Jury Duty

I received a jury summons on October 1st- the day after my laptop was stolen. Perhaps I should include this in the list of misfortunes that took place at the end of September. I was initially excited about the prospect of fulfilling part of my civic duty, and didn't even consider trying to get out of it.
I think I wrote it best in a text to my wife: This was some podunk bumpkin bullshit. There wasn't a cafeteria on site (which I didn't expect) but they didn't even have a vending machine. The room was a former courtroom that was now occupied around the periphery with what can be best described as church pews that would make a flagellating ascetic weep. These were the least comfortable benches I've sat in, and I grew up Catholic. There was no way I would be able to use my laptop to work on my grad school essays, and if I had tried there wasn't an outlet for when the battery started to die. I managed to read about 90 pages of Tom Sawyer over the course of the day, including checking my phone every 3 minutes to see if it had enough signal for a text or email. No... someone was using all of the 3Gs. 
We watched a cheesy video about the jury selection process and our expected duties. Then we sat. We were told that a judge would come in in 15 minutes to give us an overview of the court's needs for a jury. He showed up 10 minutes late and said they had 15 cases that were going to trial. We were supposed to have heard something within about 20 minutes of his leaving. Nope. It was well over an hour before the clerk came in to announce that she was pulling 18 people for a jury. Then the old lady who sounded like she needed to be in an iron lung piped up that she didn't hear anything that was just said, because the clerk was looking away from our side of the room, and how could we be expected to hear her? So the whole thing was repeated, at volume. Goddamn.
I was selected to be one of 18 in the group of second alternates. After the initial swearing in BS the prosecutor stands up and asks us to describe to her how we can tell if a person is being honest. Are you fucking kidding me? You expect us to condense a highly complex intellectual process and a knowledge of the inherent flaws in the brain's capacity for recall (in which it can construct "truth" to fill in gaps in knowledge about an event that was witnessed and perceive the entire narrative as "true" and "factually correct") in front of other jurors, the accused, her attorney and the judge? I'll just say there wasn't a lot of light shed on the topic, but fortunately I wasn't called on to answer. I was able to get out of being on the jury when she asked if there were any people who did not like the Wal*Mart corporation, and then asked if we thought out dislike for the company could prevent us from being unbiased. The judge seemed incredulous that my distaste for the company ran so deeply that I would be unable to determine the guilt of an person accused of shoplifting from the establishment- but there it is. If she DID do it, and it hurt that store's bottom line such that it might possible be shut down, then more power to her.
I went back to the jury holding pen and waited for about another 45 minutes before we were dismissed. It was just under 4 hours, but it honestly felt like we were in there all day.

FF XIV

So there's a brista at the 'bux in my building who has been haranguing me about picking up a copy of Final Fantasy XIV- going on and on about the graphics, the gameplay, etc. Over the weekend I broke down and downloaded the hardware test. Per their website, 1500 points is the bare minimum (and they recommend finding a way to alter the settings for smoother game play). 2000 is the lowest recommended. It goes all the way up to 6000, 7000, 8000 which all basically say "your system kicks ass, you pimp ass mofo."

The machine I have at home is that Vaio, i5 540M (2.53 Ghz w/turbo), 6GB RAM, 1GB VRAM on an ATI card (yeah, I wanted the Nvidia, but the E-series laptops didn't come with them) pushing to a 1080P screen.

My total points when running in 1080 res: 743. That's not a typo- seven hundred forty-three.
My total points when running in 780 res: 1490.

I know my machine wasn't designed to be a kick ass games box or anything, but Jeeee-zus! Then I found out that it won't be coming to X360 because of the network structure of XBL. if I want FF XIV I will need to shell out for a PS3, the game and whatever monthly fees are being leveraged.

I think I'll go back to my Dragon Age restart and BioShock2.

"f.e." WTF?!

I've seen "f.e." used several times in the past week. I assume it is supposed to mean "for example."  Guess what folks, we have proper terms when you need to give an example. "I.e." is the abbreviation for id est which can be loosely translated as "I explain" which is remarkable! Id est and "I explain" mean the same thing AND have the same abbreviation. So no need for "f.e." if you're trying to explain something.

The other is "e.g." exempli gratia which can be loosely translated as "example given." Hey! Waddayaknow? Exempli gratia and "example given" are both abbreviated e.g. Again, no need for "f.e."

So how are they used? If you need to explain something further use i.e. (i.e. if you need to explain how to use "i.e.") If you need to give an example of something, use "e.g." (i.e. if you need to explain something by way of a list). You could write something like, "There are a lot of crappy MP3s saved to that folder (e.g. Justin Beiber's entire catalog) I recommend we start from scratch."

Please, no more "f.e."

This is why we need historians

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/19/AR2010101907974.html?hpid=topnews (via Slate)

A textbook distributed to Virginia fourth-graders says that thousands of African Americans fought for the South during the Civil War -- a claim rejected by most historians but often made by groups seeking to play down slavery's role as a cause of the conflict.
...
The issues first came to light after College of William & Mary historian Carol Sheriff opened her daughter's copy of "Our Virginia" and saw the reference to black Confederate soldiers.
"It's disconcerting that the next generation is being taught history based on an unfounded claim instead of accepted scholarship," Sheriff said. "It concerns me not just as a professional historian but as a parent."
...
When Masoff began work on the textbook, she said she consulted a variety of sources -- history books, experts and the Internet. But when it came to one of the Civil War's most controversial themes -- the role of African Americans in the Confederacy -- she relied primarily on an Internet search.
...
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson of Princeton University said, "These Confederate heritage groups have been making this claim for years as a way of purging their cause of its association with slavery."
...
Five Ponds Press has published 14 books that are used in the Virginia public school system, all of them written by Masoff.
Masoff also wrote "Oh Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty" and "Oh Yikes! History's Grossest Moments."

And I think this qualifies for an entry in the update of that second title.

The hazards of dropping a class

It's minimal, but kinda funny. I was originally slated to finish all of my classes in May of this year, making me a Spring semeter graduate. Well, I dropped that sociology class in fall 09 so I had to take one class over Summer, making me a Summer graduate. This makes me eligible for the December commencement. But I was also eligible for Spring commencement, which I went to. I guess it just strikes me as funny that I'm getting more emails about commencement now that I'm graduated than I did before I went to Spring commencement.

I should be so lucky...

From: http://www.thelocal.se/29636/20101015/

...when he returned a short time later, the bag was missing, along with the computer, keys, calendar and other documents inside.

The professor was most upset by the loss of his calendar.

"It is my life. I have documented everything in it that has happened in the last 10 years and beyond," he told the newspaper.

...

About a week after the theft, the professor returned home to find an envelope containing a USB memory stick which had been taken along with the computer.

The professor was shocked to discover the thief had copied all the documents and personal files from his laptop to the memory storage device, a process which likely took hours.

And the asshat who stole my computer wouldn't even need to do that much- he just has to drop that little red drive in the mail. Part of the reason I was carrying my laptop on the 30th was to do a backup of the projects I've been working on.

But, hopefully never again. I've been backing up everything I've been working on on the network drive. The web access program is junk and I don't want to set it up as an FTP server so I guess I'm stuck with leaving it on the local network. But still, I can access it on any computer on said network. I may buy another network drive that has reliable web interface software, and then use the current network drive as a RAID0 (manual) backup drive.

Laptop en route

The original ship date for my new laptop was 10/14 and was supposed to have "two day" expedited shipping. They didn't even charge my card until Friday and the FedEx update shows that it will be delivered this Friday. So that's like 5 biz days in transit from China (providing the goddamned boat doesn't sink).

I hate waiting for shipped items, and I don't think I'll ever be satisfied with the process until there are GPS tracking devices in the boxes so I can watch their progress real-time. I mean, I'm that obsessive anyway, I might as well get to see some progress.

This about sums it up...

The Difference Between a Slot Machine and a Voting Machine:

(h/t Punditkitchen.com)

nonsense comparisons

I've had to look at buying a new laptop because my backpack was stolen about 10 days ago. I ended up purchasing a Vaio EC because I liked the Sony that had been stolen, and the EC has features I was looking for (notably the discreet graphics and a larger screen because sometimes we stream Netflix away from home). While doing my research I ran across this review in which the conclusion reads:
we can't help but look at the better Core i3 and Blu-ray deals to be had. For instance, the $800 Gateway NV79C35u has the same Core i3 processor and Blu-ray drive as the EC, though it doesn't have discrete graphics. There's also the Core i7-powered Dell Studio 17 with a Blu-ray drive and ATI graphics for $949 at Best Buy.

The introductory paragrpah lets us know that: it's got a Core i3 processor, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 graphics card, 4GB of RAM, 500GB of storage and a Blu-ray drive. For $949.99

So they're going to compare the $800 machine to the EC, and give the Gateway* the advantage because of price, despite the fact that it only has the onboard graphics? Why?! The whole point of a 17.3" computer is to run multimedia and games, and last I checked the onboard graphics cards can't run full HD (they don't discuss the screen res of the Gateway, either) and certainly won't run any modern games. The tested EC has the 1600x900 widescreen and Gateway's site says their machine is the same. Yes, I would pay another $150 for a better graphics card. In fact I paid an extra $100 on top of this to get the best card available on this machine.

The Dell is a better machine -IF- the build info is accurate, and has a processor that Sony doesn't even offer. I would like to have seen the item # on that to take a closer look. I have a tendency to take what I like from one item and give it to another item in my head, making this super hybrid thing. What I'm saying is, that without an item # he may have taken the i7 processor off of one machine and "given" it to the 17" Dell. Trying to build one on the Dell site shows that the least expensive 17" notebook with an i7 processor is $1069 (the Vostro 3700 in their business class machines). It's possible that this was on sale earlier this year for $120 below the website prices, but with the i7 being brand new for 2010 (and being super expensive to produce becasue of the updated quad-core technology) I think the endgadget guy messed up.

I guess I'm trying to defend my purchase, I think we all do that (c'mon X360/PS3 fanboys, you know you do it, too). But more than that, I'm calling BS on reviews that try to compare a product to another, when the other product isn't really the same thing (or, in the case of the Dell, probably doesn't exist). In the case of this article it comes off (to me) like Vaio bashing.


*the Mrs and I are in agreement that we won't ever own a Gateway. They used to make passable PCs but they never made a decent laptop. I think we know a person (or this may be worse, we know a person who knows a person) who bought one and it basically never worked right.

Public History? this is why

Slate has been running a piece about one of their author's 10 day journey to see as many Civil War battlefields as he can. It's a great series, but his comments about Gettysburg really reinfoced why I want to get involved with public history:

To be honest, my friends and I are exhausted at this point, worn down by 10 straight days of rigorous sightseeing. Yet even in our depleted state, being here—standing where Pickett stood as his men charged to their deaths, or where Joshua L. Chamberlain ordered the 20^th Maine Regiment to repulse the Rebel assault on Little Round Top with bayonets—brings on that now familiar feeling of having experienced history not just intellectually but physically and emotionally

Read the whole series (it's not long) here.

Verizon, AT&T, and the iPhone

You thought I was done talking about phones, didn't you? Today it was announced that Verizon would be getting an iPhone sometime in 2011. I haven't heard if that means no more iPhones at AT&T or what, but I did read that the CEO of VZW said they wanted to wait for a 4G phone because that's what they're transitioning to. These won't be available until 3Q or later. This is approximately the same time my AT&T contract expires. Come November I'll have to decide on a new carrier. I will probably go with an iPhone, despite my not wanting to be another clone.
I like my Tilt2. I like the keyboard. I don't like that the Windows OS is just as bloated as Win 3.1 was, so I constantly have 68% or more of my RAM eaten up by the OS. It's kinda slow sometimes. It's very reminiscent of the mid-90s working on a PC. I don't like that I had to have a charger made out of spare parts at the ATT store like it was a Radio Shack in the mid-90s. I don't like that I can't get decent apps.

I also don't like that every other phone out there is being steamrolled by the iPhone. I'm tired of being left behind, so I may have to become an iClone next year. But by then I'll REALLY be broke and in a grad program... maybe a new phone can wait (if this one isn't broken).

Foreign Language Requirements

What gives? Why do these still exist? Let me lay this one out for you.

I am told that I need to satisfy a foreign language requirement.

I am told that I should finish within my first year.

I am told that the language I choose should be something perhaps possibly maybe relevant to my field of study later on in life.

I am told there is a class that rhymes with Blanish Mixhundred that has students studying all semester to translate a 500-word essay that will then satisfy the foreign language requirement, and that basically everyone does this.

Total fucking disconnect between intent and delivery. Why does this loophole exist? If they seriously want you to learn a language, why do they offer this "out?" I know why, because foreign language requirements are just another archaic, leftover piece of education from the days when people at Harvard and Yale were all forced to learn Latin and Greek. We stopped learning the classics and yet gripped that need for learning a different language. No one coming out of this program learns a language, yet they all passed the foreign language requirement. Yeah, that makes sense.

Jesus fuck just let us not have to worry about it - we got enough on our plates.

Dodged a bullet

Well my stupid car insurance company refused to roll the wife's broken window and my lost keys into the same claim- despite the fact that if these were someone else's keys they probably would be covered. So tonight we were determined to find the spare key (again, we searched all the places we could think of on Friday and Saturday, with no luck). I was looking through tool boxes, drawers in the shop and was about to head out to the shed when the wife came out in the garage- guess what? She found the valet key! I saw the ring that it was on on Sunday, but didn't think my key was on the ring because I was looking for a rubber grip.  But this is awesome, now I don't have to pay for towing to the dealership.
This was immediately followed by "I wonder..." and she went into her jewelry box and pulled out a little rectangle of metal about 3/4 x 1/4 inch, with five numbers stamped on it. "Is this for your car? Or my daughter's?" Holy crap- I think we have the program code for my car! That means I can have keys made without needing a reprogram, which means no needing to pay the mandatory $30 fee that gets attached to all services (which is apparently attached to the reprogramming of the ECU).

Thanks to everyone who has been sympathetic and wished us well. It sucks very much to deal with the insurance company on this and we're not done yet.

Well, it ain't all bad...

Last week sucked, no question. The weekend wasn't spectacular, either. But today I haven't had to pay for coffee at the starbucks in my building, and the manager of the sandwhich place we frequent bought me lunch. So I'm grateful for that.

Whom. Did I. Piss. Off?!

I cannot believe the shitstorm that has been flying around here the past 10 days. This is less of a complaint entry than it is a recording of events.
9/20- paid balance on home repairs. The bathroom floor in the hallway was nearly rotted away and the south wall's siding was starting to crumble. For this, we tapped our HELOC and savings leaving us with no cushoin.
9/24- My wife wakes me up to tell me I need to take a shower- we'll be late for work. When I get out, I ask her if she knows why I just took a lukewarm shower. No idea. We walked out to the garage and heard a "pssssst" along with a slapping sound. The water heater shat the bed, as the phrase goes. $1500 after the plumber got done with it. The worst part was when our neighbor the commercial plumber (whom we rarely see anymore) came running into the garage asking why we hired a plumber- he said he would have done it for just his cost of the heater- about $300. Damnit.
9/30- After vacillating for a couple of days, the Mrs and I decide we'll actually go to this play that she got free tickets for. We paid for parking, went to the MetroMarket (or whatever it was called) for a dinner out of the deli, and then went to the play. I left my backpack on the floorboard of the back seat, covered with a jacket and the windows in my wife's car are deeply tinted. When we got out the wife's car's window was smashed and my backpack was stolen. Only my backpack. They left her international Blackberry, her backpack, leather jackets and left the glove box alone. On this occasion I had my laptop in my backpack. With my backup drive. And my keys, phone charger, knife, flashlight, binoculars... So far the list of items just in the backpack is at $2500 for replacement. Plus the $350 for the wife's window, plus $500 for the deductible.
The car key has been ridiculous. First I thought it wouldn't be a problem- we had a spare key on a ring in the wife's car's glove box. But when we went to get said spare- it wasn't there. The ring was there. But my key wasn't. The wife was talking to our insurance adjuster this morning and it looks like neither the homeowner's policy (which is supposed to take care of everything that was in the backpack) nor the automotive policy (which I've been paying on monthly, despite having put less than 8000 miles on my car in the last two years) is going to cover it. The dealership said I would have to tow the car to them and then it would cost $500 to have new keys made.
Because I had both the laptop AND backup drive in the same place, I lost everything that I didn't back up on the old backup drive, which was last backed up in May. So all of the work I've done on my contract project is gone. Photos from graduation, our vacation, the wife's granddaughter- gone. All of the work I did in my last two semesters- gone. And that's what has me the most pissed off about this, I can make more money (well, sort of) and I can have the equipment replaced. But the information is just gone.
10/1- Spent most of the day at home trying to sort out what I'm going to do about the lost stuff. My bank didn't seem too concerned. Finding a charger for my phone was a bit of a chore- the guy at the AT&T store had to piece together some Motorola parts for my HTC. I tried to work on my contract project, but couldn't focus on it enough. I picked up the Mrs from work and when we came home she put on a load of laundry. While we were talking in the garage the goddamned washing machine stopped running. Seriously. I noticed that the light on our chest freezer was out, too. The whole circuit decided to stop working. For like no reason. The breaker wasn't tripped. There was no indication that anything was wrong.
10/2- On a hunch I went to Lowe's and bought some new outlets. I came home and changed the two sockets in the garage. Bingo! Something has finally gone right. That shit started working immediately.

So far the best/worst part has been a friend that I told about this. Her response was that it was my fault for leaving anything valuable in a car in downtown Seattle. I told her that response makes about as much sense as my telling her that we should also be blamed for having our house get broken into a few years ago- how dare we leave valuables in a locked home? What were we thinking? It's not like I left the pack on the seat, with the door open. Even the insurance adjuster said she leaves stuff in her car with a dark jacket over it. Lesson learned, I guess. The next time I go anywhere I'll take my pack with me, and I'll buy an extra seat for it at the movies. Not that I plan to ever go out again. I think being a shut in with a clean, loaded gun is probably the best way to live.