The Untergeek

Or at least I wish I was. That was a really cool movie. I can’t wait for the sequel.

That’s it. No spoilers from me. You’ll just have to go and see it for yourself.

I was awestruck watching this:

This absolutely floored me. I have never thought that I’d be able to truly realize my creative ideas since I haven’t got a lot of time to work on practicing guitar or other instruments. This allows me so much wiggle-room in that department I can even envision creating an entire symphony orchestra from a few samples. This is simply amazing. I can’t wait!

It’s rather interesting to read about schools these days. A year or so ago, I’d have been quick to jump on the allegations of threats and attacks made a few days ago. I’m glad that I don’t have to print a retraction now. Have a look. I think her parents are doing the right thing letting her face the consequences of her choices. They’ve been dignified in apologizing to all involved and in letting everyone know that the proper authorities will be handling things from this point. It does illustrate a point — it’s not always the parents’ fault if a child misbehaves. I can’t say for sure that such is the case here, but it certainly seems as though the parents have been trying to do the right things at home, based solely on their reaction to what unfolded.

In other news, a girl was beaten by six of her classmates for thirty minutes at someone’s home. The perpetrators filmed this incident and posted video footage of the attack on YouTube, apparently in retaliation for things the victim had posted on MySpace. As cold and callous as these acts are by themselves, the behavior exhibited by some of the perpetrators as they were in the process of being arrested and booked into the local jail goes even farther:

Judd said the most shocking thing about the attack is how lightly the alleged assailants took their actions. Vieira asked him if they showed any remorse when they were arrested.

“None at all,” he said. “When we had them arrested and in detention, they were laughing and joking, ‘Guess we’re not going to go to the beach on this spring break.’ One girl actually asked our detective, ‘Am I going to be released in time to go to cheerleading practice tomorrow?’ “

I can’t even begin to understand such cold inhumanity. Apparently one girl tried to warn her, but what of the remainder? I don’t understand. Are they desensitized to violence? Are they so filled with aggression that they no longer behave as rational humans but rather as creatures of base instincts and passions?

Schools may not be the problem, but they certainly don’t seem to be helping the problem either. My own memories recall a certain prey or be preyed upon element to school, but no one ever dared take it as far as these girls did.

The victim suffered a concussion, loss of hearing in her left ear and reduced vision in her left eye. According to this report the victim will be homeschooled now. I can’t say that I blame her. Going back to school would be rather difficult, leave alone the psychological mending which will need to take place before she will feel safe around her peers again.

How do you teach your children to treat others with dignity and respect? The victim apparently wrote some rather threatening and incendiary things about the other girls on MySpace. This doesn’t make the beating justified — not by any stretch. But would the perpetrators have had a reason to even consider attacking her if she’d treated them with dignity and respect? Why did the perpetrators feel like their animalistic, violent attack on the victim was justified? Didn’t their parents teach them to resolve their differences in more constructive ways? Did they not get that memo? If they did, what made them set it aside and choose to behave so cruelly? What about the girl who made false accusations? Does she not realize how damaging false accusations can be to someone’s character and destiny?

Man’s inhumanity to man apparently knows no bounds. I believe that the best way to combat this is to begin at home. Parents have the duty and obligation to teach their children to respect others: Respect their beliefs, respect their personal boundaries, respect their culture. Treat them as you would like to be treated — with respect and dignity. If children don’t learn these things at home, the chances that they’ll learn them on their own at some future point drop dramatically. What do you think? How do you feel?

While this story is (to me) about a gift, it starts out as a gag Improv Everywhere cooked up. The premise is that they would make a little league baseball game between 10 year-olds into “the best game ever” — which basically made it a major league type of event. Follow the link and read the story, watch the video clip. It is funny, make no mistake. But at the same time they made the event extremely wonderful for the children and their parents. NBC sportscasting on a jumbotron? The Goodyear blimp? At a little league game? They even did a post-game press conference!

This story got me thinking about how it must have felt to be one of those kids. How cool would you feel if you had TV cameras pointed at you? How about people you’ve never even met chanting your name and cheering for you? This was an amazing gift to give. I think that must be why NBC and Goodyear were willing to help out with this “stunt.” Improv Everywhere tries to make sure there are no victims or anyone being hurt by its pranks, so far as I have seen. Something like this could have been malicious or so over the top that it was hokey and embarrassing. It wasn’t though. They made those kids feel terrific, even if it was only for a day. I think that such a gift is amazing. I hope that they do more like it and that it inspires others to do similar things.

Instead of “Candid Camera” styled pranks where the usually good-natured target is embarrassed but relieved at the end, what if a new style of prank were set up where the target is treated to something like these little leaguers? I think it’s an untapped market. I also think it takes more work to put together and pull it off. I’d love to see it done, though. It’d make the world a better place, or at least a happier place — which is better in my book.

All told though - it was a great bit. I wish I was there to witness it in person!!

UPDATE: The NBC/Goodyear blimp participation makes sense in light of this comment off of digg:

From the I.E. site, looks as though this was performed back in March 2007. Also from the I.E. site, they were working with NBC on a pilot version of the show for national broadcast. This must be one of the pranks they lined up with the network for use in the pilot. The financial backing needed, the clearance to use the NBC logos… and it would also explain why a year-old prank was just published this week - NBC probably needed to “release” the prank to I.E. given they weren’t going to pick up the show.

I had some issues with my cable internet service, of late. I took the liberty of taking a screen-cap of the speed test results:

I finally had to call Time Warner to send someone out. I called at approximately 7:30pm, they had someone here at 2:15pm the next day. I am suitably impressed and pleased so far. My signal strength is excellent, so it turns out it’s the cable modem. The service guy replaced it and, well, you can see the results:

I am MOST pleased with RoadRunner’s new 15Mbit/2Mbit service. You can see I get all 2Mbit of my upload speed, and nearly all of my download. Me likey!

By the way, the exceptional ping time on the “before” picture was an anomaly. That tended to be in the 87ms range. Also, the “after” picture was going through my proxy server where the “before” was not. All things considered, keep in mind that this was going through a cable modem, a wi-fi router, 2 GigE switches and a proxy server. That’s a nice ping time by any stretch.

I don’t know. I may be getting bored of the whole blog thing. It’s been nearly 6 months since I last posted, and that was only an announcement that I was moving. I no longer feel compelled to write about a lot of things.

Perhaps this is because I no longer feel it prudent to poke fun of other’s views in an acerbic manner. This has been a staple of the internet for a decade now, but it’s become tired and boring, even when it seems that such satire and occasional vitriol are deserved. Perhaps I’ve become to cautious in my writing. I lack some of the boldness I once had, but perhaps this is not entirely accurate. It is more likely that my desire to point out flaws in reasoning or logic has been tempered by wisdom. I just don’t feel like it’s my job to do that. Don’t ask me why I felt that way in the past. I don’t know the answer to that question yet.

As such, this blog is dying on the vine. I could still write about my observations, but I am a bit hesitant to do so. It’s not as though there’s a dearth of silliness and stupidity in the world, I am simply recalcitrant now. I have no desire to share my insights with the world at large. Why are my opinions important enough to warrant publishing them? I don’t know. I do know, however, that this site presents a very raw and sometimes embarrassing look at how my thoughts have changed and grown all neatly arranged in a timeline. Perhaps that is enough by itself.

I read many blogs and news sources day by day. I have found it interesting to observe how some bloggers opinions change and some do not. I have seen myself change, and I hope that it is for the better. It would be curious to do a study of bloggers to see what has changed about them over the course of years. The information could only be drawn from their writings. I would be very curious to know how many change and for what reasons. Equally interesting would be how many do not change even so much as a single viewpoint.

Being static in the world today seems impossible, and yet the evidence is around us that many people do not change their minds, once set. An opinion formed in some of these seems like a document set in stone, never to be altered or edited, even when experience and evidence point to differing conclusions.

I’m rambling now, though. And I still can’t think of anything to say.

Yes, I’m moving to Texas. I’ve accepted a job in Austin and I will be there on the 29th.

Perhaps I’ll blog more once I’ve done this. We’ll have to see. Things are likely to be busy in the meanwhile.

At any rate, my family and I are moving to Texas. I’ll be going first in order that I might get situated. My wife will be joining me to help in hunting for a home while my mother-in-law keeps an eye on our children. My wife will be with me for a week or so.

We barely listed our home on Monday and a realtor is coming to show the house tonight. We could only be so fortunate as to have someone want to buy our house so soon.

That’s all the update I have time for right now. I will have to keep this updated more regularly after I move.

We’re headed off to Southern Utah tomorrow to do some camping with a few of our friends and their families. Among the fun things we have planned are some stargazing (with accompanying Mac laptop running “Starry Night” software) and a big Mother’s Day breakfast prepared by the men.

I’ll see about taking some photos and perhaps chronicle our journeyings. Hopefully we’ll all come back intact and uninjured. Sunburn and heatstroke are likely to be the chief worries. It’s barely May and the temperature is set to hit the high 90s (that’s above 35 C for those who use centigrade).

Camping is one of the few pleasures I can say I enjoy that are completely without computers. I’d be lying if I said “gadget-free” because I still find my way to get some of those into my gear. Most of those are camping related, though. Cooking equipment, lanterns, backpacks. etc. I can’t escape being a geek entirely, now can I?

This won’t be the first time I’ve gone camping in a hot, sandy environment (the site is named Snow Canyon, which seems a strange choice of names during the summer months). I prefer high mountain tops and alpine meadows and less dense forests, however. I especially enjoy it if there’s a lake or fishable stream nearby. Come to think of it, the sounds of wind and water are inextricably connected to camping for me. I miss the white noise combination of a breeze in the trees with a babbling brook nearby. I feel more connected to nature when I have those extra sensations. Besides, it’s usually cooler at that altitude.

Have a happy Mother’s Day weekend!

…have been grossly exaggerated. They’re premature at the very least.

I’m still alive, and even though I haven’t posted in months, I still plan on continuing my website. That said, it is noteworthy to state that my blog will no longer be about the same sorts of things any longer.

Sure, I may still write about current events and my spin on them. Can’t say that I won’t when I know I probably will be unable to resist the temptation. I just feel very differently about a great many things than I once did. This isn’t to say that the sky has turned yellow, that I have suddenly become a left-leaning reactionary, that my wife and I have decided to send our children to the public schools after all, or even that I’ve switched back to Windows from the Mac. *shudder* I’m not that different in my opinions per se, rather that I am learning to interact with others in a different and hopefully more healthy manner — particularly those with whom I differ in opinion.

What this is all about is that my writing has been very accusatory in nature and I’m learning to be less accusatory in my dealings with others. (I may write about this change at some point, but that’s not important right now). I’m not going to delete or edit any of my previous posts (excepting for instances of grammar or spelling I may correct in the future). They stand as a reminder of who am was and where I’ve been. Hiding, burying or deleting records of my past doesn’t make the past actually disappear, so I’m not going to whitewash my past. It is what it is: A window into my past. Hopefully my future writings will demonstrate the change in me.

As something of a side note, I discovered that I’m no longer in as rare a subset of the population as I once was. For the past 10 years, I have registered as an INTJ personality type. No matter how many times I took the test, it always came up INTJ. I took tests from multiple sources and always tested the same. Last week I took the test again, for the first time in about 3 years. I came up as INTP. I thought it was a fluke. I took a different test, and a longer test and I still came up as INTP. Not only that, my scores for the T vs. F (Thinking vs. Feeling) came out as nearly 50/50 (51/49 if you must know). This means I will also strongly display traits of an INFP. It’s baffled me because I didn’t see the change. My wife knows me well and has observed that some change has happened in me, but she too was fascinated to see how I now appear as a different personality type.

Know your type? I’d love to hear about it. If you don’t know, you can take a test for $5 here. (Full disclosure: I am in no way affiliated with the personalitypage.com website nor will I receive so much as a single cent from your purchase at their site). There are probably other sites which also administer a version of the Myers-Briggs test, but I have always done well with the personalitypage.com site. Your mileage may vary.

This is just silly. Or maybe it’s a little bit scary too.

How many legislators does it take to change a light bulb?

In California, the answer is a majority - plus Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Decrying the inefficiency of the common light bulb, a Democratic Assemblyman from Los Angeles wants California to become the first state to ban it - by 2012.

Assemblyman Lloyd Levine says compact fluorescent light bulbs, which often have a spiral shape and are being promoted by Wal-Mart, are so efficient that consumers should be forced to use them. The compact bulbs use a quarter the energy of a conventional light.

(emphasis added).

I’m all for efficiency and for reducing pollution coming from the smokestacks of power plants. That’s not a bad thing at all. But to do so by forcing consumers to buy a particular type of product? And by governmental imposition? That’s kind of scary.

What about those of us who really dislike the 60Hz flicker of fluorescent bulbs? Or those who physically become uncomfortable if exposed to that type of light for long periods of time? What about graphics designers and decorators who need other types of bulbs to do color matching and comparison?

There are a lot of questions which may seem insignificant next to the grand and sweeping vision of a less polluted America, but are legitimate concerns. I don’t mind the notion of changing to more efficient light sources, including LEDs and such, but I really don’t like the notion of the government forcing me to do so. It’s kind of Orwellian, don’t you think?

Blessedly, this is looking as though it’s finished. Maybe with a new look I’ll actually write some new content.

Update:

I have discovered that IE 6 does NOT properly display this site. If you’re using IE 6, you’re missing one of the columns. Please switch to any of the following browsers (each of which I have personally tested):

IE 7
Safari (Mac)
Firefox

IE 6 is not a very safe browser to be using anyway. You’re far more open to spyware and other nasty stuff if you use IE 6. Click on the button in the sidebar and download Firefox. It’s worth it. You won’t be sorry.

Untested browsers which will probably work include Opera, Mozilla, Netscape, Konqueror, etc. Why is it that MS can’t make a standards compliant browser to save its life?

I recently upgraded to PHP5. Apparently some part of my main page didn’t like PHP5.

I get to play the “Change it all over again” game.

The plus side is a change in scenery. Meanwhile, I hope the bland doesn’t kill you…

Ok, let’s presume that “Global Warming” exists.  Data suggest that the temperature has increased, if by a small amount.  The doubters and skeptics are the ones questioning that it’s solely man’s fault that this has occurred.

I rank as one of the skeptics. I don’t buy the argument that man-made CO2 emissions are to blame for the observed rise in temperatures. Somehow this meme eluded me a few months ago. It recently cropped up in Fox news’ online segment titled Top Ten Junk Science Stories (or Headlines) of 2006. The link to the original story for this is provided here.

Here’s the rub, summarized and quoted:

Ten years ago, Danish researchers Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen first hypothesized that cosmic rays from space influence the Earth’s climate by effecting cloud formation in the lower atmosphere. Their hypothesis was based on a strong correlation between levels of cosmic radiation and cloud cover – that is, the greater the cosmic radiation, the greater the cloud cover. Clouds cool the Earth’s climate by reflecting about 20 percent of incoming solar radiation back into space.

They did experiments. The experiments confirmed their hypothesis. They were published in a major scientific journal. They were ignored by everyone else.

Low-level clouds cover more than a quarter of the Earth’s surface and exert a strong cooling effect. Observational data indicate that low-cloud cover can vary as much as 2 percent in 5 years which, in turn, varies the heating at the Earth’s surface by as much as 1.2 watts per square meter during that same period.

“That figure can be compared with about 1.4 watts per square meter estimated by the [United Nations’] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the greenhouse effect of all the increase in carbon dioxide in the air since the Industrial Revolution,” says Svensmark.

That is, cloud cover changes over a 5-year period can have 85 percent of the temperature effect on the Earth that has been claimed to have been caused by nearly 200 years of manmade carbon dioxide emissions. The temperature effects of cloud cover during the 20th century could be as much as 7 times greater than the alleged temperature effect of 200 years worth of additional carbon dioxide and several times greater than that of all additional greenhouse gases combined.

…

Not surprisingly, Svensmark’s potentially myth-shattering study has so far been largely ignored by the media. Though published in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society A, it’s only been reported – and briefly at that – in The New Scientist (Oct. 7), Space Daily (Oct. 6) and the Daily Express (U.K., Oct. 6).

So. Are there any scientists who want to explain this away? I confess to being only an “armchair” amateur. I am extremely interested because policies being discussed and debated based on what could be bogus information is alarming and disturbing. It is somewhat angering that this information seems to have been overlooked, intentionally or otherwise, by the purveyors of what we have come to call news.

I think it goes without saying that people don’t send their children to school to be poked by strange needles, but I worry less about this as a homeschooler.

High school student finds needle, pokes classmates (YouNeed2See Students)
A high school student found a needle and syringe in a bottle by the side of a road and jabbed eight fellow students over the course of two days, raising serious health concerns, police and school officials said.

Students jabbed with the used needle were urged to get immediate medical attention to be vaccinated against hepatitis B. The incidents also posed a lower risk of hepatitis C and the virus that can lead to AIDS, but those diseases would not be expected to show in tests for months.

“He just walked up and stabbed me with a needle, and said you now have hepatitis,” said student Ava Staples. She said she would be getting a blood test. “I’m pretty nervous.”

Wow.  Unbelievable.  And yet, it’s very scary.

And people wonder why we homeschool…

Playfully or not, there’s something inherently wrong about wedgies.  More so when a school principal gives one to a student.

Montana high school principal suspended for giving student a ‘wedgie’ - CNN.com
A high school principal received a six-day suspension and a letter of reprimand for giving one of his students a wedgie.

Eric Messerli pulled a Park High School senior’s soccer jersey over his head and yanked upward on the waistband of the boy’s underwear at a soccer game October 5. Other school officials said he was joking around with the student and did it playfully.

To his credit, he’s taking responsibility for his indiscretion and doing what he can to mend the situation.  All things considered, however, this sort of situation only fuels mistrust for teachers and administration and further serves to drive a wedge between students and staff.  Pun intended.

What?  It’s a funny story.  So I’m only partly joking when I suggest that this is a compelling reason not to send my children to the public schools.
And people wonder why we homeschool…