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Procrastination

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

Procrastination isn’t always a bad thing. The tension of realizing you’re putting off something important you probably should do can make you a lot more productive at things. For instance, instead of taking my unplanned day off from work to work on my thesis, I’m using it to list my tasks, clear some festering old things I’ve needed to do for awhile, and reorganize myself for more productivity. Likewise, while I would probably struggle to force myself to read any of the books or papers I need as a source to my thesis, at the moment I would probably read Getting Things Done in a single sitting.

Hopefully I’ll keep the winning feeling for long enough to turn it into a habit. That’s the hope, but past experience has shown it hasn’t happened yet. On the other hand, my impulses to keep my life neatly organized are becoming more and more frequent, so maybe it won’t be long until the habit finally takes. I’ll need it—I’ll be quite busy this upcoming semester.

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A most remarkable device

Sunday, March 2nd, 2008

I was reminded today that I have the most remarkable device installed in my apartment: a grilled cheese sandwich detector.

Every time I make a grilled cheese sandwich it goes BEEP BEEP BEEP as loudly as possible. This is to warn me that I have a grilled cheese sandwich in my apartment, and that if I don’t evacuate immediately it might kill me. It has other features too: for instance, it warns me when I’m using my oven without cleaning it first, or if the pizza I am baking has dripped bits of now-burning cheese onto the bottom of the oven. This is a very important feature, and I very much appreciate having alarms go off whenever I lose the slightest bit of cheese from my pizza.

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I am embarrassed for my university.

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

Nerds to Auction Themselves to Women

PULLMAN, Wash. (AP) — Looking to recruit more women, and perhaps date some sorority girls, the largest computer club at Washington State University hopes to hold a “nerd auction.” The idea is to trade their computer skills to sorority girls in exchange for a makeover and, possibly, a date.

“You can buy a nerd and he’ll fix your computer, help you with stats homework, or if you’re really adventurous, take you to dinner!” Ben Ford, president of the Linux Users Group, said on its Web site recently.

Ford acknowledged that some of the group’s 213 registered members may not be ready for the auction block.

“The problem is that we’re all still nerds. Let’s face it, guys. If anyone’s going to bid on us, we’ll need some spicing up,” he wrote. “And who better to help with that than sorority girls who like nothing better than a makeover?”

Source

This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of. Of course, the entire reason for this was mentioned later on:

This all began as an effort to recruit more women into computer science progams…

Somehow, I doubt that perpetuating the stereotype that college-age women are too stupid to operate and maintain their computers without the assistance of male nerds will help this. (Even if it is true, it’s more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than any inherent problem with women, and perpetuating the stereotype only makes it worse.) And while it’s no secret that computer enthusiasts are generally male nerds with little ability to attract women, I don’t think advertising this generalization will attract women to computer science programs either.

A public relations class decided to help by studying the social dynamics of the Linux group, which focuses on the use of the computer operating system.

Fortunately, it wasn’t the PR class that came up with this dumb idea; it was Ben Ford, in the shower. I say “fortunately” because WSU’s communications department has a good reputation as far as communications departments go, and after this level of national embarrassment I want there to be something left over for WSU to be proud of.

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Posted in College, Commentary | 7 Comments »

The moon rules!

Monday, August 27th, 2007

My class schedule this year has absurdly early classes three days a week (9 AM on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and absurdly late classes two days a week (3 PM to 9 PM on Tuesdays, 3 to 7 on Thursdays). Almost fittingly, however, this corresponds very well to tonight’s total eclipse of the fucking moon, which ends at 4:22 AM, leaving 8 hours of sleep before I get up at a leisurely noon and prepare for class.

With that settled, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I can’t very well sacrifice a virgin, since I’m not in favor of human sacrifice, to say nothing of the challenge of finding one at this late date. I’m also not sure where to go to see it. While I don’t know if the observatory itself will be open, it might be worth driving up there just because the hill is a prime viewing spot. (Of course it is, that’s where the observatory is!)

I do, however, have the music picked out—Dark Side of the Moon. True, the album is arguably more befitting of a solar eclipse (particularly in its final lyrics), but the sound is more befitting of nighttime.

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They don’t make my shampoo and conditioner anymore

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

I ran out of Aussie shampoo and conditioner so I went to get more. Well, instead of the “medium” or “mild” or other conditioner/shampoo Aussie used to make, they now only have “moist” and a variety of blends that are supposed to, I dunno, be especially nice. The only ones they had at the store were “volume”, “sun-kissed shine” and “soft”. Well, my hair’s soft enough already, and volume could have been a disaster, so I tried sun-kissed shine.

It’s quite shiny.

But now on the internet it looks like they have a “catch the wave” shampoo and conditioner that not only defines waves and curls, it even “helps eliminate frizz”. AAAAAAA!

Ooh, but they make a “calm that frizz creme”!

(No pictures because my camera is in Pullman.)

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Dream journal

Saturday, May 19th, 2007

I recently woke up from an interesting dream.

When this dream started out, I was some type of investigator—I think a rogue investigator—who was trying to locate some woman’s guard dog, because by capturing the guard dog we could then capture the woman. I don’t know why we wanted to capture the woman, but she was some type of stripper or prostitute who worked in a bad part of town.

The woman was someone I knew from high school, I think, but I can’t give a name. I highly doubt it’s anyone who has ever read this blog though.

At some point during this investigation, I signed onto MSN Messenger. Instead of two contacts, I had about five—including people I don’t talk to anymore. I could also see people’s MSN names, which I don’t have Adium set up to do.

In another part of the dream, I was a Japanese ship’s captain, and I was ordering a bagel with lasagna on the side. (I know this makes no sense, but whatever). Then the lasagna disappeared, but it turned out it was eaten by the crew during a trip into the past. Okay.

In the next part, I time traveled into the past to help some blond woman (possibly Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica, or just Katee Sackhoff, or maybe it was some other girl from high school) on some type of mission. I don’t remember much, except she decided to go back a year, or live out a year during the past in order to accomplish the mission.

The final part of the dream took place during the Civil War. I was a Confederate from Missouri who spent all his time in a Virginia bar ranting about how Virginia and Missouri together could take on the whole world. (Except I pronounced it “Missoura”). Among other things I think I dumped out a bootful of Missouri soil onto the floor, or something. As far as I can tell I was well-accepted. Interestingly enough, I didn’t remember during the dream that Missouri didn’t join the Confederacy.

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On losing a friend

Monday, May 14th, 2007

I seem to have lost a friend. I remember a quote: “It is sad to lose a friend. Not everyone has had a friend.”

My friend didn’t die, or disappear, or get abducted by Marxists. Perhaps she was never my friend to begin with. After all, our friendship was one of the few things I felt certain in, and confident of. If I couldn’t trust in that I don’t think I can trust in anything. I used to confidently think, and say, that we would always be friends, no matter what—that we would always stay in contact with each other. If I was so horribly wrong about one of the most obvious truths to my life, what am I right about? I can no longer trust anyone outside my immediate family. I can no longer let anyone become so important to me.

But the worst part is, there’s one less person in the world I can have a conversation with now. For me there have been few of those people in my life. Maybe some people have a surplus, and can stand to lose one or two.

So be it. This friendship didn’t have the best of beginnings, so I never deserved for it to last as long as it did. I’m not going to go into details, but suffice it to say that when I met this person, I was a different person from who I am today. Back then I was a rather awful person at times. I like to think I’m not so awful anymore, but it’s only in retrospect that I’ll know for sure.

But most people are rather awful at times, and a smaller majority are rather awful most of the time. And one can never really be sure when one has found a true exception. So it is wise to be reserved when dealing with people.

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Posted in Daily Life | 5 Comments »

Cascading life failure

Friday, April 20th, 2007

What is a cascading life failure?

A cascading life failure occurs when something goes wrong in one’s life, putting them into an obsessively bad mood that hinders their performance in other aspects of their life. This causes other things to go wrong, thus worsening the subject’s mood, thus causing other things to go wrong, and so forth. Susceptibility to cascading life failure can be a very significant personal flaw.

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My TA on Maxwell’s Demon

Friday, April 13th, 2007

“Physics does involve occasional congress with demonic beings…this demon is very stupid and has a very boring job”.

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More on alternatives to pants

Friday, April 6th, 2007

I’ve been doing some research since my initial post about how pants make no sense.

A couple people suggested Utilikilts. If I had $171 to spend on a kilt and belt I’d get one. It doesn’t really bother me that a Utilikilt costs $131 when I could easily get three or four pair of pants for the same price, because I don’t like pants and because wear and tear is three or four times higher for pants, to say nothing of having to wash them more often.

The used Utilikilt market doesn’t help much either. eBay doesn’t have much, and it would be hard to find something in my size. There are also alternative brands but they don’t save me that much money.

I think it would be ideal and most elegant to just wear some type of robes around, but that’s too much of a departure from cultural norms and would require inventing my own clothing instead of just buying it. So that’s out.

Sarongs are interesting, because they’re from Polynesia, and men wear them in Polynesia as an unbifurcated garment. Plus, I actually have one (a friend got one for me in Bali after hearing me rant about how there should be alternatives to pants). But sarongs are really just summerwear, and it’s not warm enough yet, so…

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