do_While(True)

Yesterday I went over to Louis's parents' place. It's really close to the house I lived in fifteen years ago. That was kind of weird. We had a cook out and I finally learned how to play Croquet. A combination of one lucky turn and John and Pat bludgeoning each other saw me as the definitive winner. It's oddly good to see Christine; I don't think I ever knew her as a kid.

Today I called out of work sick. I meant to call my home warranty company and set up a time for them to send someone to fix my A/C; I still haven't. Part of my likes being a little miserable, I think. I finished my requirement for eHarmony, which means they're giving my 6 months free. I won't be renewing with them.

I watched "I Heart Huckabees" today. It's been sitting in my living room for about a month. It was really, really, really strange, but pretty good. Most of what the characters say doesn't make much sense, but the movie makes a few interesting philosophical points. I also upgraded to 3-at-a-time (+$4/month) to justify renting some TV shows. The first are "Carnivale" and "Tin Man," with "Battlestar Galactica" likely to follow.

And now, a meme: ( Five Things )

So, here's
a commentary post on Microsoft's proposed "Digital Manners Policies." It's
a pretty straightforward idea: let devices accept broadcast commands that
limit functionality, such as forcing cellphones into vibrate mode in movie
theatres and shutting of photo-taking in locker rooms (as for that second
one, is there a big problem with that or are people just being paranoid?).
Apparently OnStar (the nice people who live inside certain cars) are already
building in some of this functionality, putting in a mechanism that lets
police shut off your engine remotely (can anyone see why this functionality
would make me really uncomfortable? Hint: it has little to do with the
enforcement of laws).

The article brings up lots of the problems with this system -- the one that
mainly concerns me is "how do we keep the bad guys from taking advantage of
it?" I mean, if the cops can shut off my car engine, why can't a
car-jacker? If movie theatres can shut off my phone, why not a
home-invader?

But even more than raising my (already-heightened) concern over these
policies (which would take control of my devices away from me), this article
made me *really* want to play
Shadowrun. Like, a lot.

I just read this quote, "I take nothing away from rocket scientists or
biologists who are trying to cure cancer, but in our domain we really
couldn't think of a more difficult problem, and that really excited us," and
thought, wow, rocket scientists are helping to cure cancer?

From an article on net-neutrality and traffic-shaping on Ars Technica. Link
in case you're interested.

Dinner tonight was steak and deviled eggs. There was no exploding involved (though the meat did pop a little bit).

Also, I found that while I love White Russians (the drinks, though Anastasiya is a good example of the alternative), Black Russians knock me on my ass, as they say. That whole cream/milk bit makes quite a difference. (Unfortunately, my milk went bad... quite some time ago. I haven't replaced it yet.)

Really. The more often I listen to this song, the more I like it. I think it's awesome that Weezer got the YouTube stars in their video.

Sometimes the world is just Silly.

If you know much about viral YouTube vids, this new Weezer Vid is pretty awesome.

So, I decided last night that I wanted to have hard-boiled eggs for dinner.

Unfortunately, I ended up getting involved in catching up on emails after
putting the eggs on.
Eggs will explode if they're left on the stove after the water has all
boiled away.
I made hamburgers.

In Freshman year ogf High School, we were going through grammar -- in
particular, sentence diagraming. I'd done diagraming before in middle
school, and I kind of liked it because it was rather like a game.
One random monday our teacher gave us a test on diagraming. I was never a
modle student, and as such didn't apply much effort into studying over the
weekend. When the grades came back, our teacher said she was really
disappointed because of the low grades, except for one paper that god 100%
correct. Then she turned to me: "Mr. Portner," as she called me, "tell the
class how much you studied over the weekend." I sheepishly responded with,
"you don't want me to do that," and she said, "no, that's the wrong answer."
-smirk-

I like the memory, though it earned me few points with my peers (with few
exceptions I didn't care that much), but I bring it up now because... It's
probably nothing, and it's probably not the big deal that it feels like to
me, but there have been rumblings that I'm giving my younger brothers a bad
example. That is, I'm too successful too quickly with too little effort.

I never planned to be where I am, at all. I don't think I thought
about college much at all before half-way through Senior year. I applied to
three schools: Xavier (a Jesuit school practically next door to my three
favorite paternal cousins), CUA (a Catholic school located conveniently
close to my maternal grandparents and cousins), and Drexel (a tech school my
buddy Louis was looking at, and the only thing that hints that maybe I was
thinking 'computers' more than I let on). I got accepted to all three,
though Xavier offered me almost no financial aid. CUA won out in my mind
because it was close to "home" and in my (parents') pocketbook because they
tacked on a little extra scholarship money (before that Drexel and CUA were
tied down to the dollar).

Interest in Drexel aside, I didn't always want to do computers. A large
enough part of me thought I wanted to be an English Major, though in truth I
think I was interested in Linguistics. My disdain for literary analysis (at
the time) saw me write that off, and computers were my second choice. I
took to programming like a fish to water and ended up graduating at the top
of my class (despite not feeling like I was terribly taxed by the
curriculum).

I had no plans for after graduation. If things had gone differently maybe I
would have made plans, but they went exactly as they did. In the Fall of
senior year I was handed (and subsequently filled out and turned in) an
application for a Master's degree program. In fact, a scholarship, where
they would pay me to go to school. I had no real drive to get a higher
degree (not really, anyways), and the driving force was the memory of how
hard Beth H.'s brother had to fight to get a job after he graduated with a
BS in CS. The only down side (and it was a major down side to me) was that
the school was out in California, but the benefits outweighed that one
negative. Even at that, if not for the intervention of one of the ladies on
the other end (Tanya Raven), my application probably would have been quite a
bit weaker -- I'd made a half-hearted attempt at the essay under the
mistaken belief tyhat they cared about the answer as opposed to my
demonstrating my writing ability. After submitting a REAL essay I was told
me application was "a lot stronger."

Despite doing well in Undergraduate and Graduate computer programs, I've
never felt very confident in my technical skills. I think I'm much more
valuable for my well-roundedness and my ability to bridge the communication
gap between people who are actually technical and people who really
aren't.

I was able to get a nice paying job right after graduation, and was able to
buy a house in a very favorable market. I get paid probably twice what
common wisdom would expect me to at my age. Yeah, I have a Master's Degree
and maybe most guys my age don't, but... I didn't even *plan* to have this
job. I pursued it as much as I did because it brought me back home, and I
wanted to be home more than pretty much anything.

So, yeah. I'm setting a bad example because my dumb luck had placed me --
accidentally, from my perspective -- in a very favorable position. studied
computers more-or-less on accident, and it turns out that's a very
marketable skill set, especially when it gets refined through Graduate
School. It wasn't EASY, but it wasn't planned, either. I don't feel
like I exerted much effort at all, I just did what was needed for the next
step. I didn't even have a plan for the second step, it just showed up.

And this rumbling bothers me because it touches on two sore spots for me.
The first is that part of me things I really shouldn't be where I am,
that I haven't had to fight hard enough for the rewards I've been given.
And the other bit is that I really do care about the impression that I give
to people, particularly the role modle I present to my brothers. I'm not
prepared to deal with the idea that I might be having a negative effect on
people.

Anyways, like I said, it's probably not as big a deal as it feels to me.
The people who said these things, almost in passing, probably didn't mean
them the way I've taken them. It just strikes much too close to my own
fears and demons, and it's something i'm having a hard time shaking off.

Hacking a computer is one thing. Hacking the telephone network is
another thing entirely. And doing it blind...?
Despite using his powers for evil, you have to admit that kid is
frighteningly talented.