Ramblings from the Warrior's Den

2004-10-30T01:37:00.000-07:00

A couple of mini game reviews

I figure I better do something to get all this dogblogging off the top of my page. Here's a couple of the XBox games I've picked up recently while waiting for the remaining holiday season releases I'm interested in (which right now are Halo 2 and World of Warcraft):

Otogi 2: Immortal Warriors

Otogi:Myth of Demons happens to be a favorite game of mine, so I had a pretty good idea what to expect (mindless hack-and-slash with plenty of stuff to smash up.) Otogi 2 does more of the same, with about half the regard for the laws of physics. It's not exactly what you would call a plotless beat-em-up (there's a plot there, but it's hard to follow. I imagine a knowledge of Japanese mythology would probably help) but it's still a lot of fun. Unless youplayed Otogi:MoD first and enjoyed it, you're probably better off waiting for the price to go down, but it's still a fun game to kill a few minutes with.

Out Run 2:

It's a bit hard to believe that it's been eighteen years since Out Run was released in the arcades. It's held up pretty well over the years, and Out Run 2 is definitely a worthy sucessor. The gameplay has changed basically none, although a lot of extra modes have been added , including multiplayer racing on Xbox Live. There are also eight different licensed Ferraris to drive. I was also reminded that I've had the music for this thing stuck in my head for about eighteen years now. A nice little arcade racer, which is also good for multiplayer (I don't think it has split screen, but it's got Live and System Link). If you can ever figure out how to get it, apparently the original OutRun is in there too.

2004-10-06T23:57:00.000-07:00

I'm mostly not dead...

Hmmm... It appears that I have left my uncharacteristic act of dogblogging up as the top entry on the page for well over a month now. Perhaps I should come up with something else to put up here before I go completely insane and start waxing poetic about kitty cats or something... Unfortunately (or fortunately, dependong on who you asked) thanks to Yet Another Set of Circumstances I Have Yet to Fully Comprehend(TM), we have now ended up taking care of this puppy for an extended period of time (long story, I'll save you the coma.) So far I'm still sane, as is the puppy (although there seems to be an ongoing effort to give the poor thing a nice little identity crisis, as it currently has about three or four different names. My sister calls her Lilly, my other sister calls her Marzipan, and my brother calls her Monza, after the racetrack in Italy (needless to say, they're F1 fans. They're already planning their trip to Cancun in October '06 to see an F1 race that was just announced.) More later, when I'm coherent enough to write readable fluff.

2004-09-09T21:05:00.000-07:00

Mostly Harmless...

All things considered, I'm far from the type to engage in dogblogging (to be honest, I'm more a cat person myself, and even then, I've got a limit of 1, maybe 2 if the house was big enough. And I've concluded that I would have to be roughly half-insane in order to consider getting a dog at any point in time. That said, why the heck do I find myself dogblogging? It's a long story.

Alpine, a 9 month-old Beagle (pictured to the left) belongs to my sister and brother-in-law, and is basically a Grandpuppy, which means that she gets to come over and get spoiled, then (usually) goes home at night. Sure, like any puppy would, she occasionally chews up stuff (in my observation, owning a puppy is better than a garage sale for telling you that you need to get rid of some stuff. Fortunately, Alpine is starting to gro out of the "chew everything/everyone in sight" tendency common to Beagle puppies, and is actually starting to be fairly well-behaved. In spite of this, throughout the course of watching Alpine grow up, I've gained a newfound respect for the profession of animal photography. You wouldn't believe how many tries it can take to get a good picture of a dog. Invariably, 9 tries out of ten you end up with some unrecognizable tan and black blur, or the picture has something in the dog's mouth. After going torhough this for about the bazillionth time, you finally give up, photochop something and call it good. I suspect the use of those ultra-slo-mo high speed cameras might help somewhat, but modern technology can only do so much to keep up with a rambunctious puppy. Apparently I'm not the only one.

Now that she's mellowed out (some) I actually don't mind having Alpine around the house every once in a while.Of course, just when I was starting to get used to the idea, my sister now suddenly decides tha they need another one of the blasted things. I will admit that I've often questioned the sanity of those people who own multiple dogs. In fact, I've been known to use the term "Disturbing Per Person" (abbreviated as DPP)to describe this type of person. Most often I apply the term to people who people who own three or more dogs and no children, but it can be also applied in cases where inordinate attention is placed on one's dogs. The fact that a lot of these people I've known have a tendency to be baby boomers who delude themselves into thinking that the Sixties never ended adds to the whole personality of the DPP. In particular, I find the term "pet parent" which has sprung up in pet store advertising as of late especially ridiculous. I don't care what the bumper sticker on the back of your eco-friendly hybrid econobox says, your dogs are NOT people. Stop trying to pretend they are. (Are you done yet? -ed. Probably, just don't get me started on Crazy Cat Ladies...)

Nonetheless, in spite of the fact that I question the sanity of my sister for having two Beagle puppies (in an apartment, no less) I hesitate to apply the label of DPP, mostly because she occasionally exhibits signs of sanity. This isn't one of those times. It is through A Set of Circumstances I Have Yet to Fully Comprehend(Copyright 2004 warriorsden.blogspot.com, all rights reserved) that we have now ended up in charge of taking care of this roughly eight week-old puppy for most of this week, while my sister and brother-in-law travel somewhere. I suppose that on one hand, it is one of the miracles of Nature that a creature this young and this tiny can manage to bark loud enough to quite possibly drown out the smoke alarm for hours at a time, usually while I'm trying to sleep (Note to ABC News: Duuuuuuuuuh.) But given some further consideration, my pro/con list for dog ownership looks something like this:

Pro:	Con:
The thing is dang cute. It might stop chewing on everything in sight at some undisclosed point in time. Readily identifies items that you probably no longer need, and promptly mangles them beyond recognition to make sure.	It might not stop chewing on everything in sight (including your fingers) at some undisclosed point in time. It makes messes in rather inconvenient places and at rather inconvenient times. It seems to make a hobby out of sleep deprivation.

Needless to say, the choices aren't exactly tipping in Fido's favor. Yet somehow, we manage to end up with dogs anyway, some of us more willingly than others. I just have to keep telling myself that the puppy (who, by the way, remains unnamed currently, although Nero is starting to sound appropriate) will go home in a couple of days. And that it'll eventually grow up, hopefully without any glaring psychological issues. And that if I'm lucky, no permanent scarring will result from my newfound employment as a convenient chew toy. I just have to keep telling myself that...

2004-08-26T00:31:00.000-07:00

More administrivia
othing earth-shattering, but I added a new blogroll to the site, including a list of some of the sites I read on a daily basis. There doesn't seem to be a way to do much more than a random list of links though, so this will have to do for now.

2004-08-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Deadly Tunnel of Furniture

For years now, the Den from whence this Blog gets its name has had furishing consisting primarily of two folding tables and some wire racks which are used for food storage(except for the roughly one year from which it was being written in the Warrior's Dining Room, although to be perfectly honest I can't recall if I actually posted anything here during that period of time. Either way, I was too lazy to change the name.) This was partially for lack of a better solution to the problem of having three frequently-used computers in the same room, and partially for lack of funds for anything much better. Given the fact that these situations hav now been rectified, I have for a while now believed that it was time to look into the possibility of getting a real desk in here. On that note, I am now proud to inform the gthree of you reading this that I have now graduated from gratuitous utilitarianism to mass-produced eurocentric particle board, courtesy of the fine folks at IKEA (I don't know why it supposed to be capitalized like that, but I figure someone might get mad if I don't, so I better make sure it's there.) In place of the former folding tables is a new GALANT desk along with an EFFEKTIV storage unit, BENNO media storage shelf and a BILLY bookcase (You know, maybe if I KAPITULYS random words and misspell them badly I can make it sound just like I bought a whole bunch more stuff there. It would provide an excellent IKSKYUS for the fact that I'm still trying to get used to the changes in ergonomics RIZULTN from this change in desk height.)

For those of you unfamiliar with IKEA, it's a giant blue monolith on the outskirts of town (the one here is in Renton, where all the cool kids seem to be opening their stores these days) with approximately twelve acres of home furnishings and half an acre of parking. Once you get your car parked in the Middle of NOVER, you can make the long treacherous hike to the front entrance... and that's where the real adventure begins. It then becomes your task to navigate through a seemingly endless maze of home furnishings, armed with only your wits, a golf pencil and some sort of cheesy paper measuring tape. If you're lucky enough to be able to get to IKEA on a Saturday, you get for no additonal cost the thrill of being nearly trampled to death several times.

Should you happen on something that you want to buy, your long and treacherous journey continues. First of all, you'll need to find the item in question, which can be located in any number of places, all of which you'll first need to find your way out of the showroom area for. About halfway past the kitchen section, the end is in sight. It is at this point that you reach the snack bar, selling all manner of Swedish delicacies. My brother, who accompined me to purchase the new desk earlier this week, had apparently not been to IKEA before this, and wondered why they would have a snack bar in the first place. To be honest, I don't know why this is the case, but I know that if I had been lost in the children's bedreoom section for three days, I'd be hungry too. But there's no time for meatballs now, we've got furniture to buy. Onward we press, the checkouts in sight... Or so we think. First, we need to find yhur way through another twisty maze of housewares. You might want to bring a MUSHETI for this part. If you manage to make it through this part, you'll finally reach the self-serve warehouse, where some of the actual furniture for purchase is located. If you're lucky (and you had the sense to use that golf pencil you got earlier to write the location down) you'llo be able to find the stuff you're looking for here, most of it packed in impossibly flat boxes. By the way, did I mention that you've got to figure out how to assemble all this stuff too?

Should you be fortunate enough to find what you're looking for, the checkouts are in sight, and all you have left to worry about is the 12-mile hike back to the car carrying a 40-pound box full of furniture parts. On the other hand, there's a good chance on a lot of items that you will need to pick stuff up at the OTHER warehouse, across the street. As far as I can tell, this is where they put all the stuff they couldn't fit into one box, so they stuff it into lots of boxes instead (if I recall correctly, the pieces for this desk came in eight different boxes, nine if you count the separately purchased cable management stuff.) Oftentimes when you reach this stage, it will be necessary to wait for some time as the highly trained staff scramble around the warehouse trying to locate part 600.449.30 and 600.449.31 on opposite sides of the warehouse.

So now that we finally have all our various bits and pieces (assuming that we managed to actually have room in the car to get them all home), it's time to put the thing together. Having stores in 37 different countries means that all of your purchases come with simple, easy-to-understand instructions that just happen to have no words to them. Instead of providing vague, difficult-to-understand instructions in all of the various languages, it's a lot easier for them to just provide vague, difficult-to-understand pictures and call it good. There's a right way and about sixteen different wrong ways to put together a given piece of IKEA furniture, and chances are pretty good that you'll find at least five of those wrong ways somewhere along the line when you're putting stuff together. Add to that the fact that you're generally using the tiny little tools they provide for assembly, and IKEA furniture can be explitive-laden fun for the whole family (unless, like me, you have a healthy supply of power tools in the garage, at which point all you need to worry about is deciphering the directions.)

When all is said and done, however, assuming you managed to get through the build process without mangling too much beyond recognition, the end result is good solid (if occasionally somewhat outlandish) furniture that'll usually not crumble to dust at inopportune times. And with all the extra desk space I now have over the old folding tables, I now have the minor problem of fighting off the urge to go multi-monitor. And it's not a bad deal either. You can probably find nicer stuff than IKEA, but you probably aren't going to find it any cheaper. And I can think of worse places than an IKEA store to be hopelessly lost...

2004-08-18T21:26:00.000-07:00

Just how well is your software being tested anyway?
Part 1: It runs, ship it!

Recently at work, several people were having a discussion regarding a new test bench being set up for some upcoming localization testing work on the project I'm working on. Assuming I didn't get totally lost in the back-and-forth conversation of exactly what sort of site heirarchy was needed for this effort, my role in all this is to set things up, but the numbers of servers needed, and exactly where these are supposed to come from varied wildly throughout the conversation. At one point, the number of servers required had reached as high as eighteen, before cooler heads (and presumably the available budget) prevailed. Fortunately for me and my my office mate, we managed to convince the test lead that this whole setup probably should be placed in a lab, rather than my office.

In addition to this discussion, This recent post by Chris of the Software Test Engineering @ Microsoft Blog, have led me to give some thought to the subject of exactly how well the software we put out is being tested. I'm probably going to do a series of posts on this subject, assuming I stop being lazy enough to write stuff every once in a while.

If you're familiar with the process of software testing, you know that the testing effort that goes into a typical piece of commercial software is extensive. You also know that there is only so much testing that you can do. Chris touched on this subject in his post:

This is one of the key problems of testing big software like this. You can test and test and test, but it's a bit frustrating to know that even with all your work someone, somewhere will have a problem with your stuff. I had a great conversation with two developers at lunch today about this. Once your software stabilizes testing becomes a low-yield game (tangent: at this point one of the developers cheerfully said “not when you're testing my stuff!”) You test a lot of surface area, and don't find many problems. This is one of the hardest times for testing, the temptation is to say “yep, it's done!”

This is a key dark art for shipping successful software. Everyone wants to be done, but someone has to have a good idea of when done actually happens. Ship too soon and you've got a buggy product out there. Ship too late and diminishing returns has kicked in so your quality isn't much better, but you just lost a lot of money by not being out in the marketplace. Every time software ships someone, or hopefully a group of someone's, thought about these issues an made a trade-off.

While this is true, it's not always quite that simple. Sure, the omnipresent spector of the schedule looms over your head, and you don't want to be the one who has to explain to the VP in charge exactly why you just slipped the ship date by six months, but it's not just a matter of popping out of your office one day and yelling "Ship it!" down the hall either. As a software tester, for the most part you're going to have someone (probably your lead, based on a schedule prepared by a Program Manager) telling you what to do at any given time. The process of getting a product to market is very structured. While this ensures that the basic functionality and features of a given product get tested thoroughly, it does also have the effect of having the testers spend quite a bit of time running through the same tests repeatedly. Depending on the way things are scheduled and the amount of test cases (and how much of it is automated,) some groups opt to run through a test pass on a weekly basis, especially as they approach a major milestone, which generally requires zero active bugs, followed by a period of escrow, in which no major bugs are found, before that particular milestone can be considered complete.

Of course, along the way, bugs are going to be found. Lots of them. Actually, I should probably back up a second here, and point out that in terms of the software development process, "Bug" is something of a generic term. What most people would think of as a bug is generally referred to as a "code defect". The term "Bug" is used to refer to just about any issue with the product that needs attention, be it a code defect, a string that needs to be fixed, a doc issue, s DCR (Design Change Request) or any number of other issues that may crop up. Just because you've filed a bug against the product doesn't mean that it'll be fixed either. Dev resources are lmiited (in fact, a lot of teams have less devs than testers, although I've heard it recommended that for ideal coverage a 1:1 ratio should be maintained.) If you sent all the bugs directly to the devs to fix, you'd be more likely to end up with your dev team barricaded in their office and surrounded by the SWAT team than you would to end up with a quality product. Therefore, you need what's known as a triage to sort things out.

To a lot of testers, the triage is some sort of mysterious process where bugs go in to get chewed up and spit out, often with great force. To be honest, having only recently worked on a team where more than 3 or 4 people attend the triage, I actually think I might prefer that the process remained a bit more mysterious. Getting your bugs tossed back in your face with a big "Postponed" or "Won't Fix" stamp is one thing, having it happen while you're sitting there watching is another. I can now see why it is that it is generally recommended that triage be left to the test leads and the PMs. Of course, even if you are going have half the bugs you file thrown out or punted (especially as you're getting close to shipping,) triage serves a vital purpose. in order to keep things on track, you need to make sure that the major issues get taken care of first, and also that they get to the appropriate people to take care of them. In the end, this is also going to leave a significant number of Won't Fix bugs in the product that didn't meet the criteria for being fixed. These are generally left to the tester's discretion as to whether or not they want to push back on them and try to get a fix. For the most part, these are going to be relatively minor issues anyway, and often have little effect on the end user experience.

Next time: Some discussion about the environments in which software is tested.

2004-08-11T22:19:00.000-07:00

Administrivia

OK, so that was a little less than a month from one post to the next. Anyway, primarily for the purpose of convincing myself that someone actually reads this thing, I added a counter.

This fine post of content-free fluff is brought to you by Yee! No, it's not a laundry detergent. Figure it out yourself.

2004-08-10T22:44:00.000-07:00

The System is Down

Just returning from an unplanned (mostly) Internet-free weekend, thanks to a power surge that fried our DSL modem. More posts in a month or so.

2004-08-02T23:30:00.000-07:00

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait...

This particular post at Robert Scoble's Blog (Yeah, I know, I'm stuck in a rut. Need to find some new tech Blogs to read) came up as a topic if conversation tonight at the Red Robin get-together following tonight's NETDA meeting. Another example that came up was digital video editing. For quite a while, it was an expensive proposition, with a well-equipped Amiga and a Video Toaster running close to the five-figure range. Nowdays, a $500 Mini-DV camcorder and some relatively inexpensive editing software will get you the same, if not better results (see also: Channel 9.)

If you want to get into sligtly less practical examples, take a look at supercomputers. These used to be big, expensive behemoths that took extreme measures for cooling in order to keep them from melting themselves. I remember back when I went to high school, on a couple of occasions I got to see the Thinking Machines CM-5, Cray T3D and some of the other massively parallel supercomputers at Los Alamos. The CM5 is probably still the single most impressive (if not particularly practical) computer I've ever seen. But now, these behemoth supercomputers are pretty much a thing of the past, as people have figured out that for the millions of dollars you'd spend on that, you can buy a few thousand off-the-shelf PCs, cluster them, and pick up a couple of teraflops of power with money to spare, and a lot less maintenance hassles to boot. I haven't really kept up with supercomputing recently, but Cray (or some entity bearing the name, as the company has changed hands a time or two over the years) is still in the business, and will probably be able to continue to remain there for a while in keeping people's legacy UNICOS apps running (most of which, oddly enough, are written in FORTRAN.) Even so, I don't think we'll ever see anything that comes close to the CM-5 ever again. It's just not practical,

2004-07-29T22:15:00.000-07:00

Whaddya' mean I'm a geek?

Well OK, maybe the casemodded computer and the XBox sitting on my computer desk were a bit of a giveaway. Anyway, Along with about 20 other people, I attended the geek dinner that Robert Scoble put on tonight. Among the attendees were Dan Appleman, who was earlier speaking at the Barnes and Noble to promote his new book Always Use Protection: A Teen's Guide to Safe Computing and talking about some of the basic topics of computer security that provide job security to tech support people. The talk pretty much confirmed what I alreasy knew, which is that I've probably got a nice little "Hax0r m3" sign hung up somewhere in the den. Among the other notables were Sam Gentile (I wasn't able to hear a whole lot of what he was saying, but the one thing I did get out of it was this: If you use C++, you should probably be shot) and Anita Rowland.

Originally, the idea was to go to the Rock Bottom Brewery in Bellevue, but the wait was going to be too long, so instead we ended up at the Taphouse Grill. When all was said and done, I think I spent a whole lot more on dinner than I had originally planned to, but that's my fault. The Ribeye steak was quite good, even if I did almost need to take out a loan. Actually, it's not as expensive as some places around here, but it's not by any means cheap either. A bit of the conversation went over my head, but I'm sure that even in a room full of ubergeeks (and a couple of not-so-uber ones) everyone's going to be in over their heads on something. It's a good excuse to get out from behind the computer for a while, and I'm looking forward to the next one.

2004-07-19T22:12:00.000-07:00

Confessions of a Microsoft Contractor

Recent posts at Heather's "Marketing at Microsoft" Blog and Technical Careers @ Microsoft have gone briefly into the subject of working as a contractor at MS. Both Gretchen and Heather admit to not being all that knowledgeable about the subject of contracting. Reading the posts, as well as the comments from each of their posts, it seems that there are some misconceptions floating around about contracting, some of which may be even scare people off. In this post, I'll try to briefly summarize the contractor experience, and some of the good and bad poitns of doing so. But first, the olbigatory disclaimer: These are my own opinions, and do not reflect those of Microsoft, the contract agency I work for, or anyone else, for that matter. Also note that the info here may apply somewhat to vendor (v-) positions, but since all of my experience so far is in contract (a-) roles, I am writing this primarily with those in mind.

As you may already know, contractors at Microsoft are employed by a number of different agencies. Although I am not completely familiar with the system, these agencies all draw their open positions from the same pool of jobs offered by Microsoft, and as such are competitors to each other. As a condition of employment, this means it will often be required that you agree to a non-compete, which generally means that once you accept a position with a contract agency, chances are that any future contract positions you get will be through them as well. Your benefits, such as health care, will be administrerd by your contract agency. There are some minor differences in the benefits each agency offers, but chances are you won't fnid a whole lot of difference between them.

Probably the biggest drawback to working as a contractor is the annual 100-day "Break-in-Service" required. What this means is that after working for a year in a contract position, you will be required to be off for 100 days before you will be allowed to start a new position (or in some cases, return to the one you were previously at.) Some contract agencies have arrangements that will allow for some short-term non-Microsoft positions during this 100 days, but generally you're on your own. Also note that if there is a period of time off between two contract positions of less than 100 days, it will be counted toward the year you're allowed to wotk.

Another occasioanal drawback of contracting is that if you end up doing a lot of it, somewhere along the line you'll probably find yourself at least once having your contract ended on either short or no notice. The formal term used for contractors and vendots at Microsoft is Contingent Staff (or CSG) and "at-will" employment is a condition of the contract, which means that they (or you) can terminate your employment at any time for any (or no) reason. Usually you'll at least have some indication of when your contract is set to expire (the MSTT system that serves as your timecard has an "estimated end date" prominently displayed on the main screen) but on occasion, there just may be nothing left to do, or a sudden reduction in headcount, and you can find yourself out of work without warning (the worst one to get is the phone call at 10:30 at night. I've had that happen once before...)

And of course, you don't have access to a lot of the benefits that Microsft FTEs have. A lot of events on campus are limited to the FTEs only (althoug on occasion there will be one that CSGs will be allowed to attend) and even within your team there may be morale events, ship parties or other things like that which you won't be invited to. On the other hand, I also find that as a contractor, I get to skip some of the more boring meetings... How you will be treated really depends on the team you're on, and your manager. While I don't have any of the horror stories that some people have about this, I have found that some managers tend to treat you better than others as a contractor. One thing that I will say is that I have never found my status as a contractor to be a hindrance to getting my assigned duties done, and at a professional level, I've always been treated reasonably well. And yes, contractors can drink the free soda too.

Where exactly you'll end up doing your work as a contractor varies by the team you're on. It so happens that where I'm working right now, I'm in a shared office (although I don't see much of the other person in there, who works on a different team than I do.) On other assignments, I've also been in a lab (I understand that this is pretty typical, especially for testers,) a cubicle (something you won't find a lot of at Microsoft except at PSS), crammed into a conference room with 12 other geek guys for three months (and one occasionally beleagured lady running the show, and trying to keep us all in line...) and in a little lounge area off the hallway next to two conference rooms where nobody ever closes the door (but hey, it also had windows, and as an unintended consequence I got the biggest whiteboard in the building.) If you do end up in a lab, keep in mind that they're generally air-conditioned, and may be a little chilly for some people's liking. I find this is usually a good thing to ask about during interviews.

There are some good points to working as a contractor at MS as well. For one thing, it's generally a lot easier to get a foot in the door as a contractor than it is to try to get in directly as an FTE. A lot of the lower level technical positions these days are filled by contractors. Generally for a contract position, you'll get an abridged version of the standard Microsoft interview. Instead of the all-day ordeal you might have heard of, you'll generally only interview with three people (give or take), and are told to plan for a couple of hours. Although I've never been through an actual full MS interview, the content of the interview is roughly equivalent to what you'd expect on one of those. a contract position is also a good chance to familiarize yourself with the way that Microsoft works, and what you would be doing there. It's also valuable experience for a future career. This is particularly helpful for someone such as myself. When I started contracting, I had relatively good computer skills, but aside from two years in tech support, little practical experience relevant to the field. Since then, I have picked a two-year college degree in programming as well as more than a year and a half of experience as a software tester. Even now, I tend to think I'd be something of a borderline candidate for a FTE position. Fortunately, as a contractor I have the means to get the practical experience needed for a future career.

All in all, I don't think that contracting is a bad way to get in to Microsoft, at least to start out. Sure I wouldn't mind having the extra perks that the FTEs get, and it would be nice if the Break-in-service policy wasn't there, but I can live with it for now. In fact, I've met some people who actually happen to prefer to remain as contractors, although they tend to be in positions where having three months off a year isn't necessarily a bad thing. It seems that most articles I've read that talk about contracting at Microsoft seem to either focus on the break-in-service policy or the long-since-settled contractor lawsuits which I started to late to benefit from, but have to deal with the consequences of. Because of this, I do tend to think there are some misconceptions about the role of contractors. As always, your mileage may vary, but until I can be considered for a FTE posiotn somewhere, I don't mind contracting.

2004-06-07T23:54:00.000-07:00

I ran over six hippies and all I got was this lousy SUV...

Via Tim Blair comes one of the more interesting auto reviews I've seen in a while, for the (unfortunately not yet available in the US) Volkswagen V10 TDI Touraeg:

What happens when a Rolls-Royce and a Tonka truck are cross-mutated in a nuclear accident? You end up with the Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI. Watch it flatten mountains! Listen to it roar! Actually, you don’t hear the twin-turbo five-litre diesel V10 so much as feel it. This engine is a primal force. It’s like having your very own domesticated volcano.

The Touareg’s specifications are a little intimidating: 230 kilowatts of power and 750 Newton metres of torque, which is more metres than Newton ran in his entire life. With that much torque available, grabbing reverse too quickly could snap the continent in two. Or at least launch your drinks out of their holders. Either way, some environmental damage is assured.

2004-06-03T19:30:00.000-07:00

The New Seattle Library

Having read a number of accounts of the new library in Seattle, , I decided today to take a trip into downtown and check it out. To be honest, I am not a big supporter of public arts funding (in fact, I could be said not to support it much beyond what gets put up on the post office wall) but from what I've seen of it so far (Here is a far better pictorial than I could have done), I thought that this would be at least worth a look.

When you walk into one of the entrances, the first thing you notice is the space. the overall structure of the building provides some very interesting views, and most notably in the "Living Room" area near the 5th street entrance where the fiction collection is located the sense of space is incredible, even more so when you find yourself looking down on it from five stories above. Another thing you notice quickly is that the metal grid material used for railings throughout the building becomes surprisingly unobtrusive when viewed from a distance at a direct angle, which led me to wonder about it's sturdiness. I had to try pushing on a section a bit first to make sure I wasn't going to fall to my doom if I leaned on it.

For the open, airy spaces, tre seemed to be some odd areas too. If you take the stairs from the Fifth Street entrance to the Mixing Chamber area, you pass through a rather odd space colored entirely in a deep shade of red. The effect is rather disorienting should you wander around it some. The mixing chamber itself (a focal point of the library, and the area where most of the computers can be found) also seems to be a bit too dark for my liking. Granted, if you're trying to use a computer you don't want the glare of sunlight in your face, but I think they could have done better than to paint everything black in this area. Since I bring the subject up, the overall color scheme seems a little bit weird. The yellowish-green that they use in large amounts (most notably in the escalators) seems to have been borrowed straight from a low-budget 70's sci-fi flick, and the minty green shade used for everything (and I mean everything) in the restrooms also seems particularly harsh (although from what I've read, this seems to be the intent, to discourage loitering.)

The one area in particular that seems to stick out like a sore thumb (in my opinion) is the much vaunted "spiral" area in which the nonfiction and reference collections are kept. The concept is certainly interesting (to start at the top and work your way downward through the Dewey Decimal System in a spiral that goes down fiur floors) but the implementation leaves something to be desired. The shelves are designed in a way that is supposed to let as much light through as possible, yet the overall effect of the spiral is uncharacteristically austere. For the soaring grandeur of some of the large public spaces, the Spiral seems for some reason sterile, almost as though the books are being stored in a bunker. The major reason for this, in my opinion, is the exposed concrete floor. I realize the emphasis on exposed building materials elsewhere in the structure (nost notably the concrete service cores) but it would really do a lot for the space to throw in some carpet. The one thing I did find interesting about the Spiral was the way that they built it to be modular. the rubber tiles that show your current position in the Dewey Decimal System appear to be readily replaced, and as books are added, the placeholders can be moved accordingly.

Some of the other spaces, such as the children's library and the foreign language section, seem to fare much better. The children's library provides a bright, warm and far more inviting space than the Spiral. The floor in the foreign language section is particulrly interesting, made of wood planks embossed with phrases in various languages (I wasn't able to find anything I could translate, so I don't know exactly what it's saying.) As you wander the nooks and crannies, it seems you'll occasionally run into a space that borders on inexplicable, such as the chrome-walled area directly behind the escalators on the fourth street entrance and the aforementioned "Red Zone" on the way up to the Mixing Chamber.

Overall, my verdict is somewhat mixed, but I have definitely seen worse.

Edit: 6/4/04: More pictures here.

2004-05-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

Exploding anvils are good for you:

I'm somehow guessing that Wile E. Coyote's opinion was not solicited for this particular story. Honestly, you'd think if the collective works of Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and company were going to turn our society into a mess of obsessed Acme product-dropping maniacs, you would have seen it by now...

2004-05-11T21:54:00.000-07:00

Just messing around with some of the new Blogger features here. This post can probably be safely disregarded, just like everything else on here. I've also turned on comments. Feel free to ignore them.

2004-04-27T17:51:00.000-07:00

A different approach to selling on reputation

There has been a good amount of discussion recently about designing products for the "Edge case" (read: Diehard junkies) of the market, particularly in regards to devices such as digital cameras and portable audio players. Robert Scoble has this to
say on the topic (read some of the previous responses linked as well):

One thing, though. I used to sell cameras. I can't tell you how many Nikons I sold because "that's what the pros were using." So, by designing for the edge case (the pro photographer) Nikon got the amateur, who liked the brand name and the cachet of carrying around a camera that a "pro" would use.

A company with an established reputation like Nikon for their high-end products can sell their lower end stuff on their reputation like this. But what happens if you're in a crowded market, and don't really have the chance to build this reputation? For an example of another approach to this, take a look at Dell. At the surface, there is little to distinguish their products from those of any number of other major OEMs in the PC marketplace. Nobody is going to buy a Dell because all the cool kids use them. In fact, it is unlikely that many people on the "Edge case" of the PC market would even consider buying a Dell for one of their desktop systems, primarily as a result of their proprietary architecture and accompanying lack of easy upgradability. So what can a company like Dell do to earn status in the crowded field? Keep in mind that there's a number of enthusiasts out there who want to be on the cutting edge, but generally don't have the disposable income that it would take to do so. As a rule, these people have a tendency to be bargain hunters. Whole sites have sprung up where people can find and share deals they may find, such as FatWallet, GotApex and other boards. These people, upon finding what they consider to be a "hot deal", will usually jump on it and impulse buy, especially if it's a limited time offer. The trick is to not only give these people some "hot deals," but also to give them the ability to get something nicer than they may be used to.

Take, for example, the Dell 2001fp, a 20.1" LCD with 1600x1200 resolution. As a general rule, big LCDs tend to be expensive, out of reach of the normal user. At the usual going rate of $1049, the 2001FP isn't exactly the cheapest thing out there either, but it is cheaper than its nearest competitors, the ViewSonic VP201b and the Samsung 213T. It also has a 16ms response time panel (the 213t has a 25ms response panel, and the VP201b has the same panel as the 2001fp, but doesn't handle non-native resolutions as well.) The 2001FP also adds composite and S-Video inputs, features that the competitors don't have. This means that you're getting a monitor with extra features for less than you would pay for the competition. (Note: I recently purchased one of these myself, should my description seem more hubris-laden than one might expect.)

Of course, $1049 still isn't exactly a bargain, and you're not going to get a lot of users willing to drop that much money on a monitor, no matter how nice it is. It's when Dell starts running specials, as they have done on a fairly regular basis, that this starts to get interesting. If you know where to look, you might be able to find one of these for as much as 25% off the regular price. When I purchased mine, Dell was running one of these specials, which resulted in a final cost of $750 plus tax (total cost about $820) with free shipping. $1049 for this monitor is a moderately warm deal. $750 for this monitor, at least to the bargain hunters, is a blazing hot deal. Dell may be taking a hit on the cost by running specials, but they're also putting their product into the hands of a number of enthusiasts who probably wouldn't otherwise consider such a purchase. They'll be talking about it, and generating buzz about Dell's products. And all this is coming from people who probably wouldn't even think about buying a Dell desktop system (and probably still won't,) but who then finding later that they need another product (say a PocketPC or a notebook) will then have Dell in mind, and recall the good value of their 2001FP.

The same thing can be said about Dell's Axim PocketPCs. In my opinion, the Axim X5 was one of the best things that has happened with the PocketPC platform so far. (Disclaimer: Yes, I own one of these too, but you probably knew that already if you actually read this thing.) Before the Axim showed, PocketPCs were something of a luxury item. At the time, you would have been hard pressed to find a PPC for much less than $300 (and that was on the low end,) putting PocketPCs firmly on this edge market in the PDA arena, basically conceding the lower end to Palm. Along comes the Axim in late 2002, starting at $199 (even lower with discounts), with specs that allow it to easily hold its own with the higher priced models from Compaq/HP and Toshiba. Suddenly, you have a significant number of enthusiasts that can now suddenly afford your product. Dell quickly grabbed a nice little chunk of the PPC market for itself with the X5, which the other PPC manufacturers then had to make lower priced models to compete with, and bringing PPCs firmly into territory formerly occupied almost completely by Palm. I still use my X5 on a regular basis (mostly for lack of much innovation in PocketPCs within that time, but that's another rant entirely, and I think the added features of Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition will drive the addition of new features too.)

So in response to the question of the value of the edge market, I say that it's there (Where's the innovation going to come from if nobody focuses on anything but middle-of-the-road products?) but companies shouldn't underestimate the effect of selling to the not-quite-edge market.

2004-04-05T23:19:00.000-07:00

Is there such a thing as a perfect test case?

OK, I was hoping to make it two months without updating this thing, but it looks like that's not going to happen. I suppose I could post another load of the Lileksian fluff you've come to expect if you read this blog (actually, I'm not sure if anyone who reads this expects anything, including any updates ever) but lately, I have been reading a lot of the various technical blogs coming out of the MS community, in particular those relevant to the field of work I currently am employed in, software testing. Consequently, I will probably move my blog to another location before too long, so stay tuned (or just check back in a couple of months, probably won't make a whole lot of difference either way.) As such, I should probably include the disclaimer that the contents of this article do not necessarily reflect the views of Microsoft and/or my current employer. You may also want to look elsewhere if technobabble gives you headaches.

Administrivia aside, I've been reading the recently started Software Test Engineering @ Microsoft, a blog run by several Microsoft testers. Seeing as how I'm not cool enough to get a Blog on MSDN yet, I'll have to stick to posting over here, at least for the time being. In particular, I have a few comments about this posting, and my thoughts on test cases in general. If you aren't all that famililar with software testing as a whole, read through some of the earlier postings on that Blog for a decent overview.

As the article states, there really isn't a "pefrect" way to write a test case, but that doesn't stop people from trying. In the teams I've worked on, each one has had a different format of test case. Some of them work better than others. From the information in the article, you can get the basic gist of what a test case is supposed to accomplish. The idea is to create a readily reproducible set of steps to check a behavior in your program. While the semantics vary from team to team, all test cases will generally have at least the following steps:

Description (Title)
Steps
Expected Result

This format seems straightforward enough, but I have found that test cases are rarely written this way. Sometimes, a section of pre-conditions will be added to establish the scenario in which the test case is being written. Other times, teams will decide to write the entire procedure that you would go through, complete with the expected result for each step. To compare the approaches on these, I will take an example of a case you might come up with f you were testing a toaster (I have found this to be a very common example used at Microsoft to get an idea of one's testing skills. Other people prefer to use a saltshaker as an example, but oddly enough I've never heard that one:)

Description: Verify that a bagel is toasted appropriately with the dial on the medium-dark setting

Going by the two different approaches above, a case written using the description/pre-conditions/steps/result format would look something like this:

Pre-conditions:

A sliced bagel is available.
The toaster is plugged in to a working power outlet.

Steps:
1. Set the darkness setting on the dial for the left side of the toaster to medium-dark.
2. Insert the bagel halves into the two left slots.
3. Push down the lever and wait for the toasting cycle to complete.

Expected result:
-Verify that the toasted bagel is within the standards for the medium-dark setting.

This particular format of test case is one that I like, mainly because it is relatively concise and easy to read. As long as you have a good idea of what you are doing, this format works well. On the other hand, it akes some assumptions about the knowledge of the tester, and although a toaster is about as idiot-proof a device as you can find, a debug build of pre-release software generally isn't. Particularly if you are bringing in a number of extra testers to help out with the final release push of a product (a scenario in which I have worked once) they may not have time to learn all the ins and outs of the product and will need to be able to ramp up quickly. In that situation, a case like that one may end up looking more like this:

Step 1:
Action: Locate a bagel.
Result: A bagel is available.

Step 2:
A: Use a knife to slice the bagel.
R: The bagel is sliced.

Step 3:
A: Locate a working electrical outlet.
R: A working outlet is available.

Step 4:
A: Plug the electrical cord of the toaster into the wall socket.
R: The toaster is plugged in.
.
.
.
Step 12:
A: Wait for the toasting cycle to complete.
R: The bagel will pop up to end the toasting cycle.

Step 13:
A: Remove the bagel, and compare to the known example of medium-dark bagel.
R: Verify that the toaster bagel is within the standards for the medium-dark setting.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of this particular test case format. As you can see, it adds a whole lot of extra steps to the same procedure that is executed by the first test case. Yet I see some teams use this format on a regular basis. To exacerbate the problems further, if this test case is part of an area where a number of dfferent settings for the dial are being tested, there is a tendency to put in all of the pre-condition steps into each case. If you are working with a complex scenario, this can mean that you are looking at cases with 30 or more steps each. This also leads to the possibility that if a tester is seeing the same steps show up in fifteen test cases in a row, their brain will tend to go into auto-pilot on those steps, which means that they can easily miss a step that differs from the others in the area, and may not notice that they missed that step until the case fails and they have to go back and recheck what they were doing.

On the team I currently work on, the format we use is basically the second one, although since the testers we have on our team are relatively experienced (and because a significant portion of our test cases are automated) we tend to dispense with the pre-conditions for most cases, assuming that the testers know how to set the cases up. The primary reason that this format is used is because our test harness tool was written that way (both manual and automated cases are handled and logged by the harness.) The cases themselves are actually written in an XML format which Harness uses to parse the steps for each case. On one hand, I think that if you can omit a good portion of the pre-conditions from the cases, the action/result format works out reasonably well, as you can more easily determine at which step in the process a failure is occurring. On the other hand, it provides no way to easily put in pre-conditions without adding that extra bunch of steps. Without going into too much detail about how everything works (I tend to prefer avoiding a visit from the legal team if at all possible) this is far from an ideal solution, but it works well enough. It makes it difficult to read the cases outside of the test harness. On the other hand, from what we have right now it wouldn't take much more than a moderate amount of work on the user interface to make what I would consider an excellent soultion for managing and running test cases.

I'll probably write more on this subject later on. Check back in a month or two...

2004-02-09T23:06:00.000-08:00

Just got back from tonight's .NETDA meeting. To be honest, I'm not exaclty a .NET developer, but hey, it's free pizza, and I figure I might actually learn something every once in a while. In addition to a demo of VB.NET Whidbey, we got a talk from Dave Winer and Robert Scoble about RSS feeds and whatnot. Since the point was made that RSS is a good way to ensure that the three of you out there reading this site will know about it when I post on my typical once-in-a-blue-moon basis. Thus I have figured out how to add an XML feed to the Blog.

Also, scroll down to Robert's previous post (same link as above), where he discusses the aforementined VB.NET Whidbey demo:

I haven't really paid attention to Visual Basic for the past 24 months. I'll be honest. I wrote off Visual Basic. I thought it was a "has been" product. You know, one of those Microsoft products like Outlook Express that lots of people use but that haven't really seen any real innovations for a while.

Granted, I've only really been working with VB since the initial .NET release, but for years, it's had a reputation as something of a "toy language". Granted, you could do quick-and-dirty stuff in it pretty well, but for any serious development you pretty much had to do C++. When .NET came around, it really did a lot to make VB a much more viable language for "serious" programming, adding a lot of functionality. As Robert's post indicates, the perception is still there (But these days, it's C# you're supposed to use for any serious programming) but VB really has come a long way.

I do have to wonder what effect Whidbey will have on these perceptions though. As the demo showed, many tasks that can require lots of coding in the current .NET (no matter which language you use) have been reduced almost down to simple point-and-click. Not too long ago, I spent hours trying to figure out how to make an editable datagrid in an ASP.NET page, a task that probably took close to a hundred lines of code (mostly in the form of parameterized queries.) It was about a week after I finished this project that I attended the ASP.NET Roadshow, where I saw my first demo of ASP.NET Whidbey. My jaw nearly dropped when I saw that this task that had proved the source of so much frustration had been reduced nearly down to a simple drag-and-drop. On one hand, I think that this simplification is certainly a good thing for programmers (note that this functionality is not limited to VB, but should work in all the .NET languages), but I have to wonder if some people are going to see this, and start to think of not just VB, but .NET in general as being a toy language again...

2004-01-18T19:05:00.000-08:00

If you have been reading this Blog for long enough, you've probably figured out that I'm not exactly a big fan of movies. Sitting around staring at a really big screen for two hours while trying to extricate rogue popcorn husks from between your teeth in a socially acceptable manner has never really appealed to me for some reason. As a general rule of thumb, I tend to go to the movies about once a year or so, give or take. I have yet to see Star Wars Episode 2, nor have I seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies... And yet somehow, I still manage to get away with calling myself a geek. Fortunately, the relative obscurity of this particular Blog means that l probably won't wake up to an angry mob of fanboys surrounding the house for saying that.

So what then was I doing standing in a long line in front of a local theater at 9am on a Saturday Morning? To be honest, I'm not really all that sure myself. As near as l can tell, I was there for a special Matinee screening of some sort of food safety training film. I hadn't seen any sort of promotion for this film, which leads me to suspect that this is one of those pretentious low-budget art-house films that you have to ponder the implications of over an espresso with fellow members of your interpretive dance troupe somewhere in the ultra-trendy part of town. The subject matter of the film also leads me to suspect that this particular film's production was heavily subsidized with taxpayer money. Nonetheless, we were charged $10 for the "privilege" of attending this matinee screening. I guess that highly cultured art film snobbery comes with a price tag to match. Now if you'll excuse me, I feel strangely compelled to go give a bunch of money to PBS...

After waiting through the long line and paying the super special film snob price to get in, I must say that this particular film was even more inscrutable than I would expect these art-house films to be. There was no discernable plot, and character development was literally nonexistent. As far as I could tell, the whole thing revolved around a bunch of chefs cooking things, then cooling them down and putting them in the fridge to keep them out Of some sort of danger zone. Woe be to anything left inside this danger zone, for it will be invaded by ravening hordes of really nasty stuff. Should you even think about eating anything that's been anywhere near this danger zone, there's a good chance that you'll probably die horrendously. It would seem that you would be able to make a semi-decent low budget horror flick out of a plot like that, complete with the requisite preachy shame-on-you social commentary you come to expect from such a production. Instead, you get hand washing. A lot of hand washing. I can only assume that this is intended primarily to give the literati something to argue about down at the Starbucks.

There didn't seem to be any significant amount of dialogue, just the type of monotone narration normally reserved for airport terminals and extra-stuffy golf telecasts. On top of all this, they cheaped out on the AV equipment, so the whole thing showed up on the screen at roughly the size of a postage stamp. As for the special effects, I'll just Say that I've probably seen better ones in Powerpoint slides for junior high science classes. Fortunately, they made the whole thing really short (in fact, if it were any longer I'd probably feel even more ripped off.)

On top of all this, someone decided that there was going to be a quiz afterward. After they confirmed that I was smart enough not to thaw out meat in the trunk of my car (yes, there was a question on the test about that), I was awarded a food-handler’s permit for my troubles. I might actually consider giving this film two thumbs up, but I get the sneaking suspicion that were I to do so, I would be berated for Failure to observe proper hand washing procedures. The things they’ll pass off as an indie hit these days… If a film like this can pack a movie theater at 9 in the morning, imagine what I could do with some of my brother’s old home videos… Nonetheless, I'd say this one's probably a renter.

2004-01-03T22:57:00.000-08:00

Somewhere along the line, it looks like another year disappeared. I managed to somehow avoid paying any attention to the changeover from one year to another, mostly because I was otherwise engaged at the time. Around this house, we actually tend to consider the dropping of the ball in Times Square to be the start of the new year, even though we live three time zones away, partially because their celebration looks better than ours (the Space Needle going off in fireworks is certainly impressive, but Times Square just looks cooler for some reason) and partially because it allows those who are so inclined to go to bed at a reasonable time. I personally could care less, as the whole idea of New Year's Day seems pretty arbitrary if you ask me. Nonetheless, I do have one resolution for this year: I resolve to no longer be driving the car I currently drive by this time next year.

Tonight, several of us went out for something that we call the Taco Bell "Grande Challenge". Basically, what we do is each order a Grande Combo (your choice of 10 tacos, soft tacos or bean burritos, mix and match) and try to eat the whole thing at once. I imagine that having six people walk in at 8:30 at night and each order a grande combo to eat in is the kind of thing that probably gives the person in charge of making all that psychological issues, but they actually took it all in stride. Last time my brother went to go do a Grande challenge, I was waiting at home for the leftovers, and there weren't any from five people (Well, 1 person had 2 left, but they took them home to eat later for some strange reason.)

Owing to some confusion beforehand, I actually made the mistake first of actually eating dinner here beforehand. I then made the further mistake of having seconds. I then found out about an hour later that we would in fact be going for the Grande, and off to the Taco Bell we went. Fortunately, the employees took the deluge of orders in stride (although the person who was unlucky enough to be behind us in line walked out with a bemused expression on his face.) I went for 3 burritos (green sauce), 4 crunchy tacos and 3 soft tacos. When all was said and done, 3 out of the 6 of us that went managed to finish, but I wasn't one of them. I managed 8 and a half before I just about totally lost the ability to eat another bite (although surprisingly enough, I don't feel particularly full, and could probably eat just about anything EXCEPT a soft taco right now.)

And after all was said and done, 6 people managed to eat 54 items total. It might be a while before some of us set foot in a Taco Bell again though. I also don't think we'll be spending $40 at Taco Bell again anytime soon either.

2003-12-04T20:40:00.000-08:00

Assuming you are one of the three people who actually reads this blog, you might remember my post from about a year ago (link) about the computers being moved out of the den to make room for one of those large exercise machines. Well, one year later almost to the day, the computers are being moved back into the den, and the exercise equipment is moving out. Right now the plan is that it will be set back up in the dining room that has now been vacated by the computers, but I'm guessing there's a good chance it will make its way into the next garage sale. It also didn't help much that the dining room in question was right over the master bedroom in the house (our house is on the side of a hill, and designed in a way that the entry and main living areas are upstairs and the bedrooms are downstairs) and having a high-traffic room like that in a house full of night owls just wasn't working out very well for those people trying to sleep below.

Somewhere in the process of moving the rooms around, the den ended up being rather... shall we say... maroon. As long as everything was out of this room, it was decided that the room would be painted. Originally the plan was to paint it in a light beige color, similar to what was already in here. Somewhere along the line however, someone wandered into the "Oops! paint" section at the Home Depot (where they put the color mistakes out for sale at reduced prices) and decided to paint one wall in that color. Then they liked the color so much, that ultimately the whole room ended up that color. I reallydon't care much for it myself (I think it makes the room too dark) but I'll learn to deal with it, and probably get some brighter lighting to make up the difference.

On the plus side, the title of this Blog is once again accurate, it would seem.

2003-11-28T00:09:00.000-08:00

Ah, Thanksgiving. A day of family gatherings, longstanding traditions, and enough food to make even the skinny Japanese kids who eat 50 hot dogs in a sitting head for the hills. I believe that I have written here before about some of the traditions our family has on Thanksgiving, but since it's probably so far buried in the archives that it would take ages to find, I'll just write about them again. As we usually do, Thanksgiving was held at the church building that my mom's parents and several of her brothers and sisters attend in Federal Way, mostly because Thanksgiving is a large enough gathering to make holding it at anyone's house very crowded. The tables are decorated elaborately, owing to the tendencies of several people in the family towards arts and crafts stuff (I've even picked up a bit of it myself somewhere along the line), and although we didn't have them this year, my Aunt Pam often makes rather elaborate wooden figures that mark each person's place at the table. I think that Thanksgiving dinner this yearwas a little bit less of a production than it has been at times, but as usual, left nothing to complain about. The turkeys turned out well, and I managed to eat enough to result in the traditional post-dinner tryptophan stupor. People were well-prepared for it this year, with an inflatable bed and blankets at the ready. Some people even brought pajamas.

Following the dishes and a brief concession to sleep-inducing enzymes, it came time for the annual Thanksgiving Shoe War. For those people who can't adequately picture this by just the name, think of dodgeball, only lacking the aerodymanics or tenuous regard for personal safety. I usually try to stay well away from this, being not particularly a fan of footwear when at rest, much less when hurled toward me at high speeds. I did try to watch for a bit, but found that the Shoe War is an event best watched from inside a steel cage at a distance of roughly 30 yards. Somehow, the participants in this managed to finish without putting anyone in the hospital, at which point we cleaned up the building, and retired to Oma and Opa's house (my mom's parents) for dessert, accompanied by singing and a round of Trivial Pursuit. The singing I can usually manage to sneak away from (since I don't know the words to most of the songs) but my innate ability to store thoroughly useless information means that as soon as the Trivial Pursuit board comes out, they'd send a team of bloodhounds after me if I didn't show up promptly.

Anyway, as alluded to previously, the Holiday season is now upon us, and this year it will be especially busy in our family. My cousin is getting married on the 26th of December, which means that much of the wedding planning will be going on at the same time as planning for Christmas. More on the way later, I need to get some sleep, should I decide that I am insane enough to try to be up early enough to get the Black Friday deals...

2003-11-23T22:59:00.000-08:00

Well, it's almost that time of the year again. A time where longstanding tradition runs head-on into runaway consumerism. A time where the parking lots at the malls are crowded enough to make Mister Rogers erupt into road rage (Can you say "I'm going to recycle your car into freakin' beer cans if you don't hurry up and move out of that parking spot?" l knew you could.) A time where you know you would have to be insane to even think about trying to go shop, yet somehow you find yourself trying to wade through a sea of humanity at the mall nonetheless.

Even before Thanksgiving, the malls can be crowded to the point of making you question your sanity for even thinking about going anywhere within a 20-mile radius of the place. Of course, in this area, you would have to head out on I-90 about halfway to Ellensburg to get that far away from the malls, and unless you really like snow, that's not exactly a fun place to be around this time of year. In spite of this, Somehow I Found myself at the mall yesterday, trying to come up with some items to put on a Christmas list. Normally, we are required to put our lists in the form of a Powerpoint presentation. This year, however. I've been authorized to do mine in ASP.NET, mostly because l spent weeks working on a wish list application for the class I'm taking in school (Something tells me that my parents never needed a dedicated SQL server or their LAN just to do their homework.) Since it occurs to me that just about everything on my list so far is ridiculously expensive, and/or would probably have to be imported from Japan, I needed to find some other stuff to put on there. Of course, if I was smart, I would just get on the computer and do all this on line, but seeing how I am moderately insane and easily distracted by bright shiny objects, into the swirling malestroms of mass retail l went.

It didn't take long to find the first item for the list, whether or not I actually wanted it. In the course .ef wandering around, I stumbled upon a marketing survey that was apparently commissioned by Nintendo. Seeing as how I happen to be a member of one of the prime demographics they're trying to sell video games to, l was asked my opinion on some potential color variations or the Game Boy advance SP. Somewhere along the line, I answered a question that indicated I was "somewhat likely" to either buy or ask for a GBA SP, so onto the list it goes. Granted, the chance that I'd actually get one is roughly equivalent to that of a snowball in you-know-where, but it's now somewhat likely that I asked for one. (Disclaimer: At the end of the survey, I was given $5 for my time. This probably means that I've been officially bought off by Nintendo. Just In case I ever start sounding like a Gamecube fanboy, you'll know why.)

Beyond that first item, the list proved to be a bit harder to figure out. Sure, I managed to come up with a couple of other items, but for the most part, there didn't seem to be a whole lot out there that seemed even remotely plausible. Assuming anyone actually reads this Blog anymore, you'll know that I've ragged on The Sharper Image a few times for their tendency to send out catalogs every month or so, each containing the same 27 items you didn't know you can't live without, and maybe one or two new ones every once in a while. (Somehow, I get the impression that somewhere out there, there's a giant warehouse filled to the point of bursting at the seams with gimmicky massage devices and formerly trendy wall-mounted CD players, and they're trying to sell enough of 'em to prevent gravitational collapse and the formation of a new black hole. Here's a hint. If the fate of the known galaxy is at stake, you might not want to be selling those big massage chairs for $3,000 apiece. There's only so many yuppies to go around in the "not quite rich enough to hire a personal masseuse" demographic, you know...) What I began to notice as I looked around the other stores in the mall is that they seem to be selling a suspicious number of massagers and formerly trendy wall-mounted CD players as well these days. At this rate, I better put 'em on the list if I have any hope of getting anything but undergarments under the tree this year...

2003-11-10T23:55:00.000-08:00

I'm sure that somewhere along the line, someone has specifically mentioned the existence of something like this as a sign of the coming apocalypse. (Link via Mira Coran at the ASK boards.) With the advent of the Internet, the appearance of specialty retailers was inevitable, but I must have been asleep when they started to get this focused. Even so, an online purveyor of pogo sticks (and little else) still makes more sense than some of the half-baked schemes that venture capitalists through millions at during the dot-com boom.

2003-11-05T00:40:00.000-08:00

OK, assuming that this thing still actually works, I think I'll post my semi-annual entry here. II've well transcended the point of starting with excuses for lack of posting, to the point of a nagging thought of "Oh, I still have a blog?" somewhere in the back of my mind. Back in school now, with 1 quarter's worth of classes to finish up for my degree in three quarters, thanks to the schedule. I can say that I'll be really happy the day I never have to set foot on that campus again (I'd elaborate, but the 2.5% maximum politics content of this blog doesn't really allow me to do so.)

You're probably aware of the competitive nature of the grocery business. With no less than 3 major grocery stores within two blocks of here (and a couple more not far from that) the competition for business is intense. So of course, when you want to try and bring the customers in, it's time for a sale. But nowdays, you can't just throw up the sale sign and expect everyone to come and unsuccessfully try to crash down the automatic doors (but if anyone cars to form a mob and attempt to do so, please let me know so I can watch from a safe distance away.) These days, you have to have some sort of gimmick to get people to show up. There may have been a time when you could just stick big posters up in the window saying things like "Bananas, 15 cents per pound" in that whimsical number font that Home Depot seems to have ripped off for their procetags and that would be plenty. But in this day of short attention spans, even the quiet, unassuming grocery store has been transformed into 20,000 square feet of retail hubris.

Take for example, a couple of the advertising circulars for grocery stores that came in the daily dead tree spam today. One, for QFC (the local semi-yuppie mart, as opposed to Larry's Market, the uber-yuppie mart in this area) advertised in big bold letters the "Milk Madness" sale. This could either mean that you'll have to jump into the middle of an all-out, no holds barred steel cage match with Bruno the Bruizer (also known as the Disaster in the Dairy Aisle) in order to get the specialy priced gallons of milk, or the specially priced product comes from reanimated dead cows, and will turn you into a rampaging, mindless, calcium-fortified zombie at the sight of the full moon. But since I doubt that QFC has enough lawyers to deal with the side effects of either of these, they have to resort to just assigning the fancy name to a fairly run-of-the-mill special.

Not content to let QFC hog all the madness for themselves, Albertsons responds in their ad with a sale of their own: The Xtreme one-day Meat Sale! They even managed to come up with a fancy logo for it. The prices really aren't all that special, but just think of the ramifications: A meat sale that even skater dudes and bungee jumpers can associate with! You could even get one of those monster truck announcer guys to come in and do the commercial:

This FRIDAY FRIDAY FRIDAY! It's the Albertson's XTREME ONE-DAY ONLY MEAT SALE! It's ground beef... LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE! See T-Bone prices SLASHED TO THE BONE! Beef, pork, chicken, fish.... ALL HALF OFF! Hurry now to the Albertson's XTREME ONE-DAY-ONLY MEAT SALE! You can use the whole cart, but you'll only need... THE EDGE!

Given the fact that advertising circulars are often hard pressed to get anyone's attention, it doesn't surprise me much to see such gimmicks starting to creep in. In general, such circulars are most often tossed in the trash with nary a glance. Even if you were going to take a look at it, there's never anything earth-shattering, and unless you're one of those crazy smart shopper types who spends hours clipping coupons from the paper, you'll probably not pay attention to it even if you're going to the store. I find that on the rare occasions I go to the store (Costco: It's a beautiful thing) I have a specific list of things to buy, which being male, is a good thing to prevent me from wandering around the store aimlessly for hours with a confused expression. Rumor has it that several men who got so lost they couldn't find the exit have set up an encampment in the canned goods aisle at the local Safeway, awaiting rescue by the spouses who sent them there. If any of these items happen to be on sale, so be it. I probably just saved a couple of bucks.

It occurs to me that grocery store marketing is largely a matter of trying to win over the hearts and minds of a populace that isn't even listening.

2003-08-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

From the Miscellaneous Wackos File:

Somehow, I don't think James Lileks ran into this one at his fair.

2003-08-24T16:40:00.000-07:00

Once again, I seen to have let this Blog go without being updated for nearly two months. oddly enough, this isn't For lack of trying. The documents Folder on my Pocket PC is littered with the half-baked fragments of several attempts at blogging. I suppose I could actually post some of them, but

I caught most of James Lileks' appearance as guest host of the Hugh Hewitt Show on Friday. I'm sure that there will be more than adequate commentary on this appearance fo be found elsewhere (in particular, on the Bleat,) but one thing in particular that stood out to me was his explanation that he does not have the luxury of being able to take his time when he writes, and that has to be able to write as freely as if it were speaking. Anyone here who has seen the way I usually write things would attest to the fact that I just can't do this. Most of the time when l write, the process ends up being something to the effect of writing a couple of sentences (maybe a paragraph if I'm feeling ambitious) then get up and wander around for a while. When I then sit back down at the keyboard, I usually end up revising the heck out of the stuff I just wrote, sometimes several times before I finally stop wondering what I was thinking then I wrote that particular bit of literary tripe. And yet in spite of this writing technique, somehow I manage to frequently obliterate whatever page limit or maximum length that has been set for whatever it is that I'm writing. When this happens, there are a couple of different approaches that can be taken: first of all, you can try to reduce the font used, and try to get everything to fit into the alloted number of pages. In the time I've spent in school, I've lost count of how many assignments I've Submitted in 6-point Arial, with as little space between lines as I can get away with and still look like I'm at least appearing double-spaced. The results of this are generally mixed, which results in plan B: figure out how to reduce it by about six pages. The ultimate result of this ends up looking something vaguely like like the original, assuming you ran it through a meat grinder a couple of times and duct taped it together. Somehow, the end result ends up being at least passable, at least as far as the original assignment is concerned. Of course, I'd much rather be turning in the ridiculously long version I wrote in the first place. but I find that the people reading the stuff I rarely need insomnia cured.

Anyway, I've been doing mostly the usual stuff. School should be starting again in a couple of weeks. For the time being, I have somehow ended up back in technical support once again. It was now close to five years ago that I left my first tech support job, vowing never to return. There seems to be some sort of "moth to the flame" style of attraction involved in the profession. To be honest, I probably wouldn't mind much if I never had to do support again (In order to meet established standards of decency, we'll just leave it at that - ed) and yet somehow I keep ending up back there. I won't go into a whole lot of details, but I'll just say that it involves a very large locally based software company dealing with an unprecedented volume of support calls due to the Blaster virus going around the Internet. For the past two weeks, they've been in full-blown crisis mode, and they've reached the point of recruiting developers and testers to volunteer to spend a few hours on the tech support lines. I've been brougth in, along with about 20 other people, to come help on the support lines for a couple of weeks until they can get this dealt with. Even with all the extra help, wait times are still exceeding two hours, and don't seem to be showing much sign of slowing down yet. The things I'll do for some free soda....

2003-07-05T00:08:00.000-07:00

Ah, July 4th. Birthday of this great nation. and a day to kick back, relax, and blow stuff up (note: it is not recommended to kick back and relax while blowing stuff up, because you'll probably want to keep most of your limbs.) Unfortunately here in Redmond, fireworks are banned entirely, which makes it difficult to blow up much stuff. Even so, the back deck here provides an excellent view to the fireworks show put on my the city at Marymoor park. Combined with the various other shows in the area which can be seen in the distance, the result is pretty cool to watch. There is a delay of roughly three seconds between when we see the fireworks from here and when we hear their sounds, which can be pretty loud for some of the larger fireworks. A good indicator of exactly how loud any one particular shell is comes from the large parking lot for the shopping center below our house. This parking lot usually contains one or more car alarms, and the really loud fireworks will result in a "warning" beep from these car alarms. Of course, the car alarms also go off frequently too, often at rather inconvenient times. At times, we have considered the purchase of a military surplus AA battery, which we could program to seek and destroy car alarms. Unfortunately, I think this might result in a few minor difficulties with local law enforcement, so we'll just have to use a trebuchet on the back deck for the time being. On the other hand, if I had thought about it sooner, I might have been able to go over to Boomtowm (a group of fireworks stands on one of the Indian reservations around here that has received unwanted attention from ATF agents in past years) and find something suitable for the purpose.

2003-07-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

As I've spoken of on several occasions previously here, baseball is taken seriously around this household. As far back as I can remember, whatever baseball game is on TV, be it the Cubs on WGN, the Braves on TBS, or the Mariners on whatever channel they happen to be on (unless it's ESPN, in which case you just turn off the TV and hit the radio) took precedence over just about anything else. The world is coming to an end you say? Big deal, Ryne Sandberg is up at bat, the bases are loaded, and Harry Caray is on his fifth Budweiser of the game. Aside from a couple of flashes of brilliance from the Cubs in the early eighties that didn't extend into the playoffs, the teams we followed didn't exactly provide us with the pinnacle of baseball talent (it wasn't until we moved here in '95 that we were able to follow the Mariners.) With the Braves' success over the past decade or so, it is hard for some people to recall the truly terrible Braves teams of the eighties, featuring such all-stars as Pascual Perez, Ken Oberkfell and Terry Forster (Well OK, they had Dale Murphy too, and we did get to see the major league debuts of Steve Avery, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz.) And the Cubs were... Well... the Cubs. No further explanation should be needed there. On the other hand, I knew all the words to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" before I reached Kindergarten

Over the years, I'd like to think that watching all this baseball has allowed me to understand the game. And to some extent, I have picked up on a lot of the subtleties of the game. I could probably rattle off the implications of the infield fly rule (exactly how that became the benchmark of one's baseball knowledge I'll never know), and I can usually at least provide a reasonably close guess on the Aflac Trivia Question during any given ballgame. Of course, just when someone starts to think they're an expert on the game, along come Bill James, Rob Neyer and their gang of SABR punks, tossing around stuff like OPS, Win shares, Pythagorean Rankings. It's enough to make even the diehards slink back to the cheap seats, drown their sorrows in a $7.75 microbrew and shout stuff at the umpires. At this rate, it won't be long before you're going to need to show your Ph.D along with the contents of your bag and tickets at the gate when you go to the ballpark, lest you be banished to the section of the 300 level full of giggly prepubescents holding up their "We (heart) Ichiro" banners.

But there's hope for us, or so it seems. From the wilds of the Internet comes Fantasy Baseball, where you and eight of your closest friends you've never heard of can put together your own dream team using superstars from all over the league, and challenge others head to head for ultimate supremacy... In theory, at least. Fantasy baseball is nothing new, all things considered. Before the Internet era, you would have to pay some exorbiant sum of money to some mail-order outfit to participate, and conduct all transactions by mail or phone. Nowdays, you just pay an exorbiant sum of money, and get to deal with all this online. After receiving an invitation into a fantasy league from a former co-worker last year, I jumped at this exciting new opportunity. After spending countless minutes of careful research (e.g. browsing though the player list and picking guys I'd heard of at some point before) in preparation for the live draft, I selected a team heavy on top-name pitching. Finally after several weeks of anticipation, the season begun... and within a week, my team was mired in last place. As the season dragged on, things continued going downhill, until I eventually found myself 30 games out of ninth place. Things did improve somewhat during the second half of the season, although I don't recall exactly where I finished, but I do seem to recall that it wasn't pretty. So far, this year's iteration of my team hasn't fared a whole lot better. Although this year's (slightly more balanced) team started out reasonably, it has since regressed to seventh place out of eight teams, and is now only one game out of last place.

As I sit and ponder the fallen state of my team, I now begin to realize that although it may seem to be a perfect solution at first glance for us baseball fans who flunked out of stat junkie's class, fantasy baseball is in fact an excellent way for fans to utterly ruin their enjoyment of our national pastime. Due to the mix-and-match nature of your fantasy teams, it is inevitable at some point that you will find members of your team pitted against each other on the baseball diamonds of reality. Thus you are faced with a dilemma: Should you root for the pitcher you have on the mound, hoping for a strikeout, which will then count against your hitting stats, or should you root for your batter, at the expense of your pitcher's stats? Unable to mentally reconcile such circumstances, you find yourself making mental compromises, which ultimately lead to rooting for ridiculously improbable sets of circumstances ("C'mon Joe, hit a line drive to the guy on third base who's on my opponent's team, and have him bobble it and throw the ball away, allowing an unearned run to score!") You know full well that this just isn't right, but especially when you have a fantasy team that is more often in the dumps than not, you find this to be an unfortunately frequent occurence. It becomes especially difficult to reconcile when your fantasy team contains members of a division rival to your favorite MLB team, or when you have two starting pitchers from your team going against each other. There's just no way to win, barring an especially unlikely course of events that hands one pitcher the win, and the other a no decision after seven strong innings. Oh yeah, your centerfielder is the only one allowed to get any RBIs, but it has to be on a double, not a home run.

There's just no way to win, I tell you.

2003-06-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

OK, blogging has been light for the past month ar so (Read: virtually none at all.) To some people, light blogging means that they only wrote twelve entries that day. Of course, those bloggers also have tens of thousands of readers, and many have an uncanny ability to get people to send them lots of money to do this. I, on the other hand, Figure that I've got about three readers, and if I was to attempt a PBS-style pledge drive and threaten to blog even less if my semi-adoring public didn't send massive amounts of small, unmarked bills to the phone booth on the corner of 148th and Main, I would be lucky to get 36 cents out of the deal, and there is a good chance someone would send a bill to get me to shut up. ("Let's see... That's a $76.50 hack writer surcharge, and a $47.23 deadbeat Blogger's fee... And we'll gladly take American Express. Oh yeah, don't forget the $4.95 long-winded rant tax...") For that reason, I'll just keep doing things as I have been, although l might throw an occasional guilt trip in for good measure. With hard work, perseverance, and a couple of well-placed bribes, I hope to eventually have five people reading this Blog. Maybe then I can start to hit my readers up for money... And earn a whopping $0.46 in the process.

That aside, right now there hasn't really been a whole lot going on around here. School got out a couple of weeks ago, and I have been interviewing for several different jobs, none of which have resulted in an offer yet. I'm still working on that, and in the meantime, I have started selling stuff on eBay again. Sometimes it amazes me just how much people will pay for stuff. I've been trolling the garage sales on Saturdays, finding items, then reselling them on eBay for significant profits. While a little extra money can be made on the side this way, there's still the hassle of getting all this stuff shipped, not to mention that every step of the way there's someone (eBay, Paypal, the USPS) taking their cut out of it, which does cut significantly into profits. Even so, there is a decent, if modest, amount of money to be made out of this.

Anyway, as the baseball season reaches the halfway point, my fantasy baseball team hovers precariously near the cellars. Owing to last season's poor showing of my team, I believe that I am still owed a competitive balance rant by the commissioner of our league. I suspect that I will be cashing this in shortly, using this Blog as a venue.

2003-06-11T00:58:00.001-07:00

It's been a couple of weeks now since I last wrote a Blog entry. Given the amount of stuff going on here, it's not like there's nothing to write about. In fact, there's almost too much stuff going on around here these days. For one thing, it's starting to get really hot around here. For an area that's supposed to be really rainy, It doesn't ever seem to rain much during the summer. I think that the last few days have reached the 80s and 90s. For some people I imagine that this isn't much of a problem, but I have this tendency to operate on a different temperature scale from most people. while this does give me the ability to wear shorts in December without much problem (other than the inevitable questions about my sanity,) but at the same time means that I also tend to be uncomfortably hot long before most people. Oh well, last I checked, there's only three more months of this. Actually, it has cooled down, and even rained in the past couple of days, so maybe the weather won't be quite so hot this summer.

Every once in a while, the time comes when you start to realize that you've accumulated too much junk. Sometimes it is obvious that action needs to be taken. Usually when you've spent six hours buried under a pile of closet debris as the friendly neighborhood Search and Rescue team digs desperately, that's a pretty good indication that you've got a problem. Unfortunately, it's not usually that obvious. Clutter has an annoying tendency to creep up on you over time. You try to clean things up, but for some reason, you find yourself making excuses to keep stuff that you'll probably never use again. The inevitable result of this is that you just end up with more organized clutter. Here's a hint: If you have to ask yourself if you will ever use something again, the answer is probably no. So when you end up with all sorts of stuff too useful to throw away, but not useful enough to actually use, it's probably time for a garage sale.

We usually stop burning stuff in the backyard long enough to sell what's left about once a year at this time. Given tle fact that we usually have four or five different families selling stuff at this garage sale, it tends to be rather large. Not quite ridiculously large "Mother of all Garage Sales" scale, but pretty large nonetheless. Thanks to the large fluorescent green signs pasted up all over town, we had a pretty good turnout of Customers throughout the sale, and managed to get rid of a lot of stuff. It was my cousin Aaron who really cleaned up though, so to speak. At our garage sale, it's been something of a regular occurence to sell hot dogs at our garage sale, so people who have been out running around to garage sales all day can grab a bite to eat. This year, we put Aaron in charge of things, and told him he could keep whatever money he could make from it. Thanks in part to a 19-cent special on hot dog buns at the nearby Fred Meyer, and to his high-pressure sales pitch, he managed to do quite well, and made over $70 out of it. Not really the typical lemonade stand all things considered, but whatever works, I guess...

2003-05-29T01:17:00.000-07:00

For the most part, this Memorial Day Weekend was pretty typical. Memorial Day itself was spent on projects of the type that have usually been put off since last Labor Day, as well as stuff that absolutely has to be done now or Bad Things will happen. In this particular case, it was the installation of a replacement transmission in my car. This cost me a little more than $300, which at this point is probably more than the car itself is worth. Fortunately, my dad and brothers are all experienced mechanics, and were able to get this taken care of without much difficulty.

I know a few things about cars, and can usually do basic maintenance stuff on my own, but if l was to try installing a new transmission, chances are that some set of unfortunate circumstances would result in a situation which would most likely require intervention by the Fire Department, Animal Control, a SWAT team negotiator, or all of the above (OK now, put down the ratchet and step away so we can get the kitty out of the tree...) Automobiles seem to be one of those things that seem relatively straightforward in theory, but by the time you go outside and pop the hood, you can pretty much throw all of that out the window (or I could if the window on my driver's side door could actually be rolled down.) You might be able to identify some of the major parts and components, but for the most part, that engine compartment is filled with a rat's nest of hoses and wires with the apparent purpose of convincing you that it would be a really good idea to pay someone at the dealership $90 an hour to just fix the stupid thing for you.

These days, on most cars they just put a big plastic cover over the engine with a hole to put oil into every once in a while. Beyond that, you're supposes to take your car to the dealer if anything breaks. What they don't tell you is that most of the stuff under the hood is functionally the same as it's been for a hundred years. On the other hand, it has been frequently mentioned that modern cars contain more electronics and computers than Apollo 11 had. Notwithstanding the fact that nowadays a $2 calculator probably has more computing power than a moon lander and the PocketPC I'm writing this on is probably more powerful than everything NASA had in the sixties, all that stuff gets to be pretty complex. If you have the right tools, you could find out all sorts of useful information from the onboard diagnostics, but it's probably going to cost you a few bucks to get that stuff ($200 or so for the basics, $800 or more for the brand-specific ones for your particular make.)

That ridiculously long tangent aside, we did also attend a barbecue this weekend. This came after two of my younger cousins were baptized (in my church, baptism of children takes place when they turn eight) which meant that members of both sides of one of my aunt’s families were present at the barbecue. I believe that at some point, I may have written about the extended family I come from, although I can’t be sure of that (read: too lazy to dig through the archives and figure it out.) I think that this particular barbecue does illustrate to some extent the difference between my family and other (read: more normal) families. After everyone ate, the two families eventually settled into their own sheep-and-cattle groups. The other family (my aunt’s parents, to which I have only a distant relationship) settled into the living room, with a quiet fire going in the fireplace, and a casual conversation. My family, on the other hand, gathered outside in the yard, when someone decided that it was a little cold outside. There were still some coals in the barbecue grill, so someone got the idea of moving the grill into the middle of our circle, and throwing some leftover pieces of lumber on to start a fire going. Before long, other items were being added, a few of which I doubt the EPA would have particularly approved of. Before long, someone started using some unidentified garden tool as a branding iron, leaving a rather odd mark on one of the fenceposts. Of course, given some of what has transpired at various family get-togethers over the years, none of this is particularly surprising.

Somehow, I managed through get through a whole childhood of this stuff relatively unscathed, although I did somehow end up being rather good at breaking stuff somewhere along the line…

2003-05-15T00:46:00.000-07:00

OK, I think I can actually manage to walk upright without swaying side to side too much now, so as promised, I will write some further impressions and details of my cruise.

The ship: As I spoke of briefly in my entries from the cruise, the Star Princess is huge. On the last day of the cruise, we were given a log of the cruise, which contained some stats about the ship on the back. Some of the highlights from this:

Gross tonnage: 108,947 tons
Displacement: 50,227 tons
Length: 950.1ft/289.6m
Width(at bridge): 165.7ft/50.5m
Height(above keel):212.3ft/64.7m
Maximum passenger capacity: 3,100
Normal crew compliment: 1,120
Fuel capacity: 3,470 tons
Fuel used for this cruise: 630 tons

The size of this ship makes it not only significantly larger than the Titanic (which was 883 feet long, 92 feet wide and 104 feet tall), but also too large to fit through the Panama Canal. To compare and contrast in terms that the readers of this particular site are more likely to associate with, the Enterprise from Star Trek:TOS was (according to this site) 315 meters long, 140 meters wide, and 80 meters tall. Or to put in more down-to-earth terms, Star Princess is the equivilent of taking an 80-story building, putting it on its side and making it not only float, but be able to cruise at a speed of 21 knots. Strangely enough, one of the best ways to get an idea of the size of the ship while aboard is to walk one of the hallways on a stateroom deck from one end to the other. These hallways are fairly narrow, but are close to the length of three football fields. I found that at my normal walking pace (which is faster than average, I've been told) it took nearly three minutes to walk from one end of the hallway to the other. In spite of the massive size of the ship, some concessions do still have to be made. While there is a lot of Italian Marble, glass and nice woodwork to be found throughout the ship, you can tell that quite often, substitute materials are used throughout the ship, presumably to reduce weight. For example, a lot of the wood on the ship isn't wood at all, but some sort of metal (probably aluminum) painted with a simulated woodgrain finish. The effect is pretty convincing, however, and I didn't even notice this until the second day onboard. You will also notice the fact that the staterooms tend to be narrow, and overall not particularly large, although most of the ones on the outside do have their own private balcony. This doesn't matter too much, since most passengers won't be spending a whole lot of time in their rooms anyway.

Still, for the most part, the public areas of the ship are quite open, and you never feel crowded while aboard. In fact, if not for being able to see the ocean going by outside, at times you'd even forget that you're aboard a ship. Some of the amenities of the ship include five different pools (and something like ten hot tubs to go with them) including one that is under a retractable class dome, numerous bars, shops on the Promenade deck, a full-service spa, a couple of themed restaurants (Italian and Steakhouse) for when you don't feel like eating in the main dining rooms, an art gallery containing signed prints from such artists as Rockwell, Chagall and Picasso, a casino (albeit nothing like the ones you'd find in Vegas), a nightclub, a wedding chapel, an Internet cafe (somewhat expensive), a library, and two different theaters. Chances are, you'll never find yourself with nothing to do while aboard the ship. On the other hand, this particular cruise was just 3 days at sea, and did not include any ports of call. As nice as the ship is, after several days at sea, you'll be glad for the opportunity to get off, whether at a port of call or to disembark the ship.

While the ship is moving, there is essentially a constant 20-knot wind blowing while you're above decks. Although they do have windscreens throughout the decks, the wind will still be blowing. I imagine that this isn't much of a problem in relatively warm tropical climates, but off the Pacific coast, this tends to make things rather chilly. The pools are all heated though, and are filled with freshwater (On a lot of cruise ships, some or all of the pools are filled with saltwater. This is one of the advantages of having onboard desalination systems that can produce 6,000 gallons an hour, in addition to the 3,308 tons the ship can store.) When the waves at sea get up some, you will notice that the water in the pools will start to ebb and flow along with the waves below. To keep the water from the pools from splashing out onto the decks, the pools are designed with high walls, and the water levels can be varied based on sea conditions.

From both an engineering and a practical standpoint, Star Princess is an amazing ship. As a guest aboard the ship on vacation, you really don't get too much of an idea of all that goes into building and running such a vessel. One of the more interesting things aboard the ship is a channel on the television that displays real-time data from the bridge showing position (with maps), heading, speed, sea and wind conditions, and other information on the current status of the ship. They used to offer tours of the bridge, but can no longer do so after September 11th. The only real "behind the scenes" tour while aboard the ship was of the galley. This was little more than a quick overview, but it gave us at least some idea of what it takes to cook 10,000 gourmet meals a day (and then after that needing to feed the crew.) The scale of this operation is staggering, if you think about it.

The experience: The ship has a crew of over 1,100 people. Even considering the fact that a significant number of those people are going to be working below decks and behind the scenes, it is obvious that service is a top priority. Although the only crew member that I really got to know was our cabin steward, throughout the ship the crew was very friendly. The cabin stewards would greet you when you passed by in the hallways, the waiters would frequently ask if they could get you anything, and overall a lot of effort was made to make sure that the guests were well taken care of. One thing that is interesting to note is that in addition to their name, each crew member's tag also included their nationality. The staff on the Star Princess (and in fact the vast majority of cruise ships) comes from many countries. A significant portion of them come from developing nations, and even though the pay they receive is low by our standards, it is often far more than they would be able to earn in their home countries. Although their accomodations while aboard the ship aren't nearly as nice as those for the passengers, the crew is well cared-for, and has many of their own facilities at their disposal.

There really isn't a whole lot that you have to worry about while aboard the ship. When you board the ship, you are given a card. When you get on the ship, you can go to your stateroom, throw your wallet in the safe, and forget about it. The card you are issued is just about the only thing you will need to carry while aboard the ship. As far as I can tell, there are only two areas that cash is used on the ship: The casino, and the coin-op laundry. That's not to say that there isn't much to spend money on. It's just that all charges while aboard the ship can be put on this card, and you'll get the bill at the end. And while the food doesn't cost anything (besides what you paid for the cruise in the first place), the drinks do cost money. Between the bars all over the ship and the wines available in the dining room, I imagine it wouldn't be difficult for someone to run up a pretty good bar tab. (but hey, if you've got the coupon, you can get a free ounce of Caviar when you buy one of those $200 bottles of Dom Perignon.) For those of us who don't drink, you can buy a sticker to put on your cruise card (price varies depending on cruise length, I think it was $11 for this one) that will get you all the Coke you can drink for the duration of the cruise. Compared to the rest of the stuff at the bars, that's cheap. They also have a few shops on board, although they sell primarily overly expensive household decoration items. Just in case you need to lose some weight (in the wallet department, at least) there's also the spa, which offers all manner of treatments, often carrying a rather hefty pricetag. There's also $10 per day put on your shipboard account that covers all gratuities, which is actually rather convenient. You can change that amount if you wish. I thought the staff in general was very friendly, and just left it where it was.

Every evening while aboard the ship, you receive a copy of the Princess Patter, a newsletter of sorts for the ship, which outlines the next day's events. There's actually quite a bit to do on the ship, should you be so inclined. Alternately, you can do nothing at all (The Calypso Reef pool is a good place to do this.) About the only thing that you absolutely must do is attend the safety drill before the ship gets underway, so you know what to do if there's trouble. In my case, I probably wouldn't have been able to get away without attending the twice-daily trivia session either, since I seem to be the useless information expert in the family. This was pretty much an informal 20-question trivia quiz, with some cheap little backpacks as the prize for winning. It took us four tries, but we managed to win the backpacks on the last chance possible, which is a good thing because I'm not sure I would have been able to get all my stuff back into the suitcase I brought it in. Other activities included various "game shows", culinary and ice carving demonstrations, shows (there were several different ones while I was on the ship, including a comedian and a magician, who were pretty good, although nothing absolutely must-see) and various bands in the different lounges. Other options include an overly loud nightclub, an overly quiet library, and various games to be found either on the sport deck or in the card room.

All in all, as much as I enjoyed this particular cruise, I don't think that I really got the full cruising experience from just about 2.5 days at sea in a not-so-tropical climate at a not-so-warm time of the year. 40 miles off the Pacific coast, there really isn't a whole lot of scenery to go around. Every once in a while, you'll see something interesting out the window (or off the balcony, if you're lucky enough to have one) but for the most part, it was nothing but a lot of water as far as the eye could see. The wind also made it somewhat difficult to spend too much time above decks. I can imagine that a lot of people (read: tourists) on an Alaska cruise are going to be wearing arctic survival gear while outside. Even so, I tend to think that the next time I look at taking a cruise, I'll be opting for a somewhat warmer climate... The Mexican Riviera perhaps? Or the Caribbean? In the meantime, I'll have to go turn down my own bed, while noting the profound lack of a chocolate on the pillow when I get down there.

2003-05-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

I just spent the last three days aboard the Star Princess with my brother and parents on a three-day cruise from Los Angeles to Vancouver. These are the entries that I wrote while on the trip.

5/9/03:
I am writing this from roughly 33,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean on an Alaska Airlines Jet en route to Los Angeles, where we will be boarding the Star Princess tomorrow for a three-day Cruise up to Vancouver. I've never been on a cruise before, so l don't really know what to expect, but me and my brother will be with my parents, who not only go on cruises on a regular basis, but have been deemed "'cruise taking nerds" by relatives and friends. Given the fact that they go on cruises often, I imagine it has to be fun.

Of course, flying down to is means that I've got a couple of hours to kill here on the plane. To this end, the airline provides the Sky Mall Catalog. Perhaps you are familiar with such outfits as the Sharper Image or Brookstone, Which seem to specialize in selling Foot massagers and other such products that you can't live without, assuming you are among the excessively monied classes of society. Now take all the vendors of such products you can think of, add a few you've never heard of for good measure, then cram the whole thing into one big 180-page extravaganza, and you're got the Sky Mall catalog. Some highlights from the catalog:

·Something you put on the wall of the shower to put your foot on when you shave your legs ($24.00, probably cost about 50 cents to make, if that);
·The ExerCHIzer, basically some device to do exercise For you if you're too lazy to do it yourself ($159.99);
·A 24-karat gold-plated phony Million-dollar bill made of silver ($119, plus a $1 excessive hyphenation surcharge);
·Oxygen Shot, a portable, easy-to-use way to "rejuvenate your body with a blast of oxygen!" Well OK, it's pretty much a can of air. ($29 for 3 cans.)

And the list goes on. The whole Catalog is full of this type of stuff.

Anyway, we'll be landing soon So I probably need to wrap this up So 1 don't cause the plane to crash in a horrendous ball of flames. More from the ship.

5/10/03:
Following a rather crummy night's sleep on a hotel hide-a-bed, I woke up probably a lot earlier than intended. The hotel itself was nice enough (they sent us cookies and milk before bed, although this may have more to do with the million dollars in business my mom sent their way recently when booking group travel than their merely wishing us a good night's sleep,) but it doesn't matter how nice a hotel is, sleeping on a hide-a-bed sucks. Still, the view from the room was good, and we spent a good portion of the morning watching the planes Fly in and out of LAX, before taking a shuttle from the hotel out to the Cruise Ship docks in San Pedro.

We boarded the ship at approximately noon, and from there the past thirteen hours or so have pretty much been a blur. It would probably take hours to describe the amenities and features of the Star Princess. It's a huge ship (too large to go through the Panama Canal, In fact) and It can be quite a task to walk back and forth across the decks. I'm definitely not used to the level of service found here. About all you really have to do is sit around, lat a lot of fancy stuff, and maybe harbor the occasional pang of guilt for a minute or two after eating that Dieter's Revenge sundae. The pools and hot tubs are really nice, and seem to be all over the place. So far, I Count five pools, and I may be missing One or two somewhere.

Anyway, I suppose that even all-you-can-drink Coke probably isn't a very good substitute for some sleep. I've still got two more days here on the ship, so I'll write more as time permits, and try to go into more details.

5/11/03:
As anyone who had someone change their dirty diapers for years knows, today was Mother's Day. Fortunately, things were pretty well covered in that regard. I didn't even have to do any dishes!

The sheer scale of this ship continues to amaze me. A structure of this magnitude would be impressive on land, but to have the whole thing float and be able to move around the world almost at will is nothing short of incredible. The hallways on the stateroom levels are so long, you almost cant see one end From the other. At a brisk walking pace, it takes nearly three minutes to traverse the length of the hallway. Among the larger cruise lines, There is something of a race to build bigger and better ships. Princess currently operates three megaships of this size (the Grand, Star and Golden Princess) with a fourth (Diamond Princess) set to enter service next year. Royal Carribean has responded with megaships of their own, reportedly even larger than this one. It will be interesting to see what comes in the Future.

In fact, the scale of the ship can make you forget that you are at sea. Although with some investigation you can see some of the pecularities and techniques that indicate you are on a boat (for example, a lot Of the "wood" on the Ship isn't actually wood, but veneered or painted metal in order to reduce weight,) but usually there is little to remind you that you are not an land. Still. There is a constant, albeit subtle sense Of movement, and particularly if the seas are somewhat rough, the ship does move up, down, and side to side to some extent. This is most noticeable on the upper decks, and in the pools, where the water splashes around with the waves. This creates a ''wave pool" effect that can actually be fun to play around in.

The other major effect of the ship's movement is the fact that while outside, there is pretty much a constant wind of roughly 20 knots. In a warmer climate like the Carribean or the Mexican Riviera, this isn't much of a problem. When you're Somewhere like Alaska, this can get to be quite chilly. Fortunately, one of the features of this ship is a pool area with a retractable glass dome to let sunlight in without the wind.

It is now close to two in the morning, and I'm getting tired. We have one move day on the ship, then we disembark on Tuesday morning. More when I have time to write it.

5/12/03:

Last day on the ship, and l have to say that as nice as this place is. it will be nice to get off and go home. Unfortunately, I'm not looking forward to the Car ride back home. Three people in the back seat of the Jetta for three hours is not exactly my idea of fun. Still. as the ship enters the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the scenery is rather nice. Most of the trip has been in open ocean, which doesn't lend itself to much scenery.

On most cruises, you will have several stops in different ports of call where you can get off the boat during the day. This particular cruise doesn't have any, and I've now been on the ship since croon on Saturday. The constant motion of the ship can get to you after a while. I wouldn't say that I'm seasick, but when l sit down somewhere, there is something of a low-grade dizziness that you notice. I'in sure I'd eventually get used to it, but it is also unlikely that any future cruise I go on would have three consecutive days at sea like this one.

Anyway, we get off the ship early tomorrow morning, so I'll take some more time to write about the experience when I'in back on dry land.

When the world stops rocking back and forth long enough for me to do so, I will spend some time to summarize the whole experience.

2003-05-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

Note: This entry is the result of an experiment with using my PocketPC to write a Blog entry as things happen. The event in question was the arrival into port of the USS Abraham Lincoln. It was estimated beforehand that 10,000 people were expected to come to greet the carrier's arrival. I don't know how many people actually showed up (the reports on the news say they think the initial estimates may have been low) but it sure was crowded on the pier that was opened to the public where we were, and people say the pier the carrier docked at where the families waited was just as crowded. This event also received national media attention.

Unfortunately, the crowds at the pier made it very difficult to use my PocketPC, so this really didn't turn out quite like I thought it might. It would have been much more effective if I had wireless Internet, and could have posted this as it happened. Nonetheless, here it is:

6:35 AM: We just pulled into a parking spot at Port of Everett Pier 1 to watch the arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln. We are now first in line waiting at the gate (well, a few traffic cones) for the pier to be opened to the public. This will happen at 8:00, when the Lincoln Starts to come into view. the carrier is expected to arrive at the Everett Naval Station pier across the harbor around 10 AM. I'll try to document events as they happen here. As with many of my Blog entries these days, I'm writing on my pocket PC, which means that there will probably be plenty of typos, but also gives me the flexibility to write events as they happen. We were just informed that the carrier is now in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. More updates later, when things happen (and when it's not so Freakin' cold.)

7:20 AM: Well, it looks like we got here just in time. There's now hundreds of people here in line. there are children here passing out all sorts of various commemorative swag (buttons, stickers, flags, and signs so far.) Right here at the front of the line with us are the organizers of Operation Support our Troops, the group that has been organizing many of the rallies in support of not only the troops who serve to defend our freedom, but also the leaders who refuse to let two-bit European whiners dictate our Foreign policy. The attitude here is festive, and there's plenty of friendly conversation going on here. There's about another half hour until the gate opens.

8:10 AM: The gates opened a little bit early, and we're now out on the pier. The Lincoln is Just now coming into View around Possession Point, and appears to be ahead of schedule.

8:25 AM: apparently, we have a better view of things out here on the pier than the people on the Naval Station pier have. The radio stations are reporting that they are waiting for the Lincoln to break the horizon. Well, from here, the horizon is broken into about a Million pieces or so. You can now see the sailors on deck, and several fire boats spraying into the air in front. There are hundreds of smaller boats out past the Jetty awaiting the carrier's arrival.

9:50 AM: It takes a while for the ship to make the last mile or so into port. The pier was starting to get quite crowded, so it was hard to write anything. It was pretty cool to watch the carrier come in. Since it's hard to write too much here, I'll try to summarize better when I can get back to a real keyboard.

2003-05-04T18:58:00.000-07:00

To make a long story short, over the course of the last week my car broke down, my dog ran away, I’m being audited by the IRS, I finally managed to make the FBI's top ten most wanted list for excessive cow tipping, and a horde of rampaging mutant gerbils is currently laying waste to the landscaping in the backyard and overturning the furniture in the living room*. But other than that, it's been pretty much like any other week. The weather around here has been pretty nice over the past week or so. Of course, This generally means one thing: Yard work. And plenty of it.

Currently, our major project is building a foundation for a shed in the yard. This involves putting together a wall with the concrete blocks strewn about all over the yard as a result of several different projects that didn't happen (usually after hours of hard work.) They’ve been sitting around for quite a while now, and as such have become shelters to all manner of various unpleasant creepy-crawlies of various degrees of sharp, pointy teeth and ability to make one's life miserable. Even though the job entails the hauling of probably a hundred of these blocks (which weigh close to 70 pounds each) across the yard, that's not even the hard part of it. In order to ensure that the whole thing doesn't collapse in a heap, the blocks (especially those on the lowest level) have to be placed very carefully to keep things level and straight. It's a lot of work. but once we get this done and the shed is in place (we're having it built by someone else) we can get a significant amount of Junk out of the garage and start working on the old Jetta project car in the driveway.

At this time next week, me, Jared and my Mom and Dad will be in the Pacific Ocean somewhere off the California coast aboard the Star Princess, Probably eating unidentifiable gourmet stuff that no sane person would ever eat and relaxing by some pool or something like that. I guess this means that I can't call my parents Cruise-taking nerds anymore. On the other hand, the main reason they're going on this cruise is to have been on enough cruises to be allowed into the cruise-taking nerd lounge, so maybe I can still get away with it. I am still not completely certain of how l ended up booked on this cruise in the first place, but I'm not complaining.

You know, for a boring, meaningless existence, that's actually quite a bit if stuff going on there. Actually, I guess my life really isn't all that meaningless, all things considered. It probably isn't all that boring either, for that matter.

*Actually, most of that stuff didn't actually happen**. In fact, only one of the occurrences listed above has actually happened in the past week. But the rampaging mutant gerbils are still being really annoying. They're already broken twelve of those little exercise wheels, and it's starting to get expensive to buy 147 pounds of gerbil food every week. By the way, Are gerbils supposed to be able to chew through steel girders?

** Just in case you can't figure it out, yes, the car did break down.

2003-04-27T00:58:00.000-07:00

I just got back from an evening spent at the races at Evergreen Speedway in Monroe. This was one of their "extreme" racing nights they do about once a month or so during the season (there's racing there every Saturday night, but this is the first time I'd been out there) which includes events even more unsual than the usual short-track racing and figure 8's.

The main track there is a5/8 mile oval, although none of tonight's racing used the large oval. It's a small facility, but the bleachers weren't crowded, there wasn't any alcohol there (which, given the number of families with small children there, was a good thing) and the food they had for sale was priced reasonably (something I can appreciate after working at a concession stand at Safeco Field during a Mariners game, and watching people pay $7.75 for a beer, among other ripoff prices.) We got there a little bit after the racing had started, although about all we missed were a couple of sprint heats. They started out with a quick "preview" of the various events on the slate. I'll try to summarize each of the events below:

Figure 8s: This was probably the majority of the night's racing. It came in two divisions, regular and Extreme Contact, with the latter being somewhat less stringent in the number of rules. I imagine the first thing you'll think about when you think of figure 8 racing is big T-bone collisions at the intersection, but this wasn't the case. Since the drivers are racing for points, they're generally going to be trying to keep their cars in one piece, so they'll be more likely to slow down to let traffic pass than they are to just dive in between a couple of cars. Even so, there was no shortage of near misses and daring dives through passing cars, not to mention plenty of contact and more than a couple of spins in the turns. Given the tight nature of the course, if there's any sort of incident on the track they'll have to red flag the race to clear it up, although that just goes with the territory.

Hornets: This is a small series run by the track owners, and the cars weren't much more than straight-off-the-lot (Well, quite a bit off the lot) production 4-banger cars (read:mostly beater econoboxes)with rollcages and a few safety modifications added. Basically, it's a series designed to let people race on the cheap. here are the rules for the Hornet cars, which look pretty straightforward. As could be expected when all of the cars are painted an identical shade of yellow, it was kind of hard to follow the action, but there was a 1G DSM that was running in front for most of the feature, until it got passed in the last turn. As could be expected from a series populated entirely by amateur drivers, there were a few spins, and some bumping and grinding going on, and plenty of tire squealing.

School Bus Figure 8s: Now this is where it starts to get interesting. Sure you can run pretty good on the figure 8 in your V8 land yachts, but just try running it in an old schoolbus! Now when you start swapping big-blocks into those busses and running straight-pipe headers, you can actually get one of these things to whip around a corner at a pretty good clip there. Sure, there's the pesky issues of an annoyingly long wheelbase and wimpy suspension, but who cares? The buses even managed to spin each other out a time or two, and at the end of the race, the guy who won managed to lay the thing down and slam it into the wall pretty good, earning himself a nice little standing ovation. This part was pretty amusing.

Rollover contest: Just as implied, find something ugly and roll it. For the most part, Late 70s and early 80s Japanese econoboxes seem to be the preferred car for rollovers (maybe we shouldn't have gotten rid of the ugly '77 Corolla we had out in the driveway so soon...) Basically, whoever manages to get their car to roll the most times wins. Pretty cool stuff, but they only had about three or four cars entered in the rollover, so we didn't get to see much of it.

Double decker race: This was quite amusing. They take a couple of junk cars, stick a couple of other junk cars on top of them, and run 'em around the figure 8 track, and whoever knocks the car off the top of their opponent's car wins. Of course, the laws of physics generally indicate that if someone knocks that junker off the top of your car, the law of inertia means you're probably going with it. From the looks of things at the end, I imagine they probably just called it a draw and left it at that.

Demolition Derby: Finally, we have the demolition derby, which is saved for last for obvious reasons. I imagine you've all seen a demo derby before, so I'll avoid going into any significant detail, but it's a good way to wrap things up, just in case you haven't had quite enough carnage for one evening. A fireworks display followed the end of the derby, but by that time we were headed for the exit to beat the crowds.

All in all, we had a blast. Although I'm not quite the car nut that some of the people here are, it's still good to head out to the track every once in a while and get your US RDA of straight pipes, tire smoke and scrap metal. I took quite a few pics, and a Quicktime of one of the rollover contest entries, and I'll try to upload and post some pics tomorrow after I sort through 'em, although I don't have anywhere to host the video (about 3MB.)

Definitely recommended if you've got a free Saturday evening around here. You can find the schedule for these events at this site.

2003-04-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

Uh... Yeah. The world (well, the Blogosphere, at least) has been, well, blogging like there's no tomorrow for the last month or so, while this one sits here gathering dust for months at a time. Given current events, the excuses for such inactivity tend to be few and far between. In fact, about the only one remaining is laziness. I suppose I could concoct some fanciful tale of aliens, a government conspiracy and something to do with miscellaneous tropical fruit that somehow ends up explaining yet another prolonged period of Blog neglect, but the Net seems to be saturated with half-baked nutball conspiracy theory stuff at the present time. Maybe the next time I conveniently forget to blog for months...

Of course, the stated political-free nature of this particular Blog tends to reduce the amount of available subject matter at my disposal significantly. These days, just about anyone can write a political Blog. All you really need to do is regurgitate various news sources from the Net, insert a pithy comment or two, then repeat the process roughly 20 times a day. If you're feeling a little more ambitious, you can add a comments section. This usually results in a proliferation of trolls, which have to eventually be weeded out. This also tends to result in a five-figure bandwidth bill each month, so you're probably going to need to throw up a little side business selling T-shirts or something. You also throw up one of those Paypal links so you can guilt people into chipping in a few bucks for the bandwidth bill when you run out of T-shirts.

There are people who actually do a pretty good job of this. In fact, I find that Blogs are actually a convenient source of distilled news, which is much quicker than wading through the flotsam and jetsam of the "Mainstream" news sites. On the other hand, I've yet to see one of these sites without an obvious political slant, and many of these are rather shameless about it. Generally, It takes all of about three seconds to determine a site's bias. Since the War in Iraq started, there ave about four or five sites I've been reading for news and commentary. Of the ones I read, Instapundit is probably the best pure news site. USS Clueless and Buggy Professor have pretty good commentary. LGF is usually good too, but I recommend this one with the proverbial grain of salt, since even though I consider myself to be a stauch conservative, I tend to think some of the comment posters (as well as some of the front-page stories) tend to be a little too far to the right, and a few of them are almost as intolerant as the radical leftists they mock endlessly. Of course, the one Blog I read on a daily basis (and quite possibly the funniest columnist on the Net) would have to be James Lileks. Who would have known that writing about the trials and tribulations of raising a two-year-old could make for interesting daily material to write about? Someday, about twenty years down the road, Gnat is going to be very lucky to have a father talented enough to write the Bleat.

Anyway, I'm not dead just yet (give it a few days). I'd say that I intend to write in this thing more often, but chances are that all I'd be doing is contributing pavement to the road to you-know-where in doing so.

2003-03-08T23:34:00.000-08:00

Me, my brother and his friend decided to go pay a visit today to the Rods 'n Rice show today in Seattle. (Well OK, it wasn't called that. It was actually called the Seattle Roadster Show and Import Motion show.) Having a few hours (and $15) to kill, me and my brother went to this show at the Seahawks Stadium Exhibition Center this morning. The vast majority of the show was comprised of all manner of customs and hot-rods. As could be expected, the vast majority were domestics, but included in the mix were a few others, including a pretty nice collection of VWs and a couple of old Porsches (including a 356 and a mid-60s 911) that were in really nice shape. There was also one guy showing off V-6 and V-8 chainsaws, which looked pretty cool also. A couple of cars that stood out:

-The Foose Speedbird, as seen on that "Rides" show on TLC. I didn't get a very good look at it, but that is one seriously nice looking car. Some pics can be found Here.

-Blast-O-Lene Special: This sucker has an 1800 cubic inch, 900HP V-12 out of an old army tank, and looks like exactly the kind of thing that you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. Pics can be found here.

After this, we went to check out the rice- I mean import part of the show, sponsored by APC and Uncle Bens (not really, it just seemed that way.) Throughout the rest of the exhibition hall, things were relatively quiet, with mostly bubblegum oldies playing over the speakers. As soon as you get to this part of the hall, you're assaulted by blaringly loud (c)rap music, and everything in sight has the strobez and neonz going. Granted, there were a few reasonsbly nice cars in the import section, but for the most part it was just a lot of rice. The "highlight' of the import show was supposed to be the Fast and the Furious car. It was almost funny watching the reverential awe people regarded it with. I just had to check to see if it still had floorboards in it.

A good portion of the import show space was taken up by Exotik Phantasies, a local club. Their cars were by far the most riced out of the cars at the show. A whole bunch of slow stuff running stock engines with ridiculous bodykits, all sorts of APC bolt-ons and about 300 pounds of stereo junk in the back. One of 'em had a Civic Type R badge on the back, sitting right next to the Civic EX stickers! Not only that, but as far as I could tell they were trailering these piles of junk to the show rather than driving them. They have a website, but it's just another mAd tItE ricer club.

Overall, it was a decent show, but I don't know if it was worth the $15 a person and $8 for parking to go see it. I took some pics, but most turned out crummy, and I have nowhere to host 'em anyway.

And finally, a few random thoughts:

-What possible reason would someone have for mounting an LCD screen under their hood to watch DVDs on? Is that so you can watch movies while you're waiting for the tow truck on the side of the road?

-What's with all the Cobra replicas? There had to be something like 10 Cobras on the show floor, and of them, there were only two that weren't replicars, and even then I couldn't be sure.

-I was wondering how long it would take before someone would rice out a Civic Hybrid, and my question was answered. At least they managed to avoid using the Type R badge on this one.

-and finally, When they call an engine a big-block, they MEAN it. When you want something that says performance, you just can't beat a high displacement big-block that puts out 400 horsepower and drinks a whole dinosaur in a quarter mile.

2003-02-27T00:05:00.000-08:00

Twenty years from now, as we look back on the culture of the early zeroes, and wonder if anything could possibly have a less fitting name than the so-called "reality show". When you can take a bunch of celebrities (another rant, coming soon), stick them in some random exotic locale, give them some incredibly contrived premise, and then call it a reality show, you know that Hollywood has totally and completely lost it. I'm sure there's some sort of technical definition out there somewhere explaining that "when the events of the program(3)(a)(see footnote J) transpire without the assistance of a script(see footnote M) and do not follow a predetermined course other than the whim of the producer, 'Reality'[Miii, definition 3] is considered to be taking place, and thus the program(3)(a)(see footnote J) may be classified as a reality show." Either that, or some grossly overpaid network exec heard the term somewhere, and was unable to come up with anything more original, so it stuck.

And for the first few of these, that term might have worked, but the latest crop of these have about as much reality as a WWE pay-per-view special. Because the networks don't seem to be able to come up with an accurate term to reflect the state of so-called reality shows, I would like to propose a new term for them: Fakeality shows. Since Hollywood seems determined to keep churning these things out left and right for the forseeable future (and quite possibly long after the fad has ended), we should at least have a more accurate term to describe them with.

2003-02-18T01:23:00.000-08:00

After some further reading, it appears that some people were a little more impressed than I was with the Roomba. It is interesting to note that a more favorable opinion of the product can be gleaned from a couple of articles found on the web (inadvertently, in the course of browsing for stuff on an unrelated topic) than can be derived from a 30-minute hubris-laden infomercial. In particular, seeing a video of little more than just the Roomba in action, without hype-laden commentary in the background, proves to be far more informative about the way the product functions. It turns out there's a whole heck of a lot of R&D behind this oversized floor-sweeping hockey puck, and in spite of a few inherent limitations in its design, it seems that it can actually do a halfway decent job of cleaning a floor, as long as you pick up all the big stuff first. At $200, it certainly is an intriguing product, but I think I'll have to leave such items to the well-funded gadget freaks for now, and be content as a modestly funded gadget freak.

2003-02-17T02:30:00.000-08:00

As a longtime insomniac, I find that a lot of my thinking (and hence, a lot of my writing, and a lot of the homework that's due tomorrow that I probably should have done weeks ago) in the wee hours of the night. Normally, I spend this time browsing the Interet, or otherwise on the computer. It is actually quite rare that I will be watching TV this late at night. As you've probably figured out by now if you have some sort of uncanny hypersensitivity to caffeine, there just isn't much out there on TV in the dead of night. Most of the airwaves are filled with various infomercials for various weight loss supplements, miracle house cleaners, and videos for faddish exercise programs that for some unknown reason are supposed to be performed barefoot.

Recently, I came across a particulary intriguing infomercial (well, however intriguing an informercial can be anyway) for the Roomba Intellgent Floorvac, ostensibly an automated vacuum cleaner. This type of product is genenrally found at Brookstone, Sharper Image or other purveyors of high-tech stuff you couldn't live without if you could actually afford anything in the store. As can be expected of such infomercials, there was no shortage of incredible demonstrations, dripping superlatives, and proclamations of this product's revolutionary world-changing power. By golly, your life is going to be SO more fullfilled with those extra two hours a week that you aren't spending vacuuming! (Speaking of which, who spends two hours a week vacuuming anyway? As long as things aren't incredibly trashed, it rarely takes more than fifteen minutes or so to get the whole upstairs in this house vacuumed.)

Yet, for all the typical robovac-inspired hype and hyperbole, I seemed to get a sense that maybe someone involved here wasn't quite as hyped up about their product as they should be in the blissful Utopia of automated floor-sweeping. Even in the most optimistic scenario an infomercial writer could come up with, it was still pretty obvious that the Roomba wasn't much more than a glorified Dustbuster with an electronic brain thrown in. You could see it scattering various dust and larger bits as it went along. And no, you can't pick up a pile of bolts with it, and they pretty much admitted this fact. Yuo could see that it also ended up several inches away from the wall at times,leaving portions of the room unvacuumed. But hey, what's a few crumbs in the corner, if it means the future of vacuuming? One notable testimonial came from an owner of this product, who said something to the effect of "Compared to a VCR, the Roomba is so easy to use!" At a time when the VCR is beginning its inexorable journey toward the proverbial wayside, we can still recall a time when being able to set the clock on your VCR was considered some sort of benchmark for one's technological ability. Nowdays, the geeks seem to have better things to do than set VCR clocks all day, like pushing the room size buttons on their Roombas all day to set them on their merry automated way.

Several decades ago, futurists and industrial films spoke of a bright and rosy (well, the color was pretty grainy, but it's still kind of rosy if you look at it just right) future in which household chores are done at the push of a button. This vision of the future has been relegated to the domain of old populuxe films and the occasional History Channel show, but through the wonder of the Internet (something none of the people who made these films ever imagined) we can view these futuristic visions at the touch of a button (and some waiting for a download.) One particularly interesting example of this is Design for Dreaming, a film produced in 1956 by General motors to promote their current models and concept cars of the time, packaged in what now seems like a campy, almost surreal vision of a future long swept to the corner by reality. It is interesting to think of a time when the future was designed in Art Deco, and when we were supposed to have colonized Mars by now. These days, you don't hear a lot about futurism, mostly because even the best informed predictions have this annoying tendency to end up being little more accurate than a wild guess.

Nonetheless, the infomercials of today are, surprisingly enough, based on real products, available now, and in fact being rather agressively promoted. Given the throwaway nature of such things, it is uncertain how much of this material is going to survive decades from now, but it will certainly be interesting to see how today's vision of the future holds up to reality's version of the same. Will we be looking at 30-minute ads for the miraculous power of Orange-Glo as we use Uber-Scrub brand Instant Everything Cleaner ($1.49 a bottle,) cursing the lack of viable alternatives to good old-fashioned elbow grease? Will we be watching commercials for the amazing new robo-vacuum2000 as we press the button for the insta-clean floor? Or will we just be doing things essentially the same way as we are now, without much change?

The future sure ain't what it used to be. (I probably stole that from someone, but have no idea who, and I should probably at least try to sleep sometime tonight)

2003-02-14T10:51:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd post a copy of the e-mail I sent to my parents a couple of days ago to give them a status report on the house while they are on their cruise. Somehow, I don't think this is the kind of e-mail one would want to see to reassure them of the condition of their house while they're on a cruise ship in the middle of a tropical island paradise...

Well, we haven't burned down the house yet...

...And as long as the contractors we hired to fix yesterday's little mishap don't take too many coffee breaks (I knew that Starbucks across the street was trouble waiting to happen,) most of the damage should be taken care of by the time you got back. We had to put it on your credit card, I hope you don't mind too much. Just don't spend too much on spa treatments and you'll probably be fine.

It's been pretty quiet around here. Jacki has got the base coat in her room almost done now (she hasn't had much else to do since the Jetta exploded into a huge ball of flame for no apparent reason in the middle of westbound 520 during rush hour (you should have seen the traffic mess that one made, hopefully we managed to get some of the news helicopter shots on video). Fortunately, I think spontaneous incineration is covered under warranty, so that shouldn't be too big a deal. There's only about thirteen pounds of paperwork here to fill out for that one.

Things are just about as usual around here, if you can ignore the fact that the entire downstairs is crammed with about twice the amount of various furnishings that should be able to fit in a space the size of the girls' room, somehow violating the laws of physics. There is currently another one of my miscellaneous half-baked schemes residing in the garage, but that should be done and cleaned up by the time you get back.

Oh yeah, one of those guerilla home redecoration shows that have popped up all over cable TV showed up yesterday, and are currently in the process of redoing the living room in some sort of retro 60s style. I suppose the bead curtains and tie-dye upholstery don't look too bad, but I don't know if I care too much for the orange shag carpeting they put in. (Note: You're not supposed to know about any of this, so just ignore the fact that I said anything here.)

Anyway, I've got to get back to my neverending quest to figure out the mysterious secrets of System.Windows.Forms.Dialog.OpenFileDialog(), so I'll let you get back to your cruising.

Later,
Brian

P.S. Most of this stuff didn't really happen. I feel it would probably be unwise to be more specific than that, because I value my life too much.

2003-02-11T23:37:00.000-08:00

At the present time, the four of us remaining at home are in a state which is probably known by various State and local government agencies as "dangerously unsupervised." As usual, our parents have ditched us in the cold, dark and drab place that is Seattle in the Winter, opting instead for a week in the Caribbean aboard one of those overly fancy cruise ships. This time, they also brought my youngest sister along with them. I've not yet decided whether I should be bitter and resentful, adding another entry to my ever-growing list of deep emotional scars, or whether I should just be grateful for the resulting peace and quiet of her absence.

The four of us remaining at home are coping relatively well so far. We've got enough microwaveable junk in the house to keep us alive for a week or so, and probably enough canned food to hold out for a month or so (albeit with the possible minor inconvenience of nothing but canned corn for three weeks of that.) I don't think that any of us have quite figured out the whole ''wild party" bit just yet, so thus far, the house has yet to be burned to the ground. All in all, that's probably a good thing, since the parents will eventually be back. In a recent survey, nine out of ten parents preferred to return from vacation with their houses not burned down by their childrens' wild parties while they were gone. I suspect that the remaining one probably got paid off by the Coalition For the Promotion of Arson or something like that. Although the house remains in a profoundly unburned state at the present time, portions of the house may not be immediately recognizeable by the time they return on Sunday. My other sister is using this week to repaint and redecorate her room. I am also using this time to work on a few projects of my own, including a couple that I'd have a hard time doing at any other time. Again, this isn't exactly bitter open rebellion material, but admittedly those of us at home this weeke are pretty lousy at open rebellion. Besides, I dont think any of us know how to change the locks on the front door anyway.

As can be expected in these circumstances, household cleanliness has a tendency to slip a bit without parental supervision. The entire downstairs is currently filled with the mind-boggling amount of furnishings that somehow fit into the room currently under renovation. Being a guy, I probably don't need a whole lot of armoires, wardrobes, nightstands or knick-knack shelves in my room, yet the removal of the basic furniture from that room has somehow managed to fill a significant portion of the master bedroom and the downstairs hallway (our house has the main living quarters on the upper floor, and the bedrooms on the lower floor) almost to capacity with stuff. And this bedroom happens to be the smallest one in the house too. I am beginning to question whether or not it will be possible to return everything to the room without the use of a jackhammer.

Still, when all is said and done, and my parents and sister wander in, work out from a week of sun, surf and spa treatments, chances are that things will be pretty much the way they left them. Exactly how it gets to that point is one of those eternal mysteries that nobody ever seems to figure out. All we know is that through some set of moderately freakish coincidences and pseudo-random events, the house will get cleaned, usually at the last possible minute before they get home, and in a blind panic. Somehow, we all end up getting dragged along for the ride.

2003-01-16T01:38:00.000-08:00

OK, I'm back to using the plain old keyboard on my computer to write Blog entries on. Although I do still use the Transcriber on my Axim for taking notes in my classes and as the primary text entry for everything else, it's the kind of thing that probably isn't the best thing to be using to write anything much more than a quick note or two with. Sure, the transcriber does an incredibly good job of translating my chicken scratches into something resembling what I was trying to write, but I get the general impression that I'm giving the technology quite a workout, and I've found out that a 2.5"X3" screen really doesn't give you a lot of real estate to write on. If I had the money to spend, I probably would have given serious consideration to getting one of the new Tablet PCs that have been appearing recently. I have messed with a few demo units in stores, and these seem to do a far better job than the PocketPC transcriber does in recognizing my handwriting. Whether this is because they have the power of a full-fledged PC platform behind them, or because I can write in much larger characters on the letter paper sized screen, I can't determine for sure.

Those of you who have been following computers for a while will probably remember the first ill-fated attempts at pen computing in the early 90's that never got off the ground. At the time, handwriting recognition was a relatively new field, and the first attempts fizzled out mainly because nobody could get it to work well enough to be practical. At the time, I messed around some with the PenWindows API (which was an addition to Windows 3.1,) albeit using a mouse for input rather than a stylus. At the time, trying to write a single sentence in Notepad was an exercise in frustration. Character recognition was limited to one character at a time, and it often took multiple tries to get the right character. The system was supposed to be "trained" by using a program that learns your handwriting, although this wasn't included (the PenWindows components I had came with a copy of Borland Turbo C++, back in the days before Visual Basic.) I didn't spend any appreciable amount of time with the program, but it didn't take long to determine that the technology wasn't developed enough at the time to be much more than a curiosity. It probably also didn't help much that these systems only had the computing power of a mobile 386 platform to work with.

There are several other methods of text input (In addition to the transcriber: There's a standard virtual keyboard, a block recognizer which uses something similar to Graffiti on Palm-based PDAs, and a letter regognizer which is a more advanced version of the block recognizer, although it's something of a misnomer because it recognizes one-stroke gestures rather than characters. In addition to these, there are commercial thrid-party add-ons such as Calligrapher (an enhanced handwriting recognition program, which is supposedly better than the built-in Transcriber) and Fitaly, a virtual keyboard optimized for use with a stylus, with which some people have been able to exceed 70 words per minute on a handheld. I haven't tried any of the third-party add-ons yet, nor have I extensively used any of the other standard input methods, because although it tends to be particularly sensitive to mistakes ans stray marks, the transcriber has been working pretty well, and is great for jotting down notes in class and having them appear almost magically (well, after corrections) in typed format.

Given the fact that my Axim is the first handheld that I've owned, I really can't compare it to any of the other Palm or PocketPC models, with which I have no experience beyond messing with demo units in stores. The Axim itself seems to be relatively well built, although it is obvious that along the line, a few corners were cut. Given the fact that comparable models from other PocketPC vendors can cost up to twice as much, I can understand why this might be the case. The Dell Axim Advanced model I have, with a 400MHz XScale processor, 64MB of RAM and 48MB of ROM cost $349 plus shipping, with a $50 rebate to bring the actual price to $299. The Basic model, with a 300MHz processor, 32MB of RAM and 32MB of ROM only costs $199 after rebate, making it the least expensive PPC on the market right now. Competitor's models start at $299 (which often doesn't get you much, and go up from there.

Most notable among the issues with the Axim is the somewhat flimsy directional pad, an issue well known among the Axim user community. The built-in speaker is also small, and relatively underpowered. The output from the headphone jack is better, although there seems to be some quiet high-pitched noises when the volume is turned up. Other than these items, the quality of the overall unit is quite good. The screen in particular is excellent, drawing comparison to the screens on some of the high-end iPAQ models. Some people have complained that for a Pocket PC, the Axim is somewhat larger in size, and somewhat bulkier. Again, I can't really compare it to other PPC models since this is my first one, but I find that as long as I don't use the included case, it fits comfortably in a pocket, although I'm somewhat reluctant to carry it this way frequently because of the possibility of the screen getting scratched. Once I get one of the WriteShield screen protectors on it, I imagine this won't be an issue. The Axim is only about an inch longer than the wallet I carry around, and significantly thinner. The stylus included with the unit is very thin, and somewhat difficult to use for extended periods of time. Most of the time, I write on it with a standard pen-sized stylus I found at CompUSA, which is slightly more difficult to use with the small screen, but a lot more comfortable to write with than the included stylus.

As I mentioned in my last entry, when I got this, I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to use it for, other than a fancy new toy. Surprisingly, I've found my Axim to be a lot more useful than I planned. I've been using it to take notes in my classes at school, and have yet to use a single sheet of paper in any of my three classes. In fact, if it were not for the fact that I need to carry around some books for use in class, I doubt that I'd even need a backpack at all. Unfortunately, I have found that I most likely will not be able to store files for use in classes because the school computers don't have the proper drivers, but I could probably pick up a USB SD card reader for $20 and do that. In less productive pursuits, the PocketPC excels. I've used the included Microsoft reader to spend some time reading some EBooks, and it works quite well for the purpose. You don't have to squint to read it, and with the backlighting, you can even read with the lights off. There are some excellent games that have been written for the PocketPC. In addition to those, there are some excellent emulators for PocketPC which allow it to play games for the NES, Gameboy Color, TG16 and several other platforms. The flaky D-Pad and cramped button layout aren't exactly optimal for gaming, but they do work. What I'd ultimately like to see is something like the game controller Sony offers for their Clie handhelds, although I imagine something like that to be unlikely to appear anytime soon.

When I was originally looking at handhelds, I was primarily considering the Palm M130 model, primarily because it was what was in the price range I was looking to pay for one of these. Some messing around with a store demo unit left me relatively unimpressed. I really wanted to get a PocketPC based handheld because they seemed so much more useful. It seemed that all of them were outside of the range of what I was willing to spend on one though, so I was about to just forget about getting a handheld at this time... Until I found the Axim. I wouldn't say that it's the kind of thing that I wonder how I lived without it, because I managed to live without it for quite a long time. I have found the Axim to be incredibly useful though. Some people who don't need something like this for much more than the basic stuff (contacts, notes, etc.) might be better served by a Palm-based handheld. If you need to do much beyond that, I'd definitely recommend an Axim.

2003-01-11T13:21:00.000-08:00

I have now been using my Axim for a week now. I'm still using the Transcriber to write stuff with, including to take notes in my various classes. So far, I've only needed to even open my backpack once in a week of classes. I've been able to take notes quite effectively with this thing. I don't see myself ever trying to use it to write code or any other thing where typos can be a matter of life or death, but I can take notes with it in class pretty well.

It's amazing just how much stuff I can use this for. One thread that I read recently On the Axim board asks the question if one of these is more than just a fancy technotoy.
The vast majority of the responses seem to suggest that o of these can be used quite effectively as a productivity tool. Sure, I have to admit that I bought this partially for the overall gee-whiz factor, but I'm actually surprised at how much I've used the various "productivity" features for keeping track of stuff. I'll eventually post a more thorough review of this.

At the end of my last Blog entry, I made a comment about the age we live in of "Information At Your Fingertips." One of the TV shows that is watched frequently in our house is 'Iron Chef' Oh Food Network. For reasons not fully explained by anyone, we even manage to watch it during dinner. I suppose that much of what is prepared on that show is probably considered incredibly fancy gourmet cuisine, but here in the western world, most of what is prepared would probably be considered unfit for human consumption. Even so, it's an interesting show to spend a spare hour on. Somehow, I managed to pick up a reputation for being something of an expert on the show (read: knowing more about it than most sane individuals generally would.) In reality, more than any individual, sane or otherwise, would ever need to know about the show can be found at a couple of different Websites: Ironchef.com or Ironfans.com.

Questions regarding my sanity aside, it occurs to me that we live in a time where just about any subject one might ever need to know anything about can be found by spending five minutes on the Internet. With sites such as Google, we have the ability to type in just about any keyword or topic we desire, and instantly have all the info we'd ever need sitting on our monitor. Usually one has the added step of sorting through thirteen thousand useless results to find the three useful ones, but that's just an accepted fact of life on the Internet. It's the small price that we pay to have all the useless information we could ever possibly need at our fingertips.

This ability to find information this readily has made changes to the way students research a topic for a report or project. It would seem that Academia would be among the most willing to embrace this new paradigm for research, but in the last year of school, I've seen what seems to be something of a reluctance to accept the Internet as a source of material for students to use. I can understand this reluctance to some extent, given the sometimes questionable validity of the material generally found on the net, but to me, it seems almost as if teachers want to downplay the significance of the Internet as a research tool.

For example, one class I had last year focused on Professional report writing. The major project for the class was a Comparative Feasibility Study which required a minimum of eight different sources, including at least two sources from periodicals and two others from books. For my study, I chose a topic with which I was quite familiar: buying (or building) a PC. I ended up not using a lot of sources because I was so familiar with the topic. In the end, I found myself having to search through a copy of PCs for Dummies to find something to use to satisfy the requirement to have one token book source in a 45-page report. In this case, the requirement to use books as sources seems arbitrary and ended up being more of an inconvenience than anything.

I can appreciate the fact that students need to be able to use a variety of different sources when they research a topic, but I seem to get an impression that teachers think the Internet is making research too easy. Because of this, they try to complicate things by telling students to not use the Net. Most of then do anyway. And somehow I don't think that teachers realize that.

2003-01-05T23:28:00.000-08:00

(Note: I wrote this one on the Axim too, and I'm too lazy to proofread it much.)

In my continuing efforts to get this thing to be able to read my crummy handwriting, I am still writing a lot of random stuff. For reasons unexplained to anyone but the geeks who design these things, it actually seems to be improving. Through hours of hard work and perserverence, I have managed to get to the point where I only need to rewrite every sentence about ten times or so to get any sort of intelligible result. Every once in a while it even manages to get something right the first time.

Anyway, school starts again for me tomorrow. I'm just now starting to get into the meat of the degree program I an pursuing. After spending a good portion of time on a bunch of prerequisites and classes which I didn't much care for, it's nice to be able to start taking useful classes l can actually learn stuff from. Anyone who knows me well enough to be reading my Blog has probably heard me rant In my usual long-winded Fashion about school, any particularly the degree program that I'm in. There seems to Ise a lot of classes I've taken in which I've learned little to nothing useful. In some cases, l could have practically taught the class :n question. I imagine that tle people in charge don't care much what I think about the Program as long as I keep paying my tuition.

I'll probably end up writing a long- winded rant on the subject one of these days, but probably not on this thing. On a good day, my writing is bad enough, if I tried lo rant on this thing, the result would probably take days to proofread. I'd probably manage to scratch the crap out of the screen too. From what I've read. the digitizer is a rather costly part to replace too. Maybe I'll try it after I buy some good screen protectors.

So far, I haven't had much chance to use this thing for any useful purpose yet, and in fact have yet to take it much past "new toy" status. Ostensibly, it was purchased to be used for school, but I would be lying if I tried to say I wasnwas't a gadget freak. I have a long history of buying high- tech gadgets first, and trying to come up with some sort of useful purpose for them later.

My cell phone was purchased because I could use it to browse the Internet. of course, it could only go to something like five sites in cheese lo-res text mode, and the fact that I could get my e-mail from almost anywhere didn't change the fact that it was 95% spam, but at least I could get that spam wherever 1 wanted, whenever I wanted. Never mind the fact that l used my phone for all of ten minutes last month. Recently I was looking at newer models, Mostly because those ones can play pac-man at three frames per second. I probably wouldn't use the new one much more than I use My current one, but I would feel smug in knowing that any urges to chonp dots at low FPS in the Middle of Nowhere could be satiated. (The fact that this thing can do the same thing at a whopping 15 Frames a second is apparently irrelevant.)

This fascination with gadgets of questionable utility is nothing new. All throughout history, people have pursued all manner of bright shiny objects of questionable use. The ongoing pursuit of such items is responsible for a good portion of recorded human history. A good portion of recorded history documents Man's ongoing quest to beat up their Fellow man and take their stuff. In many cases, there is little or no need for said stuff, but people feel the need to take it anyway. The people who had their stuff taken usually wanted it back, and proceeded to beat up the people who took it in the first place. This process hail an annoying tendency to leave a lot of people dead, which if you think about it is a pretty silly thing to end up dead over. Throught history, this process has resulted in wars, famines, and the rise of The Sharper Image stores in the shopping malls of modern civilizations.

Another consequence of this ongoing Pursuit of new and exciting gadgets, especially those of a mobile nature, is the fact that you have to find some way to carry them all around with you. Sure, six ounces doesn't seem like much, but try carrying it around on a belt clip all day with ill-fitting jeans. Someday someone is going to get very rich By devising a way for people to comfortably carry all the:r gadgets around without looking like a total dork. And yes. I know people have tried already, but the non-dorkiness requirement has yet to be fulfilled.

We live in a day and age where information is quite literally at our fingertrps. Whether or not it does us much good to actually have it there remains to be seen.

2003-01-03T20:54:00.000-08:00

(Note: I wrote this on my new Dell Axim PocketPC, using mostly the largely untrained transcriber for letter recognition. Any typos, for once in my lifetime, are quite likely not my fault.)

I am writing this on my newest toy, a Dell Axim. Apparently. I need to teach This thing how io recognize My lousy handwriting. I've spent the last fifteen minutes trying to get this thing to recognize a sentence about how well it can handle my writing out of the box, but ten different attempts resulted in incredible amounts of gibberish.

I'm sure that if I spend enough time mesing with this, it wil improve. For now, I'll just stick with the on-screen keyboard. The transcriber seems to be particularly sensitive to stuff like bumps and things other than the stylus tapping the screen. Of course, my penmanship leaves a lot to be desired. I imagine that it must be quite a challenge For the programmers to Figure out how to get these things to be able to decipher all the Crappy writing that People pass off as input. If for some reason, it looks like I'm trying to capitalize stuff at random, it's actually just the inability of the thing to discern between Caps and uppercase letters.

Other than the obvious learning curve (For both myself and the machine,) I think that I should be able to find plenty of use for one of these things. I bought this so J could use it for school, to take notes in class and be able to use them in the computer. To be perfectly honest, this thing also happens to be a rather neat toy. This Axim came highly recommended On the Pocket PC Forums, and for the price I paid For this, I'd say that I got a good deal.

I'll post a more comprehensive review of this thing later. And chances are that will actually be typed out on the computer. Were l to try writing it on this thing, it might take a week.

2002-12-29T00:13:00.000-08:00

For all intents and purposes, the holiday season is over around here. As much as the house gets decorated for Christmas, it all comes down in a hurry once Christmas is over. Everything got taken down and put under the house, where it will sit for eleven months, during which various items will fade out of existence for no apparent reason, other than for us to wonder where the heck we put them. Sure, there's still New Year's Eve, but around here, the celebrations tend to go something like "3, 2, 1, Happy New Year. Now go to bed." My parents generally consider themselves lucky if they can get to bed by nine, and the momentous passing of another year on the calendar doesn't particularly justify staying up until midnight for them. I generally do stay up, but I'm a night owl anyway, and rarely manage to get to bed before Midnight on a regular night. The festivities around here on New Year's usually tend not to exceed a plastic cup full of store brand grape soda, and maybe some candy. Anything more than that would probably keep me up half the night (I already stay up half the night anyway, but this would keep me up the other half,) which is generally a bad thing.

When asked about my New Year's Resolution, I give the same answer that I've given for the past five years: 1024x768, 16-bit color. I can't particularly see such a big deal is made of New Year's resolutions. For the most part, all pretense of actually following through on any of them has generally evaporated by January 15th, and although I imagine most are made with good intentions, we all know who uses those as pavement. I figure that any effort to try and make any sort of formal resolution is for all intents and purposes doomed to fail, and just stick to the general stuff.

2002-12-25T11:37:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas morning, and time for another one of the somwhat dubious traditions of the season. We call it the Annual Safeway Christmas Parade. Our house is located just above a fairly large strip mall type shopping center. For most of the year, the trees manage to obscure the view of the large parking lot for the most part, but during the Winter, we can see it quite well. Safeway (a grocery store, for those unfamiliar with the name) is one of the anchor stores of the center, and is normally open 24 hours a day.... Except for Christmas. Every year at Christmas, we can count on a steady stream of cars coming into the otherwise abandoned parking lot, drive past Safeway, and realize it's closed. In fact, some even get out of the car and try to go in, just to make sure. A time or two, we've even seen someone run into the locked automatic door.

Anyway, time to go watch A Christmas Story for thirteen hours straight...

2002-12-25T00:20:00.000-08:00

Well, the annual chaos of the Christmas Eve gathering at our house has subsided, and, as seems to happen frequently, tradition reigns, like it or not. For those unfamiliar with our family, Christmas Eve is always marked by a large gathering at our house. Since this is usually the only time that we have a gathering of this magnitude at our house, a lot of preparation is involved. Usually, this results in a process of a lot of running around, yelling, stresssing, and generally making a big deal out of things. I find that it's usually best to just do stuff, and wait for someone to inevitably tell me to get out of the way, then get out of the way. Around 6:30 or so, the deluge of people begins. Before we know it, there's 40 people in the house. What follows is something of a blur, but usually involves a whole lot of food. One observation I've made over the years of watching this is that the amount of food present is inversely proportional to how hungry you are. If you're really hungry, there's never enough food to go around. It just happened that today, Me, my brother and his girlfriend went out to Red Robin a couple of hours before the gathering started, and had a late lunch. This, of course, meant that there was tons of food, and I wasn't hungry at all, so I pretty much stuck to grazing.

After enough family holiday gatherings (the particular holiday varies) you eventually start to see a lot of the same foods over and over. There's always the cream puffs on one table. They used to be one of the most popular items, but now a good number of them somehow ended up splattered on the driveway as people left. Then there's the meatballs. At first, only one person brought them. Now it seems they've started multiplying. At this rate, by Christmas Eve of 2010 we'll be eating nothing but meatballs. Then there's the sandwiches, the cold cuts, the relish tray... Traditions are a nice thing to have, but I've noticed that there can be a fine line between tradition and just plain stuck in a rut. I think we're starting to hover dangerously toward the rut in the food department. The interesting part about this is that nobody really acknowledges this as being any sort of tradition, or even a recurring theme. It seems that the most deeply ingrained traditions in a family can be the ones that are not acknowledged as such. On the other hand, this is the only day of the year when we are allowed to eat food in any carpeted space in the house, much to the dismay of the rebellious types in the house (do we even have those anymore?)

Anyway, once the food was eaten (well, some of it at least), we settled down in the living room for the "program", for lack of a better term. This involves a few Christmas stores, some singing (we even have a few people who can actually sing, believe it or not), and finally, the gag gift exchange. The gag gift exchange is the source of some of the more dubuious traditions. A lot of these come and go often. Some of the more interesting ones:

The toilet seat. This one started a few years ago, when someone (I believe it was may late Aunt Christy, who succombed to pancreatic cancer earlier this year) brought in a raised toilet seat found at a medical supply place. Exactly what it would be used for is unknown, but speculation seems to indicate it to be the kind of thing employed by old people with bladder control issues. Nobody has really put much effort into finding out much on the proper use and care of this object, and I don't think anyone cares to. All we know is that without warning, it'll strike an unsuspecting victim at the gift exchange. It has disappeared over the past couple of years, but the memory of the notorious toilet seat has made people wary of selecting larger boxes.
The cheese-shaped present. This is another one that appears every year. One present will come in a wedge-shaped box, which bears a striking resemblence to a wedge of cheese. I believe that this one started accidentally about three years ago. Immediately, everyone proclaimed it to be cheese-shaped, and it became a frequent target of the present stealing (an integral part of the gift exchange). Ever since, it has made a repeat appearance, with accompanying popularity, and even the occasional "take the cheese!" chant among the younger cousins. In a somewhat ironic turn of events last year, the cheese-shaped persent actually contained a block of cheese last year.
The fruitcake. Yes. As anyone familiar with the legend knows, there is actually only one fruitcake in the world, and it gets passed on to someone else every year. We are now in possession of the fruitcake. Every year, it finds its way back to the gift exchange. This particular one now bears names and dates of its recipients back to 1998. I don't think anyone would dare to actually eat it.

Finally, when all the festivities have been completed, and everybody leaves, it's time for another dubuious tradition: The call. My mom's sister's car has broken down on the way home. AGAIN. Fortunately, this doesn't happen every year, but it's happened far too often for our liking. And it happened again this year. The clutch on my cousin's Geo Metro went out on 520. The end result is usually that we have to go out and rescue them, and tow the car back here to fix it. It has only half jokingly been suggested that we buy them AAA memberships, and make sure they're in effect on Christmas Eve.

Oh well. Guess I better go to bed, on the off-chance Santa has something other than 47 metric tons of coal for me this year. Merry Christmas to all, and a Happy New Year!

2002-12-21T18:13:00.000-08:00

Well, after about a week of way too much running around, I think that my Christmas shopping is almost done now. Somewhere along the line, I managed to somehow get a reputation for being good at shopping for gifts. I have no idea where that might have come from. When I shop for presents, the process usually goes something like this:

drive to some big "everything but the kitchen sink" store.
Spend a half hour wandering around aimlessly trying to think of what the intended recipient might like.
Wander into the electronics department, and spend fifteen minutes playing something on one of the video game demo kiosks, although it is doing absolutely nothing to help me find the present I'm looking for.
Realize I just wasted fifteen minutes playing through the same level of Metroid Fusion that I've played through 12 times before. Wander around aimlessly for another half hour.
Suddenly realize that I've managed to end up in the cosmetics department.

As a single, not-particularly social computer geek, I can thinking of nothing more boring than shopping for cosmetics. Fortunately, it is rare that there will be any reason I need to go anywhere near the cosmetics department, From observation, it seems that the proper protocol for guys in this situation is to find something gimmicky on a lower shelf, and start at it with a facial expression somewhere between that of a sleepwalker and a zombie. When asked a question by whatever wife/girlfriend/significant something-or-other dragged you there in the first place, the appropriate answer seems to be unintelligible muttering that probably translates to Zombie for "ask me that again and I will devour your brain." On occasion you might attempt to find a more interesting aisle nearby, but most places seem to place the cosmetics somewhere in between haircare and the Embarrassing Personal Care Items aisle. If you're in a department store, your choices are usually either shoes or lingerie, so you're pretty well stuck there too. I suppose that the theoretical Wife to be Named Later(TM) might change my attitude toward such things, but somehow I don't see myself as being able to offer much useful information on selecting the appropriate shade of hazelnut maroon anytime soon.

Having found my way out of the cosmetics aisle somehow, I then continue on my currently fruitless search for the perfect gift that probably doesn't exist anywhere on this planet. At this point, I'll generally either come to the conclusion that there is nothing suitable in this entire store and head elsewhere to repeat the whole process over again, or I'll just pick up the first bright shiny object that looks moderately plausible and call it good. Sometimes, this results in some unusual results. What I've learned from years of something resembling experience is that if you have to ask yourself, "Gee, I wonder if Heather would like a new toaster?", chances are she wouldn't like one (Note to Heather if you're reading this: You're not getting a toaster, but don't be too surprised if you find yourself with 27 pounds of fresh rutabaga under the tree.)

Somehow, in addition to my own Christmas shopping, I was asked to do some of my parents' shopping as well this year, owing to a general lack of time on their part. Although this made it slightly easier to determine what to get, it also made for a whole lot of running around town on various wild goose chases. One in particular, required 4 different stores, 30 miles, and occasional questioning as to whether the product in question even existed in the first place (it does, but apparently only at The Sharper Image, and at a cost of $60 or more.) Another present involved a trip into the Capitol Hill neighborhood Downtown Seattle, the land that Urban Planning forgot. As with many of the various neighborhoods scattered around Seattle, this neighborhood is populated predominantly by the type of people your mother wouldn't approve of. The streets were planned sometime around the turn of last century, and were probably marginal at best for accomodating horses and buggies, much less cars. Between the one-way roads, the lack of turn lanes, and general chaotic nature of the roads in the area, it can be a real pain to even find what you're looking for in the area. Then there's the issue of parking. Other than the few robber baron pay lots (in a recent poll, the owner of Diamond Parking Services, one of the major parking lot operators in the area, was voted the most hated person in Seattle) you can theoretically park on the streets. That is, if you can find a spot somewhere, and you can parallel park on a dime. At particularly busy times of the day, you can find yourself spending nearly an hour driving around looking for a spot, until you finally just break down and spend $5 to park miles from your intended destination. Fortunately, I manged to find a spot roughly a block away, and managed to get in and out of the area relatively unscathed.

Anyway, with one exception, my shopping is done now. Fortunately, we don't have to go anywhere for Christmas (in fact, we'll be having the gathering on Christmas Eve here at our house, as we have for the past several years.) I don't know if we could get everyone in our family to anywhere else in less than three cars anyway, so it works out pretty well.

2002-12-07T20:18:00.000-08:00

Technically, this blog is no longer being written from the Warrior's Den. It is now being written from what is technically the Warrior's Dining Room, although even that is iffy. To be honest, I don't know what we're calling this place now. About a week ago, the computers were all moved out of the den, and moved to what used to be the dining room. Of course, given the fact that no actual dining ever took place in the dining room (and, oddly enough, house rules specify that food is not even allowed in this room, due to the expensive carpet), one would be hard pressed to call this place a dining room anyway. Since no suitable alternative has reared its head yet, I'll just leave this the way it is. Besides, I'm too lazy to determine if there's even an option to rename one of these. Still, I actually kind of like moving the computers to here. In the process, we added wireless capability to our network (to avoid having to run cable to the new room for the DSL) and we've got more space in here. Now all three of the computers can be used at the same time without everyone being crowded in the process. There's still a few bugs in the process (there is currently a duvet cover, AKA the first thing that I found in the closet, covering the window to keep the glare out. The shade is going to be installed shortly) but it should all work out in the end.
Replacing the computers in what is now formerly the den is a rather large Nautilus exercise machine. It was purchased, presumably, with the best of intentions. In many cases, however, this is exactly the type of thing that usually gets used regularly for a week or two, intermittently for a few months, and ultimately ends up gathering dust, finding its way to the next garage sale to come along. It occurs to me that good intentions (and possibly the fitness club market) are what keep manufacturers of exercise equipment in business.

And here's a couple of random musings...

-Why is it that used car lots think that in order to attract customers, it's a good idea to pop the hood open on every single car on the lot and turn on the hazard lights? Does anyone drive by there and wonder if every single car on the lot just broke down simultaneously? This does not exactly seem like the kind of image that a used car dealership wants to be projecting to its potential customers.

-Who decides what items comprise the consumer fads during the holiday season? This year, it seems to be those little remote control cars. They seem to be all over the place. Radio Shark, Mall kiosks, TV ads, even e-mail spam, seems to be endlessly hyping these things as the greatest thing since sliced bread, at a cost of roughly twice what any sane person would think to spend on such an item. Are there a bunch of old guys who sit around in a room full of Tickle-me Elmos, Furbies and other items making the room look like a tornado hit a Toys 'R Us? Do they debate endlessly over the relative merits of Sing 'n Snore Ernie over the Razor Scooter? And when all is said and done, do they emerge to a well-attended press conference, and triumphantly declare a winner? Do the anxious shoppers then race to the toy stores and clamor over the selection, forming the kind of mob usually reserved for European Soccer championships?

-Come to think of it, with all the various Greatest Things that have emerged since bread was first made available in sliced form, how is it that sliced bread has remained the benchmark for so long? When pressed for comment, I wouldn't be surprised
if the guy down at the bakery demanded the camera be turned off and covered up the lens with a hand.

-If you think about it, there might actually be a market for disposable exercise equipment. Just like now, use it for a couple of months, and then whenever you get sick of it, just stick the whole shebang in the recycle bin and forget about it. You might give the sanitation workers a hernia or two, but I bet you could sell millions of the things around New Year's Day.

2002-11-20T17:08:00.000-08:00

This will be part 2 of my ongoing series chronicling the many things in my life over which I have no control. Today's topic: The trees in the front yard.

In the front yard of my house, there are two large maple trees. These trees cover most of the driveway, and because of the number of vehicles we have (and partially because I'm the only one here who still drives a junk car)I have to park my car under these trees. This means that my car receives a significant amount of whatever happens to be falling from the tree at any given time. During the Spring, it's the blossoms. During the Summer, it's a combination of various bugs and bird droppings. In the late summer every other year, we get those really annoying helicopter seeds all over the place. During the Winter, the Avian Nonconformist Society (Non South-Flying Chapter) decides to use this tree as the venue for their Annual Winter Meeting. Given the fact that my car has not had working windshield washer fluid dispensers for well over a year, this tends to become a tad annoying after a while.

Then there's the fall, when the leaves start to fall off. As anyone with a large maple tree in their yard knows, the leaves off this tree are rather large. These are also the type of leaves that have an uncanny tendency to become semi-permanently lodged under your windshield wiper, smearing the heck out of the windshield until you finally get out and remove it by hand so you can actually see where you're going while you drive. Then there's the task of removing the leaves from the driveway when they fall. For several weeks during the fall, this job is the type of task that would frustrate Sisyphus. A couple of weeks ago, I was given this task, and dutifly cleared the driveway. When I woke up the next morning, there was literally six inches of newly fallen leaves. You couldn't even tell that there was a driveway under there, except for a couple of tire marks. Thus we see the utter futility of yardwork while there are still leaves on the trees. At least it ends eventually, just in time for the aforementioned nonconformist birds to arrive.

2002-11-19T00:45:00.000-08:00

While watching the news tonight, there was a story (complete with a live on-the-scene report) of the latest new Krispy Kreme donut shop to open in Burlington Washington, approximately fifty miles north of here. A raher sizeable crowd is already camping out in front op the shop, awaiting the chance to be among the first in line. This is the second Krispy Kreme to open in the Puget Sound Area, with the first having opened about a year ago in Issaquah. about ten miles down the road from here, and about two blocks from the Microsoft Samammish campus where I spent the summer testing software. This meant that Krispy Kremes ended up being breakfast about twice a week. This also means that after a while, I got really really sick of the things. I guess it's one of those things where you're supposed to just smile, nod, and go order a couple dozen more for no apparent reason.

When the Issaquah donut shop opened, there was plenty of fanfare to accompany it, almost none of which was generated by Krispy Kreme. Somehow, the opening became a major media event, and for lack of much else to talk about at the time, every major news outlet in town was there with the remote broadcast trucks. For weeks afterward, there were lines stretching all the way around the building. About two weeks after the grand opening, I was down in the area, and partially out of curiosity, and partially because I seem to have unintentionally made it a hobby to stand in long lines for no apparent reason, I decided to grab a dozen or two to find out what was so good about the things. I ended up standing in line for nearly an hour on a Saturday evening. At the end of the line, there was... Donuts. Well, they were slightly expensive donuts, and they probably contained enough sugary stuff to send a whole daycare flying up the walls, but they were still donuts. They don't seem like the kind of thing to be camping out overnight for.

2002-11-14T00:51:00.000-08:00

I suppose I should actually write in this thing every once in a while. Lately it has occurred to me that it might be a good idea (for theraputic reasons that elude me at the present time) to make a list of the things over which I have no control over in my life. Since I seem to ramble too much, I'll write these one entry at a time.

The first thing I have no control over in my life is combs. Specifically, I have absolutely no control over how many combs I have on hand at any given point in time. It seems that I have a collection comprised of an indeterminate number of combs, each of which seems to appear and disappear at will, completely impervious to my efforts to keep them where I can find them. At times, I will be hard pressed to find a comb at all, sometimes having to resort to using one of my sisters' hairbrushes (which is only marginally less annoying than running out of shampoo and having to use their stuff. Who was it that decided that various tropical fruits had beneficial effects when applied to hair anyway? I admit that I'm not a biochemist or anything like that, but it all seems kind of arbitrary if you ask me.)

At other times, all the combs in this spurious collection of mine will somehow all appear at once, as if to mate and to herald in a new generation of combs, most of which will be scattered temporarily to the four winds until the time when they are gathered once more. It happens in cycles, unpredictable though they may be, and over which I have absolutely no control. At times I will have no idea where the heck all my combs are, and at other times, I will have no less than four combs to choose from. If I were particularly obsessive, this might wreak havoc on my morning routine. Fortunately I'm not, and I can usually select a comb with which to face the day in less than an hour. Eventually, most of the combs will wander back to where it is that they go to hide, and if I'm lucky, I will still have one to use.

It's not exactly the kind of thing that results in expensive therapy bills, but it sure doesn't seem like a very good thing for ones mental health. More of these to come.

2002-09-19T01:01:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I went with my parents to the Mariners game against the Rangers. In what seems to have recently become something of a habit (for the last three games at least) the M's managed to win in extra innings. Whether this is because they can't seem to score runs any other time, or whether they're trying to run some sort of special "Ten innings for the price of nine" deal to try and drum up some business remains to be seen. Theoretically, the Mariners are still in some sort of pennant race, although it would probably require not only a major hot streak, but some serious choking on the part of Anaheim and Oakland, neither of whom appear particularly inclined toward choking at this point. In spite of all this, it's still fun to take the trip out to the ballpark, especially when you can come up with good seats. It pays to have some connections.

Currently, most of the baseball I watch involves the Mariners, primarily because they're the local team around here, and also to some extent because they're the most accessible (with most of their games available on TV). I've also been a Braves fan for most of my life, dating back to the days of such legends as Ken Oberkfell, Pascual Perez and Steve Bedrosian... Oh yeah, and some guy named Dale Murphy. Somewhere in my room, I still have an '83 Donruss card signed by Murph, framed with the letter it came with. Since then, I have acquired several more Murphy autographed items, including a signed bat I spent $125 for on an impulse buy at the All star Fanfest last year. Chances are that he's not going to make the Hall of Fame, but he is certainly my favorite ballplayer of all time. I suppose that because of him (and because around 1991 or so the Braves managed to actually start playing decent) I also still hold some loyalty to the Braves.

Even so, lately I've found myself taking some interest in football. This is interesting to me, in part since I've never really had much interest in it before, and in part because I would probably never actually go to a football game, nor would I be likely to ever sit down and watch an entire football game on TV. What I do find myself taking interest in is the commentary, analysis and various punditry that occurs after the games have been played. There's no particular team that I root for in the NFL (and no, the Seahawks aren't worth rooting for. I think their fancy new stadium should have the slogan "Everything but football" and that Mike Holmgren should be working on his resume around now.) I just read the commentary for the most part from a disinterested perspective for the most part. I have a hard time doing that with baseball, since I have at least a couple of teams that I tend to root for (but mostly just heckle when they do bad.)

Something tells me that trying to watch sports from an analytical point of view is something that is generally not looked upon favorably by the jumping yelling fanatic types of sports fans (read: my sister,) but that's why I generally try to watch the games from the yuppie seats.

2002-09-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a short trip to Las Vegas a couple of days ago, and since I suppose that I better write something here every once in a while, I thought that I'd post a few impressions from the trip.

The Good:

Blue Man Group (Luxor): This was by far what I spent the most money on during this trip, but I'd say that the show was worth the money spent. I was able to get a ticket on the third row (in the "Poncho" section, although there wasn't any apparent need for them during the show) which meant I was able to get a really good view. The show itself was excellent. You might want to have some asprin handy though, since the show involves a lot of loud bass. Not that you'll particularly mind. I don't think I've seen a show use that many drummers before. For this reason, I tend to think that this show is probably best enjoyed while sober, a rarity in Las Vegas. Oh yeah, there's also some parts where full presence of mind is definitely required to fully enjoy the show. Afterwards, I also ended up picking up a copy of their CD entitled Audio which I have playing right now with the volume cranked. That's the only way that one can get the full effect from it. I would definitely recommend this show to anyone in Vegas (or anywhere else Blue Man Group plays, for that matter.)

Shark Reef (Mandalay Bay): This may be one of the nicest aquarium setups I've ever seen. It is a little bit expensive ($14.95 for admission) but what isn't in Vegas? They have some huge sharks in their reef environment, as well as some nice displays of various other creatures that you probably wouldn't care to meet in a dark alley. Actually, I think if you ran into most of what they had there in a dark alley, all they'd do is flop around all over the place, since there wouldn't be any water there. Still, this was pretty cool, and is a good thing to do when you're looking for something to do with a little bit slower pace. One caveat: The Shark Reef is in about the farthest point possible from the hotel entrance, which means you'll have to walk through the casino, all the shops (Does getting to anything in Vegas NOT require walking through a casino and a bunch of shops?) and even a little bit of relatively nondescript (for Vegas anyway) hallway to get to the Shark Reef entrance. At least there's trams between the Excalibur, Luxor and Mandalay Bay to help save a little bit of walking in the process.

The Rio Buffet: Just about everyone in town has some sort of buffet. The one at the Rio was absolutely HUGE. As soon as you get there, they inform you that the buffet is over a hundred yards long, and they're not kidding. This place has a ton of different choices, and the food is actually pretty good too, which is a rarity for buffets anywhere. As with everything else on my list, it's pretty expensive (I believe the cost of a dinner buffet was something like $17.95 per person.) The Rio is a few blocks off the main strip, so you need to either take the shuttle from Harrah's, or take a cab over there.

Other stuff that was pretty cool but probably doesn't need a lengthy description:

The Manhattan Express roller coaster at New York New York (one of the best roller coasters I've been on. This one's a little expensive though)
The Bellagio Fountains (See them at least once)
Forum Shops at Caesars (try to catch the aquarium and the free Atlantis show at the fountain at the back of the Forum Shops area. the Atlantis show happens every hour most days, every half hour on Fridays and Saturdays)
Star Trek Experience (anyone who fancies themselves a Trekkie should go at least once. It's a little too expensive for what it is though, even though you can go through it as many times as you want.)
The Stratosphere Tower (if only for the view. I didn't go on any of the thrill rides there though. )
The Mirage (one of the nicer hotels in the area)
The Grand Canal Shops at the Venetian (This looks incredible)

The Bad:

Most of the north end of the Strip. I was staying at the Stratosphere when I was in Vegas, and since we had no car available most of the time we were there, a lot of walking was involved. For the most part, we just passed everything north of Treasure Island completely. Most of the places in this area (Stardust and Frontier especially) seemed quite seedy. Of the places in the area, about the only ones that I would even consider going to again were the Stratosphere (which was actually quite nice), the Vegas Hilton, and maybe the Sahara (the NASCAR Cafe there was kind of cool.) The rest I'd be hesitant to even walk down the streets near. If I go again, chances are I won't stay at the Stratosphere, not because it's a bad place to stay, but because it's just too far from everything else.

Too much walking. When I got there, the first thing I did was take a (long) walk down the strip to check out the various hotels and find my way around. Somehow, this ended up lasting almost all day, and I think I managed to walk nearly ten miles. By the time my brother and the other people he was with arrived, it was nearly midnight, and about all I could think of doing was getting to the hotel room and zonking out. Of course, the next day, everyone decided that they wanted to do exactly what I did yesterday, so I ended up following them out and doing pretty much the same thing all over again. Finally, by the third day I was there, I think we were all sick and tired of walking all over the place, and just ended up taking cabs everywhere. This can get a bit expensive after a while. I think if I go th Vegas again, I will be renting a car. Trying to walk everywhere in the area is just not a particularly good idea.

The notoroious "Nausea Six-Pack": Be wary of anyone trying to offer you a deal on motion simulator rides. Someone decided that paying $15 apiece for a six-pack of these would be a good idea. If something is being offered cheap, there's usually a reason for it. In this case, not only were the ride films really cheesy, but someone decided it would be a good idea to show six of them in a row. And they wonder why they have abnormally high barf bag expenses..

So there you have it. I have returned from Las Vegas as sober as I left (although something tells me that the town is not intended to be visited by sober people), with a slightly lighter wallet, and a few blisters. I enjoyed the trip, although I tend to think I might wait a while before heading back. It's a nice place to visit, but I don't think I'd care to live there.

2002-08-15T23:47:00.000-07:00

In the Animal kingdom, one of the traits that separates the stuff that separates higher lifeforms from the lower ones is the ability to learn. There's a lot of stuff out there that survives on little more than the ability to reproduce a lot. While the use of sheer numbers is a reasonably effective strategy to ensure the survival of the species, it also tends to be a good way to end up mired in a spot near the bottom of the food chain. For example, let's look at the example of a school of small fish, such as herring. This would appear to illustrate the "Brute force" approach often found in nature to ensure the survival of the species. As an individual fish in this school, chances are that all you care about is swimming around wherever the rest of the school goes (which means pretty much at random, influenced to some extent by the avaialbility of food), eating whatever looks like food, and if you last long enough, dropping a few million eggs on the seabed somewhere. Chances are, getting eaten by whaever happens to be in your general vicinity with a mouth big enough for you to fit inside is probably a way of life. Sure, you might get picked off at some point, but what does it matter? Surely they're not hungry enough to eat all of you at once, right? For the ones that do get eaten, there isn't much opportunity to learn from the experience. And if you happen to escape, you don't really learn anything either. All you know is that they didn't eat you, and they didn't eat most of your school. Then you remember that you're hungry, so you swim around until you find something to eat, eat it, and repeat ad nauseam.

I think I managed to ramble in completely the opposite direction of what I was trying to say, so I'll put this aside and continue it later..

2002-08-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

This time of year in Seattle is when Seafair takes place, the obligatory big annual civic festival that no self-respecting town of any size would be caught dead without. The highlights of this show annually are the General Motors Cup hydroplane races on Lake Washington, and a performance by the Blue Angels that amazes thousands of spectators and makes a mess of traffic for everyone else (for safety reasons, one of the major floating bridges across Lake Washington is closed during the performance.) For those who wish to express their civic pride from afar, the major events of Seafair (the Hydro races, the Blue Angels and the Torchlight Parade, which takes place approximately a week before) are televised. I seem to recall at one point that someone made the astute observation that in order for something to be news in this area, someone either has to be killed or it has to disrupt traffic. Maybe the bridge closures aren't for safety reasons after all, but are intended to make the whole thing newsworthy?

Then again, we also have a cable channel called Northwest Cable News here as well, which is a 24-hour news channel devoted stories in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. It seems to me that there just about isn't enough news in this region to fill up a 24-hour news channel by itself, but they manage somehow. Of course, they also seem to have an uncanny ability to launch into "Special Northwest Storm Coverage" at the drop of a hat if it starts to get a little bit windy somewhere in Eastern Washington (as long as it results in a traffic jam), or some oil tanker truck catches on fire on I-90, or somethign like that. They have an amazing ability to latch onto the smallest bit of something vaguely newsworthy, and immediately launch into five hours of exclusive coverage. But I digress.

For the most part, we've been content to just catch bits and pieces of the events on the TV coverage, and if we're lucky maybe get a quick look at the Blue Angels as they fly by near our house during their performance. This year, for little apparent reason other than having acquired free VIP tickets, I went to the actual events at the park. Since parking in that neighborhood would be somewhat close to impossible, we took a shuttle over from a conveniently large Boeing parking lot a few miles away. It had been quite a while since I had taken a ride on a city bus, and the one we rode on was one of the newer ones in the fleet. In spite of this, the ride was unusually bumpy. I couldn't figure out why. It almost seemed as if the bus driver had forgotten to take the snow chains off six months ago. The roads maty have been partially to blame for this condition, but I'm starting to wonder if buses are actually built to make all sorts of clattering noises. Maybe that's their way of telling you that your buses are old and decrepit, and need to be replaced? Of course, when the buses in question are essentially brand new, you have to wonder.

Anyway, after surviving the bus ride over without too many parts falling out and most of the loose change I had still in my pocket, we arrived at the site... Or so we thought. As the driver stopped to let us all out, a Metro supervisor frantically stopped the bus driver, and informed her that this wasn't the place we were supposed be let off the bus. This wouldn't have been a big deal if not for the fact that the doors had been opened and people already began to get off. They literally made everyone who got off get back on the bus so we could be unloaded at the "proper" location. When all was said and done, we arrived at the unloading zone five minutes later... A BLOCK AWAY! So after all this, they made everyone get back on the bus, wait for traffic to clear, drive one block further away from our destination, and then get off there. And they wonder why people around here don't like riding the bus as they keep campaigning for tax hikes to fund their operation.

After hiking the not insignificant distance from the bus drop-off to the actual location of the event, we found the VIP area for which we had tickets. We arrived at the Southwest Airlines "suite" (a fenced-off area with a large tent and some tables and chairs set up outside) and found what may be some of the nicest food ever associated with Southwest Airlines: Hot dogs and hamburgers. The star attraction at the tent,at least for the vast majority of attendees in the VIP area, was probably the free beer. Although I don't drink, another of the items available at the tent struck me as being one of those "Now why didn't I think of that?" things: Canned bottled water. Standard non-carbonated filtered spring water, just in an aluminum can rather than a bottle. For some reason I can't quite ascertain right offhand, that sounds just wrong.

I drank four cans of the stuff.

Since the Blue Angels show was over, and most of the stuff outside the area we were in was intended to get us to buy new cars, we spent a good deal of time staring out at the lake, watching buoys bob up and down in the water, and occasionally seeing a boat pass by at unsafe speed, leaving a giant rooster tail. In the grand scheme of things in sports, boat racing tends to be somewhere fairly low on the popularity scale. If it weren't for the fact that they can occasionally provide material for one of those "America's Funniest Sports Injuries" shows that various cable channels seem to be so fond of, few people would pay much attention to the sport at all. However, among racing vehicles, hydroplanes are a rather interesting creature. What you have in a typical hydroplane is a fiberglass shell with a large turbine engine on the back, and a few sponsor decals holding the thing together. It's the kind of hobby that generally requires a callous disregard for personal safety, a whole lot of money, and possibly a few accidental bumps to the head earlier in life for someone to engage in. These boats are capable of well over 140MPH in good conditions, and there seems to be no shortage of people who would be willing to try it out.

Anyway, since this entry has taken approximately four days to write from start to end, I figure I better post it at some point.

2002-07-28T17:08:00.000-07:00

Some people long for a day when they can get away from it all, and find a nice quiet place in the woods to settle down. Others seek the peace and solitude of a quiet, secluded village where everybody knows everyone else. And still others long for wide open spaces to call their own.

I'm not one of them.

The first sixteen years of my mortal existence were spent in the mountains of Northern New Mexico. For a vast majority of my formative years, I lived in Los Alamos, a quiet little town notable primarily for blowing up stuff, and occasionally burning down in a large-scale episode of unplanned urban renewal. Chances are that you've heard of Los Alamos, probably while studying World War II in history class, as the Atomic Bomb was invented there. For the most part, it's a quiet little town up in the picturesque Jemez mountains, and if it wasn't for the sprawling complex of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the town probably wouldn't exist. While the town itself was a nice enough place to live, it was pretty sheltered. Sure, the town had some stores, but shopping for many basic items required a 35-mile drive to Santa Fe. Although a Wal-Mart opened in Espanola after we left(approximately fiftteen miles from town, as the crow flies, about twenty by road,) someone who lived in Los Alamos recently described it as "Not a typical, happy, rolling back prices Wal-Mart, but a 'Notify your next of kin you're shopping there' Wal-Mart."

Even in Santa Fe, there was quite a bit of stuff that you wouldn't be able to find. For example, there was not a decent home improvement store to be found in Santa Fe, nor could any of the large "Warehouse club" stores our family shops at be found there until a Sam's Club opened there about a year and a half before we moved. For any of those, we had to drive to Albuquerque, which was approximately a 200-mile round trip. Because of this, a weekend project had an annoying tendency to take two weekends, because just getting the needed supplies was often an all-day project by itself. Even going to the supermarket was a project, since our house was a good 4-5 miles from the downtown area.

Well, the first thing you know, old Dad's a millionaire...(well, not really, but it was about this time that we decided that spending the rest of his life in what was essentially a government town wasn't going to be such a hot idea.) The kin fols said, "Dad move away from there!" (My dad's late older sister convinced him that it was probably a good time to move.) They said, "California is the place you wanna be" (Actually, not California, but the Seattle area.) So they loaded up the truck, and they moved to Beverly. (Well, Redmond actually, but it is still a bit of a yuppie town.)

In retrospect, the contrast is pretty startling. Our house is perched on the lower edge of a hill which affords us an excellent view of the roof of an apartment complex and shopping center below (and on occasion, Mount Rainier on a clear day.) When we need to go to the store, we merely have to walk down the hill behind our house a short distance, and find some way across the usually busy avenue. To acquire most other everyday needs, we need only to drive the short distance to Target, only a couple of blocks from here. Within four miles from our house, we have a well-stocked Costco to handle the big stuff. And as of Thursday, we now have a brand new Home Depot within walking distance of our house. Everything else (books, computer software, and stuff like that) isn't much further away. If I could find the right job (The buildings in which Microsoft does all of their PC and XBox game development are within a few blocks of here,) I could practically live my entire life without leaving a ten-mile radius of my house!

Naturally, my Dad, who is a home improvement junkie, is quite excited by this. Of course, we lived within ten miles of two different Home Depots and a Lowe's already, but this new store means that the supplies for new home improvement projects can be acquired virtually on a whim. I've already begun searching for any relevant twelve-step programs that might be able to intervene should it become necessary to do so. Of course, I don't mind much myself, as I've been known to embark a time or two on various half-baked schemes that involved the extensive use of building materials and other such supplies.

Yet, for all this civilization, there is one thing I still miss about life in New Mexico: the food. Everyone I know who has lived in New Mexico at some previous point in their life will tell you the same thing. Of all the time they spent there, the only thing they miss at all is New Mexican food, which is essentially similar to common types of Mexical food, albeit with an emphasis on the excellent New Mexico Green Chile that is grown in the region. Every time one of us is in the area, we make it a point to bring back as much Green Chile as we can. One of these days, me and my parents are going to have to take a trip down there just to go eat at various places, maybe visit Los Alamos for an afternoon, then grab as much chile as we can carry and head back up here.

Nice place to visit, but we wouldn't want to live there again.

2002-07-25T00:02:00.000-07:00

Today I got a chance to visit some of the people who I worked with in my previous job at MS, and also realized how little things change in some regards. One of them was having a birthday, and a surprise party was planned. After dealing with miscellaneous crises that happened to pop up at inconvenient times beforehand, I was finally able to escape and drive over to campus, where the party was being held. It was nice to get a chance to talk to some people, many of whom I haven't been able to talk to in a year or more. After the usual "Surprise! Happy Birthday!" bits and obligatory singing took place, that was about the point that things started to go downhill.

Given some of the past history involved, as well as the personalities of some of the people there, I should have seen the warning signs beforehand, and known that putting that many of those people in one small conference room with a cake was probably not such a hot idea after all. It started with some of the little toy stress balls being tossed around, with increasing velocity. It wasn't long before other projectiles began to be tossed. It was about this time that I figured a rapid relocation to the other side of the room was in order, as the commotion started to move in the direction of the birthday cake. Finally, the inevitable buildup reached it's logical conclusion, and the cake fight began. I suppose I should have known something like this would happen. It's happened before (I'll probably save that particular war story for another time), and probably will happen again at some point, whether I'm present or not.

When the frosting cleared, I thought I managed to escape unscathed, but I think I ended up with a spot or two of purple frosting that might not come out in the wash. How much food coloring does it take to make purple frosting anyway? The world may never know.

2002-07-23T13:01:00.000-07:00

Recently at work, we have begun to use SAP for the validation of invoices created by the system we are working on. This may be the first application that I have ever used that appears to be designed primarily for the purpose of requiring expensive consultants to run it. For example, say you want to print an invoice:

How you would print an invoice in most applications:

-Open the Invoice.

-Hit the "Print" button.

-Watch invoice print.

How to print an invoice in SAP:

-Open SAP.

-Type in VF02" to bring up the appropriate screen to select an invoice.

-Enter the ten-digit invoice number. If you're lucky, the invoice actually shows up.

-When the invoice is on screen, select the "Header" menu and select "Output". This brings up a form with several complex-looking data entry fields.

-Select a blank field and type in some code like "ZSI2" or "Z4SP", depending on the type of invoice being printed, and the desired output. Hope you didn't select the "spam half the company" option.

-Double-click the field you just entered, and type "LOCAL" in the Logical Destination box to ensure that your invoice doesn't end up printing in some dark alley in Singapore.

-Once this is done, click the "Further data" button.

-Select a Dispatch time of "4" to tell SAP to print the invoice sometime during this millennium.

-After all this is done, click the "Back" button three times, start chanting "There's no place like home," and finally click the save button. If you did this all correctly, you'll get a printout of your invoice. If you didn't, you probably faxed your credit card info to some WaReZ d00dZ in Czechloslovakia.

It's good to see that applications are getting to be more user friendly these days.

2002-07-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

In what seems to be an increasingly common use of my time on the weekends, I found myself once again spending a good chunk of the day fixing yet another broken computer here in the den. Even though we have three computers in here, it can prove to be a major source of annoyance when one of them is down, since that often means that the other two are pretty much constantly occupied. It also means that I end up being the one who has to fix everything. This time around, it ended up requiring a motherboard swap (something, it seems, that I've had plenty of practice with as of late.) I figured as long as I was replacing the motherboard, I might as well put in the new CPU (a 1.3 Duron) I've been hanging onto for a while now. Along with this, I also installed a new HSF unit, which makes the computer sound a lot less like a jet engine at close range and more like a vacuum cleaner. Maybe this will make up for my now eerily quiet main machine moved out of it's overclocker's case?

2002-07-19T19:06:00.000-07:00

Anyway, in order to get things started here, I'll repost one of my more recent writings:

I went and had fish for dinner last night...

...And a funny thing happened. They forgot to cook it. I figured that the chef must have been absent-minded, or the kitchen was really rushed or something like that, because it looked like all they did was take a little piece of fish, throw it on top of a little bit of squished together rice, and serve it that way.

I thought briefly of point this out to someone, but I thought better of it. The last thing I wanted was to be confronted by an angry chef wielding one or more of the rather impressive (and incredibly sharp) knives it looked like they had in the place. Besides, oddly enough, I looked and found that they were forgetting to cook anybody else's food in the place either. That just seemed a little odd. Nobody even seemed to notice (or even care) that the were eating raw fish. I guess if you can find the right kind of customers (for more help on this subject, I suggest you might consult the collected works of P.T. Barnum) you can convince people that it is a Good Thing(TM) that they're being served these tiny little bits of marginally identifiable raw fish on little balls of rice and charging them $4 a pop for the privilege. They even have this cute little name for it, something that sounds kind of like "Soo-shee"?

Somehow, when I woke up this morning, the thought never crossed my mind that I would wind up sitting in some little corner restaurant in Belltown (one of the many downtown Seattle neighborhoods populated primarily by people your mother probably woudn't approve of) and staring at tiny little pieces of various seafoods to make absolutely sure (for the umpteenth time) that the one piece of fish didn't just twitch. Yet, through circumstances that I haven't entirely determined yet, I found myself following several of the co-workers with whom I had just spent over ten hours in an inadequately ventilated conference room to Shiro's Sushi, allegedly one of the better Japanese restaurants in the Seattle metropolitan area.

In a futile effort not to look too much like a gaijin, I decided that since I had not in recent memory seen any reports of multitudes of people keeling over and dying after eating at this place, I figured that I might as well try some of the stuff. That which does not kill us makes us stronger, right? (Of course, that which does kill us makes us dead, but that's beside the point.) Besides, I didn't see the Kiddy-burger anywhere on the menu, so I was kind of stuck.

Of course, just about everyone else I was with was well acquainted with the proper methods for consuming raw fish. I scanned the menu for ingredients whose names I recognized, and after several minutes of deliberation located a couple that looked relatively safe. Having little or no idea of the proper ettiquette for eating sushi, I tried to just remain quiet and unassuming. This worked for about fifteen seconds. I'm sure the people who work in Sushi restaurants probably shudder at the behavior of people like myself with no idea of their culture's table manners, but since nobody there brought up the topic of Seppuku, I think I managed to get out of it without offending any of the really mean spirits.

Finally, the food (or something vaguely resembling it) arrived. It was at this point that the sudden realization dawned on me that I had totally forgotten what it was that I ordered. After digging through the cobweb-cluttered recesses of my short-term memory, I finally managed to come up with a pretty good idea of what was what. After a brief tutorial on the proper use of soy sauce, I selected one of the more food-like substances in appearance on the plate, and readied for the kill (actually, it may have theorteically been dead by the time it reached me)...

...And promptly found that I had greatly overestimated my skills with chopsticks. At least there could be no doubt that whatever it was, it was dead now. Finally, after a halfheated attempt to reassemble the carefully prepared nigiri, I finally managed to get a hold of it, and work up enough courage to open my mouth and take a bite. It was at this point that I was to become acquainted with the wonderous substance known as Wasabi. My heritage as a native of the state of New Mexico has given me a greater tolerance for spicy foods than a good chunk of the general population, but I found that Wasabi works in a far different way than chile peppers, heading straight to the nose. The stuff looks innocent enough, but can be downright mean if you aren't careful.

Once my brain somehow decided to go into denial about the fact that I was eating raw fish, I was actually able to enjoy several of the selections I had made. In fact, I even ordered a couple more of the surfclam, one type that I thought had a particularly interesting texture. All things considered, I probably would eat sushi again if I was offered the opportunity, but I still don't think anyone could pay me enough to get me to eat some of the stuff they serve on Iron Chef. I also tend to think that for the time being, I'll stick to the local Teriyaki take-out place if I ever decide I need a fix of Japanese food. Nonetheless, I guess that this means I have now eaten sushi, and lived to tell the tale. Maybe next, I'll go try out Dim Sum somewhere...

...Then again, I'm not pushing my luck.

-=>V<=-

2002-07-19T18:58:00.000-07:00

Hmmm.. A giant, blank text box. I guess this thing expects me to post something here? I'm not entirely sure what it is that I just got myself into here, but I think I'll figure it out soon enough. Anyway, I'll probably use this space for some of my various ramblings. That pesky thing called writer's block just showed up, and compels me to hit the post button...