Congrats Bro, Congrats!
Mood:  happy
Topic: Family
Big congrats to my brother, Dan, who is most likely getting the prestigious NSA scholarship. All he's waiting for is clearance so unless they take to heart any of his blog posts about Bush or mine - he's pretty much in the clear. Any way, the NSA is party-independent: they have to exist no matter who's in office and they work through many presidencies. Neither he nor I said anything that inflammatory - just the typical criticisms of some dissapointed young men.

Gah!
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Summer General
Apparently if you're over 20k miles from the switching station you can't get DSL and I'm like 20.1k miles away so I can't get it. Too bad no one said anything when I was ordering it! So now it'll be about 2 wks before we can get some cable internet setup. Until then I've got some limited surfing that I can do at work. Everything else is going to have to wait. Grr....

P&G, Iraq, and DSL (unrelated)
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Summer General
P&G
P&G culture seems to love acting like a stereotypical woman, where nothing said is ever to be taken at face value. To fail to read between the lines could cost someone their job. For example, "you don't have to go to that meeting if you don't want" means "go to that meeting or I'll know you're a slacker". "Are you handling your work ok?" means "If you aren't swamped with work you're doing too little, so let me know and I'll give you more to do." And so on....it's a pain, but if you approach it like one of those challenging video games (ie RPG) where everything someone says is a puzzle to solved - then it's not too bad.

Iraq
The newly selected interim president of Iraq wasted no time in smacking the US around. His diatribe blamed the US for nearly everything that has gone wrong. The US has provided bad security and let anyone in the borders. Sure dude - it's not the fault of the Iraqis who are shooting, blowing up, and looting the country - it's the US' fault. But, Condoleeza gave an intelligent reply when questioned about it this morning. Basically, she said that she wants the Iraqi government to be a real government, not a puppet regime. Also, if the official is to get elected he needs to play the people just like the politicians in most of the free world do. So her assessment is that it's all good. I agree with her as long as this new president doesn't incite new violence against the American soldiers there who are just trying to keep the peace. (Most of them anyway)

DSL
My DSL modem hasn't arrived yet - hopefully it gets here soon. I want to be able to go online at home where I can surf until my heart's content, talk to my friends, and not be on the company clock. Until then I can only check my email and write a few paragraphs here.

Hopefully I'll be seeing you in another post today at home.

Quotes of the Day
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: Quotes
"Speak English Tony. I thought you guys spawned the language." -Avi in Snatch

"EQ (emotional intelligence quotient) is getting what you want without even trying" - Eric Mesa

Why the passing "how are you" is a little annoying....
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Summer General
I know I said that I wouldn't be writing until Monday, but once the genie's out of the bottle....

Anyway, this one is a little bit shorter, so it shouldn't be too bad. Basically, there's just one thing that I dislike about the passing "how are you", or when you're walking in the opposite direction as someone else and then instead of just saying "hi" you say "how are you?"

Basically after the person issues the greeting, it takes time to register the question and then think of a response. (ie, "doing good" "great" "crappy") Also you have to consider if you have some kind of relationship with this person that would elicit a different response (ie saying "sir" or "buddy") and although the mind works very fast and this takes but a few seconds, elementary physics tells you that when two bodies are moving at each other with roughly the same speed then the apparent speed is as if the observer was moving twice as fast because the distance between them is shrinking at twice the rate.

Therefore, by the time you're responding, the other person is already next to you and about to pass you. It's rather inconvenient to have to turn around to ask them how they're doing so you don't have the chance to reciprocate. You could yell it out, but because of the way that the human ears face, it will sound faint and the response the other person sends will be even harder to perceive. So you don't say anything and then you (or at least I)feel a bit priggish for not having responded.

Of course, if it's that important for me to response I could turn around and say it, but, as an engineer, I value efficiency above almost everything else and it just wouldn't be efficient for my reaching my destination for me to turn around for a greeting that, at any rate, didn't really mean much to the other person. If they really cared how I was doing they would have stopped, allowing me time to actually say how I was feeling. After all, all your really have time for in that situation is a one or two word response. Anything more than that and the other person won't hear it.

That's why I believe that a "how are you" is not a proper passing greeting. Instead people should say "hi", "Hey", "'sup", stuff like that where there's no reason the second person can't reciprocate easily.

Is this trivial? Yeah, it could be a Seinfeld episode. (if it wasn't - who knows!) There are people dying around the world and all sorts of injustices and after complaining yesterday around my crappy cabin (at least I *have* a place to live in) today I'm a little perturbed by greetings. But hey - such is the luxury of living in the US. Hopefully we don't meet our Rome-like (or Babylon, Persia, Greece-like) demise any time soon. I rather enjoy prosperity.

One last note I just realized. Isn't it neat the God-given intelligence we have as humans. I mean, to be able to know rationally AND consciously that I am filling this post with trivialities and that others will actually agree with me and at the same time know that it is something trivial and not really worth complaint is something truly amazing! Wow....just think about that for a little while - your mind is capable of holding two opposing thoughts at once and not have a melt-down. A computer could NEVER do that - it would cause a system error. Anyway, I thought that was neat - welcome to my world and a peek inside my head.

The Reason for the Pause
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Summer General
Hey, you may be wondering, "what happened? Didn't he say that the summer would be bountiful with posts."

Yeah, I did say that - and it will be....once I get my computer. See, with all the of the rigamarol of finishing finals, getting to my brother's graduation, and then getting up here to the plant, (which was an ordeal in itself and which I will recount shortly) I wasn't able to get my computer up here. What that means for me is that I'm bored out of my mind in the crappy little cabin I'm staying in - or I would be had I not bought 3 books at the airport instead of just one.

So, if not this weekend, then surely on Monday the plentiful posts will begin.

Now, a quick recap of my trip up here. It began with me having to leave my brother's graduation about a half hour early because of the fact that I had to catch the last plane to Mehoopany. Then on a half hour's worth of traffic we "glided" to the airport. I flew into Atlanta without much happening, but then my plane, which for some reason was coming from Des Moines, was delayed and instead of leaving at 9:30 I left at midnight. This got me to my final destination at 3 am and the car rental companies were closed so I couldn't rent a car to get home. Since I was supposed to rent a car, I didn't have much cash with me so a 1.5 hour cab ride was out of the question. I stayed at the local holiday inn express which didn't leave me feeling much smarter as the commercials tote, but much sleepier than I cared to be. The culprit was a room that refused to get cool thus keeping me up most of the night.

The next day I got my rental car and drove straight to work (on 3 hrs or less of sleep). After taking a nice 20 minute "detour" in the opposite direction of the plant, I arrived at work. I worked from then until 3 pm and got to the cabin and dropped off my suitcase.

Then I went out and got lunch and groceries. I read for a while, waiting for my house-mate to arrive so that I could meet him and get to know him a little. The lack of sleep finally caught up with me and I succumbed to an hour and one half of sleep. As I was hitting the snooze button on my trusty cell phone/alarm clock (currently only useful as an alarm clock since there's no service out here) my fiancee called and we had a fun little chat about our respective fates that day. As a sidenote here related to part of our conversation, on the one hand it always makes me proud when I hear tales of other guys who were looking at my girl wishing that she were theirs because it validates my belief that she is the pinnacle of beauty and whatnot (not that I deny that there are other beauties, nor do I believe her to be the MOST beautiful, but I see her as being in the top percentile - better looking than 99% of the female pop) however, it also anerves me that they were enjoying her looks without at the same time fearing that I would quickly end their enjoyment as the quickly realized that she was with me. So, it's a catch-22 and I'm often left with a complicated sea of thoughts after such a story.

Then I realized that I didn't have soap or shampoo so I went to the store and bought some. I came back and ate dinner - pork chop and salad (which I'll be eating then until Thursday for Friday I'll be back to see my girl). Then, since our cabin lacks cable Tv and since I find little of worth on network Tv, I was back to my books. (refreshing to be able to read them so freely and prose - wonderful, non-textbook prose) Then I was enabled to enjoy the virtual company of my fiancee once more when she called me and we spoke for 30-45 minutes.

Hanging up with her, I showered and finished off my book.

Thus began my adventure this summer. As veterans of this blog know, I often don't prattle on about such banal things as how my day was - let that be for the more diary-like blogs (unless something extraordinary happens in the course of a day), however, I just felt .... moved is the wrong word.... w/e ... the need to communicate that little section of my life. My "hardships" - hardships of a spoiled college kid used to the order of his apartment and disliking the very, very monastary-like housing he's been put in; as well as frustrated at the travel arrangements and the fact that planes are sometimes unavailable for flight as they should be.

But I must stop rambling...don't want to scare the newbies away. Anyway, the point of this whole diatribe is to let my readers (frequent and new) know that, come Monday (or possibly this weekend), there will be many, many more posts - so visit often.

PS - wow....boy did I use parenthesis in that post!
---
edit - added the missing word "know" to the last paragraph

Last of the Academic Quotes until next August
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Quotes

"If you're alive and cancel life insurance then they won the bet. If you are dead you won the bet but you won't care" - Prof Loucks

"No he didn't get any sex" - Laura

"It's not MIMO - it's MOFO" - Eric Mesa

"In ECE 301 you should have seen enough Fourier to choke a horse" - Prof Fine

Creative Expression
Mood:  chatty
Topic: News
I am currently rendering my latest music video which will then be put up on my server. For those of you who haven't been to my drop the bomb productions link on my server, my previous 3 videos were pretty light-hearted. One was based on anime, another on Mario Kart, and finally one with Smash Brothers as the video source.

My latest one, however, is a lot more serious. As you know from my recent posts, the prisoner abuse scandal has really gotten me emotional. As I did during september 11 (that video is also on the site) I decided to use my creative skills with video editing to release my emotions and communicate them in one of the ways that I know best.

The video isn't perfectly polished, but it only took me a few hours to do it. With these emotional videos I find it best to just finish it while the emotions are still there.

I should have a few different bandwidth versions up within a few hours and if not by then I'll definitely have them up by tomorrow night.

Finally, I have to say that I have utmost respect for our troops in Iraq. While I'm not in support of the war, I am in support of our troops. They are there and they're dealing with a lot of tough crap and so support them even if you think they're there for bogus reasons. So don't view this video as being against the troops - it's more against the situation in Iraq.

Done! I'm back! (for a few months)
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: "Listening" - Christafari
What a sense of accomplishment one can feel after 2 exams and a final lab report all done on the same day. Wow, I have yet to feel the true extent of my freedom. I'd been slowly taking little excursions of freedom these last few weeks - a game here or there, a chat with an old friend, but now I'm truly done! I could work on my server all day long if I wished to. Or I could blog until my wrists hurt. I may play Sim City 4 into the night or I may try Tropico which I bought a few weeks ago as bargain software. It's great to have that freedom.

It's also exciting that I'll be able to drive again in a few days. Other than Spring Break I haven't driven since Christmas Break and I really miss it. I'm not really into cars or customizing them and I only know how to do maintainence on my car, I can't make it all l33t like I can with my computer, but I love driving. Some people complain about long commutes but I don't mind them at all. The only thing that gets on my nerves is traffic because then you're not moving and you might as well just sit in your car in the driveway. Also gas is a pain right now (darn those oil-rich countries... at least we have a stable country q:op ), but I have a nice fuel-efficient Honda Civic, not a gas guzzling SUV so I get a cool 38 MPG or at least I did before my brother started driving it. Even if I only get 30 MPG it'll be twice what my mom gets in her lexus AND she puts in the premium gas into the car because that's what the manual suggests and frankly for how much they cost I'd certainly do what the manual suggests.

It stinks that my fiancee went home, but actually I encouraged her to go home so that she could see her family. She's going to be taking summer classes and she loves her family as much as I do so I wanted her to have some time with them. So far she seems to be having fun, so that's good. It may sound sappy, but making her happy makes me happy. It's some strange aspect of the human psyche, but it works and it's good too. I mean, basically it acts as a motivator for us to do the right thing in case the fact that it's the right thing isn't enough to motivate one.

Anyway, it doesn't matter because the place I'll be working is only 2 hrs away so I can visit her all the time. Not only that, but she's going to have some family members staying with her so we can all hang out. I guess that makes me lucky, but I really get along really well with all of her family.

Well, on to things that other people care about, eh?

There has now been a court-marshal with regards to the prisoner scandal in Iraq. I feel bad for the guy because he really didn't DO anything wrong he just took those wonderful pictures. Of course, he "did" something wrong by not doing anything, but truthfully if I was stuck in Iraq with coworkers who were doing crap like that to the prisoners I'd be afraid to blow the whistle. Especially because now there is evidence surfacing that the orders went as far as Rumsfeld. I mean, who could you tell that's higher than that? Bush?

Well, as far as Rummy what do we know? There have been Pentagon leaks confirming that he knew what was going on. There are also leaks saying that there's another prison where they do it because it's like Delta Army forces and they can do whatever they want. They can't REALLY do w/e they want, but it's one of those operations where the government looks the other way. The same leaks claim that Rumsfeld told them to institute these methods in the other prisons to get good intel out. If this is true and it's probably at least half true if it's being leaked out then we're in VERY bad shape in this country. I mean it would put us just one step closer to 1984 (the book) where the government continues to shirk human rights in the name of warfare.

I know it's easier said than done, but we seriously need to work on taking back the rights that we so easily gave to the government just because some buildings fell. I mean I'm not an anarchist or some hippie or anything, but I think that the balance has tipped a little bit too far in their favour. This is especially dangerous because it's hard to get it back in today's society. No one protests like in the footage from the 60s. People seem to all have ADD and I partially blame the news for focusing people more on Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant. Those are stories for the entertainment pages or for here and there - they aren't headline news. (I mean they are because the news services have to make money, but they aren't really newsworthy)

I don't know - perhaps I will have a revalation in the future, but right now I just feel so powerless to do anything like the nation is just zooming past me and is sweeping me along as I try to point out what's going on. But there just seems to be the response, "yes that's a nice academic arguement, but in the real world we HAVE to torture Iraqis and take away human rights. When you get out of college you'll understand!" But I've only got a year left and I don't see how anything will make me change my mind in a year except maybe complacency. Maybe this inertia will just continue to wear away at me, the friction rubbing away every bit of restistance I have left until I just see the news and shrug - which is what they want.

And I know this is a completely orthogonal topic, but what's with the bombings in Greece near the Olympic sites. Those terrorists are some really sick bastards if they're going to blow up people at the Olympics. I mean, ok, the Trade Center bombing wasn't much better, but at least it was directed at us because they hate us. But the Olympics is supposed to be a celebration of peace amongst the nations. It's supposed to be a chance for everyoneto take a break from blowing the crap out of each other and just competing in sports. Instead of nuking India, Pakistan can say, "see - our runners are much, much faster than yours" and so forth. This is why I have no sympathy for people who get killed when we blow up the terrorists. (Or when Isreal does it) They're killing innocents so they have a right to die. Let God/Yaweh/Allah (just 3 names for the same dude) deal with them and let them meet their fate - the quicker the better.

Well, I think that's about enough - anyway, my rant meeter is maxing out and my stomach is rumbling so I think I'll take a break from this. At any rate, I'm getting so mad thinking about this stuff that I just wrote and all that pent up anger is quite unhealthy.

Check out my server I added some new things as have some of the other people I'm hosting.

An example
Mood:  chatty
Topic: The Web
Two examples. Here are two examples of h2g2 which I just wrote about.

The Simpsons

and written by me:

Starting your own Web Server