VICTORY. Finally, LiveJournal has implemented Facebook Connect! The original home of OpenID has fallen to Facebook Connect! (well, probably because Connect implemented OAuth)
I am about to embark on a performance art project. If you have an iPhone or Android (v2.0+) and wish to participate, send me a message with your physical mailing address.
Nation, it's good that you elected Obama. But that basically just brings you up from a D- to a C+. It's a definite improvement, but let's not forget that he's pretty much (from a policy and issues standpoint) equivalent to the neo-cons in Canada and many other Western democracies. You've still got a long ways to go. My response to hysterical right-wingers who claim Obama is "the most extreme liberal ever" is "no, you are completely mistaken, even though I wish you weren't."
Because for the first time, I am able to acquire the latest Dar Williams album (a month after release; I am late) by downloading it on Amazon instead of physical CD.
While Kimberly was getting her hair done, I waited with Caturday, walking around the neighborhood. It turned out that her fancy hair salon was in Menlo Park, right across the street from the new Tesla dealership, and they were open. (pic, pic) Apparently the final assembly line is being built right behind the showroom, so the parts are shipped to it and the cars are put together right there.
If the technology were invented to flawlessly and truly allow people to change their sex at will, what would it do to the current dialogues about gender? How would the world in general change?
I'd call someone who I knew wasn't home and leave a voicemail saying, "This plane crash isn't an accident! It's an assassination! Don't let them get away with this!"
Man, that'd have them going in circles for weeks. I'd probably mention some cryptic clue so they'd have something to obsess over.
Well, Friday Night Internet was kind of a bust. I suppose a website whose entire point was anticorrelated against traffic patterns on the internet was a dubious idea at best. Thanks to a few dedicated users who contributed most of the material (read: blk).
Because I like the design, I am thinking of turning it into a small invite-only forum. However, that's dubious too - pros: open all the time, cons: invite-only means small user population. I'm thinking the old Forum, which was a pretty lively place with a limited set of regulars. LiveJournal is too spread out and there doesn't seem to be a great sense of community (and its communities kind of suck, for some reason). Opinions?
I find it ridiculous that in order to get wget installed on my Mac, I have to download and install XCode (1.1 GB) in order to get gcc, in order to compile wget.
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It will further amuse you to know that I am doing all this just so that I can avoid clicking six file links and selecting "Save As" for each. Uh, I mean, it's an investment in a future free of such click-and-save-as's*.
After my post on Shania Twain, Kimberly noted that a mashup of "Party for Two" (originally with Shania Twain and the lead singer from Sugar Ray, Mark McGrath) featuring Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could be pretty funny.
Taking showers at night Living in neighborhoods where white people live China Michael Chang Referring to white people as "Americans" Introducing their American friends to dim sum Classical music Classical music on NPR Always keeping the car tuned to NPR Explaining that not all Asians are Chinese/Japanese/etc Japanese cars Hot beverages (only) Protesting ethnic stereotypes Buffets PhDs Chinese grocery stores Serving fruit to guests as a snack Asking other parents who their kid's piano teacher is Covering things in plastic Using the dishwasher as a drying rack Paying monthly credit card bills in full Giving their kids popular American names Saltines
An excerpt, which shows that he understands LiveJournal's userbase better than any of its previous owners:
"LiveJournal general audience divided into three groups. There is a silent majority, which enjoys LJ for their needs and absolutely indifferent to who, where, what money, for whatever reason, this resource has created, developed and supported. There is a "positive minority" (in the Russian segment - approximately 7-10 percent.). These people like LJ, they consider it a useful and want to see it developed. They helped us, including - constructive criticism, which we are, in fact, correct mistakes. And there is a third category of people. They continually, throughout the history of LiveJournal make loud initiatives, which aim - to prejudice LJ, its creators, ruin, sentence, endanger. Basically, these people are motivated by the desire to attract attention. And that every time they succeeded.
Their rhetoric virtually the same - regardless of whether a person writes in English in California or in Russian in Moscow. These people in their time demanded the resignation of Brad Fitspatrika when he headed LJ alone. Required to call each advertiser, collaborating with LJ, and his reputation in danger of harm if he did not cease to be in the LJ advertising. Demanded repeal every innovation in the LJ. Prizyvali users go to a competing platform on one occasion, then on another ..."
This democratic nomination is shaping up pretty badly.
You pretty much expect Republicans to do things like using innuendo to make race an issue, but now basically half the Democratic party is doing it too. And then there's also the misogyny in a lot of the Hillary criticism. Mind you, all of this is coming from the Democratic party itself - we haven't even gotten around to what the Republican party is going to do.
So we're basically just going to get to see a general election that's going to be filled with thinly-veiled racism, or thinly-veiled sexism. The worst part is that I'm not all that surprised that it's turning out this way.
When people ask me, "Why do you hate America so much?" - well, my answer is going to be, "Hmm, well, let me start with two things... 1) the RACISM, and 2) the SEXISM."
Oh yeah, and there's also the bit where if Obama takes the nomination, the Republicans will try to smear him by scaring all of Middle America with "Obama is a Muslim" slurs - because apparently in America, Muslim = Nazi.
1.) The quip "Now they have two problems" has become one of the most tremendously useful ways of compactly describing why a proposed solution is bad. I've found it useful both at work and at home.
2.) I have solved the eternal mystery of where missing socks go when they disappear in your dryer. You know, when you put a pair of socks in the laundry and then you take them out (and you double-check to make sure you got everything out of the dryer) but then when you finish folding the laundry, you find that you only have one sock in the pair. I know where that other sock's gone.
Two Komodo dragons have hatched at the Sedgwick County Zoo, apparently without the fertilization of a male...
No! Wrong! The immaculate conception does not refer to the conception of Jesus without direct fertilization; the immaculateness refers to the fact that Mary was conceived free of original sin!
So in fact, ALL Komodos are immaculate because animals cannot sin against God (they have no souls), but not because they are conceived with or without fertilization!
God, the ignorance of reporters in the popular media about topics like science, technology, and religious dogma rankles me to no end.
We have received the Kindle and I have finished reading a book (review: good) on it. Kimberly is currently reading that Stephen Colbert book (review: funny) on it while breastfeeding. So here's the review:
This is not a complete review, as I have not exhaustively sampled all the features of the Kindle, so you can consider this a review by "a guy who bought one and just uses it to read stuff."
I'm probably not going to send it back (apparently Amazon's been very good about returns), but I would only recommend that you buy this if you also have $400* to blow on satisfying your weird pathological problem with books as a physical entity (or if you just can't wait for things to ship).
I also wrote this review while carrying a baby in a sling.
Today I solved a combinatorics problem. I've been slowly solving the problems on Project Euler as a vehicle for learning Python (last time I learned a new language, I created a web-based expense tracker and a matchmaking application, but this time I didn't want to do anything that extravagant). Most of the problems on that site involve programming in some way, but that one I worked out using pencil and paper (or rather, TextEdit and hand calculator).
The answer turned out to be quite simple, but it took me a fair amount of time to do it (and an unnecessarily roundabout method, involving distributing balls into bins). Also, I'm not very good at combinatorics, since the last time I took a class in it was over 10 years ago, and I got a C in that class. On the other hand, my skills haven't gotten any worse, if you allow for having to look up some of the basics on Wikipedia midway through.
The most important bit though, is that I did the whole thing while carrying a baby in a sling. I would post video evidence of this, but it really wasn't that cool to watch.
Between breastfeedings today, Kimberly managed to play a 4-song set with the band which enabled us to get the bodyguards. Unfortunately (ironically), the baby woke up and needed to be changed just as we finished Enter Sandman.
Caturday can now apparently see objects and track them.
This morning Kimberly put her down to go to the bathroom and I watched as she turned and watched Kimberly walk across the room. Now we have put her in chair and she does not get upset from not being held because she can see her mommy sitting nearby.
Apparently the brain cells grew overnight because as of yesterday she could not do this.
"Bose returned to India in 1885, carrying a letter from Fawcett, the economist to Lord Ripon, Viceroy of India. On Lord Ripon’s request Sir Alfred Croft, the Director of Public Instruction, appointed Bose officiating professor of physics in Presidency College. The principal C. H. Tawney protested against the appointment but had to accept it.
Bose was not provided with facilities for research. On the other hand, he was 'victim of racialism' with regard to his salary. In those days, an Indian professor was paid Rs. 200 per month, while an European drew Rs. 300 per month. Since Bose was officiating, he was offered a salary of only Rs. 100 per month. With remarkable sense of self respect and national pride he decided on a new form of protest. Bose refused to accept the salary cheque. In fact, he continued his teaching assignment for three years without salary. Finally both the Director of Public Instruction and the Principal of the Presidency College fully realised the value of Bose’s skill in teaching and also his lofty character. As a result his appointment was made permanent with retrospective effect. He was given the full salary for the previous three years in lumpsum."
What I don't get is - isn't Stockton where people go to find cheap houses? If I were going to overspend on a house, I'd stay here in the Bay Area or move to Hawaii.
I found out that the best sushi restaurant in the area actually happens to be two minutes from our house. We've lived here for two years and never suspected this, since it's just this little place in a strip mall between a Baskin Robbins and a dry cleaners, but the other day I happened to look up their yelp review, and now I've been there twice to try it and it's great. Since it's so close and we don't quite have time to cook, I've been eating high-quality take-out sushi for dinner (I also just got Kimberly to eat some tonight). To make matters "worse," I haven't yet figured out their portion sizes, so I've been consistently over-ordering (they give you huge pieces of sashimi) so I am basically sitting here in a sushi coma. In theory, if I can order the correct portion size, their prices should be very reasonable.
2007 was a much better year than the last one. No one died, I worked on a lot of interesting projects at work (I guess I did last year too), and we successfully had a baby.
We received an email today from my parents telling me that today was Caturday's "Mooniversary." Apparently in Chinese culture it's customary to celebrate the first full month after the baby's birth. They did not specific the method(s) by which we were supposed to execute this celebration, so I mooned Caturday.* (UPDATE: info)
I've recently started doing this thing where I thank random service people for working odd or difficult shifts, like the late shift or on holidays. The idea is that if you're working a service job, it's probably a crappy job, and it's even worse when your boss gives you the night shift or tells you that you have to work on a holiday (I imagine them at a party with their friends or family and they're putting on their coat saying, "Sorry guys, I gotta go - I have to work"). Also, since most people aren't extreme extroverts, interacting with strangers all day is probably really wearying - it's just one strange face after another, and some of them are rude to you, and usually the best you can hope for is that the customer will be polite. It's gotta be pretty soul-sucking (actually, I guess I know it was, since I worked at Burger King for awhile). So I've adopted this habit where if I'm out late at night - I do a lot of our grocery shopping around 10 or 11pm - or it's a holiday and I'm out getting some food, I make a point of thanking them for working the late shift, or working on a holiday. Today I got some takeout at McDonalds (nothing else was open), and I thanked both the people working the drive-thru for working on New Years Day. I hope it made their workday better.
1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before? Um, two women at once. Ha ha, kidding. MAYBE. Became a father. I was promoted at work. Lots of daunting new challenges in both of those.
2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? No, and No. I'm not perfect, and one of my flaws is failing to adhere to common customs.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Yeah, my wife - and I'm pretty sure it's mine...
4. Did anyone close to you die? Luckily, no.
5. What countries did you visit? None. There was much sedentery-ness this year, with the pregnancy.
6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007? A girlfriend. [okay, really I just copy-pasted this from viajes and it amuses me to leave this line in here or maybe not.] I'm not sure what I lacked in 2007 that I'd really like to have, since I have my baby now. 7. What date from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? 01 Dec 2007, I guess. I've always found these things silly, but yeah, the birth of my daughter.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? BELLIGERENT AND NUMEROUS I failed to go "Bwahahaha, it's ALIVE!" in the delivery room after Caturday was born, but I did play "Final Countdown" on the iPhone just prior.
9. What was your biggest failure? I failed to learn to play Sweet Child O' Mine in Guitar Hero 2 on Expert while blindfolded.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Hey, none! Cool! There are 5 hours left until the new year, so I hope I don't trip going down the stairs or something...
UPDATE 2008 Jan 01 17:27: Success!
11. What was the best thing you bought? iPhone. This thing truly is awesome.
This is the first time I've made a careful reading of the book within a book in Orwell's 1984. What is remarkable is that it is now an almost incredibly accurate description of how American society is run (seriously, read it), especially insofar as advocated by the mainstream conservative movement. And Orwell wrote this in 1948.
Apparently this thing arrived two days ago but I assumed it was just some other less interesting Xmas-related delivery. I finally got it hooked up to the internet (I somehow can't get it connected to our home wireless) and am posting this from the laptop itself. It is really small.
