually delivered before the main course. And eventually, Ryan's sandwich showed up. (With the hot french fries, as the menu promised.) And much later, my cheeseburger showed up. (With only warm-to-hot fries, a tad short of the menu's "HOT french fries GUARANTEED!" promise.) And not having noticed that the table didn't have ketchup, I had to ask the waiter for a ketchup bottle. But he was already gone! Grr.

(I could digress into my rant on how restaurants that serve burgers should always have a bottle of ketchup on the table, but that's another rant for another time.)

I could have waited for our waiter to show up again to take the order, but that would have been a long wait. Matt started a timer so we could see how long it was until he showed up again to check on us. I, however, wasn't going to wait that long, so I flagged down the next waitress who passed by and asked her if she would bring a bottle of ketchup. She kindly obliged, and faster than I expected, too. +2 points to the waitress who went out of her way for me!

Ten minutes later, we flagged down our waiter, and Joe pressed on him for another round of drinks for everyone. He complied, and a few minutes later, brought them all himself, carrying them unsteadily on a small drink tray. (Mine had ice in it - he had likely forgotten I had requested my previous refill without ice, though I suppose it is not a request they often get, so I won't hold that against him.) He disappeared again.

At some point, we ordered dessert. Possibly before dessert was ordered, but certainly afterwards, Ryan suggested we pull the manager over the next time he walked by. It was pretty obvious halfway through dinner that this was going to happen eventually, but this is when we seriously talked about it. After we missed the manager the first two times he wandered nearby, Ryan got the idea to unstack the pile of plates we had accumulated and distributed them throughout the table - to further accentuate the point that nothing had been picked up.

When the manager eventually wandered by again (and still before dessert arrived), Ryan pulled him over, and we told him of the poor service we had received. ("And clearly, you can see that none of our dishes has been taken.") The manager took our "input" (as he called it later), and our somewhat poor description of the waiter - whom he didn't initially recognize, further fueling suspicion that the waiter was new - and said he would look into the problem.

After he left, we re-stacked all the dirty dishes. The manager returned a few minutes later, gave us our check (saying he gave us a discount). We informed him that we had also ordered dessert, and he said not to worry about it. He then took all the dishes - six plates, a soup bowl, two platter-ish dishes, and five glasses - all at once. Several minutes later, our dessert arrived.

Our bill, before dessert, came to about $45, and we were given a $25 (!) credit. We were all impressed by the size of the credit, and Ryan suggested that it probably came out of the manager's pocket. I think it's more likely that it came out of a slush fund specifically for these kind of "emergencies", but either way, *wow*, that was a big discount.

We sat at the table for quite some time afterwards talking about various things. Something that didn't occur to me then, but occurs to me now as I type this, was that our server never asked us if we wanted coffee or anything after the meal. I don't recall if this is normal at Ruby Tuesday's, but I know that many restaurants do offer coffee - for whatever reason that escapes me - after dinner is finished and while guests are just sitting afterwards. Not that I wanted any, but even though we sat there for at least half an hour afterwards, I would have expected a server to at least ask if we wanted anything else.

We gave the customary 10% tip, but of the discounted bill. At least that way, the guy gets something for his work, and hopefully he'll also get the message that his service leaved much to be desired.

I will stress again that this is a very atypical experience. I've never had this poor level of service before from Ruby Tuesday's, and I don't expect I will the next time I eat there. (Ryan suggested we return next week, and I fully agree.) I imagine our server has gotten a good stern talking-to, and the next time he shows up for work, will do a better job of providing adequate customer service.

So...what's the point in writing all this? I dunno. Maybe so later on, if I have a worse customer service experience, I have something written down I can compare it with. Maybe it's to serve as a "helpful tip" to restaurant wait staff who randomly find this entry after doing a web search for "poor customer service". *shrugs*. I guess I just felt the need to write about it. Not really sure why. Guess I just felt the need to flog the dead equine and get it out of my system.

I now leave you with a quote from Lipstick Chat from last week, courtesy of Hobbes: "I'm into flagellation, necrophilia, and bestiality. Tell me, am I flogging a dead horse?"

You may recall my rant a week and a half ago regarding our dysfunctional timesheet/leave system.

It has now decided that, since I didn't sign in at the front desk on the 25th, it would go ahead and apply 8 hours of sick leave, on top of the 6.5 hours I had already taken.

Stupid software...

Thursday evening as I was driving up US 29 (at this location, a six lane divided road), I saw two kids, roughly 12-14 years old, riding their bikes on the road (speed limit 55). They were weaving back and forth across three lanes of non-traffic, waiting for a car to eventually catch up to them, and then they would quickly dart in front of the car and cross back to the other side of the road. I saw them do this at least three times.

Just a little while ago, I passed someone (couldn't tell their age) on MD 650 (six lane divided road; speed limit 35), walking their bike against the direction of traffic in the middle of the right lane. It being dark out with no streetlights, he could have been very easily run over.

Did I miss the memo giving bikers permission to behave idiotically on the road?

Some months ago, my company added forms for various types of leave (personal, annual, sick, late arrival/early departure, etc) to the intranet and integrated it with the timesheet system, rather than the separate Excel form they were before. This is an improvment only in that it's a web-based system, so we don't have to fill out, print out, and submit for approval an Excel form.

I was sick yesterday (and am today), so I took off. During the course of the day, I did an hour and a half of actual work. So I only used 6.5 hours of sick leave. So when filling out the form, I tell it "partial day" and request 6.5 hours, and submit the form.

But it doesn't accept that. See, because it's a request for a partial day of leave, I need to tell it either when I arrived at the office, or when I left so it can update the staff calendar. But I didn't actually arrive at or leave from the office! I never went in!

A few emails later, it's concluded that I just lie on the form and tell the system I left work at 10:30, and add a comment with the details.

So I do so. And enter the wrong date. And click on the confirm button anyway. Because I'm clearly not well enough to tell a "6" from a "25".

And because the requested date of the leave is in the past, I'm not allowed to change the leave request. (You can only change leave requests dated for the future.)

*sigh*

So I'm rock climbing this huge mountain range, and eventually I get to a spot that has a view of this idyllic lush green valley and a perfectly blue sky. Now, because this is a mountain range known for exceptional scenery, I didn't bring my camera. So I rush the hour or so distance back to camp to get my camera. A couple of scene changes and a warning of an approaching rainstorm by fellow hikers later, I get my camera, run back to the spot and...can't take the picture because a rainstorm has moved in and destroyed the scene.

So, not only do I not get photographic evidence of this absolutely beautiful mountain valley, I NEVER ACTUALLY SAW IT AT ALL because it was a dream!

I recieved a credit card application for a gold MasterCard. This card, for which I have been pre-approved, offers an amazing 9.9% APR (unless you're late for a payment twice in a year, in which case it's 29.3%) and a 23.9% APR for cash advances. It also features an account set-up fee ($29 one-time charge), a program fee ($95 one-time charge), a $48 annual fee, and a $72 participation fee ($6/month). The additional card fee is $20 annually. Additional fees include a $3.95 internet access fee (one-time), a $25 credit limit increase fee (per credit limit increase, issued automatically), a $25 express delivery fee on replacement cards, and either a $7 or $11 autodraft fee to pay directly from your bank account. The minimum credit line is $250 (which means that your first month, after $178 in fees, you can only charge $72 on the card if you get a low credit limit).

Clearly, this is a credit card for people who really shouldn't have a credit card. $124 in setup fees and $120 in annual fees is absurd, and no one in their right mind with the ability to get reasonable credit would put up with that.

Yesterday, I completed construction of a Depth 1 Menger's Sponge, using 168 old business cards. The cube contains 20 6-card cubes, 24 pieces of interior paneling, and 24 pieces of exterior paneling (enough to cover the three sides that won't be attached to other cubes in a depth 2 sponge).

The current goal is to build a Depth 2 sponge, which will require 19 more of these, requiring a total of 3,456 business cards.

If you would like to donate business cards (preferably all identical) in lots of 168 or 176, let me know.

Thanks to arterich, I have enough cubes to make another one and a half depth 1 sponges. Absolutely no thanks to JFK, who showed me this, this, and this yesterday.

We all think we know what color things are (assuming "normal" vision). But what if we're wrong?

Suppose a person is born such that their blue and green color receptors are wired incorrectly to the brain, such that when they see a blue object, they perceive what we would call "green", and vice-versa. (That I've chosen the colors Blue and Green are not significant; choose any two or three primary colors and swap 'em.)

Has anyone with this condition ever existed and been diagnosed? How would one be able to test for this condition? Does it have a medical name?

While you're pondering this, keep in mind: this is an internal perceptual difference present from birth. A person has lived with this their whole life. That means they look at the grass and call that color "green", and they look at the sky and call that color "blue", because that's what they've been taught. This means you can't just show them an object you call "blue" and ask them if it's the same color as the grass, because they'll say, "no, it's the same color as the sky." They can correctly percieve the difference between colors just fine - even though they perceive in their minds colors different from "normal" people.

(On a side note: there are some women who have four different photopigments in their eyes (red, green, blue, and either a green-shifted red, or a red-shifted green), due to the way X chromosomes match up. If their brains were able to adapt to this and percieve color as a four channel input, rather than three, they would be a tetrachromat.)

Email recieved just now on the staff mailing list: "When making coffee, pleas make sure there is something in place to contain the coffee when it starts dripping."

*sigh*

The journal entries for my Thursday D&D game character, Joss Kamin, are now online. Now, I just need to get these up on the campaign's website...

Joss is a rogue/dungeon delver. When under pressure, he quickly picks the best option he belives he has and takes it. He is an impatient fellow, and so his decisions often appear to be rash or ill-concieved. He is fully confident of his abilities, though, and is fully willing to take risks others might call folly in order to get the job done.

He's fun character to play, especially given the reactions he draws from the other players. ("Why are you going ahead toward the dragon alone?" "What do you mean, you jump off the roof to the other tower? That wasn't part of the plan!")

Rightsideuppedness, adj. The quality of being right-side up. "All of the Fluxx cards are now right side up, although they will probably lose their rightsideuppedness when they are shuffled."

After several years of not having a working printer (something happened to my HP DeskJet causing it to not print correctly), I have finally remedied the situation by purchasing a used Apple Color LaserWriter 12/600 PS, which has been rechristened "photon". (Its prior name, "Rainbow Brite", didn't really fit into my naming scheme.)

"Two foot square" doesn't sound big until you've actually seen it. This printer is a lot bigger than it looks.

Many thanks to jnespuxah for providing transportation and helping me carry this 110 lb. monstrosity into my apartment. Also, thanks to erisynne for providing the printer at a great price and the delicious lunch.

So, grysar, arterich, and jnespuxah came over to watch a few season episodes of DS9. Greg, unfortunately, had to leave around midnight, and around 1 am, we finished our third episode of DS9. Then we started discussing Matrix Reloaded. Of course, we all have unanswered questions and theories and speculations on how things work and what's going to be in Matrix Revolutions. I'll save my public commentary on everything until after I see Reloaded again later today.
At some point around 3am, after Omar bailed and took with him any last remaining voice of reason, so our seemingly intelligent conversation regarding the metaphysics of The Matrix degenerated into figuring out which Homestar Runner characters would best fit which Matrix characters. lilinthra has the full list, but my contribution to the hilarity was casting The Cheat as The Architect.

Well, today's off to a fine dandy start. Not two minutes after I leave for work this morning, I get rear-ended. Pictures here. And the insurance company of the guy that hit me has already called me. My insurance company's claims department has yet to return my call.

Go Spank the Monkey. (Work-safe, provided you have a sense of humor.) My current record is 393 mph.

Saw Matrix Reloaded today. As most of you haven't actually seen the movie yet, I'll hold my thoughts on the plot until later.
The visual effects were spectacular. Keanu Reeves deadpanned his way through the movie as usual. Laurence Fishburne showed quite a bit more dynamic range in Morpheus than he did in the original. The plot seemed a tad hollow, and some of the bits, while they make sense, didn't really surprise me. This movie does not stand on its own; it needs The Matrix to prop itself up. It is a worthy continuation, though.
And I think I'm really tired of slow-motion camera shots.
arterich, sorry about the whole miscommunication with the tickets. We'll make doubly sure next time someone actually is getting your ticket.
So, who's up for Reloaded on an IMAX screen? =)

The human brain is not meant to operate within sixty seconds of being awoken by the phone, and is incapable of correctly processing information until a sufficient period of thought collection has occured. Prior to this period of thought collection, the brain can not hear correctly, requires input to be restated two or three times, and is heavily flooded by random stray thoughts (such as, "Who is this person that is talking to me? Do I know them?", "What is that really loud buzzing sound that sounds like my alarm clock?" and "Why does my mouth taste really funny?") that complicate understanding of the indended message delivered by the originator of the phone call, and in some cases render the recipient unable to stop for a minute and try to collect their thoughts so a rational conversation can be had. This can result in total confusion when the originator of the call says something contradictory to what the recipient knows to be true.

Someone (not me) should write a research paper on this subject.

This essay, Thinking about Thinking, explores the difference between two distinct schools of thinking, "mapping" (where one gathers information, internalizes it, understands it, and builds connections among the different pieces of information) and "packing" (where one gathers information for the purpose of rote memorization, and does not construct an efficient map that connects information), and explains why "packing" is the norm in society.

...WHY ARE THERE BIRDS OUTSIDE CHIRPING LOUDLY AT 1 AM?!

The town of Arcata, CA has passed a law banning voluntary compliance with the Patriot Act. 89 other cities have also passed resolutions condemning the Patriot act, at least 12 more are considering such measures, and Hawaii is close to passing a state-wide resolution.

Granted, local law is in all cases trumped by federal law, but this should be interesting to watch...

More importantly, the Arcata Eye Police Log is great reading.

"Christmas (2002), 3:27 a.m.
Two silhouetted figures did battle
And that led a neighbor to tattle
Cops came to the crib
Calmed their trials and tribs
By giving their rage cage a rattle."

Hawk has nicely summed up my feelings on a large percentage of the spam I get.

There is a bill pending in congress that would repeal the 22nd Ammendment to the U.S. Constitution (which sets the presidential term limit to 2).

I spent half an hour this evening picking through the dice bin at WOTC painstakingly extracting matching sets of dice. Going through one of the dice bins twice (once to dump it out on the counter, and another to put them back into the bin) I picked out four complete sets (1d4, 4d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12, 1d20) in blue, gold, orange, and white, plus three extra red dice. So now, I have enough dice for a 20th level wizard to cast almost any of his spells and only roll the dice once, and since they're color coded, I can roll a character's stats all in one roll, too. And of course, this also means that I have enough matching sets to roll to-hit and damage for five or six monsters simultaneously. Which I just know will speed up next week's sessions considerably. :->

I get home and, a couple hours later, inspect the dice again to do some test rolls. And what do I find? I have two blue d10s, and no blue d8.

So now, I have to make a trip back up there before Wednesday to try and trade the extra d10 for a d8. Hopefully, they actually did have one, and I just accidentally disposed of it instead of the extra blue d10 I picked out. And hopefully, then, it'll be right at the top of the bin and I won't have to go digging.

*sigh*. Oh, and if anyone's actually reading, there's another session's worth of write-up from Matt's campaign here.

Everyone's favorite Iraqi Information Minister is now a Microsoft spokesman.

Spent Saturday at the third annual East Coast Undermac Gathering. We met at erisynne and JFK's place. Twist and burp621 drove in from Ohio; me, BatmanPPC, Nightwing, init, and PBTek had a considerably shorter commute. Pictures are available. Not sure why, but we watched part of this show called Cheaters late Saturday night. Basic premise is, you call them if you think your spouse/SO is cheating on you, they get detectives to investigate, videotape, etc., and then they send out the cool-as-a-block-of-ice host to run commentary and arrange the meeting between the two, which apparently often leads to police getting involved. It's worse than the Jerry Springer show. What I don't understand is why anyone would degrade themselves and agree to be put on TV under such circumstances. Must pay pretty good money.

Beat Xenosaga on Sunday. The ending was pretty good, but the final boss came unexpectedly, and the several fights after the last save were all pretty easy. Wish they'd just hurry up with Xenosaga Episode II...

Waiting on step files for a new song for the pyDDR 0.6.1 MacAddict release. Once I get them, I can package up the Mac OS X version and go to sleep.

jnespuxah, Dave, lilinthra, and I played Munchkins this evening. Some choice quotes:

( Click For Quotes )

Follow-up on last week's entry on the pyDDR test-dancing: I can be seen in the pyDDR article on MacGamer.com. If you scroll down to the first QuickTime movie they have, you can see me and Brendan (pyDDR's author) playing Afronova. Though somehow, we both managed to fail the song less than 13 seconds in...

Haha. I thought I had a productive weekend. I thought I got graviton working. Haha. Well, the joke's on me. Came home from work today, turned on the TV and switched it to line in to check something on the PVR box and I'm greeted with a blue no-signal screen. Five minutes of cursing, investigative work, and more cursing reveal that graviton has apparently fried its S-Video to RCA adaptor AND it's S-Video port. So it's back to being the expensive aluminum POS that I thought it was Saturday night.

ARRGH. I CAN'T WIN!

At the expense of staying up way too late Friday and Saturday nights, this wound up being a pretty productive weekend. A huge chunk of Friday was wasted on graviton, my new Linux PVR cube, which is now finally able to display more than just the color blue on the TV. And with arterich's help, I was able to confirm that my TV capture card is indeed broken, so I will have to find a new one.

I spent most of this weekend working on pyDDR. Cleaned up pyDDR's main run loop considerably and fixed a bunch of bugs. All the changes are in CVS, so all is good. Speed's slightly improved, but I think the graphics code is where the major speed bottleneck is.

On a less happy note, my grandfather passed away on Saturday. Sad and all, but it appears he went quickly and so likely without much suffering. Which is good. Or something. Kind of expected it to happen eventually - he was pretty old - but it still takes something out of you even when you know it's coming.

Last night was moderately productive. Fixed a problem that was causing the song selector to crash on Mac OS X and got autodetect of Mac OS X working so the fullscreen code works properly. Performance kind of sucks on the laptop - getting 23fps average, with it as low as 15 fps - but there still should be room for optimization. The application wrapper works, but it needs to be a little smarter and give reasonable gui responses when things don't go right.

Yesterday was a bit interesting. Week or two ago, a guy (Chris) sent an email to the GW Anime Society mailing list saying he was writing an article on the Mac OS X version of pyDDR for macgamer.com and MacAddict, and was looking for test dancers (if you can call DDR dancing). Matt forwarded the email to me and, not having anything better to do with myself for a Sunday afternoon, fired off an email saying I was interested.

So yesterday, Chris, me, and three other people took a road trip down to Williamsburg to meet with the main programmer for pyDDR, Brendan Becker. We got there, and chatted about how it works and such for a bit, before Chris interviewed Brendan. I got tapped to hold the video camera, which I was more than glad to do since it meant I could actually listen to the interview. Except for the fact that towards the end of the half-hour interview, my arm was practically falling off. But that's ok, one doesn't need arms to play DDR. Played some DDR for a little while after that.

After that, we held a mini DDR tournament. Prizes were a small Zim plushie, a Spider-Man change lock-box, a Card Captor Sakura (I think; probably wrong about that) keychan, and a can of tuna. After my reasonable, but still impressive showing (given that I haven't played DDR in months), I was in line for the can of tuna, until it came time for the final round. We were trying to decide on a hard (yet still managable) song for the last round of the tournament, so I randomly suggested Orion.78 Civilization remix.

They bit, and did O.78 Civ on trick, just so we wouldn't need defilibrators afterwards. Brendan wound up getting the top score. Then he suggested that I play it just to see. So I did, and (surprisingly, to myself) trounced their scores. Brendan, quite impressed, surrendered his Zim plushie to me. So now, Zim is sitting on top of GIR's head on my bed.

After that, we futzed around a bit with making a video of Brendan installing pyDDR on my laptop. It didn't go smoothly at all, due to some weird problems that were causing it to not want to work. And this has now gotten me suckered into doing pyDDR development. My current project is to make a working double-clickable wrapper app for pyDDR, since we kind of need that for the MacAddict CD. So far, I've got something that works, but I still need to clean it up a bit. And besides that, I've also identified a few things in pyDDR I want to change, so my free time has now just been shot even more than it already has. Yay!

* Gift cards at Giant are $160/lb per $10 of value (which probably makes the $50 gift card the most expensive item per unit weight that Giant sells, at a value of $800/lb).
* There is no word in the Klingon language for "subtle". This is probably why Klingon women have those cool revealing uniforms.
* Odo's uniform in DS9 does not have a collar, while the other Bajoran uniforms do.

Choice war quotes from Undermac yesterday evening:

[17:54] <mcc> "War begins at 8 PM EST (7 PM Central Standard Time)" would be a good name for a song
[17:54] <DShadow_> mcc: How about, "War begins at 8 (7 Central)"?
[17:55] <DShadow_> that's a little more in line with what you'd see on tv
[17:55] <Merloon> except on the west coast
17:55] <DShadow_> right, where they'll see the war on tape delay
[[17:55] <hb> Filmed in front of a live studio audience?
[17:56] <mcc> True
[17:56] <hb> tape delay war. heh
[17:56] <mcc> hb: a temporarily live studio audience, yes
[17:56] <mcc> This War Will Be Run Through a Delay Feedback Filter
[17:57] <mcc> The Invasion Will Not Be Televised (Except Under the Strict Supervision and Oversight of the State Department)

Home Bioweapons Research Lab Kit | http://www.livejournal.com/users/dshadow/5965.html |How to make bioweapons using only standard kitchen equipment:

1. Start with bowl. 2. Fill bowl with orange goo. Serve to party guests. 3. Cover bowl with saran wrap and refrigerate leftovers for two months. 4. When results are sufficiently disgusting enough for roommate to make a mockery of it, but not quite so disgusting that he's willing to dispose of it himself, you have achieved success. Please arrange disposal with the EPA. It is not necessary for the experiment to continue.

To make up for the earlier botched link to Something Awful, I now present you with this equally tasteless yet infintely more amusing kitty video (avi, 2.3 mb). And I do believe the cat looks a bit like El Gato Diablo.

Heard on radio this morning: "...this 3.2 million megapixel camera..."

The sign on the Silver Spring police dispatch center has listings for several open positions, including "Police Telecommunications Specialist (911 dispatchers)".

(Apologies to anyone who clicked the link to SomethingAwful. My bad. I should have known better than to link directly to an image there.)

CNN.com: The series of events that put a $160 million high school on an earthquake fault riddled with toxic pollution may have been a "disaster of biblical proportions," according to the [Los Angeles, CA] district attorney, but not one that involved any criminal wrongdoing.

So I bought a bag of 10 pairs of socks today. The bag is a resealable ziploc bag. It says so right on the top.

Now, why would anyone buy a particular brand of socks just because the bag they happen to be in is resealable? Why is this such a big deal that it has to be advertiseed right on the bag?

Ah. Usually I hate the snow. Except on days like today, when it scares everyone off the roads and I have the benefit of a completely stress-free commute that gets me into work in half an hour. No traffic backups. Minimal waiting at stoplights. No stop-and-go. I'd say there was 75-90% less traffic on the road than usual.

Why is this? Clearly, some of it is due to the fact that schools are closed. Parents aren't driving their kids to school/daycare/whatever. (But if these numbers are significant, then it exposes a major problem with our school transportation infrastructure.) And some of it is due to people that would normally go to work but can't because they have to stay home and babysit. And more is due to people who can't go to work because the can't get out of their housing developments due to road conditions (which would seem to expose huge weaknesses in our road-cleaning infrastructure).

While I can see the first point being a significant amount of traffic (even though it shouldn't be), I don't see the latter two points as being a hugely significant amount of traffic for an inch or two of snow. And this isn't the case exclusively in/near DC: I heard a similar tale of minimal traffic from someone living in Timonium (15 mi north of Baltimore).

Comments, anyone? What's it like in other cities when you get two inches of snow?

The Horror of Blimps, by Scylla.

Today's Cool Toy is a USB-powered electric toothbrush. Yours for only 1,280 yen ($10.80). (website in japanese.) I want.

I have ordered Xenosaga. It should get here Wednesday. My weekend is now officially gone.
It's sad, actually, that ordering it online and getting overnight shipping winds up being only $1.50 more expensive than going to a local store and buying it. $1.50 is not worth the time (and gas) it'll take to actually go to a store.

Matt and I are watching last Saturday's TMNT episode. At one point, April O'Neil is running through a sewer, falls, and gets sewage on her pants. Two scenes later, as she's running, her pants are clean.
John: "Now, waitasec. Her pants are clean!"
Matt: "Well, duh. She must be wearing a tampon."

Why am I suddenly reminded of The Whiners?

Inspired by recent technical support nightmares, I'm happy to present The Technical Support Drinking Game. Now, you too can drink your way to sanity while on those long calls to technical support!

The Overview:
* Watched more anime than my three other prior conventions combined. (Reviews of Hellsing, Legend of Crystania, Labyrinth of Flame, and .hack//sign follow.)
* Took less pictures (228) than expected. 103 pictures were of the Jay Tryouts on Saturday night. Not sure if it was because there were less costumers, or because I was less interested in taking photos.
* Attended my first con party, however briefly, located directly across the hall from our hotel room.
* Barely got any sleep Saturday morning (due to Adam having to fumble around for Chris's keys, finding them, then returning half an hour later to find them again because he was drunk and didn't remember taking them; and the alarm clock going off unexpectedly at 6:15).
* Took two naps.
* Made myself look like an idiot doing promo for Kakumei (Jay Tryouts). Hope I didn't make Kakumei look stupid.
* Forgot to turn the camera on when I gave it to Dave for said tryouts.
* The AMVs were much better than at Otakon, but there weren't a whole lot I really cared for.
* The cosplay was blah. Mostly due to the fact that I didn't know half the series the skits were about.
* "Who's Katsu?" was funny. Not as funny as last year's, though, I think, but still funny.
* The elevators at Ellicott worked (relatively) better during move-in/out better than the elevators at the hotel. Taking the stairs in a hotel should not be faster than the elevator. (Thank goodness for 4th floor rooms!)
* Bought X (Box & #1, #2), Hellsing (Box & #1), Shinesmen, and Utena Black Rose #1 & #2 DVDs.
* Bought 10 soundtracks; five new, five for stuff I already have MP3 rips of. Disappointed I couldn't find more from my list.
* Table assignments for Kakumei were successful. I only had to put in a few extra hours than scheduled (about what I expected). Props to Rob and bludstone, who probably put more hours in than everyone else.
* It took two hours to drive home, including dropping Dave off. It then took a further 45 minutes to dig Matt out of the snow twice while attempting to park.
* Disappointed at Kakumei sales. Not quite sure where the problem lies.
* Big Pimpin' Totoro is on Fansview.com. Props to bludstone for the idea.
* The Katsucon photo gallery will be up. Eventually. After I get the Otakon 2002 gallery up.

( More Katsucon notes and anime reviews )

*Sigh*. I had no idea how much a pain it was going to be dealing with Covad. I would highly recommend everyone avoid Covad as your DSL ISP if at all possible. They suck. Badly. And if it weren't for the fact that they tell me that they don't delegate reverse-DNS resolution (contrary to their earlier statement), now that I'm finally set up, I'd never have to speak with them again. I don't really want to go into a play-by-play of their inability to execute my order correctly, but if you really want to know, let me know...

About half an hour to 45 minutes ago, a "white subtance" was found in a piece of mail in the office on the other side of the building from ours (Iranian Embassy, I believe). HAZMAT teams are on their way to test the substance, and they've turned off the ventilation systems.

Update: and the mysterious white substance turns out to be ... (drumroll please) ... talcum powder!

Crab 0, Pipe 1

Warning: not for those who just ate, or who are unnaturally squeamish.

The haxor handle of dshadow is "Elite Tox1n".

The haxor handle of john is "Crash Zombie".

What's yours? Enter your name:

And you know? Sometimes I feel like it, too...

The Space Shuttle Columbia was lost during its landing approach 200,000 feet over Texas at 9am this morning. This is a sad day indeed for the space program.

This is an interesting image from weather radar showing the shuttle debris field.

My office has a shared kitchen, which (most) everyone uses. Kitchens have a tendancy to get dirty, and rather than assign one person to be in charge of kitchen cleanliness, we do the fair thing, which is to rotate kitchen duty through the staff, so each person has kitchen duty a week at a time about twice a year. The person who has kitchen duty is responsible for making the coffee in the morning and loading/unloading the dishwasher.

Now, no one likes doing the dishes. And who would? They're dirty and disgusting after they've sat around all day. So the higher-ups sent out an email requesting people to rinse off their own dishes and put them in the dishwasher. About the same time, a sign appeared over the sink requesting the same thing.

Yesterday, I went to clean up the kitchen at closing (this week is kitchen week for me), and the sink was overflowing with cups and bowls half-filled with coffee and gunk. Which really pissed me off, since not only were these people not taking care of their own mess, but I never have coffee, and never use the dishes or cups in the kitchen. I was disgusted by this. So were the two owners of the company, who happened to be milling about in the kitchen at the time.

I sent out an email rant last night asking people to please clean their dishes, mentioning the state of the kitchen was pretty disgusting, and offered rational reasons why it would be a Good Thing to do so (e.g., they wouldn't have to clean as many dishes when it's their turn for kitchen duty). The #2 at the company (who can be quite terrifying when she's angry) seconded my notion and asked the office to stop being such pigs.

Ten minutes ago, I went to clean up the kitchen.

It was spotless. Not a dish in sight. Not even coffee stains on the counter. I just had to put soap in the dishwasher and turn it on. Mission Accomplished! Yay!

Now, let's see if it stays this way...

Yesterday:
Them: "Here's a new html file we'd like put up on the client's website."
Me: "Ok." *clicketyclick* "Done."

Today:
Them: "Why doesn't the new form on the web page work?"
Me: "What new form?" *clicketyclack*
Them: "On the web page you uploaded."
Me: *clicketyclacketyclick* "Oh. That new form. You didn't tell me I'd have to actually do any work for this."
Them: "... oops ..."

'Citing the U.S. history of defending Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Kuwait, Powell said the world knows the United States can not only be trusted to consult with its allies, but it can be "trusted to use its enormous political, economic and -- above all -- military power wisely and fairly."' -- CNN - Powell: U.S. prepared to act alone

( Read The Full Rant )

An RSS feed is now available for this website by clicking on the "XML Feed" link in the navigation bar.

So now, I've gotten my website to automatically fetch my LiveJournal entries and display them as news articles. I think. I'll know in about eight minutes when this shows up on my website (or not).

Time to go work on editing articles for Kakumei now...

Ok. It's bad enough that watched things never cook/boil/work. But when I'm making a pizza, and I'm hungry, and I want the pizza to be done ten minutes ago so that I don't have to drive over to grysar's place when lilinthra's already left, the *last* thing I need is for my mouth to be watering. Damn saliva! Water when I'm not in a rush and can actually enjoy the taste of pizza!

This is only a test. In the event of an actual emergency, you wouldn't be reading this.