Freemont Troll

Man, this is by far the coolest sculpture I've seen for a long, long time. That's a REAL bug in its hand, just so you understand the scale of it. It's too bad some fuckhole graffiti'ed on it, but oh well, it still rules.

Freemont Troll

Mordor Maps and Walking Directions

Okay, now THIS is hilarious.

Walking directions, yahoo style, from Bag End to the Cracks of Doom.

Hoom! Maps and Walking Directions

Riddle me this

Sun just changed last quarter's earnings from positive 12 million to a loss of over a billion dollars. Something having to do with taxes. Corporate accounting is pretty similiar to witch doctoring, in my book. It just doesn't make any sense. Our stock is down about 15 percent, of course.

In other news, does anyone know if there's an actual disease involving being nocturnal? I spend most of my days, when I've managed to be somewhat normal, tired. Then around midnight, no matter how little sleep I've had, I perk up and become fully awake, unable to sleep until the sun comes up.

Now, I try to fix this. I'll purposely deny myself sleep so I can go to bed at a reasonable time, but it doesn't work. I'll just be exhausted all day, and then wide awake at night again. A few nights ago, I went to bed at like 4am, and ended up being so jittery that I got up and did pushups and ran in place, just to try to burn my extra energy. It may sound funny, because I'm not you, but it's a pain in my ass to have such aggressive insomnia. When I show up at work during regular work hours, people remark that they didn't know I was still employed by Sun, and I get the feeling they're not entirely kidding.

I've tried drinking heavily, which puts me out okay, but isn't exactly a pattern I want to fall into. I've tried hippie things like valerian root. I've tried physical activity to tire me out. Nothing really fixes the problem.

I think the solution here is to just find a career with no time-critical activies. Even at Sun, I have to be awake for meetings, and I have to put in "face time" at the office for purely political reasons. I should become an author. Then I could really hermit out and live however I wanted, as long as I produce books semi-regularly.

Me and Neal Stephenson

Tonight Bates and Gulkis and I went to see Stephenson talk, and sign our books. He signed Cryptonomicon for me, and he was very funny and dry and entertaining.

I especially liked when he was asked what his favorite technologies are, he said "I like buttons. They're simple, and do their job without making any noise. I also like scissors, because they're a lot better at cutting floppy things than a knife."

The answer may sound tongue in cheek, but the point he was making was that we haven't made a simple, ubiquitous modern technology as simple and universal and friendly as a button yet. We still have all this finicky, unreliable shit that we make do with, but we've got a ways to go with it.

I asked him why he wrote two books under a pen name, and he said that was because he wrote the Stephen Bury books with his uncle, and they figured it would be easier to remember than putting two big long names on it. Those books are really good, by the way, if any of you guys are interested in more Stephenson.

And here's my requisite shot. I've got Gibson and Stephenson now, my two favorite authors. There's not much else for me to live for. Heh.

Well, I'd still like to meet Umberto Eco. Also, is Vernor Vinge still alive? Or did he die? Greg Egan is cool too. I guess I'll stay alive a while longer.

matrix

I just saw my first TV preview for the new Matrix coming out in November.

My mind didn't care that I was kind of disappointed with the second one, I only saw it once, unlike the first one, which I've probably watched six or seven times. I got goosebumps and I got all excited. God, I hope the next Matrix is good, without all the boring nonsense they threw into the second one. I love the idea, and I enjoyed all the Animatrix movies and the video games and what not. But the franchise won't hold unless they really pull the third movie off right.

It's kind of like with Star Wars, how you give it the benefit of the doubt and just pray that they don't fuck up the next one, because you really want to love it. Think about how many directors don't have that advantage, an established fan base that WANTS to fall in love with their film, if they just get their head out of their ass and do it right.

interesting investing problem

Okay, I'm setting up my Vanguard account to do weekly investments in the market.

They ask me what day of the week I'd like my investments done on.

That's an interesting question. I want to buy on whatever day the market is most likely to be down, because buying low is better. Would people sell more often on Mondays? Maybe Fridays?

There's got to be a way to check this. Get statistics on market performance and evaluate what day is statistically the worst for the market, and buy on that day. Has anyone ever seen data on this already collected, or heard a report on the news or anything?

Damn SARS

Well, I was sick as a dog for most of last week. Sometime after I got back from Maryland, I got hit by a stupendous badass of a virus that knocked me on my ass for about five days straight. I was sleeping for 18 hours a day, coughing, sneezing, staggering around delerious, loss of coordination, you name it. I'm feeling better now, I'm still a little tired, but most of the symptoms are gone, except for this strange habit I've picked up of waking up every few hours while I'm trying to sleep.

Anyway, this has put me behind at work, so I'm staying at work till like 10pm every night this week trying to catch up. Hm, what else:

I found a gorgeous five bedroom house in seattle for $175k and nearly started to weep like a little girl. For reference, a two bedroom dump in a ghetto in the bay area costs about $500k. I really need to get promoted and get out of here.

Neil Stephenson's Quicksilver comes out today, and I have a huge literature erection. I'm leaving right after work tonight and picking it up at Kepler's books, and then I'm going to go home and see how much of it I can read before my eyes fall out of my head. I'm really, really excited about it, Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books ever, and this is some sort of sequel, but not really. Honestly, I've enjoyed everything Stephenson has ever written, including the two books he wrote as Stephen Bury, and the hard to get stuff like The Big U. The man roxxors my boxxors.

Oh, and I got to play with a T-mobile Sidekick the other day. It really is pretty fucking cool. I want one. It's a lot more hip and fun and well designed than a blackberry, which might have tri-band, but it doesn't have PIZZAZZ! I'm not really willing to switch providers until November 26th, which is when they theoretically allow us to move numbers between carriers. I'll believe THAT when I see it. They've been chargings us for the switchover for years, god forbid they actually enact it.

X-Seed 4000, Tokyo

So, skyscrapers.com is really cool. I've been poking around it for a while, after Kevin showed it to me.

Here's the tallest building ever (seriously) envisioned:

X-Seed 4000, Tokyo

I was surprised to find out that Tokyo has less skyscrapers than London, and London only has about 1/5 that of New York(5000). But even New York pales compared to Hong Kong, which has almost 7,000 skyscrapers, with a population a million people LESS than New York.

The tallest Hospital in the world is in London, at 34 floors. The tallest hotel in the would would have been the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea, but it was halted in 1992, and it's just been sitting empty, as a hollow concrete shell, for over 10 years.

I love huge buildings.

Mmmmmmm

I'm so jealous. I love storms. I wish I was on the east coast right now.

Maryland pictures!

The gallery of photos from Maryland is now up and running!

http://www.comicore.com/~tobin/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=maryland903

It starts off with shots from hanging in DC with Christine and Monica, and then Alison's wedding, and ends up with DODGEBALL photos. All good times.

For the impatient, here are a couple neat shots from the set:

Me getting some loving
Alison and I at her wedding
The reception was in a huge museum
This is how a BBQ is done
Old skool, hardcore, dodgeball
Another gorgeous dodgeball shot
Shot of me running in dodgeball that looks like it's from a horror film

There's a bunch of great shots in the album. Take a look.

Least Harm Principle suggests that Humans should eat beef not vegan.

This is an interesting article, claiming that you actually cause less animal death by eating animals than plowing fields and wiping out the animal population in those fields.

I'd never really thought of it that way. All these veggie-only eating people eat this food at a price, and that price is usually killing a huge percentage of the animals living on the land that those crops are grown on. That's hilarious.

http://www.wildlifedamagecontrol.com/animalrights/leastharm.htm

How do you sleep?

According to this website, my sleeping position (sprawled out flat on my stomach) is the most rare, and it implies that I have a "brash and gregarious" personality. I'll admit the brash, but I'm not so sure that locking yourself in your apartment for days at a time to play Gamecube and watch Tivo really counts as gregarious.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/09/16/sleep.personality.reut/index.html

Trip status

Last night I went down to DC and hung out with Monica and Christine. That was a blast! I love hanging out with them, they're entertaining and intelligent and fun. I'll post pictures when I get back, of course.

One funny thing was that we were hanging out with these guys that had known me from LA, and we all got really bored, and I just started making shit up. Monica and Christine played along beautifully, I started talking about how Christine and I used to date, but she cheated on me with my best friend because he was really into anal sex but I refused to give it up. Then when she went to the bathroom, Monica told them that she was a slut and she hated her, but not to say anything because she gets mean and violent. It was hilarious, these dumbasses believed every word we said. They started trying to hit on Christine and saying how they liked anal sex... god, I don't know how people can be so dense. But we had a fun time fucking with them until they finally left.

We went to some cool bars in Adams Morgan in DC, one bar had an old Nofriendo and we played Street Fighter 2, and drank a lot, and then had the biggest slice of pizza I've ever had. I got back here about 4-5am.

Being back in Maryland is a trip, because somehow everything is contriving to seem just like high school. I'm seeing all my old friends, and every radio station around here, even "alternative" stations, are playing music from when I was in high school. It's all Pearl Jam and Nirvana and mid-90's music, so I end up driving around in the rain and feeling like it's still 1995.

The rain here is amazing, being in California makes me forget what real weather is like. It's been raining since this morning, the kind of rain that even wipers on high won't really let you see through, and it hasn't let up. In California a hard rain is when that happens for half an hour, and all the retarded drivers slow to a stop. Here, people still keep speeding, fuck the rain.

In closing, I'll leave you with a dialogue from my evening at 7-11.

"Hi, where are the nachos?"
"The what?"
"Nachos. Chips."
"What?"
"See here on the cheese and chili machine? Right next to the hot dog? The chips with cheese and chili on them. Nachos."
"No."
"No what? You don't have them? You don't know what they are?"
"No."
"No you don't have them?"
"No."
"Okay then, thanks. You've been really helpful."

The guy actually had a command of english, too. It wasn't a problem in understanding, he was just either insanely stupid, or just a huge dick. I've had a hard time getting food or services here at 3am. When less people stay up late, the quality of service drops quickly. People in California pussy out and go to bed early too, but a couple more of them stay up late, enough to sustain a higher quality of late night service.

Living like a rock star

Here I am in a Motel 6 in Laurel, Maryland. Laurel is known as the white trash capital of Maryland. I've got a six pack of Yuengling, which I can't get in California, and I'm eating dinner from a vending machine. Beer, Goldfish, and a candy bar. Oh, and it's 5am, and I have insomnia, as usual. There's nothing on TV but 9/11 programs. I hate TV without Tivo. As if we haven't had enough 9/11 programs in the last two years.

Although, in Ireland, they played Amazing Grace on a bagpipe, and all I could think of was when they shot Spock out of the Enterprise in that black torpedo, and Captain Kirk gave that heartfelt eulogy. I've been completely tainted by popular culture.

Oh wait, they're playing Cops on Fox. Maybe I'll see Laurel.

On the road again...

I just got home from work, it's almost 2am, I have to leave here in about four hours to catch a plane to Maryland for the weekend for a wedding, and I haven't done ANY packing yet. I'm still not entirely clear on how I'm going to carry my suit on the plane. I'm also not sure if it even still fits me. This, of course, means that I'm going to be dead tired and miserable all day, and sleeping on planes is basically impossible. If it's not a crying baby, then it's the fact that you're trying to sleep SITTING UP.

Oh well, it should still be fun to see everyone.

As a reminder to myself, I've been doing a lot of biblical research because of an argument on Livejournal, and I want to do a post about it when I return from Maryland, but it would take too long. Turns out, all the Christians that think that the Bible condemns homosexuality are dead wrong, unless there are passages that I'm unaware of. I thought it was pretty interesting. If any of you readers are rabid Christians, please feel free to email me or comment here on why you feel that Christianity condemns homosexuality, so I can make sure that I'm not missing anything.

Okay, off to pack.

My new hobby

Acquired today, my new hobby:

the answer to life, the universe and everything

Man, this is another reason why google is so fucking cool.

Google for:

answer to life, the universe and everything

(with no quotes)

Google Search: answer to life, the universe and everything

Tell us about.... your mother.

Are any of the candidates for San Francisco mayor replicants? There's only one way to find out. We have to give them the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner. Luckily, someone has already done that:

Voight-Kampff test for mayoral candidates

Look at those pictures. Why do politicians never look human? I can see why they were given these tests. Look especially at Tom Ammiano, who was actually the only one of them smart enough to understand where the questions were from.

vote yourself a pay raise!

Augh. This is so stupid. Everyone whines about the deficit and the tax cut, but they REFUSE to spend less money. Congress, along with a million other government workers, are in line for a 4.1 percent pay raise next year. This will be the FOURTH straight year, right through the middle of the depression and dot com crash, that legislators have given pay raises to themselves and our oversized, incompetent government workers. I don't know about you guys, but I haven't been getting pay raises.

You know why I haven't gotten pay raises? Because my company can't SPEND MORE THAN IT MAKES. I can't believe that we still haven't passed a constitutional amendment requiring that we balance our budget. If we pull in less money as a country, we HAVE to spend less. Is this really that crazy of an idea?
Does it make sense to no one but me?

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/04/congress.payraise.ap/index.html

A return to sanity?

Wow. In this day and age of liberal blame-someone-else nonsense, it's fantastic to see that some people still believe in personal responsibility. A judge just threw out ANOTHER lawsuit about it being McDonald's fault that people are fat pigs, saying:

"If a person knows or should know that eating copious orders of super-sized McDonald's products is unhealthy and may result in weight gain it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses."

GOD DAMN right. It's about time that judges started telling people that the government is not their fucking babysitter. Take some responsibility. We should be a nation of adults that have complete choice in what we purchase, and take responsibility for what we purchase.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/09/04/mcdonalds.suit/index.html

What it's like to live with me.

There's nothing quite like drinking beer and bbq'ing hamburgers at 3am, while listening to an internet radio dub station, and obsessively playing PUZZLE PIRATES.

It's a pretty fun game, you should all check it out.

I bet my indian neighbors love the smell of burning cow wafting through their windows in the middle of the night.

Photo gallery

Oh, by the way, I never announced here on the blog that I've set up a big photo album with all the photos from my collection in one place. Check it out, I have photos from all my trips, people visiting, random crap, etc.

http://www.comicore.com/~tobin/gallery/albums.php

Some sample albums:

Defcon shots

Trip to Key West

Trip to LA

Carnival 2003 at CMU

I also put a link to the photos on the left side of the page.

Gallery :: Visit to the Exploratorium 8/31/03

Sally, Adrienne and I went out to the Exploratorium last weekend, goofed around, and phooned randomly. It was fun. I put the pics up on my gallery.

http://www.comicore.com/~tobin/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=explore

How Long Can You Hold It?

Now here's a charming interactive game, right up there with that click-a-lot RPG game. It's called hold the button.. and you hold. the. button. Then it tells you how LONG you held the button, and you can email all your friends and challenge them to be more of an idiot than you. There's even a current record on there, where someone kept the button held down for over four days.

HoldTheButton.com

Bumper nuts

If your car isn't manly enough for you, and you're feeling like a pussy with your stupid little import, and guys in Mustangs are blowing past you on the highway like you were standing still, at least you can add a fake set of balls to your car. Yeah, some guy is selling huge metal nutsacks that you can add to your car.

bumpernuts.com

LovePC - Summer 2002

Nina just showed me this. Oh man, this is hilarious. A home PC built for loooooove. Lotion and tissue dispenser built into the top, heart cut in the side with neon lights and leopard fur inside. Second LCD display built into the other side for "private viewing". Every day I get more bored with my dull ass PC case.

LovePC