a ba'b'ian journal

I ate the first tomato from my garden. I didn't let it get completely red, but it was mostly ripe. There was another one that was close to the ground that had been eaten away about 80%, so I was thinking whatever got that might come back for this one, and I decided it was good to get it now. It was good.

• June 15, 2010

I was in the very first jury pool to be selected. Number 27. So I didn't hear all the other things judges an places that were selected for. Mine was division seven criminal court with Judge Lee Coffee. I'm not supposed to talk about the case, so I guess I don't have anything to say about that. We waiting in the lobby for a while. Sixth floor of 201 Poplar. There weren't enough seats for everybody at the first part, which was kind of bad. And the bathrooms on that floor didn't work. We got in to his courtroom at about 11:30, and he let us go to lunch til 1:00 and then stuff would start happening. There were forty-five people in the pool, but coming back in from lunch, they selected a group of twenty to be the main people they looked at. We had filled out some fairly simple forms answering a few questions, checking our eligibility, and had we been involved in stuff or did with think we might have biases. I don't know if I said anything wrong, but I was not one of the twenty. Maybe I had been preselected out, but seems like they might well have been mostly random. He gave a quick fifteen minute lecture about the law. That was pretty interesting. And we got to the voir dire. Which means something like truth-telling. The prosecution when first and combing a bigger speech explaining things with questions for the main twenty to weed them out. And the defense attorney said he would be quick, and he was quick. Talked about other stuff and asked more questions. Then they narrowed people down. They didn't need more than the first twenty. I guess they might have. They agreed to the fourteen they had. Jury selection could have taken a long time, but they got it done on the first day. The judge said to the rest of us that we were done and didn't need to come back the next day.

The guy in charge had been a little confusing before because he had said maybe the judge would say one thing, and the bailiff might say something else, and we should listen to the bailiff, because they wouldn't interrupt the judge if there was any change. My understanding was that they might still need more, and the judge would sned us back to the pool, but they might get everything done, and that's what news the bailiff might say. But in this case, the bailiff didn't seem to tell us anything different. So it seemed maybe unclear. Also, Mr. Carson gave us what seemed a very clear and simple statistic. Combining people done on Monday, and those that take longer than Friday, is only two percent. I think maybe there were 400 people that day, so it seemed like we could only expect that maybe 8 people would be done on Monday. So I had additional reason to be doubtful. In just our group alone that was thirty people who were done on Monday. So I was maybe a little uncertain, but I had reason to believe that we were done. It seems like quite a few of us in that group were uncertain. The deal I understood was that if they didn't want you in the first group, you would go back to the pool, unless they got all the people they needed. So I went back to the room with the jury pool. It was 4:00, and they had said it closes at 4:30. Nobody there. I think some people asked at the office. Several people told me we were done. I'm reasonable certain we were, but like I said, it seems like there was room for doubt. One thing I did get, though. A judge could cite you for contempt of court for various things, like being late or not showing up or wearing inappropriate clothes. Mr. Carson couldn't though. He had one thing he could do, though. He could make you come the next week. So if there really was a problem, they'll tell me and I'll just have to come again.

One thing, though. He had this clear assumption that no one wanted to be there. And I thought that unreasonable, or at least inconsistent, because he had given a speech the first time and repeated it again this time about how important and valuable jury service is. A privilege even, that not everyone used to have. There was aa Judge Ward that cam in and gave a speech about that, too, and thanking us. You used to have to been a white man who owned property. OK. So he asked a question, now I forget exactly how it was put, something like if anyone didn't want to hear the judge say you're done and don't have to come back. Being a contrarian, I rasised my hand up a little, though I'm sure it was one of those rhetoric questions that he didn't expect anyone to say yes to. And he actually tried to say something to me about it. I must not have understood the question, so it was a bit of a mental test. I guess that happens to me sometimes. I'll say something unusual, maybe not what the crowd would say, and people will think I'm just stupid. Here's the thing about jury duty, though. They mentioned three ways you are called on to serve. And presumably they mean the government. You can vote. You can serve in the military. And you can serve on a jury. Voting is a scam. I won't go into it here. The military is pretty well worse. They talked about how soldiers take an oath to defend the constitution. I was thinking, if I had to swear an oath to the constitution, and they gave me a gun, there would be a lot of dead elected officials. But then there's the jury. It turns out that people getting together and deciding issues is just about the ideal according to what I'm seeing Anarchist talk about as a way to handle things. And it's really a place where the rubbers hits the road, where an individual can make a difference in a legal society. One of the lawyers in the voir dire was saying the jury does not get to decide whether the law is OK. That's just a lie. You totally can decide that. I found this case to be a real test of what I thought. It was a bad situation. Over lunch, I needed to take a long walk to think about things. I walked down past Bardog, but I didn't go into, because I didn't really have time to get anything. I also went into the big First Tennessee branch, which I only ever see at night. They've got offices, too. Anyway, I didn't get on there, but I would have liked to have been on a jury. They had so many people though, that they clearly wanted to give people a chance to get out early.

I watched a trailer for _the last airbender_. The movements may be based on bagua, but it's all just some kind of magic. That doesn't give me a warm happy feeling. So I don't know. Actually a bit irritating because the movement have real function, but maybe it would be obscured by here just being some way to cast fancy spells. So I'm not so enthusiastic any more. But it is bagua in real popular culture, and mostly people have never even heard of it, so maybe more people will, which is good. And I know it will give me stuff to talk about. I used don't talk much. I might even watch it more than once, which I haven't done for a movie in years.

Li Lao Shr talked about watching the Karate Kid movie. She said it was funny. David was asking, probably not real wushu. She said it was just fighting. OK. I need to go see it. I didn't when mom was here. Seems like I just slept on Sunday.

Mom has gone back. Now I've got bunches of food. She is still buying me a bunch of food, in addition to just making a bunch. I think I've got leftovers for the week, and a second watermelon, and another pint of strawberries. I guess it's a hobby.

And they said people are dying to defend the constitution. No they aren't. That's just another lie. But it made me wonder, maybe there is something wrong with the constitution the way things are going. I guess it supports a system of power that the corporations have been able to take over. That is an issue when you have a system of elected representatives, because the choices among those can easily be restricted to compliant people. And controlling voters is pretty straightforward.

• June 13, 2010

• June 12, 2010

I think the music I played was especially effective. I played a set of three girl songs, which several seemed to like: "I will survive", "YMCA", and "Dancing Queen". and a little after that, I had "On the road again", and really, a lot of people left in that. It was getting pretty late. So it was a thin but die-hard crowd that was left for me Bill Withers set, "lean on me", "Just the two of us" , "Ain't no sunshine", and "use me".

So, this time we were talking when I was leaving. I said, I still want to see her some time, and she said, "I know". Getting tired of hearing it. And she has been busy, so maybe just hasn't gotten around to me. But for it to just be something on her list of things to do. Grr.

I can and do just sit and watch her for hours. That's kind of pitiful, but it's something to do.

I went out to a meetup meeting of memphis writers. Spring's group. I've always liked Spring. Very friendly. Sweet. Like science and science fiction though she doesn't seem to really have such a big technical background, and that sometimes gives me an opportunity to explain things, which I like, to someone who is interested, which is a bonus. One thing I explained that was unusual. Spring was saying she had trouble spelling. And she said she always had trouble with "their" I think I didn't really even focus on that at first because it so never been a problem for me that I had a little trouble conceiving it as a problem and considering it. So I mentioned the example "weird". It's sort of a shortening of wayward, and "e" was pronouched a little more like "ay", the way we say "eh", so it was more like "way-urd" and that comes out weh-ird or weird. Anyway, so I thought that might help with their, which of course it does. It's just "they" and you change the 'y' to an 'i' and add an 'r' which is the possessive ending back for them. Like it is on your and our. Their. I don't see how people can do "thier". Just seems wrong to me, but I guess if you made it as a mistake a few times, it might get confusing. I hope that helped her.

There was a woman Katharine who seemed nice. Somehow it came out that she knew about websites. Some she studied in college, apparently. I'm not sure what that would be. And she's a business analyst now. I asked her if she had a personal website I might see, and i think she said a couple, but she wouldn't tell me about them. Oh well. I thought maybe I would be able to google them, but I didn't get her last name. Makes it hard. I was saying I wasn't working and she asked if I was looking, and maybe they were looking for something. I didn't really express much interest.

And the waittress looked really familiar, but I just couldn't place her. She finally figured it out that I knew her through Angela E., who is a close friend of hers. Julie. I should try to see her some time.

On thing that Spring was telling me was that tai chi was one of the styles in the last airbender. Water bending. I did get around to and apparently bagua is airbending. Or airbending is based on bagua. Louie had said it was in the movie, but I didn't get that airbending itself was from bagua. Makes me feel a little better about having studied it for three years.

• June 9, 2010

I get really sad when I even consider not going down, so I just should concede and not mess with it.

• June 7, 2010

I think I was kind of getting angry with Melissa because she hasn't made any time for me. But I didn't feel like being honest and telling her. I said I wouldn't be able to make next Sunday because of jury duty, but I would probably try to come before. Now I'm not so sure. And with my money where it is, I would need to take some more out, and I don't feel like doing that, at least not today. Well, I say honest. I didn't think she would like it. That's generally the way lies are.

So Cliff came in there. Maybe after 1. And he said he was having some trouble with his wife. He said how long they were together. Then Melissa told the story of her marriage. They had been together since she was seventeen, and got married a few years later, twenty something, I forget. And she had two things she asked for, but he couldn't manage it. And then at some point, it was like fifteen years, she was done. Then he decided to actually change and took real steps, but that was too late for her, she was done. Happy for him and hope it works out, but she had moved on. Done. Yeah.

• June 6, 2010

I finished up a couple of documentaries that I started and didn't finish. One was _We Live In Public_, about Josh Harris. Kind of a dotcom baby in New York. Such a narcissist that I had to turn it off. He had a little millenium cult that had cameras everywhere. I didn't get it exactly, but it didn't last too long, a month a year, I don't know. A few dozen people. Had a gun range in the basement. Sex and showering on camera. Then he got a girlfriend and they lived on camera. There was a camera in the toilet pointing up, I think. Stupid stuff. Lost all his money. Got an apple farm. Boradband came along and Myspace and Facebook, and he sold the farm and tried that stuff again with lots of video. He had the idea of a internet tv station that would replace real networks. No one bought it and he went bust. Moved to Ethiopia. Largely to avoid creditors, it seems. He had this need to be in charge of people, so I guess he got a plantation or something. Thoroughly disgusting person.

And I finished up _end of poverty_. Talks about how now we have sort of extended colonialism. And "neo-liberalism" or free market stuff is about maintaining that colonial-style economic system. National debt in thrid world countries serves both to redistribute wealth from them to us and to keep them poor, which we want so we can continue to exploit them for raw materials. It talks about the idea of communal property, such that people who use property have an obligation to others, at a minimum. The essence of capitalism is that property is owned individually, and there are no obligations on the owners. OK. The solution to poverty, apparently, is communism, though that called it something like communal something or other. Fine. One simple step, too, is to forgive the debts. There was something about how those national debts were illegal, in that a new government was formed, but it still had the debt of the old one. OK.

I tied up the tomato plants some more. There was one that was started to ripen, but had a big chunk eaten out, so was getting moldy inside. Oh well. There are some others that have been on there a while. I'm not sure what's holding them up. The ones I've had from seed are now really big, just about as big as the others. But I ran out of string. I've found a problem with the weave I'm using. The weave confines them to a plane, and some of them have just leaned over at an angle in that plane. To deal with that, I've just gone and put extra stakes between each plant. Before, there was one every second plant. This seems to hold them in ok, now, I think. I might have just broken down and had a single stake up against each one. I think this will be good. The sticks I'm using are very thin. I'm getting a little afraid that a waind is just going to come and blow over the whole piece, and I will wish I had used some sturdier sticks or poles or somthing. They had suggested rebar. Or maybe just fence posts. Next time I will know. And it looks like I have baby squash coming in. Bonus.

Dude said his girlfriend was a "pseudo-girlfriend". That's bush. That's bushleague.

And they recommended moving more toward property taxes and away from income and consumption taxes. Hmm.

Wow, so I went to the neighborhood Ace Hardware that just moved in to get some string. They've got big cans of toluene, just like I remember you could get. I guess just not in Wal-mart anymore. I had heard they were thinking about restricting it because people huff it. Oh well. They also have sulfuric acid drain cleaner. I guess that's fairly common.

So something I was writing about on Roxanne's wall. The idea of heaven and hell didn't come from Judaism. My guess is that it came from Greek and Roman culture. Some bozo wanted to point out that the Jews did have a life after death, and that's the important thing. But to me, not, it's very different. The Jews had a story that at the end of the world, all the bodies will rise up. That's just a very different thing from having some spirit that goes somewhere else when you die. The Jews didn't have that. The Greeks did. And of course the Indians, though they were more about reincarnation. The Greeks and Romans had the thing where you go to the underworld when you die. The Christians either had to get the idea of going to heaven or hell from somewhere, or they just made it up. Like I said, the Jews did not have that idea, but the Greeks and Romans did. Most of the early Christians were Greek and Roman. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to connect the dots. I was hoping that seeing that one of their big ideas in Christianity came from the pagans would loosen their brains up a bit. But as I said, bozo wanted to shift it and say that it was a Jewish thing. I got tired of it. He went on about the afterlife thing and not heaven and hell, and when I said no and went back to it, he said "did you read what I wrote". I don't care about him, anyway. I thing Roxi had moved on.

Also, I was saying that heaven and hell as places you go after you die might have been fine stories back then, but with what we know about the world and space, there's no excuse to buy it. In fact, they pushed the notions to some place outside the universe, I guess. Not some actual place we might be able to see with telescopes or something. But that's just dishonest. If something means something, it means what it means, and you have to go with that. If it turns out that is wrong, you can't just look for something else for it to mean, and maybe that's right. It's dishonest when you imply that's what was meant all along, when it wasn't. And you can look at hell with the brimstone (sulfur) as being under the earth. You can see volcanoes and lava, so the underworld is fiery. Like I said, the underworld was also the Greek and Roman thing. The heaven was just up in the sky. Like I said, it's dishonest to say, no, it really means something else. But religions people don't have so much trouble with dishonesty.

• June 5, 2010

On thing Chomsky talks about is how our innate tendency restrict what we can know and appreciate. Not all possible languages will work for us. Not all possible systems of music will sound good to us. The restrictions make it possible for us to attain comparable understandings of things. And he again makes the claim I've seen in other places, that there isn't enough information to learn the language the way we do. There has to be more constraining it. I've never really seen how they come up with that, but I've heard it a lot. I guess they have examples that I haven't seen.

So I reinstalled Firefox, whiping my bookmarks. That hasn't been the problem I thought it might be. I saved the old bookmarks file, which is an html page. I can't import it to actually add them back, but I can just have a bookmark to that page, and I can use them just fine. Also, a lot of the bookmarks were stuff from work, and I won't ever need them again, so I don't really even need to have them. I can also make new bookmarks. And finding stuff with google is probably just as easy, anyway.

I'm half through the sudoku book now. Five and a half months. I guess I slowed down a bit recently. I've got twenty five more of the medium level difficulty. It's going to get pretty hard.

• June 4, 2010

The Chomsky is interesting, though I haven't even gotten very far. A couple of things, dissent is really pretty much eliminated here. There are not socialists in media. This was in the 70s, but it's still true. And it reason is pretty simple. The media are corporations, and there is no reason a socialist would be working in a corporation. It's the mirror of the Soviet Union. Also, if you aren't an approved "expert" in the social sciences, no one listens to you. You have to have credentials. His counterexample was when he was once talked about mathematical linguistics to mathematicians. They didn't care that he didn't have any mathematical degrees or training or anything. They just wanted to hear what he had to say, and that would stand on its own. It just doesn't work like that in the social sciences. And one of his big points is that the political stuff does not require a lot of technical expertise or training like some disciplines. It's really accessible to anyone who takes the time. That's an important point I've heard him talk about in different places.

Got it fixed with combofix I think. PCtools just found more junk. So I don't know how it will go. But it looks like I'm not getting the google redirect. It seems like it might have been from a program I downloaded, imgburn. I might have gotten it from the wrong place. And that might be why the discs didn't burn properly. Or it could be something else. And now emacs isn't working right. That might have been some of the stuff it tried to disable. But with all that went on, it could be anything.

OK, the emacs problem was just that it wasn't using the right ftp program any more. I don't remember exactly what I had done to fix it before, so I'm not sure what changed. The one I wanted to be used was in perl\bin, but there was one in system32 that was being used instead. I think I may have had the one in system32 deleted before, so it would go next to the one in perl\bin. Maybe it restored it. Or I may have shifted perl\bin in the path and it restored that. This time, I moved perl\bin forward in the path. Whatever it was, it's working now. I knew what to look for because it was a problem before.

OK, now I have to say I'm leaning towards going down on Sunday.

Kroger has boneless ribeye roasts for $6 a pound. That's pretty expensive, but less than it usually is. I was there on Tuesday, and I think they had one sitting there for something like 8 something a pound. The whole thing was $47. Maybe they were getting ready and were going to mark it down when the thing kicked in. My mouth is watering. I want one, but I'm not sure if I will be able to break down and do it. Mom is coming into town. I doubt seriously she would get one, but she might cook it if I got one.

I got the first disc of _The United States of Tara_. She's got "dissociative disorder", more commonly known as multiple personality disorder. I don't know much about it, so I don't know how real it is. The first one is kind of hamfisted with the exposition. And I guess I feel kind of manipulated. I got it on Melissa's recommendation, so I'm prepared not to really like it. It might just seem stupid to me, but I guess I got emotionally involved in the first one. We'll see.

Got into a chapter on Chomsky's linguistics. He talks about how he considers linguistics a part of psychology. And other types of psychology ought to also do something like that. It's about how language works, but he looks at just the content of language, without looking at, say, brain details, or performance issues. In his view, there would be a visual organ, or something like that, and you could look at what is done in visual understanding, separated from performance issues. But this seems to me a little bit troublesome, because language is pretty special. We have a technology of written language that lets us look a lot more objectively at the output of some supposed language organ. A visual mental organ doesn't really have that kind of thing. Maybe it's wrong to say we can't look at because it is harder, but I'm not sure I buy the premise that he has, that there is a kind of mental organ for that. The picture is that the mind is a bunch of mental organs, and I'm not sure it's fair to separate them out like that. Just from brain connectivity, you can see that there is a lot more interactivity, and a model of separate organs doesn't seem plausible. Now, I do see the sort of opposite assumption, that the brain is homogenous, and all the parts sort of work the same way. It seems very common, and I have to say, I can't buy that either. So maybe it's helpful to hold a position of different organs, but it will be important to have a way to handle the interaction. And the thing with organs, in the digestive system, you have visible pipes from one to the other, and pretty clear boundaries. In the brain, maybe you have some big boundaraies like that, but you also have very fine-grained interaction, where a single cell can touch just about any other possible system you might come up with. Anyway, so I already have some issues with Chomsky. I guess it's odd that I seem less critical with his politics. Maybe I just haven't thought about that stuff as much.

I don't remember if I mentioned it before, and he hasn't mentioned it here, but somewhere Chomsky did say that a bit of the connection between politics and language is looking how people think. He tries to say there is no connection, and he said that part of it was that he wanted to make the point about politics not needing special background and expertise the way linguistics does. So he's kind of being a little inaccurate in order to make a point.

Ouch! What the hell was that? The market dropped three and a half percent just today. That hurts.

Man, I need to get back into speech and language programming.

OK, doing some googling and wikiing, I see that I've gotten it wrong. It's "dissociative identity disorder". There are several dissociative disorders, including that one and a dissociative amnesia. Seeing a little more about it, I'm still pretty skeptical about the show. Also, part of the premise is that she has gone off her meds. I had not heard of any meds for that condition, and from whay I'm seeing, there isn't any. At best they can have something to deal with anxiety. There are plenty of things for that. I think the idea is that only extreme anxiety situations are causing her to transition. I don't know. It's just making it worse for me. Multiple personalities is kind of a dream challenge for actors, but I can't really accept making up something implausible for entertainment. At least, it's losing me.

I ran combofix on my other computer. It thought it found something, though not as much as the other. And in both of them, after that was done, my normal virus scanner found stuff. I don't know what that's about.

So Ben had a post on the AGI that I've been kind of wanting to reply to. But what I wanted to say is starting to fade. He was saying that people haven't looked so much at a basic system of knowledge entities that makes it possible for us to know. Or something. Something like objects and properties. Didn't really sound like he had much that was actually new. And also, he seemed to be very abstract, taking a system of knowledge as something that could be independent of sensation and perception.

• June 3, 2010

I did the quick scan and it found some junk. Didn't seem to sonsider them very serious threats, but they were redirecting my web pages. So I decided to run a full scan, including a file scan. Didn't find much else, but it found stuff it considered a "generic downloader". It looked to be part of one of the java developer systems. That doesn't seem right. I don't know if it was a real problem. I think another computer also saw it in stuff I have backup up off that computer. It didn't say it was that big a threat either, and I'm not really sure it was anything.

A little girl in scrubs. I looked over when she was talking on the phone and smiled. Did she preen? I should pay closer attention.

I just got an email that my mom is coming into town next week. They were here a couple of weeks ago. My feeling is displeasure at just not being in control of my life. I should think harder about moving out.

I tried to tell Bianca the real story of Epicurus and food. I'm trying to find it on the web, but I'm not seeing it. I've only seen it in Consolations of Philosophy. The first part of it was to eat with others, and I try to do it more. Eating alone is the life of a wolf or a lion, not a man. Also, contrary to what people think, he wasn't about gluttony or extravagent food. He was into very simple food. But I couldn't remember exactly. I think I said artichoke and cabbage or something. But it was simple stuff they grew themselves. They lived basically on a commune, and they withdrew from society. I need to dig that stuff up again.

Bianca writes an advice column, so I tried to get what her philosophy was, but I didn't seem to get much. I think she said people did come to her advice, which gave her the idea. I guess as a vegan, she tries to be a good person. Whatever. I tried talking about test tube meat. She didn't seem that into it. And she doesn't really like meat, so she wouldn't be into it, anyway. I was trying to say that meat is not as simple as people think when they say something like test tube meat. Meat is not something you could do with just single cells expressing some protein. Meat is a whole system of structure, actually more than one kind of tissue. It includes muscle, which isn't just sinlge muscles cells--they have to at least be in strands to have the right texture and structure. Meat also has blood vessels interwoven with it, and the blood itself contributes to the flavor. There is also fat tissue, which in fact is a completely different tissue from muscle, but it is integrated in meat in different ways depending on the type of meat. Like I said, "test tube meat" not only doesn't capture it, to me, is shows someone isn't even really thinking about the question. But I think I was the one who mentioned the term first in the conversation. Artificially grown meat? Synthetic meat? Synthetic has different oonnotations. If I could just go hardcore, and use replicator technology, I'd probably be good with that. But maybe some weird genetically engineered meat plant, I think that would be interesting to pursue. But people think of something like beans. It would have to be something more on the size of a watermelon. Textured vegetable protein? That's just so far from meat.

I need to look more into Peter Singer's stuff. I think one guy recommended Practical Ethics. He argues against speciesism and was big with the animal rights people.

So there's a guy in here with a yarmulke. Grr. The revulsion welled up, and I wanted to say something about not respecting his supertition. But the guy he was with got a phone call, and said he was talking to a rabbi. Great. I guess that's something that might make you wear religious dress in public.

So, yeah, somewhere in the meeting, Preston said he had to respect the right of people to believe whatever they want. I had to disagree. I don't respect that as a right. I don't think it's a right. So he said, maybe a matter of semantics. And I need to put that position on a firmer basis. I don't think we have a fundamental right to believe whatever we want. As a consequence of deciding that we don't want society to use force or coercion on use according how we believe, people see it as best not to use these methods to change people beliefs. Mostly. But not always. With homicidal beliefs or some insane beliefs, we do see a role for coercion. So clearly holding beliefs is not a fundamental right.

Looking over the amazon reviews of Singer's book, I saw someone point out some logically invalid reasoning he uses. Sort of an assumption that he makes, though he thinks he is proving it. I don't remember exactly what it was, so maybe I didn't quite follow the counterargument, but it made me sort of less interested. And I don't buy utilitarianism. So I'm not putting that high on the list, but maybe some time.

I went by Borders. Didn't see and Singer. But I saw a thing on Chomsky and Language, and felt like getting some since I don't think I have anything of his. I've only recently been watching videos of him. I've seen quite a bit of linguistics stuff, and I have generally not thought much of what I've heard of Chomsky's stuff. I guess a lot of that is Pinker. But the impressions I've gotten of Chomsky's generative transformation grammar is that for one thing it's biologically implausible. And that's understating it. There doesn't seem to be anyone who can even imagine a way that it could have evolved biologically. And the second problem I've heard is that it's not really a very stable theory. He just keeps changing it. If there really was something there, you could just say what the point was and that would be that. If it just keeps changing to adapt to new things, it runs the risk that Freud's idea did of not really being scientific, in the sense of being falsifiable. Supposedly he invented an entire field, but I don't know how big a deal that field is. I watched a couple of Teaching Company courses on linguistics. I don't know if this is really going to add anything I haven't seen. But I've generally just been entertained by the thoughtful way Chomsky develops and expresses ideas, so maybe I will like it.

Dang, my browser is still acting crazy. It looks like something on links from google. Could they be sending me to ads? No, it's something in the browser. OK, upgrading firefox seemed to get it. No, still doing it. Grr,

• June 2, 2010

I also talked to and sat across from Bianca Phillips, who writes for the memphis flyer. She's writing a vegan cookbook and has an advice column on their web pages. I'll put up a link when I get my browser working again. This computer has gotten some kind of gunk installed in the browser. Trojans or some such. Here's somethingand here's her food blog

• June 1, 2010

Man, that was a long month.

I do have a bad habit of pulling away from women who love me, so I need to try to not do that.

Wow, a website that just shows documentaries. That's all I seem to want to watch, so I'm feeling pretty gusto. I'd like to try to make a disctintion between being happy, and having something to consume that I wanted. I think people generally equate satisfaction with happiness. I don't know that they are the same thing, though they might be, but getting enough can't be permanent. It's something that contributes to happiness for sure, but I feel somehow it can't be the same as happiness. I did see something tried to use the Greek term eudaimonia. Maybe the thing on stoicism. Well-spirited, or well-being. Good + spirit. That sort of makes it a little more abstract, because something might be good for you completely apart from just having some kind of feeling. Something a philosopher might consider.

But I could decide it's not healthy and hold that as a reason for quitting. That makes sense.

One thing he said in "this emotional life" was that we aren't very good at predicting what we will want. I think I saw this in his book too (Dan Gilbert's _Stumbling on Happiness_). The main thing is that we tend to be very biased towards what we want right now, and have trouble imagining otherwise. I certainly find it true. I don't even know later in the day for sure what I will want to do. And I'll make plans and have to commit to something, though when the time comes I won't feel like it. Whether I do it often depends on the level of commitment. Having to send a message ahead has been a big deal.

I just tried watching a documentary called "the mystery of love". Just a few minutes into it they had this farmer talking. And they intercut with an opera singer. Trying to tell the story about how they met on an airplane on a trip to Europe and talked the whole time. He said first to his buddy when he heard she was an opera singer that it was going to be a boring flight. I though he was going to say something about fat chicks. I had this deep feeling of revulsion, and I just had to turn it off. Oh the humanity.

• May 31, 2010

So somebody on there said you can't be happy if you don't have a job you like and you're not having sex. My reaction was, well I'm sorry. But maybe it got into me. In something later, they went into an explanation of why not working would make you not happy. Something about losing your identity. But by that time, I was starting to feel it. Maybe I'm not so happy.

Josh was there. There were times when I felt a little bit invisible. And when the last person left, Melissa was walking back from locking the door, and they kiss. Like they had been really waiting. I didn't watch; I looked down at my phone. I just, uh...

There was a fight. Again, I didn't actually see anything. And I didn't go over there right when it happened. I did got over a minute later when it seemed like not all of them had left. No one seemed to get out their camera, which should have been a first reaction. They did call the cops. Asa went outside to talk and wait for them. And there's this thing that I know how to fight and could beat them all up. But I'm not sure what I could have done. Probably need to just calm down and not touch. Get in between. Melissa yelled in a commanding way to stop that stuff right now. I don't know. Get their attention. Defuse with humor.

Jessa Lee. Shaved head. A server. Said she doesn't drink. I asked her her story. She said she never wanted to be a server, but it's kind of nice. Aldo saw her in Walgreens, and was wearing a ceebee jeebee t-shirt, which is a big Ney York bar. And he asked her to work there. So cool.

So Murphy was talking with Ben and Justin. She said she'd like to have a penis, the way guys seem to have so much fun with it. I told her there was such a thing as "penis envy". I didn't go into how I thought for sure it was just a myth, one of those strange things that Freud came up with that really wasn't scientific or real or anything. But darn it if she didn't admit to actually having it. Trippy.

Freud is an interesting case. If you know anything about the philosophy or science, or maybe have heard of Karl Popper and the idea that science is about falsification and not actually about trying to prove things are true, it's interesting to see Freud's role. One thing Popper wanted to do is to find some basis or way to distinguish things that are scientifc and things that aren't. One case of the things that are not science would be astrology, but a more subtle case is Freud's stuff. Really Freud is the hard case. He wants to say it's not scientific because it's just theories, and they don't really try to see if maybe they are wrong or not. They just use them however they want, and just ignore anything contrary.

I don't like how I'm just pitiful in the situation, but it's silly to just avoid something that I do like. I don't know.

Everyone needs a tapcode.

Well, since it is Memorial Day, I'm reading something on Stoicism in the military, and how it might not be so great.

• May 30, 2010

There's a mosquito in here. I'm trying to get it but they are so elusive. I was grabbing at it, and then it got away or I couldn't see it any more. Then maybe half a minute later I saw it on my shoulder on the other side from where I was looking. Grr. Got away before I could get it. And it probably wasn't going to come back if it had eaten. But I guess it didn't get enough because it did come back. Still couldn't get it. It's getting a little cluttered in here, so not enough clear surfaces for slapping. I should clean up.

There was one girl who had real anger issues. But her anger was just about fighting people. She didn't express any real desire to kill people. For me, just fighting or even only killing a small number just seems so insignificant that I'd rather just not bother. The image I think of for anger is that it's like an ocean. Most people just get angry the way people just get their feet wet walking along a beach. I don't know if I've ever even seen anyone who has more anger than this. This person at least seemed like she occasionally walked out in the water. But she talked about getting in a fight with someone, and eventually something changing and she just started crying. It's like a child wading in the water, and a wave coming and getting in her eye, and it making her cry. Nothing like swimming in the ocean.

They had a sequence if images of things that are frightening. Maybe a bulldog baring it's teeth. A snake, a big spider, and then they had and stuck on a lion kind of roaring. And I didn't really have fear reactions, but when the sat on the lion, my reaction was yeah, let's do this. With a sword, it might actually be about even. I could see the whole gladiator thing.

I finally made that disc of Dave's show for Melissa. It was way harder than it should have been. I think it's been a couple years since I tried before to make one. First, the program I tried using that I thought was the one (it was from the same company where I did have some editing stuff) actually wasn't editing software. It had a button for capture and the ui looked similar so it mislead me for a bit. And that was all that was on that computer, so it had to be that if there was anything. But it wasn't. So I had to go to another computer. And I found the actually computer and the program I had used a couple years ago, but then it just would not import the files. Some kind of unhelpful error message. And some googling, I guess it was just not going to work. So I ended up having to download an entire new suite of stuff, which involved doing the search of what's out there and what's good. I decided on avidemux. It's very simple. Good for just cropping out pieces, and all I really wanted to do was cut out the commercials. Perfect for that. But that just gives you an mpg. Then you need something to add menus to make a DVD, so part of a suite that was recommended, I got DVDStyler. And I actually didn't have anything, as far as I knew, that could write out a disc, so I got imgburn. Editing out the commercials was straightforward, but a little tedious because I used the skip forward button that I think must have only gone half a second forward. So it was like I watched all the commercials. Not super fun. There were no instructions, so figuring it all out was not great, but it was pretty simple. And I wanted to duplicate the pan across the audience, and I didn't see how to do that easily, so I ended up just making a whole file by clipping out everything before and after, and saving that out. And I made an even shorter version like that. But I chalk that up to learning, so it wasn't so bad. Making menus with DVDStyle was more painful, because for some reason, it worked very slowly. In one section, I would make a change on a button going to a chapter, and it would take maybe half a minute to do it's processing and then come back. Some of what I was doing was to pick a frame in the movie with an offset of a given number of seconds, so maybe it was having to search for that, but it made the thing painfully slow and cumbersome. And I had eight chapter buttons. But I got it eventually. More trouble to come, though. Writing the discs out. It turns out that my better laptop, tudor, just doesn't seem to be able to write out DVDs anymore. I think I've never been able to get it to work. This time, the imgburn program just gave an error. Blech. So I needed to transfer the files over. It took about an hour over the wireless network to do it. And I just transfered the disc image, not the files for making the disc, so if there was an error in how I set up the disc and I needed to recompile the disc, it was going to be painful. So I transfer it to my other laptop, spirit. Get imgburn on it, too. This laptop took an hour and a half to burn the disc. Ouch. I think I've tried burning on it before and it was slow like that. Terrible. So I finally get a disc. I try it out. My cheap player doesn't recognize it. I try the newer player. It gives a message, "Incompatible disc". Grr. I suspect I've messed up the disc compilation, that thing that I just mentioned would take a long time if I needed to redo. I tried playing on my laptops, and it looks ok to them. Before messing with that, though, I take a guess that maybe the burner on spirit also has a problem, so I'm going to try burning it with my desktop, third. I copy it over, while takes maybe 20minutes, and the burn takes 8 minutes. And it works totally fine. So now I've got two laptops neither of which is able to burn DVDs. That's pitiful. But I've got the discs made. I made two for Melissa, and one for me. Actually when I played it, it looks like there was something a little wrong with them, maybe. Some dropped frames, maybe. Oh well. I may take a while before I delete all the intermediate files off the hard discs. I know it's not going to be that big a deal, too. But it was a learning experience.

It puts the lotion on its skin, or it gets the hose again. There are some whiners out there.

So now I'm wondering if one of the reasons they switched to digital was because it was so easy for people to tape and skip the commercials. VCRs got really cheap. I really had a hard time even finding a device to record digitally. I have one thing that's hard disk based, but it doesn't work. I got another one that only can go to a recordable DVD, so it can only hold 8 hours at most. So it's gotten very hard to record and skip commercials again. Because they switched to digital. It had to be a factor.

Man. They had a little depressed girl. Actually a twin, which was intriguing enough. The other one wasn't depressed, but they had a shot of her being pretty darn whiny, so maybe. They tried a bunch of stuff and they didn't work. Some doctor mentioned something like four "classes" of drugs. Fucking savages. Medicine is so much about trying stuff and maybe it will work. That should tell you that they really don't know very much about what's going on. And yet, the get lots of money, so they don't want you to know about the extent of their clueslessness. I said they were savages. I did eventually see what was coming. They moved on to recommending electroshock therapy. They convinced the poor little girl too that she had a problem that needed to be fixed or else. Why was suicide such a bad option? They seemed to also indulge her whininess. If you act a certain way, and then people go out their way to give you attention, and do stuff for you, wouldn't you just naturally keep doing that? And they switched to using a term that didn't sound as harsh, "ECT" That makes it better. There was a guy in a tie and white coat damaging her brain into unconsciousness. Man. That's what they went to. They didn't just find her a boyfriend or something. They went to drugs, which didn't work, and then nuked her brain. And then it wasn't working, so they said to do it more. OK, they hinted that maybe it worked because it stimulated the growth of new neurons, which was something some drugs did. But that's because they are causing brain damage. Why not just hit her head with a rock. I'm sure it would be the exact same thing. How would I deal with it. Sit with her maybe. They've really pushed it into something that people can't get past on their own. And it can cause permanent change when not dealt with as they learn to stay with the pattern. But I guess I'm not expert.

• May 27, 2010

Saw an interview of Peter Singer on reddit. Very deep and I think it must affect my thinking on moral issues. And it's from Richard Dawkins who kind of fawned over him and treats him as a etter person than him, or at least more moral. A big thing I got from it was the idea that Dawkins suggested maybe, that altruism may be a misfiring of a valuable emotional approach to life. In the tribe, it's good to help people for genetically selfish reasons, because everyone around is related to you. In this situation, we have adopted a valuable system to just cooperate with everyone, and it is an error when it gets applied in the bigger situation of society where we aren't related to everyone, but by that time, it's too late, and we have this rule of thumb we use. Trippy. Altruism a mistake that ends up being very useful. Something mr. evolution would say.

But the stuff with Peter Singer. He bases his morality, or ethics I forget which, on harm of the organism and very importantly avoids speciesism. People are not inherently special, so animals who can clearly also feel pain, must be considered in making moral decisions. So vegetarianism. Some people use the suffering principle to say abortion becomes bad when the nervous system has developed. Singer is a little fuzzier on it. In this case not seeing people as special plays a bigger role in his thinking, so a fetus really suffers a lot less than most adult mammals like cows, so he's less concerned with them. And naturally, that's makes you consider infanticide. And they got into cannibalism, which except for not wanting to upset the family, and not specifically killing for food, doesn't seem too objectionable to them. Well, I have to say I personally am not that concerned with suffering. Maybe I'm not all that concerned with trying to be good at all. I was already leaning towards favoring infanticide. It happens. It can't be eliminated, though we frown on it and do try to reduce it. It's sad. But maybe I could say that the way food animals are treated is pretty sad. Especially at slaughter. But the cows in the field eating grass have a moderately fair life, though a nasty end. Factory farm cattle are miserable. Caged chickens are quite sad. But I'm not ready to quit this behavior. And I guess, I don't think I can see basing a morality on feelings. That's I guess the problem I have. Feelings don't seem solid enough a thing to base decisions on.

Saw a video on relationships. Part of a series called "the emotional life" which was from a guy who studies happiness. I'm not positive he made the connection between happiness and relationships other than to say relationships are important to happiness. There were a number of important ideas. And the relationships were family, friends and lovers, so three different but pretty broad categories. With family, we learn basic attachment. And they had a kid who was in an eastern european orphanage who really had a damaged ability to feel attachment. A forget what the friends section added. And lovers, hmm. There was a woman who wanted companionship, but could do without the sex. That seemed a little odd, and she said to her, sex was only about pleasing the guy, so she could do without it. Pretty sad, really. I think it was some other video i saw recently that talked about three different chemicals in romantic love that get released at different times. Passion, something like adrenaline, goes for 1 to three years, then at three years, some kind of endorphins. I don't think I'd heard that one. Each of those drops off. At seven years, you have oxytocin, which is about bonding. Moms get it with breastfeeding. And that builds forever. I'm not sure what the endorphins do. Make you comfortable with someone? I would expect it helps to tolerate them, where you might not so much when it dies down, but the bonding makes it so you like being with them, even if they have started getting irritating. Trippy.

Also, loneliness is part of an inherited emotional system where it was very important to be with others to get things we need. It's now a bit of a mistake the way altruism is.

So Melissa satisfies some of my need for love and affection. Maybe not completely, but enough that I haven't worked sufficiently hard to find something more complete.

She loves me. Maybe not all that much, but some definitely. So I don't want to skip going if she wants me to come down.

• May 25, 2010

Netflix had a video with Chomsky. Had a bunch of stuff, of course. More fanboys. A lot of old people who seems almost starstruck, and amazed at how much he appears to know. It made them seem to me kind of stupid. He is great, but people do have the ability to read stuff and find things out. It's pretty apparent that they must waste their opportunities on sports or romance novels or something. Oh well. Someone asked him about capitalism. He said it probably would be nice, but it hasn't been tried. Something about how the corporations run the government to protect themselves and avoid competition. Whatever.

And another one on strippers. Gives them lots of confidence. This was in New York. No touch, mostly. One of them had studied dance for 20 years. So athletic. Did flips and things. One was a bit of an actress, and did some kind of artsy shows. Something with big feathery fans. And did it in a theater situation, and got out of clubs for a bit, but then had to go back to one when the money ran low. The most disturbing thing was that two of the dancers died. One had written a bunch of stuff, including some exposure of the Russian mafia, and just disappeared one day. One had complications getting some stuff done on her face. Something with the anaesthesia, maybe. Bummer.

Weird. Half an hour ago this place was empty, but now it's about full of guys. It's about 10:30. when I got in there were a lot of women.

One of the interesting thing Chomsky talked about was how the media ends up saying what the government wants. It's not so much that the goverment tells the media what to say as the government does what the corporations want, and the media does too. There was some cute example, I wish I could remember.

• May 24, 2010

But the one bit of insight I took from it. Somewhere in there was asserted that what they really wanted to find was a friend. Someone to be able to call some time when you feel lonely. And they had a unique situation where they could get easy anonymous sex first, and then it it works out, then have a friend. A very unique persepective, but to see that friendship was the important thing, and sex really secondary... Deep.

So a couple were sitting here. And some fat chick took a picture or something, and chickee got mad, I guess, but fat chick asserted that she had a right to take pictures. I guess. Couple left. I need to use that some time.

I watched another on called "Dancing for Dollars". Strippers in Canada. It really made me annoyed more than anything else. There were some girls with tremendous confidence, giving what they believe is profound life advice, when they are clearly just thick as bricks. One felt it important to stay "classy". Again, though, one of the had a message about the importance of friendship. There was a little stripper that she liked, but she decided that the friendship was more important than having sex with her. I guess that's nice. But it was also kind of annoying. It's not the first time I've heard a woman saying that sex would hurt a friendship. Maybe. I guess I wouldn't know.

So I'm feeling a little angry at the moment. Not having anyone to call. The folks left. That's always disrupting. Donnie has starty working at Christie's. It really was Melissa sitting where I thought. I said I'd give her a copy.

Man, there was a guy I was sitting next to. Started smoking a cigar. And was talking to these girls who had been in there chatting with each other for an hour or two. He seemed very full of himself. I wanted to punch him in the head.

• May 22, 2010

I think I saw Melissa and Josh in the audience at Dave's show on Wednesday. I hooked up the DVR and recorded it. I'm not positive as the picture didn't seem completely clear, but I'm pretty sure.

The folks have come here again. They planted some squash and cucumber and a watermelon plant, so we'll see how those go. I've got like four tomatoes coming in at least, on three different plants, so I've got stuff going. They seem to be doing pretty well.

Yeah, I think the thing about seeing the return not working at the end of line is when I close a paragraph tag, and the matching function moves the cursor to the beginning of the tag before moving on to the next line. So not such a big deal.

Went out to lunch with the kung fu people. They wanted to thank me and Zach for painting. Like nine plates of stuff. It seemed like way too much, but we actually pretty much finished it off, so I guess they knew what they were doing. And then after it we went and try to do some more stuff, putting up mirrors, but we couldn't get it all together and we didn't finish it. Maybe tomorrow.

The Gardner book I'm working on is titled _When You Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish_

• May 17, 2010

I had a dreamt where I had slept with Melissa, and she completely changed. Became kind of cold and controlling. Was getting me to do some kind of volunteering stuff. And so I was wishing I could go back and not do it. Now I don't really think it would be like that, but I guess there might be consequences.

And she remembered that I had warned her about consequences last time when it got to time to pay my bill. So this time she warned me there might be consequences, and she paid it. I guess I should have known that it would come back to me. It was a dangerous play to make.

Something else not to like about battlestar galactica. They've got an ending where they land on earth a hundred and fifty thousand years ago among old versions of humans, and are somehow genetically compatible, and they get folded into humanity. They have a shot where they talk about an ancestral "Eve", and that is supposed to be the half human, half cylon child Hera. Please. Ron in the commentary also says something about an ancestral Adam. I guess it's really that statement that annoyed me, because it showed that the series was developed and largely written by someone with a pretty poor science understanding. And it largely shows. But the thing about aliens folding in among primitive humans, setting aside the biological absurdity, it kind of disregards the real human story, which is actually more interesting. At that time, actually as late as fifty thousand years ago, there were as many as four different human species around at the same time, from the very old homo erectus to neanderthals and then modern humans. That makes for an interesting world. _Quest for Fire_ tries to get it fairly close. I've got that in my queue and I need to watch it again.

Leanne said that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the South Park creators, were in Circa last night. She was thinking it was Saturday, so she told them to go to Raifford's, which was stupid for Sunday. I didn't get it exactly, but they must have been in some kind of group. They were in town for the barbecue contest. I was wondering if I would recognize them in person, but I bet I probably wouldn't, out of context. And at maybe 1:30 after Bardog had closed, some guys were knocking on the window. Could it have been them? I don't know. Probably not. But anyway, it would have been nice to see them. Leanne said they were going to the the Kooky Canuck. She said she didn't know them, but someone told her who they were. They were a lot younger than she would have thought.

For some reason, I was thinking what I might say to them. I'd want to see if they are as stupid as they seem. Holding in farts causing spontaneous human combustion? Did Penn set them straight about religion being just stories? But I can see how they wouldn't want to be an atheist with how obnoxious so many can be. I would want to say how their writing and story telling has just noticeably gotten so expert, and so much better, even though it started pretty good. But it definitely did occur to me, why would I be talking to them, or them to me? It was a silly idea.

So the three guys that came up. Asa and Melissa were wondering maybe if they were the guys that messed up the next door lady's decorations she had out. Tore out a sign and ripped up some plants she had. And Asa was saying if it was them, he'd go beat them up, and I could help him, since it was three guys. And I said sure. And so I'm wondering how best would you beat some guys up. The kind of fighting your train for tends to be kind of brutal. Killing people or breaking their collar bones or cracking their skull open. You don't really look at teaching-them-a-lesson ass whipping. So, what? I'm thinking stomach hits. Many some hits on muscley parts or the arms and legs, but not enough to break their actual bones. I guess that requires some finesse. Maybe work on a part of a choke out to soften them up. Throwing people on to the ground is one of the main parts of the style, and it can really mess people up, but it also gives them a chance to stay on the ground and give up if they know they've lost, if you haven't broken their arms and legs in the process. If they have any training at all and have learned how to deal with falls, it gives them a possibility of dealing with it. So it has a slight bit of humanity.

And I say they don't teach ass-whipping, but Master Park Bok Nam tells a story. He used to be rambunctious. He was studying bagua with a mean old master, and he told him not to get into fights outside of school. But of course, he did anyway. One time, he beat this guy up so that he went to the hospital. The doctor at the hospital saw that he had a particular type of internal injury that he didn't know how to deal with, but he did know someone who did, so he sent him over there. And it was the old bagua master. So he figured out what had gone on, and just beat the hell out of student Park. "You wanna know how to fight? I'll show you how to fight." But that's how they taught, I guess.

Trey does some kind of karate or taekwondo. He's got some kind of back spinning crescent kick that looks nice that he's put in some movies. Master Park tells some kind of story how he had one of those spinning kicks that he would do, and he was warned not to do that or he would get hurt, and the master explained something to the other student who he was sparring with, and after that when he tried it, he would always end up on the ground whenever he tried it. I guess I don't train as hard as they did in his school. But it might have been something to talk about.

And I say maybe four types of humans at the same time. There is a phrase "missing link". That's extremely misleading. There are maybe twenty different human species, not all of them even in our direct descent path. So there was a whole long process of us developing from wherever we diverged from tree apes. It's actually a bit odd that we're the only ones left. And recently supposedly they found that there are still some neanderthal genes still in people from some sections of the world. I don't know.

Huh, so neanderthals ate only meat. They didn't forage for berries and stuff at all. Pure hunters. No gathering.

So I think I found some kind of inductive reasoning that shows that Melissa and I won't get together and meet some time outside of Bardog. Something on the lines of mathematical induction where you show the first case, and then show how one case implies the next, so it works for all cases. It's just to say that each time she puts me off a week, that just makes it easier to put me off another week, and it wasn't a big enough deal one week, so it won't be a priority in the next, or ever. Tomorrow never comes. More just a matter that she never wanted to, but at one point was nice enough to patronize me and say she would. I let it go this time, and I expect I'll just let it go, now that I have some sort of stronger reasoning about it. This is more of a probablistic argument, but I think it is pretty strong in just saying it probably won't happen, or maybe better put, probably shouldn't happen.

It was a little funny. At about noon I was feeling like a week was too long to have waited, but as it got on to about 7, I was feeling like I wasn't even that interested in going. There's approach/avoidance. I don't quite completely understand the entire emotional dynamic.

Watching more Chomsky. Some stuff from HARDTalk last year. It talks about Obama, who he doesn't so much care for. Just another corporate lackey. The parties according to him are right of the people, more about serving corporate masters. I also watched the one from '69 with Bill Buckley. That's kind of annoying the way won't let him finish sentences, but Chomsky kind of dances around. I don't know. It was long enough ago not to seem too relevant. My link starts on the fourth of seven because I was on this view and when I clicked on each one, they would end and I would have to go back, but down when I got to four, that was part of some sequence where they automatically continue. That's nice. Somewhere in there he talks about how really, you can't have general principles, like how to use violence. You really have to think about the situation as it is. It's all just too complicated or something.

Happy fifth birthday, YouTube!

Also, somewhere in there, Chomsky says what it means to him to be anarchist. I kind of use that term for myself, for instance, on Facebook. He says it's about being sceptical of authority and requiring that it justify itself. He says democracy is an ideal that an anarchist should aspire to. Or something like that.

I made another chuck roast. Cooked it a little faster and it was a bit tougher. And maybe I didn't cook it as much. This time I made gravy. I used the au jus from the last one, and I also used some of the veal demi-glace. So it's very rich. It tastes pretty good. Gravy isn't all that complicated. It isn't giving me a feeling of the best I've ever had, but it might well be the best I've ever made personally, since I only just started making them.

• May 15, 2010

I was watching a Nova show on the origin of man. It turns out that that head lice is a different species from gential lice (crabs). They were able to use this information to figure out at what point people lost their hair. It was actually a long time ago, like a couple of million years with homo erectus. And they found that the genital like is related to some kind of bear lice. And they could be different only because there was a hairless section separating them.

I saw a little tomato coming in. Yay!

• May 14, 2010

Got Michelle sitting next to me. The drink-making barrista ask my name for my frappucino double chocolatey chip, I think that's what they call it. It's in the cre`me section. Some kind of tick over the e. I don't really know what the tick means or how it's supposed to affect the pronunciation. I guess that makes me a philistine. So it was a little hard for me to determine what I needed to call it. And the ordering process seemed like a bit of a clusterfrak. One guy took the order and marked the cup. Another girl rang it up on the machine and passing it along, seemed like I had to try to explain it again. She at first wanted to say it was some kind of latte, but the cremes are things with no coffee, which is a break for me. And then the barrista making the drink had to ask me if I had the, I think she called it a frappucino double chocolately chip. And what was my name? They should have gotten it, and maybe they will next time. OK. But since they try to write names on the cup, I've got Michelle's name that I could see on her cup quite plainly. She spoke to me to ask if the chair was taken, and no, And she sat next to me. Cute blonde, maybe a little older, though not as old as me, I don't think. I'm not good at guessing. And, mysteriously, her name was pretty much exactly facing me.

It happened again. Little Sophia, who is only 4, was at kung fu, and I got her all wet. There is a water fountain, and she was too short to reach, so I lifter her up, but only after did I realize my arms were covered with sweat. Grr. So she had to wash off. This was a rough night for her. Li lao shr wasn't there, and she was expecting Reecy to show up, but she didn't either. So poor little girl was having to wander around with nothing to do, and she was in a really mischeivous mood. Wouldn't mind, kept taking off her shoes even though she was told several times not to, because we still have screws and things sitting around from construction, and kept going outside. But she's for. And telling someone not to, I have heard is the wrong thing. Don't think of an elephant!

David asked me what I was going to do at the tournament. I need to figure it out. And register. Part of registering is entering the competitions, so I need to decide first. I really need to ask Li Lao Shr. I'm thinking the Fanzi and some Bagua, but I'm not sure which. Also probably the bagua broadsword, which I think is called dao in the Chinese.

Busimess guy in the corner, yakking on the phone, at one point started a conversation with "hello gov'nuh" I think he was on the phone with some place in Britain. I believe they hate that. I'm trying to find out what that is from. Ah, Oliver Twist.

Such gloominess.

I watched Cool Hand Luke. A bit freaky. And he loses fiath, and then somehow seems to get it back as he is broken. Maybe that's something about what religion is supposed to be. Getting your head right. And the stupid Jesus imagery. I don't know. What we have here is failure to communicate.

Oh, so I had thought of something. Almost everything from Starbucks, except for just the regular coffee, has milk in it. That, in a subtle way, is actually a bit of pressure against minorities, who are often lactose intolerant. And I was thinking that before I came in, but here, there is a black guy sitting across from me, and a couple of cops just came in, one of whom is black. I think Michelle said sometime to them about buying them coffee, or they should get some. Chai spiced lattes for the boys in black. One guy is Schaeffer, it seems. One guy is in jeans, so I guess plain clothes. I think I seldom see those. Or desk guy. Don't really know this cop stuff.

Something that seems a bit quirky here in emacs. When I hit return, it doesn't seem to always immediately insert a newline, sometimes it seems, maybe before or in tags, I can be somewhere in the middle and it seems to add a line after the current one, but won't break it at the spot I'm in. Or maybe I'm imaginining it.

Michelle's man came in. No place to sit. Aww. And he left, Hmm.

The teaching company sent me stuff again. It's tempting. Ouch. I like math lectures, somehow. I'm not sure if I'd like the really hard stuff, especially at a University that's not so good, like U of M.

And a couple more black guys in the corner. One with some kind of USA sweats, and some kind of Eagle insignia, so goverment something or other, I didn't see exactly.

The cup says "DCCF".

Kind of sublime. the rain song. I wonder how they would do it live?

And then there's that crazy shining diamond.

Russell has posted a couple of times about the privacy concerns in Facebook. I placed a comment saying I wasn't so into privacy, and what were his reasons for seeing value you in it. He asked what my definition of privacy was. I thought I had put in a comment explaining a bit about my position, but I didn't see it. I might not have hit the comment button, or I'm afraid the little Starbucks connection might have timed out at the wrong spot and eaten the submission.

Ouch. My computer blacked out in the middle of a sentence. Probably the battery giving out, but it didn't seem to warn me or anything. Not so nice.

And further bad luck. I went to the AT&T store to ask a couple of questions. I wanted to know if I got an iPad 3G, if the 3G service for it would be associated to my main account and the charges put on the one bill, or they would have to have a separate bill, which would not be so convenient. And when I went in there, I saw a thing for AT&T U-verse. They have some kind of TV offering, and I was wondering what that was by. It looks like it might be satellite. I can't do satellite because of tree cover on the south side of the house. But the evil part. I went over and stood by the desk. No one ever offered to help. No one even made eye-contact. One fat guy, Tim, was helping some customer, and when he was done, just walked away and went to the center of the room to hang out with some of the other guys. It was just making me angrier and angrier, and I waited a little longer, but I left. So At&T has an unhappy customer, for now. It does reduce my desire to get an iPad, I would say. And staying with this IPhone, I don't know. I think it might be possible to keep the device without the service and use it wifi only. I'll need to look into that. I was in a bad mood. I don't know, maybe I didn't spend all that much time, maybe five minutes. When I left, someone outside made actual eye-contact and started talking to me, but asked if I had a minute. For a survey. I did not speak. She did seem to try to be cheerful. Rough job, I imagine.

So one of Russell's friend, Perry Metzger, seems to think he has found an inconsistency in my opposition to privacy. His claim is that we need privacy for financial information and that I wouldn't give mine out.

I had another errand I needed to do. I went by the YMCA to see how their rates depend on income, and what kind of documents you need. They'll take a W-2, and they do have lower rates for lower income. But it seems to go down to $31 a month from $55. I will have to consider it, because that's still a significant amount.

Huh, one computer had an open emacs edit window into this journal with unsaved edits. I'm rather lucky it didn't overwrite and lose stuff from today. I was able to save to a file and reconcile the differences. But it was careless.

• May 13, 2010

Listening to the BS commentaries is just makind it worse.

I'm now leaning to just not getting an ipad, or at least waiting a little longer to where I'm more into getting a job and making money. Joining the whole consumer society, that sort of thing. Actually painting a little bit was kind of good. I don't know if I was any good at that, but it didn't really have this oppessive feeling that I was hating to do it. Seems like the other guy didn't really enjoy it, but he had so much more going on and other things he could have been doing. Time with family, real work, other stuff to do, fun stuff. I may have a little too much fun stuff going on that a little work isn't so bad. Trading time. Possibly the whole 40 hours a week and having to do it or else maybe is a little rough. Or gets old, or something.

And what about the word "zoologist". I heard someone say it zoo-ologist, and I was thinking, no, you might say zoo-logist, not with an -ologist at the end, or zoe-ologist. But zoo-ologist would need three o's after the z, not the two we have. It's become a standard way to say it, I suppose, but it grates. And it kind of turns on how you pronounce "zo". We;ve got a bunch of examples to compare with it. And there are a couple that actually support saying zo like zoo: to and do. But I think there are a bunch more to say zo like zoe: no, so, bo, jo, lo, ho. I don't know, I feel zoo-ologist seems wrong, but with to and do being perfectly fine words, there is an real possible case for it.

Wow, dude, Martin Gardner, is 94. He mentioned sitting in his apartment in assisted living just typing on his computer, plus researching there. He was already an established writer, but still I think it's inspiring that he's still putting out books.

So I needed to go grocery shopping. I had to go to Schnucks because only they have ovaltine chocolate malt. I also needed milk and Kroger has the kind I get, lactose free, for at least a dollar less per half gallon, and I usually get two, so it would have been two dollars difference. Almost worth driving the extra two miles. But I waste so much money, I really shouldn't be worried about a couple of dollars. Plus extra time and effort. I did balk a bit though, and only got one half gallon instead of two. I can hit Kroger some other time.

I also got some potato chips. I have carrots to eat, but I have found that they taste a lot better with chips. I think carrot and chips are even better than chips by themselves, which are a little excessively greasy and salty. It makes a nice balance. And I don't eat dips, which is kind of a factor for me.

• May 12, 2010

And he mentions the word crush. I'm not sure I ever really knew exactly what it was supposed to me. It implies temporariness. And an adolescent thing. I really only thought it meant foolish. I mean, I say to myself I had a crush on Wynne, but I guess more of a crazy obsession.

Another beef roast. I think I was getting very hungry, because it tasted really good, like I really needed it. I think I managed to get it more like a proper braise, and it wasn't just full of water. And no onions this time. Maybe the onions were adding to the water. A chuck roast. My mom picked it out. She may well be a lot better at picking than I am. Tender. The store is supposed to have good stuff, and maybe that's it.

Well, apparently Kim is in another relationship, according to facebook. Good for her. I haven't heard from her, personally.

Career is about the intersection of what you are good at and what the world wants. It is noteworthy in not involving specifically what you want, except to the extent that there really should be a correlation because what you are good at and want, if only because you have to spend time at doing something in order to become good, and hopefully you aren't foolish enough to keep doing something you don't like for a long time. But not everyone is that smart, I guess.

So one of the scenes in _Cahsback_ touched on an idea that I am in favor of. When he was a kid, dude had a little Swedish exchange student in the house, and since she was Swedish, modesty wasn't a big deal in walking from her room to the bathroom. Really, you could see it was just a movie device to have a hot young blonde walking naked up the stairs, but I would have to say it's about time society got rid of modesty. Some bits of clothing, like bikinis, seem quite silly. Maybe if we get rid of religion, that would go, too, but I see a bit of that eroding just in reddit gonewild

Time! has come today.

Felt like coming out to Starbucks. Had a little to say, maybe, but I got up feeling like I had slept enough, and it was like 7:30, a perfect time to get up in the real world and go out and great the day. So what would I like to do with myself? Writing seems like it would be nice, but putting forth a complete product that people would be interested in paying for is a lot of work. And I really have no management ability for a product like that. Capitalism really rewards management. Get a bunch of other people to do you bidding, and then take most of the rewards for yourself because you took the risk to get everything together. Now, the greatest rewards are in ownership which is a special kind of legally protected management, and there is a salary-slave sort of employed management, but even that is valued above actual production. Seems a little bit odd, maybe. Possibly one of the justifications is that management requires harder skills than line work. The pressure can be higher. But managers are often, it seems, actually much poorer skilled than line, thought they fake it by acting like they know what should be done. And I think traditionally, a manager has to "move through the ranks" in the line to get to management. But that really doesn't imply ability in the line, just political ability and ambition. According to the Peter Principle, you have to move and fail to get to a high position. Failing upward. But something had to get you to move. At FedEx, I moved toward doing more managing kinds of things, and I thought I had been doing line production well, but maybe I was fooling myself. Part of what I was doing was trying to explain stuff to other people, so that might have been more of a failure of mine and a slip that pushed me toward managing. Oops!

Man, it's nice to have tunes. I forgot to charge up the iPhone, so I have my mini iPod for the tunes to supplement it. Something extra to carry. I keep that clipped on my collar, so it doesn't take pocket space, but it's an extra thing. And probably it's better not to wear out the iPhone battery for tunes. It made me wonder about Jeff, who is a hardcore apple product user. I think he sticks to the phone, and that must run through that battery, but he buys a new device almost every new major release, it seems like. Apple things don't have user changeable batteries, so they are inherently intended to be essentially disposable, which has got to be the epitome of American decadence, Disposable in some sense-- they're program is that through them you can send yours in and get a new one when the battery finally dies, which may well be ten years later. I have a very early disk based ipod from Jeff one time when he upgraded that appears to have just about died. It now will randomly glitch out and I have to restart. I assume the battery is gone. I'm not positive when it was made, but it must be at least 5 years, and maybe closer to 10. That's a good life though, and I have another one to carry around. It's nice just not to mess with it and leave one in the car. I think went it freezes, that's not so good for the mechanical drive, and generally electronics don't like to be frozen, but hey, it serves me, I don't serve it. The onion had a parody of Chomsky. I have become a bit of a Chomsky fan lately. And this is him taking a break from railing against the system. It doesn't quite capture him, I think, though. In one of his latest talks, I think it was the one at Brown in April. he seemed very personable. Of course, I think that was about the hero worship from the crowd. Someone asked him what the best experience in his life was, and he said he doesn't answer personal questions. I really wonder what that's about.

One other thing in _Cashback_, it seemed to also be making a statement about wage slavery. And dude put it in an odd way, he couldn't sleep so he had extra time, so he traded time. I think for Brits, trade is used a little more where we might say sell or sale. Those quirk Brits. And I'm watching a thing with Richard Attenborough about peguins, and he's constantly saying glassier instead of glacier. Just defining any kind of rules of pronunciation as far as I can tell. Anyway, wage slavery. Dude and chicky talk about their dreams if they can get out of the grocery night shift. She wants to bw an air hostess, the moderately realistic dream, or the super dream of teaching Spanish in South America. Dude wants to be a painter. Really? Such a cliche. It occurs to me that whenever you see an artist in a movie (or play) that's actually a metaphor the writer is using for himself. Kind of a self-referential thing that seems to happen a lot. Since the writer is talking about himself, it works out for dude. The thing is a fantasy, after all. And to through out a weird detail, his cow-orkers make a prank phone call on him, saying they are a gallery owner who want to see him, and he goes there, and guy doesn't know, but he looks at the stuff, and he gets an exhibition anyway. Uh huh. Like an art student isn't going to paint like an art student. But he said he was a bit bored in art college, so maybe he had already developed some skill, and they were only refining it. Hopefully they aren't just propagating the myth of "natural talent". Talent is developed through work and time. Part of the story, though, is that he freezes time, so he has spent a lot of time on all this painting. Delusional hacks do like to write about natural talent. So that might be it. There was enough robbery in this movie for that to be it.

OK, the little girl had her eyes about four inches from the paper she was writing on. And she was already wearing glasses. I don't know if it helped.

Wow, someone who knows Chomsky blogged about the onion article. Too busy to read it. Yeah, yeah, yeah!

I wathced a little series on ancient Greece. It was narrated by Liam Neeson. Qui-Gon Jinn himself. The biggest thing that sticks out is that they said that for the Greeks, peace was an interruption of war, where for us, war is an interruption of peace. I gotta say, that's progress. It largely focused on Athens. They had a democracy for a bit. A real democracy, a direct democracy. People didn't vote in representatives, they themselves voted on what went on. And for me, this look demonstrated how poor an idea democracy is. It kind of worked only for a little bit, and really, it only worked because there was one guy, Pericles, who knew how to manipulate the people and get them to do sensible things. At best, all the democracy did of value was to get lots of people emotionally committed to the things that the government, actually they themselves, did. So now I really don't know what to think politically. Democracy is a crock, and always was. Without Pericles, the mob just did stupid things, including a war with Sparta, where they got their asses kicked.

One of the episodes seemed a little odd. For a bit, Athens had a big naval empire, with trade all along the Aegean. That didn't work out after losing to Sparta, but they shifted to an "empire of the mind". They had Socrates. Really just a pest more than anything, but he instilled the idea of questioning everything, which is truly the key to science. And from that, they had quite a few other philosophers after that, and an entire tradition of not thinking magically, that what happens is just the capricious will of gods, but that the world can be understood, like a machine, perhaps. It is really the legacy of the time, and why we even care about them now, so it absolutely makes sense that they would have an episode that is kind of an essay on that subject. The other two were really just context for that. And they really helped situate it for me. It also helped me appreciate how just lucky and arbitrary it was. It's no wonder that that mentality was swept away and lay dormant for almost two thousand years until it resurfaced again. OK. There are now seven women and no other men sitting here in Starbucks. I guess it makes sense that only women would be sitting around on a workday. All fairly young and cute. And me wearing my hooters t-shirt. It was a gift.

I'm trying to psych myself up to go to the apple store and maybe finally buy an iPad. I need to support the consumerism. But I've been feeling like just not spending money and putting off getting back to work. But it's getting about time to be looking for work. That's going to be long and painful. Grr.

There was a little blonde in scrubs and a white coat. Seems like she must have been a doctor. Or could have just been a nurse. I gave her a smile, and she just smiled back about as bright and friendly as I've ever seen. I doubt I will ever see her again, but it was nice.

But shoot, they were out of soy milk. So it will have moderately unpleasant consequences for me. Unpleasant and maybe painful.

And the last Battestar Galactica episode should be coming today. There's also the clip show after that, but it's not supposed to add much. And from what I gather, that was more of an afterthought as they realized that in the beginning of the episodes, they kept saying "they have a plan" and they never ended up explaining any plan, so they had to go back and try to invent something. The series sucks. I'm surprise I've stuck with it, but maybe it was a bit boring. It has a bit of a pull being a drama, and maybe you get into following the characters, but personally that doesn't do so much for me really like it might for some other people. Some people are into people more than others. Most people, actually. I'm more into abstract ideas. There aren't so many of us, but we do add some value to society, though most of society, being really just into people, do not value it particularly so much.

I don't know if it's good or not, but my kung fu style seems to be remarkably unconcerned about body type. There have been fat masters, and skinny little pipsqueak masters. The founder had the body of a "eunuch". I put that in quotes, because he worked as an imperial guard and had to official be a real castrated eunuch, but more than likely he just disguised himself as one, because without the testosterone, you can't build up much muscle, and he became stronger over time. We was a big fat guy, like you expect from a eunuch. But what this does to me is that I really haven't felt much pressure to become more athletic looking and losing weight. It's a little weird too. There is quite a bit of wrestling stuff, and with that, there is actually some value in being heavier, even without muscle, so I've actually had this weird feeling of wanting to keep the weight on. In typical external martial arts, there is obvious value in just bulking up on the muscle, and you can feel the advantage from doing that, so you have pressure to push your body in that direction. But it seems like baguag isn't doing that. Getting stronger seems to be in there. Especially in the big broadsword form. But it seems to want to work with the body you have. I don't know.

Spent way too much money. I need to not do that. But I didn't get an iPad. The store saved me from that because they were out of stock. Too bad for them. Getting one might have actually saved me a little bit, after that crazy initial expense, because I could buy online books from amazon for quite a bit cheaper than the dead tree version. If they have ones that I want. And with the plebeian nature of the world, maybe that doesn't happen. Anyway, I went into borders to get _the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks_. I had great trouble finding it. I had to ask. They had it in the section up front for local authors. I thought they would have it in a special section, but I just didn't see that one. The author is like an associate professor at U of M. sales lady said they sold out a couple times already, and she was going to read it. And since I was spending money, and spent so much time looking, I found something by Martin Gardner that looked interesting. He had a math column in Scientific American, and I've read maybe a couple of his books. He had the column before Doug Hofstadter. This one is more a random collection of essays. I should look over at the title, but I'm being too lazy. I felt like just reading general writing from someone like me, an ideas person. And he's a real professional writer, so maybe it will be inspiring. And one of the essays is about Ann Coulter, conservative she(?)-devil.

Before walking into the Apple Store, I also went into Williams-Sonoma. I looked at espresso machine. It's still sad that Melissa has an espresso machine, plus all the stuff, but still goes to Starbucks. I don't know how good her machine is though. They had a cheap two hundred dollar one, but it required you to put in coffee already ground. The real machines grind them fresh, and then pump through high pressure. The cheap one said it did 15 atmospheres, which I think is right. There is a cheap time which uses steam pressure, and that doesn't get enough to do it properly. But I'm not sure what part of the machine is supposed to be used to heat up the milk. That might actually be something separate from the espresso maker, so I would need to look at that. I was just looking at those, but I really wanted to buy some demi-glace, I didn't remember if that was the store I remembered that had it, but I think it was. I wasn't sure which one to get, though. I was thinking maybe both chicken and beef. Fresh market has little one and a half ounce chicken demi-glace for five bucks. Williams-Sonoma has 10 ounce jars for like $30. They had beef, veal, or chicken. I decided to just try the veal. I think that is about the ultimate in decadence. Even some meaties draw the line at veal. But I also got an egg cup. My folks like to eat boiled eggs out of an egg cup. I think we have a fancy one, but I believe I broke our everyday one when I put it in the dishwasher, and it fell through the cracks. So it makes sense that I should replace it. Still, spending money. Maybe not getting the iPad got me thinking I had a little extra. I'll probably get one still, anyway.

As for writing for money, that's where I can make a stand as an anarchist. Be the change you want. It's the Star Trek ideal. Getting rid of money, and people just doing what they want without all this greed. So I write and give it away for free. That can work. Capitalism is not set up to deal with it, but in software, there is a real open-source movement, where you write stuff and share it. People do pay other people do get specific work done that they need, but if something useful is made that can be shared, people just share it.

I don't know about the idea that greed is good. Russell I think affirmed it recently, and apparently he really believes it. But I have yet to see how it's good. It makes you an unpleasant person, at least to me. I think it might be that some women are attracted to greedy men. At least in my understanding of some biological pressure, it seems like it might be true. And you hear the stories about chicks going for douchebags. But I find it irritated. And the very nature of greed is that it can't be satisfied. But then, Ned Flanders talked about how he liked mosquito bites because they were satisfying to scratch, even though that could only be temporary and self-defeating. I don't scratch mosquito bites because I know they will go away if you don't, and will stay around if you do. I difficult thing to come to as it is against your natural inclination, but it works surprisingly well. So I guess I just personally don't have sympathy for the greed thing. I have gotten into the bad habit of buying too many books. That's pretty greedy, I suppose. But I like to support a movement toward a post scarcity period. Economy is about managing limited supply. In information, there aren't the same kind of limits. One thing about the ipad is that it's all abouut comsuming media, but it is trying to be part of a scheme where content a\can still be sold, just without needing to have physical media, like trees or discs. We'll see how it goes. Getting rid of media is a nice move, but apple is just slightly one the edge of capitalism and unfreedom in this.

The saddest thing about conservatives is that they've let themselves be manipulated into support things that are against their interests by rich people who are controlling the media. Is that not what you would call stupid? Part of it is by manipulating the conversation including stuff that is generally part of their values, and then linking bad things up with stuff that actually would be good for them, but bad for them if they ever became rich. And tying into their greedy dreams of being rich. Oh well. Foolishness, at least, if not actual stupidity. There is a lot of just willful ignorance too, of choosing not to know certain things. That's something I particularly don't like. And related to that is just what appears to be that lies and not looking at the full truth and story is a good thing. No one really needs to know everything. That would actually be a bad thing in their minds. And further along that road is privacy. I personally don't see that privacy is a very valuable thing. With privacy you lose a lot, and I'm not sure if you gain much.

OK, so there's an article on clojure in the google app cloud. That's something I should learn how to do. I've been trying to study Clojure, and it would be good to learn how to work in google's cloud. Unfortunately, there were only three people in the company that did that. So there may well be no possible jobs doing it. It would be something more if you could do something, you might be able to sell the service, or get some company to hire you to work. There would not be people looking externally for someone to do it. You'd have to go to them.

Wow. Saw the end of Battlestar Galactica. Just don't care.

• May 10, 2010

It makes me think of that girl who liked to make out with a guy, and then say no and frustrate him until he just takes her without explicit permission. That was a story told by a comic who did stop. She asked about it after. And he was making it a joke about how you can't play with rape. But aggression could be an important survival trait. Is there some tendency for girls to push things? And for it to really be legitimate, they would have to honestly protest. Kind of a scary twist.

I had a dream where I was talking about food with a Klingon. I don't think I have enough experience talking with Klingons to really have an accurate image of them. He seemed friendly.

I was kind of in a sad mood. I was thinking it was because of the little stock market crash. It went down 5% in a week. From that I didn't go out except on Sunday, and after that I was better. It was really just a random thing, and now so far today it looks like it has bounced just about completely back. I've also been holding off on getting an iPad. Maybe I will go do it.

I'm thinking about the remake of _Karate Kid_ that's coming out in a month. And it's Jackie Chan in Beijing and they are learning kung fu. His training is supposedly unconventional, maybe so it's vaguely like the original. I don't know if they had the story, and it was vaguely like the Karate Kid, so maybe they thought, hey, lets call it that and make a lot of money from that, and shifted it a bit to fit. And it's Will Smith's kid Jaden. Trying to make him a big star. Whatever. Kid acting can be quite poor. So it kind of smells. But still, you've got Jackie Chan. He is a real professional, and always puts out a good product. The old one was so cheesy. That stuff probably wouldn't play today, but I'm sorry, it's just not the Karate Kid without wax on, wax off. It's just not. Looking over one story, it looks like they do have wax on, wax off. So yay! And JC says it's in a funny way. Well, the old one was in a funny way. But probably he means he doesn't have the kid wax his car and call it training, it's probably just some line thrown in. They are really calling it kung fu kid, at least in China.

I spent quite a bit of time thinking of telling Melissa that she looked like she had lost wait. How exactly to put, maybe just to ask if she had. Even before going to see her, because I was a little worried that she was starving herself to get ready for summer. And when I saw, she didn't seem to have taken off as much as I was thinking, but she did look like maybe a little. And then she said she was going to quit smoking, because she was running out of cigarettes. Aparrently, all the manufacturers have changed something in their formulations and now add something that makes her sick, and she has just been buying up what people have left of the old kind. But she's just about out, so she feels she has to quit. She's tried rolling her own, but that's too hard, and she doesn't have time when she's busy. So I started the conversation, She looks like she's lost some weight, but with quitting smoking, it's going to be hard. But she's hoping that with quitting smoking, she'll be able to run again. Now that would be good. I hope it works for her. I think that stuck with her, because maybe an hour later, she said didn't feel like she lost weight. I don't know. I hope she does OK.

When I left, I said I need to get with her. And she kind of put me off again, and said she was going to arrange all the stuff she has to do that she has been having to put off. But at least this time she said we would do it some time. For what that's worth. I did say that I know she is not good at sitting down, so it's a little tough to figure out. Maybe walking somewhere.

I finally staked up my tomato plants. I got some little stick for stakes and now getting them out of the package, they seem very flimsy. I use three at one end to try to help with that. And I'm trying to use a Florida weave, which links all of the together, so I think it might make them a little stronger. But they might just all blow over. So we'll see. They main plants all have blossoms, now. The one plant off by the strawberries is not doing so well. It's in a big mulched area, and I think the soil is not as good. The leaves were getting yellow. I should try to find what that means. And I need to give them some fertilizer again. It's raining today, which should be good. The last bunch of seedlings didn't make it, but I have three or so from the original bunch that now are about the size of the plants I might have gotten from the store, so they seem like they will make it. They weren't even tall enough to reach a first string in my weave, though, so I had to hold off with them. I should be getting some tomatoes, though. My parents have not been lucky with their garden this year, though. Something ate the roots of their tomato plants, moles maybe, so they've had to start over. And they got some squash plants, but then the ones from seed came up, so now they have some extra plants, and probably they will bring some for here. I don't really care for squash so much, so I haven't put any in here.

• May 5, 2010

Our washer finally died. It was thirty-seven years old. That's a long life. It leaked water on the floor, which followed along the wall and into the bathroom on the other side of the wall. It reminded us of all the flood victims around this weekend. We didn't have any kind of problem like that, though.

I got a bunch of strawberries from our strawberry patch. Maybe half a dozen, and more than that I left to get a little more ripe. I'm a little surprised that the birds and squirrels didn't get them first. It did look like a bird might have gotten to one, but otherwise they were fine. And it looks like the way they sit on the ground, they are a little bit protected. So bonus!

The tomato seedlings seem to be making it. They are still quite small, and I don't know if they will make it to fruit. The other plants are getting good sized, though still not close to full-sized. I haven't even staked them yet, though I better get on it. But a couple of them already have blossoms. The breed is Early Girl, so they aren't kidding. I kind of think the plants are really too small to be producing tomatoes. We'll see. And I think this may be a breed that doesn't keep making fruit forever like you kind of expect for tomato plants.

To laugh in the midst of suffering. So before going down to Bardog, I tried an ATM and it was down. Then a second one. Ouch, it must have been the network. I had to go back home and pick up another c-note just in case. And driving in to midtown, I remember thinking that I could just use my Starbucks card, and probably Melissa would pick up the tab. I only got chicken tenders. But the atm in midtown was working, so I was fine. But I could see it probably meant bad things for Melissa, and yes, the credit card was up and down all night. So she was really suffering. At one point, she was struggling to handle some checks, to ring them up, and an old guy just started pointing and laughing at her. And while at first a little hurt, she actually started smiling and laughing too, despite having such a hard time. At closing, by herself, she was again sturggling and wasn't going to be happy. Aldo told her she had to stay until she got everything though, so she would probably be there until 6. And she had an exam in the morning, which must not have been good. But in the middle of it, on account of a guy, from Wisconsin, laughing, she was able to laugh and be just about as happy as I've seen her.

We put the old washer by the curb, and now half an hour later, somebody is picking it up. They wanted to charge ten bucks to haul it off. Now somebody could actually make some money off it, maybe.

• April 28, 2010

It reminded me of the line from Corso's poem "Marriage" which I linked to. I'm also reading some little bits about it. Poetry was fun. I used to do sad little adolescent bits of it. I've got that junk sitting around here somewhere. But I never was serious, and I didn't develop or keep up. I probably would have been more of a prose poet, anyway. Did I mention someone once said I reminder her of Jack Kerouac. I think she was on acid at the time. Just some kind of college party. Seems unlikely you'd find anyone who would know the guy now. And I was thinner then. More likely to wear white t-shirts. Poetry of course reminds me of Wynne. It's seems odd that I can find stuff from her now. And Kim got a MFA, so she has studied writing poetry. I could have studied writing this year. Maybe it would have been good. There were several things I could have studied, but I really just kind of decided to be lazy. Maybe that's fine. The cultural story of the talents. The little Jesus story about the three servants, each given a talent, which was just some money, but really anything of value. One hid it under a rock, and the other two invested them and used them and got them to grow. The one that hid it under a rock lost it. It's a story. And it's suppose to express how valuable it is to make use of things. But I'm not so sure. There's pain in work.

One of the lines in the movie hooked me. Brat's ex-boyfriend came by, and then hung out with the dudes, and told them he stays friends with all of his ex's, it's kind of a Zen Buddhist thing. And that was funny to me, and think few people would get it. It's the exact opposite of a Zen Buddhist thing, which in a Zen Buddhist way, makes it a Zen Buddhist thing. And you get the feeling that he's just L.A. shallow and doesn't know any better, and yet it's true. The mind boggles. It's what I would call writing.

So, we're going to do a demo for the kung fu school. We practices fanzi quan, which we have been studying. Louie said he was not comfortable with it. He wasn't kidding. He really doesn't quite have it. Reecie was more mellow, but she is quite shakey as well. I was all for it, and I think I'm solid, but I don't know about them. It was David who wanted to learn it, and he won't make it to the demo. He did it, and he's very solid. So I don't know how it's going to go. I don't feel nervous at all. I was thinking recently how I really don't think I get nervous so much any more. Shy maybe. I'm still not so good talking on my feet. But it seems like performance nervousnous does not get me. I don't talk in front of crowds much, but the idea does not scare me, like it seems to most people. That's about embarassment. Maybe I'm not so scared of being embarassed any more. And yet, there are a lot of things I won't say to Melissa, too scared. Hmm. I think it's getting to where I just don't care about what most people think, but a few, maybe. If I can write a public blog where I talk about sad little things about me, I really must not care that much.

I'm reading a reddit post about a math problem in a radio contest. If three people can sit around a table six ways, how many ways can 8 people sit around a table. The guy said eight factorial, and they didn't think it was right. He got his girlfriend to give the number, 40320, and she said he was right with 8 factorial. Honestly, though, that's not a number, so I don't think it's right. But it gets a little worse. I didn't get the answer right away myself, which makes me feel bad because I'm studying combinatorics right now. Looking at the discussion, I'm not sure the question is properly posed. The thing is, and this has gotten to me in the past, I can think of quite a few other possibilities. The first one, though, we might be able to get rid of. We aren't talking about a round table, because then three people would only have two ways. How many chairs are there? For six to be right, there would have to be only three chairs. Maybe it's circular and there are four chairs. Either way, there is no way for eight people to sit around it. Maybe people are just sitting on the floor, and we aren't worried about how many chairs. You can think about different rules, and get different answers, though at this point, I only have zero or 8 factorial. The rules have to make three map to six. Anyway, I don't know. For some reason, though, I didn't right of recognize six as three factorial. anyway, it's something.

I watched _Cocaine Cowboys_. It was about some people in the Cocaine business around Miami in the 70s and 80s. The Colombians took over from the Cubans, and it got very violent. So some of the drug war legitimately became about the violence. I guess that makes some kind of sense. America needs its violence. Somewhere in there, there was something on gun control. I could have been the thing on that fat Moore guy or Nader. But they said that gun control works. Most countries don't have a problem with gun violence like the U.S. because they restrict handguns. But Michael more used Canada to say it isn't the gun. They have lots of guns but don't have our gun violence. But he didn't say the important fact that they have long guns, but they restrict handguns. Huh. It couldn't be that, it must be the economic or social conditions.

Wow! I made this three minutes microwave chocolate mug cake, which I saw on reddit. It was incredibly easy, and didn't mess up any bowls or pots, which added to it just being easy. My mom, who bakes for real, actually seemed impressed. The cake isn't great, but it is adequate, and it's not even klitschy, which how her cakes sometimes turn out. It was actually fluffy, which I completely was not sure about. It must be something that steam or egg does. I have never made a cake before, so it was a nice first try. And I didn't even measure it really, using a regular tablespoon, and not a measuring spoon. I am quite pleased, and now I can have chocolate cake any time I want. Three minutes is the cooking time, but the scooping and mixing made it only about 10 minutes.

And then there's the Frontline episode on the vaccine war. Mom's who opt out and endanger others. But don't think they do, out of ignorance. Another thing to remind me of Wynne, who is a pediatrician. She's a smart, successful doctor, so I might like to talk to her, but I don't think she would want to talk to me. She's also very sweet. But I kind of scared her, so I should leave it alone.

• April 27, 2010

I'm watching a thing on Philip Glass. I don't really like him. I'm not much for classical music or whatever he does. Big effort music. But he's rich. Does movie music. Now there is a section on his sort of spritiual stuff, like Buddhism, but he doesn't call himself a Buddhist. He says he's interested in taoism. In that sort of diverse interest, including being Jewish, he reminds me of Cliff, who also studied music. He does chi gung and felt it after 5 years. Well, I guess I might have 2 more years. Being rich, he knows all kind of famous people. Ginsberg, the Dalai Llama, Ravi Shankar. All kinds of film makers, of course. They had Scorsese and Woody Allen. So he just said something that kind of illustrates what I don't like. He was talking about some kind of adventure weirdness out in the desert maybe that he did when was 65, and he said most people were retiring to the bahamas and playing golf. No. Most rich people are doing that. I guess other people don't count.

• April 26, 2010

At about twenty 'til 10, I said I was going to go to Starbucks to get her another one. And again with the lip, she was saying I didn't have to, but I said very plainly that I wanted to. I think I had to do it twice, and she did give in. One ominous thing. I looks like she didn't eat anything that day. I asked her if she ate something, which I do fairly often, and this time she was kind of evasive and didn't come up with anything. That girl. But seeing her with Josh. She is just so devoted to him.

Man, I was with Melissa off and on for about 12 hours. It doesn't get old. She she went off the shoulder today. some kind of tube top at work, and something else during the day. I'm not sure why she needed somethign different for work, exactly, but thinking now. She had a white skirt with some kind of salmony top, but that skirt didn't have pockets she would need at work, so she had to have her little denim skirt, but then maybe the top wouldn't match any more, so she switch to a blue one. Quite yummy. I guess it's hard to separate out how much is just liking how she looks.

Bardog did really well in the wine race. They were running pretty hard, and didn't spill anything. A lot of people went a little too fast and then lost bottles. But it seemed that was more about the wind gusting. So quite a bit was just being lucky enough not to catch a wind gust. But that's fine. They got third place. This time Melissa didn't have time to help Jeanne with her queen of the vine costume, and she just didn't get it together.

• April 25, 2010

• April 23, 2010

I didn't get her name. I little girl walked up to me and talked to me a bit. First I was at the jukebox, but then she came over to me at the other end of the bar. She said I looked happy all the time. And I said thanks. I don't have to work right now. I really wasn't very friendly, especially compared to her. She said she liked me shaved, though she also like me with the beard, too. Most people aren't happy all the time.

So I'm seeing something different now. The video will pause, but I noticed that the timer keeps counting, and after maybe five or ten seconds, it will come nack after a pause. Maybe it was doing that before, but I wouldn't give it enough time to come back. I don't know. Seems like before I would kill the process, and it wouldn't be able to recover, or maybe I would pause it.

I started watching a Frontline episode on the digital nation. They have a bunch of MIT kids. I don't like MIT kids. And maybe that's part of the deal. They themselves talk about how great they are at multitasking, but then they have some psychologists testing them, and they are actually very poor at it. Luckily, there is grade inflation to make up for it. What I don't like is how important they think they are, how sure of themselves. Maybe spoiled would be the word. But somewhere, I know I read about how the parents of some kids in some kind of economic group have empowered them to feel entitled, that they should get what they want because they are so special. Annoying is what it is.

I just read an article against paying for online dating. It's from a free dating site, OKcupid, so they have an interest in making the pay competition look bad, but it does statistical analysis on it. The main sort of fact that they have is that on paid sites, usually more than 95% of the profiles are from people who aren't paying, so they can't answer back. That makes the experience quite poor. Guys will get frustratrated, and then send poorly done messages, and that will annoy girls. I did finally give up my subscription to match.com. I met two people from it. Still, the analysis suggested you might get one reply in 100. I didn't get very many but it wasn't that bad. Also, the profiles list how recently you've had activity. That seems like it would indicate you must be a subscriber, but I guess not. Part of what they go for is to try to persuade people to subscribe so they will reply. I think I just recently lapsed, and somehow I got maybe it was a "wink". Possibly fake, or something. I don't know. They keep sending stuff. But I've given up on them.

I also saw an online game game where you're a shark

Yay! My tax money came in. It's actually been in several days and I hadn't checked. And since I got more money back than I put in, "refund" isn't really the right word.

• April 20, 2010

So, I'm kind of bummed out the Kimberly Hill doesn't accept me as a facebook friend. She's a cute little girl I see at shows with Super 5. I think she's cute, so I'd like to see the pictures she has. And she's got hundreds of friends, but doesn't accept me. She may not recognize me. I don't know. I've recenly tried to reduce my facebook friends to people I know personally in some way, though they may just be acquaintances, and some are people from the intp, but I feel fairly close to some of the intpish.

I got through the third season of battlestar galactica. I think they've gone a little weird. Starbuck is back from the dead, and it looks like it's just fantasy, not science fiction. They did something with "All along the watchtower" but whatever cover they are using doesn't sound to me like the song. And they have the lyrics stuck in there, and it just seems goofy. I should be done in a couple of weeks, maybe.

I've got a thing to watch Netflix download on the wii. It's kind of more convenient seeing it on the TV than just on the computer, I think. It's easier to have food with it on there. Mostly I've got documentaries. I saw something on Michael Moore, and something on Ralph Nader.

Donnie and Melissa were talking. Donnie said he doesn't like to spoon or cuddle, it's too hot. And Melissa had to agree with that. She said she would be like, get away. She doesn't like to be too hot when she's sleeping. Boo.

I decided to shave. Getting too itchy, and I finally found someone, Angela, who didn't like it. I think it was about time.

Maybe it doesn't sound like much, but we don't have computers or robots that can name things, that is, just tell you what something is called. There's isn't even really an idea of how you would do that, though really, that isn't all that clear a thing to ask. Given any particular something or other, it could be called a large number of things. You might call a person a person, or a man or a woman, or by his name, or maybe a brother or sister, or a cook or a worker. There are so many possibilities, and what you might say would depend on what you are trying to do. Language is really more of a game that we play. But it's a game that computers don't play.

• April 19, 2010

Angela also said that she didn't like the beard so much. She didn't even recognize that it was me until I came up to her. She suggested maybe a goatee, but I think that would be too much work for me, so I may get rid of it soon.

I surely don't know what it means, but I saw Melissa naked in a dream. She was on the other side of the room, though, with lots of other people around. My thought is that maybe I'm letting go a bit.

• April 15, 2010

I finally did my taxes maybe a couple of days ago. It was a lot harder than I was expecting. Maybe three hours to do. What I didn't realize is that every time I sold mutual funds had to be listed out individually, with the sale date, the purchase date, and the sort of basis plus the sale price. And this was all using a fairly feeble interface. Also, I tried to use their free version, and I chose it, but at some point they asked if I wanted to import old information, and said sure, but apparently, that requires paying for it. Once I clicked that, it never let me undo it. I went out and went in again, but it stuck with me like herpes. I couldn't get back to a page to start over and go back to a free version. So I was very unhappy with that. So I would say avoid HR Block. And above that, while I was putting in my mutual fund sales, it had a check mark for if the sale was a wash sale, and that would substract out some of the losses, but my investment company actually had the sales only partially as wash sales. So they didn't let me put in the information exactly. It ended up not mattering because I had more than the $3000 minimum allowed losses, but it was something more. But on the plus side, apparently with the Democrats in power, there were some kind of money giveaways, and I got back about 50% more money than I put in. That really doesn't seem right to me. And I tried to uncheck that crap, but it wouldn't take it off. It doesn't seem likely that it will do me much good. I'll probably blow it or something.

The jury duty meeting I went to on Wednesday was only a preliminary meeting. They only wanted to exlude those obviously ineligible people, like non-citizens or non-residents, and give out an designated week. They had a system where you could stand in line and maybe get a week you wanted, or at least not get one you didn't want. I've got June 14-18. They said 80% make it out by Tuesday. A combined 2% get out Monday or take more than a week. So those aren't so likely. They had maybe 3000 people there, and they got through pretty quick I waited till near the end of the week selection, and got out in two hours.

Over several days recently I had little tasks I needed to do. Put out the plants, move money around, do taxes, wash dishes, go to jury duty, go shopping. I think I've got everything done, but I've got a lingering feeling of having something I need to do. I might have forgotten something maybe. Or maybe just the feeling is hanging around. I don't know.

I went to Kroger, and looking through the meat reduced for quick sale, I saw a package of steaks, about 4.3 pounds reduced to $10. They weren't so great cuts, but they looked pretty good. I didn't feel like frying them like steaks, so I tried just slow roasting them. I put them on 200 for maybe three hours. I had put a little water in the bottom, but they really just lost all their liquid, and it ended up almost like a stew. So not the best of cooking, but it was OK. If I had just made them like steaks, I would have just eaten them completely one at a time, but like this, I can just cut off a little bit at a time and nibble. And just solid au jus. I haven't even made gravy the last two times I cooked beef. It goes fine. And I made some rice. I've about run out of potatoes and I don't have any bread. So, except for now having some rice, I'm almost going carb free. For breakfast a few times I've been having just eggs, sausage, cheese, but no bread. It really does seem like I don't get as hungry when I do that. I'm thinking eating four pounds of steak isn't going to be great, though.

Just saw an article suggesting we can do two things at once, but not more. Maybe. Doing two at once is hard enough, though.

• April 10, 2010

Melissa really seemed to be so tired as to be delirious. Seems like she was trying to tell me I didn't have to tip her so much or something. But she said thank you so sweetly. She is really sweet.

Gardening today. I put out the tomato plants. And some of the seedlings. A couple of the plants actually had three plants clumped together and I did not separate them. Maybe I should have. And I don't thing the seedlings are going to make it. They really didn't have significant roots. But I can give them a week. Plenty of time to put in other plants. The strawberry plants have a lot of blossoms. Probably the critters will get them. I need to do something about the critters.

• April 9, 2010

Man, I still haven't done my taxes. That's kind of sad. I need to get on it. And I need to put the tomatoes in this weekend. I went to the hardware store to see about getting some more plants. They have them for a dollar each, which seems like it wasn't too bad. The plants in the breed I wanted didn't look so big as the others, though. And they didn't have a convenient flat to hold just 10 like I wanted. The flats were like 16 plants, and just with everything I decided to hold off. And I come home. I've got a dozen seedlings in this second batch. I think I will just Put them in the ground like this. Maybe they live, maybe they die. I was probably going to just give up on them anyway, so I might as well give them a chance. My dad was saying the last bunch got sunburned and I put them out before they were ready for full sun, but he just says a lot of things that he thinks, and acts with complete confidence when in fact not even that often correct. It might have been that. I think possibly I didn't give them enough soil space to develop a large enough root system. Plants are leaves and roots to suck up stuff. They're not all that complicated, really. With not enough roots, they wouldn't be able to suck up enough water. Right now, my big plants haven't even really been growing, and I haven't even really watered them so much, and they haven't really wilted so much. My first batch, I think I may have let wilt a bit too much. And that's going to be an issue with this garden. I have a problem with not always watering plants enough. I'll see how it goes.

Poor Melissa. It looks like she didn't pass her biochemistry test. And she talked to the guy. He said it was easy and some people got 100%. I didn't quite hear and follow what Melissa was saying about that. It seemed like she was suggesting that maybe there was some cheating. He also said she wasn't getting it. That might just be. It's a touch subject, with a lot to memorize and learn, and you have to have a lot of strong background in the underlying basis, like organic chemistry, to just be able to follow the material in that class to begin with. And Melissa don't sleep so much, so it is must be even harder to absorb the stuff in the first place. She works full time. There's nothing to say that it's even going to be possible for her to learn the material with the effort and time she is able to put in. It could just take more than she is giving. There may be people who are doing well because they have more time to put in, and maybe they are just more interested and better at it learning this particular type of material. And one thing about Melissa, she's got the fear in this class. I've seen it. You start doubting your ability to pick up some material, and you just don't think you get it, and it doesn't sink in. You think there is more to it than you are seeing and it doesn't make sense, when in fact you have simply not taken up a sort of emotional response of accepting how things are. I've seen it in math a bit. It's kind of an attitude of I can't get it. You really want to have the feeling that it's really not bad.

I did go down to Bardog on Thursday night after kung fu. Asa asked why I went down there in the week, which was unusual for me. I said I wanted to see how Melissa did on her biochem test, which was really probably the main reason. And she might need some comforting or sympathy if she didn't do well, which I thought was likely, and it surely would be nice to help celebrate if she did well. It was really full, though. I had to park down a hill where they quite often have cars broken into, because you can't see it so easily. And I couldn't leave it there. I was actually not so worred about my car being broken into. Since mine is the cheapest car Toyota makes, it just happens to be less likely to be broken into. And I actually still have enough money to buy a couple more if I had to. I have to admit that really, the only thing I care about is how upset Melissa is when I park down there. She worries, and has told me not to do it. So after and hour or so, I just parked in the alley. Asa said he has done that a lot. And he could come tell me if there is a problem. And really, I was thinking about it. I don't worry that much about getting a ticket. Really the only thing I care about is for Melissa not to be mad. And then sometimes a parking place would open up, and I could have moved into it. Asa kind of encouraged me to just be a rebel. And like I said, it wasn't that big a deal to me, so I just left it there.

And I asked Melissa if she had eaten anything. I do that pretty often. And today she said, no, she hadn't. And I think that kind of makes sense. Some people don't eat when they are stressed, and Melissa was really pretty stressed. So there. She did get something. A pickle and an egg roll. She also has lattes, which have a lot of milk, like 16 oz. each, and she'll have like 4 in a day, so just from that, I don't worry about her all that much. But one thing that gets me. Her boyfriend should be making sure she eats. It seems like a minimal thing. And maybe it would be just too annoying to have someone that does that. And I absolutely don't ever know how her relationship is going. She never ever talks about it, and I don't think I should be asking, but still. And on Sunday, she seemed like she really needed to just be comforted, and that's a BFs job, but I didn't really want to say anything. She's got some issues. I would like to help her out, but it doesn't seem like is into that. And it seems like she kind of proud and wants to always take care of herself and not rely on anyone. Blech!

So part of the deal was that she was really tired. She really looked like she might not be able to drive home. I told her, though, when I was leaving that I've seen her more tired than this, though she did look very tired. This time, though, it seems like David who was working, probably wasn't going to let her get away with it, and was going to put her in a cab. He was going to get Asa to take her, but he didn't have his car. Possibly however Asa was getting home, they arrange it to go with Melissa. So they are looking after each other, there.

I just saw a little reddit discussion on compilers. Specifically, it was about a kind of data structure called control flow graphs that is kind of old school. Dude seems to be saying that computer science has found stuff that is better, but they still use them because the main textbook on compilers, called the Dragon Book because it has had dragons on the cover of all the editions, uses them. The book gets updated, but it's not really a start from scratch thing, so it keeps the main stuff, and this is one of the main things. I guess that's how science goes.

I probably should let it go, but writing about it helps me let go, so here it goes. Listening to Ron Moore in his podcasts about Battlestar Galactica is like hearing a guy jack himself off. And they have them where he gets on with David Eick, and it's like gay porn. Just an hour of slurping noises. Not really my thing. In season three, though, Mrs. Ron is starting to get on them. I didn't like them before, but somehow they managed to make the commentaries worse. She some kind of costume designer. But she doesn't know how to sew. OK, whatever. But she didn't seem to understand that the human-style Cylons reincarnate. So she wasn't following how Caprica six was the same person. Maybe it's just a detail, but it seems like the story couldn't really have been making sense. So how was she watching it? It seems like the kind of thing, where people will laugh along, even though they don't get the joke. The mind boggles, and I really am not happy having to listen to her. She talked on the little newsboards. I don't know. I got three in this week. If I keep up this rate, I'll be through with them all in a month. Now I'm just trying to get past it. That's really just sad.

And they had this thing where they settled on a planet for a year, and then the cylons took over, and they escaped after a few months. It was like they were completely changing the series, but it was just a four episode arc, and then I guess they're back to where they were. It seems so TV.

OK, reasoning by analogy. This is not a valid way to find something that is definitely true. But it is a way to find a proposition that might be true, and then we can see if it is. So maybe not quite reasoning. And possibly, in the analogy, there might be mechanisms in both situations being compared to make them true, so it has some kind of chance to make it true. It's a place to look for truth, not a way to find it for sure. And possibly, just psychologically, it might be a way for people to remember things, as they can keep track of which analogies work, and use those more. I think really thats more the benefit for people, because we form emotional responses favoring and adjusting how we apply different types of analogies, and that can be a mechanism for learning in the sense of adjusting tendencies to act and support beliefs in particular ways. We say intelligence. In part it's a creative ability to come up with successful ways of handling slightly new situations, though they have to be similar to other previous situations.

There's a little shaded section of the backyard that isn't very thick with grass. Sometimes it has standing water. And maybe you would call them mostly weeds. Now it's got a bunch of dandelions, but I've been trying to pull those. It's also got a lot of little purple flowers, and a lot of little yellow flowers. I guess you would have to call them weeds, but they are little flowers. I think they are kind of nice.

Some people on reddit are very disturbed with some of the terms for iPhone developers. The original programming language has to be one of theirs, like objective-c. It's so you can't take apps starting from adobe. And maybe so you can't develop for droid in java and just translate that to the iphone. I seems like a weird restriction, and I'm not sure how enforceable it could be. But it's a way for apple to stay in control of the software on their device. I haven't really tried doing anything for the phone yet. This really looks like a pretty terrible thing to have done. But the istuff is pretty popular, so maybe they can get away with it. Honestly, I'm not sure how much extra software you really need, but this sure hurts the idea of it been a new platform for software. I think you can use onjective-c, c or javascript. No lisp? Boo. Well, javascript is almost a lisp.

I saw somewhere that they are looking at mini towers for phones. Some dealie that takes the phone signal and puts it onto the internet. I'm not quite sure of the details. I know the iphone already will grab a wifi for its internet if it can.

I often watch a bit of the NBC national news if I can. But it's getting to where all I want is their little one minute teaser summary they have in the beginning. It's really enough to give me the daily overview of what's going on. I used to like the PBS summary that the do in the beginning of the show usually, but now they've moved it to somewhere as the second story, but that doesn't put it at a particular predictable time. It's somewhere around twenty minutes in, but I just don't care to watch the first story to see the daily news. So they've blown it for me. And what usually happens on NBC is that it's just a summary of their stories, and not necessarily news. I just looked at it today. I think they mentioned 5 stories. One was just their human interest story. Two were about celebrites. One was about a news story that really happened almost a week ago, but people just happen to still be talking about it, and one is something that just happened, and people are talking about it, but it's really more of a human interest sort of thing about some particular person that really makes no difference to anything. So there really is no news at all. Infotainment. A summary is as much of that as I want. And then from other sources, you can see that there is real news, but generally in other countries, so they don't talk about it. Like on the BBC news. So maybe I should just stick to the internet. But it's not a video, and sometimes there is some stuff you need to see.

I guess what I would like would be to make her breakfast, and give her massages at night, because you have to do those most nights over a period of months for it to really work with fibromyalgia. Or maybe it really doesn't work. Getting enough sleep is probably important. And just being with her. A real relationship. Not going to happen, but it's possible in some sense, and something to imagine.

• April 8, 2010

I tried Aldi again, and this time they did have strawberries, for 99 cents a pound. I bought three. I ate one of them the first day. They had at least a pallet-- hundreds of pounds. Honestly, they weren't that good. Maybe picked too green. But they were good enough. I just like them.

• April 7, 2010

Went by the apple store to look at the iPad. It seems nice enough. They had a lot of them sitting around. Probably not as big a deal as they'd like. The on screen keyboard actually seemed big enough to type on reasonably. but without any kind of feel or feedback, it's probably no quite good enough, and I'd need some kind of real keyboard in addition. We'll see.

Reading _Tihkal_. I had a reaction that while the dude is clearly a genius, the chicky not so much. And she's a mensan and all, but seems like sort of an average person who thinks she's better than she is. And I get the feeling that being married to a real genius, who probably has to constantly reassure her and massage her ego (they actually write about that), she really is confused about it. So at some point, I've decided not to word for word it, and I started skipping around. Dude is a genius, but he too seems to have some limitations as well. There's a chapter on his stamp collecting. Didn't read that. But what is some of the fun stuff? There's a chapter on morning glory seeds. Kind of unimpressive as a drug material. At some point, it was possible to by a big sack of them, though, which was I guess of some significance. I think we had morning glory growing in the garden here. Kind of a weed. I never saw any seeds. But maybe I didn't know what to look for. This gives a better description.

Wow, I see Doug standing out there talking on the phone. I'm sitting here at Starbucks.

What else. Chicky became a therapist. Kind of woo-woo. She has a section of all the "places" you can get to on psychedlic drugs. And it's all stuff that is basically already there. And she gives sort of poetical names to them. She's got "the void". It's when you think everything is meaningless. Basically acute depression. Fine. There's "inflation" which is where you think you're special. Know everything, that sort of thing. Actually, she calls it "the goddess" or something stupid, but calls it inflation later. She said she was too embarassed or something to put it in the first book. I'll bet. I'm thinking another word it "delusions of grandeur". A little subsection on euphoria. OK. There's the oceanic experience, where you feel one with or a part of everything. That's the kind of thing that you really hear a lot, that for some people makes the drug a nifty wonderful, gift from god sort of thing. Great. But she actually talks about how good the ego is, and how it would be bad to dissolve the ego, though there are people who say that's nice. As someone who sympathizes with advaita, this was really where I started getting tired of chicky.

A little bit on time distortion. She mentioned on person for whom time completely stopped, and she spent forever stuck one time. Forever. Ouch. They tell one story one time, where time slowed down, and it looked like they might be able to stop it, but what would happen if they did. Could be very bad, and you might get stuck. So there was someone who got stuck. Would never try that stuff again.

But there was one thing that stuck me. She did a thing on paranoia. I realized that I've never experienced paranoia. And it she said it was a kind of projection. You feel bad about yourself in some kind of way, or you're out to get other people or something, and you kind of turn it back on yourself. Or you internalize thinking you are no good or something. Some kind of psycho explanation, I guess I don't really get. But I just don't really have the kind of background feelings you need to get paranoia, and it hasn't ever hit me. But chicky has all those kind of issues, so it hits her all the time. Totally can't handle the weed. I'll been to all the other places she talks about, plus a few others, but I've never been paranoid.

One fairly intriguing thing with these guys. The reserve the word "hallucination" to mean actually perceiving things or scenes or objects that you think are there, but other people wouldn't. Pink elephants, say. Just wavy lines or rippling they would not call hallucinations. Now, most places that talk about these drugs _do_ say that kind of stuff is hallucination, so their talk about the drugs is quite misleading. Because in fact, hallucinations in this sense are actually very rare for most of these drugs. He mentioned a couple, ketamine and something else, that actually do often have them, but the others, not so much.

And then there are flashbacks. *sigh* They are used by the regressives to scare people. Mostly lies. They want to scare people by saying that if you take something, and any time for the rest of your life, you could start tripping again. That's not the deal. And they come up with a complete bogus associated idea that because there are flashbacks, there must be some kind of lingering amount of whatever drug it is lurking in your body ready to pop out and zap you. More lies. Not biologically possible. They especially say this with the weed. It's fat-soluble, so maybe it sits waiting in some fat deposit somewhere. Some tiny amount. That's probably the key to seeing that it's just bogus. This tiny, miniscule amount of drug has the same effect as the whole thing. When you deal with the raw facts of dosing requirements like dude does, you see that having a tiny amount work like that is silly. Flashbacks are a psychological phenomenon. Kind of like a memory. He gives an example of some experience or something that was unrelated to an substance, and the experience came back to him one time, and it was like he was back there again. And you've got the ptsd people having flashbacks, where suddenly they're back in the jungle again or whatever. Same deal. Nothing to do with the drugs. Just sometimes the brain will go back to some places that it's been. Drug experiences are just weird enough that they'll get stuck in your brain that way sometimes, and come back to you.

Doug said he's going to Google I/O 2010 in May. He's been having trouble with his phone, and last year they gave out free phones at the conference. They aren't doing that this year. They're sending them out before the conference.

David at kung fu is going to a wu shu tournament that's out in San Jose in July. I said I'd go too. Li lao shr has a friend or something out there, too, so she might go. I need to look more into it.

One little girl sitting looks oddly familiar. I'm sure I've just seen her from here, but I think I heard her say something about White Station, and maybe I saw her out there. Her friend talked to me. Asked about laptops. Wanted a recommendation.

Looking over the stuff from Uncle Fester. He goes on about how to grow ergot. He outlines a plan to put like a couple of acres of rye with ergot. So you get maybe 200 pounds of ergot, enough to make maybe a kilogram of LSD. That's like maybe 10 million doses. It's kind of a crazy amount. Obviously nothing he has done, and probably no one ever did that. I would wonder if even the people who make pharmaceutical ergot product do anything crazy like that. I don't know if there is a synthetic process to get the basic starting blocks for it, so maybe they do start with natural material. And I guess it's sad that I don't know that. If I had even looked over the recipes, I would know that. Just lazy. Anyway, there is a migraine medication, ergotamine, that is in that family, so yes, somebody somewhere is making pharmaceutical variations on the stuff. In fact, probably the main way to cook LSD is to start with ergotamine. Turns out, egotamine dosage is like somewhere in the large numbers of milligrams. LSD has dosage around a tenth of a milligram, so you can get quite a bit doing that. And messing with ergot, a fungus that grows on rye, and cause gangrene. Is someone going to grow two hundred pounds of it? I don't think so. So more than anything else, it's just entertaining to read. Morning glory is a lot more likely. And there's Hawaiian baby wood rose. I don't know what that is, though. Much higher level of stuff than morning glory, though.

One other thing Uncle Fester talks about. You can make benzaldehyde from toluene. Benzaldehyde is something you can use to make meth. It roughly can do the job that ephedrine does. You need a little more stuff if you are starting from benzaldehyde than if you start from the ephedrine. The cold pill thing. I still haven't quite grokked the procedure from the cold pills, the super simple in your kitchen personal use process. But the thing to make benzaldehyde, wow that's pretty straightforward. And it's a hardcore procedure for industrial level. Like making many pounds of the stuff. And it actually involves some electrochemistry. You have to oxidize the toluene, so you use electrolysis to make manganese oxide. And toluene. I remember you could just go into Walmart and get a can of toluene. They use it for paint thinner. I'm guessing they don't have that any more. Nope. They've got some stuff that has methanol, acetone, and toluene, but I'm sure it's useless for this.

My dad fixed a lamp we have here where the switch went bad. He likes being out at the farm, but I think he must have appeciated how nice it is being in the city and not having to drive 20 miles to get to the store. He had to make quite a few trips to get parts and things. One time he got the wrong thing.

So I don't know how bad this thing is with Melissa. It's kind of nice to just have a nice friend like her. I hope she likes having me, just as someone who cares about her and doesn't make any demands of her. At least I think I don't. She keeps doing the stuff with the lemonade, and I hope that doesn't get old for her. It's just so sweet. But sometimes she has been late for work trying to take care of it. I'm not so happy that she has trouble like that. So maybe I am a little bit demanding. But really, I think that's more something she's gotten in her head. I like it, and I hope it makes her at least feel a little bit nice to do something for me. I try to take care of her to the extent I can. I'd do more if she was into it. But for me, what? I don't feel like I need a lot of attention, and this seems really just about right for me. And the plus is that I don't go to titty bars. I really just don't even feel the desire to, which surely must be a plus. But on the other hand, I also haven't actually gone out on any real dates. That also hasn't seemed like I really needed to. But that's a bad thing. I probably should be talking to people. I'm not making an effort. I probably should be. And it's a thing I've had a problem with. Waiting for maybe something to happen with someone that just won't, and using it as an excuse to not take an risks for getting to know someone new. But there's also the thing that I don't think I really like most people. There's that.

So David at Bardog was really drunk. He was telling me that I should talk to his sister some time. She's really smart, maybe in Mensa or something. I really should do that. I think I have met her some time, but I don't remember right now which one she is. And I don't know her name. But I should definitely try to be friendly.

Tink on Facebook had a link on something what might make people shy or introverted. Some kind of "sensory perception sensitivity". Doesn't really sound like a real thing, necessarily

My laptop tudor ran a chkdsk when it rebooted. It looked like there was trouble, and it really would only schedule one of those if it had detected some problem. It doesn't even automatically try one of those anymore when it detects an unnatural restart. It has to be specially flagged to do one. And it can't run chkdsk while the operating system is running, after it's loaded. It has to do it before everything, so it has to set some flag somewhere and run it instead of loading everything. I didn't quite see what problems it found, but it said there were zero bad sectors. I'm guessing it's gotten more sophisticated than back in the day. It used to be that when there was a problem in a spot on the drive, it could just mark it as bad. But that's a very naive approach, because a disk drive that is flaking more than likely has problems that aren't really in a particular spot so much as dust that's getting kicked around such that you just get errors in different spots. At least that's my understanding. And I think this drive and the operating system now is just handling it in a completely different way. It's gotten so it just deals with the errors a bit better. There are ways to deal with correcting errors on reads, so it's just handling stuff mostly now a bit under the covers, and not kicking the errors higher up to the applications. That's my suspicion. Of course, it could just be that the problems I'm having are just different from what I'm thinking. I think I need to get a new drive, though it's always so much work to rebuild everything. It would be good if I could do that, and get a thingamajiggy to connect the old drive with USB. I hear they have that kind of stuff, but there might be an issue getting one that works with this laptop drive. They make those special, some way. Checking, a drive would only be like a hundred bucks. I should just do it and not whine. It is quite a bit of trouble, though.

• April 5, 2010

They've called me for jury duty next week. I'm not sure how that's going to go. I hear that now they're going by driver's license. They used to go by voter registration.

My newer laptop Tudor seems to have some disk errors. When I play some files with VLC the computer freezes up. And I had suspected that it was a disk error before when the whole OS crashed and I needed to reinstall. I haven't been able to get a disk fixit scan to go through. And I've been getting quite a few blue screens. But I tried just making a copy of the file that was freezing, and the copy worked ok. So I'm thinking there are bad patches sitting what was just a little ways into the unused disk area. I think it was crashing when it was trying to use the bad sections for disk swap area. But at a certain point, the bad areas got into some files I created, and then only good sections were left. Because it was doing pretty well for me just recently, while my free space was kind of low. But I just had to delete big chunks because I need the space. So I expect that I'm going to have trouble. And it's a little interesting that it could copy the files over, though there was probably some bad stuff in it. I think probably this particular program just is not robust enough to deal with the read errors. It's freeware.

• April 4, 2010

• April 3, 2010

I've been watching downloaded stuff on Netflix. I saw _Enlighten Up_, which is about yoga. Some little girl, Kate Churchill, was into yoga and making documentaries, so decided to do a documentary on yoga. But she was going to get someone who was not a yoga person to look into it, and see if it changed his life. The guy she found to do it was a journalist, and was quite skeptical. He had some kind of white collar conventional dad, but his mom was a shamanic healer, of all things. So the go to the little crappy American yoga schools and see the little space cadets. Doesn't really do much. And they go see some famous yoga guy in Hawaii. That's not enough for them, so they go to muddy smurfing India. First Hawaii guy's teacher, but they also go so Iyengar. He's like the only yoga person I actually have heard of. I studied yoga for some while, I don't remember how long, but they talked about Iyengar. Lou Hoyt. I miss Lou. Anyway, so they talk to Iyengar. Taskmistress must have been on about how it's all spiritual, because that seems to be what dude thinks he's supposed to be looking for, and he's just not seeing it. So Iyengar sets him straight. He started studying as a kid because he was really sick. He just wanted to be able to stand up and walk. He didn't get into the spiritual stuff until later. So, just what you want to get out of it. Then they kind of travel around. They learn about bakti yoga, which is the bigger thing in India. Devotion. Probably the Hare Krishna's would be the best example. You might try to do stuff through your own power, but bakti yoga is not like that. And they talk to some other kind of big guru, but I forget what all he talked about. I don't know. I wonder if Cliff ever made it out to India. That might be something to try.

What else. I saw some mythbusters. Meh. There was also something on philosophy, _examined life_. Philosophers can be some flaky folks. It seemed like they tried to be kind of artsy by talking to them as they walked around and stuff. One huy was rowing in a boat. Another was just driving around it looked like New York. Some guy was talking about ecology walking around a garbage dump. Trippy.

• March 31, 2010

This time, I was wanting to give Melissa my usual amount, but I was thinking that probably she was going to be resistant. My birthday and all. She was trying to do something for me, and it would have totally messed it up as a gift if I had given her money. But I gave it at least a shot. And I'm not sure but maybe just doing that little might have hurt her feelings a little bit. I was also contemplating just stuffing it in her pocket or somewhere. Jeanne actually stuff money in her pocket one time when they were hugging. She might have suspected that too, because after a little hug, she kind of flitted off and moved to a safe distance. Said "no money". I said OK. In the past, I think I usually convey that I'm a little disappointed that she does this, but hopefully this time it came across that I think she's being sweet. She _is_ pretty sweet. And this kind of thing gives me an opportunity to come an extra time the next week, so maybe I'll go in tomorrow.

The parents left yesterday. Kind of sleeping all day today. The black forest cake is already almost gone. Only one piece left, though we did freeze a few pieces. The leftovers are dwindling. Should get back to the usual routine by myself. I'm not sure I would call it "normal" since it seems like they are here just so much. I just have two modes of living, by myself and with them around. The transitions are a little rough, maybe.

• March 29, 2010

I got some stuff done yesterday. It was kind of cold, so they made a fire. Since it's Spring, I figure that should be the last one, and it spurred me to clean out my papers from the 90s and burn them. Since I was getting busy, I felt like connecting my ipod to my amplifier. I had the cable sitting connected, and it was more a matter of just trying it out. But actually, it didn't quite work. I'm not sure what the problem was, but there was some kind of noise or attenuation in the signal. I think it's an actually problem in the electrical stuff in the amp. Maybe something from being dusty. Or it could be a problem with the speakers. I could use new speakers. But I guess I should try it with headphones to check. Anyway, it kind of came and went, so I don't know how it is.

Melissa got me a big porterhouse steak for me birthday. And LeAnne got me a chocolate chambord cake. So I had a good birthday celebration there. And then my parents also got me a steak, with a ceasar salad and shrimp cocktail. And I got a black forest cake. It was just a completely different cake from the one I got at the bakery. Lighter, maybe, or at least, it didn't give me the kind of "ate too much" slightly sick feeling I got from the other. Real whipping cream makes a difference. It won't last long.

Another year older. Doesn't really seem much different.

Two separate news stories of religious violence today. Muslims in Moscow and Christians in the U.S.

With all that beef, my knee is hurting a bit. Hopefully the colchicine will get it.

• March 28, 2010

Are we created equal? Is that right? I think the idea in whatever founding document that's from, maybe the U.S. Constitution, I think the idea is that people are basically the same in how the government should treat them. Some are richer than others, even simply at birth, so in that sense, it's not true. And something the founders didn't know about, there are genetic differences in people. They will have different abilities. It's possible that they believed in the _tabula rasa_, the blank slate, I think from Locke. That's also an idea that is probably believed to be wrong in science. I think it's dangerous to have a government based on a principle that people don't believe in, so it's important to see if this is right. And I think at best it can be salvaged with the idea of right as in, it's best if things are done this way. And the idea to take here is it's best to treat people equally under the law, to not give some people special privileges for whatever reason. Like what was done for the nobility in the previous historical system. That's how that was a step up. Part of an issue, though, is that with money, it is possible to buy privilege, so the idea of eveyone being equal is just not true. That leave a question of what to do with it. The privileged will naturally want to keep it that way, so it's likely that they will be the loudest thing you will hear. And legitimately, that will think it unfair to have anything of theirs taken away. Of course, they want it to be ignored who they took their stuff from. And then there is the way how the national debt, because rich people hold the most bonds, is a way to transfer money from the poor and middle classes to the rich.

A little disturbed by the idea you can get from Kuhn. You can't change people's minds. At all. They won't change. The only way for a general opinion in society to change is for the old people to die while the younger ones adopt a new idea. He was talking about scientific revolutions, but it is probably true for atheism.

• March 26, 2010

Some examples of how some newer scientific theories dropped stuff. Newton's theory of gravitation didn't have any sort of reason why gravity work. With nothing touching, there wasn't a mechanical reason. It just kind of described it. The idea of the earth going around the sun had several problems. If the earth is moving, and you drop a ball off a tower, shouldn't the ball move away from the tower because of the motion of the earth? There's also a fairly obsucre thing, but let me try to explain it. If the earth is moving and the sun is stationary (relatively), then when the earth goes from say one side of an orbit to another, there should be some change in the position of the stars, called a parallax, but you don't see that. Now, it wasn't till hundreds of years later that people could solve that problem. There's no parallax because the other stars are so far away. But at Galileo's time, there was no way to know that or find it out.

Listening to the South Park Season thirteen commentaries. They've got one, the f word. They have an intention to do something like taking the word back, fags. Somewhere, they saw that it didn't originally mean homosexual, but was maybe toward women. So maybe it could shift to someone else, in this case, harley riders. Or generally big loud people. I think that's kind of a neat idea. I generally now is used to mean bad. As a pejorative to be technical. And maybe at some point it was fag as in sissy. But people really have mostly moved past thinking homosexuals are bad. So maybe we could take up fag just as a general pejorative. There is some argument with the glad people. We could see. I guess I should talk to some folk.

I did get a little more of the bagua applications. Louie is surely into them. We did some of the sparring exercises. There's one that involves a bump that aims to knock over, or at least unbalance. And some stuff that goes right into a choke. Actually the rear-choke release as an exercise also involves practicing going into the choke. Which is a little trippy.

Dang. They did a commentary on an episode that wasn't even finished. So they weren't watching it, even, just talking about it. There must be money in it. I haven't gone through and even watched all the episodes, and since I don't have cable I haven't seen them. Matt and Trey kind of hate the commentaries, but they do them to add some value, I guess. I think they're good. This time, it seems a little mellower. They are apologetic sometimes, but they also seem a lot more relaxed. They're successful and don't have anything to prove. And I really think they're doing a good job. Maybe they're getting a little happier or more satisfied. Hopefully they aren't going to let it slide, but with all they've done, they've really become expert craftsmen. Good writers. They try to do immature stuff, but they do it very well. They got an Emmy for "Margaritaville", though they kind of joked that the next one, "Eat, Pray, Queef" was really their best. Maybe so, M&T. Maybe so.

My dad thinks that my tomato seedlings got too much sun so were burned. That may be it. They seemed kind of happy the first day I had them out in the sun, and actually are worse now than they were, though back then, they only had the two rounded fake leaves and now they have the kind of real tomato leaves, but really smaller or of less area than those original. I don't know. I know I also didn't seem to keep them watered right. And I still suspect that the little containers are too small for them to have a sufficient root system. So I really had given up on them, but there were actually about seven plants left when my parents came here a week ago, and they are holding on. My biggest mistake and loss, now I see, was keeping them outside when I went out of town for the weekend. Possibly keeping them outside in general wasn't so good, but that really ended it for them. Since home depot didn't have plants, I got some more seeds, and I'm trying a new batch. I think it's really a little too late to do this, unless I have a lot of luck with these new ones. It could be that I planted those others too early or it really is a matter of the container. This time I'm leaving them in the original wide common tray, which I'm hoping will give the roots more room. They were doing so well initially. Also, the little things I'm using have holes in the bottom so the water runs out. Maybe that leaves it a little more dry than they'd like. I sure don't know. But I get you learn from experience. Seedlings to plants was something I completely didn't read anything about, and I guess I thought it was easy enough, but there are obviously things I missed.

I have some kind of soft spot for farm girls. We've had a sort of hobby farm for a long time now. Not quite a real farm. My dad was really more of a city boy who kind of romanticized about farming. And I think he went off to a farm in the war for a little bit as a boy, but they were really city people in Berlin. My mom, though, was on some kind of real farm for quite a bit. It was out in the east, and they actually road to western germany in wagons fleeing the Russians. She seems to have a lot better sense about tending the farm stuff than my dad, really. And I'm in no way a farm kid, but I guess I appreciate it somewhat. Wynne and Holly are farm girls, more or less. I think it must be less and less common. One thing it seems to do is make you work hard, kind of to have an expectation that you should be doing something all the time. Completely different from my attitude.

OK, some wild speculation. But it would be entirely possible to have a gender difference about food preference. And I mean specifically, that men would have a stronger desire to eat meat than women. There is a particular taste receptor, called "savory", which goes along with sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. All you would need to do is to connect up whatever controls what you want with that receptor. I haven't actually heard of anyone investigating if that really happens in people, but at least anecdotally, it seems like I see guys wanting meat more than women. I'm sure there's variation. Personally, I don't think that much of sweets. That also might be a little stronger in women. I'm not saying here that it's necessarily like that, only that it does look pretty clear that with the taste receptors like that, we can see bits of a possible mechanism.

• March 24, 2010

I just commented to a little girl on reddit gonewild who has some kind of stalker. She posts naked pictures of herself, and somebody gets creepy and sends her email, and she gets freaked out, and pulls all her stuff. I said people can be crazy, but she shouldn't worry too much because usually they are harmless. Not fun, though.

So there is some ISPE stuff on ning.com. Kind of a little closed community. Generally not much activity, but it can be at a pretty nice level.

I got up late yesterday. I think when my parents are here, I naturally shift into that so I'm not with them all the time, and I have time to myself at night. Anyway, it was after eleven, and the first thing I get is where's the sledgehammer? They want to split wood. I have left it in my car when I brought them the nice wedge I have. I think it's called a wood grenade. Something about the design makes it work extremetly well. Anyway, so I get up, and immediately I get pulled into chopping wood. My dad really did most of it, spltting these logs in half, but I used the axe to chop them into fourths. And there was this one log that just would not split. It was a fork, so pretty much one big knot, which can be impossible. We definitely worked on it well past being tired out, and then just gave up and knock the wedge back out. So now my back hurts today. And I went to kung fu. I did the broadsword form, but I was tired enough that I really did it pretty poorly. And I haven't been practicin it as much. Lao Shr did tell Louis, the oldest student, to help me with the sparring practices. He's been wanting to get into that more for a long time. There is one particular exercise that I have never gotten, and just then, I found how it is a counter to a rear choke. It makes much more sense now. I bet I'll get a lot more stuff from this.

My mom is going to make me a black forest cake for my birthday on Monday. I wouldn't have asked her, because now I'm thinking it's too much work, but she wanted to, so it's fine. And she has the kirschwasser already, which is the most expensive thing. But still, even with that, the ingredients are $10, so it's an expensive cake. And I have said it takes two days to make. That's once you have the ingredients. She's having to do all manner of preparation and shopping beforehand. Somehow, the whipping cream she bought didn't make it home. So she had to call, and she's going to have to go back for that. I should stick with cheesecake.

Woo, that was playing it pretty close. My bank balance went down to $7.75. Everything seemed to post yesterday. I wasn't really keeping super track, and I took out a bit of cash, too, so I was lucky I didn't bounce anything. But these transactions are supposed to be looking at what is available, so I don't know what kind of risks I'm running.

Argh, so with my parents here, they answer the phone. So all the people calling asking me for money are getting through. Not so fun. One was from U of Memphis. And it's reasonable. I've given them stuff two years in a row. But I told her I'm not working now. And she actually offered to give me the number of the employment office. Helpful, but no thanks.

Listening to the lectures on Philosophy of Science. I'm in the sections talking about how weak induction is. You really don't know the sun will rise tomorrow based on experience. Saying you do is really more of a way of talking. It's really more what we mean by being reasonable that we think we know the sun will rise tomorrow. More convention than anything else. But if you look at the thing in statistics with the law of large nummbers, if you can take a random sample that's big enough, you can get an idea of some property of the whole population. But usually you have some sort of bias, so you are only looking at the population that falls under your bias. Not really a super valid thing.

Argh. Another mistake. So I got up a little earlier. Actually, I've been up since 3, but I went in to the kitchen where my parents were earlier than usual. Since I was up, mom asked if I had washed my sheets recently, and I said no. So she is washing them. It's sunny today and is going to rain tomorrow, so to be able to hang them out, it needs to be done today. But part of my being able to get up early was that I was planning to take a nap pretty early. Now I can't do that because all my sheets are in the wash. Grr.

So the girl standing behind me in line at Stabucks had a vanity plate that says "nirvana" on her little sports cars style mini BMW. She was parked next to me and I got in first. I was thinking what to say. I was thinking "I'm guessing you're a Buddhist." But I looked at her. And it was a matter of totally avoiding eye contact. So I didn't say anything. Maybe just a Cobain fan. I didn't see what she got. I felt repulsed.

Man, I went to Home Depot to pick up an extra diamond wedge for my folks at the farm. They don't have any tomato plants. Boo! maybe they're out, I don't know. I picked up some more seeds. Maybe I'll try again.

The thing about what is math and this thing about induction both being about the language game seems very significant to me from the perspective of AI. Our ways of thinking is quite specific to us and our linguistic bias. How a computer might deal with things would be quite different. But there is still the question of how to get a computer to play our language games.

OK, something trippy. The notion that science is progressing, according to Kuhn, really is more about the fact that after a scientific revolution, or paradign-shift, the successful system writes the history to make themselves look triumphant. It ignores the things lost in the new paradigm.

• March 22, 2010

And I call the opposition racist because part of the opposition is that they want minorities to get sick and die, or at least don't care if they do. Maybe that's a little too harsh a way to put it. It's maybe closer to say that they feel like they are going to be ripped off by money going to help the minorities they don't like. But if you watched the news, there was actual racist actions by the crowd. They went after black congressmen.

So, it turns out Melissa was fine. That's nice.

I was thinking of taking the online classes in computation molecular biology, but looking at it more, I decided against it. The money was a little more than I wanted to spend, and I looked a little closer at the descriptions of the classes, and I didn't see that they had really added that much to the stuff I got in the class I already took. Plus, it was just going to be for getting access to the lectures, and I really should just be able to do the reading and get stuff out of it. They have reading lists, and I should just go through those.

One thing I don't like is how republicans say everyone is against it. They just stand up and lie bald-faced. It's kind of their thing. I haven't really been able to follow what they say their reasons are. Something about socialism maybe. That sounds really like just some kind of fear-mongering, or an emotional attack to mask the real thing.

OK, I like Vanna White. My folks are here, and we're watching the wheel. Her job is just to look pretty. I think that's nice.

• March 21, 2010

So, poor Melissa. I went down there Friday night. As usual, after that, I sent a message saying thanks, and after that she sent me a long text, still late. It actually split into three. I heard it, but I had been sleeping and didn't look at it then, and then it was late afternoon before I noticed it again. She was saying she was falling asleep driving, and was really having a rough time because she had a test she needed to take that was going to take three hours. Wish I would have gotten up and done something. Since I didn't see it till really too late, I didn't send anything, and I will wait until I see her on Sunday to see how it worked out.

Watching more BattleStar Galactica. It's not too bad on it's own without the commentary. For a few, I had just watched it with the commentary, just getting the idea of the plot offhand. And then, I was watching the commentary, and then going back to the episode. I really not only don't mind having things spoiled, I prefer knowing what is supposed to be going on before it happens, so I can focus on the other stuff. The big surprise stuff really doesn't do much for me. More than anything else, it usually annoys me because it doesn't make sense to me, though clearly it must have to the writers to some extent. To the extent that writers have any sense at all, which I'm starting to doubt. This time I watched the episode first, and then listened to the commentaries. I found that the commentaries make this stuff much worse for me. I think just watching it, I can leave alone why stuff is supposed to be happening. But when I hear Wrong Moore's explanation, it always sounds stupid. On a few of them, he stopped saying they were "great" all the time, though he did get back to it. I guess it was probably a bad sign when he stopped saying they were great, but at least it was a relief.

So, at one point, he made a big that the little fighter ships worked like rockets. They were quite capable of just coming to a dead stop, and flipping around. But then, they have this big plot point (or hole, if you will) that there's this pilot, tripped out on "stems" can control her fighter in this super fast incoming landing they have to do. It's supposed to be like landing a plane on an aircraft carrier. But aircraft have limitations that they have to keep up their speed. I don't know why I'm sticking with this series. I'm on the second season, so two and a half more seasons to go. Seems like a lot of geeks liked it, and it had some kind of philosophical things to say about AIs and identity, maybe. I think it's just not quite so deep to me.

The Teaching Company sent another message about a one day sale. They do those on the weekends. And there was this one class I was waiting for, philosophy of science. I was thinking, if they have it, I'll get it. And I was worrying, because it's getting to the end of the month, and I've let the cash dwindle. I didn't see it in the e-mail, but I went to the site, and sure enough, it was on sale. The DVD was $100, but I could get the dowload for $50. I remember that worked really well the last time. Bunch of stuff on the ipod. So I got it.

Spending a bit extra lately, maybe. I just order some stuff from Amazon. Some Ragnar Benson, Survival Poaching. Good old Ragnar. I wanted to get a copy for my nephew, Daniel, for Christmas because he asked for books on hunting. I didn't fell like I had time for an amazon order, so I just got him something that looked good from Borders. I plan to give this to him, though maybe I'll look at it first, and I'm not sure about gifts from nowhere. Seems like it would be nice if that were an easy thing. I don't think he would really want to do any of this poaching stuff, but I think it would be fun for him to read about. And he's a kid and probably has crazy friends who would do that kind of stuff. I also got some stuff from Uncle Fester. I used to get his stuff from Loompanics. I think they published it, but he does his own stuff now. I just noticed he's got new editions, so it wouldn't hurt me to get an update. And he's going through Amazon, which is totally cool. I assume Loom's sales weren't particularly protected, but it was probably harder for the thugs to find out about them. I know for sure that if you get something from Amazon, it's practically public information. But what can you do? Knowledge wants to be free.

Dang. I got a package from Stanford about their online classes, and I just opened it up and glanced at it. I see that they have two classes on computational molecular biology. I've been interested in it for a while, and just recently I've come back to being interested again. It's something I'd like to go into, and clearly is the kind of thing the bioinformatics class I took was supposed to be about, but really failed at. So it would be nice to take a good class about it. But I'm totally not in the mode to be studying and doing work for a class. Plus, this appears to be the same kind of grunt genome sequence pattern matching that I saw in my class. The state of the art to me did not seem very impressive, though I do not really know the subject very well. It might be good for me to audit these classes. That's some scratch though, and it's a little last minute. They're only two months. I shouldn't be a baby about it. And in two months, I just don't think you can do so much. The deadline is Wednesday. And to pay for it, I would have to get the money extraction stuff started on Monday.

Finished _Pihkal_. Well, the readable part. The rest is just a catalog of the different chemicals in this family he has synthesized. Don't feel like wading through it. Mostly chemical procedures with a little commentary. The last chapter was a rant on freedom and the drug war. Kind of old stuff at this point.

• March 16, 2010

OK, well not much that happens to a person or that he gets really changes a person's happiness, at least not how he expects. But there it does seem like there are a few things that a person can do to affect what that natural level of happiness. To me maybe. Seems like I've been less happy in the past. Maybe it's just the freedom from work talking. There legitimately are going to be things that you don't like. Some conflict with others. Shame, embarassment. Appearing subervient or less well off than other people. Being lower down in a social hierarchy has developed emotionally to be unpleasant to push people along. And that kind of points to some of what happiness appears to be about. It's kind of part of an award system to push people to doing things that are good for the species. Acquiring safety and food and family and such. And in this role, happiness isn't so much about trying to get to some place as something to be continually going after. More about the journeying than the destination. And it's kind of a mistake to reify it--to thing happiness is a thing to get instead of stuff to do and experience. Whatever. I guess I should have more to say on the subject so maybe I'll come back to it.

I saw another interesting question on reddit. What is math? Kind of a deep philosophical question. Back from Plato, he was thinking that there is the world of ideas independent of the physical world. But I kind of like the theory that he got that from tripping balls one time. It's the kind of thing space cowboys get into. And I think it's marginally popular. In some circles, say. If you want to say there is just the material world, you do have to deal with what mathematic truth which certainly seems to be independent of the people thinking about it and dealing with it. I guess I found the discussion interesting. The insight that I think got to me the most was the idea that mathematics is more than anything else a language and a way of saying certain things in a way that we like. In particular, number itself is not something in the world. If there are two apples, in the world, there is just this apple and that apple, and it is only we who consider that they are two of the same thing, or if you have more of something, it is us deciding that they are somehow the "same" or interchangeable in a way we can count. I guess it's kind of an outcome of having stuff that we might trade with other people, so we want to keep an accounting.

Along these lines, I remember the story of the so called primitive people who didn't have number words for more than. So they would talk about there been one of something, a pair of things, or a bunch of them. And usually you only here that bit of the story, and only sometimes will people go on to the further story. Some people like this have herd of animals. And they don't keep track of them by numbers. They are so close to their animals that the know each one individual, so let's say each on has a name. They don't treat then individually and count them, they run a roll call by name. Counting actually implies a loss of information, and treating things that actually have distinct identities as if they are interchangeable. It's a way of dealing with the world, and sure, it can work in some sense. But the way it works kind of is about reducing the cognitive load, so we don't keep track of as much. Simplifying things.

So, in math, we talk about the world in a simplified way. And as a consequence, there are certain implications and tautologies that follow. 1+1=2 isn't so much a truth that exists in some way as a consequence of this way of talking. There are huge amounts of consequences like this, and not all of them are so obvious. Some of that is because this was of talking is a little bit unnatural.

A little bit unnatural, but it does turn out that there is some actual inherited math ability, to some extent. We don't really know much about brain development, and how gene expression can come up with mental ability. I think that's kind of sad, but it's a tough problem that people haven't tackled yet. Still, it's clear we have some inborn abilities. We can get that because apes also have some of these abilities. Counting. Estimating quantities. Telling when one group of things is more than the other. Similarly, telling amounts and when one thing is bigger than another. That's a bit geometrical, but that actually counts as math. And it's very important in a survival sense to know when something is bigger than you, and in related situations, when other this are bigger than others. Generally bigger creatures can stomp on smaller ones. From what I see, though, for animals, bigger generally means taller, so it was really weird for people to stand up vertically--to most animals, we suddenly became bigger than them, even if maybe they actually weigh more. So we became quite scary. A lot of predators have to deal with that, and will atack bigger things. And truthfully, people can be pretty nasty.

Sitting at Starbucks again. Just felt like getting out, and writing somewhere else than home. Not that big a thing, I guess. Quite a few laptoppers. One cute little girl had a mini-Toshiba something. Another cutie had a Dell with a pink cover. Where do you get a laptop with a pink cover? And I guess more importantly, why? Last night, at about 9, I wanted to go out, but everything was closing. So I have to wait and go out when things are open. Seems so limiting. Life is limited. It wouldn't be like that in New York, maybe, but seems like even in Silicon Valley, not much went on at night. I don't know about San Francisco. Maybe there might have been stuff. I guess if I want to go among people, I would need to keep to their schedules. But maybe it's pitiful that I would want to. And there is a fat chick sitting in the corner, knitting. Sad. Loneliness is such a...drag.

I wanted to go out somewhat. I also felt like just going to sleep at 9. I didn't do that. Maybe I should have. I went shopping. Got some milk and bacon. Yummy bacon. The smell of bacon pervading a house is so friendly. I think I didn't end up falling asleep til maybe 3. So less time in the day, if I were to sleep a lot. But balancing out 12 hours sleep, probably getting 6 hours would be good. Weird, perhaps.

Went by Borders. I don't really need more books. It's just something that I think makes me happy. I saw an "autobiography" of William Shatner. With someone else. Now, an autobiography is supposed to be written by the person. If it's with someone else, probably that other person really did most of the writing. So I'm not really sure of "autobiography" is the right word. I wanted it. I'm not sure I really want to start a new book right now, though. So I didn't get it. I'm not all that into Shatner. Well, for a hardcore Star Trek fan. Make I should concede that I really want it. I can go back and get it some time. It was in the discount section for like 6 bucks. I really have no excuse.

One of the reasons I went in there, other than comforting, was to see about a book _Stumbling on Happiness_. I remember wanting to read it, but I couldn't remember if I had. If I had, I didn't really quite remember what it said, and I'd like to, since I'm pondering the question of happiness again. I read it from the library, so I don't have my own copy. Maybe that's one I should have gotten so I could look back at it. It was chock full of diverse little things that maybe I didn't get all of of. And probably I wrote about stuff here. But I really need to cut back on getting books since I don't have proper space for them. And I have some shelves that I'm just not using properly. The books on them have been there more than 15 years. I need to rotate them to boxes, and put the books I have on my to-read stack up on the shelves. But that sounds like work. I also need to get rid of all my papers from the 90s. Don't need those. I've got a stack of stuff on my dresser that goes a few years back, and a box with really old stuff that could be cleared out so I could put this stuff away. Laziness. Sitting hear writing about it is so much easier than doing anything.

• March 15, 2010

I listened to the commentary for the last episode of the first season of _Battlestar Galactica_. It was done by Ron Moore, the main writer and one of the producers. He used the word 'great' at least half a dozen times. That just annoys me. Clearly he likes it. It makes sense to him. But it just doesn't do it for me. It doesn't really quite make sense to me like it must for him, and I really just don't like it. I guess I'm sticking with it, for lack of much else going on. Inertia, maybe. Listening to some of the extra commetary stuff, they say it's a drama in space. I guess I'm really not into dramas.

I was tired. Didn't get a nap in. Went to sleep at 9 and slept for 12 hours. Didn't go down to Bardog. Did send a message that I wasn't going to make it, though I had earlier sent one that I was planning to go. Kind of feel bad that I missed out. Oh well. Maybe another time.

We watched _Bones_ last night. Actually two episodes back to back. But it seemed very odd to me because the Bones character was extremely different in the two different shoes. In the first one, she seemed to have Asperger's. Almost no emotional sympathy or anything. But in the first one, she seemed maybe a little naive, but still kind of sympathetic and slightly emotional. I don't know what was supposed to be going on. It was very jarring. I don't think I ever watched an episode before.

Pain is no fun. My wrist hurts again. I'm watching _Big Bang Theory_. It's the one with Wil Wheaton. I had heard about it. Coolness. And the Asperger dude Sheldon has some type of feud with him. He's been quoting Khan and just said the Klingon for 'revenge is a dish best served cold.' Wil is a redditor, so we see him post on occasion. I don't know if I've ever been in a thread with him. He also blogs. I don't really read it. I think his blog bounces around, since googling seemed to point to different places.

• 3.14

I got to Sudoku puzzle 400 in my book. So that puts me about a third through in just about 3 months, but it's kind of slowed down since I've got into this section so I don't know how I'm doing, really. And it was mostly a burst in the past week.

Just came back from the farm. I looked back in the woods in the back part. I didn't realize that there are little roads going all through it, so it won't be a problem to walk through when it grows up a bit. Right now it's actually pretty clear down on the ground, and I think it's not going to be too bad.

There are no roads in the kitchen.

• March 9, 2010

Spring break. I had been thinking that maybe on spring break, Melissa would have some time to get together, so I asked her if she was doing anything. On Monday she would be sleeping and on Wednesday she was going to see her brother, and she had lots of errands. So she said her week was booked. Maybe so. She could have been able to tell what I was moving toward, so I got the feeling that she wanted to keep me from asking to get together. I have done it often enough. So I didn't ask this night. The intention to keep me from asking in the first place, that something that I thought I saw this time. And I could see that. Not wanting to have to say no again. I stopped counting the no's at 5. But from her perspective they are probably tiresome and kind of unpleasant.

A recent similar experience. I went with Andrea and William to Texas de Brazil. The way the place works is they have guys walking around with different cuts of meat that you can try and they will ask you if you want any. They have a thing where you have little markers with green on one side and red on the other. If they are green, that's supposed to say you are wanting to try more, and red is you want them to stop. At some point, all of use were ready for a break, and we put them all red, but the guys would still come up and ask us, and we would have to say no. I felt just slight bad at having to say no to each on. I just didn't like that. Especially since they had this system where I shouldn't have had to. They were just ignoring the little red market. It wasn't really too bad, but it was just slightly off. When you go to strip club, a lot of dancers will ask you for a dance, and there doesn't seem to be a nice way to tell them, no thank you, I don't want a dance. The best I can come up with is that there are particular dancers I'm looking or waiting for.

So I can relate to not wanting to say no. But she theoretically could be open to saying yes. I think she just isn't really. Sometimes it seems like she might want to get together, but it's all the things she has going on that keep her from having any time to. I don't have any way of telling the difference though from just not having time and not really wanting to, and that just being an excuse. In fact, I have to say that if you really wanted to do something, you wouldn't really be worried about other stuff going on. Except also, doing anything new that's out of your routine is always going to be a little uncomfortable. So what? Feeling a little angry? Disappointed? Frustrated? Certainly sympathetic. But I also don't really know what the situation is. I don't really think I feel confused, just uncertain.

Just read something I found interesting. One of the characters in _Pihkal_ is described as an 'anima' woman. It's a girlfriend of the main dude, and it's one of his psychologist friends that says she is one to the female lead in the story. But the notion of an anima woman, it's a woman who isn't really complete in herself, but finds needy guys, and feels out just what they want and becomes that for them. And it reminded me of the Star Trek:Next Gen episode "The Perfect Mate" with this creature they called a "metamorph" which was empathic and adapted to whoever it was. It sounds like this concept was the thing behind this story.

So, two girls at Bardog said they liked my beard, Ruby and Britney. They said it was "manly". Seems like I need to take a picture before I get rid of it.

• March 8, 2010

I recently saw a video with Chris Hitchens that seems to stick with me. Anyway, he first asks if it's more believable that the reports of miracles are just wrong. But then, say you grant that maybe they happened. Parthenogenesis maybe might happen. And raising from the dead supposedly happened a bunch of times right then. Even if they did happen, it wouldn't prove that Jesus was divine or that his teachings were true. So you really aren't left with anything.

I'm listening to the class on Paul. I guess I didn't know this, but quite a few times, he is just begging for donations. That is just sad. I know people do that now, I just didn't know it was there from the beginning. It's just about the money.

Did a little digging in the garden. The ipod sure makes it nicer to do work.

And as for being easy to do work. I'm reading _Pihkal_. It's about a couple who work with amphetamine analogs. The book is over 900 pages. It makes sense that they would write a lot. For some reason, though, when I was thinking of the guy, I was thinking of someone sort of portly. I guess maybe it's a default for older people. It just completely did not occur to me that a hardcore amphetamine user would be skinny, which in fact he was. Silly of me.

Some anti-religious comedy

I'm listening to the guy talk about Paul, almost through. His name is Luke Timothy Johnson. He admits that most people don't believe what is saying. I mean he is really out there. I guess hearing it from him maybe it sounds somewhat plausible. OK, the situation is that using textual and literary criticism, most people now think that several of the books of the new testament say they are by Paul, but really are not. And he thought that way, but on further study, he's come up with a different idea. Part of the common notion is that Paul is writing how he feels and we see sort of the real Paul. This guy's position is that Paul is writing using traditional Greek rhetoric where you write adopting a particular persona for the kind of writing you are trying to do. In addition, the letters were dictated, so they never really were done exactly by Paul, anyway. Maybe that saves them from being the kind of forgery that most people now think of some of them. But it throws away the other important notion that it was the work of someone with some real insight or, in the kind of superstitious phrase, the "divine inspiration". At this point I real have a lot of just disgust for the religion and I don't really care anymore.

Looking for that other Hitchens video, I found him talking to Dinesh D'Souza. It has some sort of deep stuff about how actually bad the Christian message is. The idea of "vicarious redemption" is bad. The thought that someone could do something to remove your responsibility for bad things you have done. Part of the conversation is how some people, like Thomas Jefferson, might think that you could throw out the god stuff, and Jesus would be a good moral teacher. But with this being a substitute sacrifice thing, he would just be a crazy or stupid person. And even if there really were the god stuff, it would still be a bad idea, because you're still saying it's OK to harm people as long as you have whatever it is, this relationship with this third bunch. God stuff being true or false, Christianity is not good, and it's probably false, anyway. So "anti-theist" is a good word for him.

• March 7, 2010

• March 6, 2010

I tried putting the tomato plants outside yesterday to get more sun. I think it made a noticeable difference just that one day. They are still so small because they haven't been getting enough light. The temperature was up in the fifties. Right now, I'm looking at the temperature on the TV, and it's been holding at 34 for the past hour, which I think is just a little too cold, so I've been holding off putting them out. Only two dozen tomato plants have made it, about two thirds. That's a pretty grim attrition, but I'm still not so great of a gardener. Two squash plants. Two more are sitting wilted, and I keep thinking they might come back, but sometimes plants collapse so bad that they can't recover. I think these are gone.

Somehow, I have rotated into a much more normal sleep schedule. I think I went to sleep at 8 or 9 and slept solidly 'til 5:30 and got up. Something similar the night before. Although, then, Thursday, I came home from kung fu, started doing a Sudoku, then started getting spots in my vision. Right in the center so it was hard to do it. The beginning of a migraine. In the past, I think I've been able to eat or drink whatever I was lacking and got better, but I'm not sure what it needed to be. So I went to bed. I think I didn't wake up for maybe 5 hours, but I had a bit of a headache then. Not a really bad one, but I did feel a little sickly. I'm glad I must have been asleep for most of it. And I was able to go back to sleep for a pretty normal night. That must have gotten me to a better pattern.

Decided to roast a duck. It had an orange packet, which I like because it's easy to take out while still frozen, but they put in the neck and giblets too, which were not so easy. I left some of them in, and we'll see how it goes like that.

And I did put the plants out pretty quick. They really seem to like the sun.

Listening to some commentaries on Battlestar Gallactica. They are just full of them saying how great they are. But I don't agree.

• March 2, 2010

They seem so proud of how they managed to shoot duplicates with the one actor. So fine, maybe he's a good actor, but they couldn't just use twins? It just doesn't impress me that they did something difficult when there was an obvious easier way.

I tried the roast again. I've been thinking that how tough it is really shouldn't bother me. How it tastes should be the main thing. And now trying it it really doesn't seem very tough. If I slice it thin, it's perfectly fine. It being fatty is quite different when it's cold. I think pork fat must be softer cold. I really like the taste of rare meat. I guess that's something I don't really get enough, so now I'm much happier with it. It must just be something I've been missing. I get it at Bardog, I just haven't done it as much myself because I usually roast pork or chicken. So I'll definitely keep that more in mind. I haven't made the jump to less done pork. I know now that I can do it, but I haven't been brave enough, yet. This one, I didn't even do it especially rare. To about 150 degrees, which is medium rare to medium. But I don't quite have the taste right. Not really browned enough for a really rich flavor. I think the gravy was pretty poorly done. Practice.

Almost through with the first volume of _the Art of Problem Solving_. There was a chapter on counting, which is some combinatorics. I'm also watching the Teaching Company class on discrete math, and just watched one of the lectures on combinatorics. It's interesting to see the contrast. The lecture covered more cases that I think weren't considered in the book. But, it seems like in the section on probability, it kind of touched on some of the cases, but not as generally. There is a particular combinatorics problem called integer partition. It's the problem of how to get a particular number by adding together some given number of numbers. Like how many ways you can get 5 by adding three numbers. Well, they consider what the probability of getting a particular roll from two six sided dice. You have to know how many possible ways to get a value. That seems like a similar problem. I guess it's not the same because a a one and then a four is different from a four and then a one. But here you have to just about list out the possibilities. The partition problem actually doesn't have a simple way to figure it out, but there is a recursive function you can use, which actually can be weird to calculate. I remember when I first was going over this class, I was studying clojure. Clojure lets you do recursive functions pretty easily, and I could try this there.

So I just ate pretty decadently. Just some sliced of beef and potato chips. Seems pretty hardcore. Didn't quite get enough, though. Actually after that, I felt like something a little lighter. So I had turkey and cheese on toast.

• March 1, 2010

Well, I thought Melissa must have been doing well on her money, but in fact not. Her debt must be really crushing because she said she can't even pay them all each month. She only pays maybe 75% each month. So they call her all the time and she doesn't answer her phone. Poor thing. Her ex-husband racked it all up. Boo. It's not fun when someone you care about has problems. And I can relate to it.

And there was a cute little girl with black hair and a really big tattoo. I'm not sure I even really wish I had talked to her, but I didn't in any case. She did like the Beatles song I played, though. That was kind of nice.

I'm watching the Discrete Math class again from the teaching company. Combinatorics.

I've been trying a bit to avoid buying groceries. I eat more when I have lots of food available, so it seems like it would help a bit to put it off. But I'm about to run out of bread, and that's a probably because I have hotdogs and lunch meat sitting around that will go bad if I can't eat it because I don't have any bread. I've been building a list of things I want to buy, and it's getting pretty long. I don't think there can be anything more boring than a person's grocery list, but here is mine: a roast, milk, sausage, bacon, refried beans, eggs, bread. Maybe I should consider vegetables or fruit. I don't know what's in season though in the beginning of March. I just recently got some potatoes.

And speaking of vegetables, at Bardog, I had the filet, which came with garlic mashed potatoes, but also some squash and zucchini that I think was the best I've ever had. I asked the cook, and he said he used some garlic salt, butter, but also some white wine. I think it was the wine that really added something new. I may need to try it some time. I've got squash plants. We'll see how it goes.

I've been thinking of getting a duck. But I don't want an old duck, I want a duckling. But I don't see ducklings any more, they all say duck now. I don't know what that is. It could be that these are all old ducks, but that really doesn't seem likely. It costs a lot of money to keep ducks alive long enough to get old. Chickens when you buy them are usually only a couple of months old. They don't say "chicks". They probably just decided to do that with ducks. But it might not be like that. I know a long time ago, I bought something that said "duck" instead of "duckling" and it was pretty bad. Really tough. So I don't know. It's been years, I think, since I've made a duck. Seems about time.

Gah, I had some kind of trojan on this computer. That's not nice. I guess too many risky sites.

I got the stuff on my shopping list. Right at $50. Three pounds of bacon and three pounds of sausage. Those were pretty expensive. I also got some snacky stuff. Some burritoes and some nuts. The roast was pretty cheap. Chuck roast. Very fatty. I've already made it. Kind of tough. Didn't do a great job. But I think it's good for a first shot. I might need to go for something a little better. But my wrist is actually getting a twinge, so I might stay away from beef again.

I watched _Moon_. Kind of an obscure indie science fiction movie. I think it tries to be hard science fiction. I had a lot of trouble with just the sort of attempt at science bits. Mining helium-3 on the moon for fusion? That just seems stupid to me. And there are these fully grown clones kept in cryonic suspension. That also seems stupid. Plus they have some kind of memory implants, and are being used as slave labor. It all seems so useless and implausible. A couple of visual things really bothered me. They used the conventional thing were they move slowly. They aren't going to do that. With one sixth gravity, they will fall a lot slower. I think in some of the exterior shots they attempted to make it look like lower gravity, but nothing in the interior. Maybe there was no way to shoot that, but to me it seemed very noticeably wrong. I think you shouldn't attempt to shoot a movie that's supposed to be on the moon if you aren't physically able to make it look that way. I think as I sat with it, though, maybe the acting or the drama was good enough for me to suspend my disbelief. If I'm needing to suspend disbelief though, it has failed to be hard science fiction, but whatever. Did I end up caring what happened to them? I don't know. Maybe a little. I was very lukewarm. I ended up not really disliking it. Not very positive, I guess. As opposed to how much I just didn't like _No Country for Old Men_ which so many people really liked. I'm just not into the movies lately, I would guess. Maybe I should hold off on the Netflix until I get more into it. Or switch away from dramas. Something.

I just read about child prodigy Kim Ung-yong. Talking at 1. Ph.D. in physics at 16 and was working at NASA. Then he wanted to be more normal, and went to a "mediocre" school and studied civil engineering. Got a Ph.D. and has published a lot. People called him a loser, but that may be some kind of Korean thing. For me though, it kind of speaks as to the limits of what kind of achievements are possible for a really smart person. There are limits as to what is available to be done. What if we have a computer program that is really intelligent. Say it's smarter than everyone else, like this guy. What is it even going to be able to do that's going to really helo everyone? Are there really big hard problems that need solving? Is life not just ordinary and mundane?

In the reddit discussion they mentioned another guy, William James Sidis. He was into languages and math. He seemed to have things a little rough, though.

I just read an article about insomnia. It could make insomnia worse just by reading it, though. The idea is that thinking about or worrying about falling asleep makes it harder to fall asleep because if you have a goal to fall asleep, you have to think about whether you have fallen asleep, which can wake you up. There's some reddit discussion, too.

• February 28, 2010

So I think I got up around 2. But I went to sleep at around 4 thinking I would get up and do something, but then didn't really feel like anything. It's not even 9. I could go to church somewhere, maybe. Good for a chuckle. Also there is the little sitting thing at Eastern Sun, but it's so many years since I joined them that it would probably just be weird. I am looking quite mountainous.

I have a few times now felt the total frustration that I've seen with people doing math. You just get stuck and don't do anything. Freezing up. This geometry stuff I guess I'm a little weak on. But I try a few things and it falls into place. I guess that's what the fun of math is about. And Suduko does the same thing. You'll go along, and you'll get stuck. And you'll look around or stare at it. Then the blocking point will give way, and you'll power through to the end. Still, in this book, it's giving problems that are reasonable doable, though they have tricky bits. Probably in the wild world of math, there's no telling if you will get through any particular problem.

I certainly remember people blocking on math. Terrible feeling. Terrible look. I think I tutored people a couple of times way back when. Always the same thing.

Well, mind a bit blown. While sitting here, I read the chapter on analytic geometry. Just Cartesian coordinates and lines and circles. Stuff I've seen so no big deal. But the next chapter was the power of a point. Maybe I've seen that. I think possibly, but I don't think I was run through applications and the proof. I think I remember problems that must have used those and not getting them. Trippy. The concept isn't that hard. if you take a point, a circle, and lines through that point hitting the circle, the product of the two lengths of segments from the point to the circle is always the same. If it's a tangent, count it twice, so the square. It seems kind of weird that it should be the same, but you can show it with similar triangles. And probably you would need a picture to know what I'm talking about. Still, seemed cool to me.

I think on the AGI list, there is someone who is working on getting and AGI based on recognizing objects in a screen capture on a computer. Or at least, it looked like at first he was shooting to deal with recognizing objects in a screen capture. Sounds like something I would support, or maybe I talked about something like that. Also, now I'm thinking of the phone as really an obvious AI platform, so I would want to have the phone be able to recognize things from its camera. Seems like I just heard a mention of something that would convert a page to text from a digital picture. That seems like an important step. The thing I'm thinking of is these geometry problems. Just inputting them seems tough. You'd need a picture. Hopefully with whatever optics you get, straight lines would still be straight. That could be an issue. Pages in a book don't always show up flat. Something else to think about. There's still that thing with solving the link puzzles. Phones also have microphones. I think someone has an app to recognize that stuff, but it just captures the sound and does it all on the server. I swear there is room for some processing to be done locally, and a much smaller chunk handled on the server. It would even be reasonable for the server to download bits of model or algorithm as its recognition improves. Maybe I'll talk to them. Then again, servers are so cheap. Bandwidth, too.

• February 27, 2010

I also picked up some kung fu shoes from Dach imports. About $8. Not quite as cheap as they might have been, but could have been worse. These have a little plastic sole instead of a cloth one. That makes them a little noisier, but they can actually handle wet ground, which the others just couldn't, which is i think a better thing. The back yard is so muddy. I think these shoes seemed to be quite a bit nicer for doing the form out there. So I'm happy with the purchase so far. They don't seem so durable, though. They've got some kind of attempt at sharp grip, but I think walking outside just a little bit has softened them up. I think it's probably something better for gripping carpet or a mat.

I went by Charlie's meat market. They didn't seem to have any better cuts sitting out than any of the regular stores. The meat may well have been better, but the cuts seemed the same. You could buy whole boxes of steaks, which I guess was odd. And maybe if I'd asked at the counter I could have gotten something special. I bet that's what I would have needed to do. They're prices were I guess a little higher than a regular store, which I would expect. I just didn't see anything that I really felt like. Now I'm thinking of just trying a chuck roast from Kroger. Generally those need to be braised, cooked with water, and that's really not what I think I want to do. I will try a really slow roast, maybe. Give it a shot.

When the president was talking to I think it was the Republicans about healthcare (it might have been more of Congress) one of them said we have the best healthcare system in the world. Obama's reply was that he wanted us to be able to do what all other advanced nations do, cover everyone. And I kind of get the feeling that the degenerate (I think that's a better word than regressive) was playing a gambit trying to get Obama to say something bad about the U.S. system, which would not be popular. But if you think about the degenerate statement, if you think we have the best system, then you don't want to change it. So it is clear that they are only trying to stop change and should all just be ignored. I think it might be a little unfair to say that they are happy to have poor people die, but I'm not sure that it isn't very far from the truth. I know the lawmakers aren't like that, but they are reacting to their consituency and I think it's those degenerate scum opposing healtcare reform that actually do feel that way. I saw something recently that they have a lower average IQ.

'Lord' mean dictator. People used to think that could be a good thing, but we don't any more.

• February 26, 2010

Gained back a couple of pounds. I had a box of chicken and I've been eating a lot of bacon. Oh well. Disappointing.

I lost a bunch of the tomato plants. Took too long to water them. And they aren't growing so fast. I'm not sure how it will work out.

• February 24, 2010

Well, David, one of the other bartenders at Bardog, said what he made last year. It seemed like quite a bit. More than I've made some years that I was working, but less than I ended up with at Hilton. Of course, with so many years that I don't work, and nothing last year, that's a lot more. And Melissa was saying how she makes as much as David but he has a third as many bills as she does. But that says roughly how much she made, which was quite a bit. So that gets me a bit. She now has made about as much as me, and with me not even working, it's a lot more. So it is now quite silly for me to give her the money I do. Plus, my contribution isn't really even all that much any more, with how much she is making. Now, I think at her other jobs she might not have been doing as well, and it might have been more significant. Now not so much. I don't really want to stop, but it is getting kind of pointless. For me stopping can only mean not going.

Existence is futile.

OK, a solar system simulator. It's kind of fun.

I finally open up _Zen and the art of making a living_. It's seems really too long to get through, like 500 pages. I have a long way to go even to get to page one. But one of the prefaces has a quote from Aristotle-- where your talent and the needs of the world cross, there lies your career. I guess that's helpful. I have to focus on what I can do that other people want. So far it's pretty much been computer programming. That's all fine. But that notion has some deeper negative implications. Your career does not involve your wants or needs, just your talents. That's a little sinister. Presumably, if you want something and from that you work to develop a talent involved with that area, it would become a factor, but only indirectly. Softening that perhaps is that in general, your wants might be shared and from that be part of what the world needs, but that doesn't necessarily follow, and there is an important large class of exceptions. If you want something only for yourself, that's not something that the world needs in this sense. The world needs for it to have food, not for you to have food. So if you are a farmer, and have something extra for every one else, that could be part of a career. Similarly, anything you make for yourself that you can also give to someone else because you make more than you need, again, possible career. How it relates to me. I used to write programs for myself, because I liked them, so for fun mainly. Occasionally for different math things that came up just in classes. It gave me some talent for writing programs. I think no program directly I wrote for myself was useful to anyone else. Not sure if I'd even be able to come up with anything like that. I've only done contributions on the projects of other people. So I'm pretty limited. This book is along the lines of the follow your bliss thing in _What Color is your Parachute_. Fine. Maybe I'll make it to page one eventually. Maybe it'll be too imposing. If he asks what is the sound of one hand clapping, I'll probably be out.

Hmm, so I got some thick-cut bacon from Aldi's, and it has some kind of maple flavor. So I have a lingering smell of maple syrup, and now I have a hankering for french toast, or do I mean, freedom toast?

• February 23, 2010

So, the light on my insrument gauge didn't come on when I turned the headlights on. And I just went to the dealer. It was the dimmer turned all the way down. There's a dimmer? First I'd heard. And looked at the glyph on it, I guess it might be interpreted as a gauge with one of those triangle dimmer icons. Guy said he likes easy ones. If it was a real problem, I didn't know what it could be. I would have expected it was solid state, so no bulb to go out. I guess so. Seems like it could have been expensive. But it was nothing. So I guess a bonus.

I got through the chapter on triangles, which was most of geometry. It was very long for this book, maybe twenty or thirty pages. Not only most of geometry, but it was a large chunk of trigonometry as well. Thing moves fast.

I did ask Melissa about her mini computer. She said it's with her brother, and hearing that I let it go. He's a computer person, so he would probably use it as well as me. But I'm not sure she didn't just leave it with him to work on because she had trouble. So maybe I should follow up. Because I was thinking I might have this wandering damage with my car, I was feeling a little shy about money. I just saw it on the drive down there, so I was a bit in shock.

I also asked about my shoes. I asked LeAnne first. She said she's not so much of a shopper, but she was excited to have the Internet on her phone so she did a tenacious search. The hard part is to find what they are called. I wore them so I would have them to show. Asa said they were doves, or something like that. But Melissa recognized them as kung fu shoes and said Chow Imports. She has some, maybe $5. Well, OK! I guess I need to go there.

I am so happy not working. Seems like that's going to have to become an issue if I need to actually eventually get a job. But then, I was pretty happy when I was working. Happiness can be quite independent of everything external. It can come from inside. I seem to remember that at some point in this past year, I was starting to not feel quite so happy with not working. I'm not sure what that was about. Maybe just a mood. They come and go.

A whiff of perfume. A girl in a soft pink suit. Maybe laid it on a little heavy. Has some kind of red matching organizer thing and a laptop. Independent business-woman for coffee and a little net? I looked, smiled, I don't know if she acknowledged me, but she did preen. She had put her stuff at the table opposite, but thought better, and moved to the corner. Isn't that special.

The old guy next to me has a mini cup. Is that espresso? What do I know about the weird stuff done by starbuckeroos?

So, I was early enough to go by MUS before school, and I considered it. But I'm at my most grizzly. So far from that world. But they are friendly. I don't know how many years it's been. Time sure flies.

I got around to going to sleep at maybe 3. And at 6, I was golden. It's weird when that works out, and I'm never really quite sure. Generally, lately, I'll sleep too much, and then when I finally get up, I'll just be tired. Maybe that seems wrong, but it's definitely life. I do have some sleep issues, though that it's practically the human condition. If you sleep too much, it will be hard to fall asleep when you need to, and if you try to have a schedule, you'll be really messed up, and then maybe you won't get enough, and then you'll be tired from not getting enough. Sometimes I'll sleep seven hours and wake up, and not be able to go back to sleep, but it doesn't feel like enough so I wish I could, and I'll try and it won't work. One thing I've found is that light makes the most difference in being able to sleep. I'm not positive even that it's just light on the retina thing. I do remember hearing at some point that the pineal gland in the skull gets a bit of light through the eye-socket, and it regulates melatonin, and that regulates the sleep-wake cycle. An unconscious mechanism makes it hard to be aware off. Since I started using a black cloth over my eyes quite a while back, I've been much better at sleeping. Taking naps whenever, and being able to sleep in the morning if I feel I need to. But being free to sleep only really works when you're not at a regular job. So it's been good this past year. But I need to find a compatible way to make money. I wonder what the lady in pink does. And darn these aging eyes. I can't see what the icon on her grey laptop says. Boo.

Of course, writing is one off those things you can do on any schedule. But making money with it, now that's a different thing. Lana has just been writing about stuff she has been seeing lately on getting published. Some resources, or descriptions of resources. Somebody mentioned a local writers' guild, and they meet to talk about stuff, but I still haven't joined them. Lana claims to be a story teller. More of a drama queen. I remember people concluding that she had borderline personality disorder, which is just sort of like being an extreme drama queen. Maybe it helps with the writing. Didn't Hemmingway supposedly have some sort of mental illness? I forget.

I would have thought that the chai would enhance my wakefulness, but I'm starting to fade. I guess it was only a matter of a short time. I really didn't sleep enough, but I was feeling just right immediately getting up and for a bit. Possibly the caffeine caused everything else to catch up, and it could be some kind of sugar crash as I haven't eaten sufficiently.

Ouch. Starbucks. Neighbor seems to have said something like Bill Gates and Einstein has Asperger's. something about getting her kid to be more social. Had mentioned communicating on Facebook. Freaking extroverts trying to make everyone like them. I just bought a pickaxe for the garden. Maybe I should have left it in the car.

OK, this girl looks like Jennifer Schwalbach Smith. Now, I'm not so good with faces. Maybe the tiredness and caffeine is making me deslusional.

Well that was interesting. I went by the Germantown Fire Station Headquarters and visited my brother Edgar. He's running for county commission. He suggested I run for city school board. It would give me something to do, and that stuff is pretty fun. You talk to the people doing stuff in government. It sounds like something maybe I'll look into.

I went by Chou Imports looking for kung fu shoes. They aren't at their old place on Summer, but they have a place on Germantown Road and Dexter. They are discontinuing the shoes, though, and didn't have any more in the bigger sizes, so I didn't find anything. It was next to Ace hardware. I found that they do have hammer handles, but I don't know the size I need, so I need to go back and bring the hammer heads I have. I did pick up so stakes for the tomatoes and some twine. And with twine, maybe I can practice some knots.

Wow! I just saw a video of how to do a general equation solver in clojure. In high school, I did an equation solver, though I forget what language it was and how broad it's equation solving was. I think it was probably polynomials, but it might have been somewhat more general. And of course, I don't remember what method it used. It might well have used newton's method, which this thing does. One thing about this thing, is that it uses a numerical approximation for the derivative. If you just use polynomials, you can take the symbolic derivative. I think that is a neat kind of thing, and it seems like the kind of thing I would want to do. If necessary, and you can't get the symbolic derivation, then maybe fall back to a numeric derivative. But derivatives are actual quite easy, and it seems fair to at least try to do that first. It's not really newton's method if you are approximating the derivative, though I don't know what that would actually be called. Maybe secant something or other.

Clojure has a nifty something that makes this kind of stuff easier-- lazy sequences. In all other programming, when you do something over and over, in advance you have to figure out how long you are going to go, and when you are going to stop looping. That's work you have to figure out up front, and it makes things harder. With a lazy sequence, doing stuff to decide when to stop is a complete separate thing. You can put it off till later, and easily change things around and try other stuff once you get the basic pattern working. And the part the fits especially well with math is that you can use a function iterate, where you just write something that takes a the current value, and calculates the next one. so if you want to have a list of number going up by tens each time, you write a quick function that says add by ten, give it a starting number, and say iterate. That's it. Then once you have that, you can say take 5 to get the first five, or do something that checks till it gets to whatever end you want. Newton's method says take the last guess, and subtract the function at that guess divided by the derivative at the guess to give the next value. That's just the kind of thing you want with iterate. What he does then is have some other special something that takes any old converging series like that, and keeps going until the difference between the two gets to a small enough size picked out before. But since they are broken apart, *decoupled" as it's called, you can pick a convergence routine separately from your bag. It sounds like a nice setup for this numerical stuff. I did take a class on that stuff in college. Well, I thought it was interesting. And he uses numerical integration. I remember doing that. Good times. Integration symbolically is significantly harder than getting derivatives, but it is still quite doable. Something I'd want to try. But with computers, the numerical stuff is so easy that it's almost a waste of effort to mess with the symbolic stuff. The thing is, derivatives are almost always doable, but sometimes, it's not even possible to find a closed integral form, so you have to do it numerically anyway, so you can try the pain of searching for the closed form, or go straight to something that's really easy on the computer.

Looking over this math stuff again, I naturally wonder how it would be to get a computer to do this math stuff. And I'm thinking, surprisingly hard. First, you have to be able to read to get the problems in. Computers don't read, you have to type stuff in. Typing things in isn't trivial, either. How do you do exponents? And what about the geometry? You can't type in a diagram. So it's a serious problem. But I think it would be a worthy one. This thing is all about the concepts, and getting concepts in a computer isn't the easy thing, either. One of the things about it, though. There are different levels of understanding. If you can do something, that's one thing. If you can explain it to another person, that's another. But if you can explain it to a computer, and get a computer to handle it, that is an incredibly deep understanding that you have to have. It doesn't have any room for sliding.

• February 22, 2010

After transplanting the tomato seedlings to newer trays, I tried putting them outside to get a little more sun. It was kind of overcast, so I took them back in. Actually, it's been clowdy for a few days now. Anyway, one of the plants broke off in the wind. But it had a little bit of stem connected to the two leaves, so I buried that bit of stem and I'll see how it goes. Supposedly, these plants are able to grow roots quite a bit off the stem. The thing that said that said you should bury them quite a bit deeper because of that when transplanting. There's even a thing where you prune off the lower leaves, which can give you even more stem for that. Anyway, so there's this plant that was broken. I'm not sure how I'm going to tell if it's dead. There are already a few that were kind of wilted when I tried to move them, and now I think they are just dead, but this one still kind of looks the same. It's got a couple of nice leaves that look solid. But it might just not grow. So I guess I'll have to wait and see. I always like the hardcore survivors, so I hope it makes it.

• February 20, 2010

I watched _Kill Bill 1_. I really don't like Tarantino that much. It looks flashy, but it is so vacuous.

I was thinking I would go out. Super 5 was playing at Dan McGuinness. And I was thinking maybe I would go see my girls at the Pony after more than a year. But I just did not feel like it. I slept for a bit, and I got up early enough still to go out, but still did not feel like it. I guess I saved some money. Seems like there might have been something I'd like to get. Maybe Wii Fit. Probably wouldn't use it, though.

I have not kept count, but there have been a whole bunch of people who have died going after Caine. Supposedly, he is supposed to care a lot about life, but he just keeps killing people. He should have given himself up a long time ago just to stop the slaughter. There was one when he was in China. For some reason, in the third season, several episodes were completely in China, with nothing in the U.S. Anyway, there was one guy in China. It was an Imperial soldier acting as a ferryman sitting in a boat. Caine knocks him out, and dumps him in the water. Knocking him out I can see. Fine. But putting him in the water when he's knocked out means he will die. That was just totally unnecessary. He was by the shore. He could have dragged him six feet and he would have lived. He went too far. in this episode now, another guy was chasing him, and fell off his horse and died. He had the wanted poster. He finally gave a look that maybe he was tired of all the death. And he saved his head. I guess that changed his look maybe so maybe he'll be harder to find. I don't know.

• February 19, 2010

They say you won't learn if you don't do the problems. I'm lazy, and I don't want to do all the problems. So I don't know how it's going to work out. That became an issue in college where I got lazy and didn't do the work so much. But in this one, they don't have endless busy work. There are relatively few problems, and they are often quite challenging. And they say that some of the important results that you need to learn are in the problems, which seems a little unfair. That is, there is stuff you need to know that they don't explain in the main text, but you can only get by working them out yourself in the problem. Seems a little bogus. And to keep those results, I would imagine that you need to write them in the book. And example is that in one of the problems, you work out the general form for doing complex division. They don't write it out and give it to you like probably most books would. If you want it, you have to do it yourself.

And yes, chapter two is complex numbers. That's pretty hardcore for a chapter two. But it's kind of another extension to arithmetic. I guess it makes sense. And it's only 5 pages. It naturally comes after exponents, because part of exponents is roots, which are fractional exponents. That stuff makes sense if you've seen it before. I kind of have to wonder if this would really work for a little kid to learn it the first time. The authors are actual teachers, so I assume they've used it. They say they are trying to show everything all together. OK.

Chapter three is linear equations. Twelve pages. Linear equations. And not just one at a time, but also systems, and they stuck in line graphs. Maybe there isn't that much to it. Seems like normally they take weeks or months dealing with it. Maybe not. In that twelve pages, they included word problems. Most word problems are just linear equations, and the hard part is figuring out the equation. These included the problems like Joe painting a fencing in 6 hours and Pete coming in and shaving it to four hours.

I guess I'm kind of wondering where all they are going to go after covering what seem to be the main topics. They say they are going to do more geometry. Americans are very weak in geometry. That's probably fair. One class and then that's it. I remember that the problems on that impossible math test that I really couoldn't do were weird geometry problems. Doing some of the problems, I think I was remembering that maybe there were some hard problems that I actually would have been able to do.

So Chapter 4 is a bit of a puzzler, and that's where I left off. It's about proportions. I guess that's like fractions. But also equations where you might have a lot of variables and you might be dividing or multiplying. I've only looked at a couple of pages. It just seems like a weird step, after complex numbers and linear equations. I don't know what they are going to talk about. Peeking ahead, chapter 5 is about 'using the integers'. Who knows what that is. Chapter 6 is quadratic equations. OK, that I can see. It seems like a real math subject. But then what? They give quadratic equations 15 pages.

Maybe I should just list the chapters:

1. Exponents and Logarithms
2. Complex Numbers
3. Linear Equations
4. Proportions
5. Using the integers
6. Quadratic Equations
7. Special Factorizations and Manipulations
8. What Numbers Really Are
9. Triangles, a.k.a Geometry
10. Quadrilaterals
11. Polygons
12. Angle Chasing
13. Area
14. Coordinates
15. Power of a Point
16. Three Dimensional Geometry
17. Shifts, turns, flips, stretches, and squeezes
18. More geometry
19. Functions
20. Inequalities
21. Operations and relations
22. Sequences and series
23. Learning to count
24. Statistics and probability
25. Sets
26. Proofs
27. More stuff

And there's a volume 2 after that. Supposedly volume 1 is just grade 7-10. Well, OK. I glanced over it. Some trig, more geometry, a bit of number theory. Actual has limits. Seems pretty much like precalculus. I may just go back to the group theory instead.

• February 18, 2010

More group theory. I got a ways into the other rubik's article. It seems to be making more sense, and the diagrams work. It wants you to use a rubik's program to simulate stuff, but so far it hasn't been such a problem not to have done it. One problem with it is that it's a rough draft, and there are noticeable mistakes. Not too bad I guess. The knot book is going a bit slower. It is more dense, and seems to assume a bit more familiarity with group theory as it's bringing up even more advanced sorts of stuff. But I'm not so worried about absolutely getting everything at first, because I get the feeling you're really supposed to take several passes with it. I'm finding it interesting stuff, and I'm a little unhappy that i didn't get more into it when I was young. I remember in like 9th grade, Mr. Dwiggins gave me some stuff on abstract algebra, but I didn't get very far along with it. I don't remember exactly what the problem was, but it seems like it didn't have enough context or examples, so I had trouble seeing what the point was. In both of these explanations, there is a lot of that, and I'm finding it to be much more accessible than what I remember. I guess proper teaching makes a difference.

One other thing I'm wondering about is category theory. From what I'm seeing, category theory is an abstraction even further away from group theory, which is already getting very abstract. Supposedly category theory can have something to do with computer science, so it relates to programming, but I'm totally not sure what the connection is. Reddit has had articles on category theory for programming, but I don't think I've ever slogged through any, and I don't have a link to a particular one that stands out. It tends to come up in relation to functional programming, where I think the correspondence is more significant. I may have been thinking of the article category theory for the java programmer. That would have stood out for me.

A really weird kung fu episode. David Carradine directed it. In one of the commentaries, he talked about how he wanted to get into directing, and they didn't know what to do with this episode, so they let him do it. Part of it is old Caine hallucinating while dying of poison in a cave. In the other part, a rich kid has little Caine for tea and poisons him. He wants to find out what death is like. The rich kid says he will give him the antidote, but somehow little Caine doesn't think it really is the antidote. I guess it makes sense not to trust someone who has tried to poison you. Old Caine was poisoned by a scorpion, so I guess all the stories of scorpions talk about how you can't trust them. Even so, old Caine is very nice to the scorpions he sees, and protects them from falling rocks in the cave where he is trapped. So little Caine convinces the brat that he switched the half empty tea which he has gotten him to drink. At first, the brat doesn't believe, but then he buys it, and totally believes it was poision. And then he's falls for it and thinks he's poisoned. And sure enough, it wasn't the antidote. Oops! OK, so they go to the chemist who sold the original poison, and get the actual antidote, and it comes out that little Caine drank it too, so they go back and save him. It puzzles them that Caine would poison him, which would just be wrong. But no, he didn't. I don't know. I guess it holds up. In old Caine's story, someone comes and tells him to worship "Otto" but he refuses. Apparently, young Caine had that same hallucination, and told the brat about it, but the brat wanted to know the name of the god to worship, but Caine won't tell him. OK. And there is a girl who offers herself to old Caine. I was thinking it was going to be girlfriend number four, and he kisses her, but holds off on anything else. Oh well. Overall a weird one.

I'm not sure about how accurate the Shaolin temple is in it, though. It's a Buddhist monastery, but they keep a supply of food. It may well be like that there, but it is my understanding that A Buddhist monk is suppose to not keep anything but his bowl and robes, and can't keep food from one day to the next, so he has to beg every day. That seems kind of nice to me, as it gives them a connection to the community. I could well see different systems giving that up as impractical.

• February 17, 2010

The thought that not keeps coming to me is "leave that girl alone".

I got the black forest cake from la Baguette. I would have to say that it's pretty good, but it somewhat misses for me being a real schwartwalder kirsch torte. It somehow doesn't seem like it's made from real whipping cream. And it doesn't have the subtle fragrance of kirschwasser. It's not sweet, but the sort of frosting stuff they have instead of the whipping cream is somewhat unsettling. It's not covered with chocolate sprinkles, but only has some lightly done around the outside. But I think I was kind of expecting that it would be disappointing, so that's probably coloring my judgement. I gave it a shot.

And I've been thinking of doing a beef roast, or maybe a bucket of chicken, but I lost maybe a couple more pounds, and now I just feel more like staying on track than gorging like that. Eating a cake probably won't help me, but maybe that will be enough for me.

The knot theory is continuing to be interesting. At this point, it's mostly just group theory. I also had started reading something on group theory for Rubik's cubes, but the images didn't get put into it, so it was too hard to deal with. There's another one, so maybe I'll go through that one.

I chopped a little more wood. This time was unusual because I didn't use the wedge at all, just the axe. One piece took a bunch of tries though, but did eventual break up.

I ate two big piece of cake. In all a quarter of it. I guess it was too much.

I told Leanne that I probably with shave this week or next, but after hearing about Epic Beard Man, I may have to hold onto it.

• February 16, 2010

It's two days later, and I'm just remembering something I wanted to ask Melissa. I should write this stuff down, maybe, or get an email address. I see her so often, it shouldn't be an issue. And I kept thinking I had something, and it never came to me. Seems like that happens a lot. I could send a text, but those are so short it's hard to say it all. I'm looking at getting a netbook, and I think she has one that didn't quite work out, so maybe I could buy it. She never seems open to that kind of thing, though.

A weird kind of experience at Bardog. Asa and Ben actually got to fighting a bit while I was standing next to them. Asa had Ben in a choke, and I guess Ben was pushing back on him. They were roughly squatting on the ground, so there wasn't that much he could do-- a typical counter is to drop down. The ended up pushing up on me, and I kind of supported them for a couple seconds, but I let them go a bit, and unfortunately, there was a box of fancy gold-rimmed glasses from Stella sitting there. I think Stella is gone, so there won't be any more. You could hear them crunch. Three of them did make, though. But Melissa came over and was all, "get off the ground!" I almost never see her angry, but she definitely had reason to be. That was really childish. Just little boys. And I hate for Melissa to be unhappy. Anwyay, after they broke it up they were saying that I could have beaten both of them up. I don't know. I wish. I probably do have fifty pounds on each of them. Asa had a really good hold going.

Early, I was talking to Asa about Bruce Lee's one inch punch. I was trying to explain my understanding of it. You are moving your whole body before your hand even moves. You drop your weight, and start twisting, so there's actually kind of a wind-up or whip before it gets to your arm. I just tried mine on my bag here, and it's been so long, I've really let mine go. Plus my wrist has gotten so bad that I'm just too shy to really put any good power into a punch any more. Pitiful.

So that's two separate occasions that people have said I look like a "mountain man". A guy from kung fu and the folks at Bardog. The look is getting pretty archetypal. I need to get a picture. The stupid webcam on this laptop is not being recognized by the operating system, but reddit roulette was able to grab it. Crappy operating system. I think there are probably drivers on the install disk that I must have not put on here when I fuckgraded to Vista. I still haven't gotten into using my phone. I finally let my dad have my camera since I'm not using it. But the webcam would really be just right for this pic. Grr.

Finished up the other fake book. Interesting little gems. The little Indiana Jones theme. The Pretty Woman riff. There were several things that were just too long for me to get into right off--Pachelbel's canon , Classical Gas, Walking in Memphis. And this book has everything printed unusually small, so it's hard for me to see it, especially these bigger ones.

• February 15, 2010

I felt like spending money so I bought a valentine's day heart-shaped Godiva chocolate box half off, which was still way too much, but I thought it needed a home. I was expecting that eat it all at once, and I was really pretty hungry, so I didn't think it would be an issue, but after half of it, it was enough. And I had some chicken with BBQ sauce waiting. I think I just like meat better than sweets.

• February 14, 2010

Wow, so it looks like I have a couple dozen tomato plant seedlings. I think I'm going to have to move them into bigger temporary cup things. In another month they could be getting pretty big sized. And then I will have to look at actually putting them in the garden. That's going to be a challenge in itself. I'll probably have to put up some kind of posts with strings, as it may be too many to try to stake individually. I guess they call that a trellis. We have three cages, and they work very well, but with this many, I guess I'm past that. I'm googling stuff and I'm seeing bunches of stuff. Pruning? I guess I'm not that hardcore.

Did play piano for another three hours. And I watched a bunch of movies streamed from netflix. So a lazy weekend. I had been thinking of going to a mensa regional gathering in St. Louis this weekend, but I saw that it's three hundred miles so about five hours, and that just seemed too long to me.

I still remember that barbecue from Bardog whenever it was. Possibly it was combined with me being really hungry, but I think it was the best food I can remember. Or maybe just me liking it more than anything else I can remember. And I just ate meat. Some kind of beef, but I don't know what cut it was. And it was sliced up into little chunks on toothpicks. Very tender, a little hint of fat. Moist, not at all dried. Not overcooked, yet warm enough. Maybe being cold wouldn't have hurt. Could be that I usually only get roasts that are cheaper, just because my mom doesn't like to spend too much, except for very rare special occasions. But I've had prime rib, and I don't remember it being that good, maybe close. They have a good butcher that they use. Plus Chef Demitrie is pretty good. I'm not positive what all did it. I've eaten at prime steak houses, but it wasn't the same. Maybe I'm ordering the wrong thing.

Finally went out shopping. Along the way, I think I witness a sign of the breakdown of society, and I managed to use my dictaphone on my iphone to take notes. But I'm not writing based on those notes, but from memory, so I'm not quite there yet. Anyway, I was driving, and I kind of tucked in through some middle class sorts of neighborhoods, and I saw three security guard cars from three different companies. But no actual city police cars. Surely that indicates some kind of breakdown if private citizens are having to supplement what is a police and government job. Middle class not getting its fair share? I don't know. Because I moved into some must lower rent areas, and bang bang, actual city police. That included passing by the university, but they essential have their own city cops patrolling. Its a government school, so it makes sense. And the city having to patrol the lower rent stuff? I guess it falls to them. But possibly an even more profound observation since I was thinking about it today. I drove through the highest class neighborhood. Just this side of germantown (which is in some sense a ritzy suburb). This was down shady grove. Fred Smith's neighborhood. Whatever millionaires we have. I saw two city patrol cars driving together. I guess they need protection, and pay enough to get it.

So I went to La Baguette. I ordered a black forest cake. It's a French bakery, and that's a German cake, so I'm not sure what they are going to do with it, but I'm giving it a shot. I think the lady at checkout was Vietnamese. They were a French colony, weren't they? She said they have good stuff. But it was really way too expensive. I think in Germany, they actually have enough bakeries that there is competition, plus enough people who actually know what they're doing so it doesn't really cost as much to get good, I don't know what you call them, baked goods, I guess. Patisserie. I don't know the German. And I got a baguette. It's about what it is at the grocery chains. And probably about the same thing, too. Bread is not very complicated.

And went to the main library which is in the same parking lot as la Baguette. Actually, supposedly the French teacher at MUS, Dr. Dahl, started la Baguette. I don't know if that's right. Anyway, at the main library I tried to find that fancy math book I saw on line. Didn't see it. Browsed the math section. They've got a lot of stuff. Seems like I only ever looked at my local branch as a kid. Make I could have become a real math person if I'd had this stuff. But even it had some gaps, I guess, not having these fancy math books.

Going back east, I tried the AT&T store. The chick at the door asked me, why the hell was I in there. The way she was asking didn't even seem like a can I help, it was really more, what do you want. Definitely thrown off guard, and she asked if I needed to talk to a salesperson. But I wanted to look. Maybe they have neat phone stuff, and I wanted to see if they had netbooks. I certainly didn't want her attitude. So I look around. They had stuff on DSL. I used to have DSL from them, but I've got cable now. It's more expensive though, so maybe I should go back. I did finally see their section on internet stuff, and yes, they do have netbooks with integrated at&t connections, like the stuff on the iphone. Want. The things are $200 with 2 year commitment, but it's "starting" at $35 or $40 per month. Gah! I didn't feel like asking what the cost actual is. That's the kind of question they just don't answer. And they didn't engender good feeling. They have separate plug in dongle thingies that can work with a laptop. But I'm trying to get away from toting a laptop. too big. They keyboards are slightly reduced size, but I found them acceptable. I think one was an hp mini 110, there was an acer something and a samsung something. Seemed like non-intel chips, which can be very weird, but they had windows 7, I think, which is something. I think I'd probably almost like linux. I will think about it. I should also look at getting some income before commiting to spending scratch like that. But the money is actually about in the range of what I'm spending now. And getting out among people to write is something I'd really like to shoot for. I'm certainly not meeting people sitting at home.

Then I went to the bookstore. The hard part about the books I'm looking for is that I don't know the author. The title is something like, the art of problem solving, which is a little vague to narrow down. But borders didn't seem to have it either, according to their search. Actually, the search found more than have a dozen books that kind of seemed to match, and they didn't have any of them, so whichever was the one I think I'm looking for, they didn't have it. I did browse the math section. I found a book on knot theory. That's something I think I've even said I'm interested in. I've got Ashley's book of knots, but it's closer to an encyclopedia of knots, or maybe a dictionary. It's hard to learn stuff from a dictionary. You could learn everything there is to know from one, conceivably, but getting a solid understanding, it just isn't organized to do something like that. If I were to try out all the knots, that's the kind of thing that would give you an understanding, but you would have to figure some of it out, yourself. We'll see what this book does. Some of what it is talking about is algebraic topology. There is some group theory in there. And that's the kind of thing I'd like to know more about.

I also saw something on shaolin something or other. Principles, maybe. The writer is supposed to be a grandmaster, with like a tenth degree black belt. That made me suspicious, as I don't think they really do belts in Chinese kung fu. That's a Japanese and American thing. And I tried thumbing through it a bit, and it seemed like there was a lot of vacuous fluff. But I looked at it, and maybe I will consider it again sometime if I have time and I'm in the mood. I think it's good I didn't just pick it up for later, which I've done way too often. So much to read. I've got stuff sitting, now.

Then I went to Kroger. Got some lactose free milk. My mom had gotten me some soymilk. I use to do that, but I'm not sure it really improved that much, because while it doesn't have lactose, which I have trouble digesting, it seems to be that soy on its own naturally has other things that no one can digest. So a bit of a wash. Also got some grape juice.

But one of the main things I went in there for was to look at the beef roasts. They had rump roast, which I'm thinking is just not quite what I want. It can be a little too solid with not the kind of marbling I'm looking for, so it can get tough. Of course they had english roast. And it helps me understand why people say the English have such bad food. That's a vile cut off meat. I looked at one, and you could just see the huge line of grisle right through it. It can make a pot roast, if you like boiling meat. Maybe I'll try it if I'm feeling poor and desperate. I think they had a chuck, but it's also not really quite what I want. They had sirloin tip. I don't know enough about that one, and I might give it a try, but based on the other stuff they have, I'm thinking it must not be a great choice. I'm really curious now what Bardog used. And I need to go to a store with a better selection of meat. I think I need to try the whole foods place.

Triggered spark gap. Mentioned on a sixty minutes thing on Iran trying to smuggle stuff. It can be used in a lithotriptor. But as the name seems to indicate, it's an electrical detonator. Maybe I should get some.

"Joy is but the shadow pain casts"-- member of the Swedish curling team which took the lead over team USA as Marge injured her shoulder sweeping too hard to make up for Homer's bad throw. OK, I like the Simpson's. I googled the quote. It has already been tweeted and google has picked it up. Only twenty minutes old. It was a great Valentine's day episode.

• February 12, 2010

There are some computer system domains where the computer does quite a bit of learning, and some of the behaviors are based on that learning. In speech recognition, for example, there is a lot of automatic sound modeling done that helps the computer go from different aspects of the sound to particular kinds of data that move it towards being recognized as text. And at different stages, learned data is used to make more accurate sequences of text.

There is an entire area of application called machine learning where the data is just so big that people don't try to stand in the middle, and they just get the computer to go from the stream of data to the range of desired values they want to get to. One fairly interesting example is the thing where they control a helicopter. I believe it's some sensory information about how the helicopter position and speed responds to different changes in its mechanical operation. And I think the idea is that you also have a person who is trying to control the helicopter, with help from the program. One result was that they could get the helicopter to fly upside down, which a person couldn't do on his own trying to control it, but only with help of the program. Those cars driving themselves are another big area with lots of machine learning, but people were in the loop there to a great extent, setting up what to be connected to what.

Part of situation in human intelligence is that behavior is guided and controlled by emotional behavior and reactions. This is very far from how computers operate. Computers just behave as precisely determined by the sequence of instructions and data sitting in their very numerical memories. I'm not sure we even really understand and appreciate the significance of our mental emotional behavior, but perhaps more important, it's actually something that we don't want the computer to have. We kind of think that somehow we can have the intelligence without the emotional system, because out ermotional systems apparently get us to do things that we don't think are all that intelligent. We hope to distill out real logical consequences of learned information, instead of just basing behavior on emotional likes and dislikes. But this is a big flaw in the project. All of a persons behaviors come from these emotional considerations. Some mechanism has to be in the computer there somewhere. But since for now, people are always in the loop, we can pretty well conclude that the work people are doing is doing this job. And from the way people are picking goals even for the machine learning systems, one can see that this is the case.

So people at this point aren't even really wanting to let the computer go and do things on its own, which is part of what it is to be intelligent. The project doesn't move forward in part because it's not really what people want. People really want and expect a computer just to do what they say, not what it wants to and thinks is best. We don't even want a computer to have wants. We want to supply the wants. And I guess without its own wants that it can explore, a computer on its own is not doing the complete process involved in acting intelligently.

Some of this reflection for me comes from what Lockhard was saying about how mathematicians really work. Mathematicians find solutions to problems because they like finding elegant solutions, not so much because they have a problem and it is the need involved with the problem that motivates them. Other people who have the actual problems can use the results of the mathematicians, but that's a different thing. It is vaguely similar to how computers use the results of their programmers. They work for very different kinds of motivations.

Finally, in the third season, Kwai Chang Caine has girlfriend number three. Actually in one episode in there, there was a flashback after he had left the temple but before he got into his legal trouble where he runs into a chinese vixen, and they seemed to sort of fall in love, but don't quite get to do so much about it, and it doesn't work out. Anyway, right after that, we have girlfriend three. They don't actually do so much with it, as it's really just part of a side plot, and I guess it adds some tension as in the main plot, he apparently gets a pardon and has to decide if he wants to go back to China. Pretty harsh to have a girlfriend just to have more tension in the plot. Not quite as irritating as inventing science just for the plot, I guess. Anyway, this episode was extra special because William Shatner was one of the actors. And he gets to use some of his special fighting skills against our kung fu master. But he gets beat up, of course. I guess he lost a fair share on Star Trek, too. Also, one of the other actors from Star Trek was on there. Instantly recognizable, too. The girl that played Elaan of Troyius. Looking at the wiki for her, I see that she had worked with Shatner before Star Trek, even, so they must have been buds.

Kung fu has been getting a little into woo-woo stuff. Psychics and magical stuff. Blech.

Learning is complicated though. Possibly different kinds of things. People have an ability to use language to convey stuff, and that kind of learning seems significantly different from trying things abd being rewarded and thus increasing that behavior. Plus there is knowing how to move in different ways. Seems like that kind of learning is different.

Some while back, maybe a few years ago, I bought another big fake book. It got to the bottom of the pile so I hadn't played from it yet. And the binding is more of a book binding instead of a spiral binding like the other, so it doesn't sit open as easily, which may have contributed to my not wanting to try it out. But I decided to give it a shot. It has got a lot of different stuff from the other one, so not too much overlap, which is good. I played for maybe three hours and got to about 'G'. That's not playing all of them. Not too many of them, really. There are a lot of ones I've never heard of. Same as the other one. And I get more aware of the limitations of my ability. Oh well. Hopefully playing helps me get better. But it's really not so good to do it in bursts. It really needs to be everyday. And if I ever get to playing on my midi keyboard and record the stuff, that'll be nice. So I can hear myself, and have something to listen to. I wonder how much space three hours of midi takes up? Doesn't seem like it should be all that much. I'm playing on the piano now. That's something I'm supposed to be playing every day, just to work the moisture out of it. It didn't seem too bad.

OK, I'm reading in my book on historical linguistics. It says that there is a French word "vasistas" that apparently comes from the German phrase "was is das" which means "what is that?". That doesn't seem like it could be right. And the word means roughly a ventilator or fanlight, a little window above a door you can crack open. I don't know how it got to mean that. That's just weird.

• February 8, 2010

All the women at Bardog. Angela was there, plus Ian of course. And she was hanging out with her friend, Julie, who I think I would like. And I finally got the name of Murphy, who hangs out there a lot. And a bunch of people from __Jersey Boys_. There was a really cute little redhead, but I never came close to her. But one nice little girl, Jenelle, flirted quite a bit. That was nice. Lots of kissing in that group. A couple of guys seemed to start it off, then Jenelle, kissed on of them, and then one of the other girls. That was pretty. And they were taking pictures. Jenelle even got some hugs from Melissa. And when I was going outside, she came back from wherever she was, looking for a guy we thought might come back. I didn't offer to walk back with her. Oh well.

• February 7, 2010

Super 5 was playing at Stella Marris. It looks like a strip club. It probably will be one. Does a restaurant ever have a DJ booth? I guess they have to do some political stuff to get it there. And it was totally full. The parking lot was full when I got there.

Apparently Chris was talking about this. It's a thing that grabs the guitar for input through USB, plus they have software for processing it. It runs for about $100, so I think that's what it was. It's the kind of functionality I can get from my fancy stomp box, though using that isn't so easy. So maybe I should simplify and go for something like that. They have a more expensive model that had more inputs, and I might go for that.

Grady Booch of all things, recommended Gaping Void. He's a long time blogger. Old school. I think for Booch it was something about creativity. Maybe he does artwork for business cards or something. Booch also recommended a book, _Beautiful Code_, which I think I have somewhere so I should dig it up. And it reminds me that I think I have another book with interviews of programmers. It's a genre that I seem to like. _Secrets of Rock Star Programmers_, I think. I should dig it up.

Parents here. Food cooking. Broiled chicken and french fries. Yummy!

Melissa sent me a message that she couldn't find any lemonade. I guess wintertime makes it tougher. So I should bring something. She tried several places but she was late. It makes me unhappy when she's late for work because of me, but it is kind of sweet. I'm sure she's not happy about it either. So I'm not really sure what to say about it.

• February 6, 2010

I've been kind of worried that I might have been a little emotionally scarring to Wynne. Now seeing that she's still into poetry, and having seen how gloomy some of it is, I have to think that yes, maybe I was. She was always kind of emotional. So maybe mine was not such a big impact. And for a while, I've thought that maybe I'd like to say sorry or something, or try to say how she was always nice, and had a good impact on me, to try to maybe mitigate whatever impact I might have had. But now I have just a feeling of, oh well, damage done, water over the dam. No real interest in going back to it, now.

I didn't go out to the weekly Mensa meeting last night. I'm thinking of going to the St. Louis regional gathering next weekend, and I thought it might be good to go and see some of the locals to see if any were going, and maybe some advice or something. It looks like kind of a small one, but St. Louis is close enough, and I've never gone to one before. I had thought about going to the national one last year, but I balked at the money. I think it was Pittsburgh. Which is just around a reasonable driving distance. This year is Detroit. Also doable. Actually, in Detroit, you could probably squat in an empty building. So I guess I need to see.

It's a convention though. I'm not so good with groups of people. And I'm not so positive about what that is. I'm just about OK one on one, but with more than two, I have trouble even joining in on a conversation. I don't really feel like taking up people's time or something. I saw something recently that suggested that some geeky types have trouble with the conventions of turn-taking in conversations. So there will be awkward pauses and interruptions. That sounds likely to be an issue for me. And having a group of people, the whole turn-taking thing may well just be too frustrating. I do remember that I often find that people don't let me finish what I'm trying to say. And I've had people try to finish my sentences, and invariably, they won't say exactly what I'm trying to say, so I'll just get frustrated. So my experience in talking in groups is generally frustrating. Also, when talking, you have to find areas of common interest and agreement to have stuff to talk about. I think I have fairly unusual values and understandings about how things are, so I don't usually find that much in common with other people. It's the kind of thing that makes me usually not like dramatic movies, so going to movies is a problem. But in the situation of trying to talk to a group of people, I expect that I won't have anything that is common to all of them. I would guess that me talking is mostly me trying to explain my point of view, instead of a kind of mutual sharing and agreement that I think is a more usual kind of conversation. How about that airplane food?

Well there you go. I can see why I haven't played much guitar. My amplifier has a loose connection. It's the amplifier. I wasn't sure what it was. It could have been my old guitar, or my homemade cables. But with a new guitar and cable, it still has the problem, so it must be the amplifier. And the connection is loose. So once in a while, for a few seconds, it will work. Darn. I bought that amplifier used. Maybe it was shaky when I got it. I guess I need to write it off and throw it away. I charged it, and all that credit is gone, anyway. So I guess I need to get a new one. The few seconds it would play it would be fairly nice. Pretty loud. I guess that's all I could want. It's too much of a headache, though. And it always had a buzz, even when it there was no other signal, so I just generally haven't liked it. One question is if I should try to sell it off, again. But if it's really trash, I should just dump it. Since then, I've thrown away a lot more money than this. I think it was about $400. Man, I didn't really need to be spending money on this stuff right now.

So I'm shopping for amplifiers. The Fender Passport 150 looks good to me. It's a PA combination. Really, it's for plugging in microphones to amplify people's voices in a meeting or something. Maybe could be for a guy and his acoustic electric guitar. That's actually the kind of thing I want, because I have a keyboard and and acoustic electric guitar, and a microphone and nothing to hook them up with. It's like $400. I also saw the Peavey KB5. It is more specifically a keyboard amplifier, but it's close to a PA, and it probably would work fine with a guitar. It's like $550, though, and that's just a little more than I'd like. Both of those are 150 watts. I'd like more, but it looks like that's really all you can ask from these combination amps. But if I were to just be honest with myself, I'd have to admit that what I want is a Marshall stack. Speaker cabinets separate from the amplifier, or head. In their amp buying guide, Sweetwater says that Jimi always had the dual 4x12". Maybe I should concede and do that. But they point to a cabinet that costs $800, but they have one that costs $400. I don't what the difference is. That's just the speaker. I haven't looked at the amplifier head. There's probably a lot you can do. And in amplifiers, they always want sell you built in effects. I have an extremely fancy effects box, so I just want a straight amplifier, which is why I was looking at just PAs. We'll see what I find.

• February 4, 2010

Of course, I was one of the few kids in my high school who even took the American Math Competition tests. Maybe we had half a dozen in my grade, I forget. Those had really hard math, at least for me. Stuff I hadn't seen, and seems like they would sometimes actually give me a headache.

• February 3, 2010

I chopped wood again. That's the last of the stuff that was sitting to be chopped. It looks like it's good for maybe two weeks of burning steady, and it's February and getting warmer, so maybe I'll be fine. When it's gone, it's gone. I needed to chop it before the weather gets bad again, since it was sunny. We were down to having only maybe two or three days worth, if we kept it up, and it seems like we were just taking it a little easy so we wouldn't run out. You're more careful when you can see you're about to run out. But the stuff now is all wet from standing on the ground, so it won't burn so well.

Finished learning the movements for the Bagua dragon form. Now I can just work on perfecting it. We've only got three out of eight of the sections in the Fanzi Quan form. We would've gotten section four, but there weren't enough people that showed up. When that happens, I get to learn more of the dragon form. So that's it. I don't know if there's anything else for me to do by myself. The teacher is really trying to have everyone learn the same thing. It's a lot easier like that. So, what to study next. Reecy wanted to learn Xingyi, and that would be good. I think Louie is going to explode if I don't study the sparring form. But they've kind of cut back on that because people were getting hurt. There was one wild guy who messed it up. And another kind of snag is that it isn't something I can do by myself when no one shows up. So it's not really the greatest thing. I'd like either one. For now, I need to spend time on the dragon form. And I think there is a variation when you do it in pairs.

My parents are in town for a couple of days. My dad had to go to the dentist here in town. And they're coming back on Monday. My mom is making a pork roast. And I ate a bunch of spaghetti yesterday. So a break from my attempts to eat less.

And I'm holding off on picking up the guitar from Chris while they're here. The money's in the bank. I'll just do it tomorrow. I said a week, and tomorrow will be a week. Probably better anyway to have an empty house when trying out a new guitar.

• February 2, 2010

I did go on a bit yesterday. I guess that happens. Not sleeping so much and Starbucks. Plus I have been somewhat reflective lately. So, bit of a manic Monday. And we had not only just a full moon, but a wolf moon as it's called. A perigee moon that was extra close so extra big and bright. Hopefully I'm not a werewolf.

So, Oracle bought Sun. They might have sort of kept it alive in some way, but it looks like they are just obliterating any traces of it and moving on. There are Sun boxes out there, so I don't know what all's going to happen to them. And Sun kind of had some kind of possession of Java, but they did something to release it as open source, so I don't know what exactly Oracle has in relation to it. I'm thinking that in some way, Java is not dead, but with Sun gone, there's not really going to be much work on it. Microsoft has been trying to kill it from the beginning. One other piece is mySQL, which Sun bought. Sun was keeping it alive, but I would guess that Oracle really wanted to grab it and do something with it. Get rid of it, maybe. It's almost a competitor, though it kind of works in a slightly different market area--open source as compared to Oracle which is a big closed sort of system for big commercial stuff. Kind of a tough time in computers.

And overnight the money has shown up in my bank account. So that's a plus. Apparently that means it takes two business days to get access to my invested money. That seems just about as liquid as you could want. It takes maybe that long for a check to clear.

• February 1, 2010

OK, so I've got my laptop at Starbucks. I don't have the wifi going to it yet. I'm not sure what hoops they want me to jump through. Apparently, they want me to get one of their cards. I hard heard about that. But now when I see it, it has to be an active card, bought or used or refilled in the last months. That's not the same thing as just a card. I'm not sure if I want to be active enough to mess with it each month. Now, I buy from Starbucks every week, but I prefer to use cash instead of doing any kind of card thing. Maybe I can change. I'm not sure I want to. We'll see. For now, I'm writing offline. That's totally not the same. Can't do links or any of that stuff.

Now the thing is, the wifi is done by AT&T so my iphone is allowed to use it. A while back when I was in here, I had to do some kind of hoop to get access. The splash screen when the phone browser tries to access it would come up with some kind of log in, requiring the phone number, and it was send a text to the phone with a log in link, and then it would connect. It seems to do that handshaking automatically now. So AT&T is giving me access to my phone. Now this works very well for them, because it doesn't clog the phone wireless network. The iphone is becoming an incredible hog to them. So much that it's been worth it to them to set up these wifi points. But for the phone, not so much for just everyone. I don't know if being one of their customers is enough. I need some kind of account with them. I may well have one with them somewhere that I can use, but I don't know yet. Maybe we'll see.

Lunch with Aimee. At the Market Cafe on I think it's Madison. Wish the internet was up, or I'd give the link. The try to use farmer's market vegetables. The owner took our order, but passing over to the server, my soup turned into a salad. That's fine. Probably just as well. Hamp and Jenny were there. I think Aimee never found Jenny, so that was nice. Tucked in a different building somewhere. Maybe we can do lunch.

Fun writing in Starbucks, though. Got the tunes on the iphone. Weird Al's song, "Pancreas". He says his pancreas attracts all other pancreases in the universe with a force that's proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them, but to be more accurate, the forces is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Maybe that wouldn't fit so well in the song, but I hate for him to be misleading to people. It's like the place in the Wizard of Oz where the guy, I think it must be the scarecrow, says the area of the square of the hypoteneuse of an isosceles triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Maybe it's a little more clear in print. This was also quoted in a Simpson's episode by Homer. And like the commenter there said, "it's a right triangle, you idiot!"

Somehow, I got to talking to Aimee about seduction. And I mentioned R. Don Steele's _How to Date Young Women for Men over 35_. I loaned her his book _Office Politics, I'm guessing it was maybe 10 years ago now. She really hated it. Anyway, I was trying to get to how, if you just want to easily, you should just get a wedding band. But R. Don has a whole program of self improvement. Exercising, learning about things that interest young women. Getting out to a gym. Actually, what seems like a fairly nice program. And dating young women is maybe an incentive, or goal, or possibly a reward. I guess I don't have a great way to describe it. Doesn't seem like there is going to be a good way to sell it to Aimee. Because she asked the natural question of what young women have to offer that maybe an older woman like herself might have. But she said, other than the obvious physical stuff. Umm. Seems like that's a little hard to just drop. But I tried to add what R. Don added. Young women have a bit of a fresher outlook. They can be more vibrant. The world hasn't worn them down as much, and they won't be as bitter as older women can be. Again, I don't think that's going to be a case I'd be able to make with Aimee, easily. And R. Don has stages of women. An older single woman will have different things going on. A young woman is probably not looking for a husband the way an older woman almost certainly is. She could still just be looking to have fun for now. I guess.

So, going back to the shuttle to take us back to her office, we just missed it driving away. Instead of waiting for the next one, we decided to walk. And immediately, we saw that it was a mistake for Aimee. The sidewalks were covered with ice. I can walk on ice fine, but Aimee had heels. Ouch. And this wasn't slush or snow, or rough mix of snow and ice or even just snow with a bit of a crust. This was an early layer of snow, which had been rained on and that has frozen to a perfectly smooth, solid layer of smooth ice. Even ice can be rough enough to get some grip. In one spot there was just this nice slope, so I couldn't stand, I just lightly slide down, my legs spreading out. But I said I could keep her from falling. I'm actually very sure footed. In fact, my style of kung fu emphasizes walking with sure footing. And it gave me a chance to tell me a story of the founder of Bagua. He worked for the Emperor, at one of the imperial palaces. As a waiter, actually. Part of what he did in developing this style of kung fu was to work on improving and practice a style of weaving and dodging footwork. So when he was serving food in at the crowded banquet, he weaved around between people carrying the trays, never touching anyone or spilling anything. And the emperor, ro somebody like that, who happened to be interested in kung fu, said, hey, this guy probably has some pretty good kung fu, based on how he can move around so quickly, steadily, while dodging and avoiding people. So he got to do a demonstration of his kung fu, which, yes, was very impressive, and he ended up getting a job with the guards, and did end up teaching and training them.

OK, so telling the story will we were walking on such terribly slippery ice maybe help distract Aimee from all the danger. We were walking holding hands and I was definitely trying to help steady her. I think they like the whole protecting thing, too. Plus, from what I here, if you can get them really scared, and their heart is beating, they will kind of confuse that a little bit, and have stronger feelings for you. Anyway, something to think about. And then, after walking on ice for a couple of blocks, we noticed that we were walking on the shaded south side of the street, whereas the sidewalk on the north side didn't have any ice. D'oh! So we crossed the street and then we were fine. But we survived, and then got past it.

At lunch, we also talked about computer languages, since I'm reading about computer languages designers. What swung it in that direction was that she talked about her regular meeting on Wednesday. I told her that the C# guys have regular meetings on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from one to three. Every week. For the past 10 years. Now that's meetings. But they do a lot of stuff. It's no wonder C# keeps adding features. I tried to survey the C family of languages and how object oriented programming affected that family. C was simple, but to handle big projects, they've made several attempts to add object orientations. C++ has been a bit of a disaster. It's gotten too big. Still has pointers. Java is a little better. C# is kind of a reaction to Java, though since it added back pointers, one might see it as a step backwards. Objective C is like a fork before C++. Aimee has done some COBOL and I forget what the other thing was.

So I've been playing the money pretty close. I need $80 tomorrow to pay for kung fu for the month. I have $62 in the bank, after what I've been taking out over the weekend. And went out to dinner saturday and sunday. Got a lot at Bardog. Soup and Mussels. Melissa kindly paid for the soup. She often picks up my check, so I didn't know what to expect. So I only had to pay for the mussels. She actually expected me to get the fillet, but that was $25, and I think she would not have covered that. Which was good. And any other time. I would have done it, but I'm real close. And the after it all, I was having lunch with Aimee. Normally, I would pay, and I would run over her objections in a manly way. And I had prepared an argument. She can pay when she asks me out. And she tried to act like she kind of had. Because when I sent the email, she said she had been thinking of sending me something, already, what a coincidence! And she picked the place. So I simply did not fight back very hard. Plus, I paid the last two recent times. A few weeks before, a few months before that. And not so recent, I think it was maybe 7 years before that. So if we are taking turns, it was her turn. And maybe she might be a little more comfortable taking turns, but who wants to be comfortable? The owner guy as we were paying used the word "manly". Somehow letting her pay might be manly in some way that I was not familiar with. Something to do with being gracious, I think? OK. So I let her pay. Leaving me with the $32 I still had. OK. Yay! So I theoretically have the money, without needing any extraordinary effort.

But I said I was playing it close. Actually, I have a hundred dollar bill that my mom left to help with the utility bill. I think it's gotten really sad that my mom feels like giving me money. When I was working, I usually gave my mom money every time she came to town, to buy groceries. And over Christmas last year, every couple of weeks. And usually a hundred. She really appreciated that, because her money was tight. And you know, when I stopped working, I still had enough money to keep doing that, and probably I should have, but I try to keep my finances to myself, and there would have been questions, and I don't think she would have gotten that yes, I am managing my money, and I can still do this. When I was working, from the very beginning there was the understanding that the job was temporary, so it was all about saving money, because when it was gone, it was going to be quite a while til I found another one. And then it lasted more than two years longer than I was expecting, so I saved enough to go for a really long time. Even spending money at the rate that I was thinking, I could go for two years, with everything working to plan. I did tell her about the two year thing. Maybe a year and a half. It's been a year now. And this is all without cutting back, which maybe would be a good idea. So I guess she decided for me to cut back on the money going to her. That includes one of the two tax bills for the house. I paid the city, but she paid the county. I caved in to that. And then I didn't throw money into food over the holidays like I should have. Ouch. I just went down that road, I guess. So she goes back to the farm after the holidays, and then leaves me with money to help with the utilities. Now, to be fair, normally they run around $100, but in the winter, maybe last time, it was over $300, so it could have been pretty steep. But it was only $230. So really no big deal. Whatever.

So Aimee asked me, what my dream job is. It's a very good question. I didn't finish answering her, and the discussion veered off. I talked about the book _the Passionate Programmer_. The guy is a saxophone phone player, so he has analogies to being a musician and programmer, like trying to be the worst one in the room, so you can get better, and it's more fun. And he's got a lot more stuff. I have to look more into it. One thing I've found is that I'm not manager. I don't have good time management, and certainly no people management. And I'm not a self-starter, so I can't do the academic sorts of big projects on my own. Though that may just be that I haven't worked on becoming like that, and developing habits to do projects like that on my own. I certainly can do work on my own, but so far, I've needed management for figuring out goals and plans and schedules and that sort of thing.

There was the passionate programmer one, and there was another about finding a good IT job. I forget where it was, but somewhere it suggested that you should try to focus on an industry that you are interested in. IT isn't all the same. There are different areas. Along those lines, I've been thinking of going into medical IT.

In general, too I've found that it's more important to me what the company does. In particular, I just did not believe that it ever absolutely positively had to be there overnight. I guess that's where the conversation with Aimee derailed. I kind of did get stuck with that. And she found it ironic that a person with admitted problems with time management couldn't understand someone who had procrastinated to where something needed to be there overnight. Because I think people who believe it has to be there overnight are just mistaken. They've made a mistake somewhere, and now they are propagating this mistake thinking someone else can fix their mistake for them. I have heard people say they believe it absolutely positively has to be their overnight for something, but I've never heard any convincing explanation that that is the case. Of course, I haven't heard that so often. I think financial documents was one thing. But all documents can be transferred electronically instantly. Somehow, there is something about physical legal documents with signatures, but as far as I can tell, that's just garbage. Bruce's business is all about documents like that. Honestly, the cost of FedEx is cheap compared to the money involved in properly preparing the documents, and the work that he does involving them. So fine. And losing stuff in the mail? That would suck. So I've been right there. Still not convinced.

My ultimate dream is AI. But I'm not sure that it is something I could be doing work on. Which is, I guess sad. It's something maybe that I want to be able to do, but I can't now. Should I focus on becoming able to doing something in that area? Do I need to be looking at what I most want to do that I am able to do? Maybe I should. Am I able to do research?

One of the things I was just thinking of looking at doing was something in biochemical informatics. In chemistry, reactions work in particular ways depending on the geometry of the things involved. The shape of the molecules, plus actually a lot more information about how the pieces can move and bend, and how charge distributions and electrical forces are arranged Geometrically. And there is a huge map of chemical reactions in biological systems that are well mapped, along with different proteins that are involved. One important problem is seeing how the shape of a protein interacts with different chemicals, because of their shapes. And it is an incompletely handled problem simply to go from a protein sequence, which you can get from the gene sequence, to its shape. So there is a lot involved. This is bioinformatics research at the postdoc level. A lot of work. I honestly do not have the full background to do it, but it is something I would like to get into. That seems something worthy of pursuing. It also might involve AI sorts of things a dealing with computer knowledge of complex spatial objects. The computer vision stuff might apply to that, as some partial analyses add information that is similar to how vision takes incomplete information to give you a solid understanding of an object. When people talk of computer models of drugs, I'm assuming they use something at this level. When you get a molecule of a particular shape, you can check it against all the biological molecules you know about, and see it there are some strong reactions that will end up causing the freaky and unpredictable "side effects" that happen in medicines all the time.

Argh! There was a Trojan on my other laptop. And loader programs. Ick. I don't know where I got them. Not nice.

So one question I would have is, how much organic chemistry do computers understand? Is there a way I can get computers to understand more organic chemistry? Part of the question is also how much I understand. I was never that great, and I've forgotten a lot. There is a lot to know. There's fundamentals, but there's also a lot of just mass detailed facts. And then biochemistry adds a lot further into that.

OK, so I said I was playing very tight with my money. There is an additional bit. On Friday, I put in an order to sell stock. A big chunk. It takes time for the money to propagate. This time, I;ve handled it a little different. My account seems to have diffent bins. There's a bin for mutual fund shares of a certain type that I have. I have a bin that's labelled cash. And in one view of my portfolie, it will say the amount in the cash bin, the amount in the mutual fund bin, and it will have a weird line that says credit or debit from unsettled activity. Fine. So far, I've treated the unsettled stuff as money I simply don't have access to. But today, I found that there is another view, it has a line that is cash plus unsettled amounts, and then it has a completely different line labelled, money available for withdrawal. Huh. And when I look at it, the unsettled money is available for withdrawal. OK. Now, one difference in the pages seems to be that this one seems to talk more about it being an instantaneous snapshot, because with a trade account,stock sales and orders and purchases have particular times at which they are places and occur. The time of day makes a difference in these kinds of things, so that kind of stuff can make a difference. I am only trading mutual funds, which are settled at the end of the day, so the times aren't that big a deal. I am not positive that the fund people aren't jigging me with the fluctuations during the day, but that's more of an issue with the manager. You gotta trust somebody. I only get a settlement date, not a settlement time. This fund, though, in very day I sold, had a 1% swing. That means they could have juggled it and lost or gained whatever it was. But like I said, I don't know. Whatever. Anyway, this time, I went and places a transfer order for money that in one place said it was available, but had not made it to the cash bin And it took the order. I don't know what it's going to do, though. My transfer order was places before their closing time, 4pmET, where they say it can get executed that same day. In the optimistic scenario, I might have cut out a day in the time it takes to get money out. Or maybe it won't make any difference. Or, of course, there's the pessimistic possibility. They may believe I have overdrawn my account. And it could fail and I will have to pay a penalty for that. Wouldn't that be special? I tried looking over their help pages, and I just didn't see anything to indicate they could do something like that, but some places are just all about having gotchas like that.

They sent me an email saying they transfered the money. The money has been taken out of the unsettled "bin". These bins I'm describing are on a pages called "positions" the other one is called "balances". I guess there is a difference. And the market went up, like 1.4%. Actually, the day-trading amount I was thinking of really wasn't that much. But the 6% over the week kind of hurt. If I had done it a week before, or I bet waited a week. But I waited til the last, and possible a little too long. In the morning on Friday, it was going up, but then it went down. *sigh*

And the money is gone from my investment account, but it has not showed up in the display from my bank account. I'm not sure what to make of that. I apparently do not have a situation where I can account for all the money that I have. I have some sort of record of the transfer, but until it gets to the destination, I don't have a listing of the money being anywhere. Maybe it's sitting in a transaction house, somewhere. Bacause in the pessimistic case, it's not sitting there, and the handling system might catch up and starting chomping.

So, one thing Aimee came up with. Does R. Don have something for cougars? And my thought was, that'd be like having a book on how to shoot fish in a barrel. But you know, maybe there's a need for that, too.

• January 31, 2010

• January 30, 2010

I just watched some videos of Pat Churchland, kind of a neuropsychological philosopher of mind. One thing she talked about in there was how significant it is to unconsciously mimic other people, or mirror them. This was something I read about a while back in that book about getting people to like you, and I tried it out a bit. And I wrote about it somewhere. OK, dude called it "synching". So they did an experiment, and they told the person to avoid imitating completely, and the other people would end up saying he seemed creepy. OK. And she (Pat) was trying to explain maybe what the significance might be. How do we know if a stranger is dangerous? That's one of the signs. If they can pick up social cues. It's actually a little beyond just being different and trying to be like the group. Also, if you look at babies, they try to copy people, smile when they smile, point when they point. It's important for them to learn, and it also adds to their charm. Plus, here was the coldly scientific eerie part that she said, if babies can't do that, that's gonna be one of the few ways that mom knows if there is something wrong with the baby. Ooh. She talked about infanticide in there somewhere, too. That's actually a subject I go too, sometimes. So she seems like my kind of lady. Canadian, though. Occasionally, she'll say something in a way that just reminds me of all my cousins up there. Okay, eh?

One thing about Julie, though, that's still sticking with me. At some point, they say her husband suggested putting one of those paypal links, for donations. Grr. Those things bother me, but I can see the idea of donations. At least making it possible. Seems like Russell did that, but I don't see it now. It just seems like begging people is just such a painful thing to do. When it doesn't work out, ouch. So I guess I won't worry about it. And Julie's character didn't improve, but it moved to sort of a happy ending, despite it. Or maybe her realization was the thing. And to realize that everyone is a bitch too. That would be an extremely sad and annoying moral. That may an additional reason I didn't like it. The happy ending was that she got her book published and made into a movie, and her husband came back. I mean he left her for a bit. That's just sad. I guess marriages have troubles. Especially when the wife is that annoying. OK, I told Netflix three stars. Julia Child part was nice. The Julie part did not completely ruin it for me, I think. Two and a half seems like it would have been right.

Man, I didn't go see Super 5. And it bums me out because I said I would. I took a nap, and woke up around 10, but I just couldn't get myself to get up and go. I really didn't want to go out, but I didn't want to not do what I said I would. Inertia won out. Maybe I didn't know about the snow when I said I would. Maybe I still try to say what i thinking people would like to hear when I'm with them, but it isn't quite the same when I'm by myself, and I don't think of all the stuff pushing me around then. Conflict. And how to be reliable about what you're going to do. Lately, not so much.

I guess that's another thing about the star trek movie. In this new reality, Uhura is his girlfriend. They tried to play off the weird geeky attractiveness that he has, but completely deflate it by making him attainable. Fork that movie! Fork it up its evil crap-hole!

And I saw something talking about how _Avatar_ could be conceived of as racist. I'm not sure I really had that reaction. Maybe that was in there, somewhere. Primitives cain't do nothin' til one of massa's people joins up wit' 'em. It's just about at the level of jar-jar, now that I think about it.

OK, so a lot of people pronounce SQL as "sequel". I have settled on pronouncing it "squall", because it's kind of stormy to use. The book talks with one of the guys who developed it. It originally was called SEQUEL, but they had to change the name to not violate somebody's tradmark, so I would say that all the people who say it "sequel" are violating that trademark, so they need to stop. :P

And Gosling on Java. He's happy with it. He might actually use Scala instead, though. But for him the big thing is the JVM, and that's solid. On C#, he said they took most of Java, but left out the security by still having pointers. He said it was "grotesquely stupid". But he had to admit that because of that, you can't have C or C++ on the JVM. I guess you wouldn't want to. But then you here from the C# guy. Their big deal is that on their VM, whatever it is, I think they call it CLR, you can use any language you want. And more harshness. He says the Java people aren't trying for backward compatibility so much as never improving at all. You could add new things and the old stuff will still work. But I think that's typical microsoft deception. If you constant upgrade, the new stuff will be able to use the old stuff. It's the microsoft attitude that you always need new stuff. It's part of the deal when you make stuff as crappy as that. It will fall apart if you don't replace it pretty often. Great if you have money invested in landfills. Or maybe sewage treatment. They had an objective-C guy. He uses Java now. Apple took over that language, and they didn't talk to them.

I put a log in the fireplace, actually the longest one, that was the entire width of the thing. I had to put it in diagonally, and it was maybe eight inches thick, so it was fairly big, too. Not super big. We've got a bunch that are more than a foot across, but they are short enough to fit in straight. This one was wider than the opening at the front, and seemed like it might have been wider than the inside, but maybe it burned off a little on the outside, because it eventually settled in parallel. When I first put it in, it was kind of wedged, sitting up off the bottom, though I guess resting on some coals. It burned down about half through, and was sitting up against the back, and I tried to roll it forward a bit, but it just disintegrated into a pile of coals. A thick layer of burning coals covering the whole bottom of the fireplace. And when wood is just heated, baked, it turns into charcoal. So this was basically a mass of charcoal, but all the surfaces were red and burning. And now it isn't even just yellow flames, It's about half blue flame. Really hot for a bit, but it won't last too long. So I put in one of those thick one foot logs. So it'll get a chance to roast. This one, though, wasn't lying down, it was standing, with the flat cut part on the cement. I pick it up, and there are beetles living under it. I don't know enough about bugs. I don't know what kind they were. They kind of look like small roaches, but like I said, I don't know bugs, so I don't know. And there was sawdust. I think we had termites in there, too. It'll be good to get rid of this stuff.

So I wanted to check on the log and see how it was doing. When it gets too hot, the doors expand and you can't open then. So I've got me a fire going.

OK, the C# guy did turbo pascal, which was quite nice.

I felt like trying some French food, so I Googled it at Starbucks, and there was a place River Oaks, that was only a couple of blocks from there. I didn't feel like driving downtown or to midtown. And it supposedly has Chef Jose Guttierrez. The best food I've had, I think, was from him at Chez Philippe a few years back. This menu, though, seemed pretty heavily American. I had the soup, a chicken and peas cream, and the pork tenderloin. It was good, but nothing memorable. Little bartender Courtney. I'm not sure what she made of me. I am quite shaggy lately. I put the money in the little book thingie, but she didn't actually take it. I wanted to keep the receipt, but since I left it, I felt I needed to keep it with it so to be sure she could connect it up, if she was going to save it to the end. I actually had exact change, but tipped a twenty. I don't eat out very often, so I wasn't all that comfortable with it. Oh well. And I didn't say much at all. I listened to my iPhone, and read stuff on it, so I was entertained well enough. I'm not sure what I might have expected. At one point a song from Weird Al came up-- "Genius in France"-- which seemed fitting.

• January 29, 2010

Wow. I just got to the point where Julie just comes out and says "I am a bitch". I was trying not to say it like that, but there it is. That pretty much expresses my feelings. So now I'm guessing there's going to be some kind of character development where she becomes a better person, but I'm sorry, it's too late for that for me.

I'm thinking I might get an iPad when it comes out. A lot of the reddit geeks are whining about it. It doesn't work like one would expect a computer to. You expect to be able to program a computer. But this one you can't. One guy said he wouldn't have become a programmer if they had iPads. Fine, great. But most people don't want to program. We'll see if there is a market for this. It looks like just a fancy kindle. But a kindle is on my list, so there. Sounds expensive, too. And then another $30 a month to get the 3G connection. Argh.

And the market went down. Ouch. So I just lost a bunch of value. It looks much more like I'm going to need to get some work soon. I guess I still have a while. Oh well.

I saw Super Chris at Bardog. I said I would buy one of his guitars. He makes custom guitars. His buyer for it backed out, and he's just wanting to unload this one. He is going to work on getting more sales, and he could certainly sell them for more. Selling is always a challenge. Getting rid of this one will help him get some cash for materials for another one.

But French cooking. Honestly, it seems like too much work. And really, that appears to be part of the style. Hopefully, after all the work, the food is really good. I guess that's the idea. Rich.

Snow here. Went out to bring the DVD to the post office. It's been rainy a lot today, so it washed the snow off the streets, so there's just some slush. But it's going to fresh and be really nasty. A good weekend to just stay in. But Super 5 is playing at Dan McGuinness tonight, and I'm intending to go down. Could be icky.

• January 25, 2010

Watched _Avatar_. Knew it was a bad idea. I guess it was good to have seen it in the sense of sharing the experience. So many have seen it. But everyone goes to the bathroom, too. Somehow, it reminds me of that.

So I turned on House. Maybe fifteen minutes into it. At about 25 minutes there was a commercial break, and I considered going to the store quick. I might have been able to make it back to see the end, which I think was mostly what I was interested in, I guess. But I stuck with it for a little more. Some kind of psychopath as the patient, which intrigues House for some reason. But at maybe 35 minutes into it, there's another commercial break, and I've had it with the commercials. Maybe if I'd seen it from the beginning, I would have been more invested and the breaks wouldn't have bothered me as much. Or maybe I've just lost my tolerance. I mostly only watch DVDs now, with no commercials. I don't know.

So I go to Kroger's. I was going to get two half gallons of milk this time, instead of just one. The last one lasted four days, so this should get me a week. I'm not so happy that I had to go back to the store so soon. 'Cause I really hate shopping. And maybe pick up some fried chicken. Last time, I got the banquet's, plus the milk, and it came to $10 even which seemed odd. And I get really expensive milk, it's lactose free, but the store brand is like $2.99 instead of 4 something for the Lactaid brand, so I really save a significant amount going to Kroger where they have it. And I check out the chicken at the deli. It's $6 for 8 pieces. Might as well get the banquet for that, and I think the quality is better. But they have some marked down to $2.50. Getting old, maybe, but that sounds like a deal. Hopefully it's not too risky. So the total is around $9.20. I've gotten a little more food for less money. So bonus. If I bought a whole chicken and fried it myself it would cost more. But I get it home. Very dried out. Sitting under the heat lamp too long. So it isn't so good. But theirs isn't all that good, anyway. So I've live with it.

Even with the later departure, I still made it back to see a little of the end of the _House_ episode. Missed all the dialog, so I don't know how it really ended with the patient. Just some weird mood stuff with him going up to a house in the snow. Fine. Some kind of character development or something, I guess. Isn't it special that he's growing as a person? Life is but a something something. Googled it. Walking shadow. Fine.

Makes me wonder. Why would I even bother with mundanities? Writing about watching TV and going to the grocery store. That has got to be really sad. But it's writing. It's kind of fun for me. I wouldn't expect anyone to be interested. But it's something. There's all that text out there. Trees died for some of it. But no trees died here. That's got to count for something.

And it's a little bit about my alternate. Right now, paused on the DVD player is _Cathouse_, and HBO something or other about some Nevada brothel. Ugh. I'm not sure I want to know. Some kind of guy on screen who just entered and is being introduced with a grin on his face. I guess it's humanity. Man.

Ugh. Or maybe, moo. I ate too much chicken.

• January 24, 2010

And I did get through _Doctor Who_ season four. It was OK. Really not as memorable I think as it might be. Maybe got a little too melodramatic for me.

• January 23, 2010

One implication of having most computer science students write a compiler is that there's going to be a lot of computer languages out there. I think that may be what has happened. Because there really are a huge number of computer languages, and more all the time. But having a lot to choose from could mean that the ones that get popular are pretty good. But it doesn't really seem that way. Computer programming is just hard. People might flail around trying to get a better system, but it hasn't especially been working very well. One attempt with computer languages is to make it so it's easier to find problems, but to have that, you have to have redundancy, which means a program will need to be longer. That's the kind of thing that a lot of people don't like. So there's push back against that. I forget which it was, it might have been AWK, but they were saying that just about anything you type would be a valid program, but if you have that, you don't know if anything is wrong. One specific thing, in AWK, you don't have to declare a variable. If you use it, it magically appears. So if you have a typo and have misspelled something from before, that won't be an error that the compiler or interpreter will catch. It will just make a new variable, and it just won't work the way you probably want. Guy suggested you might have something to warn you. But because of this kind of thing, it's not so good to have a long program. And AWK programs are supposed to be short, maybe a line or two.

Netflix has season four of _Doctor Who_ available to stream, so I'm watching that.

• January 22, 2010

And then there's a chapter on AWK. Which seems a little odd. AWK doesn't seem like a real major language. It's a pattern matching scripting tool under Unix, but not quite a full language. But then you see what the real deal is. The guy they're talking to is Al Aho. He's the 'A' in 'AWK'. There's also Weinberger and Kernighan. But Aho is one of the authors, along with Ullman, of the dragon books, pretty much the definitive textbook on compilers. Maybe i wouldn't have even noticed it, but he mentioned that the pattern matching algorithm used in AWK is documented in the red dragon book. OK.

So I tried googling Wynne to see how she's doing. Somewhere it said that one of her interests is poetry. And they're not kidding. You can google her and poetry and find quite a bit. She won some kind of poetry contest from the AMA. Apparently when she got a masters in bioethics from U Penn, her thesis was a series of poems. That seems a little weird, but whatever. I guess she likes writing poetry.

Watched Homer do the tomorrow soliloquy.

• January 21, 2010

Some drama with the job thing today. I haven't felt like talking to the headhunters, and I think they called yesterday but that was it. But somehow today Doug decided to contact me. So he called and I didn't answer.

And let me back up. Last night I had a dream. I dreamed that the Mark guy just came into the house here. Didn't knock, just came on in. And he brought some girl or something. And Doug came on in too. I think that was about it. So I think I'm just feeling a little intruded upon.

Conversely, though, I had another dream where I was staying at a hotel. I had enough to pay for it in my account, but then I spent a little too much on something or other, and then I ended up being a little short, and I had to worry about that. So maybe I'm a little worried about having enough money, so maybe I really should try to get some work.

Anyway, Doug called and I didn't answer, but then he came by. I didn't want to see him or talk to him. Even before that, I was thinking that with this situation, I wasn't entirely happy with him, and I just have less of an interest in seeing him in general. So I just ignore him and don't answer the door. I was trying to take a nap, anyway, so I really did not want to be interrupted.

Some time later, though I get a call from my parents at the farm. Doug has called them. Great. So now I'm not happy. I called Doug and told him I'm not happy. I thought not calling because I'm not interested would be enough, but Doug called my folks. So I told him to leave it alone. Fine. Great. But now it may be time for me to really look for something. And now I don't have as much interest in staying here in Memphis. There was some stuff I needed to look at first, including one book on IT interviews, a couple on IT job searching more generally. And I have a more general thing on careers--something with "Zen" in the title. I do want to look at iPhone programming a little bit, and there's the clojure thing I wanted to do, but maybe that's so likely anymore. Not if I suddenly need to do something.

One thing about not staying is that I gained extra weight over christmas. That's a minus. But I've lost a couple of it. Still, it's going to be hard now.

And with all the problems in Haiti, my situation is nothing to complain about.

And the job is not too bad. One of the headhunters seemed to get that my last experience actually fits fairly well with this job. But I'm just not really excited about the company, and life is too short to do something you don't care much about.

• January 20, 2010

I was giving this possible java work a couple days to see if I might become interested, but it doesn't seem to be happening. I'm not answering my phone. And I don't really like when it happens to me, but it happens enough that I'm sure they must get it, though I have commented on how hard it is to get a message when all you have is someone not responding.

So it's a couple of days, and I still don't really feel like I'm going to want to go downtown this weekend. There was actually a little bit in there where the old feeling of just wanting to go down there came back, but it passed. No telling what it'll be like come Sunday. I have usually decided to go. But even last Sunday evening, I didn't really feel like going, but because earlier that day I said I would, I went. And I guess it was nice, but maybe it was getting to be enough. I went in Friday night for a couple of minutes just to say hi and ask Melissa about school, because I was out downtown with friends, and then said I would try to bring them by. I was there Saturday from about 9 til 3. And then I went Sunday. So that was quite a bit.

Finished the first of four Simpson's season 20 DVDs. The episodes are pretty good, I think. I miss the commentaries. The last one was one with Lisa and Crossword puzzles. Homer makes her mad by betting against her in a tournament (which was a good bet), and then gets the New York Times crossword puzzle to have a secret message to her. And the main guy is Will Shortz. My mom has a book of Sudoku puzzles from him. I wish I would have saved at least the cover from that last book I did, but now I'm thinking it was not one of Shortz's.

Browsing Amazon for Sudoku books, (and I think my last book was Wayne Gould's Fiendish one), I came across a comment on on book that talks about a technique the author is calling "trailing". It's where you pick one of two possibilities and see where it goes. I have to do that sometimes. And he wants to say it's logical and not just trial and error, but is not very convincing. I don't know. He marks some puzzles where you have to do that. Seems a little iffy. Plus, there were some puzzles that had two different solutions. That violates a sort of agreement that people have, so those are in some sense failed puzzles. One of the comments refers to the mensa guide to solving sudoku puzzles so I've added that to my Amazon wishlist. Maybe if I finish my book of 1250 I might try it. I've slowed down, though. Too much other stuff.

• January 18, 2010

I have a strong feeling of not wanting to go back. That never lasts til the end of the week, but there it is. I was saying I would give Asa a ride back to easy Memphis, but there must be some deal where I'm not allowed to be in the place when they are doing something at the close, maybe putting the money in the safe. I don't know. But they had to put me out. And Asa said thanks but he's OK. There was a cabbie who came in and would pick him up, though he had a fare to go to, but probably after that. Whatever. It just gave me pause that they really don't know me that well. I hung out for an hour when they were closing down, but it's still really just provisional.

And there was a thing where Melissa needed to go to the bathroom, but she couldn't because she had gotten Asa to stand by the door and make sure it was locked when people left. So I went over and did that instead. Priorities.

And I found a song that Melissa seems to really like. "I Will Survive". I asked her about it, and she said it reminds her of the last time she saw her favorite aunt Ginny happy. She was 95 and it was at a party. It was before several of her relatives died and she got bad sick with the shingles. It came on and she was dancing and having a good time. So when Melissa hears it, she remembers and feels good. And what I noticed is that she dances to it herself. And that's just very pretty. I didn't tell Melissa that, though. Oh well. But I played the song twice.

Actually, the first time I played it, in a sequence of a bunch of things, the music was turned fairly low, and when it came on, she turned the volume way up. And that was a little bad for me. The very next song I had was Queen's "fat-bottomed girls". Melissa hates queen. She tells me not to play queen (that or meatloaf, but I hate meatloaf too, so I don't play it). And because the sound was low, I thought it wouldn't be so bad. But like I said, she turned the sound up right then. Maybe her good mood held on a second, and she got right busy right then. Often she'll turn the sound down when Queen plays, but she didn't. I tried to have a bunch of good stuff after it. And I played it one more time so we could have the whole thing at full volume.

There's one song that works really well. "Lean on me". People will sing along with that one. It's a friendly bar.

So UPS delivered today. I got my Simpson's 20th Season DVDs. No Commentaries. Talk about disappointing. That's really the main thing I do with them, listen to the commentaries. I'm sure that's just me, but it's important to me. Oh well.

I also got a book, _Masterminds of Programming_. Interviews with the designers of quite a few popular programming languages. I will probably find it fun. Again, just me personally. I read _Coders at Work_, which was famous programmers, not so much language designers, and really liked that.

I got together with Doug and one of his friends, Mark Dinstuhl, for lunch yesterday. Mark needs to get out of a programming contract, and in order not to injure his relationship with the people involve, he wanted to have an alternative candidate for the job. So I have contacted the recruiter. We'll see how it goes. I haven't had that much luck with recruiters. They tend to get a list of particular technologies from their clients, and really can only go by that list. And from what I've seen, they don't have such a great understanding of the craft of programming. The programming isn't really their area, in some sense. Their task is dealing with people. I already have a list of minuses for this situation. In general, it would be good for me to pursue, though. We'll see how it goes.

Lately, I've been thinking what features I like in women. For me, she needs to be smart, and probably has to be atheist, though maybe in the broader sense of just not being so caught up with the silliness. But then physically. I think the most important thing is petite. I like freckles and fair skin, too. That seems a little rare, though. So I was looking at all the women in Bardog. There are always a lot of women there. Melissa has even remarked how there's a lot more there than most places. Anyway, there was this on woman that really seemed pretty to me. Fairly short, curvy, dark hair. Maybe I stared a little long. At closing, though, I was sitting by the door making sure it was locked behind people. And she was coming to leave, I forget what she said, maybe nice to see you, and shook my hand. Then she kissed my hand. It was so sweet. I of course, didn't have any real way of handling it--that's just not me-- but there it was.

• January 16, 2010

Went to Borders. The had a book that was on my amazon wish list, so I picked it up. Pearlman's _The Book of Marial Power_. It seemed nice because the sections were brief. Not too many pictures. I never get anything from pictures of techniques. I just can't follow them. And it seemed like he wasn't too fluffy, but a little concrete. Maybe someone who actually might understand physics. That can really be a problem, in my experience. I saw something else that looked good-- _The little black book of violence: what every young man needs to know about fighting_. I think it's along the lines of that other one, I think it was _Meditations on Violence_, which was really good. But it was really too long for me right now. Maybe some other time.

I also got the Scientific American Mind. It has a section trying to deal scientifically with falling in love. Sounds good to me. Also has a thing on suicide, and it had a picture of someone who cut herself. Both of those subjects remind me of someone I know. It also has a thing on social networks, "what they do to you". Seems like something may I should try to know more about, but then, knowing these guys, it's probably just obvious stuff. Seems like they said something about people do best if they use them to enhance their real relationships. Gee, really?

• January 15, 2010

Alone again. At last. Played some piano. Seems like I prefer to do that by myself. My mom asks me to play a lot, and the piano tuner guy says it needs to be played a lot. But I resist that. Maybe I don't like to be nagged. And my mom shows sort of a mawkish kind of appreciation that isn't so pleasant. And maybe playing is a little personal for me. But one thing I'm noticing is that I'm pretty heavy on the sustain pedal. A lot of what I like is how the harmonies play when you can get all the notes holding on for a long time, with some of them fading. It can be a very rich sound. Like a mocha chai. But the midi keyboard, is not going to have a sustain like that. Probably. There is a plug for a sustain pedal, and it might try to handle an effect like that, but it probably won't be the same. I'll need to check it out. And I'm not sure how bad I feel about losing my doodlings. I play something and it's gone. This time, I tried some more improvising. My improvising has actually gotten pretty rusty. At least I remember being better than this. Maybe the faking of songs got me out of the spirit of loosely playing. We'll see.

Where did the last 5 pounds come from? I had been sitting at 205 for a while. It has been a bit since I was checking it all the time. Maybe a couple weeks. Some of it must have been the KFC. And there's the pork roast. And I've been drinking up the OJ. Seems like OJ often gets me. It's kind of sneaky, because it goes so fast. And since it's so cold, I haven't been doing the kung fu as much as I need to. So maybe a combination of things.

They had a guy Mungo Park. For quite a while I thought it was park, but it is the guy's name. The story kind of inspired _Heart of Darkness_ which inspired _Apocalype Now_. Plus _Aguirre: the Wrath of God_. A guy going up a river and his party just being eaten away by natives. And he had gone to Africa before and been captured, but got lucky and escaped. So what does he do? He goes back, marries a girl he seems to have fallen for when she was 8 years old. Friends with her big brother. They have some kids. Then he takes the brother and goes back. In the first one, he did it cheap, with hardly any folk. This time he gets backing. And they send along 40 army guys. Made him sort of a captain. Like Willard, I guess. And the brother. Burned them all away. At the end there were maybe 3 of the army guys. A lot of it was just malaria, but some of it was because at some point he decided not to pay the bribes to the locals. Some kind of river toll, I guess. So they got constantly attacked. But the end is cool. They were being attacked and he picked up a guy and jumped in the river (the Niger, I think). They got the story from one of the slaves with them that got captured, and somebody tracked him down. Never got the body, so they don't know if he was captured, or maybe he went native, and set himself up as a little chief or something.

So you got this dumbass. And his son decides he wants to go look for him years later. Romantic fantasies, I guess. He got killed, too.

• January 14, 2010

A mistake, mistake! I have this sort of feeling that the mistakes that people make are actually very important to "intelligence". We don't always do the same thing. Sometimes we do something a little different by accident, but it just happens to be a better way of doing something. Or is useful in a different way. So over all, people in general are exploring the space of ideas, trying things, and as a group we progress. It's tricky though to have a machine try to be part of that game. Because we just don't want machines that just try things, and get them wrong. We just want them to do what we say. That's just a very different thing that people don't seem to consider. At least it doesn't seem like they consider that.

But there is another problem with keeping the fire burning. The fan that we have on the fire place makes a huge amount of noise. It's like about 5 refrigerators worth. My mom is getting a little hard of hearing so I don't think it bothers her so much. And she's a little more visual than me, anyway. So for me personally, it just not a pleasant thing. I took a nap for a couple of hours, and it was almost out. It maybe be more work than I was thinking, too.

OK, so he keeps thinking there are people on the moon. And then he decides that maybe the sun has a cool interior, and there are people living in there. Great. But then he goes on to try something. He takes a prism and cuts up sunlight into colors. And he puts a thermometer in the dark part past the colors you see. And it gets hotter. So he discovers infrared radiation. Possibly a bigger deal than discovering Uranus, which he did. What a freakish goof.

One cute factoid. Dude had a telescope magnifying maybe 6000 times. At that magnification, a star will move out of frame in a couple of seconds. So it's not so practical, unless you're just good. I guess these days, they have little mechanical things that can compensate for that. But I didn't realize what the numbers involved were.

Wow. Two hundred and ten pounds. A new maximum for me. I guess I need to do something.

Not every moment rules

• January 13, 2010

OK, so the guy found Uranus. But he sounded like a crank. And he got crazy upset when they said he got just found it by chance and was lucky. He was being methodical. He was looking at everything in the sky. And yet he didn't find Neptune. So there's that. Part of the deal was that his telescope was extra strong, so it was strong enough to tell that it was a planet and not a fixed star. But I don't know what was going on with the forest on the moon.

So, it turns out that I have to transfer the money over before 3:00. The message was pretty plain when I did it correctly. It says 4:00 E.T. In my head I was thinking 4, by I was thinking local. We'll see how it works out.

I chopped some more wood. Didn't finish it all off though. Mom is leaving tomorrow, and I don't know if I will even keep making fires. It's work, just to do something the central air can do by itself. I guess it makes the den warmer than the rest of the house. But it's some work, and you have to keep going outside. I don't like going outside if I can avoid it, and I can if I don't keep a fire going.

• January 12, 2010

I'm reading _Age of Wonder_ now for Aimee's meeting. It's about scientists in the Romantic period. I think he's claiming it's some kind of second scientific revolution, but I don't think I've ever heard that. Aimee said she liked the writing, but I'm not quite so into it. It seems like it's just biographies of scientists. What does that have to do with anything. Aimee is a people person, and I'm sure there are more people who are more interested in people than actual science. I guess that's the idea. But it isn't doing that much for me. The first guy had gout, though, so I guess I can relate to that. The second guy kind of seems like a bit of a crank. He thought he saw forests on the moon, and was pretty sure there was life there. this was in 1780. But they could see that there wasn't any atmosphere, the way the stars at the edge of the moon aren't hazy. So there's that.

• January 11, 2010

So I'm at the door about to leave, and she says she'll see me again...? Asking me when it will be. Like she remembers i wanted to see her, and was now open to suggestions. But I just said next Sunday. OK. That's a strong guess. I don't really feel like it now, but probably in a week. I was especially quiet.

It's finally above freezing after several days. The outdoor TV antenna got frozen stuck pointint in a direction that has a problem picking up the CBS station. That's a channel that my mom has her soap operas on. I hope I can move it now.

And some of the significane to me is that there are some people with whom she'll talk on the phone any time. For a long I've considered that a real friend is someone you'll talk with on the phone. That's just not me.

I desire...macaroni pictures.

Well, what do I really want? I want the emotional connection. The feeling that someone wants to be with me and cares about me, as well as my wanting to be with them. But I guess I just didn't feel it as much. But wants ebb and flow.

In the fifth kung fu episode, kwai chang caine sleeps with another woman. That's twice so far. What a slut.

So, it could all be showing how much my feelings are just about romantic interests, despite how I might want to think of it.

• January 10, 2010

A had a dream where I had this thing I thought of and wanted to write about, and I was trying to blog about it, and I was facing some kind of challenges about how to put it in. And there were some special sorts of links I wanted to add, and trying to make changes was hampered by having dynamically generated page, and I had somehow started editing the generated page but needed to get the changes back in the original. Oh well.

On thinking about it now, the thing was not so great. They say their god is the god of everything. But if it's every "thing" then they are thinking of the world as just things. Which is a restricted view about what the world is. But they are pretty limited thinkers, in general. Well, what else is there? Did this god make 2+2=4? By decree, which is suppose to be how the world works in this view, as far as I can tell?

How the world works is a different question from what the world consists in, what the world is made of. Is the world just things? Does it include these ideas, and if they can be said to actually exist somehow, then where are they? It's an old question. I forget how people deal with it in the fashionable current philosophies.

But I just saw a little three minute video on the philosophy of Hume. I had seen bundle theory in Susan Blackmore's book on consciousness. That is, I saw the term used there. I was seeing the idea that there is no self in studying Buddhism, which I did a bit more when I was looking at advaita. Advaita and Buddhism have some similarities. Advaita though, is nominally a Hindu tradition and in Hinduism, there is a very important assumption that there is an immortal soul. Reincarnation and all that. The immortal soul is also kind of related to idea and belief that there really are such things as identities, that it means something to be a particular thing, above just having different properties. In advaita, you would eventually come to an understanding similar to in Buddhism about the self, when your conceptualization of a separated self dissolves, and you in some sense realize that your self is not different from the whole world, other than it just being a habit of how you think about yourself. So Blackmore is also into Buddhism, and I had come to her from that direction, but Hume was talking about that stuff as a Western philosopher. And an atheist, though that was illegal at the time.

My brother and sister-in-law try to switch up cooking. Alternating one and the other. And they used to do the thing where if one cooked, the other would clean up. Except that ended up very unfair. My brother has inherited my mom's style of cooking, which ends up using a lot of different pots and pans and dishes and things. But she does a style where it can often just be one pot. Stir-fry, maybe. Sometimes more than one thing, but it minimizes the number of dishes. That style of cooking takes that into account, so now if they cook, they have to clean it up.

Personally, I try to consider clean up part of any task, not something separate that can be pushed off. I got that attitude from doing back stage stuff. I like ripping stuff apart--I had my own crow-bar, but I understand that hauling it away has to be part of ripping it up. And building in the first place is just a part of ripping it up.

My mom still cooks with a lot of dishes. She seems to always be cleaning dishes. For her, it seems more a matter that she doesn't like how the mess looks. Personally, when I'm by myself, I hardly clean. I will rinse, leave it sitting, and just reuse the same plates, small and large, a bowl, a small class for sugary drinks, and a large water glass. I do tend to take new spoons and forks, and they collect. And I have a square corning cooking pan that I eat from that just sits that same way. Fits the chicken quarter. The most dishes I end up are from leftovers my mom leaves. And occasionally when I roast something. So I keep in mind the clean up as part of eating, and I eat so to minimize that. Goes to eating habits. Some people just eat out. Or don't eat, and live off Starbucks. I'm sure cleaning is a factor.

I'm again thinking of classes. It's something to be around people. But I'm realizing that U of M people just aren't intellectually my kind of people. So the right school is important after all, and I didn't go to the right one for me. But I should consider doing it.

But today my mom is trying a stir-fry. Wild duck-breast. I actually don't care for my sister-in-law's chinese cooking. Maybe it's just not what I'm used to. The flavor doesn't seem very good to me. Too many vegetables, maybe.

Huh. I finally tried dictating something. But I didn't get the controls right, because when I looked at the phone next, it said it had kept on recording. I thought I paused it, but I don't know what the glyphs are supposed to mean. Does the pause button mean it's paused, or is it waiting for you to push it, and then it's paused? I get that the red dot is the record button. So it's got seven minutes. At this point, it's easier to just remember what I wanted to say. and it didn't come out so clear. After I was done, there was stuff I would have added, but I was driving, and it wasn't a good time to try to figure out the buttons.

Anyway, so I didn't go to shadowcon in part because I didn't want to spend the money. really didn't think it would be worth it. But I feel bad that I'm making decisions like that based on money. I could have spared it. It wouldn't have been a big deal. But my latest withdrawal has winded down, and I probably need to take out some more this week. I'm not sure what's going to keep me from spending, though. And I was kind of moaning about that, and then I go to Borders. I wanted to pick up the book for Aimee's meeting. And I think I had been warned. Not in paperback,yet. But I went to their website, and it said cover price $40, but they would sell it for $24. And I get in there. $40. Kind of made me a bit upset. I'm sure amazon would be the same deal. That's $24 but you have to get it delivers, so shipping, plus you wait. If you want it now, that'll cost you. And I'm thinking, their happy to give you coupons for discounts. If you want to print it out. And you get to hold the book in your hand. This book (_Age of Wonder_) was in the science section. There were a couple of little girls sitting on the floor in front of general science just reading. If you want, you can just sit in the store and read them. Can't do that in the web store. So if I want to be sensible, I could save $10. Have to wait a few days. Plan. Habe I ever really been that sensible? Probably not. There's a lot of things I could do to not spend as much. And if I want money so bad, I could get a job. So there are options. Part of the whole money thing is having a family. That's expensive. But it works out for some people. Not really my thing.

So there was a web page somewhere I read that talked about why you might want to study compilers. I gave several problems that you might be able to deal with if you knew about writing them. And I told Aimee about it. But I sure can't find it now. I looked through my reddit saves, and it isn't there. I'm sure that's where I saw it. I'm not sure what to google to find it, but the efforts I made didn't work. And reddit search is a little too crappy to help with it.

Ah it was Steve Yegge post. I found it by doing a reddit search in the programming subreddit, until I got to a post that simply mentions yegge in it's title. Then I thought, it seems like it could have been a yegge post. Then I googled yegge and compilers, and there it was. I don't think the reddit search would find it, though. I don't see it there. Who knows if the title mentioned compilers, or if it was even submitted.

And I was expecting that I would use up all my twenties, but it turned out I had $5 in borders bucks, so I only had to use 2.

• January 9, 2010

But I plugged in the midi keyboard worked fine. That's something that apple is pretty good at. But I didn't get any sound out right away, so I got a little frustrated for a bit. And i had to turn the computer on at the switch was seemed odd. Usually, it sits there asleep. and I just have to hit a key or click the mouse to wake it up, but not this time. So I turn it on, and I hear some kind of startup chord or noise or something, so I think the sound is working. And then I go into garageband and plink and nothing. I go to record, and it even puts markings down that seem to indicate the stuff i played and nothing. But I had been deceived. The sound was from the computers internal speaker, and I had turned off the amplified speaker connected to the audio output. Oh well. so it didn't start off great. But one important thing, I didn't hear any delay from hitting a key and getting sound. I'm not sure why I got that before when I was trying out some midi on whatever it was. I think I saw somewhere that it depends on the sound card. And i had been plugged in to several things to get into the computer. This has a much simpler connection. It did seem a little strange at how far away the sound was from the keyboard. And I had the volume pretty low. I didn't record any plinking. Maybe I'll build up to it. And I'll have to see what's involved. I'm not quite sure how to do the link. I'll probably just have something to click.

• January 8, 2010

It's been a little bit rougher getting over my disappointment than I might have liked. But I guess I'm getting better.

I still haven't opened up my usb midi keyboard. But it came and it's sitting there in the box.

I burned a Netflix rental on Dr. Horrible's Sing-along blog. I think you can watch the main bit online somewhere. But I think the disc is worth a Netflix. Probably wouldn't spend actually money on it. Now I'm listening to "Commentary! the Musical" Inspired, I think.

• January 7, 2010

Yesterday, Doug told me about a job prospect. A friend of his actually had a couple of people who wanted him, but he accepted from one fairly quick, so there was this other place that still needed one. Just a possibility, but a place that needs someone. I said I wasn't really ready to be looking right now. I guess. Doug didn't know what the company does. Seems important. At this point, it seems like the purpose of the company matters to me.

And it did snow. Maybe an inch. The roads are clear. But it did snow, so they got it right.

• January 6, 2010

My dad asked, I think it was Colin, what twelve times twelve was. And he was talking about how hard it was to just figure it out when you want. He went through twelve time ten is one twenty plus twelve is 132 plus twelve is one forty four. But I said there is a easier way. Tweleve times twelve is fourteen times ten plus two times two or, ten times fourteen, one forty, plus two times two, four, or one forty four. this kind of thing works for all squares thriteen times thirteen is ten times sixteen (one sixty) plus three times three, nine, or one sixty nine. fourteen times fourteen is ten times eighteen, one eighty, plus four time four, sixteen, so one ninety six. Eighteen times eighteen is twenty times sixteen ( three twenty) plus two times two (four), so three twenty-four. twenty three squared is twenty times twenty-six (five twenty) plus three times three, so five twenty-nine. And it's based on (x+y)(x-y)=x*x - y*y, so x*x =(x+y)(x-y) + y*y, which works well for itty bitty values for y, like up to four or five. The five ones are paricularly easy. Say thrity-five time thirty five. That's thirty time forty (twelve hundred) plus five time five, twenty five, or twelve twenty five. The quares of things with five always end in twenty five, and that big product is always in the hundreds, because you are multiplying two multiples of ten. When you here about this system, the suggestion is to try to do all the squares up to a hundred in your head for practice. It's not too hard.

I took the outside Christmas lights down today. I saw on wikipedia I think that people somewhat recently started thinking it was bad luck to leave decorations up after twelfth night. OK.

They seem sure that it's going to snow tonight. Usually they aren't that good. And I'm not sure that they aren't colluding with grocers. But I just saw the radar, and you can see snow moving this way.

I've finished the first hundred Sudoku puzzles in my big book of twelve hundred. That's all of the very easiest ones. And they went pretty fast because they were pretty easy. The next batch is somewhat harder. A hundred fifty of those. We'll see how it goes. I did finish of one of the four out of five star ones that my brother started and was kind of stuck on. And I did the one after that. Those are fairly hard, but I don't have to guess yet on those. It seems like they require noticing pairs of possibles, which is harder to do without writing down possibles. I guess I'll see when I get there, though it will be quite a few months.

OK, so I kept going and I'm now at 106.

• January 5, 2010

In the replacement for Ann Landers, I think it's "Ask Henrietta", maybe, there was a section on someone who wanted to connect with a friend. It was a couple of woman who saw each other maybe once a year. They had fun together, and said they wanted to connect more, but hadn't yet. She said they should just do it, but it can be hard to integrate new people into your life. That's true.

In the book on historical linguistics, I'm in the section on sound changes. One of the common changes is the dropping of a vowel between consonants. And I was kind of surprised that they gave a couple of current examples: 'family' is often pronounced 'famly' and 'memory' is often pronounced 'memry'. Ouch. They got me. My language is turning into mush. And they have a Greek word for this particular change--'syncope'. Huh.

• January 4, 2010

There are ways of asking questions which indicate what answer you expect. "Isn't this a nice day?" And in some ways the grammar may support it. I forget exactly what it was, but Latin had some sort of construction for yes or no questions that indicate whether you expect a yes or no. English has something like that. But sometimes it has to be inferred a little bit more. "Do you really want eat that chocolate?" Or something like that. Similarly you might say something in a way that comes across that you don't really mean it. And people soften commands in different ways to sound less demanding and maybe seem more polite. Dr. McWhorter really hates the construction "Can I get a hamburger?" But it's along those lines. And it can be just a matter of inflection and how you say something. So confidence can make a difference.

We had said goodbye and see was backing back into the place, and I said I wanted to get for a couple of hours. But she just before I had been asking about her week, and she said she was working everyday but Monday. So when? And school was starting back in a week or a week and a half. Oh well. I guess I didn't come off as very serious about it. But I was asking. I was only saying what I wanted. I doubt I came across as thinking it might happen.

Melissa was in a country music video. Only for just a tiny few seconds. But she stands out. She hadn't actually seen it, but somebody recommended googling it, and sure enough it was on youtube. Highest paid per unit time she's ever gotten. Mostly because it was only a half an hour, but it was a good amount. Like twelve hundred. She has gotten that kind of money for other jobs, but they might be there eight to twelve hours. And she always adds the story of how they wanted her for a Bob Dylan video, but they wanted her naked (behind a screen), and the money was a lot less, like maybe $300. So she said no. And they had an article in the paper about how they made the girl that did it look bad, or something. Anyway.

I'm up to Sudoku puzzle 70.

• January 3, 2010

Finished Sudoku puzzle 60. Seems like maybe these easy ones are rotting my brain. I tried a harder one in the paper, and there was stuff that I didn't look for. I was too used to really easy stuff. I think I may have to take breaks I'm not sure if I really want to finish this in a year. At least at the extremely steady pace of 5 per day. Maybe off and on will work.

So Melissa did one of the 16 by 16 sudoku puzzles. She sent me a message that she had finished it at maybe 3 or 4 in the afternoon. I'm hoping that that's just when she got up and sent me a message. I had sent her one saying I had forgotten to tell her she looked good in her new boots. I hope it wasn't that she had been awake all that time. She has trouble sleeping sometimes. So much to worry about with that girl.

It's the tenth day of Christmas, and my mom took down the tree. Julie did hers several days ago. Savages.

• January 2, 2010

Played quite a bit of piano for the family. Maybe two or three hours. I mentioned that at Bardog, and Gary said something about it. I said I was wanting to maybe study a little more and he said he taught piano. I said I was just faking it, from a fake book, but he said you have to know something about it to fake it.

Melissa got off work early. Which meant I was actually there when she drove away. I don't think that's ever happened yet since she's been working at Bardog. She asked me what I was doing. And she said she was just going to curl up with her sudoku and something or other. I didn't really get any sense that she wanted me to ask if she wanted to do something together. That hasn't ever worked out in the past. But I suppose it's something I could have done. But then, she said pretty clearly, and it might have been several times, that she was tired. So I guess it mightly have only been subtle hinting, but it seemed very clear to me.

She bought some boots like those ogg boots. For 19 bucks. As opposed to like $200 for the real thing. She just was not going to pay something like that for shoes. Even though she had a give card that would have covered it. But good for her. I balk like that, sometimes. It was her Christmas gift for herself. So she asked me what my gift was for myself. Seems like I've already bought something. But maybe not. I seem to remember there was something at Brooksone for about $200 that I really wanted. But I don't remember what it was. Couldn't be that important. And I think I'll finally buy that keyboard that's been on my list for a while. Something to catch midi. And I can maybe finally put stuff on here. I think it's compact enough for that.

The thing at Brookstone that I wanted was the iwear video glasses for ipod. They didn't have any. But I think I can't skip it for now. Priorities.

• January 1, 2010

I ended up staying home and not going out like I really wanted. I was thinking my people would prefer that, but I didn't feel so happy about it. And they all wimped out around 1, but I felt it was a little late to go out. And I wouldn't have a Starbucks, anyway, so might as well not go.

I chopped some wood. Nice sunny day to start the year. Almost 50. Pretty warm for chopping wood.

It's my nephew Aaron's birthday. We're having a wild goose and a pork loin. And my mom made a Schwartzwilder Kirch-Torte. However it's spelled. Black forest cherry cake. Lots of work. Yummy, though. I say lots of work. A chocolate sponge cake has to be made the day before for a couple of layers. Whip cream. Kirchwasser. Seems like at least four or five hours. I don't even ask for them, anymore, but Freddie asked for it for Aaron. Most people don't like it so much. Not as sweet as American cakes. But he says they're used to things not so sweet. We'll see. If they waste any, I won't be happy. Unless I get it.