Two Slashes

Alright, so this should at least partially explain my late posting last night.  Yes, I concede defeat, but it only means you’re getting two posts today.  And perhaps a slice of cake.  I hear people like cake.

It’s a funny thing.  Last night, I found myself up until all hours of the night, alternating between working on (an admittedly lame) project for one of my computer science classes (a simple shell, in case you were wondering) and helping a few of my friends set up everything they needed for a conference they were having over this weekend.  An iPhone software developer’s conference, to be exact, complete with introductory labs and plenty of student-provided help on hand.

And now, day one into the conference, and I’ve already found myself walking around wearing an Apple beanie and a lime green shirt with a huge silhouette of an iPhone screen-printed across the front (a shirt reserved for conference staff).  It’s the opposite of what one would expect given my previous rant about iPhones back when they were first announced.

Yes, the same person who was elected chair of the local student Linux Users Group is now running around answering random questions of MacBook-toting attendees.  While carrying around a Treo Pro (which runs Windows Mobile – is that double blasphemy?).  And a Dell laptop.  (If that’s not a sign of me at least being aware of and open to what’s around, I don’t know what is.)  At least most of the people I came in contact with didn’t notice (or at least, they didn’t show any signs of it).

Admittedly, the questions I’ve been answering aren’t so much related to Objective-C and a device with more influence on culture than as they are locating the bathroom or finding out what time a talk starts and ends, and there’s been plenty of me sitting and babysitting overflow rooms full of people (due to the unexpectedly high demand for attendance in combination with being assigned smaller rooms for presentation), interspersed with babysitting a lobby full of hungry people and carrying the remains of the feeding hour for those hungry people out to a dumpster.  I’ve been taking any spare time between (or even during) these events writing posts and working on my shell more.

What I’ve caught of the talks has been fairly informative, though useless to me as someone not all that interested (at the moment, at least) in the iPhone platform, and it isn’t quite enough to make me “eat more fruit.”  That isn’t to say they weren’t well-presented; it seems as though the guy who’s been doing most of the talking has seen this YouTube video about proper PowerPoint etiquette.  (And before you ask…yes, he was using Keynote, so it might not be all him.)

Oh, and while bugs in software are fun, bugs that laugh at you are even more fun.  (Yes, that’s a bug in my code.)

And yes, the cake is a lie.  Or maybe not…

I came across a discussion on 20SB today regarding Michael Phelps and his little ‘drug incident’, the latest controversy to hit the media…right before whatever major controversy came right before it .  (I forget, as that’s what people tend to do.  They forget the previous misdeed as soon as something more recent gets brought to the forefront of their attention, even though the misdeed in question will still have lasting consequences.)

To be honest, I’ve always wondered why people take a particular interest in the private dealings performed by the rest of the world.  With any media format you care to name, chances are it’s been used to delve into the personal lives of countless famed actors and sports figures.  Blogs, television shows…essentially, you name it, it’s been used to tap into things that have no reason to be public.

People wonder why their friends tend to be photophobic and don’t want their pictures posted everywhere.  When you have incidents like this, it’s not a stretch to wonder why.  It can make or break relationships, turn relationships one way or the other, or, in some cases, completely screw up the rest of your life.  It all depends on who finds your dirty laundry and how evil they are with it, with a direct correlation to the amount of fame you’ve garnered throughout your life.  And it’s all stuff that people wouldn’t find out about otherwise, too.

In our quest for information and with the growth of media, we’ve evolved from caring about relevant and timely information to as much trivial tripe as we can stuff into our primitive brains, personal business being just one of the many categories people file away on a daily basis, with the only benefit being the increased average skill at pop culture games like Trivial Pursuit.  And whether that can even be classified as a skill is a debatable topic at best.

I find it rather pathetic that we’ve changed how we define our lives from what we do to what we do without getting caught, too.  Alas, that is a rant for another time.

I never thought I would be adding a marijuana tag, despite the fact that I’m not a druggie.  Go figure.

And yes, this post was almost two hours late, and it’s shorter than normal.  I have a legitimate excuse, though.

Once again, events have left me trying to crank out a post in less than a half hour.  Whether this post makes it before midnight remains to be seen.  And yes, this little blurb counts towards my four hundred words.

Rather than come up with a regular post, I decided that I might try something different here.  Instead of ranting about one or two specific topics, I’m going to try to micro-rant about some of the things I managed to microblog about throughout the day.  If I think this works out, perhaps I’ll do it once in a while when I think my tweets are amusing and/or confusing enough to warrant more than Twitter’s 140 character limit.  (Today’s tweet selection isn’t particularly interesting, but I promise to be more selective in the future.)

Here’s a hint: A link to a password reset page is useless if it’s in the realm you authenticate to WITH that password. Common sense. (link)

Attending a college where almost every educator is expected to maintain at least some portion of their course online is one thing.  When the professor doesn’t realize that parts of his website require student authentication, then tries to be helpful by providing a password reset link inside the authenticated area of the website, you realize that someone forgot their common sense at home today.

In all honesty, while the password required can be reset elsewhere (it’s one of a few campus-wide passwords, after all), it goes to show that even the most helpful people can be made to look like the stupidest given the right circumstances.

Did I mention how much I hate public speaking? (link)

As some of you might now, this semester is my first as the chair of the campus Linux Users Group.  One of the requirements of this fun position is that I take part in any ACM events.

Today, ACM held an open house in an attempt to get at least a few new members for the organization and for the underlying special interest groups (like LUG).  Each of the SIG chairs had to give a short talk on their group discussing what it focused on and why people would be interested in joining.

Public speaking is not my thing, and this time was no exception.  Not only did I rush through my (“borrowed”, but that’s another story) slides as quickly as I possibly could, I also forgot to mention a few things.  Like my name, for instance.

My math discussion has degenerated into math jokes, terrible pickup lines, and a class discussion about gaming. Hmm. (link)

You know you’re in for a good semester when a discussion section for your math class turns from vectors to video games.  I think my partners and I spent more time discussing the merits of Grand Theft Auto and Gears of War than we did discussing anything particularly relevant to the course content.  Of course, this quickly turned into a few math jokes with the discussion TA (somewhat linked to the games) as well as a few lame pickup lines nobody should ever use.

*shrug*  Hopefully this post makes some sense.  Must…click…Publish!

I’m quite sure that the title and my repeated mentions of the word “Coke” are going to be enough to add drug addicts to my usual oddball crowd of visitors via El Goog (yes, that’s Google spelled backwards).  On the other hand, it’ll be fun to have something other than a few suicidals showing up in my statistics for a change.

People who have known me for any length of time already know that I’m a habitual Coca-Cola drinker.

One of the cool things about drinking so much Coke is that it affords you a plentiful number of caps to enter on their reward website, where things like headphones and thumbdrives can be mine for the low, low price of…several hundred bottle caps?  Combine my caps with those contributed to me by my friends, and you’ll find that I have quite the cache of points waiting to be entered.

Of course, these could be entered at a reasonable rate of ten codes per day, which explains why I haven’t already purchased everything Coke has to offer on that dinky rewards site of theirs.  Each cap is considered to be worth three points, so three points times ten caps is thirty points per day.  If I remember to enter codes every day of the week, that’s 210 points.

Of course, that’s going to be a thing of the past starting later this month.  Coke circulated an e-mail earlier today announcing that they were changing their point entry policy.

To quickly recap (pardon the pun?) in case you don’t want to read the e-mail (that last link), Coke has decided that they’re replacing the per-day code limit with a 120-point-per-week ceiling.  While this sounds awesome, let’s do some simple math.

Like I said above, the current situation allows 210 points (assuming only caps are entered; there are other codes that can be entered) per week.  The new limit of 120 points means that I can cram four days worth of work into one, then take a week-long vacation while the ceiling gets reset, all the while getting 90 points per week less than I was before.

Combine this with the ever-increasing “prices” on everything, and you’ll find that My Coke Rewards is quickly becoming more of a pain-in-the-butt than a useful waste of time.

If this trend continues, I might as well stop entering codes and share the wealth with the people who still think it’s worth their while.  Does anybody have a use for my codes?

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I’m not overly political, so I’ll start by saying that I had no intention of watching, looking for news of, or otherwise concerning myself with today’s inaugural ceremonies.  I don’t have anything against the President, but it’s not something I feel I need to drop everything for.

I failed to completely avoid coverage of everything going on.  A pair of posts by d-blogged caught my attention, and I liked both of them so much that I figured I would pass word of them on.  (His blog is worthy of the traffic, so I’m not going to be copying his content.  You can visit for yourself. )

d-blogged first offered a well-worded and inspiring entry on how today marks a turning point in the history of our country.  I particularly found his metaphor for the mirror interesting after later learning that legislation would be posted to the White House website for all to read and comment on.  Reflective of the nation’s desires, indeed (though I can see how the idea might raise some concerns).  I’m also sure that some people are taking comfort in finally finding the one politician who seems to counter the notion that the entire lot of them are crooks.

The second post, however, was more interesting to me, containing only an image of Obama and a caption welcoming the new president.  I took one look at the portrait and immediately drew a parallel to a similar pose most geeks might recognize (and even a good number of non-geeks):  Neo’s first experience stopping bullets near the end of The Matrix.

It’s not merely the pose that interests me, but perhaps the inadvertent symbolism implied.  If you think about it, Neo and Obama both represent the same thing:  hope.  And (while they’re “out-of-frame” in Obama’s case), the bullets could represent threats to freedom, and the Matrix’s agents bear a resemblance to real-world terrorists.  With enough thought, I’m sure just about every major character in the Matrix trilogy could be covered, and with a reasonable explanation to boot.  Whoa.  (Alright, I had to.)

Of course, I could be thinking too far into a digitized image of the president reaching out to the people he represents.  But that’s not any fun, is it?  (If people can look into their grilled cheese sandwich and see Malcolm X…alright, I digress.)

Oh, and today’s Shirt.Woot design is completely appropriate considering the occasion.  I won’t be ordering a shirt, but as of this posting there are still a few left if you want to get your grubby paws on one.  I think I’ll pass on some of the other memorabilia, though.

I came back from another semester at school thinking I would have something resembling a normal holiday season. As headache-inducing as the season customarily is for me during a normal year, this one’s poised to take the gold as one of the more frustrating. How so? A series of events I’d like to call the “Chistmas-takes.” (I’m still trying to figure out whether that’s the best way to merge the words. There are just too many good possibilities!)

Not-A-Tree
It’s family tradition each year to get a real, live tree for Christmas. There are plenty of stories and subtraditions to go along with this, including the numerous incidents involving either my father or myself nearly getting knocked off ladders trying to cut the netting, the wide (when netted!) trees that don’t fit through the front door, the trees that are too tall and need to be cut in approximately half just to be stood up in the living room, and the replacement of the tree stand every third year or so because the one currently in use just won’t hold this year’s tree.

My parents decided to forego all of the “frustration” (as they put it) this year and opted for a fake tree, an idea I’m having a rather difficult time warming up to after twenty years of pine scent and sap. And in a way, I do think I’ve got reason to gripe: the “not-a-tree” (as I’ve so eloquently dubbed it) is more of a faux-pine cylinder (at least, from certain angles) than it is a tree-shape, and I just don’t think a tree I can pull into at least four pieces without the need of a bow saw screams “Holidays!” to anyone. Honestly, I feel like I’m celebrating Festivus every time I walk past the “tree”, what with the metal trunk and all.

Not So Gifted
Despite my parents complaining year after year that I’m one of the most difficult people they’ve ever had to shop for, they usually come through reasonably well. It’s all but certain that I should expect a few books under the tree every year, and in most cases the books I end up with are reasonable selections.

This year, however, my mother decided to eschew any Christmas-morning confusion and plain out told me the books I should be expecting. One was the latest in a series of books I’ve been reading since my childhood. To be honest, they’re (disturbingly) below my reading level at this point, but I find them an entertaining read now and then, though it works out better when I hadn’t been given the same book for Easter.

The other book? Well, I’d rather not mention it, but now that I have…erm, Twilight. (Yes, I shuddered when she said it, too.) I’m sorry, but fantasy romance novels aren’t my cup of tea. Nor have they ever been. I think perhaps the closest I’ve come to that genre was the Harry Potter series. And that’s also as close as I would like to come to it, thank you very much.

Tower In The Snow
Christmas Eve generally ends up being the calm before the storm, with a (relatively) quiet family dinner, T’was The Night Before Christmas, and perhaps a viewing of It’s A Wonderful Life.

Not this Christmas Eve, however. Two of my siblings decided that the best way to honor the holidays was by honoring their gender. And they did so alright, ‘erecting’ what can only be described as a five-foot-tall phallus in the middle of the front lawn. It’s since been partially dismantled, but I’m sure the neighbors have more than a few questions for the next person they see setting foot outside my house.

Mugshot
I may have a digital camera, but I don’t often pull it out at family gatherings to take pictures of everyone and everything for posterity’s sake, and I own perhaps a single picture frame, which at the moment probably rests haphazardly in a drawer in my dresser. (One day, I’ll probably have a different mindset, but that’s another topic…)

Imagine my surprise, then, to open up a gift from my aunt to find this keychain picture frame resting inside the colorful paper.

I wasn’t the only one to double-take at the idea, either. Rachelskirts offered up a few of her suggestions on how to use the device, but I’m not quite sure that stuffing it full of pictures of the Pope or Elijah Wood qualify as intended uses for the product. I’m open to any other suggestions on how to put it to use, but pending anything worthwhile, it’s sitting on my desk and will probably be given off at some point.

There have been a multitude of other headache-inducing moments, including my mom figuring out how to use a snowblower for the first time, resulting in a driveway’s worth of snow in the garage, and the series of mishaps right before dinner on Christmas Eve, but those are perhaps better kept to myself.

I realize that this mostly sounds like a giant complaint post, and perhaps you’re right if you’re thinking so. To that, I’ll simply point out that there’s not much of a happy story to be had when the holiday magic is gone.

Humbug?