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Saturday, December 01, 2001
Well, since you aren't dead, I guess that'll make three of us for shooting, BarBQ, and beer on Dec. 27th in Denton. David might also be in town, but other than that, I doubt anyone will be around. I'll see if I can get ahold of him somehow. Most likely he'll be in Iowa with his family.
Nice picture from CNN:
.: posted by andy 12/1/2001
It's a big bathtub, but I didn't drown. I've been getting used to my new place, and I've been busy at work also. I've been writing a program that will automate a lot of the PCB design that we do. This is good, coz we only have one PCB designer right now. So I've been re-learning c++ and OO programming over the past two weeks, which makes my job interesting for a change, and keeps me from surfing the web too much during the day, which keeps me from contributing here.
But enough of that. Last weekend I got a big TV and a surround sound system and a DVD changer. I also went to the IKEA store to buy some tinker-toy furniture for my new entertainment center. I was thinking that I should pay more attention to my sleeping patterns, otherwise I might turn into Tyler Durden. But then I thought that that's impossible, because instead of bottling up my frustrations, I let off the pressure in a steady stream of weak insults and complaints to the people around me. So whenever I become a nice guy, look out.
.: posted by Jeremy 12/1/2001
They think they've caught the Green River Killer, after almost 20 years. I hope they send that guy to hell. More information about the Green River Killer.
.: posted by andy 12/1/2001
Where the hell is Jeremy? It's been almost a week since he posted. Maybe we should send someone over to his apartment to make sure he didn't drown in the bathtub or something.
.: posted by andy 12/1/2001
Friday, November 30, 2001
Want a penpal?
That actually seems like an interesting concept, I wonder how the founder got the idea, and also how they get into prison systems. Talk about a captive audience, har har. But seriously, folks, you don't have to worry about them running out on you; bah dum ching!
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 11/30/2001
Wednesday, November 28, 2001
Oh, and I hate AOL. In the amount of time it took me to write my last post, I was disconnected 3 times, once the AOL application just spontaneously disappeared.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 11/28/2001
Winter has come to North Texas. Yesterday the freezing rain blew in, and today it was sleeting. The roads haven't frozen yet, but they definitely will tonight. Cold is such a pain. This morning I decided to get the mail, something I do about twice a week, and I had to get all bundled up and put on a coat and close-toed shoes. Normally I just go out in my boxers. It seemed very peaceful and surreal through the window. Everything had this kind of halo surrounding it, because everything was coated with ice. Of course, when I actually go outside there's a 20 mile an hour wind from the north and a cacophony of sound from the ice trying to crack as the trees try to blow in the wind and the sleet hitting ice-covered ground.
CNN.com has gone to hell. They won't get out of this 'breaking news' format; the lead article is always some amalgam of the last 5 days of articles to come out of Afghanistan. Almost everything above the fold, 18 stories, are just rehashes of the same articles that have been there for the last two weeks. Then, going to the subsections, about one in three articles in SciTech is a paid-for product promotion, and the Space section has it's first new article since Friday. From now on it's bbc.co.uk for me.
And one more thing. Why are we publicly threatening Iraq? So we can piss off the rest of the Middle East and Russia? "Let weapons inspectors in or else." Is this some kind of joke? If Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, the ODCI already knows it. We've had every satelite we own trained on them for 12 years, we have low-altitude recon planes in constant orbit, not to mention the Massad and the Jordanian Intelligence agencies aiding us. If we have a real and permanent problem with Saddam Hussein, we should remove him. Then we could get our troops out of Saudi Arabia and quit angering Shiite Extremists who think we're trying to take the other half of their holy land away from them. If we don't have a problem with him, we should wrap up this embargo and get our soldiers out of the desert. Oh, and let's not try to do it under the guise of the 'coalition against terror', coz all that's gonna do is break apart the coalition when Russia, Saudia Arabia, and half of Europe pull out of it.
And finally, Cuba. Our president would've been like 10 during the Cuban missle crisis. Cuba of no threat to the US militarily or socially. We stand to gain a huge amount economically from lifting our embargo of Cuba. Why do we continue it?
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 11/28/2001
Tuesday, November 27, 2001
I had to drive to Raleigh this morning to get something for Beth, and while I was driving, I was thinking how funny it was that I was driving to Raleigh to pick up a Pepperberry garland from Pottery Barn, while half-way around the world a guy I grew up with was very possibly getting off a helicopter in Afghanistan so that he could kill Talibanians. It made me feel sort of guilty. But then I felt better when I considered that it's numerically very unlikely that he's actually one of the 1000 or so Marines actually on the ground there.
Can I just say that Legos are still really cool. We got Beth's brother some for Christmas, and it made me want to get some really badly. I rationalize this desire for Legos by saying that I want to be an architect, and architects should be interested in this sort of thing.
.: posted by andy 11/27/2001
Monday, November 26, 2001
I spent the weekend eating gumbo and moving into my new apartment. Never try to haul a 36" TV up 3 flights of stairs(that's with 2 landings, one long set, and two short sets, up to the 3rd floor) with only 2 people. You will die.
New contact info, so the world can stalk me:
7055 Hollister Apt. 1133
Houston, TX 77040
Home: 713-460-2202
moble: 832-545-9000
So if any of you need a place to crash in houston, I have space now.
.: posted by Jeremy 11/26/2001
Sunday, November 25, 2001
Some assorted thoughts, since no one else has posted in a while:
So much for cheap memory. Some types of SDRAM and DDR have gone up by as much as 50% in one week. 'Course, Rambus is still 6 times as high.
And an interesting background and view of Afghanistan et al from the, ahem, far left.
A very amateurish website on geocities with a simple, but very cool applet.
That website reminded me of studies talking about how finger length is indicative of sexual orientation, with lesbians having a more 'male' finger length ratio, and gay men having a 'hypermasculine' ratio. These can be explained by exposure to testosterone in the womb, supposedly. Last time I was at UT, in one of the psych buildings they had a study up about the relationship between ADHD, sex, sexual orientation, and finger length ratios, but I can't find it now.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 11/25/2001
So that's how they plan on dealing with non-Afghan Taliban fighters. I'm sure it wasn't some great conspiracy, but it does solve one problem for the US 'coalition'. You do have to wonder about the charismatic leaders of that group; "It is better to fight and die like dogs, gunned down by machinegun towers and cut to pieces by steel rain that falls from invisible enemies in the sky here in this makeshift tent prison than to go in front of some international tribunal and be sentenced to life in a 10 by 10 cell with running water, a warm bed, and the ability spread the word of the Koran. Or, Allah forbid, pick a fight we have a chance of winning."
As I write this, I realize that track 7 on White Zombie's La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1 has traditional Islamic prayers in the background. I was trying to figure out why I kept hearing 'Allah' in an eerie voice.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 11/25/2001
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