Journal entries for September, 2004

I was talking with my boss today about the beginnings of the internet, and he mentioned that he remembers when there were about 50 web servers on the net. This got me thinking about my own confused beginnings on the internet. I remember the first time that CompuServe offered its members internet access, which was apparently on April 14, 1995. I clicked the button for "The Internet" and was presented with CompuServe's website. I clicked around a little bit but couldn't find any way to reach anything that wasn't CompuServe related. I had heard about all the wonderous and varied things available on the World Wide Web, and was frustrated that I couldn't find where to click to get at all that stuff.

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While digging through old books of sheet music, I came across a printed copy of the fantasy/sci-fi story I was writing about four years ago. Reading through my old writing was amusing; while there's awkwardly worded parts that I'd definitely phrase differently now, I was surprised to find that I actually didn't find it horrible :) So I figured I'd type it up and post it here to abet my ridicule.

I am also chagrinned and proud to note that the story managed to conform to the stereotypical characteristics of both fantasy and sci-fi. Beat that.

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Today I went by Plaza to pick up some things I needed, and as I passed one of the CD stores, I noticed a small crowd and a few cops. Curious, I peered into the store to identify the source of the commotion, and realized it was a line for an autograph signing. I remembered that my old friend and ex-bandmember Dave McCloskey's band, Tavu was doing an in-store appearance at Plaza sometime soon, and figured this was them. As I stood on tiptoes to see if I could spot the closely-shaved, alarmingly round head I remember so well, I was shocked to instead see a poofy, blonde tuft of hair peeking out above the crowd. Scanning the store windows in confusion, I discovered that it was not Tavu, but rather Dokken and Quiet Riot, who were doing an in-store appearance before their upcoming concert.

My cowoker, Luis Ramos, is an incredible music fan, and nearly every day he brings in a new CD. He is a bassist, so his primary interests are music that tend to have interesting basslines: latin jazz, Spanish music, etc. I like lots of the music he brings in, and have discovered quite a few new bands while working here. One CD that he brought in recently was Ojos De Brujo (Eyes Of A Warlock). It's a Spanish band that plays a sort of modern incarnation of flamenco. The sound is predominantly flamenco, with a female singer, but with a drumset and with small, subtle electronic touches that add a lot. The music is fast and very percussive, and just really cool. Here's a few tracks to check out.

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Scientists are working on embedding sensors in rats' brains and strapping radio transmitters to their backs, and training them to seek out survivors in earthquake wreckage by their smell; the logic being that rats' sense of smell is better than that of a robotic sensor, and that they can reach places that dogs cannot. Cool. Then survivors just have to lay back and wait for help while COVERED WITH RATS.

I realized today that I have access to an abundant, renewable resource that I'm just letting go to waste, and that is monotony. It suddenly struck me that it's already Friday - I thought it was still Wednesday or something. Weekdays pass by so quickly, since all I do is get up, watch TV for an hour or two, go to work for 10 hours, then sleep. The days pass without hardly noticing them. Thus far, the only way this effect has been observable has been in my bank account - I'm always shocked that I'm getting another paycheck so soon. Did two weeks really go by already? As a result, I always feel like I'm rolling in dough, when really, I don't have a particularly high salary.

It occured to me that I could put this psychological time contraction to greater use. I will try to establish regular habits, like going for a run when I get home from work, or practicing drums for a while after I get up. If I do this regularly enough, it will become absorbed into the mundane routine that I grow to ignore, and soon I should suddenly start noticing results and be amazed because it didn't seem like I'd been putting much effort into it. That's the plan, anyway.

When I was a kid, one movie I loved was The Last Starfighter, which, in a recent fit of nostalgia, I ordered from Amazon. How timely, then, that an interpretation of it, in Broadway Musical form, opens next month in NYC. I'm... not really sure how to feel. I don't think there's any way they could faithfully recreate the scene where Alex kicks the alien in the knee and it doubles over in pain, and Centauri explains, "not all creatures have their testicles in the same place," much less the scenes with the beta units.

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The cross will be over You personally! The Cross will be over every Nation on earth! Over Afghanistan! Saudi Arabia! Jerusalem! America! The cross in Space Satellite will be in a Polar orbit from pole to pole. As the earth turns it will pass over every inch of the earth like peeling an apple. The cross will circle the earth every one and a half hours. After launch we can tell you on our site when it will be over you and your nation. We have carried the cross in Every nation. Now we will, God willing have it flying above Every nation! We wave the cross in the face of Satan and proclaim that Jesus is Lord over All the Earth. All glory to God.

Very HIGH QUALITY preserved cancer tumors. I ate them. I know it was wrong.

You've probably seen this before. It's time for you to see it again.

BUUUURRRIIIIITOOOOOSSS!!!

An interview with Jhonen Vazquez (author of Invader Zim and other wonderfulness) and Rikki Simons (color designer for Zim and voice of Gir) that gives a great insight into what happens when Nickelodeon hires a talent they clearly knew nothing about, and then gives him a cartoon show. This reminds me that I have a whole lot of yet-unexperienced Zim I need to watch. I neeed Zim, or I will explode! That happens to me sometimes.

I came across this article, in which people guiltily confess the embarassing selections on their iPods. I laughed, because it's a subject I'm quite familiar with. I thought I would offer a list of some of the more questionable selections in my MP3 collection. Of course there's the usual oddities that noone whose computer has graced a university network can avoid, like Right Said Fred and the Oh Yeah song from Ferris Beuller. Everybody has those (...right?). But I imagine some of the other things in my collection are less ubiquitous.

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Apparently, the yellow skin and blue hair were not enough to indicate to some car company execs that the Simpsons is not, in fact, real. In a move amusingly reminiscent of the Canyonero (MP3) from The Simpsons, truck company Navistar has announced their upcoming CXT pickup truck, which is based on a cement truck, and gets between 6-10 miles per gallon of diesel fuel. You'd think this was a story from The Onion if not for the "cnn.com" starting off the URL. *shakes head in wonder*

Originally posted on MetaFilter:

Yesterday, Mazen al-Tomasi, a reporter for Al-Arabiya, was broadcasting live from the scene of a carbombed Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which had attracted a crowd of locals. While making his report, a sudden noise came from behind Mazen.

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Ahh, after letting my deviantART page stagnate for six months (my last posting was made March 1, 2004), I've finally started posting things again. Since so much time has passed, I've got quite a few images that I feel are worth posting - I posted about two thirds tonight, and I'll post the last few tomorrow.

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A few months ago, I came across The Online Etymology Dictionary and found it incredibly interesting. However, it was a bit difficult to use, because it was stored in flat HTML files with no easy way to search them. I wrote a quick script to parse them and insert them in a MySQL database, and another script to allow me to browse and search the database, and that worked great. After a few months, my friends asked for access to it as well, so I linked to it from my website.

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Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter

The second coming is upon us, and Jesus has returned to earth. But before he can get down to the serious business of judging the living and the dead, he has to contend with an army of vampires that can walk in the daylight. Combining kung-fu action with biblical prophecy and a liberal dose of humor, the film teams the Savior with Mexican wrestling hero El Santos against mythological horrors and science gone mad, and also manages to address contemporary sexual politics. And did we mention that it's a musical? This sure ain't Sunday School.

It is a foregone conclusion that I must get this.

Well, I wasn't planning on getting the lock fixed, since it's on the passenger side and the lock still works, though with some difficulty. Besides, I have keyless entry, so I barely ever use the actual door locks anyway. However, the company who owns the building Xapiens is located in said they would pay for the damages, so I guess I will. Now the question is what do I do about the damage from when I was hit before? It's unrelated, so I don't want to make the company pay for it, but if the car is going into the body shop for work to be done on the very panel where the damage is, it seems the perfect time to take care of it as well. I don't know if repairing the scratch will require repainting the whole door or not. I haven't had very good experiences with touch-up paint, but maybe body shops have better equipment or techniques. But if they will be repainting the whole door anyway, it seems obvious that the dent should be fixed first. I wonder if I can arrange to have them charge me for that, and charge the company for the rest. But that sounds like it would be way too complicated, trying to explain to them the convoluted mathematics I want them to apply to the bill. Maybe I should just avoid complicating things and let them include the whole door in the estimate. Dunno. Thoughts?

After my coworker Luis's car was broken into in the parking lot here at work a few months ago, the building installed a security camera and infrared motion detector for us so that we can keep an eye on our cars while working the night shift.

It came in useful today, as we caught someone trying to break into Luis's car again. Fortunately, this time we were able to scare him off before he got into the car, though they did manage to damage his lock and scratch up his door. Apparently the guy was so focused on jimmying the lock that he didn't notice Luis turn on the building lights, and Luis had to tell him "The police are on the way, you know" before the guy noticed him and ran off. Man I would have loved to get a picture of him while he was working.

I feel sort of miffed, though. Why did he go after Luis's car, a '92 3000GT SL, with my newer, nicer car sitting right next to it? The jerk.

UPDATE (9/9/2004 2:52 am): Nevermind, I am chastened. It turns out he tried to break into both cars. Awesome. Perhaps I should start bringing a baseball bat to work.

So, you've been carefully avoiding eating meat for years, in order to help reduce the number of animals that die for human gain? Well, there's others working towards the opposite goal, taking the first steps in developing carnivorous robots that eat flies and slugs for energy. Cool technology, and I guess in the quest to make robots more practical and capable, there is a general trend towards emulating the human body, which seems to work relatively well after hundreds of thousands of years of tiny incremental improvements. But if I was a living creature who finds myself being eaten, as much as I'd be opposed to the idea, I'd at least rather it be for the purpose of nourishing another animal than to provide power for some robot to take one more ponderous footstep.

Three years ago, NASA launched the Genesis probe into Earth orbit to collect solar particles. The plan was for it to return to Earth at about 25,000 mph, deploy its parachutes, and then be caught in midair by helicopter stunt pilots. A foolproof plan, you might think. Somehow, something managed to go wrong.

The reason for the risky plan was that This daring retrieval method will protect the samples and sensitive instruments during reentry. A crash landing, even at the capsule's relatively slow speed of 9 mph, could ruin some of the data collected during the mission. In the end, though, it landed at a less-than-gentle 194 mph. Scientists are still optimistic, saying there is still data they can get from the capsule, but I think that's mostly just making the best of what is basically a failed mission. I hope this doesn't affect NASA's already diminishing funding. But man, it had to be fun watching a 450 lb flying saucer thunk satisfyingly into the ground at 200mph.

Two recent posts by Geoffrey K. Pullum on Language Log bringing up amusing mistakes in Spanish translated closed captioning (Los Senadores Y El Presidente and Speaking Puerto Rican) got me wondering how exactly closed captioning works and just why the mistakes are often so radically different from what was actually said.

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Bryan and Cat's recent wedding has had me ruminating on the subject of marriage a lot lately. Well, not just lately... It's a subject that has been on my mind for quite a while (you'll need to be logged in to see that one).

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...And by "sandwich", I mean "jet-powered flying person." I want one of these. It sounds like turbulence can present quite a hazard, which could be a buzzkill, but I just can't think of any more stylish way to get around at 110mph. It sounds like they really do plan on commercializing and marketing it. All they need to add to the product is the ability to take off from the ground and I will never be late to work again.

As I've gotten more involved with etymology, I've started to ponder the etymology of other languages. I look forward to the point when I am comfortable enough with Japanese that I am no longer struggling frantically to memorize words and Kanji, and can start learning more about the history behind Japanese words, or the Chinese words they are often derived from. Coinciding neatly with all of this rumination on Japanese and Chinese etymology is an interesting journal entry I came across today from the aptly-named site Words Are Pretty. In it, the author of the journal, who is a Chinese language student, discusses the complicated Chinese character shown, Nang4, which means "stuffy nose", and a very interesting discussion on the etymology of the word ensues in the comments of his post.

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On the subject of Ireland, sales of Guiness have dropped 6%, and Guiness' CEO believes he knows why: Irish youth are spending more of their money on gadgets - iPods and smartphones - rather than "following in their fathers' footsteps" into alcoholism (Dammit Otto, you have Lupis!). Sigh, kids these days have no respect for tradition and stereotypes.

While bored as hell at work, I Googled my last name to see if I could find more info about its history and meaning (I know I looked it up in high school and found that it means "Son of a Charioteer", but, well, maybe they've changed the meaning since then. I'm really bored). I was surprised to find that apparently McCormack is much less scarce these days than it used to be, and it can be found really quite cheaply on E-Bay, with an appreciably wide selection. You know what they say: "You can never have too many charioteers."

Man, I have to get more comfortable conversing in Spanish. I can communicate pretty smoothly now, but I still don't have comfortable use of slang or anything like that that lets me interact at less than a business level.

Tonight I walked into Starbucks and the girl that always recognizes me waved and yelled (in Spanish), "Hey! Jason! How's it going?" I waved back (I didn't really hear what she said, though I wouldn't really have corrected her if I had). When I placed my order, she realized my name wasn't Jason and laughed about it with the rest of her coworkers. In English, I could have participated in the discussion, saying something like "It's OK, I answer to anything, I'm like a puppy," or somehow otherwise indicated that I was a functional member of human social society. But since they were speaking Spanish, all I could do was smile really big, my mind racing furiously trying to remember the word for "puppy". In the end, my only contribution to the conversation was "Thanks" as they handed me my drink, and off I went.

Awesome. Sport Compact Car put together a list of the 100 greatest sport compact cars of all time for their latest issue. Curious, I perused the list. As it turns out, every car I've owned appears on the list. Woot. Nothing like basing your self-worth on the approval of others.

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How Kolin Pope saved the world from Armageddon. I have no idea if this is intended as fiction, or if he claims it really happened, but it's a very entertaining read either way. The pictures add a lot of credence to it, allowing you to start wondering if maybe it really is real. Hmm... (Zangief loves mitosis)

It has been so long since we've had a hurricane worth worrying about. Hurricane Marilyn was supposed to be bad, but proved a disappointment. Hurricane Bertha was predicted to be devastating as well, but we ended up going outside and throwing paper plates into the wind like frisbees. Hurricane Frances has followed in kind. Looks impressive in the picture, but the only visible effect was an overcast day with an occasional light sprinkling of rain. However, despite its lackluster performance, it was still apparently enough for all the stores and restaurants to close down.

Ironically, today was the one day I actually left for work about an hour EARLY in order to relax at the coffee shop and read for a bit, but I found it closed, so I had to head to work early (god, how lame, I hope nobody finds out).

Spiderman embarks on a monumental quest - to share his thoughts about each color in a 96-crayon box of Crayola. My untanned regions tingle in anticipation of the two remaining installments.

Bunny Of The Month: Something dreadful in the mail each month to brighten your life.

This is probably the best thing I've ever found on the internet. It made me think instantly of Jenn. I can't decide whether to post about it or quietly sign up everyone I know. But at $35/mo per person, that would get pretty expensive. But look at the samples halfway down the page! Aside from the ones that use real animal parts, each and every one is awesome.