Chez Kazrak

Sometimes I hate being right.

2011-05-20T20:25:00.002-07:00

So two days ago, somebody posted this satire link to lily. It's a joke about how Planned Parenthood is opening an $8 billion abortionplex.

My comment: "I give it no more than 2 days before it's being forwarded around as The Truth."

It is now two days later.

I hate being right.

Eighteen Years

2011-05-15T05:00:00.002-07:00

"Isn't it amazing how someone who was once a stranger, suddenly meant the world to you?"

I saw that quote recently, and immediately thought of someone who means the world to me.

Eighteen years ago today, we made that a formal promise. It's a big deal number for me - my parents didn't make it to their eighteenth anniversary. And now, I have.

We've got a long ways to go to catch her parents, though. They're somewhere north of 40 years and still going.

Random Counterfactual

2011-05-04T16:43:00.003-07:00

Time for 'what if?' Point of departure: Nixon, finding out about the Watergate break-in, is shocked - shocked! - that his people would stoop so low and hands them over to investigators. Nothing is pinned on him, nobody rats, but suspicion remains. So...then what?

Presumably, Agnew still gets forced out and Ford takes over as VP. Nixon, politically wounded and unable to accomplish much, serves out the last of his term through to '76. Ford, presumably, runs for the nomination, but it's unclear he can get it without the imprimatur of being the incumbent. Given how close it was, it's probably not unreasonable to guess that Reagan takes it. Carter can still ride the anti-establishment wave (which would probably still be there, but not as strong), so we get Carter vs. Reagan in '76. This is a tough call - Carter barely squeaked out a win against Ford, and Reagan was a phenomenal campaigner. I suspect Reagan's better campaign skills would offset the loss of incumbency and still call this a narrow win for Carter.

We'll assume no other major changes through to '80. So...Reagan runs again, but does he get it? American political parties haven't been fond of giving second chances at the Presidency in the recent past - the last time a losing candidate was renominated four years later was Adlai Stevenson in '52 and '56. In our world, he won this one definitively, so I'd be tempted to say he pulls it off but with more competition, maybe co-opting Anderson as a VP pick instead of Bush.

That's as far as I've gotten so far. I may play with this idea some more, or possibly take it down an alternative leg of the trousers of time: what if Reagan won in '76?

On Death

2011-05-02T21:47:00.004-07:00

So, apparently there was a big dust-up recently and somebody who'd done some very bad things got killed.

I don't like to celebrate the death of anyone. And, to be honest, I don't think most of the celebration is that he's dead. People would be celebrating the same if he'd just been captured. (Admittedly, a lot of them would be building gory fantasies about how he should die. These are the same folks who are now building these fantasies about how he should have died. Their disorders are their own problems.)

Before death, there's always the possibility that someone can change their mind. Repentance is a powerful thing, and there's always hope. (Yes, I'm an optimist. Sue me.)

But, he's dead, and it's probably better that way. Yes, now he's a martyr, but as a prisoner he'd have been a bargaining chip. One can threaten to kill people if a prisoner isn't released, but it's hard to do that with a martyr. The terrorists can just kill people in revenge, but it's not like they weren't trying to do that anyway while he was alive.

So, he's dead. I won't rejoice in his death. But I'm not about to mourn him.

#26: Z is for Zebra

2011-04-30T21:41:00.002-07:00

Because it is. It's always for Zebra.

Because, like X, there aren't any other interesting things for Z. The Romans dropped it from the alphabet they stole from the Greeks, then had to put it back in because they needed it for loan words. (Which is why it's sixth letter in the Greek alphabet, but dead last in the Latin one.)

And so we come to the end of 26 in 26. I'm mostly pleased with it, and hope to continue regular blogging service going forward.

#25: Y is for Yahoo!

2011-04-29T21:27:00.002-07:00

Here's your old-fart comment of the day:

I remember when Yahoo! was at akebono.stanford.edu.

#24: X is for X

2011-04-28T21:19:00.002-07:00

X isn't really for anything. Few words in English start with X; it's one of those odd letters that got glommed onto the end of the alphabet to make stealing from Greek easier.

Even worse, it gets used even less often than its companions W, Y, and Z, and rarely starts a word. Frequently lists cheat this with 'ex' words (a relatively common Latin prefix, meaning 'out of'), or fall back on X-ray or xylophone.

So, I'm going to say that X is for X, the letter itself. It's actually a nice letter. Just...not as the beginning of a word.

#23: W is for Work

2011-04-27T18:20:00.002-07:00

Work is looking up these days. Design doc that was a cast-iron pain in the butt is complete and the work involved in it handed off to various folks, including me. And now I get to ramp up on C++.

That may not be much of an upside, but my biggest concern is stagnating. Programming can be a young man's game, and I've seen what happens to folks that let themselves stop learning. The last thing I want is to be in the position of the old dog that can't be taught new tricks.

So, C++ time.

#22: V is for Vegetables

2011-04-26T21:53:00.002-07:00

One of the biggest problems I have in eating properly is: vegetables. I don't like most of them.

I like peas. And corn. (Both of which are more 'starch' than 'vegetable'.)

And potatoes and sweet potatoes. (Them too.)

And tomatoes. (More 'fruit' than 'vegetable'.)

And onions and carrots and celery. (Yay aromatics.)

And...not a lot else. I'll tolerate asparagus and zucchini and squash. Can't stand broccoli or cauliflower or brussels sprouts.

This...is something I need to work on, I think. No good ideas, unfortunately.

#21: U is for Ubiquitous

2011-04-25T20:26:00.002-07:00

At some point, computing power went from 'something at work/school' to 'something at home' to 'something ubiquitous'. Exactly when it happened varies by person, but I can identify mine.

Summer 1996, my in-laws visited and my father-in-law gave me a small pocket data bank. Stores 100 phone numbers, basic calendar, etc. It was nice, but nowhere near seriously useful. Then I went to visit a friend who had a Psion S3a. Revelation. It was a small computer that went everywhere.

I looked into what was available, and decided a S3a was what I needed as well. (Palm devices - then the Pilot 1000 and 5000 - were 'portable extensions of your desktop', when I wanted a portable computer in its own right. The tiny clamshell DOS machines were the other option, and they weren't terribly good at actually doing anything.) And so, despite money being a bit tight, one was purchased.

It paid for itself within a year. With calendaring and notes in my pocket, I earned a large raise and bonus that year. So much so that, when the Psion S5 came out the following summer, I purchased one of those as well. (The S3a had many nice things going for it, but the hinges on the screen weren't one of them.)

The S5 lasted for a couple years, but Psion didn't have anything better coming out, so with a sigh I went to PalmOS when it was time to upgrade again. The Handspring Visor wasn't quite as good at calendaring, but was much much smaller. An ill-timed drop on concrete a couple years later led to replacement with a Sony Clie SL10. The high-resolution screen was a revelation, and I never wanted to switch back.

It was followed by a Tungsten C, which I loved for its keyboard. A dead logic board caused an emergency switch to a Tungsten TX, which was never particularly well loved, but was functional.

It was time to give up on PalmOS. OS5 was clearly a dead end, and OS6 was stillborn. The Nokia N800 was a beautiful (if somewhat large) replacement, with a glorious high-resolution screen. But the next generation of ubiquitous computing was already here: the iPhone had launched to much acclaim and snark.

I waited in line for an iPhone 3G, and used it for quite some time. Even when my employer gave me a G1, the iPhone was my go-to device, until its battery got flaky. I swapped the SIM over to my employer's newly-provided Nexus 1, and kept the iPhone for its apps.

Now I use a Nexus S, and keep an iPod touch as well. I love Android for its networking and integration with my Google accounts; I love iOS for its beautiful apps. Use the right tool for the job...sometimes that means carrying two tools.

#20: T is for Teamwork

2011-04-23T19:43:00.002-07:00

Tonight my older son and I worked through a level and a bit of Portal 2 co-op. It's interesting to see how we work together - we do most of it without any explicit communication. Typed messages back and forth are more likely "oops" than anything else. (Especially when one of us drops the other into the sludge. "Accidentally.")

He's scaring me now - he's figuring out the puzzles faster than I am. Good thing he's on my team.

#19: S is for Simplicity

2011-04-22T21:39:00.002-07:00

Today I got a CR-48 Chrome laptop.

It's beautifully simple. It's a tool that does one thing - run a web browser - but it tries to be the best web-browser-runner it can.

It needs a bit more horsepower, I suspect - an Atom N455 is just a tad underpowered for the modern web. (An N570 would probably be fine - dual core would help.)

Other than that, though, it's excellent. And it comes with 100MB of free 3G data per month.

There's something to be said for tools that do one thing well. I'm less enamored of the tools that try to do everything - the right tool for the right job is more important.

#18: R is for RSS

2011-04-21T20:32:00.004-07:00

It's interesting to think about how RSS has changed my Internet time.

It used to be that I had folders and folders of stuff, and I checked various ones daily or weekly.

Now, it all just shows up in Reader. I can follow more stuff because it only comes up when it changes.

Of course, the downside is that I'm following more stuff, which means more time thinking about it. That's hard work.

#17: Q is for Quotations

2011-04-20T19:49:00.001-07:00

A couple quotes I like:

"The line between good and evil, hope and despair, does not divide the world between us and them. It runs down the middle of each one of us." -- Robert Fulghum

"But the truth is, I could no more stop dreaming, than I could make them all come true." -- Buddy Mondlock

#16: P is for Portal 2

2011-04-19T15:09:00.003-07:00

I swear I didn't plan this. P landing on Portal 2 ship date is purely coincidence.

I'm about 4 hours in so far, just at the point where you first deal with the repulsion gel. Lots of good bits, hard to choose the best, but some personal favorites that stuck with me:

Being launched through the Aperture Science logo.
GLaDOS starting in on fat jokes.
Potato.

#15: O is for Outside

2011-04-18T20:31:00.002-07:00

There's a rumor that there's a big room outside with a blue ceiling. (Sometimes. Sometimes it's black. Sometimes it's grey.)

I get to spend about 40 minutes a day there when I walk to the shuttle and back. And I try to walk to a different part of campus at least once a week. I'm involved in a program at work where I'm trying to walk at least 175 minutes a week. Four shuttle rides a week is 160 minutes, so I just need to find another 15 somewhere.

The weather's getting nice, so it's easy to spend time outside now. Maybe it's time to bring the bike in for a tune-up.

#14: N is for Navigation

2011-04-16T21:44:00.003-07:00

I don't get lost often. (It has happened occasionally. Not really 'lost' at that point, but 'I appear to not be where I thought I was, and not going in the direction I expected'. But, you know, still able to find my way out.)

And yet I find myself leaning on GPS navigation, even for places I know where to go. I set up the GPS when driving home from work. It helps with routing around traffic, and gives time estimates, but I think part of it is that it's just nice to have something to lean on.

I'm trying to decide if the solution is to use it less...or more.

#13: M is for Museums

2011-04-16T01:45:00.004-07:00

We have memberships at several of the museums near here. Some favorites:

CuriOdyssey (formerly Coyote Point Museum) - a great little combination, a small zoo with a small science museum and a small environmental museum, all set on a gorgeous point overlooking San Francisco Bay. A family favorite. (Side benefit: as a member of both AZA and ASTC, membership gets reciprocal admissions to both zoos and science museums.)
Hiller Aviation Museum - lots of fabulous old planes, the front end of a 747 that the kids can man the controls of, flight simulators, and a great view of San Carlos Airport for those who like to watch the planes take off and land.
The Tech - very nice science museum in San Jose, and well-loved (and well-supported) by the local tech industry. Complete with giant domed IMAX screen.

#12: L is for Languages

2011-04-14T15:40:00.002-07:00

I'm fascinated by languages. The different ways concepts are expressed, the information on a culture's focus you can get from their languages, all interesting things. (I'm fascinated by information in general, but this is a particularly interesting subset.)

Some particular favorites:

Hawaiian first-person plural pronouns. English has one ('we') with variants by case ('us', 'our', 'ours'). Hawaiian has four, but they carry distinctly different meanings: 'kaua' is 'you and me', 'maua' is 'someone who is not you, and me'. (Inclusive and exclusive pronouns are distinct.) Likewise, 'kakou' is 'you, me, and at least one other person' - two-person plurals are distinct from three-or-more-person plurals - and 'makou' is 'at least two people who are not you, and me'.

Japanese personal pronouns. TV Tropes lists over 20 versions of 'I', ranging from 'this humble individual' to equivalents of the Royal We, along with 17 versions of 'you'. Fine gradations between them are one of those cultural minefields that it's far, far too easy to step in.

#11: K is for Knives

2011-04-13T10:04:00.003-07:00

Knives are tools used to cut things. Handy things, to the extent that I've carried one regularly for probably 25 years now.

I don't remember my first knife terribly well. I think I got a rusty old two-blade knife used at some point. I started carrying one regularly by high school, and lost a couple when I worked for Ames. (Including one I really wish I still had, a boating knife which had my father's - and my - name on it.)

At some point I picked up a Bucklite, a very nice little plastic-handled knife by Buck which went on my keychain until the lanyard hole broke. In college, I got a Swiss Army knife, which also went on my keychain, sharing space with the Bucklite for a while. (Whatever other tools it provided, I liked the blade on the Bucklite more than the blades on the SAK.)

I stopped carrying the Bucklite and just kept the SAK for about 10 years, until wear-and-tear on the red plastic became problematic. The replacement came in the form of the newly-released Leatherman Juice S2, which added a decent pair of pliers to the mix. (The knife blade was still not as good - too thin - but better than the SAK's.)

The Juice was carried for 9 years or so, but time came for it too to be replaced. Not for wear this time - the anodized aluminum is definitely worn but not breaking like the plastic did - but just because its shortcoming finally annoyed me to the point of replacement. The knife blade had never pleased me much. The screwdrivers (other than the Phillips) were painful (literally) to take out. The lanyard ring made it hard to use the Phillips screwdriver, because the driver was next to the ring but removing the ring was frustrating.

So, time to upgrade again. Criteria: better knife, pliers, screwdrivers I didn't hate. I had to go up a bit in size for what I wanted, but I did find one I liked - the Skeletool CX. Very nice high-quality blade, pliers, a changeable-bit driver (with optional extender that takes normal bits, and optional set of 40 bits). And things I didn't even know I wanted - I've come to love the pocket clip. I wasn't expecting to like the carabiner/bottle opener, but it combines so well with the pocket clip to make it easy to switch my keys on and off it while the tool hangs from my pocket. I'm very, very pleased with it. The only thing I really lost in the upgrade was the scissors, and I'll take that as a cost. (At least for now. Next time I upgrade...)

#10: J is for Jones

2011-04-12T10:42:00.000-07:00

Jones is the 5th-most-common last name in the US as of the 2000 Census. (I haven't been able to find 2010 data yet.) This is a small slip - it was 4th in 1990, behind Smith, Johnson, and Williams, but Brown managed to just barely pass it.

Jones is an interesting name, because it's common enough that it's entered slang in at least two different ways. The first is as a term for addiction - a jones for something, jonesing for it. I'm certainly addicted to being me.

The other, though - Keeping Up with the Joneses. It bothers me, because really, we shouldn't care about that sort of thing. If my neighbor buys a nice car, it doesn't hurt me, and I shouldn't spend money just to match.

But then, that's the advantage of being a Jones. I don't have to keep up with them. They have to keep up with me. And if I don't feel like making that a challenge, then everybody's happy.

#9: I is for Independent

2011-04-11T16:24:00.002-07:00

Politically I am an Independent, not being a member of any party. There's a reason for this.

I'm morally opposed to political parties. I consider them - all of them, whether I agree with them or not - an unconscionable intrusion in the proper priorities of elected officials.

The proper priorities of an elected official should be the people of the area that elected him or her, and the people of the entire area served by the body he or she was elected to. (So, for a US Congress member, his or her district and the country as a whole.) There is a natural tension between these two priorities, which the official needs to balance - getting government benefits for your district vs. the cost on the rest of the country. Is it right to fight for a defense contract in your district? How about if the military doesn't want or need the item?

Political parties want themselves to be the first priority. Defeating the other party is more important than improving your district, state, or country. (They argue this by claiming that letting them win is better for the country; any look at their actual performance tends to disprove their point. Leaving corrupt members in place because they're on your side is not good for the country.)

But then, this is normal for any organization. The first goal of any organization is always to perpetuate itself, more than any nominal goal they carry. An organization dedicated to ending some form of suffering can never declare victory and disband; instead, it will find new things to fight, even if it's not the right group to fight it. (MADD has pretty much defeated drunk driving as much as it's possible; it's gone from 'something to joke about' to 'morally abhorrent' in the past 20 years, largely through their efforts. They won. So they've moved on to fighting against alcohol in general.)

#8: H is for Home

2011-04-09T17:49:00.002-07:00

Home is an interesting concept. Is it a building? A town? A region? One or more people?

Where is my home? I have a lot of places that may qualify.

My childhood home was a little house on Route 99 between Kennebunk and Sanford, Maine. I moved around to some other places, but they don't carry the notion of 'home' the same way.

For a town, it's a bit tougher. I typically think of Kennebunk, but I lived in Sanford for four years, and that has a distinct feeling of home as well. I think that Kennebunk was my first home, but I grew up in Sanford. (7th-10th grades are an interesting time.)

Region - I still think of myself as a Mainer. I was born in California, I've lived outside Maine longer than I lived there, but it's still where my attitudes were formed. (With the help of a mother who grew up near LA, so I wasn't quite normal even there.)

People - I suspect that's why I don't think of anywhere I've lived post-college as 'home' the same way - because the home since then isn't a place, it's the people in it. It's my wife, and now our children. Gilbert was going to be our forever home, but it didn't work out that way...and that's okay, because we're together here. Some day we'll find a house to buy here, but the house still won't be home...the people in it will be.

#7: G is for Games

2011-04-08T17:56:00.003-07:00

While we don't play enough of them, we have a nice collection of board games. Some current favorites:

Dominion: We now have all the cards currently available, all 5 sets plus the three promo cards. Very nice game, lots of interesting things that can be done with it.
Power Grid: an interesting but long game. Some minimax issues at the end of the game, though.
Ticket To Ride: Very nice train game, with some interesting play choices. Multiple versions are available; we have original with the 1910 card set, Marklin, and the dice expansion.
Magic: the Gathering: an old classic, which my sons have gotten into. I still have a bunch of my old cards, plus some newer ones.

#6: F is for Five Gods and Fantasy Fiction

2011-04-07T20:53:00.004-07:00

Recently, I've been reading a serious of books by Lois McMaster Bujold, a fantasy fiction series referred to as the Five Gods universe, or the Chalionverse. It's currently three books: The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls, and The Hallowed Hunt, with a tentative plan to add two more and have one per god.

The key to the setting is the Five Gods: The Father of Winter, The Mother of Summer, The Daughter of Spring, The Son of Autumn, and The Bastard, God of disasters and all things "out of season". They cannot physically intervene in the mortal world, but instead must guide humans to do what needs to be done. Free will being what it is, they may need to send hundreds of people for even one to accomplish what needs to be done.

In particular, the Bastard interests me. His sphere of influence includes anything that doesn't fit the normal expectations: in addition to the children born of adultery that you'd expect, he also includes orphans, homosexuals, and anyone else who doesn't fit in the neat niches society creates for them. I'm very pleased to see a system that explicitly provides a place for the people who just don't fit; it's relatively uncommon. (Another that provides it is the Glorantha setting for Runequest; the "Orlanthi all" is used, where if you say "all Orlanthi are farmers and herdsmen" it's understood that you mean about 6 out of 7; the other 1/7 perform support tasks of various sorts, but there's no shame in being part of that 1/7 or the traditional 6/7.)

Think how much easier life would be for everyone if this concept that "not everyone has to be normal" were more prevalent. Not everyone fits into the little niches. Maybe we should plan for that.

#5: E is for Exhaustion

2011-04-06T10:36:00.002-07:00

Up at 4:15 to get daughter to the airport. Blah. Today's going to be a long day.

#4: D is for Daughter

2011-04-05T17:35:00.003-07:00

So this morning I got up about half an hour early to check in for a flight. (Yay Southwest.) The flight wasn't for me, though. Bright and early tomorrow, I bring my daughter to the airport to send her on her way. Just for a little while - she's going to Denver for a conference with her Latin class. But this is her first solo trip, so it's a bit stressful for all of us. (Especially given Southwest's recent plane-integrity issues. Um.)

But I'm sure she'll be fine. She's bright, and well-centered. She'll have a cell phone and some money, and people looking out for her at the other end.

It's fascinating to watch her as she grows up. She's not a small version of me, nor of her mother, but an entirely new construction, built from the best parts of both of us and yet with a core that is no one else but herself.

I'm looking forward to seeing what she'll become.

#3: C is for Choices

2011-04-04T16:45:00.002-07:00

"Success is made of hundreds of small choices. This is one of them."

This is the new motto. The current plan is akin to Alton Brown's; not to diet, but to change lifestyle in positive and long-lasting ways.

To that end, I have lists of things to do and not to do.

With that, the lists:

Daily:

Fruit
Whole grains

At least 3x weekly:

Exercise
Salad

No more than 3x weekly:

Dessert (non-fruit)
Red meat
Pizza/Pasta

No more than 1x weekly:

Dining out
Artificial sweeteners
Caffeine
Alcohol

We'll see how this goes.

#2: B is for BMI

2011-04-02T13:08:00.003-07:00

B is for BMI, the Body Mass Index. As with any single formula that attempts to describe a complicated situation, it's seriously lacking in providing useful sharp lines, but still can be handy for some uses.

For example: somebody with a BMI of 27 is listed as 'overweight', but may just be muscular, or large-framed. The categories are themselves suspect, with studies showing that people live longer in the 'overweight' range than the nominal 'normal' range.

And yet, some generalities are useful. Somebody with a BMI in the high 30s (like me) is seriously overweight and should deal with it. Somebody with a BMI in the high 80s (like one of the competitors on Biggest Loser: Australia) is massively overweight and in desperate need to lose some weight.

And so I'm starting a new plan on Monday. More details will come then.

26 Letters, 26 Posts: A is for April Fools' Day

2011-04-01T08:23:00.003-07:00

[I saw a comment recently on blogging daily during April, except for Sundays - 26 days, and therefore 26 letters. I decided that it beats leaving the blog fallow any more, so we'll try it.]

Today's letter is A, and an obvious choice of item is April Fools' Day.

A coworker's comment sums up my attitude fairly well: "I hate April Fool's Day and St. Patrick's Day with equal vigor and for the same reason: both encourage amateur hour bumbling in areas I consider myself a semi-pro."

Except I'm not a semi-pro at either, but most of the April Fools' pranks out there really feel like amateur night. (As it has been said, Sturgeon was an optimist.) Even Google's famous ones haven't thrilled me much recently, although YouTube has generally done well. It's hard to top Rickrolling everyone, though.

That said, there have been some good ones. Thinkgeek usually has some impressive products lined up for the day (favorite for today: plush bonsai kitties).

I think my favorite for sheer effort so far is Scalzi's The Shadow War of the Night Dragons Book One: The Dead City. It's hard work to write that badly.

Workout Music

2010-11-16T21:02:00.002-07:00

So I'm working with a health coach now, and as part of that I'm hitting the treadmill more regularly. So I've been working on my list of workout music, and the current playlist groups into three major categories:

Songs that are Really Really Good for workouts. These tend to have very driving beats, and frequently have "audience participation". These are the ones you want as the timer hits 20 minutes, you've got 10 minutes to go, and you'd really like to slow the treadmill down to walking speed.
- The Cup of Life by Ricky Martin. A prime example, possibly the best workout song ever. Combines a driving rhythm with inspirational audience participation ("Do you really want it?" "YEAH!").
- All I Want by The Offspring. Two minutes of pure adrenaline.
- Hoodoo Voodoo Doll by The Brian Setzer Orchestra.
- What Is Rock and Time To Start by Blue Man Group.
- Holiday by Green Day. I'm not really sure why this one works, but it does.
Songs that are very good, but not quite at the same level as #1. Useful for running to, but don't give the same boost.
- When I'm Up, When I Am King, and End of the World by Great Big Sea. Live versions on the first two, with both inspiring lyrics and a good beat, and the studio version of the third, with a really fast beat.
- Delirious by ZZ Top.
- Hyperactive by Thomas Dolby.
- Knucklebones by David Lee Roth. You just can't go wrong with Steve Vai on guitars.
- Rebel Yell by Billy Idol. I've found that the beat of this exactly matches my running cadence at 5 mph on the treadmill.
- Your Attention by Blue Man Group.
- Headlong by Queen. Not great as a mid-workout song, but really good as a starter song.
Songs that...well, I thought they might work and put them on the list, but they'll probably get replaced when I find better alternatives.

Ballroom Blitz by Sweet.
Black Horse and the Cherry Tree by KT Tunstall
Start The Commotion by The Wiseguys
Way Down The Line by The Offspring. I was hoping the Crazy Taxi thing from All I Want would rub off, but apparently not.
Boom Boom Pow by Black-Eyed Peas.

Next, I need to find good replacements for the bottom list. I've had Fighter by Christina Aguilera recommended to me, but haven't tried it yet. I've also had it pointed out that Paint It, Black by the Rolling Stones has about the same beat as Rebel Yell, but I'm not sure if that's really a good inspiring workout song.

Uetliberg

2010-09-19T05:39:00.002-07:00

Today, I climbed Uetliberg.

Okay, not all the way. The S10 train goes up to a station near the top, but it's still a decent 15-minute hike up the hill to the hotel at the top.

So, when I was in Zurich last (in February), I had meant to get to Uetliberg, but on my last night, decided I needed to make sure I had presents for my family lined up rather than going up a mountain. So it didn't happen.

This time, I decided that it was my goal for Sunday. What I hadn't realized was how much climbing was involved from the station. The station is at 814m above sea level. The top of the mountain is at 871m. But I got up to the top, and realized that I wasn't done yet - there was an observation tower at the top. 30m more to go.

So I started climbing the tower. There are three intermediate platforms, one on each side, on the way up to the top platform. At the lowest platform, I was suddenly reminded that I'm afraid of heights. So I decided that stopping there was a good idea...and then decided that, okay, I can make it to the second platform.

So I went up to the second platform. I paused, convinced myself to stop here, and convinced myself to continue on. Up to the third platform. Only a few more flights of stairs to the top platform. And so, up.

The top platform is 900m above sea level. And it does, indeed, have an incredible view of not just Zurich, but also all the areas around it.

The way down was almost as white-knuckled as the way up, but I got back down successfully.

On the way back down to the train station, I found the start of a scale model of the solar system - the Sun, Mercury, and Venus. (Earth should have been nearby, but I believe it was in a different direction from where I went.)

Of course, I took pictures.

She's Gone

2008-10-04T19:59:00.003-07:00

I promised more info about the bad news in the last post. Here it is.

A month ago, my mother was planning to come down and visit us at the end of this month. Drive down in her RV, with the dog.

Two weeks ago today, she called me up to tell me she was sick, and they'd found growths in her lungs and liver.

Things went downhill from there. The growth on her lung was small-cell lung carcinoma. The liver growths were metastatic.

I arrived here yesterday afternoon. She recognized my sister and me, and apologized for not being good company. (She couldn't say much. She wasn't in good shape; her liver and lungs were both swollen, and her diaphragm was caught in the middle. She was on hourly morphine.)

This morning, she was in worse condition. The morning bloodwork showed her potassium level was way up. They put her on various meds to try to bring it back down. The morphine dosage went up, and they moved her to a room where they could put her on cardiac monitoring.

It wasn't enough. Her potassium levels kept going up; her body was breaking down. They could try the meds again, but the next step was dialysis; if the potassium levels didn't go down soon, her heart would go. My sister and I discussed it, and read over her advance directives. She didn't want to be kept alive when she was clearly in a terminal condition. It pretty clearly qualified at this point, so we told the doctors to keep her out of pain.

We kept her company for a while, then went to get some dinner. When we came back, her body was still there, but it was clear that her spirit wasn't. We went down to the chapel; within a few minutes, the nurse called to let us know she was gone.

Happy Birthday, Dad

2008-09-25T10:58:00.005-07:00

News hasn't been good here recently, and I intend to blog about that soonish.

But, today, I need to remember someone else.

68 years ago today, my father was born. He was born prematurely on the family farm in North Kennebunkport, Maine (which later split from Kennebunkport and renamed itself Arundel), the 10th of 12 children. Medical care being what it was then and there, they used the oven as an incubator to keep him warm.

He grew up, worked on the farm, and trained as a machinist in the local high school's vo-tech program. He worked as a machinist for a few years in southern Maine until one night when he got a ride with his next-older brother's wife and met her coworker, a young lady who'd just graduated from high school in California and then moved to Maine with her mother.

They got married a few months later, and moved back to California together. Two days after their first anniversary, they had a daughter; they tried to have another child for several years, but it didn't happen quickly; I was conceived on or around my father's thirtieth birthday, almost 7 years into the marriage.

My father wanted out of California by then; they looked into Seattle, but Boeing laid off a bunch of machinists, so they decided to go back to Maine.

The sudden pressures of being near both their families caused stress in the marriage, as did financial issues, and about 10 years after moving back, a divorce finalized the split.

He lived the bachelor life for a while, with temporary duty assignments (he worked as a civilian machinist for the Navy) around the world. After several years of this, he had the opportunity to do a long-term relocation to Guam; he took it and reveled in it.

He never moved back; a heart attack killed him in February 1996, a month before he was to retire.

And so, today, despite everything else going on in my life today, I remember the man who gave me his name. Happy birthday, Dad.

A random conversation...

2008-09-20T21:48:00.001-07:00

"Booty is truth, truth is booty."

"Indeed. For truly it is said, 'I like big butts and I cannot lie.'"

In Memoriam

2008-09-11T09:00:00.002-07:00

In memory of those who were killed 7 years ago today:

Exhibit 13

This was Blue Man Group's tribute to the lives destroyed on that day, a visualization and recitation of papers that blew away from the destroyed buildings.

Religion: A Metaphor

2008-09-01T07:18:00.003-07:00

An old thing I wrote, which I was reminded of by a conversation this morning. There may be more like this coming.

Envision God as a mountain. There are many well-worn, wide paths up the mountain - these are the well-known religions, their paths made regular by the many feet who follow them up. They may not be the most direct routes, they may not be the fastest routes, but they're obvious and relatively easy, and if you have problems, there's somebody nearby who can help you out.

Some people just go straight along the path their parents led them toward as a child. They go along as if wearing blinders, never considering any side paths or detours. (These tend to complain the loudest that others don't follow the same path. I mean, really, it's right there plain as day, just follow the path, why don't you? What do you mean you're on the other side of the mountain? What mountain? I'm just following a path.)

You can take less-traveled paths. The way isn't always as obvious, there aren't as many people around. Some people consider this an advantage.

There are old paths, overgrown, that nobody goes on anymore. These are the old religions, once dominant but now languishing without worshippers. Some people, making their own paths, find them and use them where they're convenient, then continue on their way when the path doesn't lead where they wish to go anymore. Others try to follow the old paths all the way along.

You can make your own path. It's hard work. There's no guarantee that you won't fall off a cliff. If you fall and hurt yourself, there may not be anybody nearby who can help you. It's even harder if you're trying to cut a new path for other people to follow.

Which paths are right for you will depend on your starting point - which side of the mountain you're on, which paths are nearby. Somebody telling you that their path is absolutely the right one to take won't be of much help if you're on the other side of the mountain altogether.

You can't just mix-and-match paths. If you try to blindly follow directions from separate paths willy-nilly, you're likely to end up walking off a cliff. ("Okay, Buddhism says forward 30 paces. Now Catholicism says turn right and go forward 10 paces...")

And some people look at the mountain and can't understand why on Earth anyone would want to climb that thing in the first place. It's just a mountain, after all.

A Modest Proposal

2008-08-23T11:06:00.003-07:00

Given the Bush Administration's War On Birth Control, we clearly need a solution that all parties involved can agree on. Since people, for some odd reason, refuse to stop having sex, and various soi-disant conservatives refuse to keep their noses out of other people's sex lives, we need to find some middle ground.

I think I've found it. It's simple and effective.

If a health-care practitioner chooses not to provide birth-control services to a patient, they must take financial responsibility for the results.

So, if the patient chooses an abortion, that health-care professional gets to pay for it.

If she chooses to have the child, that health-care professional gets to pay for the pregnancy and labor, and then gets to pay child support. Full support for the child, including schooling, food, shelter...the works.

If she chooses to give the child up for adoption, that health-care professional gets to adopt the child. After all, they're the one who made the choice that it had to be born. They must have wanted that child to be born quite a bit, right?

The people who want this sort of ability to impose these choices on others should have no problems with these rules. After all, it's just putting their money where their mouths are. And it's a much nicer proposal than, say, Swift's original Modest Proposal.

Proposal: The Truly Modern Pentathlon

2008-08-14T10:53:00.004-07:00

The 'modern pentathlon' is an idealized version of the efforts of a cavalry soldier caught behind enemy lines. Shooting, swordplay, swimming, riding an unfamiliar horse, and running. (My thanks to LawDog for his discussion of it; I'll be keeping an eye out for it next week.)

There's only one problem with it: nobody uses horses anymore. 'Cavalry' means tanks now, or even helicopters. (Nobody uses swords, either.)

But let's take the concept of cavalry, and extend it forward - an elite strike force whose job is to shock the enemy with their sudden blow and then get away before they can retaliate. Sounds like a fighter or fighter-bomber pilot. So let's create the truly modern pentathlon:

Fighter combat sim. Plenty of them available. Networked for head-to-head combat, round-robin or pool play or what have you.
Shooting. Service pistol would be best, although they'd probably do the same wimpy air gun as now.
Orienteering. Here's a map and a compass. Fastest person to reach all the checkpoints wins.
Swimming.
Running. (As opposed to orienteering; this time, you've got a set course.)

I'd pondered skydiving instead of orienteering, but the problem is that it's hard to make it competitive without it becoming an advanced gymnastics contest. Given that the goal of an ejecting fighter pilot is to make it down in one piece, that didn't seem like a good fit.

Anyway, treat it like you do now - score each part, use that to determine when everybody starts for the final run.

Things We Don't Need Any More Of #2

2008-08-06T07:48:00.002-07:00

iPhone tip calculators.

Especially ones that people want to charge money for, but I think we've got enough free ones now as well.

Really. Yes, it's a vaguely interesting introductory project. That doesn't mean you need to try to sell it.

A quick search of the App Store for 'tip' finds 18 items that look to be tip calculators. 4 of them are free. 11 cost $0.99, and 2 cost $1.99.

The last one costs $4.99...and that one is the only one I'd consider paying for. (International Tip Calculator, which includes information on expected tipping practice around the world. Now that is useful information for the world traveler...and if I expected to need it, I'd consider buying it.) In other words, it's not just a quick-and-easy way of calculating 10-20% of a given number.

So, can we find something else to use as our demo project now? (Not Sudoku. We're at 24 of those now. Although the issue there is that about 1/3 of them are free 'lite' versions of another 1/3.)

At least we aren't getting more flashlight apps.

The Dark Knight (no spoilers)

2008-07-18T20:08:00.002-07:00

So, work took us all out to see a movie today. Mini spoiler-free review follows:

Wow.

It felt a bit long in spots, and seriously, seriously creepy. I feel sorry for whoever plays Joker next - Ledger is just incredible. Plays it in a completely different way than Nicholson did; Nicholson wanted to wreak havoc in a funny way, but Ledger wants to show the insanity lurking inside everyone. Just thinking back at some of his actions makes your skin crawl.

Best line: "Wanna see a magic trick?"

And that's all I'll say.

WiiFit routine

2008-07-14T15:34:00.002-07:00

We've had the WiiFit for almost two weeks now, and I've developed a bit of a routine now, which boils down to 'start at the top of the list, work down'.

I start off with yoga, doing three poses (6 minutes). Then strength training, usually the three exercises that 'match' the yoga poses I did (4-6 minutes).

Aerobics is where most of my time goes. Basic step, because advanced annoys me (3 minutes), and rhythm boxing - just unlocked expert, which is good for 13 minutes.

At this point, I've got a few minutes left. A balance game or two (finally got through the bubble balance for the first time today), and finish off with Lotus Focus (best time, 91 seconds).

I hate computers.

2008-07-12T20:21:00.002-07:00

So, the old Powerbook that's acting as a media machine has been running off a Firewire drive for a while because the internal drive started acting up.

Now the Firewire drive started having problems as well. Unfortunately, I don't have any spare drives that are large enough to hold all the data on that drive. So, we'll try setting it up to run off a smaller drive (in the same Firewire enclosure) and set up a reduced-size library until we can get things fixed. No problem, right?

Well, the optical drive isn't terribly happy either, so it can't boot the install DVD. Tried to install onto the new Firewire disk from the MacBook Pro, but as an Intel Mac, it can't install to a disk that's bootable on an old PowerPC Mac. Grah.

Ended up installing to a USB drive that was partitioned for Intel booting, doing a drive-clone from there onto the Firewire drive. Then had to swap things around again because the smaller disk I had in the Firewire enclosure started acting up.

Now, about 7 hours after I started, the newly-installed OS is finally at the point of updating to the latest version. And then I need to get the music set up on it as well, and find out if I lost any data on the old drive. Guess I know what I'm doing tomorrow.

Quote of the day

2008-07-10T17:34:00.002-07:00

"Lonelier than a straight girl at the Republican convention." -- damien, after hearing about the rumors of the Alabama Attorney General's imminent resignation.

Ooookay...

2008-07-09T10:21:00.002-07:00

So, either WiiFit is having a delayed reaction, or threatening it with Weight Watchers scared my body into compliance, because I'm down over 5 pounds from two days ago, hit my WiiFit goal this morning, and dropped below 242 again.

One-week trend is still upward, though. So I guess unless that starts trending down soon, I'll need to look at WW after all.

(...think it'll work?)

Diet: Get Out The Map

2008-07-07T15:02:00.003-07:00

So, the diet trend had been slowing for a while, and the assorted festivities (my birthday, July 4, etc.) over the past week pretty much put a nail in its coffin. The weight box to the right shows the gory remains: weekly trend up 1.25 pounds.

So now I'm trying to figure out what to do next. WiiFit will help, but I need to structure my intake better. The various versions of the Don't Be Stupid Diet have, in general, all run aground due to...well, being stupid.

Not sure what to try next. Yes, watch portion size, watch for stupid sugars and stupid fats, but...what else? Because clearly I like those stupid sugars and fats.

Part of me is wondering if it's time to go back to strict calorie counting, but that's just painful and annoying. (On the other hand, it is the one diet I can point to as actually getting me all the way down under 200 pounds.) Maybe Weight Watchers points or similar. Need to think about it some more.

WiiFit

2008-07-03T19:44:00.002-07:00

Came home from work today to a WiiFit resting on the kitchen island. My mother decided that the family needed a pick-up after the numerous extraneous expenses that have cropped up over the past year - the water heater, the microwave, the tires, the CV joint...

Thanks, Mom!

So now the whole family is going through and getting initial scores. I got a fitness age of 43...not exactly ideal. But we'll work on it.

Playing with Political Numbers

2008-06-28T16:08:00.004-07:00

I'd seen numbers implying that, in general, the economy does better (higher GDP growth) when a Democrat is in the White House. So, I decided to grab some GDP data (from http://www.bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp) and see what I could find. Among other things, I wanted to see if there was a time-delay effect, or if the party controlling Congress mattered. I'm using the "chained (2000) dollars" numbers, as that seems to be the preferred one in the BEA press release.

Since the data provided is since 1930, let's take that as our first cut. Since 1930, the highest overall increase in GDP is...when the President was a Democrat last year, followed by years when the President is a Democrat. The lowest was when the Senate is controlled by Republicans that year, followed by years when the House is controlled by Republicans. For every position, the GDP is higher for Democrats than Republicans.

AVERAGE SAME-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 1.855263, Democrat 5.075000
SENATE: Republican 1.209091, Democrat 3.883582
HOUSE: Republican 1.580000, Democrat 4.415094

AVERAGE NEXT-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 2.064865, Democrat 5.142500
SENATE: Republican 1.800000, Democrat 3.974242
HOUSE: Republican 2.008000, Democrat 4.459615

AVERAGE 2-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 3.058333, Democrat 4.460000
SENATE: Republican 1.850000, Democrat 4.090909
HOUSE: Republican 3.129167, Democrat 4.103846

AVERAGE 3-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 3.560000, Democrat 4.422500
SENATE: Republican 3.422222, Democrat 4.101515
HOUSE: Republican 3.995652, Democrat 4.030769

AVERAGE 4-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 3.829412, Democrat 4.315000
SENATE: Republican 3.937500, Democrat 4.110606
HOUSE: Republican 3.968182, Democrat 4.144231

Now, it's possible that time frame gives the Democrats too much of an advantage - the Republicans, after all, are penalized with the first three years of the Depression while the Democrats get all of World War II and the recovery afterwards. So let's try again with the lower boundary of 1953, the start of the Eisenhower administration. And, indeed, the numbers get closer. But the highest GDP growth average is for years when a Democrat is president, followed by years when the Democrats controlled the House four years prior. The lowest, oddly enough, is when the Republicans controlled the Senate 4 years ago, followed by years when the Republicans control the Senate. The numbers are much closer, with the Republicans having higher averages in 7 of the 15 comparisons listed.

AVERAGE SAME-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 2.814286, Democrat 4.090000
SENATE: Republican 2.300000, Democrat 3.444681
HOUSE: Republican 3.200000, Democrat 3.322857

AVERAGE NEXT-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 2.855882, Democrat 3.930000
SENATE: Republican 2.787500, Democrat 3.334783
HOUSE: Republican 3.350000, Democrat 3.197059

AVERAGE 2-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 3.442424, Democrat 3.140000
SENATE: Republican 3.328571, Democrat 3.328261
HOUSE: Republican 3.705263, Democrat 3.117647

AVERAGE 3-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 3.318750, Democrat 3.155000
SENATE: Republican 2.616667, Democrat 3.339130
HOUSE: Republican 3.172222, Democrat 3.300000

AVERAGE 4-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 3.145161, Democrat 3.495000
SENATE: Republican 1.840000, Democrat 3.439130
HOUSE: Republican 2.535294, Democrat 3.655882

Okay, let's move forward a bit more. Let's try 1977, the start of the Carter administration; that'll skip over all of Vietnam and its immediate aftereffects. Now, the Republicans kick in a bit. The highest average GDP increase is when the Republicans controlled the House two years prior, followed by years when the President is a Democrat. The lowest average increase is when the Democrats controlled the House two years prior, followed by a tie between years when the Republicans control the Senate and when the Democrats controlled the House three years prior. Again, the Republicans have the advantage in 7 of the 15 comparisons.

AVERAGE SAME-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 2.768421, Democrat 3.583333
SENATE: Republican 2.416667, Democrat 3.244000
HOUSE: Republican 3.338889, Democrat 2.730769

AVERAGE NEXT-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 2.888889, Democrat 3.250000
SENATE: Republican 2.650000, Democrat 3.129167
HOUSE: Republican 3.366667, Democrat 2.533333

AVERAGE 2-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 3.311765, Democrat 2.425000
SENATE: Republican 2.860000, Democrat 2.962500
HOUSE: Republican 3.611765, Democrat 2.000000

AVERAGE 3-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 3.237500, Democrat 2.533333
SENATE: Republican 2.950000, Democrat 2.933333
HOUSE: Republican 3.325000, Democrat 2.416667

AVERAGE 4-YEAR GDP:
PRESIDENT: Republican 2.980000, Democrat 3.141667
SENATE: Republican 2.733333, Democrat 3.091667
HOUSE: Republican 2.806667, Democrat 3.358333

So, what does this mean? Well, it's hard to tell overall. The most consistent numbers seem to be that having Republicans control the Senate is bad - those are the lowest numbers in 10 of the 15 sets, and the Republican Senate average is lower than the Democratic Senate in 13 of the 15 sets...and those last two are very small differences (0.01667% and 0.00031%). That may just be because there are relatively few years with Republicans controlling the Senate, just 22 years out of the full 78-year range. Over the very long term, the Democratic numbers are higher, but recent trends seem to indicate that Republican control of the House is good economically.

I've made the script available at http://www.kazrak.com/gdpanalysis.py in case anyone else wants to play with it. (Yes, I know it's ugly.) Other analysis I want to play with: the effects of having multiple groups controlled by the same party at once (is there a more pronounced effect for, say, controlling both houses of Congress, or even both houses plus the Presidency, or is economic growth better when there's a party split?), or the effects of larger vs. smaller majorities in Congress.

Some notes on methodology: Party control information came from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_Divisions_of_United_States_Congresses, with Presidents and Congresses sworn in during a year counting for that year. For the years marked as having changes (1931 House, 2001 Senate), both were counted as Democratic because they spent more time as Democratic than Republican.

Psychonauts Review

2008-06-23T12:27:00.003-07:00

Finished Psychonauts over the weekend. Review...oh, Yahtzee said it better than I can. His review is basically spot on - incredibly fun game, lots of cool things, hilarious dialog, vicious spike in the difficulty curve, and the standard open-world platformer problem of hiding the cool bonus stuff in impossible-to-find places.

RIP, Ice Box Man

2008-06-23T07:24:00.002-07:00

Today, George Carlin should be collecting everything he ever lost.

Stealing his words:

Where do things go when they're lost? You know what I think? I think there's a big pile of things somewhere. I think there's a big constantly changing pile of things that are lost. You lose something, whoo-pop, it goes to the pile. And then you say, 'Oh look, there it is,' whoowhoowhoowhoowhoowhooph. Right back from the pile. And you didn't even know there was a pile.

And where is the pile? In Heaven, of course! Has to be in Heaven. That's the first thing that happens when you get to Heaven, they give you back everything you ever lost. That's the whole meaning of Heaven. You get back everything: "Here ya' are, 79 pairs of sunglasses, 212 cigarette lighters, 4,983 ball point pens. And here's a jock strap we found on the Golden State Freeway. It
appears to have mule hoofprints and chocolate sprinkles on it...must've been quite an evening."

Yes, you get back everything. Everything, When you get to Heaven...well, not everything, you know, you don't get the big things back. Good judgement, that never comes back. Your tonsils, your appendix, they keep those for display purposes, virginity...you don't get that back, because you're in such a big hurry to get rid of it in the first place. But, you get back all your wallets. You get back every wallet you ever lost. No cash, it's just like earth. They keep the money as a prayer offering.

Diet Summary, Week 3

2008-06-18T10:25:00.003-07:00

Bad week. (Okay, bad weekend. Dinner out on Friday, and then at the in-laws' on Sunday.) Beyond that, I've been getting sloppy, and it's showing.

Net weight change, Wednesday-to-Wednesday: up 0.1 pounds. Trend down 1.1 pounds, mostly on momentum from last week.

Think I need to tighten up a little bit and not be quite so sloppy about it.

Southwardly Beachish, Week 2

2008-06-11T13:29:00.002-07:00

Actual recorded weight down 2.8 pounds, trend line down 2.0 pounds.

Seems to be working so far.

D&D 4th Edition: The Obligatory Review

2008-06-09T19:44:00.002-07:00

Note: this is not based on actual play time yet, just on reading over the rules.

I suspect that 4E is going to get a lot of grief. It's got a hell of an act to follow in 3E. To some extent, I think that the success and overall excellence of 3E are the biggest problems that 4E has, because where it fixes a lot of the problems in AD&D, it does so by skipping over 3E's solutions and finding its own. As an example: 3E had an elegant solution to fixing the multiclass imbalance: every character can level in every class if they want. Want a level of cleric? No problem! 4E solves it in a completely different way; every character has exactly one class, but you can take a special feat to gain some abilities of another class.

To be honest, I think that 4E would have gotten a better reception if it had followed AD&D2 directly. It has, in some intangible way, more of an original D&D feel than AD&D did, but in a streamlined way.

Okay, enough 2E/3E comparisons. How is 4E on its own? Personally, it looks pretty good. The system fixes several of the major problems with every edition of D&D printed, such as the uselessness of first-level characters and the cleric being nothing more than a walking first aid kit with a 'turn undead' ability. Above all, it looks fun. They've clearly tried to give all the classes interesting options at every level, and to make it so a poor decision early on doesn't cripple the character permanently. I'm not sure I care for the Heroic-Paragon-Epic path design, but I'd need to see how they play to really make a judgement.

I'm not 100% sure I like their initial class choices - Cleric/Fighter/Rogue/Wizard are obviously all required, and Paladin/Ranger seem reasonable. Warlord is an interesting choice - a battle leader who helps those fighting with him. I don't think I've really seen anything quite like that since Military Scientist back in Dragonquest. Warlock...I'm surprised they printed. Clearly things have changed from the 2E days if they're willing to print a class that explicitly makes pacts with extraplanar entities for its powers. I'm surprised at the lack of the Bard and Druid classes, especially the Druid. (I'm sure we'll see them again in supplements soon enough.)

The racial choices, though, I can support. Gnome and half-orc are gone, and I (personally) won't particularly miss either. Gnomes seemed lost without a dedicated illusionist class (gone since 2E) - without that, they're just variant dwarves - and half-orcs always felt like they were meant as an NPC race. Instead, we get three 'new' races, the dragonborn, eladrin, and tiefling. Tieflings we've seen before - planetouched humanoids from the lower planes. Having them as a core race is (again) an interesting choice - I'd have expected aasimar (their upper-plane counterparts) as well, but they aren't even in the Monster Manual. Again, we can clearly see that the 2E self-censorship has gone by the wayside. Eladrin aren't quite what they used to be (the core chaotic good planar beings); now they feel like a more magical variant of elf, where the main elf race has become more sylvan warrior-oriented. And dragonborn tie the players into the dragons of the title more closely than ever before in a core race. The Monster Manual has the basic info you'd need to re-add Gnomes, plus Drow, Orcs, Warforged, and more.

Mention of the Eladrin brings up another change, one that I'm unsure if it's a good thing but it's certainly interesting to see what they did. Alignment has been simplified and streamlined down to five choices: Unaligned, Good, and Lawful Good (as player choices), plus Evil and Chaotic Evil for the villains. Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil mostly fill in the slots they covered in the original 3x3 grid; Good covers both Neutral Good and Chaotic Good, while Evil covers both Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil. Unaligned is the most interesting one, covering both variants of Neutral ('working for balance' and 'don't care') plus Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral. Unaligned isn't really Neutral, though, because it's more 'good vs. evil is nice, but I've got a job to do'. The bit I find most interesting is that Unaligned acts as a wildcard in matching deity and worshiper alignment - an unaligned worshiper can worship any god, and any alignment can worship an unaligned god. This works well for (as an example) a God of Magic, who may get worship from wizards of all alignments. On the other hand, it seems odd that a Lawful Good deity (Bahamut, the honorable paladin god) would accept an Unaligned worshiper but not a Good one. This may be something to tweak as a house rule.

Other things: I like healing surges. They're perhaps a bit on the generous side (1/4 of your HP, 5-10 times a day?) but they (along with the higher starting HP) make it possible for low-level characters to be a bit more daring without worrying about instant death from one lucky sword swing. I like encounter-frequency powers, and at-will Magic Missile that needs a to-hit roll. (Hey, wizards aren't useless after they cast their one daily spell! What a concept!) For that matter, I like at-will cantrips and other low-level magical abilities in general. I like ritual spells - a way to handle those utility abilities that don't involve burning spell slots. I like that almost no classes start with proficiency in plate armor. I like the idea of holy symbols, rods, and staffs as class implements, where an enchanted one can improve your ability to use your class abilities just as an enchanted weapon.

Overall, I'm pleased with the design. I suspect that it may have been (oddly enough) an even better game if they hadn't had the D&D baggage that they needed to use, but if it had been just another RPG system, nobody would pay any attention to it. For good or ill, D&D is still the 800-pound gorilla of the RPG world, and this appears to be a good version of it to go forward and bring in new players.

Vaguely Southernish Pseudo-Beach Type Diet: Week One

2008-06-05T12:00:00.003-07:00

So, 1 week in on adding some South Beach-type sensibilities to the Don't Be Stupid Diet.

So far, amazingly enough, it seems to be working.

Trend line is down 2 pounds since last Wednesday. Today's weigh-in was almost 8 pounds under last Wednesday. (Just taking it as Wednesday-to-Wednesday, it's 1.6 pounds on the trend line and 6.1 pounds of daily weight.)

So far, it's been easier to stick to it on weekends than during the week. (Go fig. There's more junk food at work.) I'm not missing the snacks so much, although not having them on weekends makes dinner a bit more iffy. (We'll pick some good snack food up this weekend to fix that issue.) Snacks at work are more of an issue when I'm bored or thinking - I tend to go walking around the office when I'm trying to work through a design or implementation issue, and the microkitchens are a likely place to end up walking to. I've been looking at the snacks provided, then typically grabbing a diet soda and walking back.

I suspect that, in the medium term at least, I can live with this one. It feels...right, I suppose. It's taking the Don't Be Stupid Diet to a better level - instead of just watching portion size and number of snacks, it's paying more attention to the contents of what I'm eating.

As an example: today's lunch wasn't particularly appealing, so I made a sandwich. Picked the 12-grain bread instead of my more typical sourdough, put just a little mayo on - enough to taste and moisten, but no more, and put on turkey instead of roast beef. And the resulting sandwich was pretty darned tasty, and now I'm full.

Things We Don't Need Any More Of

2008-06-02T10:57:00.002-07:00

#1 in a continuing series. (Collect them all! Trade them with your friends!)

Anyway:

Rock songs about how awful the touring life is.

Sorry, folks. This is the life you chose. Yep, it's not all wonderful. Get over it.

(Besides, whatever you're trying to say, there's a damn good chance Jackson Browne already said it better.)

The Wrong Audience

2008-06-01T08:30:00.002-07:00

Spent an hour trying to get a game running on my PC last night. It seems that SecuROM decided it didn't like something, and refused to run. Eventually grabbed a no-CD executable from online, and things worked from there.

This is, of course, the fatal flaw of copy protection: it makes life difficult for your customers while not particularly inconveniencing the people who would never have paid you money in the first place.

And folks wonder why Steam and Stardock are doing so well. Not having to worry about this BS is worth an extra 10% on the price of a game...and games are generally the same price or cheaper on Steam to begin with.

So, how's it working?

2008-05-30T08:20:00.002-07:00

Been trying the South Beach-influenced diet for a couple days. Still too early to tell if it's going to work, but the initial results are promising. Weight dropped the first day, by about 5 pounds -- I'd say most of that was water loss from bicycling, but I drank enough water to pee clear, so I'm not sure there.

Anyway, second day, weight was up 0.3 pounds, which is realistically within the error margin on the scale. So, it seems to be okay so far. We'll see how it holds up over the weekend.

Discovery of the Day

2008-05-28T19:31:00.002-07:00

According to the scale at work, the capacity of my bladder is approximately 1.4 pounds of liquid.

Diet Update

2008-05-28T17:00:00.003-07:00

Okay, so what I've been doing hasn't been working. Or, more to the point, what I was trying to do was not what I was actually doing. So, time to try something else.

Looked at South Beach, which seems to be the best of the 'ooh magic wand eat this super-special diet and get magically thin' diets. Unfortunately, I find I'm morally opposed to them, perhaps because I've used them too often in negative comparisons when describing Dave Ramsey. (Summary: there are two types of diet books, 'magic miracle diet' and 'eat less, exercise more'; likewise, there are two types of personal finance books, 'magic miracle money' and 'spend less, earn more'. Dave Ramsey is solidly in the last category.)

So I'm trying to steal some South Beach ideas, mix it into what I'm doing now, and see if it helps. Basically, avoiding the stupid sugars and mixing in some better carbs and fats. Hey, worth a shot, right?

What He Said

2008-05-26T08:13:00.001-07:00

I was trying to think of something to say for Memorial Day.

Ambulance Driver already said it.

Congratulations to the Phoenix team

2008-05-25T19:21:00.002-07:00

Having worked for a member of the science team for Odyssey and MER, I'm always happy to hear that somebody else beat the odds and made it safely to orbit or the surface (as appropriate).

Now comes the fun part, folks.

Indiana Jones mini-review

2008-05-24T08:43:00.002-07:00

So, work took us out to see IJ4 yesterday. Mini non-spoiler review:

While I didn't much care for their choice of McGuffin, it was definitely an Indiana Jones movie, and if you liked the first three, you'll probably like this one.

Trending...down?!

2008-05-22T09:44:00.002-07:00

If you look to the right, the diet box has something in it hasn't for a while.

Green text, saying: "Deficit 27 cal/day Loss 0.05lb/week".

For the first time in quite a while, my trend line is actually down long enough to have a negative weekly trend.

(Yes, I know, at 1/20th of a pound per week, that's a whopping loss of just over two and a half pounds a year. It's a start, though.)

Diet Plans

2008-05-20T07:45:00.003-07:00

So, there's a box on the right with weight tracking, and the twitter is keeping a food journal. But the things showing up there aren't necessarily diet food...you may wonder "What's up?"

The problems with diets come down to two major kinds of issues: sustaining the diet while on it, and transitioning to maintenance when you're at goal. I'm hoping to ease both by, effectively, transitioning to a reasonable lifestyle now, and then letting the weight trend downward on its own.

Specific things I'm doing: restricting portions at meals. No seconds. Watch snacks, and choose reasonably. Bicycle when feasible to do so. Limit straight sugar.

The goal is that, living reasonably, when I get to a saner weight there's no transition to make. (Granted, it'll take longer to get there, assuming I do.)

Financial Detour

2008-05-19T08:25:00.002-07:00

Need to build up funds for short-term expenses, so we've created three sinking funds for condo rental for the vacation, everything else for the vacation, and curriculum for next year.

Since we've been saving for the vacation for a while, the first one is fully-funded and the second is 2/3 done. The vacation is at the end of July, and the curriculum needs to be ready by August, but we should be okay. Just means the consolidation loan doesn't get the full snowball quite yet.

Mmmbrisket.

2008-05-18T18:38:00.001-07:00

Brisket came out well. Had beans and macaroni and cheese on the side. Then grilled up some marinated chicken for sandwiches during the week.

Brisket!

2008-05-18T08:55:00.003-07:00

Today's mission: smoke a brisket.

Grill's warming up. Brisket's been slathered and rubbed. Just waiting for the coals to finish ashing over, and it's time to start. Mostly pecan wood today, with perhaps a bit of hickory and/or mesquite. (Haven't decided yet.)

80% done...

2008-05-17T12:12:00.002-07:00

Step 2: pay off all debt except the mortgage, using the snowball method.

Last night, we paid off the last credit card. Of the 5 items we had to deal with in step 2, that's the fourth...all that's left is a consolidation loan we took out after the layoff in 2001.

Almost there...

Surprise!

2008-05-17T12:05:00.003-07:00

Got a summons to jury duty today. Okay, not a problem, employer will pay me for jury duty...

Wait, what's this? Northwest Regional Center, Surprise, AZ? (For those not familiar with it: that's 50 miles away in the opposite corner of the county.)

Oh, this'll be fun. Trying to get all the way across metro Phoenix for 8am court arrival.

Arizona Revised Statues 20-1057.08

2008-05-15T01:56:00.004-07:00

A. If a health care services organization issues evidence of coverage that provides coverage for:

1. Prescription drugs, the evidence of coverage shall provide coverage for any prescribed drug or device that is approved by the United States food and drug administration for use as a contraceptive. (...continues, but nothing in it would alter this. My employer is quite definitely not a religious organization whose religious tenets would allow them to not offer any contraceptive at all. Full text.)

Translation: my insurance company is paying up for the IUD.

Things I Hate About You Detour: Medical Insurance

2008-05-14T16:08:00.003-07:00

Monthly birth-control pills? Covered.
Viagra? Covered.
Pregnancy and childbirth? Covered.
Abortion? Covered.
Sterilization? Covered.
Infertility? Covered.

IUD? Of course not. Why would we want to cover that?

Things I Hate About You #3: Python

2008-05-14T11:38:00.003-07:00

This one's tougher, because my Python isn't anywhere near as good as my Perl or Java.

Whitespace - Low-hanging fruit. The whole whitespace thing is Python's bugaboo the way that speed is/was for Java and a resemblance to line noise is for Perl. But there is still something here, and not the usual "OMG it makes me indent!" that shows up. The problem is that using whitespace as the delimiter causes issues when modifying code later. A very, very common maintenance idiom is taking a block of code and wrapping it with an if statement because you've found cases where it shouldn't be run. In C-styled languages, when using emacs, the usual way I've done this is to put in the if statement, then walk through the code, reindenting each line with the tab key, until it's time to close the block. In Python, if you try this, you will screw up the indentation for each block inside the new block you're creating. More generally, programming in C-styled languages in emacs teaches you that re-indenting with tab does not semantically change the program; that's no longer the case in Python. (Other editors generally have similar concepts; it's not just an emacs thing.) Or, in the general case again - if you lose leading whitespace in a Python program somehow, there is no automatic way to get it back. (This can happen with a bad translation to HTML, a funky mail filter, or many other ways.) Now, there are ways to work around this (ending all blocks with 'pass', '#end if' comments, etc.), decent editor support makes it less of a problem, and there are advantages to Python's approach, but it's not without its issues as well.
PyGTK - Not entirely Python's fault here, I suppose, but PyGTK is quite possibly the least intuitive, most annoying GUI toolkit I've ever worked with. (And, remember, I've worked with both Java AWT and Swing.) GtkTreeView in particular is just plain twisted.
Python People - Mention #1 to a Python advocate, and...hoo boy. Python's got some damn good Kool-Aid, I guess. Any mention that there is possibly a problem with using whitespace as the delimiter is met with either blaming the user ("Well, clearly you shouldn't be editing that way, then") or shifting the issue ("Well, you'd have to fix the indents anyway, right?") and missing the point that making whitespace significant causes issues of its own.

A relatively lame list, I think. Clearly I need a few more years working in Python to build up some good hatred for it.

Things I Hate About You #2: Java

2008-05-13T12:23:00.003-07:00

So - Java. Most of the folks who hadn't worked in Java would mumble something about speed or lack of native compilation when asked what they disliked. Now, I'm just coming back into Java development after being away since about 2000, but from what I've seen so far, these items still haven't improved much...

TMTOWTDI (poorly) - The Perl motto is "There's more than one way to do it", and it (mostly) works well in Perl. You've got several ways to do something, and can choose the appropriate one for the task you're dealing with. Java, on the other hand, has far, far too many cases where they implemented one way to do something, realized it was wrong, implemented a second while leaving the first one in place. They can't just remove the first one, because it's embedded in other parts of the API, so it just...festers. The worst example of this is java.util.Date, which has 6 constructors (4 of which are deprecated) and 27 methods (17 of which are deprecated)...you can't just use Calendar everywhere, so you have to change back and forth between Date and Calendar all the time. In particular, if you're using SQL, java.sql.Date and its kin are all subclasses of Date, but you can't get any information out without using a deprecated call or converting it to a Calendar. (So what's the solution? JodaTime, of course! Replacing a broken API with another incompatible one is the Java Way!) Other examples: there are three separate UI systems now (Java 1.0.2 AWT, Java 1.1+ AWT, and Swing), there's the whole Reader/Writer vs. InputStream/OutputStream issue (now with Channels to make life even more confusing), HashTable/Vector vs. Collections...and those are just the ones off the top of my head. The biggest advantage that C# has is that Microsoft was able to learn from Sun's mistakes and not have as much deprecated cruft cluttering their APIs.
Make the simple things simple and the hard things tedious - A pattern I've run into several times in Java: "To make this work, you need all these other objects to be in place...a convenience method is provided for the common case." And so, as long as you're doing exactly what the programmers expected, it's easy...and as soon as you wander even a little bit off that track, you need to do everything manually. Places I've run into this include Swing (JTable, specifically, as I recall) and security/cryptography (adding a new trusted key for an SSL connection).
Frameworks upon Frameworks - Java EE is, apparently, built around the idea that if you have enough frameworks, every problem will come out of them eventually. Er, no, it's build around the idea that the solution to every problem will come out eventually. (In practice, it seems the first statement was more accurate, though.) Why I Hate Frameworks sums this up better than I can, though, so I'll let them have it. True story: I went to look into how to use a particular framework at work. Lo and behold, this framework in and of itself is an agglomeration of seven external frameworks plus four more internal frameworks. Now that's Enterprise.

I'd be interested to hear what other Java developers would choose for their three items.

Things I Hate About You #1: Perl

2008-05-12T11:10:00.003-07:00

An interview question we used to use to separate the posers from the folks who knew their stuff was "Name three things you dislike about Java". The idea is that if you've seriously worked with a language, you've run into several things about it that drive you nuts, but if you've just poked at it a bit, you're likely to spout a few superficial things like "...it's slow..."

So, I'm going to work through this for a few programming languages. Today's victim: Perl.

Perl 6 - An interesting comparison: Python 2.0 was released about 3 months after Perl 6 was first announced. In that time, Python has released 6 versions (2.0 to 2.5), announced Python 3.0, and released 5 alpha versions of Python 3.0 with a scheduled release of 3.0 in September. Perl has released a few partial versions, has a partly-written virtual machine, and no planned release date. To be honest, Perl 6 reminds me of everything I've heard and seen about ALGOL 68 - a Byzantine language spec that tried to be all things to all people, with the end result of killing off the parent language (ALGOL 60). The best result we're likely to see out of Perl 6 is the backports into the Perl 5 project, but it took far, far too long for folks to realize that Perl 6 itself was a dead end and begin reviving Perl 5.
CPAN - CPAN is a great idea: a single repository for user-contributed modules with a handy front-end and dependency-handling. Unfortunately, both of those systems fail. As a single repository, it's great...until you try to actually find anything in it. Say, hypothetically, that you wish to read a CSV file. And so you go to CPAN and search for CSV...and get 261 results. Which do you use? There's a small amount of guidance now, with ratings and reviews starting to show up...this is a vast improvement over before, where you had literally no indication, but it's just a start. (And CSV is a small example; try XML, which has a FAQ list just about finding which one of 14 XML modules is the right one. A search for XML finds 3522 matching modules.) As a front-end, it's also great...until you run into a mandatory upgrade of some sort. Fortunately, they seem to have fixed the issue where it would try to upgrade Perl on you...
Non-Obviousness - There are a lot of cases where what Perl is doing is extremely not obvious to anyone who hasn't spent a lot of time programming Perl. (I've commented elsewhere that Perl is an extremely difficult language to be an expert in, because it's got so many odd edge cases.) Basically, Perl tries to guess the right thing for you...this is great when it guesses right. When it guesses wrong, tracking down the problem is a major pain. Examples include autovivification, scalar context vs. list context, true/false vs. defined vs. exists... There are also a lot of cases where Perl is egregiously Different for no readily apparent reason. (break/continue vs. last/next, switch vs. given - especially egregious since the 'given' statement needs to be activated with "use 'switch'") And let's not even get started on the punctuation variables. A lot of these things are hacks nested upon hacks, where the 'obvious' original use wasn't as obvious as they thought and a new addition had to be made for cases outside the original plan. (Example: lists cannot contain lists. Solution: references. So now you've got all the fun of C pointer manipulation.)

Several of these could be expanded out further. Now, in practice - I like Perl, and I'm reasonably good at it. (I can't consider myself an expert, though - still too many odd edge cases I don't know about yet.) But...well, there's a reason I'm trying to do quick hacks in Python now. (Python's list of problems is coming later this week.)

Dramatis Personae

2008-05-11T09:31:00.002-07:00

It occurs to me that we've had three pictures of Number Two Son, and no pictures of Number One Son or Darling Daughter yet. So:

Number One Son. Seven and a half years old. Loves video games and music.

Darling Daughter. Nine and a half years old. Loves books and Neopets.

Happy Mother's Day

2008-05-11T09:25:00.005-07:00

So. Mother's Day. Not exactly a day everyone here was looking forward to this year.

Things are still a bit raw around the edges, but we're going on. Last night, we let Number Two Son choose dinner. He wanted a hamburger and a play place. (The joys of being four. Number One Son will probably request Islands again, because he likes their french fries.) So off to Carl's Jr, where they ran around for an hour and a half.

Aunt Jacquie sent a check for his birthday, so he picked out some Legos. Number One Son is helping him put the intended set together. (Read: Number One Son is putting part three together while N2S is playing with parts one and two.)

Today, we visit Grandma and Grandpa for a slightly belated birthday. (And Mother's Day. But we're not talking about that part much.)

Goin' Mobile...

2008-05-10T11:30:00.002-07:00

He's loose!

He's 4!

2008-05-10T07:58:00.005-07:00

He's 4 today. He got a Webkinz from his siblings, and a bike and helmet from his parents. (Helmet isn't shown in the picture because it was too small. It's getting replaced before he gets to ride. Oops.)

Looking for a word...

2008-05-09T21:14:00.002-07:00

What do you call it when you're watching folks who are getting a tremendous (long-term) deal, and suddenly it's going away? It's not quite schadenfreude, because I'm not particularly happy to watch this, but I'm not feeling terribly sympathetic either.

Bike

2008-05-09T10:51:00.002-07:00

Rode the bike in again today. A little sore, but not too bad. When I was locking it up at Safeway to deposit a check and drop off mail, I noticed that the cable to the front derailleur was badly frayed and probably not long for this world. Fun. Guess I'll drop it off at the shop on Monday.

My Last Day With A Three-Year-Old

2008-05-09T08:01:00.002-07:00

Number Two Son turns four tomorrow.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. I'm glad he's getting older and growing up, but I'm going to miss the uncluttered view of life he has now.

On the other hand, it's frequently a view of life that has little to do with reality. We're continually convincing him that, no, just because he's making up a new word for something, that doesn't mean that anyone else will understand what he means.

And, well, I've commented before that Hell is a seven-year-old with an infinite supply of joke books. Deeper levels of Hell supplement that with a three-year-old sidekick who's trying to tell their own versions of the jokes.

But all of this is part of learning how to be a person. And he is learning, and quickly. Give him another couple months, and he'll be reading the joke books on his own.

I suspect that I'll miss the person he is now when he's grown up.

Yay blog (part 2)

2008-05-08T19:46:00.002-07:00

Apparently, I tripped the "potentially evil" sensors accidentally, so I was blogless for the day while Blogspot confirmed that I am not, in fact, a scumsucking weasel of a spammer.

(Scumsucking Weasel Anti-Defamation League on line 1...)

Anyway, rode the bike again yesterday, and weight was up again. Need to get back in the groove of eating less and biking more. Bike again tomorrow, I think.

About the old blog...

2008-05-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

I'll leave it as-is, but it won't get any more changes at this point. It's over here if anyone cares about it.

Yay blog.

2008-05-07T12:06:00.000-07:00

Finally got annoyed enough at myself to deal with the lack of blog.

The diet...mostly isn't right now. It's hard to diet when your employer provides free lunch and snackyfood. Although I'm ramping up the bicycling again, which should help some, and trying to be reasonable about food at work.

Daily food log is at http://twitter.com/kazrak.

Weight tracking is at Hacker's Diet Online under public account Epsilon Sinlaku. (There doesn't appear to be a way to create direct links to it.) The badge in the upper right shows the status over the previous week.

Coming up: a few archived things I've typed up, and assorted things that have been festering but haven't been sent out yet.