Rick, the Creepy Thin Man

Forbidden Kingdom

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:33:03 GMT

I'm rather surprised Forbidden Kingdom is getting the reviews it is getting. I mean, better than 4/5? Really? Really?

Am I so much of an HK snob (I've never bought a single bootleg or turned off subtitles!) that even the pairing of these two greats wasn't enough to make the movie worth seeing a second time? I mean, the plot and dialogue were horrible! I like watching Jackie Chan stumble around as Drunken Master as much as anyone else, and seeing him and Jet Li go at it for 15 minutes was truly something to behold, but still ...

I dunno. It just seems like people are so busy salivating over the pairing that they forgot to pay attention to the movie.

Why do I take these things?

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 21:33:03 GMT

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SciFi TV

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 22:47:46 GMT

I am aghast that The Dresden Files has been canceled, while Flash Gordon continues. Aghast, I tell you.

Anyone read Rachel Caine's Weather Warden series?

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 14:57:21 GMT

Can anyone who has read Rachel Caine's Weather Warden series tell me if the fantastically dumb ending of Ill Wind, the first book, gets any better in the second?

I really enjoyed the book for the first 330 pages ... then the last 5 pages were just plain horrible. Like, Agatha Christie let-me-introduce-the-murderer-you've-never-heard-of level of badness. The writing was otherwise good, so I am moderately tempted to shell out another $8 for the second book ... bot not if it just goes downhill from there.

Anyone?

What if there was no such thing as The News?

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 01:27:03 GMT

What would be the implications if you woke up tomorrow and there was no News? No morning paper, no top-of-the-hour news on NPR, no CNN behind the bar at lunch, no evening news while you make dinner, and no news wrap-up for background noise while you get ready for bed.

What would the world be like? Would it be better, worse, or just different?

Your first reaction might be “but then how would I know what was going on in the world?”, but ... why do you need to know what is going on in the world? Can you, personally, do something about the War On Terror, or the earthquake in Peru, or the domestic dispute a few streets over? If you could actually do something, would you be getting your information from the TV or the paper, or through your job or some other more reliable means? Either way, does the News help you? Does it do anything more than make you feel like you make a difference when the truth is that you really don't?

How does it impact your life, personally, whether or not Don Imus gets back into radio?

You might start to worry about oversight. If the public isn't made aware that Big Bad Companies are doing Big Bad Things, which can surely only happen via the News, then they would just get away with it, right? Sorry, were you on the legal team prosecuting Enron? My bad.

Does watching the News do anything other than stoke your righteous indignation?

What if you decided to take a week off from the News? You could recycle your paper for a week. You could turn on the Discovery Channel while you get ready for work. You could ignore the CNN blaring during lunch and actually have meaningful discourse with your coworkers. On the ride home from work you could listen to music instead of NPR. And again at night, if you had to have the TV on, you could turn on G4 or a Knight Rider rerun or something. How would your life be affected?

It might mean that you miss out hearing about whom some random Asian country is beheading today. It might give you a little less to talk about around the water cooler -- but that might actually be a blessing in disguise, as you might feel like you got a bit more done than usual.

You'd just have to trust that the really important things would get to you eventually. If a gas tanker explodes on a freeway and shuts down traffic, it's not like you'll be allowed to obliviously drive through the pool of burning fuel, right?

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 12:43:36 GMT

Stardust was good. It's worth seeing on the big screen. (There were a few noticeable editing errors, though.)

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 22:00:52 GMT

NaNoWriMo progress graphs are up again this year:

This year I've given them their own domain: nowrists.com. Technically, it's short for Novel Writing Statistics, but given the amount of typing that NaNo calls for, I figured "nowrists" was fitting.

P.S. - If anyone is an aspiring artist and feels like contributing a design (SVG format only, please) I can add it to the choices. (Do give yourself credit on the design, of course.)

Update: added a dashboard version.

A smile is a wedge

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 14:35:31 GMT

(I really need to re-rip my Keoki CDs. I miss my Keoki.)

My printed copy of my NaNo book arrived in the mail yesterday. Lulu.com is da bomb, yo. I had been in a pretty foul mood up until that point, but that completely turned it around. I've started reading it from the beginning and it turns out that it's not nearly as horrid and dull as I thought it was. I don't know that anyone but a complete geek or dork would enjoy it, but I think it's fun. It's weird holding it. I wrote an actual book. It's in my hands.

The Girl and my aunt both think I should pass them out for Christmas gifts in the most self-aggrandizing way possible. Now, I admit that I'm a dick, but I don't know if even I have the brass cojones to do something like that. And really, I doubt that more than one or two people in my entire extended family would even get into it. We'll see.

I've been going through the galley and redlining all of the typos and horrible grammar. I guess there aren't that many, especially as I was typing like a man on fire just to get it done. Now I just need to lighten up the colors on the cover a bit and it might actually grow up to be a real book!

Oh, and for all of you Daily Show fans, I present you with last night's Moment of Zen:

Wow, that is a sweet graph you might say.

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 15:28:36 GMT

I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year. Being the geek that I am, I lose motivation easily and just need pretty things to keep me on track. So I came up with this:

Yay pretty graphics. Anyway, I put it up with instructions so that any NaNo participant could use it. But, I only put it up in one place and let it spread from there, just to see what would happen. Over the weekend I suddenly jumped from about a dozen people using it to about 50 90 right now. I've been perusing my referer logs and seeing where people are using it. That may be slightly evil, I know, but it's not like I'm selling anyone's info to telemarketers. It's just a harmless bit of ego-surfing, right?

When I went to a NaNo write-in this weekend, I got a bit of fanboyage off of it. Being fanboyed doesn't happen often for me, so it's still cool, but very very weird and creepy. About an hour into the write-in I realized how art-vs-life the whole situation is, because a major theme in my novel is the lengths the main character will go to to avoid being recognized and getting fanboyed, and about how no one thinks they're a rockstar.

So, yeah, that's about the most interesting thing to happen to me lately. Which is nice.

I did go see the Orlando Magic play the Cleveland Cavaliers last night. I'd never been to a basketball game before, as it's really not my kind of sport. It didn't suck. The first three quarters were rather bleh, but the last quarter and the overtime were fun. Turkoglu did well, and kept making 3-pointers, but looked like he could have used some caffeine in the fourth quarter. I don't own stock in Turkoglu, Inc or anything, he was just the player that stood out for me.

Songs that make you go zen

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:17:25 GMT

There are a few songs that just make my brain detach and go to its happy place. It's an instant visceral reaction, and it really weirds me out, but in a good way. Off the top of my head, and in no particular order:

Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, "Cupid de Locke"
The Crystal Method, Vegas, "Comin' Back"; Community Sevice, "No Soul"
Timo Maas, Loud, "Help Me"
Deftones, Deftones, "Minerva"

Cranky mood today

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 14:48:04 GMT

Someone has a case of the Mondays, and that someone is me.

My debit card stopped working this weekend. Apparently Visa notified my bank that several thousand card numbers had been "compromised", and mine was among them. The bank is sending me a new one, but it'll take a few days. Oh, the joy.
The new speakers I bought for my computer get wicked interference with my (GSM) cell phone. Thinking I couldn't just make a tinfoil hat for my speakers, I called up Tech Suport to see if they had any bright ideas. Nope. The support tech said Ferrite Beads might help, but they sound a bit like witchdoctor mumbo-jumbo to me.
Microsoft documentation is teh suq.
Data Mining is teh suq. I am not an analyst, I am a programmer.
I miss my girl.

For all the linguaphiles

Fri, 15 Jul 2005 01:42:21 GMT

All linguaphiles should go here, then here and listen to the song called "The Tear Drop". The clip that is there is all too short, so you may want to find the entire song elsewhere. It's a "sit in a dark, quiet room and listen with headphones" kind of thing.

Econ 101

Mon, 13 Jun 2005 23:18:40 GMT

I've been having this discussion with, well, pretty much everyone I know in Pensacola. I need to get it out on paper so that I can be sure that I'm not crazy.

When people find out that this is my last week in Pensacola, they inevitably ask why I am leaving. The short answer is "because I can't afford to live here anymore". Everyone then looks at me like I'm crazy and points out that I'm a web programmer, and have no earthly right being poor. It's not that I'm poor, it's that I can't afford to live here anymore. There's a difference. I say that it's a long story, and that I really didn't like the place anyway, and the conversation moves on.

The common myth here in Pensacola is that it's a nice place to live because the cost of living is so low. This is utter tripe. It costs me more to live in Pensacola than it did to live in Orlando. But I digress. For whatever reason, it seems like everyone in Pensacola owns an extra house or piece of land or somesuch. Pre-Ivan, prices for such things were mostly normal. Post-Ivan, anything of value now costs 40% to 400% more, especially land and housing. This is where the disconnect starts.

Where does that money come from? What are the ramifications of that change?

If I'm a homeowner, I've probably made out anywhere from "okay" to "like a bandit" because of Ivan. Insurance should have paid to either fix my house or tear it down and build a new one. It was initially a pain in the butt to get the insurance companies to pay out, but from my understanding it has gotten easier. This means that, generally, low-value houses probably got destroyed and rebuilt while high-value houses probably got fixed up and gained more value. Win-win.

If I'm a landowner and my land hasn't washed out to sea, I've almost certainly done well. Everyone needs a place to live, and with the insurance money rolling in, land prices have gone through the roof.

But what if I don't own a house or own land?

Buying a home has become harder because not only have the home values gone up, but so has the demand. (Some might argue that the value is a result of the demand, but I'm also counting intrinsic value.) But, income has stayed the same for most, assuming the company you work for wasn't put out of business by Ivan. This means that people who might have just barely been able to buy a home pre-Ivan are left out in the cold post-Ivan. Literally.

Buying land right now is almost stupid. If you can get your insurance company to cover it, great, otherwise don't even try.

Renting right now is a black hole. Did I mention that all those folks that are waiting for the insurance companies to rebuild for them still need a place to live? This drives the demand, and thus the cost, of apartments up up up, while driving the availability to zero. Again, can a middle- to low-income family who might have been able to scrape together to get a decent aggregate credit rating to get into an apartment complex pre-Ivan really compete with a high-income beach family that may only be in the apartment for a few months, but can afford to pay twice the rent?

Don't even get me started on the folks who default to "house as investment" and forget about "house as place to live".

Middle- to low-income families probably rented middle- to low-value homes or apartments. What did we say happened to most low-value homes? Gone. Renters don't get much help from FEMA beyond displacement stipends, if they even qualify. Nor do they get much help from insurance companies, because if you lose all your stuff, the insurance company is only going to pay to replace that stuff, not help you find a new place to put it all.

My income is great. My family's aggregate income is medium to low. See where I'm going with this?

This is where the other person's eyes begin to glaze over. They can see that they made a huge chunk of change on their piece of land, or that their house's value has doubled, or the shiny new house that their insurance company is paying for. They can also see that I haven't been able to find a place to live for two months, and that the difference between the rental price of an apartment now and one year ago is in the 40% range, and that I'm making basically what I was before Ivan. But for whatever reason, they can't connect the dots. They can't follow the money. If your house/land/car/boat/whatever doubles in value over a year and you've done nothing to add to the intrinsic value, where is the money coming from?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that they've done anything wrong or that they aren't Living the American Dream. Nor am I saying that I don't regret not having bought a house or some land when I moved here two years ago. Nor am I saying that property isn't a good investment. Nor am I saying that any of this is unethical or that anyone should feel bad about it. Nor am I advocating any kind of solution.

I'm saying that for every winner, there is a loser. Economics, for all intents and purposes, is a closed system. If money suddenly appears in your pocket, it had to come from somewhere.

...

Why is there such a disconnect?

Ten years in the making

Mon, 09 May 2005 05:23:13 GMT

I forgot to mention that I graduated with my AA in CompSci last week. Ten years to get an AA. My BS is right around the corner. Really.

The job hunt is progressing at a glacial pace. I think the AA may have actually made me a little worse off, as now I'm no longer the rebel without a degree, but am the schmuck who only has an AA, not a BS. Experience counts for nothing these days.

I had a tech phone interview last week with a guy quizzing me on esoteric C# keywords. I kept trying to explain to him that I understood the concepts of what he was asking (polymorphism, inheritance, finalization, etc) but he kept getting hung up on the fact that I couldn't remember the exact C# keywords (sealed, override, etc). Apparently, the fact that I could remember the analogous keywords in several other languages (Perl, Delphi, VB) also didn't count for anything. I don't get it.

I [heart] Andromeda.

Sat, 07 May 2005 19:44:33 GMT

Maybe a little too much, I think. What is it about bad, campy, cheesy sci-fi that so appeals to me? It saddens me that next week is the last episode.

I hadn't heard until last night that Lexa Doig (Rommie) married Michael Shanks (Daniel Jackson). This amuses me greatly. They shall spawn many good looking, but tiny, minions to carry on the sci-fi torch.

And am I the only one that heard "Terra Z (Zed)" and not "Tarazed"?

In the news

Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:23:43 GMT

I was interviewed for an article in The Daily Texan, entitled “Program fools peer-to-peer pirates”. Some of what I said made it into the article. I even got mentioned by name. Cool.

Station identification

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 03:00:56 GMT

One of the nice things about LJ is that I can go back and read about the me of two years ago. I'm still as whiney and ranty as ever, but generally I'm a better person. My temper is much more under control than it was, and I've managed to not have a psychotic break from the workload like I thought I would. However, I do notice that a great deal of my sense of humor has been deadened since then, which is sad. Hopefully I'll get it back.

The Girl called earlier to inform me that we're down to one room of the house that doesn't leak profusely. Just 6 weeks to go before graduation. To move or not to move?

Oh, and I'm old. Feh.

I want to move. Seattle. New Zealand. Something along those lines.

I'm having a strange day

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:25:46 GMT

Lately, I've been having this feeling that there's something fundamentally wrong with our society’s use of computers, and maybe technology in general. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s been eating away at me. I’m going to ramble for a bit and maybe I’ll stumble upon something.

A computer is a complex piece of electronics, similar to how a car or a jet fighter is a complex piece of machinery. When you want to drive a car or fly a jet fighter, there’s a skill and awareness verification process that you have to go through. We have this process to ensure that the people around us are aware of what might happen if they drive or fly without thought of the consequences. People can get hurt, or at the very least very inconvenienced. But computers, which are just as complex and in today’s business economy have just as much potential for mischief, destruction, and loss if not used properly, are given to anyone.

Indeed, most businesses today won’t take you unless you have a moderate amount of computer skill. But computer skill does not necessarily translate to computer awareness. A 6-year-old has the hand-eye coordination to drive a Ford Excursion, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one that understood the consequences of doing so.

Let me jump around here.

No matter how computer savvy you are, you have a mental list of who to run to if your computer starts doing something funny, right? Sure, you might try to fix it yourself, you might reboot a few times and run a virus scan, but eventually you grab a phone and dial your favorite computer guru. Do you act the same way about your car? You might, but I’d be willing to wager that most people have a much lower threshold for “okay, this is too complex, time to see a mechanic” for their car than they do for their computer. This is true even for businesses. Why is that? Are their computers somehow less important than their cars? Somehow less worthy for knowledgeable care?

I find this is the case even for businesses that simply cannot run without their computer. Whether they have a web site, online credit card processing, or are just using QuickBooks, there seems to be a general resistance to paying for technical support for their computer. They’ll pay $100 for a mechanic, but they won’t pay that much for a computer tech. They don’t wave their hands at a mechanic’s bill and say “but can’t you just, you know, make it work?” and imply that there’s a no-cost magic dust that the mechanic can sprinkle that will fix everything. And yet, I can’t tell you how often I see this when I’m contacted to fix someone’s computer.

Jumping again.

Do you have antivirus? How about anti-spam? Anti-spyware? A firewall? Are they all up to date? Do they update themselves on a regular basis? Would you know if the updates stopped for whatever reason? Do you wear your seatbelt when you drive? Does your car have airbags? Anti-lock brakes? Decent tires? Do you check your tires and your fluids regularly? I cannot tell you how many people are okay about spending $20 every other month on oil changes, $60 on tire rotations every 6 months, etc, but then won’t pay $40/year for one package that gives them a firewall with antivirus, anti-spam, anti-spyware, and free automagic nightly updates. (Oh, and dear God, don’t buy any Norton or Symantec product. A vast majority of my time is spent recovering computers that have Norton Antivirus installed and are teeming with viruses.)

But wait, you say. That’s way too much for me to worry about. I don’t want to care about that stuff. I don’t want to care about my oil or tires, that’s why I drop it off at the shop on a regular basis. Same goes for computers. They should just work.

Fine. Get a mechanic. Pay him to drop by every other month and make sure you are doing okay. When he says you need to fork over $40 for an upgrade to your software, you’re allowed to grimace, but just like replacing your timing belt you will eventually realize that it will save you from major work later on. And each night you can go to sleep comfortable knowing that your computer isn’t spamming your friends with viruses and isn’t being used by the Russian Mafia to break into NASA. All for less than you pay to maintain your car.

The circle of life at work

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 23:40:28 GMT

There is a pattern that every one of my jobs has followed:

Interview. I usually need to hype myself up enough so that my prospective employer will trade my decade-plus of work experience for my lack of degree. This part is generally amusing.
Start. The first few weeks/months generally involve me fixing what they have that is in some way broken. I'm a good fixer because I love solving problems, I'm a quick study, and I've got a pretty broad range of skills applicable to my field. (That is, not a one-trick pony.) This part is generally informative.
Grind. After I've put out all the fires and fixed all the important stuff, I get eased into actually developing new things. This part is generally fun.
Exposure. After I finish my first real project, someone sees my firefighting skills and development skills and realizes that I'm not a complete moron, despite my lack of degree and my age. People start asking me questions, and it's rare that I'm stumped. This part is generally ego-building.
Overexposure. Pretty much everyone figures out that I'm an information resource and am good for more than just code-monkey work. I start spending more time answering questions and solving problems outside the scope of programming or development. This part is generally foreboding.
Reproach. My direct manager sees that my development productivity has come almost to a halt due to being a resource for everyone. I get yelled at. Often. Yet, my attempts to stay productive, for example by working offset shifts (to have part of my day as a resource and part alone to develop), don't work when everyone realizes that my knowledge has somehow become critical to the business. No solution is offered or accepted. Because I was hired as a programmer, I keep getting in trouble as deadlines slip. This part is generally depressing.
Departure. I either get fired or quit. I hate being nonproductive and all my attempts to stay productive are usually cast down in favor of me being an information source. This part is generally ego-crushing.

It's inevitable. And, it's depressing as all get-out. Is this how all programmers work? I can't believe that's the case. How do programmers avoid becoming non-programmers? My theory is that the sterotypical programmer is fat, smelly, and anti-social for a reason. It's not that they can't fix those things, it's that they trade those things for some peace and quiet and the ability to just work.

My day job is on late step 6. My weekend job is on early step 5.

School is teh suck.

Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:52:28 GMT

My psych prof keeps butchering words:

MC Escher: eish-ner
amygdala: uh-mig-lee-uh
axon: aks-ee-on

There have been more, but my brain has been actively removing them from my memory in an attempt to stay sane. This does not reinforce my faith in education.

Monkey Business

Tue, 07 Dec 2004 20:04:27 GMT

View Poll: Monkey Business

Today's moment of zen stars ... Anna Nicole Smith?

Tue, 30 Nov 2004 23:08:42 GMT

It's funny ... for every stupid fascist thing I see on the news that makes me want to move to some other country, I have a day like today.

I just had a meeting with a guy who used to play pro soccer in Chile and Brazil. (We host and develop a few of his web sites for him.) He retired and moved here to do what retired sports pros do: coach youth soccer, organize sporting events, et cetera. When he came here 3 years ago, he didn't speak a word of English. What he speaks now is pretty close to intelligible, and he learns it by taking his laptop and watching DVDs every night before he goes to bed. Bad B-movies, like Skyscraper with Anna Nicole Smith, and the other stuff you find in the $3 bin at Wal-Mart. He watches them over and over again and understands a little more English each day. He was so proud of this that he made me watch the first 15 minutes of Skyscraper while he explained all this to me. (I then got to explain what "keep your shirt on" means.)

I had some DVDRs in my desk that I gave to him to help him out. Jackie Chan's Accidental Spy, Spider-Man 2, Goldeneye, and of course the pinnacle: Shaolin Soccer.

It's reassuring to know that not everyone in the world hates us, even though the leaders we elect give them every reason to.

Ever more Found History

Wed, 24 Nov 2004 21:09:54 GMT

I occasionally stumble across things I wrote years ago that are, of course, archived in random places on the 'net. Like this webified mailing list message in which I actually used the word "octothorpe" with a straight face. Seriously, what kind of crack was I on? Octothorpe!

Google Scholar

Thu, 18 Nov 2004 19:20:47 GMT

I just found out that I've been cited in research papers. Sort of. Go me.

You know you're getting old when ...

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 00:46:09 GMT

... you see the Star Wars Ep 3 trailer and think "eh, so what?". I guess I don't understand why everyone is creaming their jeans over this. I participated in the furor for Ep 1, I was still pretty excited to see Ep 2, but now I'm just overexposed and underentertained. Maybe this one will rock, but I just can't seem to get excited about it.