All posts by jason

The Singularity, Uncategorized

Oh, #*@&!%.

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Maybe the scary AI researchers all took a vacation over the summer, or I just missed the best headlines.  But check this mother out: Computer circuit built from brain cells.  You have to wait for the scariest excerpt of all:

Brain implants can allow the paralysed to control robot arms or learn to talk again, but suffer a drop-off in performance when scar tissue coats their electrodes. “An intermediate layer of in vitro neurons interfacing between man and machine could be advantageous,” he says.

Yes, who can say what sort of advantages a neural interface with your computer could provide?  I can only think of about a MILLION.

General, Uncategorized

Choking on My Googles

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Hey, in case you were looking for something fun to do with your gmail account, try this:

  1. Forward your Gmail address to your more oft-used POP3 account
  2. Don’t logically think through how mail servers behave
  3. Set your Gmail account to check the POP3 mail from THE SAME ACCOUNT YOU’RE FORWARDING TO.
  4. Watch the mail pour in with the feedback loop you just created!!

In all seriousness, though, is anyone out there using Google Apps (formerly ‘Google Apps for your domain)?  Anything good or bad to say about that?

"Roll Your Own", General, Uncategorized

Probably Just Delusional

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I’ve worked on moving my home server operations to a new machine this week.  As of last night at around 7 o’clock, the web server has moved (mail and file server ops, for those using them, are still on the old machine for the time being).  It’s a completely subjective assessment, but the site seems a little faster to me today– possible, I suppose, that the server is processing SQL queries more quickly, but I may just be deluding myself.  Overall, I feel pretty good about not having to enlist as much help from Joe as usual.  At this point, I’m confident that if I felt the need to change, add, or otherwise modify the way that I’m hosting my websites, I’d be able to do it.

Work has slowed down for the semester.  I had a chance to catch up on most everything over the last couple days, and that’s a good feeling.  It does, however, leave one with a little extra time to assess where one is at professionally, and depending on how that goes, it can make one more or less apt to do something productive during the work day.  I could at some want ads over lunch, maybe…

I still need a Halloween costume for the weekend.  Michelle and I are going to a party where the costumes are “mandatory.”  It’s a good idea, because in the end, it’s probably more fun, but for the neurotic, the compulsion can be a bit stressful.  I’ve a few good ideas over the last couple days that would’ve worked GREAT if I’d started seriously thinking about a costume back in September.  Any ideas?

Finally, today is my dad’s birthday– he is turning 55…  Happy b-day, Dad.

General, Uncategorized

Reining In Spending, Kickin' It Old-School

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Michelle made the comment to me on Monday that she’s been happy to have done a better job than usual over the last couple weeks to check her weekend expenditures.  Going out or socializing in general will typically carry a hefty price tag, and we’ve both been making concious efforts to do fun stuff that doesn’t cost a lot (yes, I can hear you as I type this– baseball season not withstanding).  I had a bad habit within the past 12 months or so of carrying a small balance forward from month-to-month on a credit card.  Not the end of the world, but it’s hard to get yourself caught up when one of the first things you have to pay out for at the start of the month is that $100 or so that you overspent the month before.

I finally have gotten to where I’m not carrying that balance anymore.  It has come at the expense of some of the stuff that I like to do for fun, though; I don’t go out for wings on Thursdays with the Mundschaus as much anymore, and I’d like to take Michelle out for dinner and entertainment a lot more often than I do.  I’m trying to come up with ideas for fun that are much lower cost, but still entertaining.

One of the things that we used to do in college that was cheap and lots of fun: playing cards.  We had a sheepshead night at the apartment on High Ave for the better part of a year or two, I wanna say.  Over the years that have passed since college, I’ve made occasional efforts to get some people together to play online, and for maybe a month or so when I lived in Bozeman (5 years ago now), it worked.  After a while, finding a time that worked for all parties got complicated and we sort of gave it up.

So there are a couple problems.  It seems like the vast majority of Americans who play cards right now are interested exclusively in poker, which holds absolutely no interest for me.  I like to gamble a LITTLE bit, but the whole point of a card game is to do something that’s affordable.  Even playing a quarter-a-point at sheepshead means you can probably have a good time for several hours and spend under 5 bucks.  Another thing is, you really need to have 5 people to have a good game, and I think 6 (where the dealer sits out) is ideal.  I wouldn’t mind getting a group together again, but somehow, everyone’s schedule is always really flaky.  Maybe the answer is to have a group much bigger than what you need for a game (like get 12 people to commit to a night per week, so if everyone is there, you could have 2 tables, and if not, you wouldn’t be in a position to have to cancel).

So if you live in the Milwaukee area and might be down with a card night, let me know.  I sort of have visions of this bygone time where our grandparents got together with friends at someone’s house and enjoyed the evening very affordably.  No reason we can’t get back there, if you ask me…

"Roll Your Own", General, Uncategorized

Weekend Update: Special Monday-Mid-Morning-Bocko Edition Without Any Political Commentary

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Well that’s a mouthful.

Weekend flew by for me– Friday night, Michelle and I went over to The House On Dousman for Justin’s birthday observation.  It was a nice time; Marcia & Todd made an unexpected appearance, so it was cool to talk with them for the first time since they got hitched.  There were libations aplenty, and Michelle made cake.  We couldn’t stay really late, because she had to get up early to judge a cheer competition.

On Saturday, I had some plans to work on a little computer biz at my house, but I got an call from the Poquettes who needed backup on a short babysitting gig– Kilian and Harper had some overlapping zoo classes, so I met up with them there and watched Abe for an hour or so.  He’s a very low-maintenence baby; took him about 20 minutes to fall asleep, then I just milled around the zoo for a while until Amanda called to say Harper’s class was done.  The zoo trip worked to my advantage, as I was able to miss the majority of the Badgers’ drubbing at the hands of Iowa.

Later in the evening on Saturday, we met up with Michelle’s friend Amisha and her (relatively new) financee, Ajay.  I hadn’t met him before.  We had a good time at Vox on Prospect, where the atmosphere is pretty smokey, but also quiet enough to talk.  They also have movies going in the background all the time there.  For me, it’s a good way to keep time at the bar without looking at your watch: “We’ve been here for Princess Bride and half of Team America? Shit, it’s gotta be pretty late…”

On Sunday, I got around to working on some of that computer stuff and did laundry.  I was pretty happy to note that I was just about able to migrate my home server over to a new machine without having to call Joe every five minutes with questions.  There are a couple things that are still left to do, but I was glad to have been able to install the new system, import all the old user accounts & various server settings without incident.

I wanted to head over to Grandma’s house to help out with yard work, but I ran out of time.  Now it looks like it’s going to rain the rest of today, but it’s supposed to be nice on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Maybe by Wednesday, the leaves would be dry enough over there and I could give it another shot.

Sports, Uncategorized

Replacement Prognostication, Week 7

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I suffered last week from some last-minute injury updates: I thought Hasselbeck was going to play, and the Seahawks would prevail over GB.  As it turns out, Charlie Frye is every bit as awful as expected.  That, and (even though the result worked in my predicted favor) the Bears.  Oh, lordy, did you watch that last big play for Atlanta?  Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  At least the NFC North is back to utter mediocrity, right where it belongs.  Here are your predictions for Week 7.

SEASON RECORD: 14-13

  • Packers – win
  • Bears – win
  • Vikings – lose
  • Lions – lose
  • Seahawks – lose
  • Dolphins – lose
  • Chiefs – lose

And the manager job is NOT a lock for Dale…

General, Uncategorized

50 Nifty

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Who among us Northland Pines alums (and probably several others, too) remembers singing the “50 Nifty United States” song in grade school?

Don’t ask me how, but I got it stuck in my head this afternoon.  There’s a YouTube video out there of a very poor a capella performance of this tune combined with a single shot of a US map, if you wanna look for it…

Here are the lyrics that I found on sing365.com:

Fifty Nifty United States from thirteen original colonies;
Fifty Nifty stars on the flag that billows so beautifully in the breeze.
Each individual state contributes a quality that is great.
Each individual state deserves a bow, We salute them now.

Fifty Nifty United States from thirteen original colonies,
Shout ’em, scout ’em, Tell all about ’em,
One by one,til we’ve given a day to every state in the USA in the USA in the USA, <- hold out all the A’s for 3 beats
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut
Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana
Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine,
Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan.
Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana,
Nebraska, Nevada,
New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York,
North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio,
Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina,
South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas,
Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

North, South, East, West in a clam, objective opinion (Name of favorite State)
Is the Best of the Fifty Nifty United States from thirteen original colonies
Shout ’em,scout’em, tell all about ’em
One by One, till we’ve given a day to every state in the good old U….S…A (hold all notes very short)

General, Uncategorized

Going Blind, Thomas-Dolby-style

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This is an encouraging little piece I pulled from the AP Science wire today:

Scientists view both Obama, McCain as supportive

It also touches a bit on the candidates’ respective stands on the space program, which is a question I know Dave had early on.  Don’t forget to hit the corresponding link in the article to their responses to the Science Debate 2008 survey, too.

Doctor Emmett L. Brown, scientist

"Roll Your Own", General, Uncategorized

Random Bad Idea

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So, ever since I moved to this apartment in Shorewood and switched over to SBC for the Intertubes, I’ve had a helluva time with the “blogs” section on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel website.  Specifically, any time I tried to access ANY of those various blogs from my laptop (usually trying to get my up-to-the-minute Brewers news), the page would load-load-load, hang, and… kill my router, forcing me to reboot it.  It was only a problem on that one site, but since I visited it often, it really bugged the crap out of me.

Well, the genius finally had a revelation today, and it dawned on me that at some point in 2006 or 2007, I started using OpenDNS.  I think that I was somehow convinced that it would load pages faster, or in some other way make the Internet a vastly more magical experience.  That might have even been true when I started using it (I had myriad problems with the cable connection at Wright Street, for what it’s worth).  I said to myself, “well, let’s troubleshoot this with something easy.”  And wouldn’t you know it, we have a winner– going back to using my ISP’s DNS servers (which, again, I can’t now think of a good reason not to) not only fixed the problem I had with the Journal site, but the whole goddamn Internet seems a lot faster.

Like I said, maybe it’s just that AT&T kicks Time Warner’s ass in this respect.  Either way, I’ll take it.

Just a little update– yeah, that worked for an hour or two, then all hell broke loose on my Internets to the tune of “totally broken.”  I guess I can contend with one slow/busted site, as opposed to the entire Internet.  What a drag to have any problem whatsoever, though…

General, Uncategorized

Things That Are True

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So I have 2 days left on my vacation, then it’s back to the real world and really working.  A good thing that I can think of about going back: I did have to get caught up on all the little piddly shit that was sitting around on my desk before the vaykay started, so I’ll pretty much have a clean start on Wednesday.

But anyway– there are a few things that I’ve figured out over the last several days (some more serious than others):

  1. I could do very well with about a month off from work.  However, the week has shown me that I can get things accomplished if really put forth some effort.
  2. If I just wrote out everything that I have to talk about from those years being a kid in E.R., it would be an extensive memoir.  Who would have ever thought a person could say that about that place?  Certainly not me when I was living there…
  3. Having a maid would be great.  The number of household chores that pile up in a house of just one person is amazing.
  4. Even when you buy Oakley frames for your prescription glasses, they don’t include the hard case.  No joking.
  5. I haven’t watched a football game from start to finish since last year.  I know this is going to sound nuts, but I got so used to watching tons of baseball over the summer, a football game seems REEEALLY LONG.  I think the key comparison is the way the sports are televised.  The NFL, being such a TV-driven enterprise, has very frequent TV commercial breaks, and halftime takes a while…  It’s just a different sort of sport, I guess.
  6. Speaking of football, beating Charlie Frye means nothing.  Yes, there were a lot fewer penalties this week, but against that Seattle team, all you had to do was not shoot yourself in the foot.  Possibly losing two more defensive players isn’t good for the banged-up Packers…