The Book of Merle

9:00AM - volumetrics

A long time ago I had a Brita pitcher. Over time and disuse it kind of got nasty so I cleaned it and shoved it onto one of those shelves you never really look at. A decade later I realized that yes, I do want cold water, and although the tap water in Oakland is almost superior to most bottled waters (we do have an excellently regulated system), cold is good and a filter is fine and a pitcher is better than small bottles. So out it came.

What I did not realize was that there were no instructions on the replacement rate for said filters. There may have been on the box, but having unwisely chosen to recycle the box, I was flying dry. Except.. there's this internet thing out there. Searching led me to an answer.

The filter is good for 40 gallons, which for an "average" family means about two months.

This is useless information. One refills the pitcher incrementally. It has no indicators anywhere about the capacity or nice little lines delimiting increments. I have no clue what an average family's consumption might be. Experimentation might yield results but at the cost of drinking skanky water I don't want to go there.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls. Because for you, my plastic artifice of clean water, after the next and last filter, you will be one with the recycle bin. Even if there is a silicon heaven I have never heard of a plastic heaven. Bummer, dude.

7:00PM - promises

I did swear that I would not vote for anyone from either of the "two" parties we have.

I am sorely tempted to break that promise.

Because even though Romney will not win, I want it in his face that Ru Paul.. erm, Ron, whatever.. would get my vote. Plus I was too lazy to go to the courthouse and change my voter registration so I am stuck with a Republican ballot. Stupid apathy. I'd do something about it but it sounds a lot like work.

I would write in the cool Green candidate (no, it is not Roseanne) but that might be offensive. A supposed Republican voting for a Green person on a Republican ballot? Surely it would be the end of days.

In completely unrelated news my friends page no longer shows "current music". Not due to display but it does not exist in the page LJ generates. WTF? Sure, I'm using the outdated S1 style, but backwards compatibility between an entire two versions seems trivial.

5:00PM - the six degrees of perspiration

According to their commercial, Degree asked women to wear bells around their wrists. I question the accuracy of their focus group because if asked to do something like that I suspect the requester would be decked, if not pummeled, but this is their magic fairy tale. The rationale? To provide an indication of how often you move around.

They then proceed to describe how their anti-perspirant has magic little motion sensors and adjusts itself based on your movement.

I maintain my stance at "this is bullshit". And if it is not? That's damn scary. And much like the global data mining you really wouldn't want to advertise it.

4:00PM - the note that should not be

I've posted before about random notes I scribble down on whatever sticky note or piece of paper is nearest, and how not only do I have at least fifty densely covered pagelets that are almost completely unsorted (usually interesting books, songs, events, topics, or password notes). The current baffling one:

bell bottoms

What? I don't want a pair. I have nothing particular to say about them. It not only matches no normal category but just having it written down makes less sense than the bizarre array:

35 80
24 28

Whatever that means it likely had import. It's so out of context that I'll scratch it, but "bell bottoms"? Really?

Probably my evil twin jotted it down when stoned. Yeah, that's it.

7:00PM - high-travel weekends around the bay

For some reason the transit agencies decided that Memorial Day weekend was an excellent time to close three of the five major bridges in the SF Bay area. (okay, there are six, but the Benecia Bridge doesn't really connect parts of the bay, it just allows people here to escape to Sacramento or Napa more easily) This weekend the Bay and Dumbarton bridges will both be closed for repair work. The Golden Gate is not closed per se, but there's some festival there for the 75th anniversary with no parking anywhere near either side so cars are expected to cross back and forth in such quantity and lack of speed that all the traffic reporters have been saying "if you are in a car, stay away".

That does leave a sufficient number of bridges that you can get around, but it still seems like an unwise confluence. What would be light traffic on the remaining bridges is going to be pure hell.

11:00AM - club penguin

Yeah, social networking for kids is really big. Just wait for the inherent data mining, whether it be in the cloud or in NoSQL or both. It'll happen. But when you take that one dramatic sequence from Orff's "Carmina Burana" straight up for your commercial? That's cheap. Even low grade movies have variations on it rather than using it verbatim.

But hey, it's Disney. I would expect no better from them.

2:00PM - in which I am wrong yet again

*sigh*

My memory serves me poorly. Apparently although dice bought around the same era from the same distributor are similar, the similarity does not come from industry-generated protection from loaded dice. Mea culpa.

9:00PM - the mile high job

There's just something special when a show that bears no relation to another show references it. While watching a show with thieves infiltrating an airport and talking about what identities they have to offer, the names Peter Davidson, Sylvester McCoy, and Tom Baker were presented as the options.

Hell yeah. Age of the geek, baby.

4:00AM - B6

If there is one thing Hollywood is good at, it is reminding us over and over that all of history is forgotten and can constantly be repeated. Well, and that the only way to win is not to play, but that lesson is lost in the distant past of over a generation ago.

Part of me wants to see the travesty that will be the "Battleship" movie. It is probably the same dark and twisted part of me that sat through watching Coolio in "Dracula 3000", a movie that had it come out earlier would have been a floor roller for MST3K fans.

The darker side of me wants to watch it so I can prepare for the obvious sequels of "Connect Four" and "Tic Tac Toe". I do attempt to repress this side, but now and then it escapes.

1:00PM - what's in your diploma?

I had a long and relatively unrehearsed discussion last night with a friend who is a university professor over whether, in this day and age, we should be educating or training. These terms require some definition as I simply chose two words close to what I wanted to discuss.

Education is a long process of tossing facts and theories at someone until they can analyze and synthesize either known conclusions or new ideas. It is what most of us think school should be like. The end result is someone who can flense either end of an argument and is likely well enough rounded to deal with any task at a certain level.

Training, by contrast, is more vocational-based. You might train for a year to be a cook or run a business or be a secretary. All of these are essential components for society, and by focussing on particular aspects one can become quite good at one thing.

Both methods have defects. Education requires a lot of time and infrastructure and, let's face it, money. The latter seems to be the biggest downside as people are in school forever and then require decades to pay off student loans. One could also argue that much of the knowledge is useless outside of a classroom: not once since leaving college have I used a partial differential equation. Knowing of them and how they work is enlightening but does not aid me in replacing a toner cartridge.

Training is quite specific. The short term benefits are spectacular, but once you are living in a factory town and have 23 years of experience installing a particular part, if the factory closes you need to be able to quickly go out and pick up a new vocation. You also lack a lot of the interconnections, but if your life is making brown sludge at Starbucks do you really want thoughts of comparing Dostoevsky and Shakespeare going through your head?

I think there is a tradeoff. Both are good options. In the past, having chosen that road, I would have said that education is definitely the way to go. Give all possible chances and utopia will spontaneously exist. I suffer from a crisis of belief, and now am moving towards the other side. So little that is passed off as education is either done well or appreciated that it is a drain on time and money. Better, perhaps, to train people for a handful of careers and see where they go. Education for enough, training for most.

Elitist? Yeah. I loathe myself for even suggesting the notion. But it has been a long road and I feel this is the better path for the near future. For those who have the most basic of smart phones education remains an extracurricular possibility.

So. Thoughts? Doesn't matter if you think I am wrong or right, I simply need more data points. And if a change does make sense, how would one implement it?

8:00AM - Johnny, la gente esta muy loca

It must be wonderful to live in the Union.

Marriage is now more strictly defined in North Carolina than it is in many a state. This passed by what is called an "overwhelming majority".

During the current peaceful protest outside of the BofA shareholders meeting the police utilized a recent ordinance to declare it an "extraordinary event" and arrested some people for standing or sitting on public property. Actual results are pending accurate reporting.

I'm not saying all states do not have their own issues. Nor that CA did not enter the Union as a free state. But wow, NC is taking the cake and eating it too.

10:00PM - just what you'll do for a kid

From what I hear, acupuncture is an acceptable way to get a baby. I guess. Different strokes, whatever.

But recently the popular option is a plastic thing you kind of insert which gives you realtime data (a five second delay) as to your internal temperature. This being an indicator as to your fertility. Having repeated this I do apologize and wish I had not. Uhm. Ew?

This being said, the baby the news indicated that was assisted in this fashion was named Jonathan Jameson. I cannot chortle enough.

8:00AM - the use case for the singleton

North Carolina must be a fun place to live. Previously they banned same-sex marriage. Now there is a measure on tomorrow's ballot that from what I read invalidates all existing civil unions and domestic partnerships. It is expected by pundits to pass.

To think that I believed I lived in one of the most backwards of states. Maybe I read too much Heinlein while growing up (if such a thing is possible). Maybe my moral compass is set to slightly north by northwest. Whatever. Really? There are people willing to stoop so low?

"It proclaims the false notion that a man can be a mother and a woman can be a father – that men and women are exactly the same in rearing children." I have no retort to this that does not rapidly descend into vulgarity.

6:00AM - murder most foul

Straight from the media: "there is new evidence that Oakland's population drops with every homicide".

You just can't make stuff like that up. It probably requires several degrees in television broadcasting.

8:00AM - the four seasons (continental breakfast not included)

Fire, flood, earthquake, and civil unrest. These, according to one, are the seasons Californians go through each year. Somehow one of these does not match the others. I do not doubt the veracity, just the parallelism.

Were I won of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, as good as I would be at civil unrest it is not a great job title destined for promotion. You're not going to see Civil Unrest as an Avenger.

3:00PM - what lurks under your bed?

Watching one of the infinite supply of Resident Evil movies last night, and having played many of the games and other similar ones, I came to realize: the zombie apocalypse does not scare me. At all. Maybe I do not believe in the undead or in bad people who would genetically engineer things that require nothing but somehow crave human flesh and world dominance. Whatever. If it comes you need a shitload of ammo, some Ginsu blades, and a good working knowledge of local terrain. Future skill points should go towards kickboxing and if possible psionics. You live or you die. There is no fear.

Max Headroom? That scares the daylights out of me. Totally predictable. A world run by corporate executives, where who is in power is based off of arbitrary ratings? Where technology is abused to manipulate the ratings, and most people live in carefully crafted slums? This is what I fear. Not for the future but because I know it has been around for decades. And there is no escape.

What scares me more? I sort of knew this would become our brave new world. I knew how to reformat myself, and had enough practice that I could have done it. I could have become a pure part of this evil.

1:00PM - think simply of simple things

There are, according to some random thing that was on, some amazingly complicated mathematical equations that are known as "algorithms".

In very related news, I am sick and tired of being a cripple who has to lay on a sofa all day watching whatever crap is on. Television is predominantly an anathema. Could I even hold a book or type at a speed over 1cps it would be vaguely tolerable. Supposedly there are couch potato people who can barely work up the enthusiasm to take an empty bag of chips to the trash can. This does not qualify as justifiable existence.

This constitutes your daily dosage of self pity and mockery. You may now return to an actual life.

6:00AM - dead birds 1, pilots 0

The news reports a call from a pilot saying they had engine troubles after a bird was ingested by one of their engines. Okay, "ingested" is my terminology, but said Delta pilot noted that there were 179 souls on the plane (and how much fuel they had, and other pertinent data points).

This leads me to wonder: does this definition of what constitutes a soul include Arizona's new definition of when life starts? Does it follow the semi-recent rise in vamp fics, since vampires supposedly have no soul? It could have been a nighttime flight after all. Does it include the soul of the probably not so angry but rather horribly mangled bird?

Mostly I am curious what motivated the pilot to use that particular term. It could be an industry standard I am not aware of.

5:00AM - the child within

There is something quite disturbing about only being able to sleep a few hours in a row. There can also be something interesting.

Half a lifetime ago I would be awake at 2am (my natural state being 28hr days) and would fall asleep listening to acid house mixes on Live 105. There is no good explanation for this. Party club rock, especially hardcore speed, is not what your average bear would consider relaxing. But it worked for me. It seems most likely that I was exhausted and trained myself to relax to it. If so, go me. There are many worse ways to train yourself.

In the fun and completely stress-free environment of being jobfree and having constant arm pain I have rediscovered house. It's not the same: generally much darker. But it does manage to put me out, so long as I do not rewind and replay at a conscious level. And house is intrinsically designed to be subconscious.

11:00AM - there are some things you can never live down

Late last year, an Air Canada first officer woke up from a nap and saw a very bright light straight ahead. Assuming (for whatever reason) that it was a US military flight not on the books, he went into a steep dive to avoid a crash, sending passengers hurtling out of their seats.

The bright light? It turned out to be the planet Venus.

That's one of those "man, my career is shot as is my social life, time to move halfway around the world and start over" moments.

9:00AM - the ways of trade

From what the news reports, Obama is down in Colombia or Nicaragua or one of those countries that exists only for slave labor and drug exporting, in a set of talks about bringing more jobs and economic growth to the US. Various companies whose leaders he will meet with were mentioned, including Walmart, PepsiCo, and Nike.

...

As a sidebar there was mention of the secret service people who had been down there to protect him being involved with some prostitution ring and them having to be replaced by a new team at the last minute.

Various doctors and other people wonder why I am constantly depressed and cynical. Good on me that I have yet to suggest that a few rounds of selective decimation would be good for humanity. Otherwise I'd be in a nice corporate-run mental health institution getting my daily supplements straight from the wall socket.

1:00PM - out of the blue

Someone (Junkie XL) covered a Siouxsie song! Not an amazing production, and the lyrics are just slightly bent to provide for artistic license, but it's still a cover. As someone who has kept Siouxsie at number one for more than half a lifetime I am pleased to know someone else thinks highly of her.

9:00AM - cool hand Luke

Being dominantly right-handed and stubborn as a mule, I spent a lot of time training my left hand to do more than just be there. Keys in left pocket, wallet in left rear pocket, even up to brushing my teeth with that hand. All was well and good and they seemed like skill points well placed to generate balance should something happen to my right side.

Little did I appreciate that with only one functional arm everything changes, regardless of which arm it is. For example, try prying open some toasted pita to spread hummus inside with just one hand (and whatever external leverage you can find). "Not easy" would be a modest summation.

Not that getting my left hand improved was a waste. It is unclear whether one-handed fu is a skill to train for, but if it is, who knows which hand will remain? I have no regrets aside from being stuck in the one-handed world for another month or two.

9:00AM - the great egg robbery

To my eyes seeing kids dash down a neatly mown hill cluttered with flagrantly contrasting eggs and tossing them into baskets is really bizarre. Maybe it is a NE US thing. Maybe my family were freaks. We just hid eggs around the house.

From before I was sentient I knew the rules, and was trained by the best. Put eggs in unsuspecting locations, with as little contrast differential as possible. Make each year a new and harder challenge for the wee one. It made up for the boring long meal and sports watching, aside from the here and now of pre-sentience.

Most importantly: I learned the game. Look where you do not normally look. Go one step past that, and figure out where people would never look.

So one Easter morning I woke up well in advance of the egg-hiding fairies and picked out some sweet spots to foil those who were at least ten years older than me. The toaster oven. Inside a coffee mug that was waiting to be cleaned. On top of some books that were mostly ornamental. In a niche of a coat rack, but near the floor. Nestled within a hanging fern. The last turned out poorly because nobody found it and I forgot about it...

It was a primitive hack. One could do much better, and my only excuse is that I was so very young. What I would take from this is: don't sell your kids short with the Disney™ version. It may prepare them for simple Flash games, but only that.

3:00PM - the irreverant calendar days

So. Let's see if I have my Christian mythos correct.

On Thursday the big guy gets to invite all his best pals over for a fine supper. In that part of the world suppers start late and run long, so no hangin' yet.

Friday comes around. Since it's not Black Friday one cannot expect people to be lined up waiting to sneer at the freak carrying his own death up the hill, so let's say mid-morning, probably after lunch before he's all nailed up. Death by being nailed to wood takes a while; I would not expect it that day but perhaps they were some righteous big nails. Maybe dusk.

At this point they remove the corpse and burn the midnight oil entombing it. Me, I'd have set up bonfires on the hill so the people of your homegrown cult can watch the crows feast, and come the morning paid street kids to go up the hill and shout and spit, repeat until corpse is stinky, then toss it into a hole. Much better way to demoralize the cult. But they might not have read many books about conquerors, and my mind is a scary place. Whatever. Tomb, let's call it fairly late Friday.

Not much happens on Saturday. I mean, it does in that eggs need to be coloured and chocolate melted and poured into bunny-shaped molds, but aside from a few people weeping outside the tomb.. come on, for the Holy Week this day doesn't even get a name. Fast forward.

Sunday someone realizes the tomb needs cleaning so opens it. Pouf! No body. It must be early to mid-day so they could see. According to the timeline (which assumes a rapid death and a highly efficient cleanup crew) this suggests at most two chronological days, likely a bit short of that. Yet it is written in canon that he rose on the third day, because they used calendar days. If I went to bed at 11p and woke up two hours later one would hardly say that I slept for two days. I can just see the petty accountant waiting there late Friday outside the tomb, peering closely at a sundial, saying "yup, tomb closed at 11:56pm. you boys barely made the deadline.".

Anyway, happy nameless day, y'all. May your plaid eggs turn out pretty.

4:00PM - new LJ delayed posts

At least one of you has noted that my post times are always rounded to the nearest hour. About a month ago I started seeing severe lags between submitting a post and it appearing. At first I attributed this to a downgrade in their servers, but twice when rounding up I noticed that the posts were appearing just shortly after the hour boundary.

My last post (3:30p rounded to 3p) appeared immediately. If this post does not appear until 4p then my hypothesis that this is a "feature" will be supported.

LJ didn't work that way before. I wonder why such a weird feature would make it into their priority work queue.

Results: sure enough it does not appear, either on recent entries or friends page circa 3:50p, 10mins after posting. It finally appeared 4:01p local (my Apple ignores all automatic timesyncs and the clock runs fast). After creation, the offered URLs for view/edit suggest I have a delayedid of 9, rather than an entryid. I suppose this feature could have utility: before wandering off the grid for several days, post something in the future saying "send help! wild dingoes have captured me!" and people will see it and send help. Just remember the id so you can quickly purge it upon safe return.

Update: fun, it doesn't recall the link from delayed to entry so if you start an edit and the boundary is crossed your changes are lost. Whee.

3:00PM - the holiday waveform that never collapsed

Today was apparently National Walk To Work Day. Being unemployed at the moment, I can neither admit to nor deny participating in this event. Bah.

9:00AM - blind branding

Watching an episode of "Fairly Legal" for the first time, I was surprised to see that one of the show's sponsors was.. H&R Block.

My best guess is they looked at demographics and market share without seeing the title when making their decision.

9:00PM - things not to do

I do not particularly recommend taking a Segway tour, clipping a corner, and falling with the device on you with all of the impact on your left shoulder and elbow. The excursion was fun up to that point but typing with one hand and not wanting to jostle anything is not a good way to spend an afternoon and evening.

'Nuff said for one hand.

12:00PM - there's a glitch inside my system / rushing through my whole existence

I should not read books like "No Logo".

I mean, I knew at least half of what was in there, knew it would paint a dark face on reality, and knew the political outlook. But reading about how corporations sell brands rather than products, based off of products produced in what could only be called slave-driven sweatshops, and how attempts to stifle the companies are in turn beaten down by coalitions of companies.. it can only be described as depressing. To the point where I again think that humanity is a plague on this planet. Some people are cool, but so many are not that it is good I am not a bioweapons engineer. I would then need to balance my decision against whether a sufficiently strong contagion would also take out other life forms. Plus it would be difficult to code a sequence that would only take out the uncool people.

*sigh*

It's just another reinforced brick in the wall of the Cask of Amontillado.

4:00PM - do not forsake me oh my darling

As far as cold calls go, the Gallup poll was kind of interesting. Having never participated in one I could only guess a few moves ahead what they wanted to know. I do have to say that many of their questions were ambiguously phrased.

Do I think the economy is getting better, yes or no? No elaboration as to my question about short or long term was offered and I was told they could only read off the questions and ask for (not her words) a binary reply. This makes sense, as when people taking polls elaborate they often skew the probabilities of answers, which makes the media happy as they can bounce from side to side but does little to generate useful information. Still. Today? No, the economy is not getting better. In three or ten years? Yes: three if the corporations artificially manufacture a P/E bubble as was done before, ten if the revolution succeeds. Having asked for clarification on previous questions I just pondered and said yes, it was getting better.

The political questions were more interesting. When asked if I was a radical conservative, a conservative, a moderate, a liberal, or a radical liberal, I chose to say I was a moderate. Truth be told I am likely a flaming liberal to most of the country, but I do not think of politics as being along a single axis. Come on: as a CN peaceful anarchist I had no valid options. Since I have played a bit of chess and go in my time, I knew that about three questions later I would be asked if I was going to vote Rep or Dem in the next election. Those being the only two options. You can guess which one I picked, although that's not where my vote is going.

It took a lot of time but was interesting. Semi-professional would be my call: professional in terms of how the poll was take, moderate in terms of their questions. It is quite likely I will be considered an outlying data point. Eh.

11:00PM - excellent patent idea #10234879823

Nokia has patented an idea for tattoos that will vibrate when you get a text message.

I cannot possibly imagine this being used immediately for gang warfare. Gangs are filled with young people who know tech better than the people who created it. Even an old fogey like me can immediately see the uses of such tech.

I would sigh, but must chase the taggers off of my doorstep.

1:00PM - the intelligent meter

Our electrics company has decided to upgrade everyone to "smart meters". Supposedly these not only give better usage information, but allow them to charge different rates depending on when you are using power, which (again supposedly) saves the customer money. I think it's a bunch of bullocks they designed so they can lay off the thousands of people who have to walk neighbourhoods and read the meters. But I think I went ahead with it.

If you do not install one, you get to pay a $75 "conversion" fee. This makes no sense since the old meter needs no conversion. Also about $5 a month for not upgrading. In other words they're shoving it down your throat, or perhaps some other orifice.

I say that I think I went ahead with it because I called to make an appointment. Living in an apartment building it is hard to tell. The power did go out for several minutes as they suggested it would: apparently power can only be sent to you if they can measure it, and two minutes of downtime might cause such massive profit losses to their company! But there was no notification that it was indeed installed aside from the landlord saying "oh, yes, they did seven apartments today".

Should there be a conversion fee on my bill I will be upset. It will be interesting to see if there actually is any savings. It seems dubious. With no air conditioner and the washing machines building-owned my power consumption is not going to be being during peak periods. If anything, as with most changes, they will probably not only increase rates but tack on some fictitious surcharge.

Time to start investing in PG&E. Oh. And if you heard about a gas leak that destroyed dozens of homes in San Bruno due to them having ancient pipes that had not been properly tested? They've filed to have their fines reduced by the amount they have spent since then checking all their old pipes. It must be wonderful to be a monopoly.

2:00PM - mixed messages

So of course, on today of all days, there's a Saint Patrick's Day parade in SF. The good local weekend news always covers local events so had clips from last year as this year's had yet to start. All the standard Kelly green and ginger beards and what not, but in one part of the parade there was a dour group of men in kilts playing bagpipes.

Uhm. I thought Scotland and Ireland were a bit different? Aside from the mutual sacred hatred of Mother Britannia, of course. But I've never heard of them particularly getting along together so it felt dischordant to see Scots marching in an Irish parade.

4:00AM - from dusk til dawn

Way past my bedtime. Something horrible happened early this week, coincidentally with something pretty good. Stayed up chatting while things are churning in my mind. Need to recall and refresh various technologies in my mind. I wonder if the random outsourcing of tech jobs will become like the EPZs of the last few decades. Likely not because tech requires some training, rather than taking kids from farms and forcing them into factories. We'll see. Skynet comes way after the next Mayan shift.

3:00PM - who gets to win?

One of the interesting problems in the music industry is determining a "primary" artist for a song. All three music databases I have worked with flag just one artist as primary and the others are given secondary roles (or in cases like classical music will be broken down into conductor etc). All music vendors want in their sales reports to have a single column listing exactly one artist, so it is no wonder the databases of those reporting to the vendors to constrain to one primary.

In most cases this is easy. You have a "Sisters of Mercy" song: even though they are a group of people they are considered a single artist. Then there are the modernish "featuring" things which might read "Pitbull feat Ne-Yo and Afrojack". That's not terribly hard to parse out "featuring" or "feat" as being a break suggesting several secondaries but letting you know who the primary is. This does make the assumption no band calls themselves "A feat B": manual intervention is occasionally required but one wants to minimize it. Then there are other freakish things like "Swedish House Mafia versus Knife Party". Or even more bizarre collaborations like "David Guetta and Chris Willis featuring Fergie and LMFAO".

Everyone I've talked to uses the same implementation I used: look for frequent word separators like "and" or "feat", and take the very first name. Even if it is a collaboration the first name listed is primary. Guess it's consistent. Still prone to error if some damn band calls themselves "And Feat". You know it'll happen. Hell, there's an album out there named ">=<". Someone's going to try to break things.

Let's not even go to choosing primaries for albums, which also has to be done. Think "best of the '90s" and you'll realize it is completely impossible. Again, every system I've seen uses the implementation I was forced to use: create an artist called "Various Artists" and they get to win. Again, subject to defeat. *sigh* Parker Lewis can't win all the time.

11:00AM - the war zone and the time zone

That's nice. The LJ posting page thinks it is an hour earlier than it really is. As always, ignore me, as these rants repeat about twice a year. JavaScript--, as always.

In other news, the news reports that eighteen people are dead from weekend attacks between Israel and Palestine. Over 120 rockets were launched in what was claimed to be either defense or a preemptive attack. Unless they were targeting unmanned infrastructure in the middle of the night I must say that their rocket technology sucks massively, with a kill rate under 20%.

Really. IR tech has been around for a bit of time. Point and click. It is very hard not to kill someone with a minimum of two rockets. I would be putting whatever defense or offense contractor on the chopping block for such a miserable waste of money. Just buy off the enemy with a spare rocket and tell them, hey, you might not be able to hit the broadside of a barn with this, but you can resell it and get a nice home in Florida.

5:00PM - revisionist history

Netflix has recently released S06 of Doctor Who into the public (although really it's closer to season thirty, whatever). The intro was modified to include a happy little bit by Amy. This reminds me a lot of Red Dwarf, which replaced most of the season 1-2 instrumental intros with scenes from seasons 3-5. It was something I would internally classify as irritating.

More than irritating, but that is as far as I can take it. Such things happen all the time. Intros are changed, shows disappear, books are no longer printed, or if they are they are different. It is not within control of the individual. It should be.

The archivist within me wishes to have remained active and diligent in maintaining caches of ancient data. They may never see the light of day but should exist.

1:00PM - the coupon that time forgot

At some point I became lazy and ordered food through one of those intermediary vendors, who pretty much exist to take a small fee from restaurants and offer the ease of a single consistent online delivery system to people who want such food. It worked out well, but every week they email me out a new coupon code, usually for the same amount. Their most recent one claimed that because we were losing an hour due to DST shifts (don't get me started) I was getting a coupon, good through midnight on.. February 11th.

Obviously I could not resist replying and asking why they were sending out inactive coupons.

"Wow! Someone actually reads the fine print! We were just testing you J" was the quick reply I got.

I did not expect a reply, much less a rapid one, and did realize the pattern that each coupon code uses is only good for the weekend. Still. It was fun.

6:00AM - only in California

Lying in bed, I felt a rumbling. "Earthquake!" I weakly said, knowing it was a small one. Hearing no response from my partner in non-crime I repeated "Earthquake!" a bit louder, and added that it felt like a 3.5. (that turned out to be untrue; it came in initially as a 4.3 but was rapidly downgraded to a 4.0, still way higher than my estimate)

In response I got a "yeah, felt it" followed quickly by some mild snoring sounds.

4:45PM - aaah! cobras!

Sorry, it's just the night terrors.

It has been a long time since I have had to deal with COBRA. Back when it seemed like a reasonable deal. Today? It will cost as much as my rent, power, internet, phone, and cable cost combined. That seems outrageous.

Of course I must pay because health insurance gets much worse if you have any lapse in coverage. So I shake my fist pathetically at the clouds in annoyance.

3:00PM - the odd world of bed and breakfast owners

It is understandable that as someone who runs a business open every day of the year you might not get out very much. Perhaps I have set the bar too high. But when I go on vacation to a B&B I expect the innkeeper to know something about the area they live in. All too often there seems to be a pile of ancient menus and the person in charge has never actually eaten at any of them.

This would be another excellent niche to be filled: the B&B concierge. Someone who gets free lodging in return for providing excellent restaurant and recreation suggestions, possibly along with walking tours, although that bit might be difficult to coordinate with needing to help other guests.

In a town with a few dozen restaurants you should be expected to have eaten at or formed an opinion of all of them within a year, and know the best trips for those who want to walk, bike, or drive. To do less seems negligent. As suggested, perhaps I expect too much, but as an average citizen I expect that of myself so am frequently disappointed.

10:00AM - one more for the road

Eons ago, before I was even what are now called tweens, I decided to trust my subconscious. It was fast and if sufficiently trained by a combination of successes and train wrecks it would be even more powerful. When I can get into that zone it works wonders in social situations.

Later on, once search engines for the web existed, I learned that knowing specific things was far less important than knowing how to search for things. So I was able to offload most of my knowledge and allow an inner sense of how search engines worked to help me find information within minutes, if not seconds.

More recently I discovered the power of having a personal wiki at work. Pads of paper are essential for keeping track of things, but if you want it at your fingertips you either have to memorize a bunch of stuff or enter it into a wiki -- one that you designed so you know its structure.

Through each iteration consciousness has dwindled. I have wondered why we don't have Gibson's virtual glasses yet, since it was technologically feasible over a decade ago. And now I know why. If I had a pair I would only live in the now and in the relatively short future. In effect I have mostly outsourced myself, and going further would put me completely offshore. Scary. But apparently effective.

1:00PM - job titles and warning labels

It is interesting to come across someone whose title is "Director of Accounting & Revenue Maximization". I wonder if their business card is in the Wile E style and says "have fingers, can lift".

I remain irked that my bottle of conditioner proudly states that it was not tested on animals. Being an animal myself, I wish they had done a bit more due diligence. What? The aloe plant didn't react to the Cesium isotope in our formula? Ship it! *sighs*

Warning labels are just strange. I wonder how a statement makes it onto such a label. Probably via lawsuit(s), but not being the litigious sort, my warnings will never make labels. Such as: if your headache is bad and you opt to chew an aspirin to get it into your bloodstream faster, do not inhale until the powder is sufficiently doused in saliva, or coughing may ensue. Or: when pouring shampoo into your hand, do not move your hand into the stream of the shower in front of your face or your eyes may hurt. Best yet: when a bag tells you it is not a toy it is lying and it is your sworn duty to prove it wrong.

Silly world.

8:00AM - the car of the average Joe

An Acura commercial briefly overheard while I was waiting on the weather forecast noted that their cars came with "all of the standard features", like leather and bluetooth.

Now, I own an ancient Acura, and understand that their concept of "standard" is to toss in every bell and whistle they possibly can into the base package. But I do not think of leather as a standard car option. Bluetooth, yeah, that'll become standard. And given how tech-savvy manufacturers are you'll be able to hi-jack a car and defeat the lo-jack protection before even worrying about the alarm system on the doors.

1:00AM - penny in the air, penny drops

While looking for a card in the pile of various cards I have stacked next to where I set my mobile I partially knocked over a pile of three coins. For whatever reason I had saved these since they were not actually in the spare change bowl, just next to it (standard operating procedure for me). One was a nickel: I stared closely but it wasn't a pre-'65 so into the bowl it went. The other two seemed to be quarters.

Seemed to be. The top one was rather dirty and clearly not special, but there was something odd about the other one, which was incredibly shiny.. and had no ridges.. and damn, that's not a quarter at all! It was a 1 rupee coin. Which happens to be exactly the same size as a quarter, albeit about half the weight (must be where that "find the light coin out of seven in three weighings" puzzle came from).

A quick google check suggests a rupee is worth about $0.02USD. Now, some vending machines work by weight rather than merely size, but I bet it would in many machines. If so, 90+% discount. Now that's a good investment on your money!

5:00PM - and people whined about cubicles

More and more offices I see these days look like the contractor skipped town a few weeks before finishing them. Bare rusted joists with long screws through them, plasterboard occasionally slapped on, some rooms with barely whitewashed rough concrete.. they look hideous. Seriously. People spend a third of their lives in such horrible surroundings? Try selling a house or apartment or even trailer home that looked like that. Sure, maybe you spend two-thirds of your life in your personal dwelling and have decided the sacrifice is okay, but most people are asleep for half of that time so it brings it up to 50%. I do not want to work in a place where for just a few grand you could spruce it up and make it vaguely tolerable.

And this movement towards "open space" desk arrangements? There is a better term for it: stinginess. In a Scroogelike manoeuver, it was discovered that not only was a bare desk easier to get in and less expensive, but you could cram more people into a smaller space! My sentiment remains the same. "You can just wander over and talk to people" I have heard. I was doing that when there were real cubicles. It is no harder.

Yet this is the trend across small to middle sized tech companies. I have even heard it referred to as "chic". Uhm. You want realism, set up your wifi near the window and go crouch in a nearby alley to do your work. Better yet, skip the building and steal wifi from the local slumlord. I'm sure they won't mind.

Saying how great a company is is one thing. Saying it with a straight face while living in an urban monstrosity is another.

9:13PM - guess it really is true

I organize my wallet by leaving the twenties where bills normally go and everything else loose and unorganized in the folding section. At dinner tonight, the person I was with said "I have a twenty.. but only one one and we need eight". I pulled out my wallet, took the wads of loose bills, dropped them on the table, and said "there should be enough in there". Sure enough, a ten and eleven ones.

It had been an ongoing pseudo-joke that if you needed change for a twenty you came to me (and people have done so). Huh. Guess it really is true.

Warning: pedestrian carries no less than $20 in small non-sequential bills.

(muggers who know my locals, please do not read this post)

6:00PM - the strange democracy

Now that I'm back in February (*sigh*), I can say that earlier this week Yemen held its first democratic election where you stick ballots into a box. The previous president, from what I understand, was not subject to votes. His minister or some such is running in the election.

Nobody else is.

The excitement of voting when there is only one choice feels underwhelming to me. I suppose it sets the scene for future elections.

As a point of trivia, in the first US election, one George Clinton ran under the Democratic-Republican party. He didn't win, of course, but given the long stream of Georges and Clinton before Obama, it's amusing.

3:00PM - the lazy pig

When noting to someone that developers were intrinsically lazy, I was told that we were perhaps eccentric, quirky, and unique. While I do not doubt that I still support my initial assertion.

In other news (Fox news always counts as "other") McDonald's accounts for 1% of US purchases of pork. I tend to think of them as more of a hamburger and occasional chicken place, but guess they must do a lot of breakfast sandwiches with pork sausage? Either that or they are cutting their beef with pork which seems unlikely both from a taste and a health standpoint. Still, they are like the Wal*Mart for pig shopping.