When security deity Bruce Schneier links to an article detailing how to steal an election by hacking the vote titled “How to steal an election by hacking the vote”, I began to worry that criminals aren’t even being subtle anymore.

Also, Democracy as an institution appeared to be doomed.

Fortunately, Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert, was there to calm my jangled nerves:

“I think about the history of ATMs when I hear all the nervous Nellies wetting their pants over electronic voting machines. I believe those worries are totally misplaced. Now don’t get me wrong – there’s a 100% chance that the voting machines will get hacked and all future elections will be rigged. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get a worse government. It probably means that the choice of the next American president will be taken out of the hands of deep-pocket, autofellating, corporate shitbags and put it into the hands of some teenager in Finland. How is that not an improvement?”

Looking for news to discuss, I found myself at Tech website Gizmodo viewing this post of a cuddly bionic turtle.

Now, when you repost something from another website, it is normal to provide a link to the original source. It surprised me quite a bit to notice that Gizmodo attributed the tortoise to boingboing, who attributed it to The Daily Weird, who attributed it to METRO.co.uk, who is presumably the original source as they attribute the story to nobody.

Either the Internet at large is too lazy to find an original source, or world’s greatest blonde joke is back in action.

UG: I’m something like 2 books behind in my english class
UG: during discussion, i just nod my head

Me: who needs english to get by
Me: During neither of my internships was I required to write an analytic essay about Faust

UG: egzackly

Me: I was understandably pissed

We got our tests back in Theory of Computing today, and one student disagreed with how a problem had been graded:

Student: You took off 10 points on this problem…

Professor : (annoyed) Your answer is completely wrong, I can’t even read what you wrote.

Student: The problem is only worth 5 points.

New rule: If you’re defining a word, none of the words in the definition get to exceed two syllables, or you get shignucked. In case you’re wondering:

Lauren enjoys science fiction, all kinds of science fiction. The one exception is the kind that I like, which is good science fiction. Firefly is perhaps the one series which we both appreciated equally, it still had it’s cheesy sci-fi moments, but for the most part it stayed away from aliens farting amusing gases, time travel, worm holes, dopplegangers and the like; All of which I have seen in the past two episodes of Farscape i have been forced to watch.

Ben came over this evening, thinking he would weaken me with these images of horrible alien makeup (High-Def is no good for suspending disbelief), props stolen from the neighboring set of Barney & Friends, make me forget that I had yet another blog entry to write and earn him self a free meal. Well if he’s going to make me forget, he needs to bring way more alcohol.

I’ve been reading Dr. Sipser’s “Introduction to the Theory of Computation” and it’s blowing my mind. Unassuming at approximately 400 pages, this book doesn’t screw around. On page 81, in the middle of a proof, it mentioned the following, “the class of regular languages is closed under intersection, which we proved in footnote 3.”

Proved in footnote 3. If you’re reading a book of proofs and even the footnotes have proofs, you’re in for some serious shit. It was at this point that I noticed that both the front and back cover are adorned with proofs, and even the dedication page establishes universal truths. The next 100 pages I would come to know as the most amazing of any textbook ever to escape from any publisher’s ravaged womb of a printing press; God’s existence was proved twice¹, disproved three times², and ultimately shown that in the 3rd dimension³, he could neither be proved nor disproved, though Sipser has shown that what he can’t prove doesn’t matter.

[1] In the 2nd⁴ and 5th dimensions, respectively.
[2] In the 1st and 4th dimensions, as well as cross-dimensionally on Sundays (“Sunday” doesn’t exist in the 2nd and 5th dimensions, as shown in footnote 68 of Sipser).
[3] See: Our dimension.
[4] See: The Bible.

“Over and over again lately you have tensions in some town, then Belov shows up and tells people they’re being terrorized by Caucasians, and the violence begins.”
– Fred Weir, from here.

Apparently the “Caucasians” they speak of are a dark-skinned people from the former Soviet Caucasus region. Every frakin’ day I learn something new.

I haven’t been updating watchred as often as I’d like, but it’s time to start. Ben and I have entered into a challenge where we must update our respective Internet-holes four times by the Saturday of each week. We forgot to name a price for failure, but I’m certain it will be severe and involve watching the Star Trek animated series and at least one of the biblical plagues (I’m hoping for locusts as boils would interfere with my “social agenda.“)

Now I have a midterm tomorrow that I’ve only begun to study for and I have to admit that I’m cheating a little bit with this entry, but so be it.

Cal Poly’s career center has a copy of my resume. They’re nice enough that when they see a job that is perfectly matched to my aspirations and skill-set, they let me know about interview possibilities.
Today they contacted me about such an opportunity:

“Brian,

Based on the information you entered in your Mustang Jobs profile, you are eligible to submit your resume for an interview with ABERCROMBIE & FITCH for the Manager In Training position.”

They know my innermost hopes and dreams….

I called an 800 number this morning, and the line was busy, as could be expected. Fortunately, I was prepared, and this particular phone was equipped with redial. I called again, still busy. The last time I’d been in this situation I was probably 13 years old, calling KOME to guess the top five at nine and win tickets to the No Doubt concert.

The difference being, this time I did get through, and this time I am going to go on a trip that is sure to blow my unprepared psyche. But this call wasn’t about concert tickets; no, no, no. This call was about something much greater….

This call was about a tour of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.