Journal entries for October, 2004

I've been having trouble deciding what to dress up as this Halloween. It needs to be portable since I'm flying up to Boston for the weekend, and ideally a little less disturbing than last year's costume. I think I settled on a good option, but now that I've seen this page I'm starting to reconsider. But really, I could never match the cuteness of those kids, so I won't even try.

Hmm, that was weird. I stopped at the gas station on my way back from getting food around midnight, and as I went in to the store to leave my card, this dark-skinned sketchy guy in a wife-beater crouching by the door tried to ask me for something. He said, "Hey man," and then seeing my apprehension, said, "It's not money that I want. My truck is out of gas." This sounded like he was going to ask for a ride somewhere, which, needless to say, coming from someone on the street at midnight in PR when you drive a sought-after car, is not a request with much hope of being granted. Besides that, I was only out on my "lunch break" and was on my way back to work, and told him so. He pointed to the parking lot and said "I just need some gas, that's all," which normally I'd be happy to help him with, even if it WAS just a dumb cover story. But money is somewhat tight right now, so I apologized and declined and headed inside. I noticed he was gone when I came out.

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My steadily dwindling contact lens supply has had me meaning to make an eye doctor appointment for a month or two. A week or so ago I found myself on my last pair of contacts, and figured I should really make it out there soon. Finally this morning I found that one of my remaining two contacts was no longer wearable. OK, time to bite the bullet.

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I haven't been online much lately. Thursday saw the purchase of my first RC helicopter, a Raptor 50 v2, and pretty much all my waking hours since then (quite a few of which should have been sleeping hours) have been spent trying to assemble these few hundred oddly shaped metal and plastic bits into something hopefully roughly resembling a helicopter. (The incredibly cute picture to the left is not mine; it comes from Eric Balay's site)

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I went down to the local hobby shop today and talked with a guy there who gives classes. Based on his recommendations, I'm considering the Hangar 9 Alpha Trainer 40. It's far from pretty, but it's apparently very good for learning, and yet not so coddling that it is good for nothing else. There's some other planes available that have built-in sensors that will auto-level the plane when you let go of the controls, etc, but he said with those, once a month or so passes and you're comfortable handling a plane, you basically have to go out and buy another one to do anything fun. The Alpha has a relatively small amount of dihedral (the amount that the wings are angled upward), which sacrifices a little bit of level-flight stability but gives it more capability for aerobatics.

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For the last month or so I've had this insidious and steadily increasing desire to get back into flying, and finally get my pilot's license like I originally planned to do when I was 16 (because of the relative priority I gave to the idea, I remember musing that it was very likely that I'd find myself having a pilot's license but no driver's license — needing my parents to drive me to the airfield when I wanted to go up, hehe). Even the harrowing experience of landing in a light jet in tropical storm-force winds hasn't done much to allay my enthusiasm. As a recreational pilot, I can simply choose not to fly if the weather looks like it could turn ugly.

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Jon Stewart is always pretty outspoken on the show about what he feels is the failing of "real" news to do the job entrusted to them, which is to report the facts to the people. He often makes little comments, especially during his interviews with the guests he has on the show, about how frustrated he is at seeing all the news organizations avoid making a big deal about some really alarming issues and events, instead focusing on irrelevant trivialities. Essentially, he feels they are just functioning as a tool of the respective parties, and in doing so are failing in their duty to the general public.

But the other day, he really took a big step out there to firmly make his point. He went on CNN's Crossfire as a guest, and apparently they expected a standard "pet on display" book promotion appearance, but he used the opportunity to attack and criticize them outright, saying they are hurting America.

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I came across this story about the Bush administration's attempts to legalize torture, or, as it's euphemized, "extraordinary rendition." I figured it couldn't be as bad as they made it out to be, and looked for other articles to read more about the issue, ideally from both sides, and slowly came to the disturbing realization that yes, it really is. Quite simply, they are trying to sneak in an amendment to a bill which would exclude from the protection of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, any suspected terrorist (emphasis mine). And that's just ridiculously unacceptable. So, even though Puerto Rico's representative doesn't have a vote, I wrote my first letter to my Representative. I strongly encourage you to do the same, particularly if you are lucky enough to live in a state where your opinion actually matters. See the link above for more details about the story. Damn this growing political awareness! It's so much work, actually caring about things.

Watching Viva La Bam today, I had an epiphany (first time a sentence has been started that way ever). Ryan Dunn is by far my favorite of Bam's "crew". Bam is immature and sort of petulant, Brandon is just insane, and Rake scares me. Raab is pretty cool, but Ryan is just level headed and awesome. He seems like the only one who is likeable just because he's a cool person, rather than because he's willing to do crazy stuff.

Yeah, that's right. I'm reduced to writing posts on the order of "OMG AJ is my favorite Backstreet Boy!" But I bet Dunn is way cooler to hang out with. :)

I discovered today that Nick Nolte has a blog and, true to form, it's often random and weird. But strangely enjoyable :) Actually, he calls it a diary, and says in its defense, I explained that I had picked up the diarist bug. He misunderstood me at first in a predictable way. Then he asked me if only women had diaries. The fact is: “journals” are for sissies. I calmly explained that Steinbeck and Hemingway both had diaries and that that was good enough for me.

According to this site, seven percent of Americans claim they never bathe at all. Hah! And people tried to make me out like I was a freak.

It's quite an entertaining page. The trivia there is much more contemporary than your typical "Coca-Cola used to be green" trivia page, and there's lots of stuff there I'd never heard before. But there's a few that I know to be true, and a few more that I've researched on the web, and all have turned out to be true. So it looks like the page is pretty trustworthy. Given that, here's some facts from the page that make me happy:

• Each year, more people are killed by teddy bears than by grizzly bears.
• David Bowie thinks he is being stalked by someone who is dressed like a giant pink rabbit. Bowie has noticed the fan at several recent concerts, but he became alarmed when he got on a plane and the bunny was on board.
• An average of 100 people choke to death on ball point pens each year.

Amazing, the things that people can find to die on.

I read today that American Airlines is now offering lifetime AAirpass® memberships for people who like to travel a lot. Well, you also have to be ridiculously rich; it costs $3 million.

So for just slightly more than the cost of a private jet that can take you anywhere you want, you can purchase the right to sit among strangers in someone else's jet and go anywhere you want. Alone. Once you get past the metal detector and the random security screenings. And assuming your flight isn't cancelled or delayed.

Of course, I guess it doesn't cost them anything if nobody buys one, so they probably figured, "Eh, what the hell, why not? There's plenty of stupid people out there. At least one of 'em has to have a few million bucks, don't they?"

I went up to Rochester for the weekend to visit Courtney, and had a really good time. It turned out that there was a sort of Parents' Weekend-type thing going on that weekend, at which they always have a different stand-up comedian perform. In past years, they've had Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles. I got excited.

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For a while now I've been secretly enjoying the website of this Dan whom I cannot presume to label an impostor — if anything, I'm his impostor. But I figure I should share the wonder, so here's some recent entries I've particularly enjoyed.

My wallet likes to fall out of my pocket when I'm sitting down. Luckily, so far I've always noticed before disaster struck, but eventually it will find a chink in my armor of attentiveness and make good its escape. I think it may be time to breach the drawer I swore would never again be opened, and withdraw, gleaming in the setting sun, my trusty wallet chain of old.

Haha, there is no real content here, I just love these pictures.

Meg drunkenly mumbles something to Andy who listens attentively

Andy has a long trend of appearing gay in pictures. This is just a natural continuation of the trend (and a hilarious one at that)

Think back to when you were in college. (For some of you, it may not be very difficult). What do you do when you encounter a food product that has been a member of your household long enough that the memory of its acquisition has taken its place alongside the name of your first grade teacher among the mists of dubious recollection? If you're like me, you leave it there until it undergoes an alarming change of physical state.

But if you're an engineering student, you take a different tack.

Whenever I come across the website of someone who is interested in photography, their photo gallery tends to only contain the few outstanding pieces they're really proud of. This stands in stark contrast to my own, which contains pictures of anything and everything. As a result, the few pictures I take that aren't just snapshots are sort of lost amid the malestrom of the mediocre.

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I learned today that well-known linguist, human rights speaker, and every political band's favorite source of samples, Noam Chomsky, an Institute Professor of linguistics at MIT. Just one more reason I'd love to have spent time there.

As for Google, my score on the SAT, the only saving grace of my academic career, would be irrelevant to them. What they're interested in is an employment candidate's performance on the GLAT — the Google Labs Aptitude Test. In case their URLs change, I've got the four pages here:

• Page 1
• Page 2
• Page 3
• Page 4

I love working at Xapiens, but I can't help but swoon at a company that clearly has so much nerdy fun in what they do, and look for the same in their prospective employees. Though I feel terribly inadequate, perhaps someday I'll work up the nerve to send them my resume or something. In the meantime, I'll continue to gaze on them from afar with heart-shaped eyes.

There is a hacking/security convention in PR towards the end of October; something like DEF CON but on a much smaller scale. Xapiens is going to have a booth there, and my boss is talking about dressing me up for the convention. They want to put a helmet on my head with a WiFi antenna on top, put a PDA in my pocket, and let me walk around the convention automatically sniffing passwords and other wireless network traffic.

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Today on the way to work I saw a scene that would have made a perfect picture. A dump truck had apparently been unloading dirt for planting trees, and due to a weight imbalance, had tipped up onto it's rear end. The bed was vertical, the truck was at a 45-degree angle, and the driver was sitting in his cab gazing sadly out his window at me as I passed. This last part was what made the scene — he just looked so dejected and glum. But it would have been mean to stop and take a picture without staying to offer him help or the use of my cell phone, and today was certainly not a day when I could afford to be late for work, so I had to grudgingly continue on.

A few weeks ago, I was experimenting with DanBot, giving it the full text of my postings here to work with, and seeing if I could get it to write its own posts that sounded somewhat coherent. I didn't work on it very long, and the results were unimpressive (I can post an example or two if desired).

But someone named boog did a much better job than I did. I Am Learn is a weblog written by a perl script, and surprisingly, it's actually surprisingly lucid and coherent sometimes.

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It's freaky and surreal to watch your own birth, especially on jerky, aged, The Ring-like 8mm film, complete with the whirring/ratcheting sound of the projector and the abrupt, out-of-focus scene transitions. That wasn't a home video, it was a disturbing art piece.

There's no real merit to this post other than to point you to an amusing entry by Geoffrey K. Pullum over at Language Log:

I stopped by the eye care center for a routine check of my ocular acuity, and although by the end of the session my pupils had been chemically dilated so things were looking a bit strange to me, I had enough clarity of vision to notice the title of a pamphlet in a rack near the reception desk:

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This is currently my favorite person in the world.

Are you going to vote for John Kerry even though you find him unpleasant, annoying, arrogant, waffling, misguided or just generally unappealing in some profound way? Then you've come to the right place! We're Kerry Haters for Kerry -- perhaps his largest constituency! No need to hide in the Kerry-hating closet anymore while you pretend to everyone that he'll be a great president. Here you are among friends. You can speak freely and honestly. You can admit: 'He's awful! And I'm for him!'