Monthly Archive for September, 2002

Unless someone stops the cycle, unfair will forever beget unfair.

Published
by
Benjy
on Saturday September 28, 2002
in Kvetch, Logic, Opinions and Spite
. Closed

"So because someone was unfair to you in the past, you're saying we should be unfair to someone else, even though we can change it?" I asked an acquaintance I was having an argument with.

"Yes." he said with certainty that showed he had already made up his mind and which clearly told me that the conversation was over.

Man, that's the kind of narrow-minded, self-centered attitude that causes wars.

And just to be clear here, it's not his actual position that I took fault with. It was his reason for his position which was so very wrong.

Entertainment provided by My 172 Instructor and The Class

Published
by
Benjy
on Tuesday September 24, 2002
in Computer Science, Quotes and School
. 3 Comments

Check it out: It's 12:30 am, and I just got home after leaving my apartment at 9:30 this morning. Accordingly, here's another quote from my 172 instructor. AKA, lazy content.

    "Do you think the class of context free languages is the same as the class of context free languages?" my instructor asked.

    "Uh, did you mean you the class of regular languages?" a student queried uncertainly.

    "What did I say?" my instructor asked, his brow furrowed. There were some murmurs in response from the class.

    "Oh... well, I was starting out with an easy question, and of course the answer to that one is yes. So do you think the class of context free languages is the same as the class of Regular languages?" he said, saving the situation fairly well. There were more murmurs from the class.

    "No, they're not the same, because otherwise they'd have the same name." he concluded.

And if you were wondering, I still don't know his name.

Incidentally, during class today, I got to thinking that The Class would be an amusing name for a backup band. You know, like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Huey Lewis and The News. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. You know, something like... Brian Harvey and The Class.

But I digress. A little while later in the lecture, we were treated to this ironic follow-up quote:

    "It's good when the class is more on the ball on the professor."
    -- my 172 instructor again

No comment.

Goals of Summer 2002 Past

Published
by
Benjy
on Sunday September 22, 2002
in Books, Buffy, Games, Goals, Past and Television
. Closed

Gah, I put this entry off back when I should have written it, because I was really busy with a combination of work and school and fun and games. And then I put it off longer and longer, and now I've forgotten a lot of the summer, and at this point all I can do is respond to my stated goals in the Summer 2002 Future post. So here it is:

  • Whew, I read a lot in the first half of this summer, but I haven't actually read anything since July 10th. It added up to something like 5000 pages in a little more than a month, but I forgot the exact number. Anyway, in no order, here are the books I read before July 10th: Microserfs, House of Leaves, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, The Dark Side of the Sun, Smoke and Mirrors, Coraline, and, I'm very embarrassed to admit, five Star Wars novels that I got cheap used.
  • As much as I read, though, I didn't actually get around to reading Ender's Game or Moral Politics: How Conservatives and Liberals Think like I wanted to.
  • Game-wise, I only actually finished Jedi Outcast and ICO as planned, though I also played Pikmin. Everything else in my queue, including (most notably) Golden Sun and Eternal Darkness remain unplayed.
  • In the second half of the summer, I ended up watching more TV in the evenings than I would have liked. In particular, I watched all of Babylon 5 on reruns, and seasons 1-4, 6 of Buffy. I also saw a few assorted episodes of season 5 Buffy, leaving the other 2/3 of season 5 for me to patiently watch on the painfully slow weekly rerun cycle. Stupid syndication.
  • I don't really know how to measure how successful I was at saying "hate" less, so I'm not not going to comment on it either way.
  • I fixed what was broken with Linkstew.
  • Uh, I didn't study for the GRE, because I haven't registered for it yet. And by that I mean I still haven't done either. I should get on that.
  • And overall, I think I was fairly less successful at work than I was hoping to be. In particular, LDAP kicked my ass.

Why yes, that is an iPod in my pocket!

Published
by
Benjy
on Saturday September 21, 2002
in Apple, Gadgets, PowerBooks and iPod
. 2 Comments

I've had my iPod for almost a year now, and in that time I've gotten more unsolicited comments on it than on anything else I've ever owned. Here are my top three random iPod encounters:

  1. After one of my first discussion sections of the semester, a cute girl asked me, "Is your iPod one of the new ones with the solid state track wheels?"

    Not expecting that question at all, I fumbled my response, and ended up saying something like "Er, uh, no, look, an original one, wheel."

    I held it out for her, and she reached out and spun the wheel. "Oh," she said, sounding almost disappointed.

    Between her being cute, her asking about my iPod, and her owning an iBook, I admit I was disappointed when I found out she had a boyfriend. But at least it came up in random conversation the next week before I had a chance to put myself in an embarrassing situation.

  2. While standing in line to see Gigantic last spring, I took my iPod out to play a song for my friend.

    While the song was playing, I overheard a guy in line behind me say "Wow, I suddenly want to shake his hand, and say 'Wow, I wish I had money to buy an iPod.'"

    His friend told him "You should." But he didn't. I pretended I didn't hear them, and went right on talking to my friend.

    But when it was announced the venue was 21 and over, the kids behind me, along with many others in the line, were left in a lurch. Hell, I didn't know it was 21 and over either -- I didn't see anything about it on the website or in the email confirmation.

    I felt kind of bad for them when they wandered away from the line dejectedly, but what was I supposed to do? Give him my iPod ID as a consolation prize?

  3. During a pick-up game of Set at a BART station while waiting with some friends, some random guy started watching us play and trying to strike up a conversation. When the train showed up, the guy got on and sat down altogether too close to us.

    At some point, I transfered my iPod from my pocket to my backpack or something, and the guy latched onto that and attempted to pick the conversation back up.

    I'm pretty sure he was more interested in my beautiful companions than me or my iPod.

    I tried to wrap the conversation up as quickly as possible, but not before he gave us his web site address for "his music." It was hosted at eristocracy.net or something else containing a too clever pun on the name eris.

    Thankfully, he got off a couple of stops later, so we didn't have to ride with him the whole way.

Anyway, those are just the three that stand out the most in my mind for one reason or another. Besides that, there were three incidents on my first round trip Amtrak ride after I got my iPod, one conversation at a party, innumerable discussions at work, and several others in class and at cafes. It's quite the conversation piece.

I can only hope the TiBook I plan to buy next month works out half as well for me.

Was it good for you, or was that just another fit?

Published
by
Benjy
on Thursday September 19, 2002
in Biology, Psychology and Sex
. Closed

I think epilepsy is my favorite neurological disorder. Sure, there are things to be said for Broca's aphasia or prosopagnosia, but in they end they're only interesting in and of themselves.

Epilepsy, however, is my favorite, because attempts to treat epilepsy have led to so many amazing discoveries about the way the brain works. An attempt to treat HM by removing his hippocampus led to amazing discoveries about the role of the hippocampus in memory.

Attempts to treat epilepsy with a Corpus Callosotomy led to amazing discoveries about the independence of the brain's hemispheres.

And now, epilepsy treatments have led to a possible neurological basis for out of body experiences.

Besides, how could you not like a disorder that has so much in common with an orgasm? Er, and sneezing, if that happens to be your thing.

(Link and witty subject via Kevin.)

Perl vs. Excel, Round 1, Fight!

Published
by
Benjy
on Wednesday September 18, 2002
in Computer Science, Microsoft, Perl, Programming and UNIX
. 3 Comments

I was working with a bunch of Excel data this weekend for my CS project, and at some point I decided I wanted to transpose a table of data. You know, swap the rows and the columns? Simple, right?

Well, I tried searching Excel help, and had no luck. A quick google search didn't immediately yield the answer. And I asked my CS partners, but they also had no clue. A few of them even asked other people they knew in the lab, and still no luck.

For a bunch of CS majors, I was amazed by how little they all knew about Excel. Hell, that I was the one manning Excel in my group (because I knew the most about it) kinda says a lot by itself. I mean, I can get around in Excel, but I wouldn't dare list Excel on my resume. I know how complicated that sucker is, and I know that I can barely scratch the surface.

So I shrugged and decided I was going to write a perl script to transpose colon-delimited data that I could export from Excel. Perl is, afterall, my swiss-army chainsaw. What's the point of having a chainsaw if you're not going to use it? And besides, I figured it wouldn't take me more than 5 minutes to write, and I'd already spent at least that long trying to figure out how to do it with Excel.

But before I started, I had to go to the bathroom. And when I got back, one of my partners had found the "Paste Special" option, which, among a bunch of other handy features, includes a "Transpose" option. So much for showing off my perl-fu.

Examples in mirror are closer than they appear.

Published
by
Benjy
on Monday September 16, 2002
in Computer Science, Quotes and School
. Closed

Today in CS 172, the instructor kinda botched one of his examples. But it turned out alright in the end, because his segue managed to distract everyone.

    "Okay, so let's move away from this example as quickly as possible."
    -- uh, my 172 instructor...

In other news, I just realized that I don't remember the name of my 172 instructor. I'll look it up later. Maybe.

What’d'ya mean it doesn’t go BLAM!?

Published
by
Benjy
on Friday September 13, 2002
in Games, Music and Nostalgia
. 4 Comments

I got the Frogger theme song stuck in my head today.

Y'see, when I was but a lad, I had an Atari. My favorite game was River Raid, but I also had other classics like Pole Position and Jungle Hunt and a few other classics.

But we also had Frogger. The thing was, I totally sucked at Frogger.

Dude, don't laugh. That game is hard.

Anyway, today I got the Frogger theme song stuck in my head, but since I was so bad at Frogger, here's how I remember the song going:

    Da-do-do-do Da-do-do-do Da-da-do-do-BLAM!
    Da-do-do-do Da-do-do-do BLAM!
    Da-do-do-do Da-do-do-do Da-da-do-do-doo BLAM!
    Da-do-do-do Da-do-do-do Da-da-do-BLAM!

Needless to say, I got more than a few strange looks while humming that at work today.

Of course, it’s not a school night for me… ;-)

Published
by
Benjy
on Thursday September 12, 2002
in Apartment, Quotes and Sex
. 1 Comment

So someone is getting some action somewhere in my apartment building tonight -- perhaps in the apartment above me, or maybe next door -- I don't know. Wherever it is, I know what that sort of intermittently rhythmic bumping and thumping means.

"Is someone jumping up and down upstairs?" my roommate asked.

"Ha, no." I figured I should let him in on the secret. "No, someone's having SEX." I whispered.

"It's a bit early for sex, don't you think?" he asked.

"It's a school night!" I reminded him.