Cranky-D

G-d help me, I’m actually watching race-walking. Because that is all that’s on right now olympics-wise.

I just finished watching the indoor volleyball game with the Americans and Russians. The Americans pulled it out in the end, and are going on to the match for the gold. They will at least get a silver at this point. Earlier this evening I saw the American men win the beach volleyball game. Both volleyball games were interesting because I wanted the U.S. to win. Otherwise, I really cannot see a reason to watch. I mean, it’s pretty exciting stuff and the scoring happens quickly so it’s good for people with short attention spans. Sort of. Because the games last a long time it seems.

Part of watching the olympics is deciding what it’s okay to watch. Now, women’s beach volleyball is always okay to watch because you have tall hard-bodied adult women running around with almost no clothes on. That is something I might watch even when it isn’t the olympics. In fact, I think I have. However, when watching “women’s” gymnastics, there is a problem. Because they are not women, they are girls. Usually attractive girls with nice bodies. The only way to survive that was to become temporarily gay and complain about the scoring (and I did complain, though in the end the individuals scoring came out right anyway) and bitch about how much of a catty nancy that one male gymnastics commenter is. Then, once they were over I was able to catch the beach volleyball stuff and return to my usual straight horndog mode. By that time, I was able to think that the sturdy little gymnastics girl named Shawn would make a nice daughter.

I watched the male gymnastics as well. Whatevs. They’re pretty impressive. However, they are also very small guys, so it isn’t a threat or anything. Not like wrestling; those guys could kill you.

Right now I know a few additional things. Jamaicans are really fast. Americans cannot pass a baton without dropping it. Race walking looks really really weird, and it also looks like you’d ruin your hips or something.

BTW, I also watch race-walking last night. I must be insane. Luckily, this is all over in a few days, and I can go back to watching other kinds of bad television. Yay for me.

Okay, I’m kind of at a loss here. I plan to start having regular content, but I really don’t do straight news analysis stuff and have no desire to do so at this time. I was going to start writing 100 word stories based on the topics suggested by the site, but it is apparently dead now. So, if you like, throw out some topic suggestions for that.

I figure on one 100 word story per day, an apropos of nothing post, and perhaps one other thing of some kind yet to be determined.

Probably should go to bed now, before Mr. Sun shows up. He’s due soon.

Update: 100-word story topics could be just a word that must be used, a situation that needs to be explored, stuff like that.

Jeff G. has decided (rightly IMO) to take back his site and allow no more guest posters. There was a lot of drama going on there, and it was taking away from time he needed to spend on other projects. While I will miss the opportunity to write for a large audience, ultimately it has to be about him, his site, and his brand.

One of my favorite movies is “Conagher,” with Sam Eliot as Conn Conagher and his real-life wife Katherine Ross as Evie Teale. Evie was widowed early on in the movie, and was so lonely she would write poems and tie them to tumbleweeds in the hope that she could somehow be communicating with someone out there.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the writer of the poem or the tumbleweed that carries it.

Another of my father’s sayings, “Don’t let your alligator mouth overload your hummingbird ass.” Words to live by.

I found out about, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” at Ace’s blog. It’s a web-only musical written by Joss Whedon starring Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion. It looks rediculous at first, but it kind of grows on you.

I recommend going here to watch it because you can watch it full-screen. I had to select the low-resolution mode to avoid stuttering issues at full-screen mode, but I have a 30in screen running at 2560×1600 resolution, so YMMV.

BTW, the screen? Awesome. If you sit in front of a computer all day, especially if you write a lot of code, it is a great investment, though it cost more than a really good big-screen television. In my case, however, my employer got it for me (I work out of my house), so you cannot beat that price. If he suddenly took it away, however, I think I would have to buy one anyway.

Jeff G. at protein wisdom has decided to take a break. As one of the guest bloggers from a few years ago (and I still have access), I will try to add my own weird take on things over there to keep the content going. If the spirit moves you, you might drop by to see if I have contributed anything. Or not, whichever. I admit that there is a lot more traffic there than here, which means that my ego gratification score is much higher there even when I get lackluster feedback.

The first time around I decided to expand on his memes. If you’re masochistic and curious, search the archives for my handle and you should get a good portion of my content there. This time, I plan to come up with my own memes, and rather than ape J.G., I will try to create something new.

Update: I just did a search over at PW and wow, I have written a lot over there. Some of it is actually mediocre.

Update II: If you’re interested in my weird short stories, read here, here, here,, here, and here, in order. They take the armadillo meme and run with it. I have no idea what J.G. thought about what I did to his character, he never said a word.

83% Geek

Created by OnePlusYou

I’m a little disappointed that I couldn’t do better. I mean, I have a piled higher and deeper in geek, for frel’s sake.

There is a petaflop supercomputer currently running at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Awesome!

There is at least one supercomputer being built in the U.S. at any given time; at least, I’m pretty sure of this, since that was what was happening when I was an intern at one of the National Labs. It seems like there is a trade between Labs with respect to who gets the next one. A supercomputer requires special facilities that include enough cooling ability (the new petaflop computer needs 3 Megawatts of power to run it, and that means a lot of heat is generated) and also the required security. This can take a while to build, and of course the computer itself takes a while to build.

These supercomputers are used for simulations of a classified nature, and when they are operating the room is closed of to those who don’t possess the required security clearance. The simulations allow for scientists to understand, for instance, what happens to nuclear weapons as they age without actually having to set samples of them off.

The fact that these supercomputers exist allowed the U.S. to agree to not doing any live testing since they make testing pretty much unnecessary. They probably have other uses but I prefer not to speculate about things not publicly admitted to; I did not have the clearance so I don’t know and even if I did I would say nothing. Some secrets exist for a reason.

The older supercomputers to not go to waste by any means. They can be used for less intensive computations. Also, at the facility I visited they had set aside a portion of the older supercomputer for anyone’s use. That was pretty much the only time I did any parallel programming.

By the way, apparently Bush was behind the initiative to get the U.S. back in the supercomputer business and currently we have the fastest ones on the planet. I don’t agree with a lot of his domestic policies, but this one was a good one. The U.S. is about high-tech, and we need to keep up on that front, lest we become a country that only exports entertainment. That would not be a good thing.

Link found in the sidebar at ace of spades hq

Orson Scott Card has an essay about Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. I recommend you read the essay whether or not you have any interest in seeing the movie, as Card makes some very good and well-reasoned points.

I have not seen the movie yet, but the main point is that the scientific community has become somewhat closed to new ideas. In this case, Stein was seeing what the results were for trying to get Intelligent Design (ID) taught in school. ID is a theory that there is ultimately a Watchmaker, as it were, responsible for the creation of life. I agree with Card that it does not belong in school as part of a science curriculum, since it is not a scientific theory. It cannot be proven or disproven, and there is no overt evidence pointing to a Watchmaker. The fact that I believe in G-d does not mean that I think G-d belongs in science education.

Perhaps Stein was ill-served by choosing ID as his point of contention, since it creates a lot of problems on its face. I think using anthropogenic global warming would have been a better choice, since the academy is almost as closed to any arguments against the AGW religion. Still, the point of the movie was apparently more about violating any of the established barriers to other ideas than trying to push ID.

Science can only survive as long as inquiry can continue. If anyone states any scientific result as being “settled,” or that there is a “concensus,” avoid that person because they are not talking about science any more, they are talking about dogma. Science is most certainly not about concensus, it is about forming a hypothesis and then testing that hypothesis with repeatable experiments.

If they perform experiments but will not share their data, they are probably promoting an agenda. In cases where the data cannot be shared due to privacy concerns, they had better prove their model on data that can be shared. Otherwise, the results remain suspect.

Scientific inquiry must remain open to new ideas, or else we will miss too many things. No one should be afraid to examine an idea just because it goes against what they believe. If no one is willing to do that, nothing new will ever be discovered.

Updated: Pretty much re-written on April 27

This election season has brought with it the most blatant example of identity politics I can remember seeing. This is mostly due to the fact that the Democratic candidates, Hilary and Barack, are very busy playing the victim and race cards, respectively, whenever they get in a jam of some kind. The difficult situations they manage to get into are usually the result of their own political ineptitude, which I assume is tied to a belief that the press will give them an easy time when they make a mistake, like they did in the past. However, because the media are also divided on which candidate they support, much of it does not get ignored for very long, and if it does get ignored we have the online masses who are willing to lay on a beat-down as appropriate. The media and the liberals are starting to see that the Clintons are serial liars. Many are also realizing that Obama is pretty much an empty suit, spreading the idea of hopey-changiness wherever he goes while remaining something of a cypher on substance when he isn’t outright reversing himself on policy positions he supposedly held dear not that long ago. Some pundits have been calling fellow Democrats racists or misogynists when they don’t want to vote for their indentity candidate of choice.

The schadenfreude can be very tasty.

Right now the utility of all this beyond the entertainment value is minimal, and I am tired of the whole thing. However, it isn’t going away soon, and I see an opportunity to show the average citizen, who cares little for politics, just how ridiculous and destructive identity politics can be. Therefore, I want this behavior to continue right up to the general election, when a lot more people will be paying attention. The only way this can happen now is for McCain to nominate a black man or woman as his vice-presidential candidate.

On the surface, I hope you find the idea of playing identity politics right back at them distasteful. You should. However, there are probably enough qualified candidates that I think McCain could make a good, sound choice of running mate such that the person is appropriate for the position and, oh, by the way, happens to be black. I want the candidate to be a solid conservative, so someone like Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powell are right out. I would be thinking a Michael Steele or J.C. Watts here, and I’m sure others have their favorites. A conservative candidate should also help to bring some of the base back to McCain, which is how I would argue it to him (of course, he may not care about that).

The nominee must look as qualified on paper as anyone else, and be more qualified than Obama. This is necessary because the very first salvo would include the charge that the nominee was chosen because he or she is black (ironic but completely expected), and the response must be to show that the nominee is as good a choice as any, and certainly as good as the one the Dems have put forth. The technique should be effective even if Hillary somehow gets the nomination, since Barack will not be forgotten soon even if he gets shunted aside, and Hillary’s qualifications are mostly hinged on being the wife of a former president.

Since a black Republican by definition has left the progressive identity plantation, expect the calls of “Uncle Tom” or the more vulgar “House N..r” to soon follow. The pivot point will be that somehow the Democrat’s black guy is intrinsically better than the Republican’s black guy, and that therefore the charges of racism for not voting for Barack (they will be everywhere) will somehow be justified in sticking in some unhinged minds, even though people would be choosing between pairs of candidates which both include black men. Those deep in the identity politics dungeon can twist their internal logic to follow this kind of reasoning, but most people cannot.

While “Uncle Tom” type charges have been used before with respect to Powell and Rice, they have generally been confined to editorial cartoons and the like, which most people never see. I think this time those patently racist slurs would be much more likely to end up out in the open. I want the light to shine on this stuff, so at least some people will see more clearly that automatically placing everyone into identity groups is an ignorant thing to do. I have no idea how many people would pay attention, but I think some would.

It isn’t likely we’ll have another chance like this any time soon to show identity politics in its truest form. I would like to see McCain take it. That way perhaps something positive could come out of this election.

Obama:

“It’s not surprising then that they [Pennsylvanians] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Ace responds:

The trouble is, those stupid Bible-thumpin’, shotgun-pumpin’, outhouse-dumpin’, sibling-humpin’ morons [in Indiana and North Carolina] don’t realize yet that Obama was talking about them too, and I’m not sure how to inform these degenerate inbred racist cannibals of that.

I don’t speak their language of grunts, backwoods mumble, genital-itching, and racist spree-killings.

How do I reach them?

If only they could read English, or any language, apart from the crude pictographs of elk-hunting and gang-raping they inscribe on the walls of their bone-littered and Bedazzler-studded caves.

The real reason I posted this is so that I would have my own copy of that great string of words.

However, the fact is that this kind of condescending attitude is exactly what I would expect from any Democrat presidential candidate. They have demonstrated it time and time again. They claim to have the solid cultural and religious values that typify America, but then demonstrate that their only G-d is expedience. They can change their morality as fast as a cuttlefish changes color. They also seem to think that the electorate has the brains of cuttlefish as well.

Look, I am often an intellectual snob, and if you hang around me long enough you’ll see it. However, I also have know some great people, like my late Uncle Don, who were great men and women worth listening to even though they never went to college or had any other kind of “official recognition” of their abilities. Where someone lives and what they do for a living has nothing to do with how smart or well-informed they are. However, the left-liberal mindset would have you believe that this is not true.

The thing is, I really don’t care if a presidential candidate is an elitist. I would vote for an elitist, as long as that person held enough positions close to my own and was going to pretty much take us in the direction I want to go (and more important, not take us in a wrong direction). What I really don’t like is someone who pretends to be and average joe or jane when they are nothing of the kind. You cannot eat a Philly cheese steak sandwich or bowl a bad game or whatever and have that somehow give you street cred with me. I doubt it gets you anywhere with anyone.

Presidential candidates all: no voter thinks you’re one of them, because we know you’re not. Quit pretending otherwise.

I ran into this and this a few months ago, but never got around to pointing to them. They are both from the same author, and are definitely worth reading. High thee hence, or something like that.

Read this. Read it and wonder. Read it and take heed.

I wrote a little blurb about the direct to disk movie over at Protein Wisdom. There are also plenty of old posts over there whose linkiness changed at some time, so they are no longer linked properly in my archives, but you can find them, if you’re interested, by searching on my handle, “cranky-d.”

Basically, my day consists of reading blogs, watching some teevee, playing RPGs on various Game Boy incarnations, and writing code (the last one is what pays the bills). Mostly it’s writing code and reading blogs, but some days, like today, it is more reading blogs and writing code.

Anyway, I bought a DS a while ago, and I finally started using it last week after I completed yet another run-through of Dragon Warrior III. Right now I’m playing Final Fantasy III. It’s an amusing little RPG. I find myself using the touch screen a lot, since the game kind of encourages it. So the screen is smudged and will likely remain so for some time. I have no idea how long the screen protectors are supposed to last, but you definitely need them. I have seen no reason to use the stylus so it’s just naked oily fingers instead.

What’s sort of funny is that I have started about four or five final fantasy variations and have yet to play one to completion. This has more to do with what interests me about the genre than me not being able to finish anything. Once you’ve done all the pre-requisites, the only thing left is to level up enough to tromp the last “boss” and win. I only finished DWIII this last time because I thought there was supposed to be more coming afterwards. I guess I took a wrong path or something. However, I played DW I-IV on the 8-bit system and finished them all many times so I already know what happens. Obviously I get replay value from the series.

FFIII is probably not supposed to be a complete level grinder but sometimes that’s how I play these things. Today I had to go to the laundry, so I used that time to grind away to increase the stats. Oddly enough, I have never played D&D, and I have only played a smattering of computer-based RPGs; that probably puts me in a minority among my peers. I’m still considering moving on to WoW. I would probably like it, and when I bought the laptop I’m using to write this I made sure it could play WoW just in case, but it seems that I don’t have the time since I waste too much of it doing other stuff.

If that’s wasting it. I’m not sure.

Anyway, if you like RPGs you could do worse than get a DS. The graphics are pretty nice, the screen is bright, the unit is small but is still okay for adult hands, and it plays GB advantage games as well so there’s a catalog of games you can play. Plus, there are walkthroughs on the tubes if you get stuck, and the ones I’ve seen are usually pretty good. I have found that ebay is a good source for older games, but I tend to buy new if I can because then I know that the cartridge hasn’t been in and out of the unit a lot of times. There are a few titles out on the DS right now, and it looks like Dragon Quest IV will be released in the US fairly soon (DQ IV is the same as DWIV which was on the 8-bit NES); someone has already discovered that the chip released in Japan has an English translation already on it. I’m hoping they follow with DQV and DQVI, which I have never played but look forward to. They are definitely going to be released in Japan, but I’m not enough of a fanboy to deal with a Japanese-only version of the game.

I still have DQVII and DQVIII to play on the still-unused PS2. Maybe when I get back home “for good.” Somehow I think I’ll still be here in S0-Cal a lot more than I was before. Such is life, I guess.

So. My sister is working for H&R block this tax season. She wanted to look at what her schedule would be this weekend, and it didn’t show up properly in firefox. We’ve all seen sites like that, and we all know the solution. Use explorer.

Of course, explorer wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Instead, MSN explorer was parked in its slot, and it wanted to set me up with a new email account and stuff like that. Bye. I had to dig through the menus to find explorer, which I consider odd since we’re talking about the dark empire here. Still, this is on XP Home, which is a sub-optimal O.S. in my opinion. Don’t even attempt to “repair” the dlls if you know what’s good for you. Trust me. I did it once, and it was such a disaster I wondered if I could get the machine working again. I haven’t touched it since.

The amazing part was, my sister had no idea how to type a URL in. Seriously. She apparently uses google all the time to find things, and then pulls the URL out of the list google presents you. The whole process of typing “myblock.com” in the topmost bar was shocking to her. Even though I just showed her you can do that, I’ll bet it never happens again.

What’s really scary is she is actually pretty intelligent. One wonders what the stupid people do. Bang on the keys and hope for the best, or only go to sites that are in the browser history, I guess.

Yesterday marked the end of winter for me. I left the upper Midwest and flew to my father’s house in Southern California. I won’t be returning until the end of March, and by that time I doubt there will be any sub-zero temperatures. On the other hand, right now it is wet and rainy and I think it’s in the mid 40s out there. Yikes. Still, compared to what I left this isn’t too bad, and I know it will get better again very soon.

When I got here, I found out that the cat had finally gone to kitty heaven. When I left 10 days ago, she was not doing all that well and couldn’t use her back legs. That had been an ongoing problem that seemed to be helped with steroids, but they had finally stopped working. She had finally let me touch her to help her on and off the bed, since she couldn’t jump up on it any more. As it turned out she had cancer in her spine. I don’t know all the details, but my dad footed the bill for the MRI and an operation that was not successful. We are pretty sure the cat was about 23 years old or so. She had survived many challenges, but this one was too much. My sister has yet to pick up her ashes.

My father is slowly getting better; he is the reason I’m here in the first place, of course. With me here my sister can go to work, and in general it takes some of the load off of her since she can also go places without worrying about what might be happening. I’m fairly content to not go anywhere. It’s enough to just try to get a useful amount of work done so my employer doesn’t regret hiring me.

I was only home for 10 days this past break, and I spent a lot of time catching up on stuff there. It was more of a vacation being there than being here. Since the beginning of December, I’ve only been home for 20 days total. I decided to make this trip longer since I don’t have anything planned back home, as I did for New Year’s and for a blues concert during my last stay.

Only today, my father decided it was time to open his Christmas gifts. I took them to him in the hospital on Christmas day, but he wanted nothing to do with it. I can understand that. There were only a few items; we have long since stopped exchanging presents, since it usually turned out to be all of us exchanging lists and buying stuff on the list. I suggested that we could all buy the stuff ourselves and cut out the middleman. I guess I’m not particularly sentimental. I still send money for the kids gifts, since they have no way of buying things themselves.

That’s life, such as it is. Boring, really. Lately, that’s a good thing.

I just got home from my Monday night outing. I was approached by a young man at one of the train stations, asking me for money. I told him I wouldn’t give him any. He said something to the effect of, “You better make sure I’m not on the station where you get off.” Well, that pushed me over the edge just a tad. I approached him on the platform to let him know I wasn’t afraid. I entered the train in the exact same door he did. I told him that if he wanted things that way I would accomodate him. He apparently backed off, because he did not get off at my stop. My best friend, who I didnt’ think would get involved in my stupidity, let this guy know that there would be trouble. I really appreciated that.

I don’t like confrontations, but I know how this shit turns out. I was immediately in his face, but I gave him an out. I said that he could just walk away from it and that would be that. He did not get off the train when I did. Smart thinking on his part.

Maybe I’m wrong. I can understand if I am. However, this man threatened me. He thought he could get away with it. He didn’t. I won’t let that happen. Ever. Even though right now, my right arm is almost useless and could hardly back me in a fight. The nerve ending that fires the right shoulder muscle is dead, and I await its re-growth. And still, I wouldn’t be sorry to have taken that shit on.

I cannot figure out what’s wrong with boys/men these days. I think they don’t have fathers to teach them how to be men. I really wish I could help them. On the other hand, I don’t care much for the average person, so who cares?

Update: I wasn’t clear. The boy in question was white. The one man other than the rest who got how things were and talked with me about it was black. Just so you know.

Last weekend sucked ass. The two football teams I wanted to win their division championships lost. Sure, the Chargers didn’t really have much of a chance, but the Packers should’ve been able to pull it off. Also, the only presidential candidate that actually got me a little fired up, Fred Thompson, tanked in the primary and decided to pull out of the whole thing a few days later. I’m not sure if this means I’m some kind of jinx, but apparently if you want to win a contest it is best to not curry my favor. In fact, since the candidates I like the least, McCain and Huckabee, are still hanging in there, with McCain the supposed front-runner if you squint while viewing reality through MSM-colored glasses, currying my disfavor may indeed be a way to succeed.

In the mean time, one of the nurses that comes to change the weird foam vacuum pump wound-closing thingy on his chest drives me nuts. She is a nag and she has the proper nasally nagging voice to go with it. Every time she tells my father that he has to wear shoes around the house because he doesn’t have feeling in his feet (type 2 diabetes). And every time he does not wear shoes. You would think by now she would figure out that he isn’t going to wear the shoes, and leave it the heck alone. The other nurses who come to change that foam thingy are pleasant and do their thing. This nurse is also always asking about what he’s eating and if I hear about “carbs” one more time when it isn’t referring to something that sits on top of an internal-combustion engine I might wig out.

I hate nagging. My mom was a nag. Drove me nuts. One of the myriad of reasons I am not married, beyond my incredible lack of social skills, is that I know somehow I would end up with a nag for a wife and no basement to call my own to hide in. And that would be much worse than the way things are now.

Yes, I know, I lack focus. Deal with it.