Screaming in an Elevator

Getting on the elevator this morning, it turned out I should have waited. Some woman was yelling at someone on the elevator about how he should support health-care, and some randomness about the unnamed politician who’s bumper sticker adorned his jacket was so terrible and such. She continued to rant at him all the way […]

Productively Procrastinating

I’ve spent quite a bit of time procrastinating this weekend, surfing the Internet when I should’ve been finishing cleaning my apartment. Of course, in addition to total time sinks like Facebook games (Yahoo games for people who like assisting spammers), I’ve watched a shitload of TED talks… So far the most interesting by far are […]

Status

One week on, I’m down about 6lbs, which is around 10% of the goal. Today is a low day (that is, 1350 calories), and I was still coming up short by the end of the day so I hit the chips and queso after dinner… which I’ve got to say is addictive once you get […]

Laptop Suspend, Status

I’ve inadvertently stumbled onto the calorie cycling method of weight loss. Two days of radically low calorie intakes (1300) followed by two days of “normal” intakes for my desired loss (1850). I’ve seen varying numbers, but the recommended course is to use this method when your weight loss flattens out, I was using it because […]

Inanities

I went to the optometrist’s offices today to try to get the little feet on my glasses replaced… they have to order new ones and charge me $15 for the trouble. Irritating, and precisely the sort of nickel-and-diming bullshit one should expect from a “family owned” business. On the other hand, I tried to get […]

Web Applications

Reading the utopianism of worldchanging.com after watching a TED talk from the founder of it, I tried calculating carbon footprint more accurately than I had previously. Catching up on missed blogs, I’ve gotten myself going on dopplr a moment ago, following a Lessig commenter’s idea to use it to calculate carbon for offset donations—which is […]

Insomnia

I’m currently suffering from putting my insomnia to good use (so far I’ve installed Tracks), so I’ll take the time to post some random thoughts: I was bitten by April Fools twice today. The second time because I was too exhausted to remember that it was April Fools. A life without hope is not wasted […]

Pong

I notice I tend to start blog posts like an awkward attempt to jump-start a stalled conversation: “So, I was looking at…” or “So, I was doing X…” It’s a little cowardly on my part, afraid to just jump into something without some sort of warning—in this case, the word “so”. Either that or I […]

Fuck Hope

Hope is a high-rate credit card. You can get charge away your pain now, but you pay more when it’s all said and done—you get real tired of paying your balance after the first 12 months.

Train Of The Damned

[I’ll probably end up delivering this onstage either tomorrow or next week.] It’s 9:28 PM Commuter train of the damned Slaving away for machines Which do our thinking for us Which is what this is all about… Evolution… It’s 9:32 PM Commuter train of the damned Soon to be boarding A motly crew of the […]

The Fool's Only Teacher 3

Sometimes life works. Other times it doesn’t. Hopefully you get to the point where you can spot the “doesn’t” parts in advance… If you’re lucky enough to get a technical person calling you in for the interview, remember to ask about a dress-code range. It’s uncomfortable to be pimping a suit when the guy who […]

Collection of One-Liners

The train of thought connecting those two events disturbs me. I don’t care about your attention, I’m just bored to tears with internet cat photos. “I can only hope to achieve your level of dorkitude so that one day, I may be on the cutting edge of ridiculous linkage” VoIP spam means never having to […]

Whee

A few months ago, I was supposed to get some help on my job. Specifically, someone to work on the .NET side of things, which would free me up to do the job I was actually hired to do: PHP development. He wasn’t my first choice, but he was second, in large part because of […]

Micromanaged Zombies

I come into the office early this morning, in the hopes of getting a head start on the backlog I’ve got: Finish refactor of My First PHP Project to take advantage of what I’ve learned since I wrote it, be documented, and generally just stop sucking. Add needed features, like an XML-RPC interface. Switch to […]

Near-Life Experiences

I usually get up for work sometime between five and six in the morning, or enough time to work up a sweat, take a shower, read news and eat some toaster fodder before heading out. This morning I fiddled with the alarm after getting up (yeah, always a bad idea), and ended up sleeping until […]