August 31, 2003
You Know It's Election Season in NH when...
You see Joe Liberman hanging out with your high school driver's ed teacher.
August 28, 2003
Jeffie and the Chocolate Factory
Last weekend, we headed up to Berkeley to take the tour at the Scharffen Berger chocolate factory. We learned about it watching Bay Area Backroads. It was actually pretty educational and we got to taste various states of chocolate ingredients and qualities of chocolate. Some of them were pretty nasty. I expected to be more touring of the chocolate factory, but it was actually pretty small and so noisy we had to wear ear protection. We spent 45 minutes getting the history of chocolate from the over-enthusastic tourguide.
Overall, I thought the Jelly Belly factory tour was much better. It was a lot more interesting and they have lots of jelly bean art and neat candy-making videos, not to mention the discount jelly beans at the end. I think I've been there 5 times now with various combinations of visiting relatives and friends.
Speaking of the Chocolate Factory, apparently Tim Burton is remaking the classic movie. Tim Burton seems a little too "dark" to do a musical for kids, but I guess it'll be interesting.
August 27, 2003
My computer has bugs
Literally. We came home to another ant infestation. The ants had formed a solid conga line from the study window down across the carpet, up the desk, under the keyboard and behind the laptop to an apparently very tasty box of Ritz crackers.
Uggh, Raid gives me such a headache!
Another sign of the imminent apolcalypse
Freddy vs. Jason was the #1 movie at the box office for the second week in a row. Truly, we've abandoned all hope of good taste.
August 26, 2003
My New Perspective
Well, I finally won an eBay auction today for a new monitor. It's a flat-screen Dell UltraSharp 20 incher. Should be pretty nice. I know a bunch of people who have one and they all love them.
$770 seems like a lot to pay for a monitor, but I figure it all works out. The last monitor I bought was in 1998. It was a ViewSonic 20G that I bought from Microsoft out of Firefly's assets, for only $75. It was a nice big monitor and it could do 1600x1200 at 65hz, though it was very curved on the edges, and huge and heavy. It worked great for a few years, then it started this problem where the guns would be intermittently misalinged on the top or bottom half of the screen. It became very annoying and finally I decided that I had to get something better. I'm now technically and philosophically opposed to CRT monitors and the ViewSonic had spoiled me on 20 inch screens which made all of my options expensive.
Ebay turned out to the be the cheapest option, sometimes. I watched the auctions for a while and found the lowest price I saw one of the Dell monitors close at, $670. Then I started bidding, trying first at $670, then about $700, and then finally $720. You sure can get some cheap deals on Ebay, but it can definitely be a lot of work. I've spent the last week scheduling my activities around the closing times of auctions. I found that bidding more than a hour before the auction closed was useless as the price ramped up quickly by 'snipers' in the last few seconds. My only choice was to try to snipe myself after I was outbid a few times by only a few dollars. I found myself dreaming of ebay as I worried about waking up in time for the closing of some of the auctions.
I thought I had one snagged at only $569 over the weekend, but it turns out the guy mislisted the monitor he was selling.
I'm anxious to get the monitor now though. Hopefully it'll help save my eyesight. I can't believe I'm still the only person in my family still not in need of glasses.
Yahoo! News RSS feeds
I'm proud to annouce that Yahoo! News is now available as RSS feeds. Please consume.
August 25, 2003
Fox Attitude
You've got to give a company credit when their PR person can say something like this:
"It's time to return Al Franken to the obscurity that he's normally accustomed to," Fox News spokeswoman Irena Steffen said.
August 23, 2003
Geocaching is not a crime
Here's something that doesn't happen to me every day: I nearly got arrested.
August 21, 2003
August 19, 2003
Movin' On
One of my oldest friends (from high school) told me today that he's moving from from the Bay Area and back to the east coast. That's sad news, it was really nice to have someone from NH around here. We had some fun getogethers.
It brings up the issue again of when our west coast expedition will come to a close. The plan, of course, is to get back to New England sometime in the next few years, buy a house in a slightly more reasonable real estate market and settle down permanently.
Now all I need to do is to find a good job there or convince my employer to open up an engineering office in Boston.
Looks like we'll be here for a while.
August 18, 2003
They're Made Out of Meat!
One part of The Tech museum yesterday had plaques on the walls with various interesting/amusing quotes about space. A few of them were:
"Don't kill me, you're from outer space!" - Alien
"I'm not from outer space, I just work there" - Captain Kirk
"Wherever you go, there you are." - Buckaroo Banzai
And my favorite was this entire dialogue, "They're Made Out of Meat!".
THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT
by Terry Bisson
"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."
"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."
"No brain?"
"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."
"So ... what does the thinking?"
"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"
"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."
"We're supposed to talk to meat."
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
"Officially or unofficially?"
"Both."
"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."
"I was hoping you would say that."
"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"
"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"
"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."
"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."
"That's it."
"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"
"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."
"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."
"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."
"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"
"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."
"They always come around."
"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."
August 17, 2003
NPR-Style Advertising on the Web
While I was listening to NPR yesterday, I realized that their "ads", read by NPR staff, are basically the equivalent of the text ads in search engines like Yahoo Search. They're usually highly relevent to the audience, but subtle enough to not overpower the content.
My First 30 Seconds on a Segway
Well, I had my first Segway ride today, over at The Tech Museum in San Jose. It feels pretty natural to move forward and back on it, but I nearly ran out of the little coned in area they had for it when I tried to figure out how to turn. It would definitely take a few minutes practice to get the hang of it. The 0-degree turn radius was very cool though.
I realized that what makes it look so strange is that the people riding it are not perceptably moving their bodies, yet they are moving. We're used to seeing people move their arms and legs when they wark or at least their legs when they ride a bike.
The rest of the museum was standard-museum-type stuff. About 10% of the exhibits were broken at the time, probably from all the kids banging on stuff. We spent more time than we thought we would exploring the exhibits and we caught a pretty good IMAX film, Coral Reef Adventure. Part of it was shot in Fiji which was where we had our honeymoon, so watching it brought back good memories.
The people in the film were often talking about how dangerous diving was and how they had to avoid sharks, getting the bends and other underwater hazards. I couldn't help but think that it might be easier if they didn't have to swim around with that huge IMAX camera box between them.
It was a fun day though and we got to explore downtown San Jose a bit, which we really haven't done since we lived here. There's lots of caches there, so I'm sure we'll be back.
August 16, 2003
R.I.P. Sunnyvale Town Center Mall
The Sunnyvale Town Center Mall or (the WAVE as they tried to rename it) is closing. We went in today and most of the non-chain stores were closing out and selling everything at half off in preparation for the Aug. 31 shutdown of the mall. The Target and Macys anchor stores will remain open.
I'm glad they're finally putting that mall out of its misery. It's always been weird going there when half the stores were closed. I've never seen a Carl's Jr. or Cinnabon close, but they did in this mall. I hope it does get revitalized at some point; it sure is a convenient place for us to go shopping and there was a good Hallmark store in there at least. I know the city was never really happy it was there as it breaks up the Murphy street downtown area, but it would be great if something compelling were to end up there. Maybe it will drive more people to Murphy street which is a cute little one block stretch of shops and restaurants. It sure was happenning this morning for the weekly Farmer's Market.
August 15, 2003
Boy I'm Glad I Don't Live in New York
I've never been a big fan of New York City. It's just too big and too busy with way too many people. Then every once a while something crazy happens and the whole city goes into crisis. I bet a lot of people give up on New York after this latest incident and move to saner cities like Boston, just like people leave San Francisco after earthquakes or when the economy implodes.
August 14, 2003
Power Outage Not Related to Excessive Consumption of Donuts
Just in case you're trying to eliminate all the possibilities.
Quote of the Day
"Whats with the frickin' crickets?!"
-- Anne, lying in bed last night, apparently not amused at the crickets who have moved into our backyard.
August 13, 2003
I think I broke my foot
I rolled over on my ankle on a hike a week ago and now it hurts more than it did an hour after I injured it. Damn. Well, I guess I have good excuse to skip running for the rest of the week.
Phosphor Brain Suck
I'm pretty sure that computers are making us stupid. The more I stare at my monitor, the more dumb things come out. If I spend 2 seconds thinking while not staring at a computer, I usually think much better. My best ideas usually come to me in the shower for some reason. I wonder what would happen if I brought a waterproof computer into the shower. Probably nothing, except I wouldn't get very clean.
August 12, 2003
Back from Vacation
Had a good time in Tahoe. Hiking, watersports, gambling... what more could you ask for? The cat is glad we're back too. He's been reminding us of that at 5 am for the last few days. Grrr. That fan sure is effective at drowning out his meows when we lock him out of the room. Thankfully in this house the door is too hard to open. When we lived in LA, he figured out how to open our bedroom door and was very loud in doing so.
Ahhnold for Governator
I think I'm going to vote for Schwarzen-whatisit for Governor. I have no idea if he's qualified or would do a good job, I just know it's going to be damn entertaining to watch this guy try to run the state. I have no plans to be a permanent resident of California anyway, so bring on the fun! If he screws things up more than they already are, there's one more reason to move back to New England.
So far I've enjoyed all the punny headlines the media has come up with - "Total Recall", "The Governator" and "The Running Man".
At last!
Alright, less blogging talk, more blogging action! I've had a work blog for a while, but I've got enough random thoughts zooming around my head that it's time I unleash them on an unsuspecting world.