I'm Not Working: April 2005

Snow Organ

My Excuse

It is my firm belief that out of all hobbies and time-wasters, video games and television are the two most grade-detrimenting. Unlike sports, dating, excercise, and reading, video games and television don't require much actual brain power. Of course there are exceptions, but they only serve to contrast the members that define the rule.

If my idea of fun consisted of actual activity or brain power, I would probably work harder on homework. Homework requires an equal or more amount of concentration. Video games and television require no effort to start and no effort to practice.

If you don't have to work to do something, you are more likely to do it. Once again, there are exceptions, but let's work within the context of the issue.

To do homework, you must first decide that you will do it, and second, you must decide to stick with it. It can be said that the same goes for television or video games, but the weight of those decisions is far less.

If you need to get your grades up or work on a project, I suggest getting a hobby that is less accessible.

Tag: school Life Work Games

Polyforumist Dies in Satirical Tragedy

In what can be listed as only the saddest demise for a netizen ever, a man died during a week-long forum-posting session.

Computer forensic specialists from SUNY at Cortland discovered that Wanamaker was subscribed to 48 different forums and networking communities including one apparently having to do with the elderly called "oldtimers" and another apparently limited to just 100 people. They also found that he posted a comment into one forum or another on an average of two per minute every hour of the day for the past seven weeks.

It reminds me of my initial fears concerning blogging.

(Source: Blogger Buzz)

Tags: blog web internet

Nokia N91 Music Phone

Nokia has announced a phone that holds 4 GB of music. That is to say, it has a 4GB harddrive on it.

You know what that means?

That's right...

Somebody is gonna install Linux on one of these bad boys. It is inevitable.

[Blogger Interview] Freedom of...'s Truth Peddler

This is my first post from work in a long time. Let's get down to business.

Let me tell you that Truth Peddler is a man of conviction. If you've ever read a post from Freedom of..., you know what I'm talking about. You may not agree with him, but he doesn't seem to care.

The most important thing about blogging is telling it like you see it and I don't think anyone does a better job than Truth Peddler. This family man just won't back down! Combine those qualities with a great writing style and you pretty much have the best kind of blog that I can think of.

That's why I present this interview, the result of a grueling e-mail inquisition. It provides some insight into Mr. Peddler that I think his fans will find interesting and will hopefully interest others in checking out his blog.

---

1) How long have you been blogging?
Since June 2004.

2) Why did you choose a blog over other forms of media (such as books, tv, video, etc..)?
Mainly because I'm lazy. Blogging let's me write whatever I want, when I want, with minimal effort, and I don't have to worry about editing or revising. Another reason is because I don't have a face for TV and my thick Southern accent doesn't make for easy listening.

3) What would you say is the main vision or purpose of your blog?
Main? Don't really have one. I just strive to keep things family friendly and kid safe. And I like to promote a convservatice, Christian viewpoint.

4) How long have you been a follower of Christ?
I asked Christ into my life at 13. But when I got to high school, I didn't exactly hang out with the "right crowd". That lasted through college and when I turned 21 things really went down hill. I was still in church, just not paying any attention. I guess that's why people call Christians hypocrits. But they fail to see the next part. At 24 my life choices caught up with me and God started knocking at my door again. I rededicated my life and haven't turned back since.

5) What is the most important thing in your life?
God first and foremost. But of earthly things its my family without a doubt.

6) If money were not an option, what would your ideal life be like?
I'd own a baseball team, preferably the Braves. And it wouldn't be expensive for people to come to watch. I'd make tickets cheap no matter where you sat and wouldn't give the best tickets to companies. It'd be all for the fans. I'd also have throw back days where everything--prices, food, uniforms--would be like the 20's and 30's. How awesome would that be?!

I'd also like to have a big house with lots of land for the sole purpose of building little league baseball and softball fields. My wife played softball in college and wants to coach some day. This would give her that chance. It would also give me a chance to coach my son.

Lastly, I'd like to form some kind of ministry for kids based around baseball and softball. Parents seem to take there kids to games more than they do church. So I think this could turn into something vital for a lot of communities.

7) How long have you been married?
Since November 9, 2002...I think.

8) If we could only see one of your blog posts, which would it be and why?
Man, that's a tough one. They're all so mediocre I'm afraid everyone would be bored regardless!

9) Plug your favorite blog.
I'm Not Working is the best blog around! The Prof is witty, smart, and gramatically accurate. That's because he's a real professor--regardless of what the player haters try to tell me.

10) Finally, here's your chance to say anything about you or your blog that want to say.
I'm a uber-normal guy. You can probably tell from question 6 that I love baseball. I like a lot of stuff from the 80's--mainly becuase that was my childhood. I like posting pictures of my son because I think he's cuter than most babies on commercials or shows. I guess that's about it.

---

Whew! I'm tired from copying and pasting!

Remember, The Prof recommends Freedom of.... If you don't read through Truth Peddler's impressive archives, baby Jesus will cry.

I Hate E-mail

Here is the worst e-mail correspondance ever.

From: (dad)
Date: Thursday, April 21, 2005 11:58 am
Subject: a short poem

P.E.
for me.
And thee?
--me

From: (me)
To: (dad)
Cc: (dad's home address)
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 2:56 PM
Subject: Re: a short poem

Dad

Even with my College-level composition-based intellect, I cannot derive> meaning or purpose from your prose. Perhaps you could explain your dictioin?

Also, I'll be going to Sweet Dream after work this afternoon. Would you please pick me up on your way home from the gym?

Thanks

(me)

From: (dad)
Date: Thursday, April 21, 2005 4:08 pm
Subject: Re: a short poem

I'm surprised that this is beyond you.

P.E. is Physical Education (that's high school level isn't it?).
thee is Bible talk for "you".

So, Physical Education for me, and what about you?

Sorry I over estimated you.
dad

Tea Blogging

Oh man, have you guys heard of this Bubble Tea stuff!? This is seriously amazing. It's so good I'm going to take a break from the somber concept of tolerance to just talk about Bubble Tea!

This is a little tea product from Taiwan that features milk, tea (duh), and some sort of flavoring. For example, I am currently sipping on a Vanilla/Strawberry Thai Tea.

Here's what makes it really strange. At the bottom of the concoction are little bubbles of tapioca. This stuff is chewy and tends to take on the flavor of the tea.

I think I'm going to die of happiness when my Ban Mi sandwich gets here.

Seriously, if you are ever in Juneau, visit Sweet Dream Tea Shop.

Eternity of Tolerance Part Deux

Tolerance is the ability to experience exposure to potentially harmful amounts of a substance without showing an adverse effect.
www.bio.hw.ac.uk/edintox/glossall.htm

I'm laughing right now. I'm guessing that people who wish to be tolerant may not want to exhibit so much tolerance that they have to endure harm.

I look at harm a little differently than others. I feel being made to endure stupid ritual and immaturity is the same as suffering harm.

This collides with my belief in the standard American rights, the first being Freedom of Speech. Hot damn, what a difficult one. The unmentionable Days are perfectly excusable forms of Freedom of Speech. This means that I feel they should not be stopped by opposing forces, but said forces should be allowed to express their distaste.

Hopefully this post serves to elaborate on my position on the line of "tolerance" and "mule-headedness".

Eternity of Tolerance

After the laughable attention-fest of Day of Silence is the Day of Truth, a fundamentalist Christian counter-Silence Day. It seems every group on any side of any issue has to prove how much holier they are.

These Days are just ridiculous. No one is changing anyone else's mind, and the idea of designating days of the year to spread one-sided ideals is just immature.

Now that the two Days are over, I propose a new series of Days. It's called Eternity of Tolerance. It's an Eternity dedicated to everyone doing their thing how they want (where the law allows) and use mature conversation and discussion to settle disagreements. When it starts, supporters nation-wide will wear whatever they want and talk as much or as little as they care to. It starts now and will end when after the Apocolypse.

365 days a year we tolerate eachothers opinions and grow the fuck up.

You don't have to sign up. Since it's an Eternity of tolerance, you won't need a safe room. People won't loathe you. There will be no controversy, but it will allow for all of us to develop ourselves in a manner befitting human beings.

She Needs More Power!

I did some rough (read: very rough) math to figure out how much time will be required until GMail accounts reach 3 GB of space.

I did this assuming that it's rate of increase stays at a constant. When I did this, the space was approximately 2090.0000.

It takes approximately 2 seconds for 2090.0000 to turn into 2090.0010

That means it takes about 20 seconds for 2090.0000 to turn into 2090.0100 and 200 seconds for 2090.1000. So on and so forth.

It would take about 2 million seconds for 2090 mb to become 3000 mb, or 3 GB.

I divided 2 million seconds by 60 seconds (as in, how many seconds in a minute.)

It would take 33333.33.. minutes to reach 3 GB.
Divide by 60 (60 minutes in an hour)
It would take 555.55.. hours
Divide by 24 (24 hours in a day)
It would take 23.148... days.

Considering I rounded down for the initial figure, it would take close to 23 days to reach 3 GB.

I hope I did the math right, because I marked May 6th on my calender.

Tags: Google Gmail Storage arithmetic

Mutes for Homosexuals

Today my school is running an event called "The Day of Silence." On this day, students who choose to participate don a pink ribbon and don't talk at all. They go to all their classes, hang out with all their same friends... but they don't talk.

This is meant to represent the silence that some Homosexuals and Bisexuals, as well as transvestites, face in their communities.

How utterly ridiculous.

I understand the cause is good. I understand the symbolism. I don't understand who the hell the participants are helping. No one is going to see a bunch of silent students and think, "I should be nice to my child when he wears my wife's clothing."

No one outside of Juneau is going to hear more than a blurb about the event. In this scenario people have made up their minds on where they stand on the issue. No amount of symbolism can break that.

If you want to make a point, actively do something. Be a good Democrat and lose 20 pounds of fat protesting in front of a building. Go door to door and spread awareness on the issue.

I think most participants of "The Day of Silence" simply wish to be "individual." There is a certain rebel element to not talking at all. There may be those who wish to be "Holier than Thou" in their silence.

This whole thing stinks of fake empathy.

Those who think they are actually doing something, look at the facts. No one will be touched by your silence.

However, I'm glad I don't have to hear some of the more idiotic students talk today.

Tags: homosexuals

Why Didn't I Think of That?

It's like these rules were written for me.

Why yes, I do read Slashdot!

Tags: blog

Marilyn Manson Anatomy

I'm out to find out if Marilyn Manson has boobs.

Tags: Music Manson

Bagel Blogging

My class went to the Silverbow Bakery for class today. I'm not much of a fan of bagels, but it turns out that bagels made by people who know how to make bagels actually taste good.

Even better, this bakery has WIFI! Seriously, that is the last thing I'd expect a bagel resturant to have. I was at a coffee shop that lacked wifi. How does one have a hip trendy coffee shop (complete with COUCH) without wifi? But no, I can always depend on a bagel resturant.

This really destroys my sense of all universal truths.

I have some free time before the next period of the day. I'm sitting in a bagel shop, waiting for my girlfriend to commit some god-forsaken act of female hygiene. Seriously, why did God make women so "icky"? That really is the only word to describe it.

The sheer volume of liquids their bodies manage to conjure without warning is shocking and horrifying. I like women, but their constant ability to emulate a drippy faucet is just plain baffling.

I'm starting to regret having eaten that bagel. I'd run to the bathroom to remedy the situation, but the female ritual continues.

As I type this, a fellow student is making out with a bagel shop employee behind a curtain in the resturant. How obvious can you get? You think they'd at least try to stay quiet.

Nothing is quite as inspirational as wireless internet. When I find out that I'm in the midst of a sperm-killing stream of bandwidth, I just have to pull out my laptop and say something. Needless to say, this leads to "blogger's block" and rambling.

Okay, the scene behind the curtain is too quiet now.

Ike Speaks Again

My favorite quote from Eisenhower:

"Our basic aspiration is to search out methods by which peace in the world can be assured with justice for everybody."

Many people view justice differently. Some people feel that justice is leaving others to their devices. Some people feel that justice is taking an active role to spread happiness, even if it costs something.

How do you perceive justice in an international sense?

Ike Says

According to the American History text I am made to read, President Eisenhower said:

"Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political histroy."

Eisenhower was doubtlessly wiser than I am, but I'm certain that any party that take a serious approach to doing any of the above will be remembered for a good long time. However, you can be sure that such a party would never come into office afterwards, and rarely does someone have the brass to do such things in the first place.

Tags: history politics

Dr. Professor

The Love Doctor, that is.

Everyone knows that relationship needs proper maintenence from time-to-time. We'll call it "patching."

Now, as everyone knows, when you get a new computer, you need to do the same. But you also need to make sure that it is properly patched when you first set up that new computer.

The same goes for relationships. When you first get into a relationship, you may feel inclined to ignore little problems.

Don't. They come to bite you on the ass later. When you try to resolve Issue A (not the same as my previous post, stay with me here), Issue B may turn out to the key to solving it.

Confronting one issue is hard enough. You don't want to have to solve two issues at the same time.

Because Issue B might have it's own Issue C attached to it. Then it's just messy.

Meta-debate

You know what I hate?

First, blogs that ask those kinds of questions.

Second, it's when you try to confront an issue with someone (known as arguing), and then they pull out a "red herring." I'm just trying to resolve "Issue A", and all of a sudden.. "ISSUE B!" attacks. Where the hell did ISSUE B come from anyway?

It turns out, by diluting a conversation by going off-topic, you can limit the amount of relevent information that comes your way. If you do this enough, you may be able to run out enough time to never recieve any relevant information.

Why didn't I think of that? Next time ISSUE B! comes my way, I'll just bring up issues C, D, and E. Three alternate, non-relevant issues at once. They won't know what hit them.

It's called politics.

E-Mail Rocks

Here is a correspondance between my father (a programmer in Douglas, Alaska) and I.

From: (my dad)
Date: Wednesday, March 30, 2005 4:32 p,
Subject: fyi

Something every serious programmer needs.
http://www.juneaumovies.com
dad

From: (me)
To: (my dad)
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 2:42 PM
Subject: Re: fyi

Wait. every serious programmer needs an online movie schedule?

Even more importantly, how come we never thought of checking this when> we didn't have access to a newspaper?

From: (dad)
Date: Thursday, March 31, 2005 4:15 pm
Subject: Re: fyi

Evidence seems to succest that somebody is not a serious programmer.
-w

From: (me)
To: (dad)
Sent: Friday, April 01, 2005 2:52 PM
Subject: Re: fyi

I don't about serious, but you're a typic programmer.

Step 1: Create a rule (i.e. every serious programmer uses/needs this)
Step 2: Identify programmers who don't follow the rule
Step 3: Obliquely insult them from another city during work hours

Cya Sunday

From: (dad)
To: (me)
Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 15:41:52 -0900
Subject: Re: fyi
Indeed, as you yourself demonstrate.
dad
p.s. I can remember when you would have never used a word like "obliquely"

By the way, the e-mail addresses are consistent throughout the series, but the timestamp on my father's last e-mail uses a different format. Could anyone tell me why that might be?

April Fools

I'm no good at coming up with gags, but you can find my favorites here and here.

I'm Not Working

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Snow Organ

My Excuse

Friday, April 29, 2005

Polyforumist Dies in Satirical Tragedy

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Nokia N91 Music Phone

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

[Blogger Interview] Freedom of...'s Truth Peddler

Thursday, April 21, 2005

I Hate E-mail

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Tea Blogging

Monday, April 18, 2005

Eternity of Tolerance Part Deux

Friday, April 15, 2005

Eternity of Tolerance

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

She Needs More Power!

Mutes for Homosexuals

Thursday, April 07, 2005

More link-theft

Why Didn't I Think of That?

Marilyn Manson Anatomy

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Bagel Blogging

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Ike Speaks Again

Ike Says

Saturday, April 02, 2005

Dr. Professor

Meta-debate

Friday, April 01, 2005

E-Mail Rocks

April Fools

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