View From the Bushes

Last night a friend of mine from elementary school (if you can believe that) was in town, so we got together with all of the friends we'd picked up in college. It was nice to be able to make inside jokes that are over a decade old and still get a laugh (in this case, it was a reference to the Bubmi's (get it, Bambi...) mother dying scene from an old episode of Animaniacs). We also had a detailed discussion of the genius that is X-Men and X2 -- overall a pretty geeky night, good times... good times...

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I have a Dilbert page a day calendar, and in the past when I have a page-a-day calendar if I come across something particularly humorous, I'll hang it outside my cube, but this time I decided, why nickel and dime it, why not post the entire year outside my cube? Fortunately I have a cube on the aisle, so I've got a big outside wall to work with. Looking at the space I figured if I was judicious I could post the entire year on just that wall. It was only a month or so in that I realized that people don't want to have to get down on their knees (or belly) to read a comic strip. I think my fatal oversight was underestimating how popular it would be. One of the executives (the number three man at the company) is a huge fan.

In any event, I just posted the first three months, and it's already down the wall to the point where people have to bend somewhat to read the latest strip, so I'm moving over to the next cube. By year's end the entire hall will be covered in Dilbert cartoons. Of course in the beginning I never thought I'd make it through January before someone asked me to take it down; I guess that's what perseverance gets you. Finally, if for some bizarre reason View From the Bushes is your primary news source, I should inform you that Terri Schiavo is dead.

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Ross

Yesterday after wrapping up a big project at work, my boss let me go home early, at which point I was faced with the choice of taking a nap or posting an entry in my blog: the choice was not difficult. I suppose I could have posted something after my nap, but sleeping resets my RAM, so I forgot everything I was going to do.

Fortunately, I did remember to watch "Scrubs" and "The Office." The former is still sadly under-watched and maybe in danger of cancellation. The latter is also not doing very well despite being the darling of critics. I guess I just have to face the fact that my taste in television bears no resemblence to the tastes of the public at large. I still choke up a little bit when I think of "Andy Richter Controls the Universe." I mean, if there was ever a show more deserving of a long and happy life it was that one, only to be cut down in its prime by an uncaring public.

Finally in other news, D&D is being investigated as a motivation for the killer in a quadruple slaying in Pennsylvania. The quote is: "We are looking into whether that's part of it," Castor said. "They have many, many stab wounds. Those Dungeons & Dragons fantasy games involve swords, and knives and daggers." Using this logic, you can blame ransom notes on Scrabble...

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Ross

I'm coming down with something. Right now it's just a sore throat, and I'm hoping to keep it that way. In one sense, I'm surprised it took so long. I've been getting less sleep than I should for quite awhile and certainly I've been exposed to enough stuff -- my kids are sick just about every time I turn around, but I guess I was lucky until now. The real scare was this morning at 4 am when I woke up with a really sore back; for a while I thought it was the flu, rather than just a cold, but ibuprofen and a better sleeping position seemed to knock that out, so I'm hopeful...

In other news, it turns out that on Tuesdaythe Supreme Court will be hearing arguments on the legality of peer-to-peer software. While I understand that much of the peer-to-peer traffic involves illegal transfer of copyrighted material, I have a hard time seeing how the technology itself can be considered illegal, and so far all of the lower courts have felt the same way, so my suspicion is that SCOTUS will feel the same, but you never know.

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Ross

Somehow it seems that whenever I'm trying to be good and eat a decent breakfast, it's always on the days when I end up eating some collosal lunch (a cob salad the size of my heard in this instance). Of course, since it's the "family campaign" tonight, I'll end up eating a huge dinner as well. I guess it's no wonder that I'm pushing 300... Not really, of course, but to briefly move back to the discussion of Mozart and Salieri, weight is one of those places where I'm sure that I'm Mozart to someone else's Salieri, because I know that there are many, many people who, if they ate as irresponsibly as I did, would be pushing 300.

I've been slogging my way through Crichton's latest novel, State of Fear. I say slogging, because it's been something of a chore. The writing is okay, but there is this ginormous plot hole, which sucks my out enjoyment. The writing is good, the story is decent, and the subject matter is right up my alley, but it's all warped by the absurdity of the actually plotting. For those who have read the book or who never intend to read the book here's what I'm talking about (and I'm only 2/3 of the way through so the could be more).

Highlight to read:

Without any explanation or even the flimsiest of pretenses he has an administrative assistant and a young corporate attorney make up half of the strike force charged with defeating a well-funded, immaculately organized international eco-terrorist organization. What, were all the Navy SEALs busy?

I know my wife will read it, because she likes to be spoiled. One of her favorite sites is MoviePooper.com; she'll read up on movies she doesn't even care about. It's a sickness...

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Ross

Last night I went and saw Amadeus at the local theater. I think it might have been better than the movie, though I would have liked to hear more of Mozart's actual music during the performance. But in any case, it was very good. I saw the movie a long time ago but my memory is that in the movie it was Salieri vs. Mozart, but in the play it was clearly Salieri vs. God with Mozart being caught in the middle as God's chosen instrument. Of course, the premise is facsinating; how would it be to be the hard-working devoted Salieri to the vulgar and lazy Mozart? Without hopefully too much arrogance, I think I can say that I've been on both sides of that relationship.

Obviously a play like this is going to be of questionable historical accuracy, but from what I can tell, three things (and probably more) appear to be unquestioned:

1- Salieri did claim to have killed Mozart late in life.
2- Salieri was extremely jealous of Mozart.
3- Mozart was basically a vulgarian.

For me that's more than enough to hang a story as good as this one on. Certainly "historical" films have been based on much flimsier facts than these.

Having said all that, I will leave you with a link to the solar death ray! Enjoy...

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Ross

I got my second LCD at work today, so I was finally able to install my new video card and bask in the convenience of two monitors. I've got to say overall I'm not that impressed by the LCDs; I actually think that with the exception of the form factor that a CRT is better, but having two monitors is da bomb! Getting two monitors actually caused quite an upheaval in terms of office politics, but fortunately it died down enough to not derail the plans.

Blizzard finally came out with the long awaited content patch. Feature-wise it was reasonably cool, but implementation-wise it was a nightmare... Normally they have a downtime between 6 am - 10 am Pacific every Tuesday. Yesterday they started an hour early (no big deal) but went maybe twelve hours over. It's hard to say, because there was intermittent availability in there, but mosty everything was completely FUBAR, but the truly annoying thing was not the game servers being down, but the website and the forums were completely hosed as well, so there was no way to get any kind of information on whether they even knew what the problem was...

In any case, turning back to New Scientist we discover that a classic math problem has just been cracked. It's not as glamorous as Fermet's last theorem, but it's still pretty cool.

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Ross

Unless you locked yourself in a cave for Lent, (in which case you won't be reading this till at least Monday anyway) you've heard about Terri Schiavo. I've been looking long and hard to find a really good listing of the facts and the timeline presented in as an objective manner as possible and I finally came across this page, which if nothing else, has a really great timeline. There was a lot of good stuff there, but I think the most interesting was this:

Recently, Michael received an offer of $1 million, and perhaps a second offer of $10 million, to walk away from this case and permit Terri's parents to care for her. These offers, assuming there were two, were based on a misunderstanding of the situation here. Michael lacks the power to undo the court order determining Terri's wishes and requiring the removal of her feeding tube. He did not make the decision and cannot unmake it. The court made the decision on Terri's behalf. Nonetheless, Michael apparently rejected each offer.

I knew about the million dollars, but I didn't know that Michael lacks the power to order the feeding tube re-inserted even if he changed his mind (that could be a good reason to turn down the money). I have to confess that much of the stuff I had read earlier (when this case was last in the news back in October of 2003) gave me the impression that the husband was a real scumbag. Since then I've changed my mind; (refusing the million dollars helped) to go through the kind of hate and venom he's surely been subjected to would take someone of enormous conviction, the kind of conviction I feel (or at least hope) is not available through baser emotions like greed or hate, but only more noble impulses like compassion and honor.

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Ross

I took a lot of grief for Friday's entry and I feel like I need a break, so this is it for today.

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Ross

My daugther came down with a fever suddenly yesterday morning. My wife was giving her ibuprofen every four hours to try and keep it down, but it wasn't quite doing the trick. So that evening as I was leaving to take my daughter home early so that she could get some rest, my wife instructed me to try an acetaminophen suppository when I got home. The rest of the instructions were blurred out by the horror of the initial request, but I remember hearing something about a curve, and my pinky and the necessity for speed. In any event, she's feeling much better this morning, so hopefully the horrible experience (for both of us) was worth it.

Speaking of horror, Lucas is describing the next Star Wars movie as 'Titanic' in space. Though to be fair, with the exception of the 'present day' plot line and the two main characters, I really quite enjoyed 'Titanic.' In fact, if Episode III is that good, I will be overjoyed. Though still you have to admit that describing it as "'Titanic' in space" is not a good sign.

Finally, Slashdot linked to an article in the New Scientist cotaining a a list of 13 things that do not make sense. The list covers such things as Dark Matter and the Placebo Effect, but for me the highlight is my old standby of Cold Fusion.

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Ross

In my continuing quest to entirely remove myself from the process of writing my blog, I offer you a link to Everything Bart Simpson has ever written on the chalkboard. Some ones I enjoyed:

I will not yell "Fire" in a crowded classroom an homage to Oliver Wendell Holmes
I am not a 32 year old woman Nancy Cartwright probably wishes she was still 32...
I will not torment the emotionally frail This is one I should probably work on
Goldfish don't bounce Pure comedy gold
Organ transplants are best left to the professionals Sound advice for us all

And that's just the first five seasons...

Finally, great news: The obese will die young and save social security!

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Ross

My wife was in charge of an activity last night for a bunch of women; since my wife was in charge, I ended up being in charge of the on-site child care. Fortunately for me, only one kid showed up. This was, of course, unfortunate for the child, since he would have much rather played with other children than spend the entire time hanging out with a scary bearded stranger. He hung in for a little over an hour but eventually he just couldn't take it anymore. Can't say I blame him -- an hour is about all I can stand of me as well.

In other news, a friend of mine sent me this hilarious recording of someone calling 911 when a fast food place failed to get her burger order correct. Okay that's not really news, but it's all I got.

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Ross

One of the many secondary duties I've picked up at my work is a partial responsibility for dealing with SPAM. Mostly this consists of "white-listing" stuff that was erroneously flagged as SPAM by our less-than-stellar current SPAM solution. Soon after I picked up this responsibility, I discovered that the legal disclaimer we attach at the bottom of every single e-mail triggers the SPAM filter, not going out, but coming back in. This means that anytime someone responds to an e-mail one of the people in the company has sent out, that if they don't take the time to delete the disclaimer, when it comes back in it will be flagged as SPAM and sent to their junk e-mail folder. I never cared for these sorts of disclaimers in the first place, but you can imagine how unimpressed I am with them now.

I write about this because the transportation department sent out an e-mail to 100 people demanding that people respond with what sort of shipping bag they use. So all 100 people respond, no one deletes the disclaimer, and I end up with 100 new e-mail addresses that I have to add to the white list... Of course, your first question is why don't you just change the disclaimer? Well, I've looked into that and apparently the legal department spent months and months on it, so it might as well have been carved in stone and carried down from the top of Mount Sinai by a guy with a beard.

I just discovered that there's a new Star Wars movie coming out (no I'm not talking about Revenge of the Sith). It's called Star Wars: Revelations. I know what you're thinking and that question (isn't Lucas going to sue the hell out of you?) is in the FAQ. But speaking of suing, I know that someone can turn a blind-eye to copyright violation if they choose, but it's my understanding that if you don't defend your trademark, that you risk losing it (the trademark in question being "Star Wars").

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Ross

Looks like a time machine was recently auctioned on E-bay. Sorry I didn't post it early enough for any of you to make a bid (there's a joke in there somewhere, but I'm too worn out to come up with it). Here is what the seller had to say about it:

Hello, I am selling what I believe to be a time machine that was built in the year 2239 by Dr. J. S. Strauss. I found the machine under my house when I was doing remodeling to the bathroom. The machine was hidden in a old rotten wood chest along with some other findings that I believe to be related to the machine like old pictures, letters, etc. I dont know too much about time machines or electronics, but from my observations I believe that the machine might have caught on fire, at some time or another from the looks of the inside, and is now in a non-working condition. It also looks like there might be some parts missing on the inside, but I dont know. The time machine itself is not too heavy -- it weighs 20 pounds and it is 18" high by 23" wide and 11" depth.

I found the time machine in December of 2004 and I have tried to get it to work but I could not. I even called my best friend who has worked on cars, and even he could not get it to work. I know this time machine might be one of the most important discoveries of all time, but if I can't get the time machine to work, then it's not worth that much to me, so that is why im selling it on ebay. Also, I figured I could get a little extra money so I could finish remodeling my bathroom.

I'm not sure what else I can say...

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Ross

Tonight is the legendary family campaign. I switched everything over to Eberron a while ago and so far it's been quite a bit of fun. The biggest issue is that I have seven still relatively inexperienced players so the campaign moves pretty slowly. I need to look into ways of speeding it up. Of course, when I try and hurry things along they just get mad at me for spoiling the social aspect, which for most of them is the primary reason they come -- that and the food. I think, if I'm lucky, having me as a DM probably ranks around tenth.

So I watched the new Episode III trailer. A co-worker had it; I'm not sure where he got it since it's not on the Apple quicktime site (I imagine it will be there soon). It looks really cool, but of course that's never been the problem -- they've all looked really cool. I guess this one is probably going to get a PG-13 rating, and Lucas has said he wouldn't take 5-6 year olds to it. My number one son is going to be disappointed, though I may just take him anyway... how harmful can it be? Of course, later at the trial they'll find this entry and use it to throw me in jail as well.

I find that by the time Friday rolls around my blogging energy has mostly been depleted. Of course most of you will argue that I never had any blogging energy, and to you I say, "I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pick up my dinosaurs and leave the room."

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Ross

Today Pakistan admitted that its chief nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, provided Iran with centrifuges. In a curious coincidence, I went out to lunch today with a Pakistani consultant. I decided to talk to him about the issue and he said, "Yeah I know that guy, his daughter is really hot." I guess his family lives in the capital city and is part of the upper class, so as a result I guess they went to a lot of the same social functions. He mentioned that not only did he know Qadeer, but that he's sure that Qadeer would recognize him and know who he is if they ran into each other. When you think about this coincidence you have to wonder, what are the odds?

The consultant took quite a few pains to assure me that he didn't agree with what Qadeer had done, but that in his experience he was a nice, down-to-earth guy. I guess things would be too easy if all evil geniuses acted like James Bond villians. I should really begin another subject to flesh out the rest of this entry, but I think I'll pass.

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Ross

When I was a child I lived in what might be termed an upper-middle class neighborhood (after I escaped from the ghetto), and so I was surrounded by people who had not only cable but that hippest of all channels, MTV. If I had had any friends then, I might have been able to watch this show and scratch that itch, but bereft of friends or cable TV, I pretty much developed this unrequited love for music videos which persists to this day. As a result, I find very few things as satisfying as opening up one of the many music video archives out there (at the moment my favorite is launch.yahoo.com and playing music videos in one corner of my screen while I work on the computer. Unfortunately I can neither do this at work, nor while playing World of Warcraft.

While I was doing this, I came across a band I had never heard before but which I instantly liked, by the name of Flogging Molly. (They're basically a fusion of Rock and Irish Folk) What was even more surprising is that the lead singer looks exactly like one of my friends (who shall remain nameless for reasons you're about to discover). This is interesting because although my friend is Scottish, not Irish, in all other respects this lead singer is leading his dream life. The closest analogy I could come up with is that movie Twins. This singer and my friend were seperated at birth, just like in the movie and unfortunately my friend landed the Danny DeVito role...

After looking further into the whole IMDB number thing, it appears that films are basically numbered chronologically and that the actors start out in a vague alphabetical order which breaks down and then restarts around #95, but looking through there are a lot of big names in the first set, like Heston and Richard Burton and Groucho Marx. Anyway, that's it for today.

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Ross

I wasn't going to post at all today. I figure I was due a day off. I didn't bother to check how long it's been since a missed a day, but it has to have been many moons. I donated platelets this morning and it threw everything off. I watched The Bourne Supremacy, which was very enjoyable, although I guess it has very little in common with the books (which I haven't read). though I think I missed about ten minutes because of a bad DVD.

One thing that amazed me is I had just barely re-watched X2, and of course, Brian Cox, but he looks so much younger and fitter in X2, I'm not sure if he worked out quite a bit or if it was just hair coloring or what, but if it wasn't for the voice (and IMDB) I almost wouldn't believe it was the same person.

Of course, the greatest transformation between two movies was Daniel Day-Lewis as Cecil in "Room with a View" and Hawkeye in "Last of the Mohicans." Here's a bit of trivia I just discovered: If you look at the links to actors, you'll see that the links are just numbers, presumably assigned in the order the film and the actor was entered. The first actor is Fred Astaire (#2 is Lauren Bacall), and the first movie is Carmencita (apparently a 1894 Edison film).

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Ross

Well, since I blogged on Friday Pacifier's Rotten Tomato Rating has dropped below that of Be Cool, but it hardly matters, since Pacifier took in over 30 million dollars at the box office -- yes, that's right: 30 million. I'm not sure if that indicates a unfulfilled hunger for family films (I hope that's what it indicates) or a tragic indictment of the American publics' taste in movies. Either way, you should start preparing yourself for Pacifier Part II, Operation Poopy Diaper.

The weekend was interesting; my son was throwing up for the majority of it. Fortunately my wife was gone for much of it, so I got to really experience the illness first hand, something which had previously been denied to me. I think it's a memory I'll always treasure; then just as that had finally settled down a railroad tanker car started leaking some horrible acids and they instituted a mandatory evactuation of a 6 square block area. Fortunately we weren't in the area that needed to be evacuated, but the major freeway we had planned to drive on was.

Overall it was an interesting weekend. There was something else I was going to write about, but I'm out of room/time, so maybe I'll talk about it tomorrow. I will leave you with one final link to an article in Slate about massively multiplayer games in particular, World of Warcraft and City of Heroes. The feelings he expresses in the beginning about why he can't play, very closely mirror my own.

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Ross

Well, I took my car into the mechanic yesterday (I can't remember if I mentioned that, and I'm too lazy to check). The big thing I was taking it in for was that the registration expired in February and I couldn't get it inspected because the check engine light came on. So they replaced a PCV valve (along with some other stuff), reset the check engine light and sent me on my way. I had driven my second car to the shop, then I was going to drive the van home, pick up the wife and kids drive back to the shop and pick up the other car. It was on the tip back to the shop (it's about a ten minute drive) that the check engine light came on, so I figure that fix lasted for all of about 12 minutes of driving time.

Adding insult to injury, my number 1 son decided to start throwing up this morning. Of course, given the choice between running to the bathroom and throwing up on the couch, he choose the latter. I suppose I can't be very upset about that, since it's my wife that has to clean it up. Though she is leaving at four to drive half-way across the state to see a play, so I'm sure that I'll get my turn. In any case, it's a great way to start the weekend.

I very rarely pay any attention to the new movies that are coming out, but one that I had some hopes for was "Be Cool." I had liked "Get Shorty" and the trailers for the sequel looked good, but some people are calling it an early contender for worst film of 2005. To give you an idea of how bad it is, as of this writing The Pacifier is getting better reviews.

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Ross

While purusing slashdot last night I came across a link to an article about a variation on the classic double-slit experiment, with this experiment instead of doing two slits in space they did two slits in time. I though that would be a very worthwhile subject to blog about, but unfortunately hours and hours of playing WoW, writing a horribly pulpy fantasy novel and the very act of blogging itself has reduced my mind to a squishy substance which looks rather like week old spam (the processed meat beloved by the inhabitants of Micronesia, not the bulk e-mail). I can understand the experiment, but I certainly couldn't condense it into a pithy re-telling. So I turned to the darker corners of the internet...

There I found a complete collection of all of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips. I can only imagine that the site is some kind of horrible copyright infringement, but while it is illegal to provide I doubt it's illegal to look at, however to help salve my conscience here is a link to where you can pre-order the complete Calvin and Hobbes collection on Amazon. You better believe that's going on my wish list.

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Ross

Continuing our discussion from yesterday, in yet another stunning display of political correctness run amok, we have the banana incident in Columbus. Apparently during a civil rights march in commeration of MLK's birthday, some woman got off a bus and saw some police officers eating bananas. She was horribly offended and demanded an apology (which she got, by the wa,y both in writing and over the phone from the police chief). But the part where it gets interesting is no one knows why she was offended. She won't say.

Obviously this happened a while ago and much has been said and written about it already, but from what I've seen, most people just classify it as yet another example of something we've already seen a lot of, but I would argue that this is something new; this is a mutation. Certainly it resembles the organism that proceeded it, but this is a whole new creature.

If we have already basically reached a point where we allow people to be offended about anything, we should at least make them come up with some justification for it, no matter how implausible. But if we get to the point where you can be offended about anything and you don't even have to come up with what it was that offended you? I think you can easily see where the oil of restraint which keeps society functioning would quickly be replaced with venom.

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Ross

I belong to quite a few mailing lists. I guess getting 500 pieces of spam a day isn't enough -- I have to add another hundred mailing list messages as well. Today on one of these lists someone used the word "kosher," specifically that their D&D campaign was not kosher. Someone else on the list went ballistic over the use of this word. I have to say I was surprised; there are words you expect to generate a reaction (the mildest I can think of off the top of my head is "chick") but "kosher"? Of course immediately everyone assumed that he was Jewish and that's why he was offended; I don't think that's what it was...

A closer read of some of the guy's posts lead me to believe that he had no particular fondness for the Jewish people and may in fact have been a neo-nazi. I guess that the most surprising thing of all is that political correctness has come full circle and is now being used by anti-semites. All of this goes to show, of course, that we really need to have PSA's on the value of not being so incredibly prickly. I swear, everywhere I turn people are launching jihads against anything they find even remotely offensive. The latest story is about how animal activists managed to stop "Road Kill" candy. Will the madness never end?

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Ross