October 25, 2006

a bit harsh

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.

October 22, 2006

you ecclesiastical bastard

Ecumenic Ec`u*men”ic, Ecumenical Ec`u*men”ic*al, adj.
General; universal; in ecclesiastical usage, that which
concerns the whole church; as, an ecumenical council.
[1913 Webster]

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:

Shignucked Sh`ig*nuck”ied, v.
To have your helioretina removed from its proper location.
[2006 MY ASS]

October 21, 2006

lemme guess, the ship is alive?

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.

pi is exactly two if you draw a big enough circle

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.

October 18, 2006

those caucasians are ruining russia!

“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.

October 17, 2006

Challenge #2

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.

October 3, 2006

abercrombie and red

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….

October 2, 2006

gone fission

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.

September 28, 2006

i completely

“Most engineers are not early risers. I know a team that has to come in for an 8:00am meeting at least once (maybe several times) a week. Then they sit like zombies in front of their email until lunch. Then they go home and take a nap. Then they come in at night and work, but they’re bleary-eyed and look perpetually exhausted. When I talk to them, they’re usually cheery enough, but they usually don’t finish their sentences.”

– Google employee Steve Yegge, from here.

September 5, 2006

big ones

You know those scams where you fill out credit card offers and give someone your kidney and they give a trip to Hawaii? Lauren and I signed up for one. It took us several months and about $150, but we were finally set to receive our forty inch plasma TV we were promised.

Except…

We got a letter stating that the TVs were discontinued, and that they would be sending us cash instead. After quite a bit of research, we decided that the original TV did not fit our needs anyway, and instead bought this 62″ Toshiba:

thems big uns

Total out of pocket cost including all the offers and getting the TV to our house ended up being just over $200.

No, you cannot move in with us ;- ).

August 31, 2006

quote of the moment

“That doesn’t change the fact that he’s written some of the ugliest code since the Enigma machine.
-Capt. Anon

August 13, 2006

now imagine this dude on a _plane_

In reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, I ran into what may be the greatest paragraph in all of the English language. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that all of human existence has been leading up to paragraph five, page 271 of this novel. It’s all downhill from here.

“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”

August 9, 2006

…on family

Ryan has been posting a ton of pictures lately, so I figured I’d post one of my own.

kels-hair.jpg
Kelsey doing her Dee Snider impresson.

July 23, 2006

like a fish

After seeing the classic 1934 film The Thin Man, I’ve realized what I want to do with my life. Screw computer science, I want to be a retired alcoholic detective who’s fallen into money. I’ll solve crimes between lavish parties and come up with witty jokes about my drinking, such as:

Reporter: Say listen, is he working on a case?
Nora Charles: Yes, he is.
Reporter: What case?
Nora Charles: A case of scotch. Pitch in and help him.

or

Reporter: Well, can’t you tell us anything about the case?
Nick Charles: Yes, it’s putting me way behind in my drinking.

It’s a hard life but somebody has to live it. It might as well be me.

July 11, 2006

inconceivable!

From a wiki article on Zeroconf.

There are two very similar ways of figuring out which networked item has a certain name. Apple Computer’s Multicast DNS (mDNS) is in use, and is published freely, though not by a standardization body. Microsoft’s Link-local Multicast Name Resolution (LLMNR) is little used, but is in the process of standardization by the IETF.

To paraphrase: There is a freely published NON-standard way to do something which is actually being used; there’s also a standard way of doing something, which nobody uses.

I propose that ANSI standardizes the word “standard,” many implementations of the word seem to be incompatible.

July 9, 2006

heads I win, tails you lose

I watched the Italy vs. France World Cup final earlier today as Italy won after double overtime with penalty kicks.

I’m not sure how I feel about the penalty kick system; penalty kicks do not tell me which team is better at “soccer,” they tell me which team is better at the entirely different mini-game known as penalty kicks.

Imagine if a football game ending in a tie meant the kicker who scored the best out of 5 field goals from the forty yard line would be declared the winner. The teams have shown they are essentially equal, and we just need to declare a winner for posterity’s sake. I’ve discovered an equally fair way to decide the winner of any given sporting event, I call it the “coin toss.”

June 20, 2006

take it to the streets: be reasonable!

“The extremists rule this country because moderates have shit to do.”
-Jon Stewart

June 18, 2006

in fact, i do

Me: *driving in the car* wait, you don’t know where we’re going? You suggested Taguri’s…

CptAnon: It’s not that I don’t know per se, it’s just that the location of this particular restaurant is not a subset of my knowledge at the current time.

Me: Did you think that as we got closer, it would rise in front of us, like some sort of tangible mirage?

CaptAnon: It’s not entirely unheard of….

Me: …in the bible. Do you normally rely on divine intervention when choosing an eatery?

June 16, 2006

and shrimp and salmon and pizza and….

So how did my first week go? I just got back from my first employer sponsored beer bash so I’m in good condition to tell you about it.

Well.

It *went* well.

In case you didn’t catch it the first time: today, my employer sponsored an event where I showed up, talked to cool people, and drank beer. On the clock.

I might go so far as to say it went quite well.

June 14, 2006

life is hard, part 2

I’ve never owned a video game console. It didn’t stop me from playing console games, it just reduced the frequency. I could only play Mario Bros. while I was not at home, due to the fact that my family was the only one who didn’t own a Nintendo. Lauren has never owned a video game console either.

So it’s a bit exciting that everyone in Lauren’s department at work got a free Xbox 360. The first and only thing I’ve done on this machine was play an amped up version of the arcade classic Asteroids, and I can say without so much as a waft of sarcasm that it rocked. That was four hundred dollars well spent.

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