Constant Contrarian

Holier-that-thou Foodies

2011-11-03T10:52:00.000-07:00

It's the end of hunting season (actually bow is starting back up) so the "I hate hunting" crowd has surfaced once again. Apparently these people are actually air ferns and can subsist only on the moisture in the air, and emit only life giving oxygen as a byproduct of their respiration. But I'm going to assume that plants don't have facebook (yet).
So here's the quick-and-dirty: meat comes from animals (shocking, I know). For thousands and thousands of years a select group of people in a village (though sometimes an entire village might participate, depending on size and the difficulty of the method) would go out every day to look for animals. Were they curious about the critters around them? Did they all have biology degrees and were cataloging the fauna? No, they were looking for food. And they weren't looking to find out what those critters were eating, these people wanted to eat the critter! Fast forward to animal domestication, then to the more modern era. This is still happening, except we have delineated the boundaries of the habitat and have stocked said habitat with animals that we find useful-- e.g. cows. These cows provide food products (milk) and additional cows. They also provide meat. Getting the meat from the cow requires that the cow no longer be alive.
Those who are anti-hunting but are also munching on a roast beef sandwich are either impossibly ignorant or practiced at the art of self-deception.

Without linking the the article in question (use your Google skills), I will reference Steven Davis' work out of Oregon State U. His stated goal was to determine whether there are more animals killed per acre for plant harvest than are killed every year for human consumption. His initial findings were that approx 0.3 billion animal lives could be spared if Americans only ate meat (chickens account for a whopping 8 billion animal deaths, a logical conclusion would be that eating only cows would result in even fewer animal deaths). His findings were, not surprisingly, controversial and after some modifications to his method, the data showed that vegetarianism was slightly better than all-meat from the "fewest deaths so people can live" perspective.
But here's my point: even for vegetarians, death is required for life. Animals die directly from harvest practices, or die during the relocation after their home has been destroyed. If anyone thinks that the little animals can just move to another area, I encourage you to come out to Pullman to experience a region with farmland as far as the eye can see. Now, when it's harvest time, how far do you think the field mouse needs to go to find another food source? If he survives the machines (which run two, three, or more abreast, with blade systems that are twenty feet long) will he survive the hawk on the phone pole waiting to pounce? If he manages to survive both of those, how long until he starves to death?
The only way to get around it is to join a food co-op in which the vegetables are all organic (no pesticides to chase all of those insects across the highway to die on my windshield before otherwise dying from neurotoxins) and hand picked (no machinery to squash animal dens).
I'm out of time on this one, but hopefully at least one anti-hunter is sitting slightly lower on their perch. All animal life must extinguish other life to continue, and this is most true for humans.

"Why Are You So Negative All the Time?"

2011-07-26T09:18:00.000-07:00

I'm not what you'd call a happy person. Frequently I'm accused of being a pessimist, and I respond that I'm simply a realist-- though I have a tendency toward projecting to the outcome of an event, so it looks like pessimism. But why? Because that's how I've been conditioned. I've tried being excited about things. I've tried "positive thinking." And what does it get me- rampant disappointment. Let's take some recent examples:

I was excited to run in the Warrior Dash that took place on July 18. Result: Achilles tendinitis that sidelined me for about 4 days on either side of the race.

I was excited to be running stairs at Greenlake with my friend Jaime, in preparation for said race. Result: my calf muscles spasmed such that I couldn't walk upright for three days.

I've had two job interview sessions that went into third interviews. Result: No offer from either, with one explanation being so bizarre that I'm convinced the exercise was a practical joke.

Grad school. Result: no reasonable funding offers (about 40% from one school on the other side of the country). I was accepted to my undergrad institution, but communication from the department was like pulling teeth, the guy who was supposed to be my advisor could clearly not give a shit less and even with the grad student bump to student loans (bringing it up to $26K a year!) that still would not be enough for me to meet my minimum financial needs. In the end I canceled my enrollment and won't be going. Note: this is one item whose result I could have had an impact on-- if I had paid another $150 to try to raise my GRE scores by taking the test a second time. That said, I got the impression that funding was too scarce and it probably wouldn't have helped anyway.

Degree. Result: about $12000 in debt on top of what I paid for the first section of my undergrad in the late 90s. Bonus- no one gives a shit that you have a bachelor's.

Belt grinder for the shop. Result: what was advertised as taking about 90 minutes took closer to 11 hours becasue of crappy instructions and some overall design issues. Bonus- a project I was working on was damaged when a part of the grinder slipped, and in the process I shaved about 1/8" off the end of my thumb.

Anvil. Result- after wrestling the 400# beast into place, I found that there was a huge sway in the back (anvils are designed to be flat working surfaces), which required that I spend hours grinding and filing to get it into useable shape. Then it turns out that the face had been "repaired" with welding stick sometime in its past, and overall it's softer than I expected. It's also far too big for my shop space, and I've given myself a few charliehorses trying to maneuver around it. Will probably be selling it as it's a disappointment and a hazard.

Motorcycle. A buddy had a Yamaha bike that needed "a little mechanical work" and he gave it to me out of desperation becasue he was moving. Result: the electrical system needed complete overhaul, I could never get it started and I ended up selling it for $100.

Truck. A boy needs a truck, right? Especially a blacksmith boy! A coworker's neighbor was selling his son's truck for $300 (1976 Ford F-150 Camper Special, so it was the F250 chassis with the F150 engine- or something like that). Managed to drive it home, taking a ferry from Kingston to Edmonds, and somehow didn't get killed; the steering coupler was totally gone, so there was a ton of "play" in the steering. Result: The timing was shot, so it took forever to get it to start, and it frequently stalled out no thanks to all of the stop signs and lighted intersections in my town. Insurance was stupidly expensive for it, too (and our adjuster would not let me only insure it on days I was driving it). After nearly $200 in parts and around a dozen hours in labor, I sold it to a neighbor who uses it on occasion.

So there are just a few of the bigger examples. I can't usually get a cup of coffee at Starbucks without at least a little of it spilling on me- I'm not kidding. My wife looked at me a couple weeks ago when I was having a -real- bad time of it and she said (I'm paraphrasing some) "you know, I thought you were just being negative all these years, but honestly, I don't know why you bother getting out of bed some days. It really does seem like nothing you've tried to do in the last several years has worked out in any kind of good way- at best you've broken even." And there you have it. The Constant Contrarian rides again!

More Helpful Career Advice

2011-07-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

Saturday night I posted to a message board that I'm active on that I had an interview yesterday. Yesterday afternoon I updated that I did not get the job, and I was (am) kinda bummed about it.

Helpful piece of advice in response:
"Maybe you can keep looking and sending out resumes."

LotR and Star Wars Are EXACTLY the Same!

2011-07-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

A fairly common question from the past few years is, "which is better: LotR or Star Wars?" Which got me thinking about them, and I think they're exactly the same:

*Protagonist is an orphan
*Protagonist encounters an elder with a reputation for mischief
*Protagonist is given an artifact from an ancient age
*Protagonist travels with a small group of companions
*Protagonist travels away from home with companions, first place they stop is a watering hole full of criminal-types
*Protagonist meets adventurer-type with a dangerous reputation at said watering hole
*Protagonist relies on adventurer as a guide
*Protagonist learns from magic-wielding elder during journey
*Part of the journey takes place inside a large, maze-like environment
*Magic-wielding elder is killed during the journey out of said maze, but is still able to interact with the boy during the journey
*Protagonist's party splits, companions are captured by elite enemy forces
*Protagonist has close-encounter with main evildoer
*Protagonist's companions manage escape from enemy forces, cause a distraction that allows...
*Protagonist drops something in a hole that undoes the power of the main evildoer
*Protagonist is permanently scarred by the journey

I'm sure there are even more general similarities, and quite a few differences, but the list of things that come to mind while I'm sitting here without either story available to watch and compare is pretty stunning. Though, I think Joseph Campbell might argue that the above is an outline for many hero stories, so I may just be noticing that the sky is blue for the first time.

Yes, I am Upset with Netflix...

2011-07-14T10:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, it will only cost me another $5 a month for my plan--BUT the service kinda sucks and there's not even a nod toward fixing it. If the streaming service wasn't primarily old Steven Seagal movies that I already get on HBO I probably wouldn't be so mad. But the hike is for DVDs you say? Sometimes, by the time I wait for a DVD to be available and shipped to me, I've forgotten why I wanted it in the first place-- probably because of some avant garde piece in Salon touting the cinematic virtues of 1952's 'Watching Grass Grow and Other Tales of Forbidden Romance.' why did I want to watch that again? Oh yeah, Hitchcock directs the corpse of Robert E Lee to an Academy Award nominated performance.... But now I can't seem to care. And there's no promise/guarantee/discussion from Netflix that they have any intention of using the revenue garnered from the DVD plan increases to improve their streaming service, or any service for that matter. I mean seriously- I can get 'AlienS' and fucking the stupid ass theatrical release of 'Blade Runner' but if I want the good shit, like a 5 hour ultimate brain-drain director's floor-sweepings-cut of 'Blade Runner' then I have to wait for that shit on DVD. And they have like one copy in the whole system, so I have a 'very long wait' which means by the time the damned thing shows up I don't feel like I HAVE 5 hours to sit there watching unnecessary camera holds on a fictitious futuristic LA. Will paying another $5 a month mean I get these DVDs faster? Does it mean I won't even have to wait for a DVD?

Dear "Homeless" Guy

2011-07-14T08:56:00.000-07:00

What's wrong with this picture:
Clean New Balance shoes.
Crisp jeans, with what appears to be the remnant of a crease.
Hilfiger fleece jacket.
Patriots team-store hat with the hologram under the brim.
Handwritten sign that reads, "anything helps."
<Brrrrraaaaaaap> Oh, there it is. This guy is dressed more expensively than I am (I didn't see his watch) but he's got the stones to stand on the street corner asking for a handout. Nope. You gotta do -something- to get a buck off of me. I don't care if you're sitting there selling shitty sketches of the streetcorner for a dollar. Do something. Play two cords on the guitar. Play the goddamned spoons (maybe you'll get a song written about you). I really don't care, but you're not getting a free dollar.

Medical Insurance is not really "optional"

2011-06-24T13:15:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I bothered, but I read the user comments on a blog post the other night. The conversation turned toward healthcare, then medical insurance. One poster said she was paying $650 per month for her and her husband, as they are small business owners and have to provide their own coveage. She hinted that the coverage isn't spectacular, and did say that she was traveling 70 miles to see a dentist who is covered by her plan.
The "fiscal conservatives" chimed in with genius comments such as:
"That's not healthcare rationing! You have healthcare!"
"You don't need insurance! It's a scam! Just save your monthly premiums and pay out of pocket"

Those are the two that reall stuck with me. First, how is this NOT healthcare rationing? There are clearly other dentists available. Only certain dentists will take her insurance, and I'll bet that those who are on plan, but won't see her, won't see her becasue the plan doesn't pay very well and they may already be caring for others on the same plan. This is textbook healthcare rationing.

Second, health insurance is not optional, and the folks who claim it is have never had, or known, anyone with even a minor, chronic medical condition. I believe the surgery related costs for my wife's knee replacement surgery was near $60,000- and that doesn't count the dozens of doctor visits before she got the OK for surgery, nor the horribly-failed orthoscopic knee surgery that put her on the path for a total knee replacement, nor the after care, nor the prescription meds before and after the surgery... So let's just look at that.
My company tells me that their out of pocket for my health plan is about $530 per month, and I believe my wife's is the same (I know it would cost us $550 per month if I were to be covered on her plan, and even then the benefits are reduced). So let's say we take the higher number from above -- $650 -- and put that in savings every month. How long would we have to save to pay for that knee?
$60,000/$650 per month = 93 months (rounding up). 93 months is 7 years 8 months. And that's just for the ONE procedure. So anyone who thinks having medical insurance is optional is some kind of PollyAnna.

Now if they were arguing for a return to a pay-for-service model, with no insurance intervention, and providers charging fees in a competitive marketplace-- then we're talking about a different game. I was talking to a doctor in a clinic that I worked in, and she said she knew a doctor in Colorado a couple decades ago who worked near a ski resort on a cash-only basis. He charged like $30 for a visit, and you were basically seeing him becasue you twisted your knee in a mogul field and needed a Rx for pain meds. He kept no records, had low overhead and a non-recurring patient base. In that scenario it works. But I can't see that working if a poor or low-middle class family has a couple of kids. $30 per visit for two kids is going to add up fast, so now we need to discuss a sliding scale....

I love pat answers from chuckleheads in blog comments.

Ryan Dunn Dead... BFD

2011-06-20T21:10:00.000-07:00

Well #200 here at the ol' Contrarian needed some "wow" factor, and think this is it. Ryan Dunn, the fuzzy guy from the 'Jackass' franchise, died in a car crash on Sunday night-- just a few hours after Tweeting pics of him and some friends drinking. And I'm left wondering WHY THE HELL SO MANY PEOPLE ARE UPSET ABOUT THIS?!?!!?!
Caveat: I'm clearly not so insensitive to include his friends and family in this rant. Surely losing someone who's close to you is traumatic, regardless of how they lived or died.
But to the rest of you on the interwebtubes who only knew this guy from TV and on film- knock it the shit off. The guy's lasting impact on society is getting paid ridiculous amounts of money for being drunk on camera, then dying when he was likely drunk and driving. What are you people mourning? I mean shit, 60% of you people should be glad there's a job opening for a blackout drunk. And really, I can't muster much more incredulity than I've already posted. This guy wasn't even a blip on my radar when I was watching the movies he was paid boatloads of money to stand around for. . .

EDIT: June 22- AP just confirmed that Dunn's blood alcohol was twice the Pennsylvania limit for a DUI. And he may have been going as fast as 140MPH... AND--- AND! The article states there was a passenger who also died. This is the first I've heard of this, whcih makes me even mroe sick about this story. The headlines SHOULD read something like "Ryan Dunn of Jackass fame, kills passenger in car during drunk driving wreck" rather than all of the eulogizing that's been going on for him. RIP Zachary Hartwell, your family and friends have my condolences.

EDIT: June 23- article/discussion at Slate's "Brow Beat" blog: http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2011/06/22/defending-roger-ebert.aspx

Anti-Gay Starbucks

2011-06-15T14:10:00.000-07:00

So it's all over the interwebs today (less so yesterday) that a *$ location in NYC fired an employee in front of a customer. That's about the only fact that I'm safe agreeing with as far as this story goes. Was it becasue the dude is gay? The lesbian blogger who wrote the letter, and whose partner posted it to her blog, is fair certain that's the reason. Have we heard from the employee? Nope. What about the manager and staff of that location? Nope. What about another customer? Nope, and I would find it hard to believe that a Starbucks is only going to have one customer. So what we're left with is one person's open letter to Starbucks Corporate-- one person who didn't indicate that she was there for the start of the altercation, and didn't bother to ask the former employee what had happened after they both left the store (she followed him out)-- she assumes it was becasue he's gay becasue of the "anti-gay slurs" that the three crones at this location used after they ganged up on him.

Of course news oultets are leading with headlines such as "Starbucks Accused of Anti-Gay Behavior" (Seattle P-I 6/15/11 online)... which really magnifies the problem way out of proportion. The manager at the NYC location is a manager of one location. IF, I repeat IF this incident occured in the manner described, then it's one store that's at issue and the manager is an asshole, if for no other reason than dealing with this on the floor instead of in an office (but "Jeffrey" should be pretty damned glad his manager was thoughtless in every conceivable way or we wouldn't be talking about this). It's not like Howard Schultz inlcuded a chapter in his book entitled "The Gay Problem- and How to Deal with it." I first heard about this from Starbucks' FaceBook feed, so they're not shrinking from the negative publicity.

I guess all I'm saying is, this is a great example of the media getting a hold of a story and really making as much out of it as they possibly can. And it also shows the power of blogging, while the other side of the same coin is the utter lack of context and perspective.

App Store

2011-05-24T12:12:00.000-07:00

I love the app store, or rather I love the reviews in the app store. For example, I just read a review of a FREE app and the review gave it 1 star. Why? Becasue the app writer had the audacity to want to charge $10 to unlock the functionality that would allow the user to export his data to an email. Consider that for a second- you have a program that is supposed to do one thing (in this case, read bar codes and help track inventory) and you have access to all of that information for free. The developer knows that the useful part of the application is being able to share that info, and that's what they charge you for. You know the program works and does what you need it to in terms of its overall function. Why get mad when the dev is trying to (gasp!) make money from software he developed? Do you hate 'Merica? Are you one-a them communists? No? Then pay for the functionality in your goddamned app!

Not necessarily contrarian...

2011-05-16T23:34:00.001-07:00

Rather, a reminder that no one starts out at the top (ok, a select few Mozart's out there start out on top, but without them we'd have no haterade, so drink up.....)

This was posted at Don Fogg's bladesmith forums by Alan Longmire, attributed to Ira Glass:

What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

http://youtu.be/BI23U7U2aUY

A word on Productivity

2011-05-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

I recently drank the Apple flavor-aid and bought an iPhone 4 to replace my Tilt2. Part of what drove my decision is my employer's decision to throttle back our internet access. It appears that our servers could not handle the streaming traffic from the recent NCAA basketball finals, so many sites that have streaming audio/video are no longer available, notably Pandora and Grooveshark. In a bizarre twist, I can still sometimes get to Facebook and YouTube is wide open. Seriously, WTF?

I can't begin to tell you how much more I'm getting donw during my workday simply becasue I don't have to fight the technology at my disposal to do something simple, like check my email. I have two domains through Yahoo so I have three email accounts that are accessible from the same menu. It's painfully slow to get to the domain emails, and my old-as-hell Yahoo account is practically unusable from work. When I want a quick FB update I have about a 30% success rate, and of course I F5 the shit out of that page trying to get it to connect. Even Slate.com is too robust for our network (or maybe my 7 year old computer... SEVEN!) and I can't even get the main page to load properly.
*Slate on the phone. Yep. I'm not even using their app (which can't really be any better than opening the page in Safari or checking my Twitter feed).
*Pandora? There's an app.
*Grooveshark. Big neg on that, mostly becasue I think the way they're set up is that you stream music from other people's computers, so it's like a torrent site that doesn't let you keep the tracks. Anyway, Apple has said no to thier app and it won't run in Safari.
*Email- I have four accounts pushed to my phone. I just have to look at it to know if I have email- that is SOOO much faster.
*FB- the app is pretty good. And since I don't play games on there anymore or use their "services" it does what I need it to.

So I'm not here to hand you a cup of what I'm drinking vis a vis the iPhone, the point is that now I don't have to waste time trying to do simple tasks. Instead of 5 minutes to discover that I have no email, it takes 2 seconds. And if I have something that requires a reply, then I can open that particular account. I know employers' gut reaction is to try to control their employees as much as possible, but I'm not an n=1 example of productivity increasing when employees are allowed to blow off steam during the work day. If I feel like it later I may try to dig up some articles I recall reading about the topic. Certainly those who are on chat for half the day or can't get off FB to do any work are a problem. But I can't believe that Pandora is so demanding or is such a threat that it should be restricted.

Commercial for low testosterone

2011-04-27T11:22:00.000-07:00

My first thought after seeing a commercial about getting your test levels checked was "awesome- anabolics from the doc!" which I know is BS and the product they're selling probably only works if you're watching porn all day when you're not lifting weights or killing things. My second thought was "wow- the symptoms: depression, moodiness, lack of motivation/low energy, weight gain/difficulty with loss, sexual disfunction... all sound a lot like vitamin-D deficiency." How do I know? I've been having all of the moodiness/motivation/weight loss issues even though I've been working out and eating a good diet. I had my doc check my vitamin-D and I'm still low, despite taking 10000 IU every day (yes, ten thousand units) for the past five weeks. So what's the recommendation? up the D intake, and pray for sun- seriously, that's what the doc said.

Howard Schultz's book....

2011-04-20T12:23:00.001-07:00

It's supposed to be about how he saved Starbucks from obscurity or whatever. Is there a chapter dedicated to his fight to save the SuperSonics? (Answer: no). Maybe that will be his followup besteseller (Answer: doubtful).

Just sayin....

You Paleo, bro? AFK has some options

2011-03-26T21:22:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I haven't posted about AFK Tavern in a while is that I simply haven't been here. The Mrs went gluten free last year and I followed suit in January (for the most part) and it's hard to go to a burger joint when you're avoiding wheat. But we're back tonight and I have my paleo/primal/carnivore report.
Eating paleo can be done here (here's the menu). The most obvious choice is a burger without a bun, and my weapon of choice tonight is the Orc Burger ($13) plus swiss (+$1), plus a "normal" patty (+$2), minus the bun (-$0, no shit). They sent it out with some wussy lettuce on either side of this pile of meat, but it's exactly what a hungry carnivore needs: half pound patty (pre cooked weight ;) ), thick slice of ham (1/8" or so), a slice of salami (it covers the huge Orc patty!) and two slices of medium thick bacon. Yes, I added more meat, then added cheese (this is not standard on the Orc). In case I haven't mentioned this before, a single Orc patty takes 12-13 minutes to cook. Come hungry, but stay cool. I also subbed
SWEET POTATO FRIES!! for the regular fries or side salad. Nice. Basic. Waffle cut sweet potatoes fried in oil. No batter. I didn't taste much salt. I didn't dip them in anything, that would be sacrilege.

The "chef's salad." Apparently this is a typo and they meant to call it a "house" salad. It's not a chef's or cobb salad in that there is no cheese, no egg, no tomato, and you can choose either ham or turkey. So it was a little confusing, but it works if you're avoiding wheat, nuts and legumes. A little spendy at $8, considering it was mostly iceberg lettuce.

You're assed out on: all the sides. No chili cheese tots/fries; no mozz stix; no onion rings... suck! No pasta dishes, but you didn't want those

So what else is there for the modern day caveman? The Dragon burger ($10) (spicy, has cheese); The Normal burger ($9); Toadstool's Revenge burger ($12) (huge portobello mushroom cap, swiss, meat); the ULT ($9) (Unicorn, lettuce, tomato) for those who are eating nightshades, cheese (provolone) and unicorn bacon; and finally the Grilled Beast- a filet mignon wrapped in unicorn bacon- a steal at $22 (which is a pretty good price for even a mediocre mignon, from what I've seen on menus). The modified versions of the following will work, too: Druid Delight($10)/Blighter(+$4): cucumbers, tomatoes, spinach, avocado, hummus (if you eat chickpeas) and the Blighter mod adds "lots of bacon;" Princess Zelda's Other Triforce ($9)/Sheik's Chain(+$6): cucumbers, cream cheese (if you're eating dairy), avocado - listed on a grilled ciabatta, but you're gonna make them toss that shit in the garbage - and the Sheik's Chain mod adds bacon and grilled chicken.

So enjoy a vodka/soda (bring ID, sucka!), have a bunless burger, and play some street fighter somewhere besides your sweaty recliner.

Helpful Advice...

2011-03-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

So I am once again attempting to battle the Job Search Troll. Thus far, in response to my call for assistance in where to look for trolls to slay, I have been given this piece of helpful advice:

Figure out what field you want to work in, find companies online who are in that field, go to their jobs listings and apply.

I am fucking dooooomed!

Quick English Lesson: affect/effect

2011-03-11T16:51:00.000-08:00

Jesus God. The earthquake/tsunami in Japan is a true tragedy. The video feeds from CNN and NHK were actually difficult for my jaded ass to watch on Thursday night. But, following in the wake of that tragedy is a metric fuckton of people showing support for those "effected" by the disaster.

Fuck. Me.

Alright folks, without getting into a bunch of language jargon that you wouldn't appreciate anyway, here it is in a nutshell: disaster victims are Affected by said disaster, and an Effect of a disaster is destroyed buildings. Verb. Noun. I don't expect you to want to understand the nuances, but you've been schooled, so I expect you to use the right goddamned word!

More IT ridiculousness

2011-03-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

I know that bitching about your employer can come back to bite you in the ass. But I just can't let this bullshit slide. Yahoo is blocked as "portals/search engines" by the websenseless in my office. There just are not words...

"If he's innocent why doesn't he turn himself in...?"

2011-02-24T09:05:00.000-08:00

The title of today's piece is heard pretty frequently, but it's brought to mind by the calls from protesters of Julian "WikiLeaks" Assange. The UK courts have determined that he can be extradited to Sweden to face charges of sexual misconduct (or whatever they're calling it). He doesn't want to go. I don't blame him, innocent or not.
Let's look at it from the perspective of the 100% not-guilty-of-the-charges standpoint (and here's where I say that I don't have an opinion on Assange's guilt-or-not. I'm not saying this guy's a saint, clearly he's not. But I'm also saying that apparently one of the women who are bringing these charges was or is a prostitute, so there's a lot of sin to go around...) Anyway, If I tell you that the second you step out of your house I'm going to arrest you, put you in jail, and put you on trial for murder- would you leave your house? Regardless of how innocent you are, regardless of how frivolous the lawsuit is, I guaran-fucking-tee you that you're at least going to think twice before setting foot outside. Why? Because NO ONE, no matter how innocent, wants their liberty revoked for any period of time. Even if it's like six hours before your mom can scrape together the money to pay the 10% to the bondsman (who then keeps like 10% of that anyway). So if you're Julian, and the courts even grant you bail, it's gonna be on the order of at least a million bucks, so mom has to put together $100,000 and then you know she's gonna lose at least $10,000 of that- all because I'm making some shit up and have had you arrested. And in Assange's case, I'm willing to bet Sweden is pursuing the sexual misconduct (we'll just stick with that term) under pressure from other international bodies to get Assange in jail for something, anything, while there's a case built against him for being the mastermind at wikileaks.

So the next time someone goes spouting off with the "well, if he's innocent then why doesn't he just turn himself in" line of bullshit, slap 'em in the face with a nice, juicy bass and then explain how stupid they sound.

On Penny Arcade, PAX and Dickwolves

2011-02-03T14:26:00.000-08:00

Last week (I believe) the Dickwolves T-shirt was pulled from the Pennay Arcade Merch page. Gabe states that this is in response to a vocal minority who felt that the imagery would "make them uncomfortable" if they saw it at Penny Arcade Expo. My gut reaction was that this was an overreaction on their part and was contribution to the hyper-sanitation of PAX. I'll need to link back to my previous rants about cosplayers and booth babes, but suffice to say that while I understand the core concept of this convention is video games, there is a strong sexual undercurrent in said genre and ignoring it or wishing it away does not make it so. I did refer to the Dickwolves strip in my posts as evidence that people who find this sort of thing offensive might be better served by visiting Disneyland rather than occupying space at WSCTC.

But I decided to not say anything about this recent affront on yon blogzor. Partly becasue it's a T-shirt. Partly because while I understood that the -point- of the strip was the meaningless, endless grinding that takes place in MMORPGs can lead to some moral issues (whether it's not rescuing miners from dickwolves who rape them nightly or the wholesale slaughter of a population of "monsters" that resides in the mountains to the east) there are people who would be offended by the out-of-context dickwolf. Note I said -would- not -might-, this is a topic that people WILL get offended by.

So why am I writing about this now? Becasue of this update. I'm an asshole and I can say some pretty awful things when I'm riled up-- things that may have, at best, a tenuous grasp of the reality of a situation and that I by rights should be ashamed of under any circumstances. But I am shocked to hear about death threats made toward the families of the writers of a comic. Read that again: death threats made toward the families of the writers of a comic.
The people making these threats are exactly the same as muslim extremists who threaten editorial cartoonists and the offices of Comedy Central for daring to publish an image of Mohammed (as if we actually know what he looks like.) I can't possibly be as disgusted as Mike, Jerry, and their families and friends are, but I'm appalled that people even think this way. I really hope they can all soon forget about the ramblings of that jackass and that nothing further is made of it.

[EDIT to add this which is epicly awesome if you a) agree with me that the PA guys are being pussies about both the dickwolves shirts AND sanitizing PAX and b) you like zombies]

[EDIT 2: I wonder, if they had said "pummeled" or "bludgeoned to sleep every night," would we have similar accusations that PA promotes a culture of violence, or promotes a culture of abuse? I have my doubts.]

Being Human on SyFy

2011-01-13T16:48:00.000-08:00

I'm listening to Pandora and they're running a commercial for the upcoming SyFy series "Being Human." The commercial actually says "the SyFy Original Series" which is complete horseshit. "Being Human" has had at least three series on the BBC (possibly more because I was watching it on BBC America).

It was an enjoyable show, I suppose, but the way they played through each story arc left me a little cold. It was a cross between "we're fine leaving an open ending" and "we need to conclude this sufficeintly such that if we don't get renewed we at least told the whole story." Each arc went gracefully up to the peak, reaching high enough that it could carry into another series, but then came crashing back to earth. It was an interesting drama and I hope the American writers tighten that up a little. Maybe get Joss Whedon on board- that sumbitch can weave some story arcs.

Headline: AP IMPACT: Meth flourishes despite tracking laws

2011-01-10T10:48:00.000-08:00

Article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110110/ap_on_re_us/us_drug_war_tracking_meth

So, um, since this tracking BS isn't working will the govt please "deregulate" sudafed so I can buy a box without being treated like a criminal? KTHXBAI.

Who wins in a fight...?

2011-01-09T00:53:00.000-08:00

Dwight Schrute or Ron Swanson?

Discuss...

Hanging paper...

2011-01-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to making color copies of my BA and writing certificate, and I framed them last night. This morning, first thing after clocking in at work I hung them in my cubicle. I do a job that will be completely unaffected by the fact that I have this BA and cert., and it took some internal debate before I decided to bring them in. On the one hand I earned the damned things (3 years at Shoreline CC, a year at UW and 30 months at WSU) on the other I didn't want to come off as a braggart. My internal compromise was to put them in frames that were simple, understated, and classy, but not draw any other attention to them.

Already I'm surprised how much the space of my cube has changed. I feel like a big kid :) My monitor is in a corner of my cube, the documents are hung just above it and no matter where I turn during my usual workday, I can see them (at least in my periphery). I should have hung -something- in here a long time ago to change how it feels.

AFK Tavern Review #2c- Rub-a-dub-dub, let's talk grub

2010-12-30T09:53:00.000-08:00

This is part of an ongoing series, launched by this previous entry. We were given a verbal glimpse-behind-the-curtain tonight at AFK Tavern, in regards to the preparation of their food during our hour-long chat with AFK co-owner Kayla. Here's some great news: food prep times (and in turn patron wait times) should be drastically reduced in the immediate future because the kitchen just got permission from the fire department to start using some new equipment that I'm not at liberty to divulge. I can tell you that the additions sound extremely exciting. I can also tell you that there are some inherent time issues that probably can't be easily overcome.

For example: we learned that the Orc Burger takes 12 minutes to prepare-- bear in mind we're talking about two fully cooked, thick patties of fresh beef. I think that's information that people may like to have up front. I am warned when ordering certain items at other restaurants (like steaks... mmmm steeeaaak) that it will take X number of minutes. I know how long beef takes to cook at home, I guess I just never thought much about it when I've been in. While it's a $13 burger we found out just how tight the margin is on these bad boys. No, I won't divulge specifics but I will say that the standard practice of keeping patties warming over is cost prohibitive with this item, and it would detract from the quality of the product (which has improved recently, see below). Plus their Cordon Bleu Chef (yes, really!) probably just had an aneurysm from reading the words "patties warming over" so I'm willing to bet their food will always be cooked-to-order.
We knew that they used fresh ground beef for all of their burgers. We didn't know that their ingredients are sourced locally (except the jalapenos which come from Mexico, as I recall). We didn't know that they get their meats delivered three times per week from a ranch out of Oregon. We didn't know that they were so dissatisfied with the early results of their cooking that they called the rancher into the restaurant to do some explaining. It's no surprise that fresh beef patties bleed, so it's also no surprise that the patties on the bottom will absorb blood from the patties above. This made the blood soaked patties nasty (and those on top probably got dry). They now flip their boxes of meat every 8 hours, and yes that means they have an employee come in during their closed hours just to flip boxes. Fresh meat also cooks differently than frozen, it's much more fragile. They made a few adjustments to their equipment and the overcooking issue went away as we can attest to. The Mrs was eating a couple of patties with cheese (no bun) last night and commented on how much better the beef tasted than when we first ate there.

One of the complaints that we were told about was the size of the menu. Some patrons have come in expecting a big, grandiose menu like they were going to an Applebee's or something. These folks are apparently not familiar with "pub grub." Hang on- AFK is several steps above standard pub fare, but the point here is that most pubs I've been to have a fairly limited menu (even the vaunted McMenamins pubs don't have extensive menus). The real purpose of the food is to moderate the patron's alcohol absorption. I assure you, if hard liquor serving establishments could not serve food, they wouldn't go through all the trouble of opening a kitchen, making a menu and dealing with the food issues. Pubs and Taverns are not usually known for being destination dining establishments, I certainly can't think of one. So it's unfortunate that these folks saw the layout of the establishment, got the impression that they walked in to a Ruby Tuesday's and then were disappointed when the reality of the situation made itself known.
Here's the good news: the menu will be expanding in the next couple of months (as the new equipment comes on line). Again, I can't divulge what we were told-- nothing was set in stone and I don't want to contribute to unrealistic expectations. But if you went in and thought, "you know, four pastas (including vegetarian), four sandwiches, a half dozen burger options and a half dozen LARGE appetizer plates really isn't enough" then YOU are the person they were thinking of when they came up with the menu expansion pack.

I've always enjoyed the food at AFK. The portions have been generous and the prices have been good (now that I know what goes into the food, I feel like I'm getting a hell of a deal). If you ate there when they first opened and had an issue, I encourage you to go back for a second try. If you're the type of person who wants a little nosh with your drinks and you've never been there because of a bad review I absolutely encourage you to try it for yourself.

AFK Tavern is located at 1510 41st Street in Everett- take the 41st St exit from I-5 in either direction and head west about 3 blocks. It's on your left next to Ivar's. They're open 3P-3A except on days that they're not (see website for days with non-standard hours).

AFK Tavern Review #2b- the staff

2010-12-30T09:29:00.000-08:00

Let's discuss the main issue of my previous post: the waitstaff at AFK Tavern. There have been definite improvements. Drink service is soooo fast last Monday night that I wasn't sure they had brought our beers to the right table (turns out they had-- yay for us). We had a bit of an issue last night with a distracted waiter- some folks were smoking weed in the vicinity and it was wafting into the restaurant. Weed is apparently a severe allergen for one of the owners, so this was turning into a major problem (one that we didn't know about at the time). Our waiter went to apply his police training to take care of it (I didn't ask for details, he probably just told them to stop). My wife went to remedy her lack-of-water situation and met the new waitstaff consultant. This lady is -awesome-! (Yes, I remember your name but I'm not posting it out of respect for your privacy). She's clearly been working in food service for several years and was able to strike a good balance between hands-off so we could play our Trivial Pursuit game in peace, and hands-on so that our drinks stayed filled.

During the somewhat lengthy conversation with Kayla (one of the owners) we were told that they had begun using "secret shoppers" (or the equivalent) to time the activities of the staff. The process is as simple as it sounds and the staff knows these people are around, though not necessarily who they are. The shoppers will call or text the owners at the end of a scheduled transaction to report how long it took to complete. Early reports show improvements, and some aspects of the serving process are taking half as long as they did before.

Kayla was quick to point out (and rightly) that they're NOT running a Denny's, Red Robin, Fuddruckers or whathaveyou. You can't bring a board game in those places and play for three hours. If for no other reason than the staff won't leave you alone for five minutes (unless I actually need something, then I can never find a waitress at a chain restaurant). Do you think you could walk in to IHOP, seat yourself at a booth, lay out maps for Gamma World, play for four hours and NOT buy anything? Apparently, that's happened several times at AFK-- and they've been alright with it. Yes, they prefer paying customers but they have only had to ask one person to leave, and that was for unruly behavior.

From the conversation I expect we'll be seeing the main food-ticket computer near the front doors in the near future. I think this will have a twofold benefit. First, incoming customers who have a question will immediately see an employee. Based on what was said last night AFK will still clearly note whether they are running self-seating or assigned seating so customers do not have to interact with the person at the computer, but it will be an option. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the staff will see the customers walking in. Provided the staff has good communication, the benefits of them knowing when new customers are coming in, and how many there are, should be obvious.

I know no one wants the "hard sell" like you get at national chains. I don't want to sit at my booth and have wait staff descend on me with their rehearsed script about tonight's drink specials, the dessert special and today's soup-- all while shoving a menu in my hand and covering the table in branded coasters and napkins. And just as importantly, no one wants to be ignored. Fortunately, the staff at AFK know that people who are playing games need refreshment and game time in good balance. I've seen improvements, I'm glad to see them and I expect that things will continue to improve.

AFK Tavern is located at 1510 41st Street in Everett- take the 41st St exit from I-5 in either direction and head west about 3 blocks. It's on your left next to Ivar's. They're open 3P-3A except on days that they're not (see website for days with non-standard hours).

AFK Tavern Review #2a- Let's Clear the Air

2010-12-30T09:02:00.000-08:00

Apparently people have been reading sections of my previous entry/review about AFK Tavern and have jumped to some unintended conclusions based on partial information. The problem is, even if you read the ENTIRE post you'd still only have partial info because I don't know any of the inner workings, and as I said I was making suggestions based on my observations.

Series-long tl;dr: It's hard to believe it's only been 2 weeks since my first entry. I've been in at least four times since and the improvements have been remarkable.

I went back to AFK tonight with the Mrs and S C S for a little Trivial Pursuit and tots +2. I ended up having an interesting conversation with co-owner Kayla. It sounds like some of my faithful readers took my previous post to be an indictment of my favorite local watering hole. It was also interesting to learn that they have been brought printed copies of the first review and have been told both, "this is why you guys suck" and "I think this guy might be on to something" (or maybe she said I was ON something...). Fortunately the staff took the post in the spirit in which it was intended, as constructive criticism. I'm sure the readers in question are familiar with the second term, the first maybe not so much.

Here's the situation: This place is new-- wet behind the ears kind of new. Even under ideal circumstances there would be kinks to work out and this place is absolutely one of a kind- there's no template to work from like there would be if it were a Denny's or Red Robin. Gamers in general are hard to pin down as a "type" (c'mon, you know there's more to this subculture than the stereotype of MTNDEW and poor hygiene) . Yes, I know the earlier post is loooong, but I really encourage everyone to read it in its entirety before passing judgment on AFK. I don't take back a word, but I think it's important for readers to know that I wasn't trying to tear this place apart.

To address some of the topics we discussed last night, I'm going to do a short series of reviews, each covering a different topic (hopefully without a lot of overlap) and each will be mercifully short. If you don't want to read the entire series here's the

tl;dr: I LIKE AFK. I keep going back and I've enjoyed all but one visit. I will continue to support them because they deserve support (not becasue I feel like I'm donating to a charity).

AP Headline: Boomers Fear Outliving Medicare

2010-12-29T12:26:00.000-08:00

Tough shit. Frankly, it's your generation that made the decisions that have us in the mess we're in now. How about a follow-up headline: Gen-X, Gen-Y and GenNext are pissed that their tax dollars are going into a program that they'll never see becasue they don't get to retire until age 72 (or later. . .)

Who's the 4E Commie now, bitch?!

2010-12-29T11:49:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago S C S and I were at AFK tavern in the smoking area outside (I was enjoying a pipe, he was along for conversation). We ran into a local legend-in-his-own-mind who goes by the handle "Porkfry." Another guy just randomly asked what games people played, and I mentioned than in addition to some X360 I had been playing D&D since the 2nd gen Red Box, then 2E and lately some 4E with my wife. Pork cries out with "Communist!" which pretty much made everyone look at him like he just shat himself. Conversation continued and he was more-or-less ignored.

Imagine my surprise at today's Penny-Arcade (12/29/10 if you have to search the "archive" such as it is) in which Gabe recounts that Pork was playing a game of Warmchine that Gabe had retooled to use 4E style rules, and will be run like a 4E style campaign.

Allow me to repeat the title of this post: WHO'S THE COMMUNIST NOW, BITCH!?

Fueling my Ongoing Distaste of College Athletics...

2010-12-23T15:02:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's from The Onion, but it's true nonetheless:

http://www.onionsportsnetwork.com/articles/report-100-percent-of-college-football-players-rec,18653/
INDIANAPOLIS—An exhaustive three-year internal investigation has confirmed that a full 100 percent of college football players receive the advantages that come with being a college football player, the NCAA reported Friday. "We were frankly stunned at the benefits athletes received when it came to classwork, housing, transportation, tuition, even food. There appears to be no part of the college experience in which one doesn't receive special treatment in exchange for playing football," the report read in part. "In truth, it's inaccurate to use the term 'student athlete' in describing these young men, as one of the benefits of being a college football player is never having to cram for tests, attend a study group, or take out a student loan. It's shocking that these practices are tolerated at our nation's institutions of higher learning." The report ultimately concluded that while a litany of unfair benefits are rampant in NCAA football, this year's Auburn-Oregon championship matchup does look like a pretty amazing game that surely can't be missed.

Aikido misconceptions

2010-12-15T09:55:00.000-08:00

This article on Slate (I know, you're shocked) talks about dealing with angry customers. It references "A Complaint is a Gift" in which the authors advise managers and store owners that, "Masters of aikido [sic] do not resist the physical force of their opponents... [R]ather, they turn with it and let it pass them."

Um, well, maybe. I actively practiced Aikido for about six years and continued to read books and articles about it for a couple years after I completely stopped. I took my 2nd-degree brown belt (ikkyu) test once, failed it miserably for a variety of reasons, and (I think) sufficiently improved my technique and attitude to the point that had the school been in operation long enough for me to take it a second time I would have passed. I still practice the occasional fall, stretches and some of the footwork. I've seen internationally recognized "masters" (a term that wasn't used when I was training, and I doubt has come into fashion with Aikidoka) in motion and under certain circumstances it's fair to make the "dancing" comparison that some insist on. However, to say that Aikido is all about "moving with the flow" isn't exactly fair to the martial aspect of the art, most authors make it sound like Japanese TaiChi.

The Origin Story of Aikido is that Morihei Ueshiba was a cocksure kid who issued an open challenge to the passersby in the town he was in and almost had his ass handed to him by a swordsman. He had, as the story goes, "a divine inspiration" that peace was the path of righteousness. Or, to put it another way, he found out that all of the direct-attack sword work he'd been studying for years put him a little closer to the edge of a sword than he was comfortable with. He decided it was time to modify his Daito-ryu Aikijujutsu (loose translation: when some dumbass tries to grab your sword, here's how to kick the shit out of him, and it works pretty well even if you're not holding your sword at the time). But with his new found appreciation for not dying, and based on the assumption that others felt the same way, he wanted to develop something that was effective but not necessarily deadly.
The early techniques are sometimes referred to as "diamond" (they are in the Shirata-ryu/Classical Aikido) and are little changed from the Daito-ryu that Ueshiba had studied. From there the periods of technique are referred to as "willow," "water," and "ki" each representing a progression toward flowing and harmony. Sure, by the time you get someone who's expert at all four schools they can dance away from an attack and it looks like they've "used their opponent's energy against them." But for the most part, once a grab is initiated, or if there's a close-quarters punch or kick incoming, there's little to impress an outside viewer that there's much "harmony" going on, especially if the attacker is determined to complete the attack. Pins, joint locks and throws are just not as friendly as authors like those above would have you believe when they say "just flow with it, like in Aikido!" I am certainly not a fan of Steven Seagal, but the reality is that in the close-quarters real world, fast, sharp techniques are more effective, efficient and reliable than trying to smile your way out of an attack while doing a pirouette (sorry, Ki Society- don't get attacked on a bus : | ). Those big, flowey, "use your opponent's energy against them" techniques look great in the dojo when everyone knows approximately what to expect in terms of attack and technique, but are frequently impractical (impossible?) in the grit that makes up the real world.

AFK Tavern Review- A Work in Progress

2010-12-13T10:52:00.000-08:00

Updates here, here and here

Arrrgh, I have to get this out of my head and I can't bring myself to tell the folks at AFK Tavern directly so here's the passive aggressive approach in full effect. I really really want to like this place so I'm going to start with the good. The food is good for this type of establishment (a one-off). The burgers aren't Red Mill but they're tasty, the burger patties are made on site, and very sizable helpings of sides accompany each. The food prices are lower than what you might find at a national chain of sit-down casual dining (e.g. Red Robin). The drink prices are really very good. For example, I paid $4 plus tax for a Skyy and tonic (not a well-drink, I asked for Skyy and watched her pour it). That same drink would cost between $6 and $8 in downtown Seattle. The strength of the drinks appears to be about average, though I have had both a very weak rum and coke and a very strong vodka tonic. No points lost/gained on overall drink strength. It should be noted that they routinely run drink specials and have happy hour discounts. Something new that I liked: on Epic Game Day they had a person at the door carding people and stamping the over 21s. This is the first time I've seen them do this and I would encourage more of that for the Friday/Saturday crowds. Having been there during the week, I think it's safe to card at the table.

What about AFK's atmosphere? If you've been in the video game/RPG world for more than a few years it feels like what you'd imagine a huge gamer house party to feel like (or a con if it had liquor and food). I have yet to feel even slightly hassled by the staff for sitting there for hours on end. It may have something to do with their knowing that my tab will run over $50 if I'm there for more than two hours- bearing in mind my wife doesn't generally eat or drink there because of dietary restrictions. Or, more liekly, they -want- people to come in and plant themselves so long as they're not just ordering one cup of coffee and trying to stake a claim for four hours. The lighting is a lot brighter than you might expect for a bar, but many people are there to play games and the text on Magic(TM)(R)(C)(whatever) Cards is really quite small. I would not consider AFK to be a meat market, though I would not rule out that the occasional hook up could happen. Again, most people seem to go there with an agenda of gaming or gathering with friends, and this place is really conducive to that.
They do have WiFi and encourage gaming. The wireless signal has been spotty at times and the router does not appear to be fully set up (it asks if I want to set it up about 80% of the time). Overall this is a plus and if the network reliability gets to the 95% range I would start to encourage MMORPG groups to look at this place as a regular meeting location. I do not have any reports about how the network fared during the Cataclysm debut, so the issues I've experienced may not affect MMO play. That said, outlets are limited to a nook near the kitchen with three 2-person tables and two 6-tops. Demand may dictate change, but that remains to be seen as laptops aren't a commonly seen item, yet.

What about crowds/events? This past weekend the first Epic Game Day took place and I think it's safe to say the crowds were as large as I've seen there. I'm generally anti-social and even start to feel claustrophobic in some places but that was not the case at any time on Saturday (we were there from noon until about 7:45). Handling customers is, however, where AFK as an establishment starts to show some strain.

S C S and I went in there on a Sunday afternoon when he was in town. We were two people at one table and there were probably three other tables occupied in the whole establishment. The problem was that all of the groups were about as spread out as they could be and they only had one waitress on staff. She did an admirable job, considering the circumstances, but I can't say that our orders were right, that the food was warm or that our server was friendly.
But hey- that was a fluke, right? Not exactly.

The Mrs and I have been in several times since and the waitstaff always seems overtaxed. We went in on a fairly slow Saturday night, sat in an area where there were other people and waited. For a half hour. Without a waitress asking if we wanted anything. It was about three minutes after I'd packed up my laptop and told the wife I was ready to leave that a waitress finally asked if we'd been helped. At which point I told her we had not, but that I was on my way out the door. Did I mention above that I regularly spend over $50 every time I go there? I think my cheapest tab has been $32 (before tip). Heck, at Epic Game Day we didn't really eat much considering we were there for eight hours- between cash at the bar and our table tab I was at $50 before tips. My point being on the night in question there was a waitress in the area, and they lost out on orders from people who really order food and drinks simply because she didn't ask if we'd been helped- even after I'd made eye contact. I suppose I could have waved her over, but it's a restaurant, she's a waitress and we're customers- it didn't seem necessary at the time.

Here's where I begin my "being helpful" turn phase. Bear in mind that my grandma owned a restaurant/bar for nearly 20 years and a good friend of mine has worked in catering and as a bartender. These are suggestions from my POV and they may be completely worthless in the overall context that I don't have access to.

1) On days with only one waitress, the seating should be assigned. The white board should have big block letters that read "Please Wait to be Seated." This will keep the one lady from having to run to the far corners of the joint to take care of customers. Managing each table becomes a lot easier if all she has to do is turn her head to see who needs a refill or wants to place an order, instead of physically walk the 60+ feet around obstacles and a stage to get to her next nearest table. [edit: the wife wanted me to mention that her preference is for the laptop area, so that nook should also be an option for those bringing machines. That said, even with a couple of tables in this area which is right next to the kitchen, and a few in the main dining area it's more manageable than letting gamers spread themselves out, because you know we'll stay as far away from each other as possible unless directed differently.]

2) On days with limited waitstaff, the bar needs to be self-service. This works best in the above example of limited patronage, not so well if the place starts to fill up unexpectedly. I know the bartenders know how to get food out of the kitchen. I've seen all of them do it. Patrons seated in the bar area would walk up to the bar, order a drink and a burger, and the bartender could then take the order back to the kitchen. Hell, the bartender could even walk out TO the customers and take an order. From there, the kitchen staff could bring the food to the bar and announce the order for pickup (and hopefully the patron orders another beer while they're there). Patrons in the general seating area would walk to the bar to order anything more complicated than a Jack and coke, or anything requiring layering. The waitress could take orders for anything off of the beer/mead side of the drink menu.
If customers are there to eat: sit in the dining area. If they're there for fancy drinks: sit in the bar. Seems easy enough, but let them know what's what before they choose.

3) The Bar. If AFK has an Achilles' Heel, it's the bar (or maybe the drink menu). The AFK menu has an entire page dedicated to layered/fancy cocktails that was in need of serious copy editing which S C S and I did, but they have yet to accept our changes despite reprinting an "updated" menu for December. Yes, I'm grumpy about that because we did it TWICE. Once on our own and the second time the owner asked us to go over it because she knew it needed help. I digress... The fancy drinks are problematic. On Saturday I watched one bartender chat on the phone while the other tried to pour a layered drink- for like 3 minutes. Then the phone bartender asked me if I'd been helped, and I ordered my Skyy and tonic- which was greeted with a roll of the eyes. Not cool, Red. The Layered Drink bartender went on to make another layered drink, and a couple minutes later I saw her on the phone, too.
An hour-or-so later I asked my table waitress for my check and was greeted with excuses about how long it would take to run my card because the bar is backed up. I like you, waitress-who-normally-waits-on-us, but this is not my problem. Also, if you take 30-45 seconds per table to tell them that it will be about 5 minutes to run a card, guess what? At 6 tables times 45 seconds, that's already 4.5 minutes spent explaining why it will take so long to run a card, making the task take that much longer. I don't expect anything to happen immediately. If you have my card and it's taking like 10 minutes to complete the transaction, then you can apologize.

So here's what I propose to remedy this (thanks to catering friend for working on this with me): The bar needs a separate drink menu AND they need a third bartender. The fancy layered drinks should only be available at the bar, and there should be one bartender whose entire night is spent making these fancy drinks. Patrons would be required to walk to the bar, order, and wait. The second bartender should be pouring "standard" bar drinks (G&T, rum and coke, etc.) for the incoming drink orders while being available as backup to the layered drink tender. They also need either a third tender for beer/wine/shots or let the waitresses do that (though I think in WA you need a bartender license to pour a beer). That is all this person does: pour one thing from a bottle or tap into a glass or pitcher. If it requires more than one ingredient then it goes to tender #2- unless tender #1 and #2 are slammed with Mana Potions or something then #3 can do simples- but only then.

Overall, I want to give AFK an 8.5*/10. They really have improved and the atmosphere is great. But there's something that routinely causes snags and I'm always hearing about how backed up the bar is, so I'm looking at that. Checking IDs at the door really helped streamline the ordering/drink delivery process (and the chick with the black/purple hair was cute and friendly- so why wouldn't you show her your ID?) The increase in waitstaff has been noticed and is a good change. The camaraderie of the staff is also noticed and I think adds to the vibe of the place.

I will continue to patronize this establishment and I don't ever expect perfection because I think the employee-NPCs are zero-level human tavern-keeper classed and shit happens (the DC for "smoothly running a restaurant" is like base 17 and is checked hourly, so these folks have to make that roll 12 times a day.) But there's room for improvement. At the very very least, let's get the waitstaff to stop making excuses/apologizing up front, and ask them to continue doing their best. If I'm not happy, I'll let you know (on my blog, but still :\ ) Until you hear about it, don't worry about it.
The take home message: I like this place. There are issues. They won't stop me from coming back, but I would enjoy myself more if they were fixed.

AFK Tavern is located at 1510 41st Street in Everett- take the 41st St exit from I-5 in either direction and head west about 3 blocks. It's on your left next to Ivar's. They're open 3P-3A except on days that they're not (see website for days with non-standard hours).

* the 8.5 is provisional and takes into account that they've only been open for about 5 weeks. If this was an established tavern the score would be lower and I would be less inclined to make the 20 mile drive to get there.

Our Front Line Againt Terror: Wal-Mart

2010-12-06T15:09:00.000-08:00

I wish I were making this up. I wish this was April 1, and I could chalk it up to April Fool's Day. But no. The Department of Homeland Security is teaming up with Wal-Mart to spread the "See Something, Say Something" campaign which encourages citizens to contact authorities if they see something they deem "suspicious." Like: black people spending cash? Anyone in a turban or burk(h)a? People with extra melanin who don't make a lot of eye contact or are quiet (because maybe they have a seasonal cold and just want to buy some NyQuil in peace...)?

Corruption Rampant in Afghanistan...

2010-12-03T08:55:00.000-08:00

Afghanistan is "monumentally corrupt" according to a report on the latest WikiLinks distribution from CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/12/02/afghanistan.wikileaks/?hpt=T2

In other news, water is wet...

Gratz to AFK....

2010-11-30T12:06:00.000-08:00

Alternate title: fuck websense.

I tried to check out their website at AFKTavern.com today at work to see if there was anything going on tonight. Blocked by WebSenseless as a "games" site. So congrats to AFK for already being so popular, and so associated with gaming and things fun that they're blocked.

Dibs!!

2010-11-30T00:13:00.000-08:00

I posted "the dice must roll!" on the AFK Facebook profile in response to an annoucement about Epic Game Day 1 on Dec 11. This is a sort of rhyming pun on "the spice must flow" from Dune. I got dibs on this- if you see it in print anywhere, tell 'em they owe me royalties! :)

TSA Screening- Vegas 2003

2010-11-29T19:30:00.000-08:00

(originally shared on jackbrummet.blogspot.com)
In 2003 the Mrs and I were returning to Seattle from Vegas and I had worn my workmans' Utilikilt, mostly because it was clean. It was a quiet morning and no one was waiting to pass through security. As I approached the gate both the male and female TSA agent got wide eyed and raised their hands to stop me before I made it to the metal detector. See, the 10 steel buttons, two steel clips and 3" belt buckle that was holding up my unbifuracted male garment gave them pause.
"No problem," says I, as I put my backpack on the conveyor belt.

Before the lady agent could turn her back, or the guy could cover his eyes, I had the kilt stripped off and on the belt.
Good thing for them it was a chilly morning, and I wore my boxers. They didn't feel the need at that point to employ any advanced search techniques on the shoeless man in his underwear and t-shirt- though the lady agent kept blushing and couldn't look me in the eye.

Surviving Snowmageddon 2010b

2010-11-29T10:07:00.000-08:00

I can't recall the last time it snowed on Thanksgiving, much less several days prior. I remember being about 6 and seeing snow on Turkey Day and dad remarking that it was very strange to see the white stuff. And snow it did. Seattle isn't known for its robust drivers- when it's even lightly sprinkling I can count on adding 10 minutes to my comute. So I wasn't surprised when it took an additional 45 minutes to drive in to work last Monday as the leading edge of our arctic storm came through- disappointed, but not surprised. The drive home took about 2-1/2 hours, which is considered a breakneck pace in comparison to others' whose commutes took between 5 and 11 hours. Here's a tip: I-5 will be shitty on a snow day, so please don't block intersections for cross-traffic when you're trying to get to the freeway.
Tuesday was a snow day. The wife's office was closed and my office had an "optional" day (even though we're in the same building). I took the option becasue WSDOT was apparently caught unaware(s) about the impending storm that we'd been hearing about for at least a week and every major road was an ice rink.
Wednedsay was slow, but not as bad as Monday, despite below freezing temps and winds.

I'm happy to report that having an insulated floor, in conjucntion with a reliable furnace, kept our toes from freezing off. Yay for us! We were even a little hot a couple of times this past week and considered turning the heat down from 68F.

Thursday we drove over Steven's Pass to Wenatchee for Thanksgiving, and came back Friday mid-day. Earlier in the month I bought new tires for the wife's car becasue she was still driving on the tires that were on the car from the dealership. I went out on a limb and bought General (brand) "Grabber" tires. Wow. These things really live up to their name! I think I had two instances in which I slid maybe a foot or two and those both involved a braking maneuver in which the ABS wasn't a lot of help. I only had the 4WD engaged for maybe 20 miles on the way over becasue we were driving through powder on some twisty roads. The only problems we had were: the windshield washer fluid kept freezing in the pass (so we'll know to completely flush out any water and only have the low-temp washer fulid in the reservoir) and jackasses who would ride my ass on a straight, lose a ton of ground in the corners and then charge down the road to ride my ass again. Just pass me, asshole >:|
In the car we had about a gallon of water, a couple MREs, spare clothes, and chains, among other weather-preparedness items. It may seem like overkill, until you're out on the road and the possibility of having to either sit tight in the car or walk several miles becomes a distinct possibility.

There's another front moving in that is supposed to bring heavy winds (60MPH gusts) and lots of rain (1-3" over 72 hours). I think this is what we get for having temps in the 60s just a few weeks ago. It looks like winter is getting an early foothold.

Apple Cup 2010- first bet is placed

2010-11-16T13:10:00.000-08:00

The manager of the Starbucks in the building I work in is a) a huge UW fan and b) hates WSU (this is probably becasue his dad and granddad are Cougs, so there's no telling what sort of emotional damage his Husky-ness has brought). Also, his GF was a cheerleader at the U, so there's a little more emphasis for his support of that institution.
I am a Coug. I went to UW for the WORST year of my academic life- seriously. That place was ridiculous and everything pretty much fell apart while I was studying there. That's an old story for another time.

So I was thinking about how I could make a wager on the Apple Cup that wouldn't be too expensive and might be creative, too boot. Here's the bet: If UW wins the Apple Cup, I wear a big puprple "W" on my messenger bag for a YEAR. If WSU wins he wears a big WSU logo on his laptop bag for a year. Here's the underpining: he's concerned that his GF will hate seeing that stylized WSU every day until next Apple Cup and it might cause some tension at home. I'm concerned that I might get the shit beat out of me on campus... So this is a -real- wager :)

Game on!!

The U.N.

2010-11-09T14:54:00.001-08:00

Sigh... really guys? Cholera? No one bothered to do some quick blood tests on the people who come from a region that has its own brand? Shit, I have to get TB tested just so I can sit behind a computer where I don't see more than 6 people a day, much less come into contact with them.

That -was- a long drive...

2010-11-07T01:50:00.000-07:00

And I didn't have much to think about. The album is really solid, and I couldn't believe how long it was- in a good way, like it was really good value for the money. I will definitely listen to it again on the way home.

I missed the initial turn from 90 to 26 and had to take 261 from Ritzville to Washtucna. That was a 38 mile detour that I didn't really need at midnight. But 261 is mostly straight and has a lot of level territory, so a couple of sprints up to 110 and 115 were in order ;) It was a successful drive and I had a good time wandering around campus (and watching a little of the WSU game through the gate at Martin Stadium). The return trip will probably also be very long.

This is a long drive...

2010-11-04T12:15:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow night I'm heading over to Pullman to hang out with CC contributor S C S. And it's gonna be a long drive. Once I get over Snoqualmie pass I'm going to set the MP3 player to play Modest Mouse's "This is a Long Drive For Someone With Nothing to Think About" because I will also not likely have much to actually think about. I'll let you know how it works out.

Fonts

2010-11-02T12:06:00.000-07:00

It's a little bit of a meme at this point, but Comic Sans is not a font that belongs in the office. At first it was just a coworker. Today there was a memo from the secretary of our CFO.

People, it's completely unprofessional looking and no one thinks it's "cute," not even people who write comics. So please, knock it off.

Jury Duty

2010-10-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-25T09:15:00.000-07:00

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?!

2010-10-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-20T09:01:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-19T10:48:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-10-18T15:59:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-18T15:49:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-10-11T18:58:00.000-07:00

The Difference Between a Slot Machine and a Voting Machine:

(h/t Punditkitchen.com)

nonsense comparisons

2010-10-11T11:01:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-06T14:32:00.001-07:00

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

2010-10-04T22:27:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-10-04T13:57:00.000-07:00

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?!

2010-10-02T15:05:00.000-07:00

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.

George Lucas is a monster....

2010-09-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

Not in a good way. Hollywood Reporter reports that Lucas plans to rerelease all 6 Star Wars movies in 3D. This is bad on so many levels. First, I don't like the forced 3D thing at all. I saw Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D a couple years ago and at best it looked like a diorama. Then take into account that he's "testing the waters" with Phantom Menace. I hated Jar Jar in 2D, what makes you think I want him popping out at me? The reality of this is that he wants to put the movies in yet another format- so I'm willing to bet this will be the first time in over 30 years that the original theatrical release will be available. This is complete conjecture, but I wouldn't be surprised if Lucas tried to get us to buy this new tech version by waving the TR carrot in front of our faces.
I'm interested to hear what he has to say for himself. Certainly he's claimed that these are HIS works and he feels that he can do with them what he wants, but previously he's tried to sell us these changes under the guise of "it's what I wanted to do originally, the tech just wasn't up to speed..." The only way I'm buying that argument is if his 3D is like R2's projections of Leia, or the Rebel maps of the Death Star...

We ARE in a class war...

2010-09-28T09:08:00.000-07:00

But the wrong side is winning. From http://www.slate.com/id/2268872/

Norton and Ariely focus on the distribution of wealth, which is even more top-heavy than the distribution of income. The richest 1 percent account for 35 percent of the nation's net worth; subtract housing, and their share rises to 43 percent. The richest 20 percent (or "top quintile") account for 85 percent; subtract housing and their share rises to 93 percent.

Absolutely stunning. If you don't take the value of property into account, the top 1% of Americans possess 43% of the wealth in this country. The article goes on to say that when presented with a pie chart showing the top 20% possessing 85% of wealth, an even distribution among the quintiles, or the top 20% possessing 35% of the nation's wealth 47% of respondents* selected option 3: the top 20% should possess 35% of the wealth. That pie chart was based on Sweden's economic distribution. Sweden. Like the very socialist Scandinavian country. Respondents' second choice? Equal distribution (with 43% choosing that chart). That means that only 10% of Americans believe that the top 20% of Americans should hold 85% of American wealth... if those 20% are equally represented in the study, this means that only HALF of those in the top quintile believe they should be there (I say that because I doubt a single mom with three kids living below the poverty line is really going to think that the top quintile should possess 85% of the wealth... I sure don't)

Noah's article is excellent for one other reason, he vividly demonstrates the cluelessness of this top 1% when he discusses the blog post of a Chicago law professor (who wrote the piece as sort of an open letter to President Obama) lamenting that he only makes $250K per year, adjusted (which other bloggers point out means he makes at least 300K but probably closer to 400K). I strongly encourage you to read Mr Noah's post and the linked blog postings. Very enlightening for anyone who has been asking why the rich would be against the repeal of the Bush tax cuts (I mean, yeah, it's obvious that no one wants to pay mroe taxes, but the point is that Chicago Law is way, way better able to afford a tax hike than I am, and I'm better able to than the family on foodstamps...)

* (the author at Slate, Tim Noah, reminds the reader that these are all AMERICANS in the survey and that the charts were not labeled as to which country/idea they represented)

Considering antidepressants?

2010-09-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

Who hasn't? We live in a fucked up world full of stress casued by shit we can't control, while the people who make our lives a collective Hell seem to be rewarded at every opportunity (I'm looking at you, bank CEOs).

I've never believed in the magic bullet theory of pharmacology. Having done just a little research about people's experiences with SSRIs has made me think about 6 times (three times more than thinking twice!) about taking them: paranoias have cropped up, addictions are common, massive weight gain, worse depression (I recall one person saying "I was just a little sad before, now I can't even fathom getting out of bed- my doc says that's just the pills 'fighting the depression' "), suicide, and hyper-aggressive behavior. I was on Prozac for about three weeks in 1994 and my mom made me stop because she said it made me even angrier than before I'd started, and I distinctly recall getting into an actual fight with my brother. If I've never believed in the MBToP then why take them? Becasue my pediatrician thought they might help me feel better when I was kinda bummed, thinking that this world was frequently a steaming pile of shit (once a realist...) I guess it's better than his alternative solution- he was accused and convicted of molesting male patients a few years ago. I wasn't one of them. Had I been, I wouldn't be wondering how to pay for grad school.

Then I came across a link to this article via Slate today. Just wow. Now I'm wondering if a few weeks of SSRIs 16 years ago might have been enough to put me in the occasional funk I run into (not really, but it's good hyperbole). So I guess I'll stick to slamming down the epsresso to beat the blues. Plus caffeine is supposed to be at least a little good for you...

D&D 4E, Wow, and Simulacra & Simulation...

2010-09-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

Here we go, let's crank up the crazy.
I agree- from a marketing standpoint, revamping D&D to be more like WoW is brilliant. But I don't think you even need to press 1,1,2,4,2,1,1,4 anymore. I'll bet you can hotket all of that to "Alt+F" if you want to.

I can't help but think of Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation." Wargamming was the simulacrum. D&D was a simulation of that, but with different rules and ended up superceding the rules it was based on (this was back in 1974). Then AD&D simulated this new simulacrum and in turn became the model for RPGs. For a short time we had a battle between the simulacrum-cum-simulation (AD&D 3.5E) and the simulation-cum-simulacrum (WoW). Wow has seemingly won that round, with D&D* 4E attempting to usurp the throne, or at least get a piece of it by making rules and using terms that are more familiar to WoW players.

(*s/be AD&D 4E, really, but now that Gygax is dead and can't defend his D&D rights WotC figures they can take it back to the old school)

Guest contribution: S C S on D&D 4E and WoW

2010-09-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

Yes, he posted this in the comments to that post, but it offers enough to the conversation that it warrants its own entry:

WoW is the worst thing to happen to the MMO market. It went the extreme opposite of games like Everquest and decided that everyone should always be getting something for doing everything. The game is the essence of min/max and people who won't do a damn thing if there's no reward or if the group isn't doing X amount of DPS. It's full of noobs who need every class to have the same fucking strategy (1, 1, 2, 4, 1, 1, 2, 4). There, I just played WoW without actually playing it.

The problem is they get bored with WoW (because like any MMO it's the same thing over and over) and they come to other MMOs with a huge chip on their shoulder because they were "uber" in WoW which relates to being able to push 1, 1, 2, 4, 1, 1, 2, 4, over and over for hours at at time. Then games like DDO have this glut of people wondering why the quest givers don't have giant hovering markers over their heads or why they have to read quest text or THINK while playing.

And from the $ standpoint it's stupid not to appease the WoW people because they flock in droves to new games trying to find the "new thing." Everquest 2 is exactly the same thing, except its playerbase is full of bitter people who hate WoW.

Godamnit I miss playing Everquest.

I'm going to stop now.

D&D 4E and WoW

2010-09-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

The Mrs had a coworker/friend come over last night. Friend plays WoW. The Mrs played occasionally until she went back to school and stopped having time, and has (since PAX) taken up D&D. This is a paraphrase of the exchange between the two:

In D&D you do this
Hm. Sounds like WoW
D&D has this
Oh, like WoW?
D&D has this other thing
Oh yeah, just like WoW
Only D&D came first. But you do this and this
Oh, that sounds like WoW. Do they have shammies?

As a D&D player since the Original Red Box (yes, initial cap on that- respect) this was an extremely irritating conversation. I get that WotC reworked the D&D rules to be more accommodating to WoW players (to the extent that a player last Saturday night didn't know what class of character she was playing and could only refer to her Psionicist as a "controller" (despite not controlling shit...)). But is this what I have to look forward to? WoWies who can't relate to a different set of rules, thereby making D&D live up to its current reputation as WoW with dice? Fuck. Me.

Holy Crap! JoCo, JoHo and SpiJo collabo?!

2010-09-20T12:17:00.000-07:00

According to John Hodgman he will be working on a project involving Jonathan Coulton and Spike Jonze which will be aired on HBO. Epicness is about to be witnessed.
If you can get to the hangar in NYC by 3PM on the 28th, you could be part of said epicousity. Check it out:
http://www.areasofmyexpertise.com/2010/09/good-evening-my-name-is-john-hodgman/

Redhook Sausagefest

2010-09-20T09:57:00.000-07:00

The Mrs and I went to the first Redhook Sausagefest on Saturday. We think this is their attempt at a tongue-in-cheek Octoberfest. Sausagefest is usually used negatively, and this definitely lived up to what one might expect when one hears the term.

The good:
tickets were only $5 through their online ticket vendor
We each received a souvenir (plastic) mug with the discounted ticket purchase
It didn't rain
The music was decent
The Oberto Tent. No lines. They lowered their prices. The people were kinda cool to hang out with. The new Southern BBQ Pork flavor is really good, though we ALL agreed that the very best Oberto Jerky flavor is the thin original.

The bad:
Woodinville. This is a HORRIBLE town to hold any kind of event. Parking is almost non-existent and the entire economy is based on fermentation. You'd think I would be excited about that, but with shitty parking and narrow streets I became acutely aware that everyone on the raod was either coming from or going to a drinking based event.

There were only two lines to get in: one for VIPs and one for everyone else. So if you prepaid you had to wait in the same line as the people who decided they would just show up.

Lines on the inside: Once inside there was a line for everything. Beer, soda and water were all sold at the same booth and it took 17 minutes to get to where we could buy a drink. At a brewery. At their event... I wanted a beer (becasue we drove to the damned brewery!) and the wife wanted a Dr Pepper (they only sold Coke and Sprite). Did I mention 17 minutes. Oh, but the smart ass employee bitch who knew the people pulling taps walked by to talk to her friend in line and rubbed in all of our faces (her "friend" included) that she didn't have to wait in lines becasue she was an employee. That's fucking classy Redhook! We knew instantly which of the food vendors would be worth a damn- their lines were 20 minutes long, and that is assuming that their equipment worked sufficiently to meet the demand (which wasn't the case with Uli's sausages). The most popular stand was Dante's Inferno Dogs. They looked awesome, but there was no way I was going to stand there for that long.

Prices: Now I didn't expect to be getting a screaming deal on anything, but I didn't expect to have to pay $4 for a beer. At Redhook. On their property. $2 got the wife half of an Uli's sausage, which was about four bites, total. And that was after we had to come back to their tent becuase of power problems. $2 also bought a crappy cheese plate (nothing was identified and the cheeses were bland) or a "slider" made with tough, thick cut beef, bleu cheese and "bacon jam." That was meh but I ate two because the wife decided to not risk the gluten hit to her system by eating the white bun.

Girls: Despite assurances on the website, the didn't have Sausagefest girls there. The wife was sorely disappointed because she likes the serving wenches at Octoberfest celebrations and there were none to be found. She pointed out that there was a dearth of hotness from the attendees as well. I say there were a few pieces of eye-candy, but not enough to satisfy a sweet tooth.

The Ugly:
The majority of the event took place on what was essentially a soccer field. It was muddy and wet from the rain we'd had earlier in the week. The Mrs decided to wear flip-flops and quickly determined that was a mistake becuase her feet were caked in watery mud in seconds. Women in knee-high boots (the hot kind, not fishing waders...) didn't even bother trying to go anywhere for fear of staking a heel in the muck. A few chairs may have been provided, but I got the distinct impression that we were expected to sit on the wet ground if we didn't want to stand.

Conclusion:
All in all, I want my $40 and afternoon back. That's probably the worst part- we weren't even there for an hour, but we were there longer than we wanted to be. All told, finding parking, being there and leaving took about 2 hours. How to fix it? $3 at most for beer. Throw in a free beer with the mug (actually, hand people mugs that are already full of beer!) Separate lines for non-alcoholic drinks (though have water and sodas available in the beer line, too). Something needs to be done about the space, but I don't really have any good ideas. The popular vendors had enormous lines, the less popular vendors didn't have lines- for a reason.

*$ not in M$ dictionary...

2010-09-17T16:07:00.000-07:00

My Outlook dictionary thought "Starbucks" was spelled wrong and I had to add it to the dictionary. Really Microsoft, you've never heard of these coffee guys down the street?

Of course he's happy,,,

2010-09-17T16:05:00.000-07:00

Here's the Yahoo headline:
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Happy Making $36,000 A Year Working For Amazon

Here's the obvious conclusion from having read the article: Dude was paid $260M+ by Microsoft for his LinkExchange business, and Zappos was bought by Amazon for $1.2B So he's not exactly LIVING on $36K a year, that's just what his salary is (though the article doesn't mention stock options, benes, perks, or retirement funding...)

So the headline could have just read:
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Happy, Making $36,000 A Year Working For Amazon
or
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh ~~Happy Making $36,000 A Year~~ Working For Amazon
or
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Happy ~~Making $36,000 A Year Working For Amazon~~

But to imply this guy is some kind of Zen master, living off of $36K a year, eschewing material possessions or the trappings of the corporate culture is misleading at best.

I LOL'd

2010-09-16T14:10:00.001-07:00

I love Scocca's blog at slate.com. This is why-

Discussing how Tom Coburn thinks the expansion of FDA authority would be too expensive:
Coburn's concern about the deficit is one-sided—he's not asking for taxes to go up to cover the cost of the bill, which is a scary-sounding $1.4 billion, or a considerably less scary $4.67 per American citizen. Taxes are bad. He is expressing the political opinion that removing disease-ridden feces from the food supply is a responsibility that the government should not take on. This is what Tom Coburn stands for: he believes that, on top of everything else, you can actually go eat shit.

Fixing USPS

2010-09-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

I'm tired of hearing how the United States Postal Service can't do its job. I get that they both have a lot of mail to process AND they don't have as much mail as they used to because of email and private carriers. But, there's no justification for raising the price of their service while simultaneously reducing services. So here's what I propose:

Do away with the bulk rate for "junk mail."

First it will keep a lot of this shit out of my mailbox, which means it will also keep it out of the recycling stream (because 99.999999% of it goes immediately into my recycle bin without my looking at it). That will make me happy. Qdoba for example emails me coupons that I can choose to print out if I'm going to eat there, and Big 5 Sporting Goods has their 4 page ads online. I don't see why others can't folow their lead.

This then reduces the amount of mail the postal service has to bundle (this stuff is supposed to be presorted, but once it gets to the post office it has to go through some manner of bundling with the rest of my mail). This is turn reduces the number of mail crates USPS has to keep/replace. It further reduces wear on USPS vehicles AND increases gas mileage because of the weight reduction from not having to haul the junk mail around.

If companies decide they STILL have to mail me something I'm going to throw away, USPS collects the same money from them that they would from me. Actually, USPS could charge a premium for these loosely arranged bundles of mail- they must be a pain in the ass to keep together during this process, becuase they're a pain in the ass to keep together once I get them out of my mailbox.

USPS can keep the bulk rate for catalogs and whatnot, and non-profits should still get a hefty discount. But these companies have basically been taking advantage of a pricing loophole and it's time we close it.

Corn Sugar

2010-09-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

Be on the lookout- High Fructose Corn Syrup is getting a name change: to Corn Sugar. The Corn Refiners Association* claim that HFCS and cane sugar are nutritionally identical. I have my doubts. Cane sugar ain't great in the quantities most people consume it. But, my wife was telling me about a study in which houseflies were given access to HFCS, sugar and some kind of real food. Every fly ate only HFCS and died of malnutrition. Their brains are wired to eat the sweetest food they can find, but there's no food-value in HFCS so they died. That was actually the point of the study- to show that despite starving to death, their brain wiring was so strong that they could not not eat the HFCS, even when nutritive food sources were available.

* It's telling that they refer to their assn members as "refiners"

Ice Field Archaeology

2010-09-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

Alright, I'm not a global climate change denier, and I don't doubt that all of the gasses we emit via transportation and industry are contributing to the change. But I do have to put my foot down when alarmists say we're "causing damage" that hasn't been seen in human history.
For example- Scandinavian ice fields have receeded so far that archaeologists are finding pre-Viking tools and hunting weapons LAYING ON THE GROUND. Which is awesome. I'm thrilled to learn about the technologies used some 1000-1500 years ago.

So chillax. Climates change. Maybe not as fast as they are now, and maybe not all at once like they are now, but it stands to reason that what we're experienceing isn't new. The only reason we're afraid of these changes on a global level is that we can communicate with any spot on the globe in seconds. When these pre-Viking artifacts were deposited, most people didn't travel more than 5 miles from their home so they only had that very small area to know about.

Steve Jobs- ninja?

2010-09-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

Well, if you're like me and think that Apple is overpriced, overhyped, hipster tech that goes against the very ideals Jobs and Wozniack were working toward in the 80s AND you are on the Pirates side of the pirates/ninjas debate then you'll love this. According to Bloomberg News Steve Jobs was stopped in Japan while trying to board his own plane because he had ninja stars in his carry on. I'm a stickler for accuracy when avaialable and I would have demanded that the term shuriken be used, but that's me.

The point is, Jobs is NOT the pirate of Silicon Valley, he's a ninja. Which means he fails.

Guilt Machine

2010-09-13T11:50:00.000-07:00

Tycho at Penny Arcade posted the Wiki entry for the album from Arjens Lucassen's Guilt Machine "On This Perfect Day." At least 4 tracks are avaialable through Grooveshark.com if you want to give a listen. I like it. It reminds me of Queensryche (like immediately, out of the box, this could be a Scandi followup to Operation Mindcrime). There's some Machines of Loving Grace in there, a little Rush, maybe some Pink Floyd. But no one sounds like they're pushing themself like can be heard from these other bands, though. I think they want to be "dark" but aren't as successful as any of the aforementioned predecessors. It's a great debut from what I've listened to, and I might listen to a follow up album more than once if it's a bit more of a stretch.

[edit: their song "Perfection?" reminds me of A Perfect Circle, but again, not as edgy. The singer is competent, but not very emotive. It sounds like he's singing someone else's words without trying to get into the headspace that summoned the lyrics forth.]

Why the PAX thing bothers me so much

2010-09-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

As I've pointed out (and others on the PAX forums have pointed out) there's a disconnect between the content of the comic and what's being declared "acceptable" at PAX. The users and mods of the forums state that the booth babe policy and cosplay decency standards are being set by the community itself and they don't want to talk about it anymore. I notice that attitude a lot from people who are getting their way.

I guess my problem is that I hoped the PAX community was gonna be cool. I know, not everyone is going to like the dickwolves joke, or cardboard tube samurai, twisp and catsby, etc. But, I thought there would be more of a "live and let live" attitude than what I'm seeing from those who are active on the forums, and that disappoints me and makes me feel like these aren't really my peers. If you're worried about your kid seeing something "objectionable" then you need to figure that out. If you're worried about someone else's kid seeing something potentially objectionable then you need to get a freaking life and mind you own damned business.

PAX Prime 2010 videos

2010-09-09T23:49:00.000-07:00

PA strips not suitable for sani-PAX

2010-09-09T00:13:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I'm a little obsessive about this right now, but I went back to the beginning of 2008 to find ladies in Penny Arcade comics who wouldn't be allowed at PAX if the cosplay Puritans have their way. Aside from the more recent strips, I only looked at the comic to find boobs/bare skin. Keep in mind that not a lot of PA comics have women in them, and frequently when they do, the lady in question is married to one of the PA founders (so of course the wife in question is portrayed as the great lady I'm sure she is).

The point here is that even in the comic these Puritans claim to LOVE sooo much that they HAVE to go to the conference, we have busty ladies showing cleave and skin. Also, very inappropriate (read: not child friendly) content. If it's good enough for PA, it's good enough for PAX. BTW, all strips are copied from www.penny-arcade.com and the image name indicates the date published in YYYYMMDD format.

[EDIT: Also this: http://www.sumolounge.com/sumosac-gamer.php?re=na SUMO has been a long time advertiser on Penny Arcade and those sweater puppies only serve to reinforce the idea that the bean bags are soft and inviting]

PAX 2010 Overview (crosspost)

2010-09-08T23:30:00.000-07:00

Here's the promised crosspost:

The embedded blogging didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped. For the record, a 17" Vaio is heavy (especially when it's in a backpack with event swag, keys, wallet, phone, PSP, dice, chargers for all of the electronics I'm carrying, etc.) So I have a lot of respect for the folks who manage to do this.

The wife went crazy and decided that we MUST get a PlayStation 2 and a PS3 so she can play all of the God of War games. I’m fine with that. We picked up an indie game called Zombie Pirates that is a lot like desktop tower defense, but with pirate ships (you may need to wiki tower defense). I loaded it Sunday afternoon at about 6:30 and I've probably put in about 12 hours with it already. It's very very addictive.
I also bought the reboot of the dungeons & dragons red box, which is now based on the current 4th edition rules, but eliminates a lot of the clutter. I don't need a lot of what I've heard about the rules for 4E. I'm fine with the old-school, basic human, elf, halfling, dwarf races that can be fighters, rogues (formerly thieves), mages and clerics.

The Mortal Kombat reboot looks awesome, too and I have video of the wife and I playing it. I’m going to post it to YouTube as soon as I get a few minutes to edit the footage. So yeah, 2010-11 is the year of the old-school reboot and multi-player (in general, if the game wasn’t an update of a classic, then they were adding multiplayer to it).

There were several variations on dance and music games, too. Microsoft’s Kinect looks like the Wii but without the controllers. They didn’t do anything too impressive at the booth, but a couple of developers had made yoga/dance based games that looked pretty cool.

Are you tired of Guitar Hero and Rock Band? Never fear, you’ll have about four other choices to do more of the same, and one company is already using 6 string guitars as controllers (I believe this will become the norm, and people may be able to actually learn these instruments by playing the games).

The table-top gaming area (specifically D&D and Magic cards) was awesome. It was almost a refuge from the noise and crowds of the main exhibition hall. Plus we met up with Maxhavic, half of the team (and store) of Wandering Havoc. We haven't seen Dan in years and it was nice to get a couple of minutes to catch up. I hadn't seen this (or heard of it) before, but players were given chits that could be redeemed for items at the game registration booth. They had T-shirts, small backpacks, string backpacks, and game-related cards that could be "purchased" with these chits. I think it's an awesome way to draw people into multiple games. That said, this area needs to expand next year to accommodate the crowds. For a brand that was all but dead a few years ago, the interest in D&D was very encouraging.

The only game I played that I was really not impressed with was Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest. This is completely attributable to how the Wii systems were set up. Players need to be a few feet from the sensor bars, but PAX pretty much squeezes people right into the screens they're playing on. This made control difficult, at best.

I'm sure there will be more as the photos and videos are gone through. I will definitely post the Mortal Kombat footage, and may have to split the LotR:War for the North demo footage into pieces.

PAX Prime, booth babes and cosplay

2010-09-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to write a novel about this, but the background is that there is a vocal minority at the Penny Arcade Expo forums who are adamant that booth babes be banned, and some are even calling for costume decency standards.
Long story short, this is a gaming convention that centers around a comic that itself occasionally has female characters showing cleavage, and recently joked that miners in an in-game quest needed saving because they were raped to sleep each night by dickwolves (the hero of the story said he'd already saved the 5 he was sent to save, so meh). The morality and decency argument is invalid.

There's another argument that it degrades women. But these women aren't forced to be here- we're talking about adult women being paid to do a job, these aren't Asian sex slaves. The women are "on display" as advertising for a game and they can take action against anyone who gets "creepy." Saying these women are not free to express themselves is possibly MORE misogynistic than any "degradation" these women suffer by wearing a skintight spandex bodysuit that covers them from neck to wrist to ankle with no skin showing (and being paid to be sexy in the name of a corporation is self expression because they could just as easily NOT do it).

As for cosplayers- they're dressing like characters from comics and videogames. If there's anger at THEM then it's displaced and should be directed at the people who buy the games and comics (because the developers and artists wouldn't make characters that look like Kitana from Mortal Kombat if they thought people really really didn't want to see some DDs in a bikini). That is to say, the people complaining about cosplayers at a gaming convention really only have themselved to blame because they support the industry as much as the cosplayers do.

These folks "don't want to see boobs or butts" at these conventions. A couple have even said that tank tops would be unacceptable (by saying that no cleavage is acceptable under any circumstances). Are these the same haters that walk around talking shit about the cosplayers? Are these the 400 pound women who take the handicapped elevators becasue they're too lazy to take the escalators? (there are no stairs at the Washington State Convention Center- they're escalators) I'll tell you what- you ban cosplayers or booth babes showing some skin under any context and I will demand that we ban anyone with a BMI over 40.

[edit- I just talked with a fellow PAX goer who likes the current "rule" for booth babes which states they need to know the source material. I can get behind that for the booth babes, I guess. But compared to just having sexy women at the convention, is it less degrading to walk up to a woman and say something like, "Excuse me, but I noticed you're an attractive woman. I can't continue to ogle you until I'm certain you know the errata of the product you're advertising. If you can't answer my questions in detail, I'll succeed in embarrasing you by showing you're nothing more than an attractive woman standing in front of a video game, and are thereby in violation of this nebulous "rule" that has been sort of discussed. I will then continue to stare at you, but with derision equal to my lust. To prove your worth, I'll begin with the complier language used to build the game. How would you debug these lines of code..."]

Perhaps, folks, you need to reconsider your choice of vacation venue. I hear Disneyland is nice for much of the year... but then you might see Hannah Montana's underage cleavage, which is actually WORSE (for several reasons) than what you're complaining about at PAX.

Son of a Bitch...

2010-09-07T11:16:00.000-07:00

I just did a sizable overview post of PAX at brain-bottle.blogspot.com and went to edit it so I could copy it here. The entire fucking thing is blocked by my office's servers as "gaming content." Well, I guess that means SOMEONE is paying attention to it... I'll do the crosspost from home tonight. There aren't any juicy asides, but I may post pics of costumed hotties here :)

[EDIT: for Steve, my loyal blogfollower (I removed the dude from the WoW elves for you ;) ) ]

PAX 10 Day 1 1517

2010-09-03T15:29:00.000-07:00

Wow.

There are a lot of people here today, and Friday is usually a slow day for PAX. I took video of the demos for LOTR War in the North, Assassin's Creed's new multiplayer offering and Gears of War 3.

LotR:WitN looks really good. The graphics are impressive and the multiplayer is mandatory. If one of your characters dies (or the AI, if you don't have 4 players) then the quest is a fail. The game looks tough, too.

I didn't get a lot of info about Assassin's Creed, other than the multiplayer aspect. It seems to defeat the concept of the lone assassin, but this seems like the natural progression for the series.

Gears also looks to be a multiplayer, capture the flag type of game. I didn't watch that too long, I was looking for my wife.

WB Games had an interesting idea: of you want a shirt or aluminum water bottle you have to collect 5 badges. Badges are earned by demoing a game, or watching the demo video for LotR:WitN. We played Lego Universe, which is an interesting concept. It's an MMO where users can create their own content (hence universe). The first thing I thought of was the user generated world in Snow Crash. It has a very slick interface, which was designed and refined by kids according to the WB games rep who was handing out the badges.

Alright, so open note to people who attend these conferences: if you're overweight, that's not a disability on the same level as, say, someone in a wheelchair. You SHOULD feel like shit when my wife rolls up to the elevator and you're pressing the "down" button because you're too lazy to walk 20 yards to the escalator.

I would like to thank the ladies who dressed in costumes, and the ladies who dressed to impress. It's a nice offsetting of the stinky nerd guys in attendance (of which I am one).

I'm going to rest for a little while and then head back in. It's intense!

PAX 10 Day 1 0852

2010-09-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

We have a late start here for getting to PAX. Our internet connection was ridiculously unstable last night- we would have moments of 1MB/s download and then it would shut off. As a result, the Mrs had to go in to the office this morning to send some data. It's good that the building we work in is on the same street corner as the convention center, so this morning was just like any other Friday for her.

the crowds were non-existent on the main floor. I imagine everyone is on floor 4 with the vendors and the queue for goodie bags and whatnot. The energy in there from excitement over new games, meeting new people and seeing friends from the last PAX was almost tangible.

I'm going to post more here at CC than I do at the blog for brain bottle. I obviously feel more comfortable in this space to drop some "inappropriate language" and to generally talk some shit.

The jokes about Starbucks are true, BTW. The wife wanted me to get a triple grande soy pumpkin spice latte and the goddamned thing was $5.85 AFTER the discount for the upgrade to soy milk. That's a lot of money for a coffee. My iced tea ended up being $2.42 but I can get refills from this store all day- and they start making my drink as soon as they see me, instead of when I place the order (we have some non-verbal communication going on to indicate that I'm getting my regular drink).

Hopefully I'll have a follow up post around 1100.

Starbucks cards update

2010-08-31T14:48:00.000-07:00

I posted a plea to a WSU group at linkedin and received a response with this link:

http://buckscards.com/unique.htm

It shows that Starbucks has an Arizona State University card, but no WSU?! We must end the injustice!! (That said, the ASU card looks really good).

university waste...

2010-08-31T13:03:00.000-07:00

My wife has a permanent disabled parking placard because her psoriatic arthritis (an autoimmune disease, not an age-related illness) is pretty much eating her joints. She has had temporary UW disabled parking passes but has run out of exemptions, so she has to get a permanaent UW disabled pass, too. Her "interview" was today (despite already having submitted proof of her disability in excess of what the state requires). The woman at the UW wanted my wife to leave work, drive to campus, park in a regular parking lot (becasue, again, her disabled parking pass expired) and walk to the parking office for said interview. My wife said no, we'll do it over the phone. The woman protested. My wife, true to form, insisted that she's not doing all of the above after having already submitted the aforementioned documentation. The woman relented. The phone call lasted less than 20 minutes.

I write this as an example of the kind of wasteful mentality that is inherent in the university systems. While a simple phone call sufficed, the UW employee had insisted that the interview be done in person. I think it's safe to say that the phone call saved both of them time and saved this woman a 15 minute ass chewing when my wife figured out what a bullshit hoop this was to jump through (and probably saved the UW employee's manager some of the same ass chewing). WSU was no better when I tried to find out what summa cum laude actually meant in terms of class ranking. Four people and about a dozen emails were required to basically tell me that it's only an indication of a student's GPA and that they don't really track what percentage of students achieve each level of honors. Wasteful and lazy. Don't get me started on how much more attention on-campus students receive in comparison to online students...

Wazzu Starbucks cards...

2010-08-27T10:30:00.001-07:00

Here's the email I jsut sent to Satrbucks corporate:

I live in Seattle, but graduated from WSU and I use my Starbucks card multiple times per day (you know where this is going...). My wife is at UW and has a UW branded Starbucks card. The manager of the store in the building I work in loves to remind me that UW is the only school whose logo is on a Starbucks card (or as he jokingly puts it, "UW is the only school COOL enough to be on a Starbucks card"). Rumors from Pullman have been carried on the wind whispering that WSU cards -may- be coming soon if the UW cards prove popular. What do the Cougars have to do to get some Starbucks love? Surely a cross-state rivalry, fuled by epsresso shots, can only be good for business. I hope to see the crimson and grey soon.

I have decided that, based on their response, we may need to take action! If they don't have immediate plans to produce WSU logo'd cards, I will begin planning a mock-protest at the Apple Cup in Pullman on Dec 4. Further, I will do my best to have the protest be sponsored by Tully's! I posted to linkedin about the card injustice, let's see how Starbucks responds.

back of the plane, baby...

2010-08-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

Today's XX in Slate has this piece titles "Fly the Child-Free Skies" (http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/fly-child-free-skies) in which the author blogs,
someone has come up with a survey suggesting that in one circumstance, at least, we be put in our place: the back of the plane.

Oh, wait, that has some particularly unfortunate cultural connotations, doesn't it? Well, perhaps not the back of the plane. But more than half of fliers polled by fare-comparison Web site SkyScanner favor confining parents flying with children to a "family section," and with the front of the plane inconveniently located near first class, the rear section makes an awfully good place to tuck the potentially undesirable. Sure, not every baby cries, and not every 4-year-old will spend the entire flight kicking the back of the seat in front of him while throwing Skittles and hittlng his hapless mother, but you know, he might. Far better to put him and his whole family back where there's no risk of offending the polite, well-behaved adult flying public.

Is it even necessary to present a sincere argument against this, or would sarcasm suffice?

As a non-parent by choice, I would actually like to hear you defend your position. However, I would expect that you'll get the same kind of sympathy as the kid in my neighborhood who insists on riding his weedeater-powered scooter, the guy who runs his lawnmower at 7AM on a Saturday and my neighbors who insist on loud parties for every holiday (and fireworks of they think they can get away with them).

I don't have kids because I don't want the responsibility, and their noises and smells bug the shit outta me. Had I not already been married, I would have proposed on the spot to the attractive young lady stepping off on an elevator who said to her friend "I don't know why I don't like babies- maybe it's that fucking smell..."

English prof tossed from the 'bux

2010-08-16T11:22:00.000-07:00

Here's the link to NY Post: http://m.nypost.com/;s=41LH64aAtL6yDSlEzpToZ03/p/news/local/manhattan/venti_size_fury_A0uKw71Ky1UAOksmbjrBhI

Rosenthal, who is in her early 60s, asked for a toasted multigrain bagel -- and became enraged when the barista at the [Starbucks] franchise, on Columbus Avenue at 86th Street, followed up by inquiring, "Do you want butter or cheese?"

"I just wanted a multigrain bagel," Rosenthal told The Post. "I refused to say 'without butter or cheese.' When you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want.

"Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a stickler for correct English."

Um, no. It's not incorrect to ask someone if they would like something additional, commonly added and gratis with their bagel. It may be inefficient to engage in further discussion about the item, especially if you're a regular at that location and only ever order a boring-ass plain toasted bagel- but it's not improper use of the language. And by the way, when you go to the BK in BK and order a Whopper, they'll ask you if you want cheese on it because it's a common fucking addition, just like butter or cream cheese on a bagel (though the cheese will add up to a dollar to your Whopper purchase, depending on your market). So stop being an overpaid, overpriviledged, elitist bitch, answer the question, and let me get my fucking iced tea. If you want to argue about FOOD go someplace like a diner, not a coffee shop.

Looks like Slate's Brow Beat has been reading the Contrarian:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2010/08/16/don-t-like-starbucks-don-t-go-there.aspx

When you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want."

Actually, Ms. Rosenthal, Burger King might invite you to "have it your way," but if you don't want pickles or lettuce or mayo on your Whopper, you have to let them know

and their conclusion is heartily agreed with:
Rosenthal is an English professor and insists that she is a "stickler for correct English." Two points: There is correct English and there is PRECISE English. She placed a perfectly "correct" order for a bagel, but her barista wanted to be "precise" and followed up with a question, for which she could have given the correct answer of "Neither, please." (Starbucks can't read its customers minds and presumably has a lot of customers who order a bagel without requesting butter or cheese but who DO want a spread.) Secondly, you don't have to have a Ph.D. to learn courtesy. That's something that is usually covered in kindergarten.

Emo vs Macho

2010-08-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

I just realized that The Expendables and Scott Pilgrim opened on the same weekend, possibly setting up the greatest emo vs macho conflict in history. On the one hand we have a cast of action movie legends- each who has played at most two characters in their entire career, and that's being generous. Their entire raison d'etre is to be muscley, delivery witty one-liners, shoot with impossible accuracy while the bad guys unload crates of ammo and miss entirey, then blow up everything. We have no complaints about the typecasting of action heroes.

Then there's Michael Cera who has played exactly one character in his entire carrer. I would love if someone could do a mashup of all of his pining-for-the-girl scenes because I bet if it was just audio we wouldn't have any idea what movie was being sampled. If it was a full video clip, you could probably get away with taking his character in Juno and planting it in Infinite Playlist and we would be none the wiser.

So what's my problem with Michael Cera? I'm not sure. I guess because he's tried comedies as well as these emo angsty "feeelms" I assume he's trying to branch out (more than say Stallone branching out from Rambo to Rocky to his Formula 1 movie). But more than Stallone or Schwarzenegger, Cera is the SAME character in each movie. At least with Stallone you can see subtle difference between Rocky and Rambo. Or Jason Statham's characters in Crank, Transporter and "In the Name of the King" (which was kind of a turd, but c'mon- Statham kicking ass and Ms Sobieski in tight, sheer clothing. Nuff said). I guess I just don't see those differences in an actor like Cera whose every character is a self-conscious, middle-class suburban high schooler who forever tilts at the windmill of the future-librarian hottie. I guess by way of showing his acting range, occasionally he carries spermicidal lube.

Probably to no one's surprise, Expendables crushed Scott Pilgrim, and even the touchy-feely Eat Pray Love kicked Pilgrim's ass.
[edit to add: Slate's Twitter Feed reports, "Male stupidity whups female stupidity at box office."]

Worst Paying Degrees

2010-08-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

According to CBS/Moneywatch here are the twenty worst paying degrees. I am soooooo glad that I abandonded my thoughts of a paralegal degree for my humanities degree :)

Worst-Paying College Degrees in 2010

College Degree
Starting Pay
Mid-Career Pay

1. Child and Family Studies
$29,500
$38,400

2. Elementary Education
$31,600
$44,400

3. Social Work
$31,800
$44,900

4. Athletic Training $32,800 $45,700
5. Culinary Arts $35,900 $50,600
6. Horticulture $35,000 $50,800
7. Paralegal Studies/Law $35,100 $51,300
8. Theology $34,700 $51,300
9. Recreation & Leisure $33,300 $53,200
10. Special Education $36,000 $53,800
11. Dietetics $40,400 $54,200
12. Religious Studies $34,700 $54,400
13. Art $33,500 $54,800
14. Education $35,100 $54,900
15. Interdisciplinary Studies $35,600 $55,700
16. Interior Design $34,400 $56,600
17. Nutrition $42,200 $56,700
18. Graphic Design $35,400 $56,800
19. Music $36,700 $57,000
20. Art History $39,400 $57,100

Idea Generator

2010-08-12T11:26:00.000-07:00

So I've been looking at this site, Elance.com, the past few days. My previous post about crappy writing is based on some "job" postings I've seen there.

There's another section for e-books and blogs that is, in essence, an idea generator. See, when you tell me you want me to write 125 unique marriage proposals for men, which you intend to publish as an e-book you just gave me a great idea for an e-book. See, with e-publishing, I completely eliminate YOU as a middle-man. I don't need a publisher or anyone else involved. I write it, save it as a PDF and put it on a bunch of websites. The only advantage I can see to writing something like this for someone else is that I'm guaranteed a check when I'm done writing,otherwise I have to wait for sales. But $50 to write your book that will probably be sold for $15-20 anyway isn't much incentive. But thanks for the idea.

Another one just says: I'm looking to have two e-books written about social media, 30-50 pages each. Really? On any aspect of social media? You don't have anything in particular you want to say or discuss?

Here's another gem, taken STRAIGHT from the site. Notice that this joker wants to retain all rights to publishing and insists that this work be 100% original. Because if I'm an acoustical engineer with the background to write his book then I'm obviously incapable of e-publishing it myself.
Here goes:
10 Chapter eBook on Soundproofing a Room.
Also provide info on acoustics and sound.
Minimum 8-10 pages per chapter.
I will provide outline and topics for Chapters
Must contain custom illustrations
100% ownership over the material
100 % quality original work (not duplicated content).
Original content will be verified
Any sources of information, such as stats or research must be cited.
Writing must be easy to understand, simple, professional
Must be free of spelling errors, written with an attention to proper grammar and punctuation

Things that are not trilogies....

2010-08-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

By definition a trilogry must be three separate stories that share a common story arc. Star Wars* is by far the best know example of a true trilogy. Each movie has a beginning, middle and end. Each movie tells part of a larger story that has its own beginning, middle and end (though there were plans for events after the fall of the Empire and there is MUUUUUCH fan fiction with Luke as an adult, etc). A story broken into three pieces for ease of consumption does NOT a trilogy make, to wit:

The Lord of the Rings is NOT a trilogy. End of story. It was originally written to be ONE book (of a two volume set, the other book being The Silmarillion) in something like 9 'books' as with the Bible (though the current official 'book' count is 6). Tolkien's publishers had him break it up into three pieces for ease of publishing and to make it more wieldy for the average reader. I have the faux-leather bound single binding edition, which I love, in no small part because that's what God... I mean J.R.R. intended. But wait, you want to be smart and say "well, if you count 'The Silmarillion" and "The Hobbit" then you have a trilogy" and you'd be right until you realize a) no one but you and I have read "Silmarillion" and not everyone is even aware of "The Hobbit" and then, fuck us, they went off and released "Children of Hurin" a couple years ago, and we've had "Unfinished Tales" and some Tom Bombadil stuff since the Tolkein gold rush of the 1970s. I don't want to hear any of your bullshit about "well, it's always commonly been broken into three parts, so to the average reader/viewer it's a trilogy." See above about three parts /= trilogy. Let's just stick to agreeing that neither the movies nor the books can in any way be considered a trilogy.

The Matrix. Jesus this is a hard one to convince people about. See, the first movie "The Matrix" is one movie. "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions" are also one movie, broken into two segments. People don't think "Kill Bill" is two movies, they understand the concept of "halves." So what the Wachovski brothers did was take "The Matrix" and ruin it by adding a double-length sequel, which then confused millions of ignorant people who want to refer to it as a trilogy. It's right about now that people try to get clever and say "you have to count the Animatrix," but fuck that because the Animatrix is like 11 more stories set in the world of the Matrix.

Pirates of the Caribbean: See "The Matrix" above. Same shit without an AniPirates disk thrown in there. [Edit: shit, with the recent film release it's now ACTUALLY a trilogy, but in four parts.]

*re: Star Wars. "Episodes 1-3" don't count because they suck balls. We're talking old school, canonnical works here.

Crappy writing

2010-08-11T12:41:00.000-07:00

I think I've figured out why there is SO MUCH crappy writing on the internet. By crappy, I mean sloppy structure, poor word choice, no depth to the articles, obvious plagiarism, etc. I've been looking at a website for freelance writers and there are companies that are expecting 500-1000 word articles with citations/references and they're paying $5 (or less) per article with a commitment of 10-50 articles.
It's no wonder google results are full of piles and piles of articles that are either direct copies or very close copies of other articles. 500 words, researched, would take me about 90 minutes if I didn't really care about the end result, which means I would be making $3.33 per hour for that article. That's about $7000 per year at that hourly rate if I worked a standard 2070 hour work year.

I guess like everything, you get what you pay for and that's why a lot of what we find on google is useless.

Another Valedictorian wants to join the haters....

2010-08-07T17:04:00.001-07:00

A FB friend posted this speech by a high school valedictorian. http://blog.swiftkickonline.com/2010/07/valedictorian-speaks-out-against-schooling-in-graduation-speech.html

I was going to respond to it on FB, but as usual had so much to say it would bore most readers to tears. So I put it on my blog :)

I thought it was great that she lumped engineers in with the artists, etc. Having been down both paths, I can say with authority that there is an enormous difference between an engineer and an artist. You'll buy jewelry from someone self taught, but would you want to fly in a plane designed and built by a dropout, or worse, the guy who was a “D” student all the way through? At least the dropout probably built the damned thing so he could fly it himself- the student went on to be a "professional" and probably takes the train.

I wrestled with a similar problem to that presented by Ms Goldson over the past 32 months: should I bust my ass to graduate summa cum laude, or should I give myself a break and spend some time in the shop working on my metalcraft, or playing video games, or trying to learn the guitar again? My final GPA was 3.98 and it took me 19 months to finish one knife. I still haven’t finished Dragon Age: Origins, Red Faction Guerilla, or Darksiders. But I think I made the right decision. The video games are still there and will continue to wait. The tests I took and papers I wrote are long gone.

More importantly, I think her speech misses the point- because she did all of that work in high school she opened doors that would otherwise not be available to her in college. If she, as valedictorian, goes and travels for two years and then decides to go to college, that school will look at her application and say "wow, here's a girl with a good head on her shoulders- we applaud you for taking time to see the world!" Whereas, if one of those C or D students took a couple of years off and then decided to go to college, that same admissions office would say "well, this one just kept goofing off after high school, and will probably do the same if we let them in." And surely she knows that artists can starve whether they have PhDs or dropped out of school, so if that’s what she wants to do, there’s nothing stopping her.

If her point with her speech is to try to change the fundamentals of the educational system in this country, then she’ll have to learn about irony. First, she’ll have to apply to college and continue using those skills that earned her Valedictorian status. Add four years. She’ll have to figure out which path will do her most good: Education, Education psychology, etc and then apply to a graduate program, where she’ll spend an additional 4-7 (or more!) years becoming an expert in the field of educational systems. Then her work on changing the system can begin in earnest! At this point, assuming she’s one of these people who can burn through degrees, she’ll need at least 7 years on top of being 18, so she’ll be a PhD at 25. Then she’ll have to work in the field, write papers, get herself known as an expert. How long will that take? I have no idea, but I think at least 10 to be well thought of. But here’s the rub- she’s going AGAINST the current system. A system she will have spent her entire life inside. A system designed to eliminate boat-rockers. To put it in simple terms to save my writing and your reading: she wants to be Neo, and we know the Matrix (educational systems) will continue making Agent Smiths (unions, long time teachers afraid if change, administrators, other experts, etc).

It was a bold speech, and it took a lot of bravery for her to deliver it (assuming this isn’t another Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen http://www.bondon.com/sunscreen_song.html ). I wish her the best. If she reads this, or if you need a reminder:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

Where do I get grant money to prove obvious things?

2010-08-03T13:47:00.001-07:00

so there's an article on News.Discovery.com about whether Cleopatra could have used vinegar to dissovle a pearl, then drink the resulting concoction. That's not the part that has me pissed. Dudes actually spent money to prove it in a lab. Are you frakking kidding me? All tehy had to do was ask a jeweler, or my wife.

"hey, what about wearing a pearl when you're cooking or cleaning with vinegar?"

"Um, hells to the no! That shit will dissolve the pearl, at worst. At best it will mess up the finish- don't be retarded."

See? That's all it would have taken. But no, these jackholes treat this like they found that Roman recipe for water-hardening concrete or something. It is PAINFUL to keep reading these articles about obvious things being presented as discoveries of the century.

This is why we can't have nice things....

2010-08-02T12:57:00.001-07:00

This morning at 1AM I emailed my final paper of my last class of my undergraduate degree. Thank. God! So I'm looking around the interwebtubes trying to figure out the best way to list my education on my resume. I had been using a format that indicated my completion date, but since that has officially past I want to highlight that I have the damned thing and I want to put it in the place that is most effective for my ass to get a new job. So I think it should be near the top to tell employers in the new field I'm looking at that my experience in the field is light, but look- BA (Summa Cum Laude), writing cert, etc. And then they see that I've been in the medical billing field for 10+ years.

I went to linkedin to see what foils had to say and this is a pretty typical response:

http://www.linkedin.com/answers/career-education/resume-writing/CAR_RSW/258070-13158659?searchIdx=3&sik=1280778359264&goback=%2Easr_1_1280778359264

For those who don't have a linkedin account (you should) I'll summarize: each of the 12 responders had a different answer for how they prefer a resume to be arranged. Seriously. And they're all in hiring. So if these guys can't agree on how a resume is supposed to look, it becomes pretty damned apparent that ANY and EVERY layout is completely right AND completely wrong at the same time- it's a matter of dumb luck that the person reading it likes your format. Which further emphasizes that it's best to get to know someone who can get you the job you want, then the resume is sort of perfunctory and is put in your file as a piece of paper for them to refer back to.

follow up

2010-07-15T15:55:00.001-07:00

The buzz keeps on with the Holocaust survivor video... worst phrasing in decades comes courtesy of the AP (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100715/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_survivor_s_dance/print ):

In Israel, home to the largest concentration of Holocaust survivors, the video has received scant attention.

Yikes--- someone think about the wording a little next time, 'k?

re: that dancing holocaust survivor video...

2010-07-12T15:36:00.001-07:00

When I get home, I'll post the link (one of many), but here the TLDR: Holocaust survivor, his daughter and grandchildren dance to a rendition of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" at various concentration camps and Nazi outposts in Europe. At first I was like WTF. Then it sets in that, well, this is a family he wouldn't have had, had he not survived the camps. Poignant, to be sure. Some have said "life-affirming."

Then there are others who aren't sure this is really in good taste, and I think I'm in that camp at least as much as I'm in the "well, yeah, this is something to celebrate" category.

Hear me out. The lyrics of the song tell the story of a brokenhearted woman who knows that she'll get through the breakup and will be alright, if not a little more cautious in the future. She just has to have the will to pull herself though.

Now that's a little different than being shot because you're a Jew. Or gassed in a "shower." Or forced to labor without food until you're too weak to work, and then you're shot, gassed or left for dead. Bleeding to death from multiple gunshot wounds isn't something you get through by having a positive attitude.

And that's the problem I have with the choice of song. I think it's commendable that this family went to these horrible places and basically said, "we're done letting the memory of what you did to our people ruin our lives." And maybe that's why they chose the song. But the implied message seems a little insensitive to those who also survived who had loved ones killed in the camps: "Hey bub, all your dad had to do was have love in his heart the day they sent him to the gas chambers and he would have survived like I did, and like Ms Gaynor survived her breakup."

What would people be saying if there was a montage of images of slaves being whipped, mutliated, killed and sold, with the same song being played? I guarantee YouTube would not allow it to be streamed.

Perhaps if there was a little more context to the dance routine, there wouldn't be so much controversy/discussion about it. Maybe if they said why they chose the song (am I right about my "we're getting past the memories" guess) it would be easier for others to get into the spirit in which the video was obviously made: I survived, I have this family that I love and I won't let these places with their memorise of dark deeds take one more day away from me.

Russian Spies- what's really scary...

2010-06-29T09:11:00.001-07:00

I'm baffled by this new story about Russian spies in the US. What could they possibly want to know? how long have they been here?

Is this a test to determine how much authority the FBI has?

What am I talking about? Check this out, one of the 'spies' is a reporter from Peru who contacted a Russian official in 2000, and that was the pretext for her arrest this week. This is from today's AP story about it:

Pelaez was a reporter and editor for a prominent Spanish-language newspaper videotaped by the FBI contacting a Russian official in 2000 in Latin America, prosecutors said...

Pelaez is a Peruvian-born reporter and editor and worked for several years for El Diario/La Prensa, one of the country's best-known Spanish-language newspapers. She is best known for her opinion columns, which often criticize the U.S. government.

Is that IT?! Is that all the evidence we need to arrest people now? A REPORTER in a foreign country talks to an official from another government, and doesn't like the way you run things so that makes her a suspect...?

I guess the good news is that Limbaugh, Beck, et al. will STFU for fear of being arrested as Russian spies, sent to subvert American politics... I hear Sarah Palin could see Russia from Alaska- I think she needs a few weeks in a small cell, answering pointed questions about why she was looking at Russia. What did she find out? What did they ask her to do? how much are they paying her to do it? Someone should look into that. FBI, I know you read the Constant Contrarian- just go ahead and copy your report into the comments box.

speaks for itself

2010-06-24T16:16:00.001-07:00

Another from Slate (yeah, it's been a while, I was on vacation last week):

Texas Judge Nixes Master's Degree in Creationism

Thanks to a federal judge in Austin, anybody looking to pursue a master's degree in Bible-based science won't be able to do it in Texas. Two years ago, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board shot down a proposal that would have allowed the Dallas-based Institute of Creation Research to grant master's degrees "that critique … evolution and champion … a literal interpretation of the biblical account of creation." (The institute's tagline is "Biblical. Accurate. Certain.") The group appealed the decision, arguing that it violated their First Amendment rights, but this didn't fly with Judge Sam Sacks. In his ruling, Sacks tore the institute a new one, noting that it was "entirely unable to file a complaint which is not overly verbose, disjointed, incoherent, maundering, and full of irrelevant information." Luckily for those whose academic ambitions involve an M.A. from the institute, there's hope yet: It has regulatory approval in California.

Houston Press | Thursday, June 24, 2010

follow up to "fail for Democracy"

2010-06-11T09:38:00.001-07:00

The follow up also comes from Slate:

Who is Alvin Greene?

Is he a Republican plant? Does he have a criminal record? These are some of the questions swirling around mystery candidate Alvin Greene, a man who very unexpectedly came out on top in this week's South Carolina Democratic primary despite not campaigning at all. Greene won more than 60 percent of the vote and beat out party-backed challenger Vic Rawl, who has promised to look into "election day irregularities." The best theories about Greene's victory suggest that voters picked him because he was listed first alphabetically, and that Republicans took advantage of the state's open primary system and came out en masse to vote for him. What is known about Greene is that he's 32, doesn't have a phone, and lives with his 81-year-old father in a rural part of the state. He's also facing felony obscenity charges for allegedly showing pornography to a 19-year-old University of South Carolina student last fall, the AP reported this week, and is a military veteran. While the Pentagon confirmed to the Washington Post that Greene served in the Army and Air Force national guards—and was awarded a handful of medals for his service—how he left the army is just as mysterious as the man himself. Greene told the Post that he "was honorably discharged from the Army, but it was involuntary. Things weren't working out. . . . Same thing happened in the Air Force. It's a long story in both services."

The Washington Post | Friday, June 11, 2010