Snow!

Bonus Philo family photo:

NPR

Amid layoffs and bad economic times, NPR is asking for its yearly donations to keep rolling. So if you're able, it would be a prime time to toss them a few dollars.

That said, another great This American Life this week, the theme being "people who ruin it for the rest of us." The meat of the program had to do with a family who had opted out of giving their son the MMR vaccine. The kid caught the measles in Europe and brought the disease back to suburban California, where an outbreak caught fire and caused a dozen children to come down with the frequently fatal disease. It's a shame that the link between vaccination and autism was published (later retracted) in a British medical journal.

In San Diego, no one died from the outbreak, although it cost several families lots of money and time to deal with the consequences. Since the MMR is given at about twelve months, even parents who were pro-vaccine were affected. Both sides felt vindicated by the result - no children died so, hey, measles must not be so bad after all, no reason to risk permanent health effects with a vaccine. People who were pro-vaccine saw that outbreaks were a risk of the gaps in the mesh of herd immunity.

The last story is a stark reminder that not everyone sees the world in the same way that you do.

Insomnia

Boo. I slept from about 12:30 until just before two, and haven't really gotten a wink since, just laying around with eyes closed hoping to some rest. Guess it's just a dumb symptom of the schedule flux I've been in for the past week, just like last weekend.

Well, I'm wondering if Brian will let me skip out early tomorrow (if he's around). I'm sure that he would understand the fact that the screwed up schedule has deprived me of sleep. It would be very nice to get off work about noon and take a nap. No matter, anyway, since I've got two shifts left before I head home for two weeks and fix the sleep schedule, at least temporarily.

Ugh, at least I got a bit used to staying up until ten in the morning. Hopefully the little bit of sleep I did get will boost me until the afternoon.

The source is bright and endless
She resuscitates the hopeless
Without her we are lifeless satellites
Dreaming

And as I pull my head out
I am without one doubt
Don't wanna be down here
Soothing my narcissism
I must crucify the ego
Before it's far too late
I pray the light lifts me out
Before I pine away.

Storytime

It was a fair day, warm by the standards of January in the nation's capital. A breeze had blown for most of the day, propelling leaves along the ground, making light scraping sounds as they skidded along the concrete of the sidewalks. The sun was hidden behind a bank of clouds, and thus the sunset was not accompanied by fantastic color, but rather by a dull fade from gray to black. Ripples rode atop the reflecting pool at the base of the Washington Monument. The obelisk itself stood watch over the place where many had gathered, abandoned by all save its watchful and unblinking gaze.

They had come from all corners; an impoverished couple from the inner cities of Washington had taken the day off to see. A Japanese tourist was there, snapping images of the area so tightly-packed with history that was not his own, but was nonetheless worth capturing. A group of children bussed in from Fairfax to the north of the beltway, whose history teacher felt that it was a day that would be not only significant, but invaluably informative. A family of four who had, together, worked at campaign offices, volunteered their valuable time, and felt it necessary to make the trip from Kentucky to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

There were millions, packing the National Mall to the brim, some hundreds of feet away. It may not have been the mere sight of the event that people wished to enjoy. No, perhaps it was the energy of the moment, of the day. Some, no doubt, attended simply to have a story to tell, or to forever remember exactly where they were on that day.

The dull roar turned deafening when the he emerged from behind the stage. It was like an open-air stadium, though whatever of the noise was lost from lack of enclosure was regained and then some from the sheer numbers. The ceremony itself was short, but the speech which followed didn't disappoint. It was rousing, pure, hopeful, just as those in the crowd had expected.

As the night began to set in, many hours after those millions had egressed, the lights in the White House flickered on. The historic home of the President of the United States looked the same as it always had, but the air was different. Crisper, perhaps more optimistic or hopeful. The eyes of those observing could see no difference, but their intuition would say otherwise.

The lights of the White House were extinguished one by one as the night continued, a brutal cold setting in around the District of Columbia. And so ended the first day of the Presidency of Barack Obama. It had been a difficult road, but it had been paved; from here on, he was forging ahead with no path to mark his progress.

Just Apathy

I'm too much
Or not enough
Baby, everyone else is messed up
Well anyway
I can't seem to stay
In just one state of mind

Waiting 'round for something better
I'm the one that wouldn't let her
Now I'm back and forth
I get bored when she's no perfect find

'Cause it's one thing
Or another
I don't even know why I bother
One thing just tears her down
Something I just can't get around

Some things I just can't get around
But still I know you won't let me down.

Schedule for Week Ending 12/21 REVISED

EDIT: Revised because of those wacky radar guys.

ಠ_ಠ

We're getting close now - I can feel it! I actually attended the scheduling meeting today, which was actually pretty cool. Not much goes on, but it's neat to seat at the table with all the leads of the different parts of the project I work on. I put together the prelim schedule and glanced at the times when I plan on working:

Monday - 11:30 to 24:00 (12.5 hours)
Tuesday - 15:30 to 24:00 (21 hours)
Wednesday - 11:00 to 20:00 (30 hours)
Wednesday - 0:00 to 8:00 (29 hours)
Thursday - 11:00 to 20:00 (39 hours)
Thursday - 0:00 to 12:00 (41 hours)
Friday - OFF
Saturday - 7:30 to 16:00 (49.5 hours)
Sunday - OFF

Pretty neat, plenty of overtime if I want it. Also, BONUS, here's what I project will be my schedule for the following weeks afterward:

Week Ending 12/28
Monday - 12:00 to 24:00 (12 hours)
Tuesday - Vacation (16 hours)
Wednesday - Vacation (24 hours)
Thursday - Holiday (32 hours)
Friday - Holiday (40 hours)

Week Ending 1/4
Monday - Vacation (8 hours)
Tuesday - Vacation (16 hours)
Wednesday - Vacation (24 hours)
Thursday - Holiday (32 hours)
Friday - Holiday (40 hours)

Booyah. Basically two weeks (almost) off with using 36 hours of vacation. I've got sixty hours built up, so it's a blow to my total, but not a fatal one. I can't wait to head home and rest for what will seem like an insane period of time.

Checkpoint!

So do you remember that racing game, Cruisin' USA? The one in all the arcades that they released for Nintendo 64? Well, in it, when you passed a certain threshold and you got more time to finish the race, a female voice would yell 'CHECKPOINT!' for no real reason except to inform you that you've been allotted more time to finish out the race. Well, ladies and gentlemen, if life were like Cruisin' USA, that voice would be ringing out in my head in the coming few days.

Six months of living on my own, six months of supporting myself, six months of holding down a steady, great job. I'm pretty proud of myself, I have to say. I'm not dead yet, which is definitely a good sign.

Fiction

This post on a blog I follow from time to time inspired me to write a little about fiction and book-reading. I read very often, but not in the sense that most people do. I devour thousands upon thousands of words daily from (mostly) internet sources, the bulk of which coming from Wikipedia, SomethingAwful, blogs, and news aggregators.

I am devoid completely of one thing, though, in my reading. I don't touch fiction often. The last time I read a fiction book was re-reading Slaughterhouse-Five a couple months ago just because it was sitting around and I had nothing better to do. This is strange, too, because it's not as if I avoid fiction in other areas; I enjoy television dramas like House, I like non-documentary movies immensely, and I play (obviously) fictional video games. So what gives?

I have a theory over why I'm not drawn as much to literary fiction as I used to be. I am not any less interested in fiction than I used to be, but rather I am far more interested in non-fiction. In following politics, in doing research on fantastic inventions, eerie disappearances, and tales of human triumph over adversity, the plights of vampires, elves and Fabio-esque he-men seem to become a lot less entertaining.

Another contributing factor may be my lean toward wishing to understand and learn "everything," which clearly is impossible, but movement toward infinity is still away from zero, even if infinity doesn't get any closer. I am content to know that I am aware of the world around me enough to form a coherent worldview with reasons behind what I believe, rather than resorting to blind faith. Absorbing non-fiction sources of information certainly adds to this ability; putting political beliefs in historical context is certainly important to most when it comes to having justifications.

Food for thought, I suppose. When I enjoy fiction, I thoroughly love the material, though when it begins to get boring or feels like a rehash, I'd rather be reading an essay on the causes of the current financial downturn.

Zero

Treasury bill interest rate dropped to or below zero. This is on the four-week treasury bill.

Essentially what this means is that investors are "lending" their money to the government and not expecting any kind of return on it. They give $1,000 and four weeks later they are given $1,000. Or maybe $999 if you believe the Wall Street Journal. Essentially the four week t-bill system is a giant mattress where occasionally a dollar bill falls out.

EDIT: Whoa, apparently YouTube is no longer blocked, so I can listen to whatever the hell I want to. Sweet.

Blagojevich

SHOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. You heard that? It's another Republican talking point swooping over the horizon.

Rod Blagojevich, an oft-cited-as-corrupt governor of the state of Illinois was arrested earlier today after the FBI had gathered wiretapped evidence of his wrongdoings. Blagojevich has long been tangled in the Rezko fundraising, and it was really only a matter of time before he went down hard for something like this.

To understand the Blagojevich issue today, you probably should understand his gubernatorial history. He was originally elected in 2002, where the likes of Tony Rezko and other business men funded his campaign. Rezko was an entrepreneur in Chicago, opening the first Chicagoan Subway and Papa Johns restaurants, among many others. Blagojevich's rise to power saw many of Rezko associates appointed to positions in his administrations, and strongarm tactics were used on local businesses to force them to donate and contribute to campaigns. Rezko was found out in the FBI's "Operation Board Games," where earlier this year he was jailed and charged with, among other things, bribery and extortion.

This kind of "pay to play" scam, where governmental entities give out favors and subsidies to those businesses that donate to their campaigns or administrations, are a legal gray area. Conspiracy to commit and solicitation of bribery, however, are solidly in the "illegal" pile here. A federal warrant was issued for the tapping of Blagojevich's phone - most likely because of his Rezko links - and they just so happened to listen in on his wheeling and dealings with President-Elect Barack Obama's replacement. Essentially, the FBI caught him red handed selling off the appointment "to the highest bidder," which bodes quite poorly for him.

So what does the whole situation have to do with Obama? Tenuous links at best, though of course the Republicans are salivating at the story. Chicago politics are and have always been rife with corruption, and this fact was already enough for the right to accuse the President-Elect of wrongdoing. Obama purchased a small bit of land from Rezko at one point to extend his own property (Rezko owned the lot next to Obama's), and this was enough to cause a scandal. Obama later apologized for the appearance of impropriety; he paid over twice the assessed value for the ten foot wide strip.

War on the Winter Solstice

So apparently at the Washington State Capitol building there's a nativity scene, and not far away is a sign posted wishing onlookers a "Happy Winter Solstice". Now, the state has allowed displays of the aforementioned nativity scene, a "holiday" tree, and a menorah. So what's the big deal?

Well apparently people have been protesting the capitol to have the sign taken down, declaring that it discourages faith and embarrasses the state of Washington. The people who put the sign up belong to a local group of atheists who feel that religion is among the ranks of "superstition and myth," though nothing about the sign itself is particularly anti-Christmas. It's simply another viewpoint to add the pile.

Now what I don't understand is the fact that it's okay to display Christian and Jewish paraphernalia but anything else is offensive and against the spirit of the holidays. And, of course, when it comes to the "War on Christmas," our good friend Bill O'Reilly isn't far behind. He considers this as another piece of "evidence" that anti-Christmas sentiment is growing in the ranks of the "secular progressives." You mean someone who considers themself secular doesn't like displays of religion on public property? Well I never!

The governor has defended the right of the group to display the sign, not wishing to be exclusionary, and I completely agree with him. Allow everything, or allow nothing, otherwise you're playing favorites and agreeing with the "tyranny of the majority." By far the best part of the article was this:

The atheist sign was briefly stolen Friday but was returned to the Capitol after somebody dropped it off at a Seattle radio station.

It was restored to its display site, along with the added message, "Thou shalt not steal."

When will people in real life realize what the meaning of the word "troll" is?

Pope Guilty posted:
christianity is the largest religion in the world

atheists should target smaller, weaker religions to build XP and level up first

Sunshine in Space

I was poking around a little bit on Wikipedia today when I stumbled upon a television project I haven't heard of in awhile, a sci-fi/comedy called Boldly Going Nowhere. The pilot was filmed in October, and the Fox network ordered the pilot and five more episodes.

So it looks like this thing might stick around for a season or more. And the best part? Its creators and writers are the three geniuses behind It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I'm curious to see how they can set up a show that's very different from It's Always Sunny and still be successful, though I'm certain they'll be able to. Sadly, they won't be starring in their new creation, but it will feature the likes of Tony Hale as "Robot" - Buster Bluth from Arrested Development - and possibly Kurtwood Smith - Red on That 70's Show. Sounds pretty enticing so far, but I guess I'll have to dig up the pilot somewhere to see what I really think.

The plot of Boldly Going Nowhere is a takeoff of the old Star Trek formula, though it concentrates on what the crew does in the long stretches of time where they're not solving mysteries or seducing green and blue women. I'm not sure if they'll be as asinine and stupid as Charlie or Mac, but it is a pretty creative idea for a premise. These days it seems like most new shows are just "INSERT ARCHETYPAL CHARACTERS INTO SITUATION, COMEDY ENSUES" rather than originality as It's Always Sunny and other shows like My Name is Earl and Pushing Daisies.

While I'm on the topic of new television series, Dollhouse looks kind of promising, I suppose. I never watched a moment of Buffy or Angel myself, but I was a big fan of Firefly, so hopefully I'm not just hoping for the latter only to be disappointed if it's the former. Whedon does good stuff in general, so as long as it's fresh and new I'm sure I'll at least like it for the novelty.

Superjail is over and it's still the weirdest thing I've ever really seen. I need to catch up on Dexter's third season sooner or later, since apparently the season finale is coming up next Sunday. Heroes continues tonight. I have to go back in time and grab all those Pushing Daisies and House episodes that I missed. I've got a lot to catch up on, though nothing but time to do it, I guess.

Apparently every episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force costs $75,000 to $200,000 apiece to create. Where is the money going? It's an eleven minute stretch of time with animation that's already been created and used a thousand times. I guess they're just being wasteful with it, since the limited animation techniques they use could probably end up costing a few grand.

Schedule for Week Ending 12/14

Since I forgot to do this last week, it's schedule time! Since it's getting closer and closer to the holidays (two full weeks left before my vacation!), the shots are starting to thin out a little. Most of them are in prime time for the week, which kind of sucks for me, but let's see if I can't pick out a reasonable schedule.

Monday - 14:30 to 24:00 (9.5 hours)
Tuesday - 13:30 to 20:00 (15 hours)
Wednesday - 7:30 to 16:00 and 23:30 to 24:00 (24 hours)
Thursday - 0:00 to 12:00 (36 hours)
Friday - 11:30 to 16:00 (40.5 hours)
Saturday - OFF
Sunday - 7:30 to 16:00 (49 hours)

Alternatively, I could shorten that huge Thursday to four hours and still come out with a teensy bit of overtime. Let's see if my desire for more Christmas gift money outweighs my desire for sleep!

I Blame Patriarchy

So I've been delving into a lot of reading on the subject of gender, feminism, and patriarchy. A lot of very interesting things come up when you really think about this stuff.

Masculine conditioning in our society obviously points males to maintain certain norms. The stereotype of the male condition is, of course, the unfeeling and stalwart being who deals with things on a completely detached and distance level. The effect has been compared to that of Effexor, an SNRI which essentially begins to block out feelings to the point of a person resembling a zombie.

Men are socialized, in a general sense, to be everything that is specifically not feminine. Concepts like empathy, sharing feelings, and addressing emotional concerns have been virtually eradicated between two heterosexual men. Most guys I know would grow really freaked out and uncomfortable if a male friend approached them and began talking about how hard it's been dealing with being dumped, or how concerned they are that the other is angry. Guys are simply "supposed" to be equipped to deal with these feelings alone rather than showing weakness by going to others.

And what do guy friends do when something devastating happens in their life, say a parent or significant other dying? They go drinking. Not only is drinking a social lubricant, but it provides a way for men to actually connect with one another, providing a sort of plausible deniability in their feelings. This is pretty sad, really. The constant drive for competition in the normative male makes showing vulnerability a horrible thing. I've seen this first hand with a lot of my friends; there are some of them that I could never even imagine opening up to, describing how I feel about certain things, etc. It's kind of sad, really. There are some, though, that are a lot more receptive to it, but it's tough to get them to open up themselves. Maybe it's some kind of fear of exploitation?

I've never had a whole lot of female friends that actually open themselves up. Most of the ones I knew in high school, with a few exceptions, fell into two categories: those popular and high-up ones that always carried a peppy sense of "happiness" without ever seeming to show any sort of chink in their armor, and the ones that seemed to expect that I was the normative male, causing feelings to be pushed off the table. There were then the shining few who would open themselves up, to an extent, but it seemed some things still remained buried. It then became difficult to adjust to actually having someone available to speak about what's driving me to do things. In never really having opportunity to open up before, it's tough to move to doing just that.

Honestly, this may be why I'm so intent on making friends who lie on the opposite side of the gender spectrum. I suppose that such societal norms make it a lot more comfortable to open up to women. The strange thing is, though, the person who I spent a lot of time with in the first few months of living out here was a girl, but for all intents and purposes may as well have been a guy. Everything was shut in, guarded. It just felt horribly awkward whenever I tried to ask her how she felt about essentially anything. Maybe that's merely because it's strange to see a male share his feelings, no matter who's doing the listening?

More thoughts on this later, probably. Gender studies is fascinating.

Sickness

Well, ever since that late night shot on Thursday morning I've felt like utter crap. I went to sleep with a throatache and woke up with an even worse one. The weird thing is that I have no idea what I might have.

I have a bad throatache, a pretty bad cough, and a headache. I also had some stomach troubles this morning, despite not really having eaten much and mainly just drinking a ton of water and orange juice. Ugh. I just hope it goes away soon. I'll have to pick up some Nyquil on the way home and knock myself out for a few hours.

And it was going to be such a great, two-consecutive-day weekend, too. Wah.

Second Session

So, with the Chambliss/Martin Georgia Senatorial runoff complete, my origin state of Minnesota appears to be the last state actively counting ballots. The recount has been in full swing for weeks now, and according to the Minnesota Secretary of State website, is now over 97% complete. That said, with December 3rd's count totals posted, Franken appears to have a comfortable lead of over eleven thousand votes. Here are the totals from the site:

Recounted Data	Totals	Percent
RECOUNT Ballots for Coleman (as recounted)	1174964	41.24%
RECOUNT Ballots for Franken (as recounted)	1186134	41.63%
RECOUNT Ballots for Neither (as recounted)	481922	16.91%
Ballots Challenged by Coleman	3241	0.11%
Ballots Challenged by Franken	3085	0.11%

So, in essence, it appears Franken, without any challenges resolved, is ahead by 11,170 votes. Going by the Secretary of State's number of 97.58% of the ballots having already been recounted, this leaves slightly over 70,664 ballots to be recounted. In a scenario where, say, 70% of the challenged ballots go in favor of Coleman (this is necessarily meant to be a conservative estimate from the other side), this nets Coleman an additional 2530 votes, closing the gap to about 8640 in favor of Franken. Thus, the last 2.42% of the ballots would have to break about 56-44 for Coleman for him to catch up that large of a margin.

I'm not sure exactly what counties/precincts are left, and which direction they are liable to tip to, but man this is good news.

Obsession

With a great band.

Mister Moon?
Yeah?
Tell us about the sky.
The sky is deep, and dark, and eternally high.
Many people think that's where you go when you die.
Do you?
Well I think you return to obscure
Or whatever you were
Before you were
But I won't let you lose yourself in the rain.
All you see, and you and me
We came from a star.

Recession?

Yep, it's official. The United States economy, as of yesterday, was declared to be in a recession. Party, anyone?

At least we aren't Zimbabwe. As of two weeks ago, the inflation rate of the Zimbabwe dollar has breached sextillion percent (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) and the exchange rate with the US Dollar was thirteen quadrillion (13,000,000,000,000,000). Essentially this means if you wanted to buy a $0.25 USD gumball with Zimbabwe money, you would need 3,250,000,000,000,000 ZWR. Yup. So essentially what this does is drive people to immediately exchange their money for something that holds more value (USD or something more local), since the inflation rate causes the ZWR to lose 50% of its value daily. If you're paid $10 for something today, then it's worth $5 tomorrow. In a week it's worth less than eight cents.

So maybe that party is due after all... at least for the Zimbabweans. Better to spend the money right now rather than wait for it to melt in your pocket!

Refreshin'

So it was time again today to put in my objectives for work. What that basically entails is to write down a few paragraphs on what I want to accomplish and how I want to challenge myself. Essentially it's just a promise to myself that I will continue to soak up information in any fashion I can, to be inquisitive; not too tough, since being curious is essentially what it is to be human.

I don't think I'm peaking yet at this job, but it seems I'm getting sort of close. I know most of the things I have to know for what I do, and though I learn something new every day, I'm starting to plateau off a little. I know this is pretty normal, but it's kind of disappointing. As my old manager Sam used to put it, I really like "drinking from the firehose". Though you can't absorb all the information, it's wonderful to have all the information there for the taking.

And it's all about information. I feel like Johnny Five screeching that he needs input for some reason. I want to know as much as all the guys who went through Naval tours and shifted back to the white collar world with the knowledge they gleaned. I want to cram three decades of learning into a year. I won't succeed at this, but I think this is exactly the position I want to be in.

Introspection aside, I've settled into the strange schedule pretty well. Late nights are great because there's really nobody around; I can get a lot of work done, and if there's no work to do, I can always entertain myself with reading and whatnot, though I'm still always eager to go home. Probably now moreso than a week ago, just because of all the shiny toys I bought myself.

Speaking of that, I've become a bona fide HD elitist. Yep, it only took three days, but now it's almost painful to watch anything that's not in HD, at least on my big TV. Though it's really a blessing to finally have a reason to get out of my dusty room, and if anyone visits (hey, some guys actually came into my apartment to deliver the TV, so it reset the counter of "nobody has seen this place but me in X days"), I'll be well equipped again. It would probably seem like I was hitting on someone if I was trying to explain that the only TV I own is in my bedroom.

Well, random stream of consciousness post done. Later.

Monies

TV - $1100
TV Protection Plan - $170
TV Stand - $150
Delivery - $100
Tax - $100

For a grand total of $1620.

Yeah. I drained my bank account, but it'll hopefully be a good purchase. I got a pretty good deal on a TV that I'll have for years, so it's nice to treat myself. It doesn't come until Saturday, though, so I have to bate my breath a little longer. In the meantime, I'll build the stand , call Comcast to enable HDTV feeds, and maybe even drop more cash on a PS3. I need my Blu-Ray!

UPDATE: 8:47am
I dragged the extremely heavy TV stand up the stairs. Ugh. I put it all together and it actually looks really great:


Sorry for the blurry crap. It's three tiered with nice glass platforms for everything. Can't wait until I put the crown on top.

Better picture from Best Buy, TV and all:

Blammo!

Low Content

To continue my latest trend of very little content posts, I direct you to the following Rolling Stone article:

This was a very eye opening article, and makes me consider a free-range-only way of life, if but for a moment.

What is Money?

This week on Planet Money, Alex Blumberg and company investigate exactly that question: What is money? Monday's podcast was especially illuminating, featuring economist, author, and Harvard professor Niall Ferguson explaining what money is.

The crux of his argument isn't that money is paper and coins, bank notes and IOUs. Money is a symbol, whether tangible or intangible, that crystallizes a relationship between loaner and debtor. Money is confidence in other people and society as a whole. It has exactly the value that society assigns to it and no more or no less. If tomorrow everyone in the world decided that all money was worthless, it would be worth exactly zero.

One of Ferguson's anecdotes was of an epiphany he had while studying the past of money. He found a clay tablet that had written on it a promise to pay a certain amount of wheat to whomever possessed it. He realized that this was one of the first instances of money; an otherwise worthless object that, because of what could be considered a "confidence trick," was worth so many kilos of a commodity.

Post Tryptophan Mania

Schedule for next week, out bright and early thanks to having Thursday and Friday off. Subject to change, too.

Monday - 15:30 to 24:00 (8.5 hours)
Tuesday - 15:30 to 24:00 (17 hours)
Wednesday - 15:30 to 24:00 (25.5 hours)
Thursday - 0:00 to 4:00 (29.5 hours)
Friday - 11:00 to 16:00 (34.5 hours)
Saturday - 7:30 to 16:00 (43 hours)
Sunday - OFF

Weird. Twelve hour, day-straddling shifts are kind of cool. Plenty of movie time when nobody else is around.

AAAAGH

Why does the east coast suck so much? There are literally no grocery stores open after midnight here. WHAT WILL I DO IF I WANT GRAPES AT 3:17AM?!

Seriously I wish there was one. I want to pick up bread and milk.

Best Buy Blowout

I may have finally found it. After months of searching and waiting, I'm closer and closer to pouncing. What seems like eons of saving up has led to this point.

I think I may be buying my heralded television on Friday.

Yes, the wonderful Black Friday has once again duped me into getting excited about getting stuff for super cheap. The piece of machinery, nay artistry, is a 46" 1080p Samsung LCD model with three HDMI inputs. Half a foot smaller than I was thinking initially, but the price tag makes it the most tempting; on Friday, it'll be available for $1099.

I've been to Black Friday sales before, and haven't had a whole lot of success due to my very small commitment to it. The cold Minnesota winters don't do much for my ability to keep my eyes on the prize. Out here, though, I may have more success. I actually hope it's abnormally cold, because that may eliminate some of the competition. I may end up going out at one or two in the morning just to ensure that I'm able to get what I want.

I made up a big finance sheet today to ensure that I had enough money. I definitely do, but I did a lot of math with the numbers I came up with. Apparently when you take into account car payments, insurance of all sorts, food, rent, random purchases, cable, electric and heat, and everything else, it costs me about $85 per day to live. Awesome. That seems like a lot. Also, I spend an average of just under $3 a day on gasoline.

Civic Literacy

I stumbled on a very good civics test here. For the most part, it's good at testing your civics knowledge, though its scope creeps a little. I tested 93%. The questions I missed tended to be more about economics and history than actual government. I don't claim to be a great economics, nor have I taken an econ class in six years, so I'm not too concerned about the fact that I don't know why free market economies work better than federally planned ones on a micro scale.

People are pretty stupid, though. The average score is 49%.

Schedule for Thanksgiving Week

This is going to be a fun one.

Monday - 14:00 to 24:00 (10 hours)
Tuesday - 15:30 to 24:00 (18.5 hours)
Wednesday - 14:00 to 24:00 (28.5 hours)
Thursday - OFF (36.5 hours)
Friday - OFF (44.5 hours)
Saturday - OFF
Sunday - 7:30 to 12:00 (49 hours)

That's a lot of overtime, ladies and gentlemen.

EDIT: Revised on Sunday, November 23 for schedule changes.

On the Nature of Life

I've been thinking; there's a shocker. I've been thinking about the people who read this, and if I don't know them, what drives them. Even if I do know them, I'd love to know more. I think in these days, people have so little time to be introspective. They're not forced to sit in the dark at night rather than watch television and browse the internet. I'm a creature of consumption, and I'm consuming media constantly.

But what about you? I have some questions, and if you'd be kind enough to answer them, I'd be delighted. Anonymous or not, go ahead.

What's the biggest risk you've taken thus far in your life? Mine happened very, very recently. I packed up and moved to a place I did not know. A place that did not know me. I began full time employment when I had never been employed full time for more than a three month period. I left something I had never been without for so long; school, family, friends. I knocked down the majority of the castle, and am picking it up again piece by piece. I couldn't be happier with myself, with my adventure.

What do you consider to be your biggest failure? That is, a decision you made that led to a dead end. And, most importantly, how was it good for you? I've had a few. In the past few months I've let people know how I feel rather bluntly. I had a spectacular failure; what was an attempt to take a big step forward took me back to the starting line. I had a wonderful success; that success still remains with me today, and I'm thankful for it. Did I make the wrong choice in either case? I don't think so. I made a choice; every binary choice is half chance. What did it help me with? That's a little harder to pin down, but the events of the past few months have taught me a truth that you never realize as a kid. When you're young, you think that it only goes up from here, that you will be older with more money, more things, more excitement. But there's got to be a climax, a point where you hit your stride, and have attained all you need to be happy. In other words, you can't always get what you want.

How has choice and risk shaped who you are today? I used to be very conservative with choices. I was a kid who would have a crush and never really act on it for fear of taking such a risk. Recently, after rekindling old friendships and creating new ones, I've grown accustomed to taking a diving leap. Of course, it's good to look before such a leap, but you still can't always predict the outcome. I've recently realized that I have to separate things into what I can live without and what I can't. I have to be very picky about what drops into that second bucket; before I would have played it safe and dumped all my thoughts, dreams, and feelings into that category. Now I feel more discerning.

I hope to hear from you soon, readers, however few or many of you are out there. Thanks for reading this.

"Taking a risk, doing things where you actually have a chance to fail... that's what being young is."

- Ira Glass

Hunting Season, and You Know What That Means!

It's time for the amazing accidental killing of children and loved ones post!!!

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to answer our final question for a fabulous prize!

Which story is true:
A) Sixteen month old shot in the chest and killed by a hunter. The man shot an Eastern White Tail and failed to kill it in the first shot. His second shot penetrated a trailer, killing the toddler residing inside. He was using .300 Magnum rifle shells - GUESS WHICH ONE THAT IS!
B) Father shoots and kills his six year old daughter while cleaning his gun. He was drinking at the time. Also among this man's awesome history is being handed a shotgun and immediately pulling the trigger, accidentally discharging what he had thought was an unloaded weapon.
C) Nineteen year old woman shoots and kills herself by accident while handling a gun that apparently belonged to her boyfriend.
D) Eight year old Massachusetts boy accidentally shoots himself in the head when firing an Uzi. The kickback caused the child to lose control of the weapon.

Oh wait, looks like all of them are true, and each of them tragic beyond words.

I understand that people want to hunt, and they have every right to do so within reason. Within reason means you don't have to use rifle shells that could kill an elephant for hunting small deer. Within reason means you don't need to let small children fire a dangerous submachine gun. Within reason means that owning a gun should be a privilege to the people who have earned it, and not the absolute right some people think it is. Whatever interpretation of the Second Amendment is used, the founding fathers were fallible. Even if they thought every citizen should own a musket for their own personal defense, why can't they have been wrong about it?

There sure are a lot of these.

Word Substitution Racism

Conservation of Angular Momentum is Great OR I Miss Physics Class

In other words, I've been listening to music spinning in my chair. Wheee.

I've done some super specific tests (watching a clock and counting rotations) to figure out my angular velocity ω. With my arms held inward, I make five rotations in seven seconds, resulting in an average angular velocity ω1 of 4.488 rad/second. With arms outstretched, I make five rotations in twelve seconds, resulting in an average angular velocity ω2 of approximately 0.417 rotations/second, or 2.618 rad/second.

Now, in both situations, my momentum should be approximately the same - L = Iω, where I is my moment of inertia and L is my angular momentum. To figure out my moment of inertia in the first case, I have to cheat a little and assume I'm a uniformly distributed cylinder. I'll assume the chair I'm using weighs about forty pounds, since it's a computer chair with plenty of steel on it, and seems to weigh about 3-4 times what my ten pound weight weighs. Added with me, that's about 92 kilograms. The me plus chair system has a varying radius, but I'll assume it averages at about fourteen inches, or 0.3556 meters. Thus, the moment of inertia is:

I1 = (mr^2)/2 = (92 kg)(0.3556 m)^2 / 2 = 5.816 kg-m^2

My angular momentum in the first case is therefore:

L = (5.816 kg-m^2)(4.488 rad/s) = 26.106 kg-m^2/s

And I can find out my moment of inertia in the second case by using the same equation:

26.106 kg-m^2/s = I2*(2.618 rad/s)
I2 = (26.106 kg-m^2/s)/(2.618 rad/s)
I2 = 9.97 kg-m^2

The only thing different between the two situations in a practical sense is the radius of my arms; we can find how much I "spread out" my weight with:

9.97 kg-m^2 = (92 kg)(r^2)/2
r^2 = 0.216 m^2
r = 0.466 m

Essentially, it's like my weight was "spread out" by a factor of 1.31 in the second scenario. This seems pretty realistic. Though my arms are a small part of my weight, my "wingspan" is fairly significant and the weight of my outstretched arms can add a lot to the moment of inertia. Think of it like a see-saw, where the further you are from the middle, the more upward force you exert on your partner's side.

Error could be introduced by my shoddy timekeeping, pushing with more or less force in either scenario, and the friction and air resistance differences in the two situations. When my arms are outstretched, air resistance can play a big part. Friction will also obviously have more effect on the second scenario, since I'm spinning for longer. Also I'm not a cylinder. Oh well though, it was just for fun. Need to do some good math here and there, even if it's just a little algebra.

The Forgotten

I've raved again and again over This American Life, and this week's episode is quite interesting and heartfelt. It's all about living alone, so I can definitely relate.

I've been living alone in my own apartment for about five and a half months now. It takes getting used to, especially after sharing not only an apartment but a room with somebody else for the past four years. It takes getting used to, knowing no one within about a thousand miles. I have work friends, definitely, but considering nobody else has set foot in my apartment for around eight weeks, the place begins to be associated with being alone. I've got a duality about me, though; I'm perfectly content to be by myself, and I'm content with being with others. In the former situation, I generally seek to speak to people via online messaging or the phone, and with the latter, the person or people I'm with often get my full attention. Either way, though, I'm happy with the situation I'm in now.

My apartment, sadly, doesn't get utilized as much as one would think; my living room, for the months of July, August, and early September, was where I would hang out with visitors. Now I only venture there to talk on the phone or lie down on the couch. It's curious how my guest bedroom door has been closed for weeks, a kind of no man's land that I don't care about or touch. I have been doing a pretty good job keeping up with cleaning, though; the shower is spotless, and I run the vacuum every week or so to keep everything tidy. I'm not a clean freak by any stretch, but I suppose it could be any day now that a friend shows up looking for a place to stay. If somebody asked me if they could stay with me in my spare bedroom, I would be absolutely delighted. In fact, my Floridian friend Whitney S. asked me if the opportunity would be there for her to move up if she had to. I agreed; a break with rent would allow me to save more money, in addition to having somebody to hang around with when I get bored.

So am I lonely? I wouldn't consider myself so. I definitely seek out interactions with other people, doing my best to make friends in the area, which has introduced several intriguing adventures over the past few months. But lonely? I don't have the time to be lonely. Between work, sleep, said adventures, and phone calls, I don't have enough time in the day. I'm ambivalent, one could say. I like doing my own thing at my own time, but there's no enjoyment that compares with sharing comedy, tragedy, knowledge, and mystery with others.

Regardless, the episode of This American Life this week included the story of a department of the Los Angeles Police that dealt specifically with those who had passed away without any obvious family (or even friends) that should be contacted. They told the story of Mary Ann, a woman who had lived alone for dozens of years, barely speaking to others who lived around her. She was unmarried, had no children, and carried nothing with her to the hospital she checked into to indicate who she knew or who she was related to.

Although a distant relative of Mary Ann had been found, they also told of the people who had no one. Their parents had already passed, they never married or were widows or widowers. They had no children to speak of, and shut themselves in, filling their lives with things instead of people. This amounts to about a thousand people a year in Los Angeles, who are cremated and stored for four years before they are buried in mass graves. Almost no one attends these ceremonies, save a chaplain and a few county employees, less than a dozen usually. It's almost poetic; people who spend their lives alone, whether by choice or not, enter eternity with such company.

The most heart-wrenching story the particular LAPD investigator cited was the death of a woman in her eighties. Her husband died sixty years earlier in World War II after being shot down in Europe. The woman had still had the letters sent to her by the government - the first telling her about the loss of his plane, the second telling of the recovery of the wreckage with no body, and the third telling her about her husband's death and the discovery of the body. She had never moved on, for that six decade period, preferring to remain in mourning for the rest of her days.

Such concepts and stories make the gears begin to turn, thinking about memory, perception, and the intangibility of both. Philosophical discussion aside, though, it's a great listen.

"Because we / Are messengers of memory / Just whispers in time."

Grains of Wrath

Back in '83
A man came to me
And he told me, "Son,
Our way of life is done."
But I was only young.

With an eye to the fields
Speculators and yields
Rotten to the core
Monocultures whores
Entering bidding wars
On distant shores

I don't wanna be
In a land known
As destitute and free
With the grains of wrath
Blazing a path
From sea to shining sea.

King Corn

I'm sure everybody who's lived in America at any point is familiar with high fructose corn syrup. Virtually every product on the market today which contains any sweetener at all also contains HFCS rather than actual cane sugar. I've been interested in exactly why this happened for awhile now, and thought I'd share some research and thoughts on here.

Before the 1970s, high fructose corn syrup was basically unheard of. Products contained mainly beet or cane sugars, which were generally imported from several countries around the world. The United States keeps nearly all sugar it grows locally, in addition to very large imports of the commodity. This was a perceived problem in the early seventies. Imports were expensive, and importing this large amount of cane and beet sugar was a necessary evil that caused food prices to stay fairly stable. A man named Earl Butz was appointed as the Secretary of Agriculture under Nixon. The goals of the administration included reducing the amount of money the average American spent on food. This would allow them to consume more in the other areas of their lives, stimulating the economy. So how exactly did they decide to do this?

Butz was well known for encouraging a monoculture attitude when it came to farming. That is, he wanted farmers to plant their entire field with the same crop. Now, anyone who's up on their nineteenth century Irish history knows one of the big problems with monocultures - vulnerability to a single pathogen or other irritant. This is circumvented quite well by new farming technologies such as pesticides and genetic engineering, making the issue nearly moot.

Nearly.

Now, what crop did you suppose Butz and the USDA decided to focus on? What crop is the one you're most used to seeing when driving through rural areas in practically any state, in particular the nation's breadbasket? Corn, of course. The United States grows nearly half of corn worldwide. This is mainly because of extensive use of high fructose corn syrup; for this reason, the corn you see growing in most fields is engineered to be perfect for this purpose.

High Fructose Corn Syrup has recently surpassed cane and beet sugar in American consumption.

Modern field corn is different from sweet corn. It has a distinctly chalky taste, as it has sacrificed the majority of its nutrition (proteins and minerals) for starch, which makes it more useful for being broken down. This is not a unique phenomenon to corn - most crops now are engineered not for nutrition, but for yields. Under Nixon and Butz, farms were encouraged to buy and sell in bulk. Subsidies, which had been based on the size of farms in the past, were now based on yield. While this may seem reasonable at first, if one looks at the practical effects, it means the more efficient a farmer is in growing crops, the more money the government bestows upon him. Thus, it's no longer a goal to farm nutritious or high quality crops, but rather to grow as much as possible.

The shift in governmental policy coincided with the rise of big agriculture business. Farmers were advised by the USDA to "get big or get out" by Butz, and the end of feasibility for the family farm fast approached. Large corporations were able to purchase chemicals and equipment in bulk, saving them millions. Small and family farms struggled to keep up with the ridiculous efficiency of these titans, and were quickly forced to tap out of the business for good. In turn, the corporations used farming techniques like genetic engineering to increase the size of their yield (and decrease the nutrition of their crops) and thereby increase the size of their subsidy check.

Americans noticed that the quantity of food went up for their dollar while completely blind to the quality rapidly diminishing. Obesity has since become an epidemic as the demand was increased by the supply. Larger portions of cheaper, less nutritious food were offered to the masses; more food was necessary to supplement that lack of nutrition. Hence, obesity has become America's most prevalent health problem. People not only now have extremely high caloric intake, but the computer revolution has caused sedentary lifestyles to become the norm.

And it's no surprise that when the makers of the documentary King Corn had their hair tested, they averaged 56% corn in composition. The documentary sees two college friends and their quest to know the corn industry inside and out. In the process, they move to an Iowa farm to grow an acre of corn, receiving $28 in Federal subsidy for their effort. The two plant 31,000 kernels of corn in eighteen minutes thanks to modern technology; they spend about two hours farming over the entire year. Of course, owning a thousand or fifteen-hundred acres requires far more effort, but not nearly as much as it used to. The film is amazingly informative and I highly recommend it.

The corn watertower in my hometown of Rochester, Minnesota.

Digg Annoys Me

So I came across a thread about a new method the ESRB is using to get better ratings out to parents for video games. Essentially they have a website where they display a bunch of descriptions of games, telling about their content with somewhat of a context. For example, instead of just looking at TF2 and seeing it it's rated "M" and a couple of descriptions why, it could say something like "a first person shooter where two teams compete with one another in an online environment. Contains significant amounts of blood and guts in a cartoonish context." et cetera.

Now, I don't see anything wrong with this. So a regulatory agency wants to put something out there that's pretty easy to access and all in one place. Nothing changes for the average person who buys video games, right? It's not even that they're making it harder for minors to purchase games of any stripe. But of course, there is somehow still irrational hatred for the ESRB trying to deliver more information to parents to allow them to make a more informed decision:

Why bother? NOTHING will satisfy the nanny groups until every game has been turned into a PG game. Sure she praises it now, until she needs to rile up her base and starts going on the evil of games again. I think we have learned a valuable lesson to how to stop the political madness. Get a campaign started to Give money to the opposition party during election cycles and explain exactly WHY you are doing it. If enough gamers/free speech supporters/etc band together and give money to political groups who support OUR view, politicians will quickly change their tune.

This kind of slippery slope argument is really, really stupid. Sorry, I'm not fan of censorship, not at all, but taking steps to inform more people is never bad.

There's always a backlash in the video game industry to school shootings, and video game advocates always say the same thing - that parents should be more responsible for what their kids are exposed to. This is true: parents are chiefly responsible for such things. The thing about this story is the fact that it allows parents to make more informed decisions. It doesn't restrict free speech. It doesn't make games "evil".

There's a reason why slippery slope is a fallacy. Way to go, Digg.

Speaking of Digg and their blind support for everything Ron Paul, apparently he appears on every "Choose Your Own Cabinet" list that the New York Times posted. He peaks at #3 for Treasury Secretary and is #7 on Secretary of State, where for Defense, Homeland Security, and Attorney General he's somewhere in the 4-6 area. People are really stupid. At least Noam Chomsky made it in the top 20 for Defense and State:

Foggy posted:
Would [Noam Chomsky] be better in defense or state

The New Zorker posted:
merge them, dep't. of power/linguistics

Schedule 2: Electric Boogaloo

Another humdrum week for the most part. The schedule is remarkably similar to last week's, which is fine. An early wake up for a Monday, but better than waking up for a bright and early Sunday as I'll have to do.

Monday - 11:30 to 24:00 (12.5 hours)
Tuesday - 15:30 to 24:00 (21 hours)
Wednesday - 11:30 to 24:00 (33.5 hours)
Thursday - OFF
Friday - 7:30 to 16:00 (42 hours)
Saturday - OFF
Sunday - 7:30 to 16:00 (50.5 hours)

I'll probably shave down what I work on Monday on second thought. I think I can deal with "only" having six and a half hours of overtime.

In other news, I noticed something about the totals for the Minnesota Senate Ballots, shown below:

Independence DEAN BARKLEY 437389 15.16%
Republican NORM COLEMAN 1211565 41.99%
Democratic-Farmer-Labor AL FRANKEN 1211359 41.98%
Libertarian CHARLES ALDRICH 13916 0.48%
Constitution JAMES NIEMACKL 8908 0.31%
Write-In WRITE-IN** 2340 0.08%
Write-In MICHAEL CAVLAN** 13 0.00%
Write-In ANTHONY KEITH PRICE** 12 0.00%

Seriously? 2340 people wrote "Write-In" in the Write-In box?

Chris Matthews Owns

Old, but still great.

Change!

Though I'm weary of the whole "change" and "hope" buzzwords from Obama's campaign, it looks like his team can competently use the internet. His transition team has apparently set up this site in order to get the word out to the American people. This was one of my favorites:

Create the American Opportunity Tax Credit:
Obama and Biden will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit. This universal and fully refundable credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans, and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university and make community college tuition completely free for most students. Recipients of the credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of community service.

This is a great idea. Not just the credit but also the community service requirement.

The ideas on his site are quite agreeable in the AGENDA column, at least for me. I know some are unrealistic, but if a small fraction of his ideas are put into motion I think we'd be much better for it. More incentive for people to go to colleges, even community college, is a great thing. A step toward intellectualism being accepted and encouraged in this country, a step away from xenophobia.

Schedule for Week of November 10

Short, sweet schedule post for next week.

Monday - 11:30 to 24:00 (12.5 hours)
Tuesday - 15:30 to 24:00 (21 hours)
Wednesday - 11:30 to 20:00 (29.5 hours)
Thursday - OFF
Friday - 7:30 to 16:00 (38 hours)
Saturday - OFF
Sunday - 7:30 to 16:00 (46.5 hours)

Plenty of overtime, and two days completely off, which is pretty nice. Hopefully I can find a way to make it to Thursday after seven full days of work ahead of me!

Who Needs Sleep?

I do, but it seems I probably won't get much tonight.

I think with the day off today my body shifted into weekend mode on a week where I won't have a weekend. Hopefully tomorrow will be exhausting enough so I can get to sleep fairly early tomorrow night to make up for it. The nap earlier was a mistake.

Winter

"I should know
Who I am by now
I walk
The record stands somehow
Thinking of winter
Your name is the splinter
Inside me
While I wait.

I remember the sound
Of your November downtown
And I remember the truth
A warm December with you
But I don't have to make this mistake
And I don't have to stay this way
If only I would wake."

Why McCain Lost

Now the Monday morning quarterbacking begins, only this time it's more of a November 5th quarterbacking effort. John McCain failed in his bid for the presidency. The reasons why on the surface are fairly clear - he failed to capture the 2000 and 2004 Bush states, and failed to sway Pennsylvania to shift to a more red hue. But there were underlying causes that began to doom him from the beginning.

The Charisma Gap has played a role in every election in the past fifteen years, since Clinton was elected in 1992. Clinton and W had "everyday guy" charisma, the kind that appeals to average working Joes. This played an important role in capturing the areas of the country which, frankly, may enjoy NASCAR a little too much and consider reading books to be a waste of time.

This election was a little different, but which candidate possessed the more charismatic qualities was obvious. McCain is a fairly good speaker, far better than George W. Bush ever had been or ever will be. Obama, though, is immaculate. Where McCain's technique involves jokes which aren't very funny and somewhat awkward soundbytes, Obama utilizes spotless segues and impressive inflections. Kerry and Gore were well spoken, certainly, but they spoke in a kind of monotonous fashion that made it hard to rally around them. Barack Obama was ready and willing to transcend the soundbyte culture that has grasped the media so tightly in the past eight years, and in many ways he succeeded.

Losing Control was seemingly a factor in McCain's downfall. Steve Schmidt, former Cheney aid and longtime political organizer, was given full control over McCain's campaign in early July. Schmidt comes from a school of thought that when it comes to campaigning, message isn't necessarily the most important issue; that as long as you can come out ahead in the majority of news cycles, the election is yours. This led to the McCain campaign turning quite negative, focusing on his opponent's political weaknesses rather than his own strengths. This probably also led to the strange and erratic movements of the campaign, jerking from one issue to the other as unnaturally as Sarah Palin's catwalk moves.

On the Sunday night before the last debate, McCain's core group of advisers—Steve Schmidt, Rick Davis, adman Fred Davis, strategist Greg Strimple, pollster Bill McInturff and strategy director Sarah Simmons—met to decide whether to tell McCain that the race was effectively over, that he no longer had a chance to win. The consensus in the room was no, not yet, not while he still had "a pulse."

The above quote, from a Newsweek article just released about the campaign, illustrates the little control McCain had over his own fate. The top advisors of his campaign had a hunch a month ago that things would not go well for their candidate, and they decided to not discourage him. Certainly McCain got wind of this eventually from how the polls and temperament of his colleagues and the media were moving, but it just exemplifies how weak of a grasp he actually had on his own campaign.

Probably foremost among the reasons why McCain's campaign failed so miserably was the selection of Sarah Palin for his Vice President. The pick seemed sound, at least at first. A relatively unknown Washington outsider - could definitely play for the "change" ticket. A woman to boot, to try and scoop up the rest of the Hillary vote. Sounds fairly reasonable, right?

It didn't seem to work out very well. Palin was a definite conservative, but she may have been too conservative for the American public to stomach. She galvanized the abortion- and tax-hating wings of the Republican Party, but did she also push the border cases further to the left? Was her inexperience and her penchant for disastrous interviews a death knell for the McCain campaign? I say yes. She also got off message several times on the campaign trail, "going rogue" as some put it and blathering off on her own tangents instead of sticking to the campaign line:

Palin launched her attack on Obama's association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain's advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.

She seemed like quite the loose cannon, and some of her behavior toward the end of the campaign seemed to be motivated by her own ego rather than the ticket she was promoting. It seems like things may work out for her as well - in Alaska, where she remains remarkably popular, a Senate seat seems like it'll be up for grabs in short order. With most of the right-wing media calling the McCain campaign a failure because its candidate was not conservative enough, her status of a pariah may stand as a badge of honor.

McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.

Source.

Sad Songs Are Nature's Onions

Struggling Americans Forced To Work Extra-Dimensional 4th Shift

"I age an extra eight hours every time I work the fourth shift, and it's really starting to wear me down," Vernacini continued. "And having to buy a new shirt every time my body is flattened out to 4,000 times its usual surface area is one more strain on my budget that I don't need."

Some businesses have already installed a rip in the space-time continuum in their break-room areas so that employees can report for work in the other dimension as soon as their Earth shifts end. People who regularly work the fourth shift have reported that the tasks they perform are more or less exactly the same as during their other shifts, though they have to contend with frequent plasma storms and occasionally meet themselves leaving for one shift as they arrive for another, which can be demoralizing.

"The worst part about my job in the other dimension is trying to digest the silica-based food product they serve in the cafeteria," said Thomas Kinney, a line inspector who takes on a fourth shift three days a week at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in alternate Atlanta, GA. "It's probably the most painful part of working a fourth shift. That, and not getting to see my kids grow up."

Election Results

Well, last night certainly was eventful. The results I was watching closely are below.

• Barack Obama and Joe Biden defeat John McCain and Sarah Palin for the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States of America.
• Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey retains his Senate seat over challenger Dick Zimmer.
• Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota is locked in a recount race with challenger Al Franken. The current margin is 42%-42%, with Franken trailing by less than 600 votes.
• It appears Ted Stevens of Alaska has won his seat over Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, despite Stevens' recent felony conviction on charges of corruption. If Stevens does indeed win, it is likely that he will resign and a special election will be held within ninety days for his seat. Look out for Palin trying to take his place and burst onto the national scene.
• Michele Bachmann retains her Congressional seat for Minnesota's 6th District, defeating Elwyn Tinklenberg. The race was closer than it would have been if not for Bachmann's McCarthy-esque statements on Hardball with Chris Matthews a few weeks ago.
• John Adler defeats Chris Myers in my home Congressional district, New Jersey's 3rd. This represents a pickup in the House for the Democrats, as Adler replaces retiring Republican Jim Saxton.
• Tim Walz retains his seat as Congressman from Minnesota's 1st District, defeating Brian Davis handily.



• Arizona, Florida, and apparently California have voted to ban gay marriage within their states.
• Arkansas has voted to ban gay adoption, preventing homosexual couples from adopting children.
• Colorado overwhelmingly shoots down an amendment that would define life as beginning at the moment of fertilization within every constitutional context. This would have essentially given a day old embryo the same rights as a forty-year-old person.
• Maryland votes to allow video slot machines in certain areas within the state, with procedes being directed to the education system.
• Massachusetts denies a ballot initiative that would abolish the state income tax.
• Michigan votes to legalize medical marijuana and permit stem cell research with embryonic stem cells.
• Washington state votes to allow doctor-assisted suicide.

Overall, a mixed bag. The Stevens and Franken races have yet to be called, so I'll update this once everything comes out in the wash. Apparently the Coleman-Franken race could be awhile, though - those from Washington state who remember the governor's race a few years back know what I mean.

Thus far today at work I've been reading meltdowns from various conservative sources around the internet. One of them unironically suggested that people who don't have a job should not be able to vote.

Hoagies

Election Day Hath Begun

Dixville Notch goes for Obama, 16-5. Booyah.

Time to get some rest and then hit the poll in the late morning. Hopefully it won't take too long to get out my vote.

Collegiate Adventures

Obviously, throughout my collegiate academic career, projects and labs were a part of the Electrical Engineering lifestyle. Returning to the University of Minnesota campus and conversing with some team members on said projects jarred some great memories and late nights of working on these sorts of things.

1) Calculator.java - it may seem innocuous and simple. It may seem utterly useless. And it was all these things, but it was really the first programming project I went through that felt complex enough for me to be proud of. The goal of this project was to create a Postfix Calculator. Essentially what this meant was to make a calculator in Java Swing that would take input like 3, 4, and + and spit out 7, for example. It honestly wasn't too hard, and creating the Swing frame was a fairly involved and interesting process. This is also one of the first times where a nasty habit of mine began to rear its ugly head: I am a code hog. I get on rolls where I will simply sit down and code for 5-6 hours at a time unheeded. This means I finish projects rapidly and sometimes when group members are not available to observe or help. This project specifically exemplified that, when I did a good 70% of the project before my group members were even involed. Oops!


2) The Magic Cubes - ah yes, our Senior Project. I have to explain this quite frequently to people who ask me about big projects I had completed during my time at the U of M. Essentially, they were intended to be an interactive piece of furniture, which was initially a large plastic couch. When the couch showed up and lacked transparency, we sent it back and instead ordered a set of three cubes which were intended to be lit from within as dual-purposed lightning and seating elements. These proved much more suitable for the task, and we set to work creating multi-coned inner pieces to which LEDs could be affixed, and the cones could (mostly) direct lights to a single side.

The LEDs we used had a ridiculous three watt power maximum. For power transformation, we used a single ATX power supply which peaked at a couple hundred watts, which was more than sufficient for our purposes; namely, fifteen of the KingBright RGB LEDs. The LEDs were driven by PWM generators made by Texas Instruments, which in turn were driven by Arduino microcontrollers. The Arduinos were ridiculously easy to figure out and program, even with the serial communications required by the PWM driver. Sensors were also integrated that could "hear" sound and "see" changes in lightning, allowing the piece to react to human interaction.

Regardless, the entire thing worked out pretty well, which a vast array of colors available for each side of each cube. It was fun to work on, but there were several long days and late nights trying to finish the stupid things. Matt Oehrlein managed to do some work on them over the summer, which can be viewed here.


3) GeneriQuest 4000 - another programming assignment that I worked on with some close friends. Our task was to author a MUD, a text-based network-enabled and multiplayer game, which was original and interesting. Obviously, the largest criteria was to create something that allowed several people to play using telnet clients. What we created was somewhat like the run-of-the-mill fantasy MUDs, with wizards and swords and MOBs.

The overall coding was certainly bloated and filled with the possibility of buffer overflow exploits, but the game actually worked and could be played to completion. From start to finish with three people, the game took about forty-five minutes. The classes, Wizard, Fighter, and Cleric, had to be meticulously balanced against one another lest one be overpowered and overshadow the rest. It was a lot of fun and a little strange to have a spreadsheet with different attacks available to each class, crunching numbers about scaling options. Also quite amazing was the beta testing phase. One incident which sticks in mind is when I was testing higher level behavior and buffed a character for Jason. Essentially it allowed him to kill a level one or two player in one hit fairly easily. Andy logged in only to be instantly cut down by a single attack from Jason. The game then became how fast could Andy run around and dodge Jason, who was hell bent on smacking the crap out of him.

Obviously, the game had some big flaws - for instance, the only way we could make fighting monsters even remotely fair for the monsters was to have them counter-attack whenever a player made an attack on them. This made the Cleric class fairly essentially, since they were the only one that could replenish hit points quickly. We also made (what I thought was) a cool tick system, where regeneration and attack rate were throttled by a counter, which I believe was on a two or three second timer. Players could only attack once per tick, and would regenerate health once every few ticks. We also hard coded the game map instead of making it more dynamic, which was certainly a mistake, but in retrospect we had spent enough time on it. We won the "most original" award from our professor, conferring to us ten bonus points, which clued us in that we may have spent exactly the right amount of time on the little C program.

Fusion Power

Apparently, I left a couple things back in Minnesota. Unfortunately, my razor was among those things, so I had to stop by Wegman's to grab a new one today. I looked for the same kind I was used to - a Gillette Fusion razor I got in the mail a few years ago. It worked adequately as long as I replaced the blade every few weeks.

I got to Wegman's today and the shelves were full of several different Gillette Fusion products, but none that matched up with my old razor. I had to settle with a new model - it looks like it shares the same type of razor that my old one did, but with one subtle difference.

This one came with batteries.

Yes, apparently it's necessary now to needlessly toss in a triple A battery and make the razor jiggle as you shave. Will it make a difference? Only time will tell...

Schedule - REVISED

Though I'm at home for the weekend, I got the schedule from Brian via e-mail, which allows me to pick out my schedule. This is only prelim, since I haven't run it by him first.

Monday - 16:00 to 24:00 (8 hours)
Tuesday - 14:00 to 18:00 (12 hours)
Wednesday - 11:30 to 20:00 (20.5 hours)
Thursday - OFF
Friday - 7:30 to 16:00 (29 hours)
Saturday - 7:30 to 16:00 (37.5 hours)
Sunday - 7:30 to 16:00 (46 hours)

Lots of overtime - plenty to pay electricity and cable for the month, woo!

The State of the Election

Things are looking bleak for the Republican party these days. The events of the past two weeks have only served a steep downhill slide for the right - a slide the election will punctuate with the sharpest of exclamation points.

Ted Stevens' chances of being re-elected look extremely bleak. The state of Alaska, having become a national focus since the Republican National Convention, is becoming a sort of pariah with charges of ethics violation and corruption pouring from the Land of the Midnight Sun. The largest of which looms the indictment and subsequent conviction of Stevens, the patriarch of the Republican side of the Senate. Begich seems to be a shoe-in after the events of yesterday. Even if Stevens were elected, he would almost certainly resign the position, causing Governor Sarah Palin to possibly offer up a special replacement before an emergency election. If Palin loses her shot at the Vice Presidency, would she take a stab at Alaskan Junior Senator?

Speaking of Palin, with the slow bleeding of the McCain ticket as of late, sources from inside the campaign have been trickling allegations of her "going rogue". Talking points go unheeded and untouched, and Palin appears to be reading off her own script more and more. Is this just indignation over the campaign staffers holding her leash too tight, or does she have the hubris to see herself as the new light of the Republican party? I suppose if Stevens does miraculously secure re-election, we'll see for ourselves whether or not she seizes the opportunity for a power grab.

And how about that election? With the McCain campaign seemingly becoming more and more desperate for a talking point to latch onto, they've shifted to the image of "Obama the Redistributer", with no lack of "Obama the Socialist" innuendo. The desperation has become more frenzied and with it the red-blue balance of power blurs from royal purple to a more indigo shade. States regarded as reliable for the right - Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana - have made huge leaps left. The RNC even tossed several hundred thousand dollars at Montana, a state no one would have dreamed they would need to spend money in a few months ago.

One week from tonight we will see how the polls stack up against the ballot boxes. Keep your breath bated for just a while longer.

Remember When Matt Drudge Was Relevant?

Neither do I. Obama the Redistributor is apparently more important than a sitting Senator of 40 years being convicted of ethics violations, as well as an apparent plot to kill a presidential candidate and 101 other people. Go back to 1995, Drudge.

19:18 EDIT - Hahahaha, from Freep: "What will happen to the seat? Begeich is now a senator? *pucnhes wall*"

Ted Stevens

Senator Ted Stevens, a man who became an internet meme through gaffes speaking to his inexperience with technology, was found guilty on seven counts of violating Senate ethics regulations. These charges stemmed from his receiving several hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from friends and failing to disclose these gifts. One such "gift" was a $250,000 remodel of his home on the dime of oil construction executive, Bill Allen.

Fortunately, this almost certainly means he will fail to be re-elected for his 41st year in Congress. His high-scale trial already began to sink his chances for re-election, considering that even with his incumbent advantage, he was a few points behind in the polls. This new revelation of a guilty verdict makes Mark Begich's chances of obtaining his seat that much more feasible.

Stevens will likely serve no jail time for this violation of ethics laws. Since this is a turning point in electoral terms, and a lame duck president is on his way out, Stevens will likely receive a pardon, wiping clean the felony charges and any hard time or fines that come with it.

I found his THINGS JUST SHOWED UP IN HOUSE! defense to be hilarious:

He said he considered that chair a loan.

"And the chair is still at your house?" prosecutor Brenda Morris asked.

"Yes," Stevens said.

"How is that not a gift?"

"He bought that chair as a gift, but I refused it as a gift," Stevens said. "He put it there and said it was my chair. I told him I would not accept it as a gift. We have lots of things in our house that don't belong to us. "

Playing to the jury, Morris appeared confused.

"So, if you say it's not a gift, it's not a gift?" she said.

"I refused it as a gift," Stevens replied. "I let him put it in our basement at his request."

Schedule for the Week

Gonna be a short one, since I only work two days this week. Gonna try and pack in the hours, though, so I can avoid using my Comp Time as much as possible.

Monday - 15:30 to 24:00 (8.5 hours)
Tuesday - 11:30 to 24:00 (21 hours)
Wednesday - OFF (29 hours)
Thursday - OFF (37 hours)
Friday - OFF (40 hours)

I can't wait to be back in Minnesota again for a few days.

Pushing Daisies

So with the new television season comes a lot of returning series, including my old favorites like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, 30 Rock, and Heroes. The only 2007 arrival that I've been keeping up with lately is an amazingly quirky show that comes from the depths of ABC. Don't read on if you mind the first episode being spoiled.

Filled with amusingly colorful imagery and a definite fairy tale atmosphere comes Pushing Daisies, a show about Ned, a lonely pie maker with the strange power to bring dead things back to life by touching them. He discovered that this power had a catch or two when his mother suffered a sudden death from aneurysm, and he touched her to bring her back to life, unwittingly causing the death of the neighbor girl's father. Oh, and his mother was again relegated to the land of the dead when Ned touched her again. Upon the second touch, the being was dead again, this time for good.

Fast forward to present day, and we find Ned running a lucrative pie business (fruit no longer has a shelf life for him) and helping run a detective agency on the side. It's much easier to solve murder cases when you can wake the dead and ask them who killed them. Eventually, the murder of a young woman who was pushed off a cruise ship. It was Charlotte "Chuck" Charles, Ned's closest childhood friend and first kiss. The first episode details Ned and his associate, Emerson, solving her murder by bringing her back to life. The catch, though, is that Ned can't bring himself to doom her back to death and nothingness, and thus leaves her alive.

The newly formed trio use Ned's gift, Emerson's gumshoe talents, and Chuck's creativity to continue the murder-solving business, all while navigating a relationship lacking the sense of touch between the two childhood friends.

The best part of the show is by far the beautifully clever writing. It's littered with puns and alliterations, interesting metaphors, and situations that make one smile. The result is a modern fairy tale with an amazingly quirky sense of humor. The imagery is surreal at times, which only enhances the uniqueness of the show. It's funny, thought provoking, and amazingly interesting.

Also, they creators are clearly fans of They Might Be Giants: