Mildlyretarded.com

Curious about 'The Whale?' Read the Book

2010-02-27T12:58:00.001-05:00

There are numerous factual errors and misleading lines in this article that need to be corrected.

a) The sperm whale is not the largest mammal or creature in existence today. That title belongs to the blue whale

B) Orcas do not hunt sperm whales. They have been known to attack and kill blue whales however.

C) The presentation of ambergris is very misleading. Ambergris can only be collected from the shore after is washes up, it can not be collected by whaling or in any other way harming a whale since man can not replicate the role the ocean plays in the months of transformation of the sperm whale secretion to ambergris.

D) Tilikum did not kill three trainers. The second death wasn't even a park employee but a random moron that decided to go swimming without a wetsuit in water that would kill him in a few minutes.

E) What does a shark aquarium have to do with whales in captivity?

We shouldn't be keeping whales in captivity, that much of the article I can agree with, but this needs some serious editing.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Mobile Blogging Test

2008-01-19T12:34:00.001-05:00

Sign me up

Edit: Oh yeah it works

Coming Soon: Guitar Hero Battle.net Edition

2007-12-02T16:11:00.000-05:00

Apparently Vivendi is going to spin off their games division (Blizzard Entertainment) and merge that with Activision to form a new company named Activision Blizzard.

That new entity Vivendi would retain 52% ownership in and would rival EA in size.

Activision's Product line:
Guitar Hero II, III
Call of Duty Series
Quake Series (just the publisher however)
Wolfenstein Series
Tony Hawk Series

Blizzard's product line:
Diablo I and II
Warcraft I, II, III
World of Warcraft
Starcraft, Broodwars

Okay so start coming up with mash-ups

Guitar Hero Battle.Net Edition
Call of Duty 5: For the Horde!

Up in yer country speakin' da english!

2007-06-14T22:46:00.000-04:00

What American accent do you have? (Best version so far)

Midland

("Midland" is not necessarily the same thing as "Midwest") The default, lowest-common-denominator American accent that newscasters try to imitate. Since it's a neutral accent, just because you have a Midland accent doesn't mean you're from the Midland.

Click Here to Take This Quiz
Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Its actually not that surprising considering I was raised explicitly to use "Newscaster English". Seriously, I was even aware of the name when I was growing up.

Escalation

2007-06-01T21:19:00.000-04:00

So last night there was a party next store...

I'm thinking about turning up my speakers and leaving my appartment for a while. The problem I'm afraid of though is escalation.

Movies, movies, movies.

2007-06-01T18:43:00.000-04:00

So its been a while since I've made a movies post, so its about time. Because of the number I'll keep my comments short. The list is ordered alphabetically and not in order of "goodness"

Babel. If this movie came out 10 years ago, before we had movies such as Traffic, Crash, and Memento, it might have been good. But it didn't come out 10 years ago, so beyond the very obviously political slant through the entire film the style comes out as old and recycled. And the Japanese part of the story contributed nothing to the plot. The acting wasn't particularly memorable to me, though that also means it wasn't horrible, just boring.

Blood Diamond. My expectations for this movie were pretty low, I mean come on its a Leonardo movie. I was surprised by how well the movie was done. While parts of the story weren't particularly novel (after all there is Lord of War in recent movie history), the acting and cinematography made up for it. I don't want to give too much of the story away, but I think each actor did an effective job in conveying their part of the story. I think the movie ended the way it should have ended, not particularly romantically, not too depressingly either.

Catch and Release. Silent Bob acts. Its funny how a movie that has Jennifer Gardner as the star name it was all about the supporting cast. The story while revolving about Gardner's character, is definitely not focused on her. Its a different way to approach issues and I found the movie enjoyable. I think the movie did suffer in parts where the supporting cast shined brighter than the "star" did.

Come Early Morning. Viewers be warned, this movie has no “plot”. But with that I still believe this is a quality movie in a certain light. This movie very accurately, though somewhat romantically, portrays the culture, mindset, and lives of people it is modeled after. People that have grown up in the south/Midwest may take offense at the movie, and those not familiar with that segment of our country may be bored.

Crank. Any movie that advertises itself with a poster displaying a heart nails and needles shoved into it is promising violence. This movie delivers it. The plot is simple, and the number of ways they thought up for an adrenalin junky to get high is huge. This movie does not have a lull in the middle, and appreciably ends when it should, as it should. I enjoyed the display.

Déjà vu. Interesting plot, good cast, made for HBO cinematography. This movie also suffers from a worn out hook. Haven’t we already explored time travel dilemmas enough?

The Departed. What another Leonardo movie? Yah that’s what I thought as well. I personally thought it was a bit long, but in it’s defense they did adequately develop the characters. My overall opinion of it though is that the movie feels like a fan written Law and Order movie for lifetime. Too many clichés and it ends exactly how the TV audience would expect it to.

The Good Shepard. One word: Boring. The movie is too long as a barely organized string of romanticized glances at a man’s life. This movie barely delivers on the promise of detailing the “start of the CIA”. Yes the CIA forms during the course of the movie, but the movie doesn’t really cover it. Also Angelina Jolie does not play a dutiful housewife well at all.

Morning Music

2007-06-01T18:24:00.000-04:00

So this morning it finally dawned on me as to what was different about the drive into work. While I have been noticing a few changes in music selection on the dance channels on XM I realized I hadn't heard Alan Freed in quite a while.

So far no details have emerged on why he "left" xm, but things have been different, and I do miss some of the personality he added to the stations. Of course during his tenure as music director at XM, BPM was voted the best dance station every year.

I hear they have added DJ Armando to the lineup which isn't bad, its just, well not all dance music is from New York. Right now that leaves the all the control of the music on those channels in the hands of DJs from New York.

Yum...

2007-04-25T13:06:00.000-04:00

So the shortest path between downstairs and my cube happens to be through accounting. And by shorter I mean a good minute of walking shorter.

Anyway lunch time is always somewhat interesting... accounting is mostly women, ranging in ages between mid 20s and somewhere around 90. Then on top of that they're both penny pinchers and health concious and always bring lunch in. This makes for some very interesting smells when you walk through.

Today was steamed ass with a hint of brussels sprouts.

I have yet to walk by when there wasn't a smell somewhere in the range between foul and stomach turning. Luckily my cube is firmly situated next to purchasing where the average BMI is probably something pretty rediculous. It smells very good here.

BofA sucks part II

2007-04-04T12:24:00.000-04:00

So after taking over the company my oldest credit card was with (MBNA) I've been forced to deal with Bank of America. Given the fact that they are one of the largest banks in the united states I have been tempted from time to time to see what they offer. After doing a bit of research I found this part:

A BofA money market account with $3000 in it would get the following rate:

0.36% APY

The national average money market (FDIC insured) rate for accounts with <10k in them is

3.75% APY (most with no fees if the minimum deposit is maintained 1k-5k normally)

And I have tripple checked those numbers, they are in fact offering a rate that is 1/10th that of the national average (source: bankrate.com)

Here's a list of rates:

Citibank: 4.50% APY (no fees, no minimum, FDIC to $100k)
CapitalOne: 5.00% APY (no fees, no minimum, FDIC to $100K)
Netbank: 3.05% APY (no fees if above minimum, $500 minimum, FDIC to $100k)
ING Direct: 4.50% APY (no fees, no minimums)
Vanguard: 4.20% APY (no fee if above minimum, $3k minimum, FDIC)

there is a huge list of other national banks with good rates between 3-5% APY

Online Banking Retardation

2007-03-10T01:18:00.000-05:00

I hate this trend of online banking services of moving toward 1000 questions and essays for answers system. All it does is create a headache out of something that should just work. I would rather have a physical usb key with a syncronized timecode than to work with the systems they're implimenting.

Also once set you can't fix them. So basically it promotes the user to make a physical (or worse notepaded) version of all the questions and answers simply to deal with the system. This is not an increase in security.

I've said this before about other things (quality plans) but I stand firmly by this statement. Increasing complexity is not a solution its an indication of a problem.

Speed limits

2007-02-16T12:03:00.000-05:00

Where I work we use a fairly significant number of small microcontrollers from Microchip called PICs. Or chief workhorse is the PIC18F452 which is basically the successor to one of the most indestructible processors of all time the PIC16C877. There is actually a story from when I was in the school's solar car team; one team member had installed a PIC backwards in the socket and didn't realize it until he saw the die through the window (EPROM parts use UV to erase) glowing red. He promptly powered the device down waited a few moments and returned the PIC to the proper orientation and powered it on again, without any problems.

Now back to the topic at hand. Given that we use so many of the new part its nice to have new projects also use it for simplicity’s sake. The main issue is its been a while since Microchip last did a die shrink limiting the top end to 40MHz crystal (10MHz instruction cycle time), which is great for most tasks, but is starting to be a bit slow in this day and age.

I'm currently working on a device that is to emulate the satelite crash sensors on several different automobiles. The most recent generation of parts are using a new protocol that is significantly faster than their predecessors did. This protocol is a balanced 200kbaud pwm synchronous voltage transmit, current receive system.

The current signaling isn't difficult for it is simple level based, however the master does transmit as a pwm voltage signal. The bit time is 5 uSec and the PIC instruction time is 0.1 uSec. That means for each bit the PIC only has 50 cycles to measure the signal and determine what the bit is (a 1 or 0) and decide what the next bit to transmit is.

Sound intense? The interframe time is 4 bit times or 20 uSec which correlates to 200 cycles in which the PIC has to determine the next message to transmit having received and decided what the previous one was.

Basically after a fairly tech heavy post it really boils down to that sometimes you don't need a processor with a lot of bells and whistles, you just need it to move fast. Unfortunately there isn't much between the world of PICs and the worlds of DSPs, so when you work in that nether region in between you have situations where neither is ideal.

Thursday Linkfest

2007-02-15T12:42:00.000-05:00

Mars Rovers Get Software Upgrades to Support More Autonomous Work

Dog Loses an Ear to Tyson the Dog Groomer (I made up the Tyson part)

Ron Jeremy doesn't like pron (Doesn't mind staring in it though).

Hershey Outsources Chocolaters, Goes Back to It's Roots

Shipping take 2

2007-02-15T11:05:00.000-05:00

So as I have previously mentioned DHL isn't the best of shippers. Now I have a new shipper to add to the list of people that don't threaten UPS. That is FedEx Ground.

I have discovered that FedEx Ground and FedEx are virtually different companies that use the same phone numbers and logos. I might post more detail in the future but the major part of the issue is their customer service (thankfully American, but most obviously from where FedEx is headquartered) is really really bad.

Bored at Work

2007-02-10T14:44:00.000-05:00

So one of the major problems with coding is that if you have more than about a half a dozen brain cells at some point one of them will revolt and go out and get donuts and coffee and totally distract the rest of them. And then a conversation will commence...

Are we talking about office workers or brain cells?

Anyway here's the thought, with the costs falling so rapidly I think it would actually be possible to put together a small FPGA board together to act as a small virtual PC with only ethernet and SATA peripherals (this whole train of thought stems from attempting to find PCI sata cards, many are simply 2 ports or else rediculously expensive). Of course designing the hardware is one thing, adapting software is another. The beauty of course of using an FPGA is a great deal of IP is freely available from companies like Altera.

Of course the task would likely be rediculous hard and I won't think about this again but here's the list of major milestones that would need to be accomplished.

a) build hardware (hahaha... easier said than done)
b) adapt gcc to be aware of whatever soft core used in the fpga. If done correctly this should be a non issue (for example the NIOS development kit already comes with a c compiler)
c) adapt a micro core of a well known and supported OS (good parts of this are already done in different fashions in the RTOSes)

Invent Me

2007-02-09T17:14:00.000-05:00

Okay google here we go. I want you to build in wikipedia linking. Thats right! Make it so when I do [[Magic Link]] it'll make the correct wikipedia link. That would just be cool.

I wonder... has anybody used the wiki software pack as a blogging medium? I know you'd have to change some things about it, namely post security of some sort.

Lazy Taser

2007-02-09T14:57:00.000-05:00

I will start with saying that the very first axiom I believe is true in today's society is that people are lazy. I think fundamentally, regardless of how driven a person is, they are still lazy. Even with fatastic goals and years of endless pursuit of it... they are still lazy.

Now what happens when you give police tasers with virtual immunity from disciplinary action resulting from their use?

Remember people are lazy.

Now I don't know the particulars of the case but I want to see the video behind this story

Basically it boils down to this. A kid (though not a student of the university) decides to skate down (some very nice for boarding) paths on the college campus in the middle of town. Given there are signs posted against all formed of wheeled transport on those (10' wide) paths, the campus police (actual police), approach the dude and through some chain of events the two of them end up tasering him. And being this is done in front of several hundread college students it ends up on "tape" by a cell phone, of which the user promptly youtubes (possibly on the spot via the cell phone).

I'm not arguing that they weren't justified in issuing a misdemeanor ticket (the sum total of what he ended up getting) but using a taser I feel is a result of lazyness moreso than need.

Issuing police the taser is asking for abuse.

Google Finishes Something

2007-02-08T17:30:00.000-05:00

I noticed this afternoon that Google had finally decided to take something out of beta. You might remember my diatribe about unfinished software that stayed beta in perpetuality.

Some Home Network Topography

2007-02-08T17:07:00.000-05:00

Here is a quick diagram I drew up of the network items and basic topography of what I'm attempting to do. Nothing majorly exciting, the only flaw I see in it is having the NAS/BOOTP server sitting between two networks.

One item I didn't mention is I'm using a Netgear FVX538 which I got for an absolutely phenominal deal (factory refurbished). It replaces my FVS318 that previously had served all my needs extremely well. I am very excited about this new router however, its feature list coupled with a web interface that works very well make it a dream to configure and use. I especially like the bandwidth monitoring and shaping tools I have available to me (bit torrent ruining your browsing? No more!).

Ironically I don't actually have a laptop, its just there for um... completeness.

Snow days

2007-02-06T18:32:00.000-05:00

Indiana DOT truck driver: WTF? Why the hell is there a giant hunk o' metal on my damn truck?
Indiana DOT worker: Its a snow plow.
Indiana DOT truck driver: What's it fer?

Link

The NeXtStations find a home.

2007-01-31T23:03:00.000-05:00

So the NeXTstations that I got when I was in college are now safely located in the rack I just purchased (the transport of which is worthy of its own post). They aren't particularly glamerous in any way but they do fit in the rack rather nicely. Interestingly enough 7 was the number I decided to carry home, and seven is the number that fits between the rails perfectly.

As you can see I'm not particularly good with the RJ-45 crimper yet (so the cables have a tendency to get shorter when making them).

I don't know how well you can see from the picture but the NeXTstation when not attached to a monitor requires a 450-470 ohm load between pins 6 and 19 of the DB19 (yes, a DB19... good luck finding a mating connector). I have actually found DB19 soldercup plugs fairly reasonably priced (50 cents a pop) so I'll be ordering some of those to make the resistor load a bit more secure.

As for the future plans of this cluster I know I can get them to netboot netBSD without an issue (did that in college, and even installed the netBSD clustering suite to play around with), but I'm thinking about actually getting them to netboot copies of NeXTstep 3.3. Remember the very first webserver by Tim Berners-Lee while he was at CERN runs on NeXTstep.

Ow

2007-01-31T10:55:00.000-05:00

So for those that have seen my apartment at some time have probably seen a fairly heavy duty TV stand supporting, well, my TV. This entity (the stand) is made of metal and glass and can be considered an immovable object. Behind this of course is a spaghetti of various cords and power outlets and whatever else happens to make its way back there.

Now imagine, if you will, attempting to fit yourself back there to work on something, losing your balance and squatting to avoid falling backwards over your TV. Now imagine your left ass cheek getting impaled (I guess imapaled implies breaking the skin... but I can't think of a better word right now) by the corner of aforementioned TV stand and having that corner slide up your side as you decend to a stop, having saved the TV and not fully comprehending the pain that in 10 seconds you were about experiance.

I now have a half-assed bruise, literally.

Anybody want pictures?

RIP Jack Palance

2006-11-11T00:07:00.000-05:00

Today Jack Palance passed away. Most people may remember him as the mysterious hired gun in the movie Shane. If you haven't oh well, you've probably seen him in some other film in his prolific career.

Quality Plans and Corrective Actions

2006-11-10T15:04:00.000-05:00

I won't go into too much on this since I am still at work but here's my perspective on things. Quality Plans/Inititives and Corrective actions are no solutions to problems, they symptoms of even larger problems/failures in the system.

As I have stated before people are no longer interested in root cause analysis. When implimenting a quality plan the one most important thing people forget is that solving a problem isn't done by making it more complex its done by making it simpler. The quality plan in and of itself is a problem showing the deeper rooted dillema in all quality control systems. All these inititives are doomed to failure and 5 year plans have to be reviewed and recreated every 3 years or so.

I'd rather fascist than communist.

2006-11-08T16:08:00.000-05:00

Ah november... the month we celebrate turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, and crazed communists.

By this point in time it shouldn't be hard to figure out that I was refering to Democrats in that first line. Granted I myself have no love for Republicans but frankly if your choices are:

Fascism is a radical political ideology that combines elements of corporatism, authoritarianism, nationalism, militarism, and anti-anarchism"

Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a future classless, stateless social organization, based upon common ownership of the means of production.

Which do you pick?

I'd rather be Republican, er, fascist.

Google and Unfinished Software

2006-10-25T18:32:00.000-04:00

Recently one of the big problems people I know as well as myself is the slowness of gmail message delivery. Basically what happens is you send an email to a gmail account and randomly it just won't show up, for about a day. If you go back and look at logs as to when the gmail stmp server recieved it normally you get that it recieved the email shortly after you sent it, gmail just lost the email and forgot to put it in your inbox for somewhere on the order of 10-20 hours.

This is starting to become a very common occurence. I personally find this highly annoying because there are occasions where I want my email in a fairly prompt manner. Waiting a day for an email with a link that expires in 3 hours is not kosher in my book. Now it would be all fine and dandy if I didn't have something to compare it to, however, I have used yahoo email for over 10 years. I have NEVER had an email time delay problem. And when I mean never, I do mean, never.

I think I've mentioned this before but Google has this bad habbit of labeling everything beta and never taking it out of beta. This allows them to never actually have to fix the problems that crop up. So far all the google software I have tried has looked good and worked somewhat decently but there has always been a few sticky issues. Pretty much exactly like my own software.

But I really need a reliable email system.

Pat and Stanley - The lion sleeps tonight

2006-07-12T22:08:00.000-04:00

So I found this video via google video and well... it was too good not to post. BTW the built in google video feature that lets you post a video via like three clicks is pretty sweet.

The EU beyond Reason.

2006-06-28T10:16:00.000-04:00

There isn't anything stopping anybody from writing a viable windows alternative at this point in time. All of Microsofts interconnects and APIs have either been released to the public or reverse engineered by the bsd/linux community.

The problem is that there is no solidly released linux distribution that meets everybody's needs, or will even nessesarily run on your machine.

Take a windows XP disk. Put it in the CD-ROM drive of ANY machine made in the last 5 years, using any hardware and install. Then either download the patches from your release disk version to what is most up to date.

Your computer now has a moderately secure, put it behind a 30 broadband router/firewall and anything bad that happens to it will be due to a dumb user. For the record, in all these years I've been involved in computers I have NEVER seen a virus, half the time I've run a virus scanner and half the time not. I have even managed one department's network at a college and still never saw a virus get flagged by the scanners.

But I digress, the point here is that the now forementioned fresh XP install will be clean and integrated and for the most part easy to understand and follow. If you need to do something the built in help system will describe exactly what steps you need to follow. While the base windows package comes will nearly everything you would want for the standard PC that will be used for email and internet browsing you don't need to go any further. If you need more you can purchase Microsoft's Office for a relatively small fee. While MSWord might have a few deficiencies it still works as one would expect it should. Excel is still unrivaled when it comes to Spreadsheet work. If you use POP or a Corporate email system the version of Outlook that comes with Office is one of the cleanest email/groupware type programs around (compare wil Novell Groupwise, Lotus Notes, etc)

Now try to find something that competes. There is no linux distribution that even in itself that maintains a commonized interface. Moving into the unix field the only good integrated windowing environment would be OS-X from Apple. Again OS-X is not free. OS-X has all of those same features I talked about earlier when describing Windows XP.

And by all indications it looks like Apple will start growing even faster in the close future. With Microsoft's .NET architecture gaining ground, I would even guess we will see a business model shift for Microsoft shortly.

But the point of all this really comes down to the EU's extremely agressive and utterly absurd Communistic approach to their Anti-trust dealings with Microsoft.

While the EU case started off sketchy at best, it has gone far far off into the crazy now. The people consulting on the case for the EU are paid for none less than Microsoft's own competitors. Their comments are sealed and can't be viewed by anybody, not even Micrsoft. The case is designed from the get go to extract either massive amounts of money for the EU nations or else had over to Microsoft's competitors the entire source code for Windows.

Right now the EU is getting ready to levy a fine of $5 million PER DAY back dated to December of 2005. Right now thats about $1 billion and rising. Microsoft isn't the only American company that the EU is targeting either.

At this point I would rather see Microsoft stop all opperations in the EU instead of paying any fine of any sort to the EU. That means closing all divisions and refuse to sell any software licenses to anybody in the EU.

As an interesting subnote the EU has a GDP of just slightly more than the United States (about $1 trillion more) but if you take the EU's GDP per capita and compared that to the States of the US that number is only better than THREE (3) states. Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia are the only states with worse GDP per capita numbers than the EU. Ironically with the coal boom just starting up again I wouldn't be surprised to shortly see the EU's GDP per capita barely above the two lowest states.

Names of some people I work with

2006-06-16T15:06:00.000-04:00

Or names of some people that work where I work.

Chainsaw
Hacksaw
High 5
beerbong (his actual last name)

Things are heating up in the job world

2006-05-31T17:00:00.000-04:00

So if you need a job now is the time to start calling people up.

At least thats what I'm judging by the fact that I've been getting about 5 emails a day from recruiters on a resume that hasn't been updated for a year and that IS NOT on any job sites. They're pulling it out of previously downloaded batches.

DRM on NGen DVDs

2006-05-30T09:23:00.000-04:00

So by now most people know that two formats for next generation DVDs are on the way. HD-DVD is already available with players and some movies being released. The showing thus far isn't all that impressive as one would expect. HD-DVD does have the support of Microsoft, Paramount and others. HD-DVD does use the new AACS system.

The other is of course Blu-Ray developed by sony with a huge list of backers. To get Fox Movie studies to side with the Blu-Ray format the consortium working on Blu-Ray added two additional layers of DRM. These are:

ROM-Mark: A digital watermarking scheme that will embed a cryptographic key in the data stream being read by the player that matches information on the disc. Thus in the eyes of the movie studio preventing pirates from recording movies in theaters and burning them to BluRay DVDs to sell. My question is how are users expected to use Blu-Ray to create home movies?

BD+: This one is the major sneaky and dangerous part of Blu-Ray. In short the DVD player can download new cryptographic schemes from discs if the studios believe a certain player has been compromised. This means that the cryptographic scheme can always remain fresh. On internet connected Blu-Ray players (read PC, PS3, and future IPTV players) the consortium can push new schemes across that way.

While the Rom-mark will likely be a headache for some people I don't think it would take all that much time for somebody to figure out a solution for it. This is especially true depending on how much flexability there is in the BD+ technology. Blu-Ray for this reason even earned the rating of "Anti-consumer" by Bill Gates.

I'm just wondering how long it will take before people figure out how to use BD+ to their advantage. Such as updating players (or hacking the PS3) with their own system that removes DRM completely from players.

Cube Pacing

2006-05-23T15:50:00.000-04:00

OMG I CAN'T DO SHIT WHEN MY CUBE IS IN THE PACE ZONE.

My cube is in the far back and yet it has more traffic behind it then the front cube. Why?

Cause the boss offices are the other end. Its so freaking retarded and is virtually impossible to do any work. Especially when my monitor shakes like mad every time somebody walks by.

Today I learned...

2006-05-18T15:08:00.000-04:00

That one can fit a Potiac Sunbird, in its entirety, in the blind spot dirrectly behind me.

You know the blind spot normally exclussively reserved for running over little kids in the drive-way? Now the question is... how did I learn this?

Well on my way to work today I was cruisin' along at my normal speed I set on the interstate (somewhere between 70-75, the limit varries between 65-70) passing a semi. I check my mirrors make sure nobody is in the way, check my "normal" blind spot for the lane I'm going into and I move over. Its at that point I notice that there was a car sucking on my tailpipe.

Very disturbing. Especially if for some reason if I had to break for anything...

Bad Credit cards

2006-05-05T14:04:00.000-04:00

Anybody that uses an American Express card is a moron.

The company sucks and should go out of business.

I had troubles with them years ago so I canceled my card with them. My corporate card is through them now and I'm having EXACTLY THE SAME TROUBLES.

When will they ever learn?

Wikipedia Nap

2006-03-30T14:00:00.000-05:00

So recently though some fashion I discovered something fairly interesting. This phenomenon I have decided to call the Wikipedia Nap (as you may have guessed from the title of this post).

Anyhow, there have been days for one reason or another where I was just damn tired and found myself in a less then optimal state of mind for work. So I hopped onto my favorite worksafe website and started my browsing. I used to read the regular encyclopedias when I was a kind anyway so it wasn't a big stretch. I found that after just browsing and letting my mind wander from topic to topic I seemed to be far more awake and able to do work.

So recently following lunch I go browse wikipedia for about half an hour. It's almost as refreshing as a 10 minute power nap. I wonder if its related to simply letting you mind go where it wants to go instead of where you want it to go that refreshes it (dreams for me at least are always virtually completely random).

So next time you feel tired at work try typing something random into wikipedia and start your travels.

From the history yesterday was:

Abcess
Alcatraz Island
Alvin Karpis
Anaphylaxis
Arenavirus
Arming Sword
Atropine
Autoinjector
Airborne Warning and Control System
Birdman of Alcatraz
Broadsword
Bullwip
Al Capone
Cat o' Nine Tails
Charles Manson
Urumi
Claymore
Document Management System
E-10 MC2A
Ebola
Edo Period
Epinephrine
EpiPen
viral Hemorrhagic Fever
Indianapolis, Indiana
Jitte
Kalari
Katana
Kilij
La Cosa Nostra
Leprosy
Lipid
Longsword
Made
Made man
Mafia
Mameluke Sword
Mortuary Sword
Club
Polyphasic sleep
Pralidoxime
Schiavona
Scimitar
Shelf life
The untouchables
Tonfa
Ursula K. Le Guin
VX
Yakuza
Zweihander

Today so far has been:

Bushmen
C Programing Language
Chevrolet Small-Block
Click Consonant
GM LS engine
GM premimum V engine
GM Vortec engine
Lisp
Lisp programing language
N!xau
Northstar
Oldsmobile Intrigue
Scheme programming language
The gods must be crazy
V8 engine
Ward's 10 best engines

It goes something like this

2006-02-28T12:34:00.000-05:00

Consumer: Dear FCC, my cable costs too much. I only watch 17 channels. Why do I have to buy 200?

FCC to Cable: Offer a la carte programing.

Cable: Okay. But we'll have to charge three times as much.

FCC: What? You've been increasing rates at about double inflation every year. AND you say it'll cost more to offer individual channels? Our studies show it'd cost 10% less at least.

Cable: You're wrong. We won't do it. Oh yah and we refuse to support CableCard too!

FCC: Fine be that way. We'll give AT&T and Verizon video licenses for the fibre they're installing right to peoples door. They charge $40 bucks a month for 3MB IP connections that can handle video. How's that feel?

Cable: You suck. We'll try to block AT&T and Verizon in court.

FCC: LOL

Medicine and Root Cause Analysis

2006-02-13T09:31:00.000-05:00

It seems all to often that the medical profession as a whole of late is not interested in research into the root causes of ailments, only the imediate relief of symptoms. Whether that is caused by the seemingly boundless lengths people will go to relieve those symptoms or simply a loss of focus in the education of future generations. Ultimately history is being writen, and is showing this disturbing tend quite vividly.

For example:

Stomach Ulcers. I remember quite vividly how much during the 80s these had been attributed to "stress" and spicy food. It was virtually a done-deal. Eventually somebody wasn't content with the phantom "stress" trigger so many other scientists and doctors had decided was the cause and found out that in fact there is a root-cause to Stomach Ulcers. Its a baceria, Helicobacter pylori, and also pain killers such as Asprin that weaken the stomach lining allowing ulcers to form. Yes when people feel "stressed" they medicate themselves commonly. But nobody prior had taken it to the behavior of the person to find the root cause. Now what is also amazingly interesting about this is how it leads to my next item.

Migranes. The bussiness for migranes is gigantic, virtually every over the counter pain killer is and can be used to treat them as well as other assorted headaches. There are two very interesting things: a) all over the counter migrane medications, and all but one or two prescription migrane treatments have caffeine in them b) all treatments take approximately the same period of time to relief the symptoms of a migrane c) no migrane studies have attempted to control the caffiene intake and metobolization of the participants. Now there have been studies associated caffiene as a drug addiction and the withdrawl symptoms are well documented. In fact the varying degrees of caffiene withdrawl match in totality to those documents in migrane studies. Given how much money people make from migrane treatments and the fact that they aren't generally considered life-threatening, it could be a very long while before the connection is decidedly proven. Until that point simply think about the number of "triggers" exist for migranes. Everything under the sun has been listed a trigger, all the way down to Saturdays. All those triggers can be narrowed down to two items: things that cause the human body to motobolize caffine faster, and b) things that alter a person's daily caffine intake.

And after all that the real purpose of this post was to take note of an article I read this morning. And that one of the most common mental illnesses, Schizophrenia, is very likey caused by a parasite. One commonly found in cat stomachs and whose life cycle involves infecting other mammals such as mice and rats and affecting their brain function to make them more likely to be eaten. This parasite goes by the name of T. gondii and causes something called Toxoplasmosis. The article detailing this can be found here.

Now we have known about the parasite for a long time, we have known about the behaviorial problems of rats infected with it. There are also a great number of people infected with the parasite, and we also have a treatment for it to eliminate it. Why haven't we made the connection before? One can only guess.

As a follow up I also found out that John Hopkins Hospital is now conducting studies in which they are suplimenting routine anti-psychotic medictions with T. gondii treatments.

Said Well

2006-02-06T11:31:00.000-05:00

Normally I don't read anything that Time publishes but for once this essay is short, concise, well writen, and accurate.

If you ever wondered why the numbers don't makes sense...

2006-02-03T09:54:00.000-05:00

Here is an article that covers some of the intangibles. I think it covers most of the things that I think people for the most part observe themselves, just never make it into the offical numbers.

On TV Sunday.

2006-02-01T11:19:00.000-05:00

ABC will be showing Superbowl XL

Guess what will be on ESPN?

hrm... can you?

Try Figure Skating.

Ouchy

2006-01-31T17:12:00.000-05:00

So Google just missed targets and dropped $75 bucks a share today.

Thats got to suck for somebody. So thats like down 25% since January 1st.

Facinating

2006-01-25T14:17:00.000-05:00

You must read this study:

http://www.livescience.com/othernews/060124_political_decisions.html

Iron law of oligarchy

2006-01-25T09:36:00.000-05:00

Its a pretty interesting concept. Basically put its the idea that any system regardless of how it is started will migrate to an Oligarchy.

Be it polical, social, or even now networks and machines.

Okay so here's the scineros:
a) Start as a Monoarchy or Dictatorship. As the system grows the monoarch or dicator will gradually start delegating tasks and decision making to those he assigns simply because there are too many decisions or tasks or simply wants a break. In turn those will start to specialize and become essential to the functioning of the government and will at some point challenge the leader. This then is the begining of the Oligarchy. Oligarchy doesn't say that all the few share the power equally, only that a few control the majority of it.

b) Start at a Democracy/Republic. Either everybody elects a leader or votes on every issue. Eventually people get sick of this and will elect representatives to make those decisions for them. Eventually those representatives can institutionalize themselves though the appathy of the people. And an Oligarchy is born.

Whats facinating to me isn't the nature of people, its how it even occurs in machines and networks. My best guess is its only related for our natural tendancies as engineers of these systems to put them in a hierarchy. And in general as systems get larger our ablity to create the master computer is limited to our technology we end up reverting to several imply massive computers to manage the rest of the system. Each of those is specalized to due certain tasks. While not quite to the point of making network changing decisions (some systems are very close to being able to detect intrusions and self heal the last time I checked) because we have not given them that sort of programing. I would have no doubt in time that we could have at least moderate AIs running our large computer systems.

Of course the peer2peer and distributed processing movements could end up changing the hierarchical approach so we just to wait until we have more decision making ablities built into computers.

Editors note:
I bet you could make this a Ph.D. thesis. First develop two computer only models. The basis of these models are computers need to make "important" decisions or simply calculations. Give the programs on these computers the ability to know what the performance of the others in the group are. Allow each one to decide to do the decisions themselves or allow them to delegate the task. First start with a small group of equal performing computers. Then start inserting more powerful computers and less powerful ones. See if they move to an Oligarchy. Then try the other massive computer first making all the "decisions" and start adding smaller computers it can chose to delegate to, then add even less powerful ones.

HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray

2006-01-20T16:37:00.000-05:00

So back to the days of the Beta-max and VHS we have the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle heating up. Blu-Ray by far has the greatest support but HD-DVD has already been shown to consumers. Now lets break it down:

HD-DVD:
Can be made using standard DVD processes
No extra licensing fees
Ready to go, players are ready
Players can play standard DVDs at the same quality or better
Players cost half as much as Blu-Ray players
Microsoft is on board.

Blu-Ray:
Needs complete new lines to make
Has roughly twice the capacity of HD-DVD
Requires seperate licenses for playback on computers (uses Java)
Players cost twice as much as HD-DVD
Players can no play normal DVDs
Players are not yet available
Blu-Ray discs are not yet in production

Hrm...HD-TV is catching on.... which matches HD-DVD or Blu-Ray?

Okay okay what about content? Well its split pretty evenly right now... except HD-DVDs are actually being produced and ready for sell in march, many of which will include a standard DVD playable side... Blu-Ray discs? Unknown.

And one of the major backers of Blu-Ray? Sony. I wouldn't want to be the Sony side this year with how many flops and disasters they've had recently.

So I think HD-DVD will the the winner really quickly. I just can't imagine a format that costs more on both the supplier and consumer end (remember if you double the supplier cost that is the markup the consumer will see, making Blu-Ray anywhere from twice to three times as much as an HD-DVD disc in my best guess), requires hardware that will not play current DVD collections and still costs twice as much, and supported by a company that has already proven to be no consumer friendly with their copy right systems.

Why didn't I short...

2006-01-20T10:23:00.000-05:00

Google is already down $40/share since Wednesday and keeps on dropping.

Would you...

2006-01-18T13:44:00.000-05:00

So if you could give up 20% of your brain to the smartest workaholic you know in exchange for 20% of whatever he/she produces/invents, would you?

What if you could conviced three of your friends to do it... would you?

Is google growth unsustainable?

2006-01-17T09:43:00.000-05:00

Well as I've suspected... just maybe

Gender Disparity

2006-01-17T08:36:00.000-05:00

Wage Statistics from Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2004 & 2005

I guess it pretty much shows women still make less money on average. Of course just like any statistics it doesn't show why or what data they left out. But still interesting

Omega-3 Fatty Acids

2006-01-11T12:12:00.000-05:00

For those who haven't read about them I suggest a google and/or wikipedia search now.

So while a lot of the data is debated hotly right now I find this bit of information very interesting.

The United States instituted a rationing system in the 40s. During this period of time families with Children were allowed virtually unlimited access to Cod Liver Oil. This down home suppliment was in amazingly high use to combat all kinds of supposed maladies. It was known then as a good source of vitamins A and D.

Now if you take the Children that grew up during the 40s and extrapolate their careers... you end up with interesting things... during they 60s they were 20-30.. 80s they were 40-50. When you match that up to normal engineering and science profesions and normal ages of highest productivity it is very interesting.

Anyway enough random connections that may or may not be relavent. But have fun reading what you find.

Notes: Your brains are mostly formed of different kinds of fats. Your brain forms of course while in the womb all the way up until about puberty when it simply goes into maintence mode and you then start to lose a certain amount of brain cells as you age... maybe what kind of fat your body has available to it is important? :)

Funny Math

2006-01-10T08:35:00.000-05:00

So before I left for vacation I closed a checking account I had with a very small local bank about 3 hours away from where I now live. It was your standard run of the mill feeless, intrestless checking account. I had about 50 bucks or so in the account which they simply cashed out and gave to me.

Anyway when I was going through my stacks of mail I found two notices from that bank saying my account was 20 CENTS overdrawn. Needless to say I'm baffled by this.

It of course probably cost them more than 20 cents to send me two notifications for being overdrawn.

Hawaii Photos

2006-01-09T22:26:00.000-05:00

So I have some pictures of my winter vacation of the Big Island of Hawaii posted here

I plan on posting more details later.

First do no evil.

2006-01-09T22:15:00.000-05:00

Those were the word of Google's credo. Now there is Google Pack.

Okay so the bundle isn't terrible.... but everything NORTON IS EVIL.

And RealPlayer honestly can be easily lived without. I have a Media Center PC that has never had it installed. Also while I personally love Trillian, and in all honestly never tried the purchasable version, I still suspect some underlying memory management problems with the software.

In fact ZDnet says it all.

Further thoughts on free internet software. I don't know what it is about Firefox but I need to see it play a little better with others. It seems like whenever I try to use it either a) crashes horribly or b) fails to render the page (okay that is probably Microsoft's fault). The crashing part of Firefox really bothers me. I use so many different computers and configurations I would like to see a web browser function on more than 50% of the non-freshly-wiped PCs.

Now if you wander over to Sourceforge there are a few gems I would like to see more mention. Such as The Gimp and Realterm.

NIPSCO is EVIL

2005-11-29T08:39:00.000-05:00

Here's the plan. Go though the customer lists, find anybody that may be "overdue" and disconnect them without warning. Then call them and tell them they are disconnected and will cost them $155 to reconnect service.

Natural Gas futures are then paid for the winter.

My overdue amount? $70
Number of bills I recieved: 0
Number of notices I recieved in the mail: 0
Number of phone calls requesting payment: 0

Dirty Words

2005-11-28T11:02:00.000-05:00

Some words should never go in offical documents. One of them is a four letter word. Can you guess what it is when used in this context.

"...the electrical panel experianced a self-sustaining overtemperature condition that subsequently required manual control."

And yes I did just come up with that*, but it was in response to a question asked by a co-worker on how to say _____ nicely.

*Maybe there is a bureaucrat lurking underneath, be afraid, very afraid.

Sony is going crazy.

2005-11-16T14:46:00.000-05:00

So in case you haven't been keeping up with the most recent news about it, in brief Sony created and has been installing a rootkit on computers since April of this year.

The first documented case of the rootkits discovery on Sysinternals.

Tough Choices In Life

2005-11-10T16:33:00.000-05:00

So to exercise my right, nay duty, to be a well armed American citizen I pose this question to you:

Which one? The Ceramic Boker Infinity or The Model 805 by Benchmade? Cost is nearly identical.

So yah...

2005-11-10T12:19:00.000-05:00

So for a decent part of my life (and like many of my friends), I have carried a "utility" knife. Either in the form of a leatherman, the classic pocket knife, or a standard folding drop point. My last and most current knife falls in the last category and definitely has seen better days. So I have found several possible replacements for it but unfortunately they all fall in the auto or assisted open category, which are only legal for active military or law enforcement to carry. And of course "switchblades" are illegal pretty much everywhere for no reason. In fact if I can get a concealed carry permit for a handgun you would think the same permit would allow me to carry a knife. But no.

Anyway this brings me to an awesome quote:

"The possession and use of dangerous weapons has long
presented a problem to the law... Statutes of this kind have
been criticized for having the effect of prohibiting the law-
abiding citizen from protecting himself, while at the same
time failing to reach the criminal who habitually uses
dangerous weapons for illegal ends. Nevertheless, a great
many convictions have been obtained for the crime of carrying
concealed weapons. Hence, the Committee felt that a
continuation of the same policies which lie behind the
present law of deadly weapons was desirable."

Which was by an Illinois legislator in the 50s on a committee concerning knife laws. And in response to that was a quote on the website where I found it:

"Translated into plain English, they said that this law only
affects law-abiding citizens, but since many of them have
been convicted, and thus have been redefined as criminals,
let's keep enforcing it."

I've never heard it put better.

The Saga

2005-11-09T12:15:00.000-05:00

First rule of customer service: If you say you're going to call a customer back, you damn well better do it.

So here's an update:

Oct 21: First finish date,
OCt 26: Need to replace steering column, on order
Nov 2: Steering column not in yet. Plan to get and install friday
Nov 7: Mechanic's Water heater blew up monday morning, can't come to work, Steering column still not installed.
Nov 8: Painter out sick, can't come to work. Steering column still not installed

Kyoto Protocal Anyone?

2005-11-01T14:07:00.000-05:00

A very large underground fire burns through large coal beds in Northern China. The fires consume up to 200 million tons of coal each year. This fire is quite a bit larger then the largest Pennsylvania fire (Centralia), releasing almost "as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as do all the cars in the United States"

Please, may we....... nuke?

2005-10-28T07:51:00.000-05:00

"As the Imam [the late Ayatollah Khomeini] said, 'Israel must be wiped off the map'… The Islamic world will not let its historic enemy live in its heartland." -- Iran President Ahmadinejad

Way to be awesomely honest. Can we nuke now? (I think we should definately do what I thought we should do with iraq: plant a medium sized nuke in the heart of the capital and detonate it, then say "Yup they were working with nukes, and well, screwed up something"

Indianan Time Zone Fight

2005-10-27T07:54:00.000-05:00

Daylight Saving Time was pitched to everybody in Indiana in a sleezy mannor. The idea was to reduce the costs other people would incure by having to keep up with what time it was in Indiana during the time switches each year. However, because this was all done in the legislature and not by popular vote there was no determination to what time Indiana would actually be on.

After the whole thing looked to be on the way of a large bomb Daniels sent the whole problem to the federal government to come up with a time zone plan.

Of course now by spliting Indiana down the middle makes the whole thing just as confusing as before and I doubt there will be any realized savings from it. So the whole thing was simply an exercise in bureaucrazy.

OMG!!!

2005-10-26T21:08:00.000-05:00

Hrm...

2005-10-25T09:58:00.000-05:00

Something to read:

http://www.livescience.com/othernews/051025_halloween_candy.html

I love this guy

2005-10-21T12:20:00.000-05:00

Today's Must read

I mean we should all aspire to think like him.

I think another true visionary, Gene Ray, would agree whole heartedly with this fellow. "You've been educated stupid"

Coming back to reality I did find this site, however.

Here's a link for Jerry and Dave

So other than simply make fun of the guy that is totally against Object Oriented programming I'll try to be fair and say that there are cases were OOP probably isn't the most useful (in my case the embedded world). However in his writing he treats the quintessential procedural language C with distain, saying it is too strongly typed. That sets of some pretty serious red flags in my mind.

He even starts out saying that his entire experiance has been in small niche markets. I'm guessing these were small enough to only require him as the sole developer. I know there are people out there that use Python for everything under the sun, but it doesn't mean thats a good thing. He also speaks of Crystal Reports in a favorable tone (even my aunt who wrote a large chunk of SAIC's payroll reporting system has told me that writing a program to work with crystal reports takes more time than writing the program and a chunk of code to do what you needed from crystal reports).

I believe that this guy is ranting about poor implimentations of fellow contractors in his niche and not faults of that of programing paradigms or the languages himself. Combining both the statements that procedural code is better than object oriented and that C/C++ is too strongly typed really leads me to believe that this guy only really understands a few languages and his niche (which he actually blames the proponents of OOP for being).

As I think about it I am drawn more to the conclusion that this guy is a die hard perl fanatic designing web applications. It makes sense to the limited scope he talks about and the heavy emphasis on tables. In general web applications like shopping and web based email systems, etc do not act like standard PC applications. Mostly in web applications you are concerned with moving data from one place to another and formating it for display or storage. It is significantly more difficult to work with systems that require handling of multiple kinds of interrupts, events, or messages in a procedural only paradigm. For instance in the world that he is probably coming from the program that is instantiating his perl program is in essence treating it as an object.

VB6 Inheritance

2005-10-20T13:45:00.000-05:00

Anybody have a rusty hacksaw blade?

I think I need an upgrade from this plastic spoon in my ongoing self castration that is Inheritance in VB6.

Remember Star Trek IV?

2005-10-19T19:21:00.000-05:00

So this may not be exactly transparent alluminum, but it comes pretty damn close.

New Cell Phone

2005-10-18T22:51:00.000-05:00

So I decided to pick up a new cell phone today since I was using an ancient Motorola V60i with Verizon (which I am sure is somehow a member of Devil & Assoc. Inc.)

I am now the owner of pretty much the only phone that has sparked any interest for me: the Motorola V3 Razr in black with Cingular Wireless.

Unfortunately number portablity only works between carriers in the same local market so that means I have a new number (blah). Which means if you're in my phone book you'll be getting a call. If you aren't but you're in my email list you'll be getting an email. In all other cases I probably don't care enough about you to bother (just kidding of couse, leave a note and I'll make sure you get the latest number)

Editor's Note: The Razr only costs $200 when you sign a two year contract.

Things change in 8 years...

2005-10-18T22:41:00.000-05:00

Okay so does anybody remember Charlotte Church and her Voice of an Angel album?

If you do then I recomend visiting this link and watching the Call My Name music video.

Unfortunately I suffer from not having enough friends knowing who she is/was to be able to show them the video then making them guess who it is. But that only slightly makes a difference to how shocking the change is.

Hrm.... and you missed the question why?

2005-10-12T04:43:00.000-05:00

Okay so I had The Weakest Link on the TV last night and was damn near floored when somebody missed this question:

"Biblical chacter's name that starts with a J and was son of the blessed virgin mary"

I am so hungry.

2005-10-10T03:14:00.000-05:00

I mean like hungry enough to chew on my arm. When I get back to the States I think the first thing I'll be doing is finding the biggest juiciest rare prime rib, slow roasted to perfection, with a bottle of a nice Merlot. Then after gorging myself I'll sleep for like 30 hours

Best lyric I've heard in a while:
"I know I'm going to die so my revenge is living well"

Update

2005-10-07T09:31:00.000-05:00

*sick*

*caugh* *caugh*

*sniffle* *sniffle* *sniffle*

Yah I'm starting to feel something ready to make me have a horrible cold. Maybe it'll just make my throat a little scratchy instead.

So yah up to this day 27 hours of overtime.... 3500+ lines of brand spanking new code.

Tested you ask? Why of course...

NOT!

Oh well I'll go back to loosing my mind now

Oops

2005-10-06T04:57:00.000-05:00

Okay so I just quickly reread what I had posted yesterday.

Man its absolutely terrible. I promise that I will go through and actually make it somewhat readable by putting in important things like:

a) commas
b) articles

and fixing things like:

a) tense
b) word choice
c) flow

Back to work now

Thoughts from Frustration

2005-10-05T04:37:00.000-05:00

Forgive me if this really seems like a very long rant. So far I’ve had a somewhat stressful week and have been working 16 hour days since Saturday. Tomorrow I am definitely planning to take the evening off and wonder around and see the Durham Cathedral and Castle. Possibly even the university. I do love old architecture. Hopefully pictures will follow.

First off I think everybody is deaf. They are dreadfully loud, all the time. They speak at the top of their lungs and barely enunciate. They are virtually yelling at each other all the time, probably due to the fact that they don't understand each other either (since it seems like a fundamental aspect of human nature to speak louder if it appears you aren't getting your meaning across).

They need small efficient vehicles because they drive with lead feet. This is probably a secondary reason to use Diesels in everything. Instead of using diesels because they are highly efficient at sustained loads they use them at full throttle to yank cars up to merging speeds due to their much higher torque at low speeds. Under the circumstances if you were to compare these vehicles to the "American" vehicles they are more fuel efficient. If you compare what people really get to what people really get back in the states I think the picture would look much different. Of course Americans still lose out due to the distance driven though for total consumption.

In fact an interesting thing for the environmentally "conscience" European governments very few of the diesels can actually pass emissions requirements in the united states. They produce far too much nitric acid (HNO2) which in the atmosphere causes acid rain. This is readily apparent in Athens which has for quite some time had the worst air quality in the world, where the priceless artifacts of the past are literally melting from it. The united states of course freaked out when pitting was noticed in the limestone façades of New York high-rises and quickly implemented the clean air act which, despite its flaws and lack of suitable enforcement methods against large polluters, has reduced significantly the noxious compounds released into our air. So yes the United States (and Australia) have not ratified the Kyoto protocol; why follow the rest of the world in a token effort to reduce CO2 emissions when most of them don't even make an effort to reduce compounds that cause health problems RIGHT NOW.

Okay so back on track. Lead-footing of everything: Roundabouts just make the problem worse because in the favor of "reducing congestion" they have traded stop lights to making every turn a dead stop to a merge with high speed traffic. In other words if you do have a lot of traffic you end up with worse congestion than you would otherwise since the roundabout gets clogged up to the max and nobody from any direction can get on. When I was in the states I always thought that roundabouts would be a great idea. I mean it all makes sense on paper.

But then I thought about another highly engineered "traffic" routing system. Ethernet. It normally is a self monitoring system and if the line is clear it will transmit. It also uses something called collision detection to self arbitrate the bus. However as you start to add more and more transmitting nodes the performance reduces significantly. In fact it has been acknowledged that for Ethernet to work you should not go beyond 70% (or something like that) utilization. If you want to go higher you use a SWITCH. You stop traffic and route it on a first come first serve basis. Switches didn't exist in the early days, people used to use hubs that would connect all the lines and keep traffic moving smoothly all at the same time. So great idea on paper, bad idea in reality.

Okay so next up. TV Licenses: 1000 pound fine if you don't have one. What is a TV license? Why do you need one? The whole concept of it just boggles the mind. Of course there are also Yearly Vehicle Registration/Road taxes...but only an 80 pound fine.

So I highly recommend traveling. See the world. Keep an open mind. Then think and draw some conclusions about yourself. Enjoy the past while its still exists.

diamond.co.uk: Legal gender discrimination? I mean who cares about equal rights for ALL?

Of course all of this has given me a totally different perspective on the United States trade deficit. Everywhere I look I see items, while locally made, are produced by companies that at one time were also locally owned but are now divisions are American companies. So yes Americans aren't producing as much anymore it is amazingly obvious to me here that American companies are very able to skim the cream off the milk of the world. So for the people that protest globalization in the United States because it is "exporting jobs" maybe you start protesting globalization because it is gradually enslaving the rest of the world.

There was a heavy dose of sarcasm in that last sentence. Those companies were able to be purchased for a reason. I'm sure many people in the world would rather be employed by an American company than totally jobless. Its really quite sad I think. Its no wonder that so much of the world resents the united states, but they need to turn the lens back on themselves and realize that through the powers of democracy they have willing relinquished rights unto a socialist government in favor of an "easier" life which has made local companies highly vulnerable to outside purchase. In fact the way a socialist government makes life easier to survive does it by sucking away what in the United States makes it possible to excel: rewards for brilliance and the right to generate wealth. There are NO FREE LUNCHES anywhere. You want the homeless to be housed, the poor to be fed, the jobless employed, and everybody to have free medical care? Then be prepared to give up your chance to be great.

Personally I would much rather see pain and suffering exist in the world today if it means the human race can move forward and become greater tomorrow. I don't want to see a new caste system in place that trades progress for stability.

The only real danger to the United States economy is if there is a world movement towards Nationalization of private companies and its own citizens voting for socialization.

Homework Reading: The Communist Manifestos by Leonard Peikoff

When in Durham...

2005-09-27T22:10:00.000-05:00

...do as something something.

So anyway this friday (the 30th) I will be flying out to Durham, UK for two weeks. I've heard rumors that the hotel internet service is amazingly terrible (soemthing about a card you put minutes on which plugs into a kiosk that doesn't have drives or the like) so I may or may not post. I will try to get some pictures though.

Whoa...

2005-09-24T15:48:00.000-05:00

So I do my best to stay out of Ford versus Chevy debates. But I was surfing through my insurance company's page and came across a bunch of crash test videos. Some of them are amazing:

Chevy 1500 into barrier at 40mph

Ford F-150 into barrier at 40mph

So like.... wow...

Lumpy...

2005-09-23T20:36:00.000-05:00

So yah I forgot to post the picture of my leg bruise.

Strange Creature

2005-09-23T20:18:00.000-05:00

So we saw this really weird looking thing on the way to body shop:

So honestly its probably for tractor pulls or the like. But.... wow...

The number is...

2005-09-22T12:46:00.000-05:00

$14,000

Yup thats the repair estimate.

"...I called my manager and he's talking to his manager and he'll call you tomorrow..." - Insurance adjuster

Well at least they aren't...

2005-09-20T16:25:00.000-05:00

...disguising the fact they don't want somebody that uses logic and his brain as the top judge.

"He is going to be confirmed," Reid told reporters after his Senate speech. Reid said Roberts is a smart man, but "I'm not too sure if his heart is as big as his head."

Update

2005-09-20T09:49:00.000-05:00

They filed a claim against me via an interpreter. They had the wrong date-of-loss and provided extremely little information to the insurance company. I'm glad I have a nice sounding agent working on my side of things with the body shop and a woman that sounds as if there is an "eat your soul" personality hiding underneath resisting the claim against me.

Guess the winner of this matchup

2005-09-18T00:25:00.000-05:00

Today's vehicle deathmatch is the 3/4 Ton Suburban versus Nissan Sentra.

So here's the story. I was coming back from Bloomington after seeing a Rose-E perform (Brandon Javella for those who may know him, he's pretty good actually) when to my surprise I was rounding a bend in the road when I saw headlights in my lane. At first I couldn't believe it and the first thing I asked by girlfriend was if I was in the right line, could I have turned onto a one way or an opposing turn lane?

Nope, I just was up against a vehicle that had three (likely illegal since the one guy that went to the hospital didn't have a license that match) hispanic men that smelled of alcohol. In fact I performed all the correct avoidance procedures by the book and hit at about 25-30mph. Oh yah and the two other guys left the injured guy there are the scene before the cops and paramedics showed up. Okay so how cliché is that?

So now I have a vehicle that could be totalled (it should be), it all depends on how severely the frame is bent (hydroformed front end can't really be repaired) and if it did any motor damage. I'm probably going to pay the $500 deductible since I doubt they are insured. But both of us are okay, though I have a nice bruise on my leg. Oh at a little a stiff.

Preface to Electronics and Embedded Systems Design Best Practices

2005-09-08T21:49:00.000-05:00

This post is really just the start of what I believe will be a long series of posts that will likely bore most people. However, this medium is fairly nice for documenting thoughts of this nature due to is semi permanent and public record status.

Basically, I have come to the conclusion that a major problem that exists currently is there is no concise, focus, and mostly inclusive reference of Best Practices or rules of thumb for any kind of electronic design. The CRC exists for Chemists and Chemical Engineers, civils have several depending on their individual field but electrical and computer engineers have very little. Most of what a young engineer fresh out of college needs is gained by experience.

For whatever reason, be it cost, timeframe, or just lack of engineers the concept of young engineers being mentored for several years by an experienced engineer is all but non-existent in the field of electronics. From what I have seen most places an engineer fresh out of college will end up in one of three types of jobs: paperwork only (managerial or project), monkey (very limited tasks, over-trained for the work), or a G.O.A.T (geek of all trades).

I have personally found myself in all those positions, sometimes all at the same time, but inadvertently I find myself in the last category all too often. Mostly I notice that the lack of a handbook or mentoring programs is painfully evident. I count myself lucky in having a couple very good mentors. Most notable of them all of course would be the guy that spent years designing and building military radios.

I believe if the trend of throwing fresh engineers into design positions without regard for mentoring then a handbook is an absolute necessity. There needs to be reference that covers everything from specifications to manufacturability and six sigma. A reference that will point out potential pitfalls, a reference that shows good design principles (general of course) and bad ones.

So that is what I will be posting shortly. And in the sprit of engineering process, the next post will be an outline.

Note: This is not meant to be an authoritative work. I expect it to change and grow with time, I may even be wrong occationally (yah I know...amazing, no smart ass remarks : )

Comments and corrections are welcome.

Three Very Important Rules...

2005-09-08T08:58:00.000-05:00

...for working with things you know nothing about

First Rule: If you don't know what it does, don't change it.
Second Rule: If you don't know why something works, don't assume you can make it better.
Third Rule: Only change one thing you don't know anything about at a time. In fact only change one thing at a time even if you think you know what each change will do.

Note: I've mostly learned these by making changes on the behalf of others only to end up having to go back and analyze the thing and actually fix it.

History Challenge

2005-09-02T10:35:00.000-05:00

Here's a challenge for you all.

Name a major contribution to the United States that ANY state of the former Confederacy has made, ever.

I am looking for innovations like: mass production, the transistor, the internet, television, radio, heart surgery, MRI, etc. not things like: KSC (Florida), Oakridge (Tenn.), or other federal creations.

(Note: New Orleans alone is going to cost about as much as Sept 11th for New York, the three states affected by Katrina only make up 3% of GDP however)

Hyphenation does not mean inheritance

2005-08-31T18:09:00.000-05:00

Quite often people of minorities blame the “majority” for creating and marketing racial stereotypes. I admit that even I will generalize people under certain circumstances. However, I have known people from all walks of life. I have a great respect for many of them and their differences from myself. I don’t believe in racial stereotyping. I don’t make judgments based on a person’s appearance. I do judge them on their actions, verbal and non-verbal. I judge a person based on their opinions. And most of all I judge a person based on what group of people they choose to identify themselves as a member.

If a person says to me I am an American. I will associate those ideals that America was founded upon and apply them to my understanding of that person. I will assume they believe in freedom from tyranny and oppression. That they believe that all people should have an equal voice (though to clarify an equal voice does not mean equal influence, there should always be the voice of justice to remind people of what freedom for ALL means). This applies to everybody. I knew a guy that didn’t even have US citizenship yet and still called himself an American. Not Mexican-American. Yes he did later obtain full citizenship, and still the last time I talked to him consider himself only “An American”.

In 1968 there was the black glove incident of the Olympics. Many people will remember it in their own ways, I personally believe in the original concept that rejected all politics in the favor of celebrating the individual. Anyhow, George Foreman was one of the athletes that the organizers of this civil disobedience exercise tried to recruit. When he won the gold in the heavyweight match instead of grabbing the Black Glove, he grabbed an American flag and declared “I AM an American”

Okay so now here is the reason for my title. When somebody hyphenates something onto the word American it does not mean that the new amalgamation somehow has all the features of the word American with a few added ones. That would be contrary to the word American.

Thus when I hear African-American, I remember that 1 in 3 African-American Men has or will see the inside of prison. Or if I hear Arab-American I will remember that the teachings of Islam do not necessarily always condemn the violence we see in this world.

So the point is if you associate yourself with a group that certain generalities apply then do not be surprised if those generalities are applied to you. I am not racist. I do not assume you associate yourself with a certain concept, but if you willingly declare yourself a member of said group then you are embracing those generalities that the group does not reject, or in some cases embraces.

I am an American, and all Americans are my brothers, white, black, yellow, red, short, tall, smart or dumb.

Six Sigma

2005-08-31T17:17:00.000-05:00

This is mainly dirrected to those whom have a slight understanding of what six sigma is "supposed" to indicate. I’ve just gone through several days of class and have two (and I think a third is on its way) “Green Belt” project, after completion of one of those, I will be a certified Six Sigma Green Belt. Whatever that means, at least it looks good on a resume.

Now here are my three biggest problems with the system:

a) Six sigma does not mean failures beyond six standard deviations from the mean. It means about 4.5 because of a built-in 1.5 standard deviation fudge factor.
*hand waving* “You see it has been observed that systems tend to drift 1.5 standard deviations after initial gauge R and R measurements”.

b) The only thing people pay attention to is one metric, or variations of it. That metric is CPK or PPK. Which is basically the probability of any failure occurring in your process. It takes some numbers from empirical data and others from a FMEA. That number from the FMEA is how many things can possibly go wrong with the process. That means the more possible failure modes you can make up the better your CPK/PPK becomes without actually improving your process at all.

c) A high degree of hand waving and dependence on pre-made "tools" that ignore important hypothesis testing methods from statistics. This means the likelihood of you creating a statistic with no meaning is very probable.

Something to think about

2005-08-30T14:19:00.000-05:00

Important Reading

I stumbled upon this article while I was doing some work on an embedded test system here that is in dire nead of some form of glitch rejection because everytime we power on products they screw with the test system. And of course modifying the test system to reject electromagnetic interference (or even rewiring the thing to reduce the number of incidents of tightly bundling high current and signal wires together) is out of the question. I hate it when I have to do something in software that would have been better done if the thing was engineered properly the first time.

Oh well. At least I found an interesting article that really does illustrate a lot of the things people really need to be aware of when working with digital systems. Its all to easy to reboot, ignore, or mask through some other means an incident that could be of significance in the long run.

OMG!

2005-08-23T13:48:00.000-05:00

There is nothing more annoying than somebody going nuts with the canned air ALL DAY LONG.

I mean come on people, its not all that beneficial and how much dust can you have in one PC anyway? And if it has that much why in heaven's name are you doing inside the damn office?

Arg....

Well thats discuraging

2005-08-19T10:51:00.000-05:00

So I ran some excel calculations on the cost of ownership of a hybrid right now.

Turns out comparing an uber modified hybrid (made myself that would cost about $8k) that would get me close to 150 MPG and not counting electric charging cost would take 6 years to pay for itsself (at $4.5 a gallon for fuel, which should take a couple years to get there I would think)

In fact the amount of money it would save per week versus my SUBURBAN is less then the amount of money that investment cost would earn me per week in investments (Right now I've been averaging $20 per week on $2000 invested)

The conclusion. Don't run out and buy a hybrid. Wait till you need to buy a new car and have your old one converted (assuming its something that isn't insane... like an SUV... pick a vehicle that is light and has low frontal area and doesn't have a massive amount electronics. I'd say like a late 80s camero, cugar, golf, jetta, escort, etc)

Pwned!

2005-08-18T13:02:00.000-05:00

Motorola/Freescale: ~20
Bryan: 0

Microchip: 1
Bryan: 0

Reason for pwnage: Undocumented features/errors.

Reason for the post:

Today I experianced my first problem with a microchip product that I had to call support and talk to for a long while only to not get an answer from them other then to try the latest version of their development environment. For some undocumented reason, it worked.

Editor's Note: Motorola/Freescale will kick your ass into the next century. When working with one of their products make sure to have a nice comfortable phone. If you think you know electronics prepare to be pwned! (anybody remember the three magical NOPs required to make spi work without random glitches every once in a while?)

Ah...... logic...

2005-08-15T12:21:00.000-05:00

So this is a follow up to my previous post about the logical nature of VB (heh)... this example is really cool:

foo = 1
bar = 2

if foo and bar then
do something
end if

Question: Will you enter the if statement?
Answer: Absolutely not. Because 0x0001 and 0x0010 evaluates to 0x0000 which is hrm.... not true.

The correct form would be

if foo <> 0 and bar <> 0 then
do something cool
end if

And in other news the very last corner of the Sandwich I am almost done consuming has a small speck of mold on it. This disturbs me, luckily this was the last of the loaf anyway.

What do you do .....

2005-08-10T15:23:00.000-05:00

When you have a code base that has a magic number needs changing?

When the power goes out and you have a chance to modify that number?

Do you ninja code change or wait to release documentation?

Bonus points if somebody can guess what I did today :)

VB is Not Logical

2005-08-09T14:27:00.000-05:00

Ah the joys of VB.....

Not is VB for both ! and ~ operators instead of one of them. That
creates a weird problem when it decides to do bitwise instead of
logical negation on you.
Mod is VB for % and is the modulus operator

So you would think:

Not ( (1+1) Mod 2 ) would evaluate to 1 right?

Actually it evaluates to -1

So what about Not 1? It evaluates to -2

And if you guessed thats because VB is storing things as numbers and not actually booleans you guess right.

Umm...

2005-07-28T11:33:00.000-05:00

So my boss forwards me a lengthy email conversation between him and his counterpart in my company's Sunderland, UK plant about my project. Last question is if they think they'll need somebody to help out during installation.

So I ask if that means I should think about heading over there. My bosses reply:

:)

Yup that was it. Verbatim.

de-MYST-ifying: A long story.

2005-07-27T22:03:00.000-05:00

A long time ago (more towards the year and a half mark then two years ago), a young impressionable, somewhat insecure engineer (me for those that didn’t guess) was doing cool stuff for a small company in the middle of nowhere. Some tumultuous events had occurred earlier that year and things for this guy were just starting to look up again when he re-met a girl he had known in college (Dess).

Okay so enough with the third person. It sucks to write in. And it sucks even more to read I think.

Anyhow, we started dating. Well I guess to be more specific we spent a lot of time together for some reason mutually didn’t call it dating because didn’t want to. Of course now that sound amazingly dumb, but hey I wouldn’t be at this point if I had made all the right choices the first time.

So after a few months of dating (but not “dating”) I remember receiving a message like this: "I by no means want to confuse things between us, and I have a great time just the way things are, but I have to ask, because it's been gnawing at me in the back of my mind, have you ever thought of making this more than it is?"

My answer to this was classic. Well classic in my mildlyretarded (shameless plug) way and said in no more words then this: “Well I won't lie and say that no it hasn't ever crossed my mind, but it doesn't really sound like the best of ideas to me for a huge number of reasons. And really what would be gained by changing the name of what we have? We happen to be idling in the same place and while we're here it may seem a good idea but we'll move on in different directions, its just a mater of time. In general friendships last much longer for me, transcending distances substantially better so I would prefer to keep things that way.”

Wow, reading back through that now is terrible. I can’t believe I would say such a horrible thing. I am amazed by how degrading a comment such as that really is. So in short order things ended as one would expect. The thing is that wasn’t what I wanted to say, it just sounded like the right thing to say.

I guess now is the time to explain a complex I have seemed to suffer from for a great long time. I nearly always chose the hard choice without considering if it’s a right choice. I have since learned that if your heart is in the right place then the hard decision is actually the wrong decision because it is your head thinking what is right going against what you KNOW is right. Where in this case knowing is not rationalizing.

Anyway getting back on track this separation was not long lived because I did a few things that I don’t really seem to end up thinking about they just happen. In this case a bouquet and note at exactly the right moment. Also, I think by this point I realized how wrong I was (but not how wrong I realized I was now).

So I guess now I have to fast forward though a lot of moments in time where things were up and down for miscellaneous reasons. Of course though the times I thought I knew all the answers and thought we had come to an agreement of sorts to resolve them. Well not so much, I didn’t really live up to my side of the bargain. I am actually probably skipping a lot of important history here but I guess it remains to be seen if that affects the way this story should read.

Well then I ended up moving back to Terre Haute after putting in a couple years at my first employer. It was nice moving back into the haute. At least the drive went from three hours to 10 minutes. Unfortunately, while I had the opportunity for spending a lot of quality time with Dess, I didn’t. Instead I blew her off to play WoW instead. That’s pretty much the brutal truth of it. I squandered the short time that we had together.

The thoughts going though my head were greatly varied at the time and I guess I wouldn’t call them doubts, but just more along the line of accepting of the fact that I could live without her. That was farther from the truth then anything I think I’ve ever heard.

That brings the story nearly up to date. Just skip a little bit into the summer months.

The one thing that I guess I haven’t mentioned really in this whole thing is though my life two things have been true. One being I have gotten by more on talent than motivation. I am not the most self-motivating of people. The second is because of events in my life I chose to create a shell for myself to live in, a facade of strength and aloofness to combat the possible judgment or hurt the world would bring to bear. It thought that not only would that protect me but would also help me because who would possibly resist that strength?

Well I learned this weekend that in the end it didn’t help me at all. And, it was one of the things I see now is one of the most offensive things to the people I know. The details of how things recovered from such a catastrophic fall will be put off for another time.

Note: Thanks Jerry for the post title :)

Did I read that right?

2005-07-26T07:34:00.000-05:00

White House spokesman Scott McClellan reiterated on Monday that the administration "doesn't think we need to be providing tax credits to oil companies when the price of oil is above $50 a barrel."

OMG a statement that makes sense! We need more of those!

heart

2005-07-26T06:23:00.000-05:00

Monday was one of those days that really makes me believe I was not the one calling the shots. There were a lot of events both large and small that seemed to conspire in my favor. I am very thankful.

With that, my mid-20s crisis is over.

I love you Dess.

Inadequacies

2005-07-24T20:38:00.000-05:00

So I spend a decent amount of my time programming in VB6 at work. This is mainly for historical support reasons and we haven’t made the switch to anything .NET yet. Though my next project that doesn’t involve being needed for production next month I do plan using it.

The one major problem I have with VB is that its object system support really sucks. The class system is handled primarily in the development environment instead of inside the file. So this means each object that is its own class must have its own class file so the environment will identify it correctly. Even if the classes are part of a collection you can not put them in one file. Basically the annoyance becomes apparent when making data structures like trees, or in my case state machines (one of these days I will have to write a generic state machine system that actually makes sense and doesn’t have huge entries and exits for errors). See the problem is since each class requires its own separate file that means you have a to declare a file for a node, and a class for the entire data structure.

Then you have to include all of those files into the project every time you want to use that structure. Or you compile it into a dll. The later I find annoying because this is a structure only used for this program.

I know there are well documented cases of major inadequacies in VB6 but this is just the one that annoys me.

Leason Learned Today

2005-07-24T20:32:00.000-05:00

Breakups are bad for gas mileage.

New template

2005-07-24T19:00:00.000-05:00

So I noticed that the little thing at the top of the screen was eating most of the top of my blog when it was displayed. So much for having a template I created ages ago.

The only real problem with the whole thing is I moved over to using the commenting system that blogger has built in. That means I will somehow have to figure out a way to either import comments in or just say goodbye to them all.

Sorry about that folks.

2005-07-23T23:16:00.000-05:00

As much as you can think you'll be okay with a life change such as this (since in reality you knew it was coming) when it actually happens, nothing can actually prepare you for how drastic the change really is.

I really did know that this was going to happen. It was just a mater of when. I guess the knowledge didn't really faze me at all. Sometimes I wonder how was so very able to completely ignore the thought and deny so much.

And as much as really didn't want it to there wasn't much stopping the split. While not nearly as life, altering as some previously were there is still a profound feeling of loss. To say I didn't make some choices in the last two years without certain things in my would be lie. There was a very good chance that I would now be in DC or Detroit had things been different.

There are always many things to be missed, as anyone in a similar situation will attest. There are some things not to be missed as well (nobody is perfect right?). I don't know if its sound or a pseudo-sixth sense that tells you somebody exists nearby that, I miss. A feeling of presence even when they're not around, either though some trickery of the mind or some deeper emotional connection that seems to cut through distance, that is truly what I miss.

I guess the really ironic thing about it all is my whole life I’ve been able to be alone fairly easily. I love the solitude of being alone, especially out in the wilderness, even as rarely as I will venture there. But, it only really works if there is someone. It is as if the knowledge of someone is enough to not need their presence. I wonder if this is how some people end up with imaginary friends? Actually there is a funny quote describing this really well. My grandmother once said this to my Uncle, “For somebody that loves to be alone, you never are very long”.

Sometimes you have to wonder if upbringing really has anything to do with your personality at all.