As I inch towards #400....
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Summer General
I learned something today that I didn't know. The word snafu - you know, "the wedding was such a snafu - everything went wrong". I'd never used the word, to me it's a very California or rich person snippity thing to say, but I've heard it and you probably have too. It's also a popular word in tv and movie scripts portraying gays. Well, this is really interesting, because I found out that the word isn't actually a word - it's an acronym! It's just gone the way of "phat" which stands for "pretty, hot, and tempting". (Another example that's almost there but people still know the meaning of is "milf") Most people use it without knowing the real meaning behind the word. Well, enough suspense - here's the meaning of the acronym snafu -situation normal all f----d up. No wonder people use the acronym; it removes all vulgar connotations from the word.

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edit: added the missing "s" word in snafu. Oops...hope it makes more sense now

Deliciously Funny Quotes
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Quotes
Today's quotes come from two articles blasting abbreviations and the companies that fuddle them.

About AT&T and their new campaign emphasizing the &:

"Thank goodness they've reminded us it's American Telephone AND Telegraph. Mustn't forget the highly profitable telegraph division."

"But this company didn't need a new graphic. It already has its Death Star globe, which has years and years of built-up brand equity."

About TCBY:

"Way back during the mid-1980s frozen yogurt wars, there was a chain called I Can't Believe It's Yogurt, which sued competing chain TCBY because the letters stood for This Can't Be Yogurt. Unperturbed, TCBY deftly shifted its underlying name to The Country's Best Yogurt, kept the well-established abbreviation, and went on its merry yogurt-peddling way. (Few of us now remember the third fro-yo warrior, YSCCMTTIIFY, which stood for: You Simply Cannot Convince Me That This Is in Fact Yogurt!)"

about YM:

"YM magazine was once Young Miss, then became Young and Modern, and is now Your Magazine. Frankly, those all suck--the last just as much as the first. Your Magazine? Could there be a blander title? Why not call it Hey, Here You Go, Have a Magazine?"

-All by Seth Stevenson, Slate Columnist

Almost there....
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Summer General
I will have internet access, according to the cable company, on 18 June. These guys better not mess up. Of course, it's made worse by the fact that they need to "install" the modem. Why can't they just ask me if I'm young enough to know how to install this stuff? Anyone in college or younger who's spent time with computers or on the internet can pretty much figure it out. The diagrams that come with the modem are pretty self-explanatory if you need them. But no, with their vague "we'll be there between 9 and 5" I have to take time out of my schedule to be there. Why can't we have comcast, time warner, or brighthouse cable? Instead we have some Blue Ridge Cable. Blech!

On the happy side, though, people are still visiting my server. You can click on the link on the left or write down http://server.ericsbinaryworld.com. In fact, even with people out of school and without much new content in the past few weeks, we've had 57 visits. Of course, the most exciting part of the whole ordeal is that I was visited by the Googlebot! That's right! I now have the possibility of showing up on Google. Perhaps it shows what I nerd I am inside, but that makes me very happy and excited as if I'd won some kind of prize. So check out the videos and other fun things you can find on my server. I'd love to have so many people visit that it actually gives the "server busy" warning. So don't delay....

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!
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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