Author: cdwan

There has been a lot of simpering about the electoral college since 2000. A large number of people in our country apparently missed out on high school civics, and have failed to read the constitution. It pisses me off that, in spite of this simpering, in spite of the bumper stickers that say “not my president” and “don’t elect him in 2004 either,” there has been (to my knowledge) not one serious effort to change the electoral college system in the most recent four years.

It’s not all that hard. We strike those lines in the constitution describing the college, and replace them with “the president and vice president are elected as a single ticket, through a majority vote of the entire nation of eligible voters.” This would have a far better chance of passing than the gay marriage red herring.

I, for one, like the electoral college.

Here’s why

Yesterday, I went to the first of day of a three day class put on by Intel titled “Tuning for the Itanium architecture.” It was pretty sweet. There were a lot of details that I’m still digesting.

The geeky details

Had my first real freako-on-the-T experience today. He came on through the door further from me (most cars have two sets of doors per side) all twitchy and jerky and stuff. My “not right” filter went off immediately, and I considered switching cars (easy to do at a stop, impossible between them). Decided that he looked loony, but not violent. Then he started (as the doors closed) grabbing his balls and hooting about how “THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY TESTICLES!” “WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY BALLS???”

He spat on the floor a couple of times and hurkey-jerkied off the train at the Harvard stop.

I did, actually, wonder “has simianpower come to visit me?”

Family arrives for a visit tomorrow. Hooray!

Also tomorrow, triple booked for work:

(1) More booth bunny, which is superseded by:
(2) Attending an Intel training session on optimizing for the Itanium 2 processor in 64 bit mode, which I will have to cut out of for
(3) a conference call with people in Texas.

Woot!

I was going to be witty, but now I’m too tired. Pictures available here.

I’ll be a booth bunny at the Apple booth at the Drug Discovery Technology conference all this week, hawking the software that my company makes which is resold by Apple. I feel like such a corporate harlot.

Many short stories:

We used to have this clothing hanger thing in the back yard. I’m sure it was cool once, but now it’s filled with rust and totally redundant because of the dryer in the house. I determined to remove it. So, I dug around the thing (metal post, set in concrete), tipped it, and spent about an hour with a big ‘ole hammer just wanging away breaking off pieces of the concrete until it was light enough to move. It was fun and all, but my right forearm is *really* tired now.

We’re 40 bags of cedar mulch into the process of re-mulching all the flower beds. I estimate either 10 more or 30 more bags, depending on whether or not all the shrubberies need mulch.

Jen got a Canon D10 digital SLR camera. She’s completely geeked out, and is presently shooting pictures of me (while I type) saying “ooh, the F-stop autonegotiates the arbitrated lens abatement armature (or something like that). It seems pretty cool.

Because it was on sale, I tried “malta:” a “non alcoholic malt beverage from India.” It tastes exactly like wort (which is the malt soup that you make when brewing beer, prior to the addition of the yeast. As soon as yeast touches it, it’s beer). Weird, and strangely wrong. I don’t recommend it. Eat a slice of good dark bread and drink a ginger ale instead for a similar, but far superior experience.

Tomorrow, we go to Block Island, where (I’m told) more than 150 species of bird pass on their annual migration. W00t!

Back to humor. Chicken of the sea…. Read it out loud for maximal effect.

This is so, not vegetarian, but the jingle is pretty cool.

Pretty lights, colors…

It’s like in the first Airplane movie: “I’ve got to concentrate…concentrate…concentrate…trate…trate….te…te…te”

My attention span is, like, what was I talking about? Oh yeah…pretty lights…colors…

This means that I will be having only ideas that require very short durations of thought, like…

Ummm…

This could be problematic if it persists. I’ll be like that guy in Memento except on a much shorter timeline. I’ll, like, write on myself in chalk to remind me of what I was thinking of just moments ago.

So, I’m settling in to the new homestead: Baked some zucchini bread and took it over to the neighbors.

It’s now confirmed: My fence is unpopular on all three fronts. Each of the neighbors, when I bring up the fence, folds their arms and says “it’s your fence, Chris.” One neighbor thinks it’s on her property (nope! Survey, done by the city! Right here next to the Deed!), back neighbor gives me crap when he sees me because it’s not straight in any dimension (sorry, gotta fix the plumbing first!), and the third one wonders why the previous owner needed to paint a perfectly good cedar fence.

But it gets better. I can understand the side where the neighbor hasn’t kept up her property for as long as anybody I’ve spoken with can recall. No paint, no mowing, no basic repairs, mid sized trees growing from the roof…I understand the motivation for the screening pine trees and the fence over there. But the other side, the neighbors are nice, they’re obsessive about their neat lawn. They’re kind and generous people, and they’ve been there 25 years.

The Z. bread brought it out of them: A few years back, they were thinking of selling the house. Apparently, wham bam, a fence went up. The prior owner of my house came over to them and said “I’m sorry about the fence. It’s not you guys, it’s just that a black couple was looking at your house.

The response (at least in the retelling) was: Um, if they move in, I don’t think that little fence is gonna hold them for long.

My fence has its posts steeped in racism and petty mindedness. My fence is the embodiment of centuries of distrust, doubt, and malice.

My fence is evil, and must go.

Thanks to my good sources, I now know that “BTU” stands for “British Thermal Unit.” It’s the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water from 64 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

Setting aside the totally arbitrary and random nature of the unit, I purchased a machine that can crank out EIGHT THOUSAND of this unit of heat!!!

Ummm, in some amount of time, using some amount of energy, and distributing it outside of said machine at some efficiency.

But EIGHT THOUSAND of them!!!

Enough lollygagging: It’s presidential physical phitness time.

Qualifying standards for a 17 year old boy (the oldest for which they’re willing to publish standards, to go beyond that you need to go with military standards…which would be just silly). On the other hand, at least the army publishes standards for my age range.

Of course, were I to long for injury and possible death, I could try to achieve the Navy SEALs standards. Ha. Ha ha.

Another discovery: On perusing a rock climbing book, I discovered “uneven pull ups.” These are apparently “the first step on the road to one handed pull ups.” Basically, you need two bars (or grips of some sort) which are vertically offset by about 14 inches. Grab one with one hand, the other with the remaining hand. Go on. Try one. They’re wayharder than they have any right to be. Why? Your shoulders leave the equation. Ordinary pull-ups ought to be mostly back, with a little bit of arm. Uneven pull ups are all arm, all the time. Yeesh.