LiveJournal Project - Jan/Feb 2005

2005 was definitely not a good year. Well, it certainly ended on a shitty note, that's for sure. Let's see how it started.

Date: 2005-01-04 16:12
Subject: not surprising at all...

Ed: This explains a lot - basically I'm pretty good at everything except music and dealing with other people.

Date: 2005-02-03 16:20
Subject: advisory...
if you can see this, then please read it.

i have a strong suspicion that there is something wrong with those white alligators, so i'm mailing one off to ecstasydata.org to be lab tested. i would suggest not taking any until the results of the test are posted (about two weeks).

Date: 2005-02-05 10:10
Subject: quote of the day...

I live in a world like that, where everything is sort of shit, every car burns oil, every orgasm is somehow inferior, finding a suppurating lesion on a broad's tit is to be expected, where modems do not connect for more that ten minutes without puking some sort of Gaussian vomitus on the floor, where no clothes fit quite right, where the food is grey and tasteless, like boiled grass clippings, where scorpions and centipedes gambol in the dawn light, where wankers are taken semi-seriously, top-posting tolerated by decent men simply because it is so exhausting to sweep back yet another mudslide of indifferent, just-in-time semi-competance, given only a broom whose bristles are worn to the nubbins of futility, where everyone's opinion is shown the same sort of bovine respect, tainted, contaminated, used, infected, surplus, redundant, shopworn, scarred and not quite to spec; remaindered books all I seem to get, operating Life 1.2 when the current life is alleged by trusted liars to be 4.3, saw my first unicorn, a road-kill on Rte 30, and bonds yield 4.2% and inflation yields 5%, where cynicism is confused with erudition and erudition with wisdom, where woodchucks are hunted with machineguns and the best in life is to drink your master's piss. Did I mention brain-damaged software APIs?"

-the venerable dc-stuff woodchuck
and people say that i am disillusioned and cynical?

Date: 2005-02-15 17:17
Subject: guns don't kill people, bullets do.
the absolute stupidity of the arizona legislature never ceases to amaze me. From here: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0215bar-guns15.html "In a latest tribute to the Wild West, Arizona legislators have come up with a plan to legalize loaded weapons in places that serve alcohol. Senate Bill 1363 breezed through the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 5-2 vote Monday and appears headed toward a promising future in the full Senate and House."

ok, y'know, i don't have a problem with guns - if people want to own them for hunting, for protection, for aesthetic value, that's fine by me. i've thought about picking up a few assault rifles myself now that the ban has been lifted, just in case there ever actually is some sort of armed revolt in this society. and i don't really care much about concealed carry laws, either - but there just seems something inherently wrong with the notion of allowing people to mix alcohol and firearms. the last thing we need is some drunk-off-his-ass idiot starting a fight and intead of simply getting himself beat up, gets shot instead by some hothead with a pistol in his pants. what the fuck is wrong with these people? they can't honestly claim that passing this bill is going to make folks SAFER - yet it seems that's exactly what they're trying to say. and before any of you 2nd amendment lunatics (if there are any of you such folks reading this) get on my ass, let me remind you that there's nothing absolute about the second amendment any more than there is about the first (or any of the rest of them). you can't falsely shout "fire" in a crowded theatre and claim 1st amendment protection - and you shouldn't be able to carry a gun into a fucking bar.

john huppenthal, the head of the state senate judiciary committee, said this: "Restaurants and bars will be safer after the bill passes because criminals, who ignore laws barring guns, won't take the chance with customers who might also be armed..." are you kidding me? does he really believe that? it's not like everyone and his dog owns a gun, or has a CCW permit, or even bothers to carry said weapon around all the time. what kind of message are we trying to send here - that the world is so bloody fucked up and dangerous that everyone ought to go out, buy a gun, and have it on hand at all time to ward off the miscreants? oh, hey, better take your glock when you go out for pizza, because you never know when the criminals are going to come after you!

funny - we don't want nuclear proliferation because we know full well that the more people that have nukes, the greater the chances of something unpleasant happening, but we seem to have no problem giving everybody a gun.

Date: 2005-02-23 02:13
Subject: eh? blink blink
it's been awhile since i've actually put down a missive here which contained something other than a quote, a political rant, or a meaningless quiz; whether this is due to a lack of interesting occurrences in my life or simply a missing desire to write, i don't know - perhaps a combination of both. so, today, dear friends of the blackbird - today is your lucky day. or something. really, though, life has not been particularly interesting. we're about 6 weeks into the spring semester at ASU, and none of my classes are all that inspiring. i can see the finish line which is my graduation approaching on the horizon, and questions of "what the fuck will i do then?" continue to creep into my brain when i'm least prepared to deal with them. the question of grad school comes up constantly, but the more i think about it, the more i start to doubt whether or not i'm going to get in ANYWHERE. not because of poor grades, not because of lack of recommendations, not because of poor GRE/LSAT scores - none of those things will be a problem - what's really going to kill me, i think, is that i really just don't know what i want to do. i look at my undergraduate existence and i say "fuck, i'm tired of dealing with these people, these classes, this mundanity - i want to work on real-world problems, i want to do something challenging, i want to be around people who are smarter than me so that i have something to reach for" -- and that's about where it ends. i don't have a specific research interest in mind, i don't have a project that i've been working on for the last three years, i don't really have a fucking clue. when you think about doctoral dissertations, they're all so exceedingly specific - you've become an expert on one tiny facet of a small aspect of a specific subfield of a general area - but to look at something with that kind of a focus, it seems to me that you leave so much behind. sure, i've heard the phrase "jack of all trades, master of none" -- but i'd counter that with an equally trite cliche -- "specialization is for insects." unfortunately, i don't think i can really write an SOP for a computer science grad program stating "i want to work on human computer interaction and alternative methods of visual knowledge representation." that sentence sounds pretty cool, but it doesn't really tell them anything. or, what if i apply to a political science grad program and say "i want to work on computational models in international security theory." somehow i don't think that's going to cut it. i've been surfing around various university websites, trying to get a feel for the kinds of things that they're working on, trying to find something that might be a fit with my interests, and so far it's not been going all that well. maybe this means i'm not looking hard enough, maybe it means i'm looking in the wrong places, or maybe it means that none of my ideas are really worth investigating. who knows? maybe i should apply to the U of Alberta, move to canada, and work on AI poker, eh? no, too cold. at least the MIT Media Lab allows you to submit a portfolio along with your application, so perhaps if i ever get off my ass and finish any of the projects that i've been toying with for the last several months, that'd improve my chances. it's all about motivation, eyes on the prize, all that shit. i guess it might help if i had a better idea of what the prize is, though.

and that, right there, is the rub. i mean, hell, in 6 months i'll be 30 years old - and as i look back on this thing i call life, i'm not at all anywhere where i thought i'd be. that's not to say that i'm in a bad place, because aside from the fact that i'm tired of this city, there's a lot of good shit in my life. i've got a girlfriend that doesn't drive me nuts, three great cats, a small cadre of friends that i like and respect, a place to live and money in the bank. but it still feels like there's something missing - it still feels like, by and large, i'm just going through the motions without any real clue as to where i'm trying to end up or even where i'm trying to get to along the way. i look at the things that give meaning to people's lives and i say "is there not more to life than this?"

and in other news... i'm still dealing with shoulder issues from lifting. went to an orthopedic surgeon - the guy is one of the team doctors for the phoenix coyotes, had an MRI, and the end result is basically that my shoulder pain is largely due to a strength imbalance. in particular, my back is weak, and this weakness has led to problems with my shoulder mechanics. so, the good news is that i don't need surgery, my rotator cuff and labrum are in one piece, and all that rot - the bad news is that i'm doing physical therapy again to try to correct all of this, and the time i've spent away from the gym has led to a 20% loss of strength. i used to be able to do a couple reps with the 120lb dumbbells, but now it's a struggle to do 4 reps with the 95s. one step forward, two steps back. but i'm determined to someday bench 5 plates, and squat/DL 6 plates, so i'll do what i have to do to get my shit fixed and get back at it - that whole "journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" kind of thing.

weee!
Ed: interesting thoughts here - I actually seem content with life even though I'm still looking for something more. At least today (13 years later) I have a sense of what that -something more- might be, even if I'm no closer to finding it.

Date: 2005-02-26 00:16
Subject: visual knowledge representation - or, what the hell is wrong with us?
with all the advances in computer technology that have taken place over the years, there's one thing in particular that strikes me as still being left in the stone age: the way we continue to rely on strictly linear models to visually represent (and, at least from my perspective, compartmentalize) knowledge. think about this livejournal, for instance. it's just a chronological list of items, from most recent to least, laid out on a page in a linear fashion. if there are comments to a particular item, they're laid out in the same way. is it because this is the most natural way to do it, the easiest way to implement it from a programming standpoint, or is it just the result of tradition? all of these, none of these, or some combination thereof? message boards are the same way. you have a list of threads, and when you click on a thread, you get a list of messages. all of it, again, completely linear. at any one time, we're only able to see one page, one small part of the whole, and we have no idea how what we're looking at is related to anything else if it doesn't follow immediately in chronological order. this, of course, also constrains how we're able to contribute to the conversation, how we're able to add knowledge - because if we can only see the immediate, we can't (or, at the least, are less likely to, because it won't be in front of us and our working memory doesn't last all that long) draw connections to historical data.

even the web, which contains all manner of complex interconnections between sites, pages, and resources, is still presented in a basic linear fashion. sure, i might go to a page which has all kinds of links to other pages - but i still only get one page at a time. i don't get previews of the other pages to see if they're what i'm looking for. i don't get to see how the various pages are connected (perhaps in a strictly web context this is largely irrelevant, but i think in some cases it might be useful). i don't get to see how a discussion has developed and how the ideas contained within it are related - particularly if the people involved in the discussion don't quote the messages that they're replying to. if i'm taking an online course, i don't get to see how concepts are interrelated - i simply plod from one topic to the next. that's not how the brain works. at least it's not how my brain works.

so, with all of that said, ravyn's idea lab is at it again. just once, you know, it would be nice to come up with a cool project idea that didn't involve sitting in front of this box or blowing stuff up (and hence being unlikely to be pursued, as i'm not keen on the idea of becoming someone's bitch in the gray-bar motel). but, hey, i suppose you do what you're good at.

Time: 22:42
Subject: drumming up membership
intelligent? adult? enjoy conversation? don't like internet drama? come, join our messageboard: http://www.theinfoline.com/

click on my eyeball (it's easy enough to figure out)

after becoming fed up with immature teenyboppers, drama-filled forums, and the like, a small group of us decided to build something different. it's basically a word-of-mouth thing where we're trying to create a small community of intelligent folks who like to hang out, discuss things, from politics to music to daily life - whatever - without having to worry about endless posts filled with inanity, personal attacks, and the like. but, since we have only 23 members, the board is, shall we say, somewhat slow. so if you can see this, you're invited to come join the fun. or, at the very least, you can come argue with me. =)