i hate you all

I think I'm going to start using quiz memes as a litmus test of people's intelligence.

Meaning: if someone posts a quiz meme of any sort on their blog, I'm just not going to read it any more.

These things are poisoning blog culture. What anime character are you, answer five things about yourself, mark off adjectives about yourself, what color are you, what tv show are you...

Jesus christ, people. These things are meaningless, they're vain, they completely lack content, and they appeal to that really sad little part of you that wishes you were important enough to interview, or be compared to something well known. It's so fucking stupid that it makes my head hurt.

Starting now, I'm going to begin culling the blogs that I read with a big scythe of anti-idiocy.

another useless net meme

This is hilarious.

In the fine tradition of PROGRESS QUEST comes another clever time wasting RPG that requires, nay, INSISTS that you do nothing at all.

Enter Idle RPG.

You join the IRC channel, you register a nickname, and you idle. If you don't idle, they penalize you. Every X minutes, you go up a rank, and get a random weapon based on your level. Sometimes people go on quests. Sometimes they fight. You have no control. All you can do is watch and idle.

I challenge you to join me on the slashnet IRC network (I'm on moo.slashnet.org) and join channel #g7, and play IDLE RPG.

I'm ranked 343 right now. Can you defeat me?

Jobs at Sun

For any of you looking for a new job, or a better job, I'd just like to let you know that Sun is finally recovering and hiring again.

We've got a whole slew of jobs available. Most of them prefer that you have SOME programming experience, but it's not necessary for some of the entry level jobs. We have jobs mostly in the Bay Area in CA, but also in Colorado, Mass, and Austin.

We have jobs in GUI design, kernel design, application development, framework development, hardware diagnostics, testing, you name it.

I have access to a really powerful internal search tool where I can recommend people for jobs internally before they're available on our external site.

So if you'd like a job at Sun, I'd recommend taking a look at sun.com's job site and see what category or type of job interest you. Then mail me your resume at tcoziahr@hotmail.com, along with a bit of personal information from you telling me what kind of work you're interested in, so I can search all through the database for you and enter your resume/name in appropriate positions. Also, if you find specific job entries on Sun's site, tell me the Req #, and I can submit your name for those as well. I don't have to tell you that people internally recommended have much better luck finding jobs.

Anyway, Sun is a great place to work, and a cool company. I'd love to get some more quality people working here, and I know that a lot of you are still out of jobs, or working at jobs that you don't really enjoy just to pay the bills.

Drop me a line, and I'll try to get you working here at Sun!

Medicare Bill

My head hurts, and my throat is full of bile. Our Congressmen make me sick.

You all may have heard that there's a new $400 billion dollar Medicare increase up for vote in the Senate this week.

"Wow," I thought, "that's a fucking huge increase. How did the Democrats possibly get that past the house?"

Turns out, it wasn't the Democrats. It was the Republicans, cementing their position in my mind as being just as despicable as the Democrats in terms of irresponsibly bloating our goverment beyond all reason.

But I had read that there was a pitched battle over this. Why would that be? There's one obvious reason, but it can't be that. I searched around for both the details of the bill, and the Democratic reasons for objecting.

The Democrats say they don't want the bill because about six years from now, it opens the playing field to private companies. They say this is going to "kill Medicare". But all the private companies are optional, and open to promote competition. Seniors will be able to choose traditional Medicare, or go to another group that offers more modern practices or better prices. So that's not the real reason. Well, it is, because the Democrats can't stand the thought of ANYTHING being private and not employing lots of government workers, or being out of their control, but it's not a good objection.

Second, they say that all the rich people will bail to private companies, and leave the poor people with rising costs in traditional Medicare. Strangely enough, in the bill, which Democrats were supporting when it was first proposed, there is a measure saying that Medicare has a capped cost rate after privitization. So it CAN'T skyrocket after the privitization. Apparently this objection is just a flat out lie.

What I'm left with is this conclusion: Republicans are backing a massive governmental bloat, via Medicare, to get the votes of all the retiring baby boomers. AARP already has 35 million voting members, and this will cement them to the Republican party. They're fucking the youth in order to pay for everyone's prescription pills, because that will get them votes.

Democrats are opposed because this plan will probably work, giving the Republicans a massive senior voting sway. It actually DOES what Democrats want, but they can't stomach the Republicans providing it.

So I hate everyone. The Democrats are bastards because a) they want this bill but can't admit it, b) they're lying to everyone, and c) because they basically want to remove the one tiny element of sanity from the bill, which is allowing medical competition. And I hate the Republicans because a) they're promoting this bill which bloats the crap out of the government, and b) because they don't stand for a god damn thing anymore.

God damn it. The only voice of reason in this entire thing is, you guessed it, John McCain. Why the HELL ISN'T THIS MAN OUR PRESIDENT?

"McCain said the new program would fail and "add another $8 trillion in unfunded mandates that we're laying on our kids."

With that in mind -- added to the country's overall budget deficit -- the Arizonan questioned "what's ever happened to my party's fiscal discipline?

"Somehow we've lost our way," he said. "And we are laying a terrible burden on the next generation of Americans.""

That's right, John. It's too bad that you're the only person that can see it. Everyone else is a freaking idiot. McCain should send fliers around, and make t-shirts that say "Republican = smaller government". I wish he could run for President in 2004. The man is amazing.

But fuck everyone else. I can't even listen to politics anymore, they make me so mad.

picture fest

Here are some pictures for your entertainment.

First, a really sweet depiction of where Voyager 1 and 2 are now, with respect to our solar system:



Second, a comic that reminds me why I will never work anywhere that I have to interact with humans again. This would be me at a help desk:



Third, some really fucking frightening toys being sold on the streets in Palestine:



Fourth, the Japanese proving that they will always, ALWAYS be weirder than we are. And I absolutely love them for it. This bra actually emits a scent that's supposed to "kill the desire to smoke". Honestly, if that girl asked me not to smoke, I probably wouldn't. Heh.



Are you hot or not for video gamers. There are some pretty sad shots in here of girls photoshopping their faces onto hot video game bodies. That said, it's still hot when girls play video games.

A man in Russia died in a drinking contest after drinking ONE AND A HALF LITERS of vodka.

"A vodka-drinking competition in a southern Russian town ended in tragedy with the winner dead and several runners-up in intensive care.... Some experts estimate one in seven Russians is an alcoholic. "

And finally... a hippo dancing to the Thong Song. It doesn't really get any funnier than that.

ohmanohmanohman

OOoooooooooohhhhh.

I'm so happy. Family Guy might be coming back.

BEST SHOW EVER.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2003-11-18-family-guy_x.htm

"As many as 35 new episodes could return in January 2005, marking the first time that a canceled series has been revived based on strong DVD demand and ratings in syndication.

Fox Television Entertainment Group chairman Sandy Grushow said a decision is expected soon and called the series a late-blooming phenomenon that may have aired before its time.

A DVD set of the show's first 28 episodes released in April has sold nearly 1 million copies, making it this year's top-selling TV show and the No. 4 television title ever, according to Video Store magazine. A second collection, of 22 episodes, has sold 520,000 copies. And the series is Cartoon Network's most popular among adults."

OH HELL YES.

PMS, astronomy, and l33t sp33k

Wow, I guess technology really *does* solve everything. Heh:

"Easily synchronize PMS Alert with her natural monthly cycle. Read a simple scale of five colors to get the likelihood of mood swings. Get a real-time estimation of fertility. Pick a date off the calendar to get a quick forecast of what's to come. Store custom notes to go along with each day in the cycle. Get reminders when conditions are changing. Even get reminders of her next birthday and anniversary."

PMS Alert 1.0

I'm really quite tempted to download it, ask the girls I know for dates so I can synch up with their cycles, and see how accurate it is. It'd be especially funny to be busting out weird facts about their cycle in daily conversations two months from now, once they'd forgotten.

This Freecycling thing is cool. I have a lot of stuff that I want to get rid of, but don't want to throw away. This way I can just give it to other people who actually have a need for it. I think I'll ditch my old 15" monitor first.

Check out the Planetary Photojournal. It's a really amazing collection of astronomy pictures compiled by JPL.

And last but not least, the "English to 12-year-old-AOL-user" translator. (Thanks, Alison.)

AH YES11!1 OMG WTF THIS MAEKS MAH NORMAL SPECH TURN IN2 DA EPI2ME OF WIT AND SOPHISTICATION!111!1 OMG WTF LOL AL TEH LADEIS WANT MA WH3N I TOK LIEK THIS!!1!! OMG LOL

stereotypes

I just got to see a hilarious example of real stereotypes in action.

Last night, new people moved in above me. I could hear them moving around. This morning, next to my car, in the parking spot of the apartment above me, was a brand new Jetta. Hanging from this Jetta's rear view mirror was a cute little anime stuffed animal. "Oh, an asian girl", I thought, looking at the car and the doll.

This evening, I come home from work, and there along the side of this car, which was spotless and new this morning, was a big yellow scrape, where I presume she dragged her car along the side of another car, or some sort of stationary object. She managed to fuck it up in less than 12 hours. Amazing.

(Yes, I'm presuming the accident was her fault. So blow me. I've seen them drive.)

Intimate Mementos

"If he was proud of it, and he enjoyed sharing it with you, wouldn’t he like you to have his penis and testicles to keep, treasure, and remember him by?

We use a new process called “Plastination”, which preserves indefinitely every bit of the original tissue, in fine lifelike detail. The resulting Intimate Memento is sterile, non-toxic, very durable, and safe to handle and display as you see fit."

Intimate Mementos

This comment is my favorite:

"My schlong is like 2 feet long. Do you have enough "plasticon" to preserve it? Also if my chick is alone and only has my penis to protect her, can it be used like a club? Thanks."

Google Code Jam 2003

Damn, I wish I'd known about this.

Granted, I'm not a hot shit speed coder. I like to take my time with a problem, work on it for a while, think about it and draw it out. But still, it would have been fun to compete in:

Google Code Jam 2003

There's a coding arena, and you have to solve coding problems in a set time frame. You also then get the opportunity to "challenge" other coders by breaking their code. I tried to open the arena to see what it was like, and check out some of the practice problems, but now that it's over, it won't let me in.

It looks like it was powered by www.topcoder.com, which I'm reading right now. They apparently have a lot of these competitions going on. I hope the competition isn't only in C++, because the only language I'm really good at is C.

Anyway, if anyone out there has ever competed in one of these, I'd love to hear about it. I'm thinking about entering some of these contests, if the problems aren't insane, and if I can code in C.

Queen Mary 2 accident kills 12

Ah, this is nice. I'm planning a trip to send my grandmother on her dream vacation on the Queen Mary 2, the largest ocean liner ever built, and it's already killing people. A gangway collapsed, killing 12 people and injuring dozens more, including children.

This is really troublesome, following all those people dying on cruises of poisoned food last year. Cruises are starting to seem really dangerous, the people running them are really slacking on safety measures.

The really sad thing is that most of the people that died were family of the people who worked on building it. It sounds like they were allowed to come and visit the pride and joy of their husbands and wives, and a dozen of them ended up dying. And soon the Queen has to christen this thing and send it out to see. That's a bit of a black eye.

BBC NEWS | Queen Mary 2 accident kills 12

god DAMN it

So basically, Republicans can't be trusted to shrink the government, and I *KNOW* that Democrats won't shrink the government.

We're all totally fucked.

"Confounding President Bush's pledges to rein in government growth, federal discretionary spending expanded by 12.5 percent in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, capping a two-year bulge that saw the government grow by more than 27 percent, according to preliminary spending figures from congressional budget panels...
The federal government spent nearly $826 billion in fiscal 2003, an increase of $91.5 billion over 2002, said G. William Hoagland, a senior budget and economic aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). Military spending shot up nearly 17 percent, to $407.3 billion, but nonmilitary discretionary spending also far outpaced Bush's limit, rising 8.7 percent, to $418.6 billion.

Much of the increase was driven by war in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as homeland security spending after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But spending has risen on domestic programs such as transportation and agriculture, as well. Total federal spending -- including non-discretionary entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- reached $2.16 trillion in 2003, a 7.3 percent boost, according to the Congressional Budget Office. "

From here.

And it's not even just war. Most people think it's just because of war and Homeland Security. But non-military spending is up 8.7 percent, and all of our entitlement programs are growing at 7.3 percent... This is such horseshit to grow our social programs faster than we grow our own economy. It's absurd. Prepare yourself for higher taxes, on our slow creep toward socialism.

I love red meat

This is appropriate for how this project has me feeling.

anti-mac movie

This is probably one of the funnier anti-Mac movies I've seen so far. Instead of just talking shit, he actually gives a lot of examples, and what's amazing is that in my incredibly limited experience in using Macs, I've run up against a large number of them, and they frustrated me greatly.

"Apple killed my inner child."

http://www.ancientspear.com/mac.wmv

Investing in vices, friendster pictures, physical interfaces

Here's more stuff I found interesting, without a terribly large amount of commentary, because I remain quite busy, and will be so until this project is finished for work.

Invest in the Vice Fund. You figure that people will always drink, smoke, and gamble? Then how can it be a bad investment? Sounds good to me.

This video of a physical user interface to computing nearly made me poop myself. Especially note the interface he designed for mixing music. There's so much that could be done with this. It looks like that weird shit in Minority Report.

Yes, this has already been posted all over the internet, but it's fucking hilarious. It's mocking what types of pictures people put on Friendster, but it actually relates to any site where people are looking for dates. Closely cropped picture? You're probably fat. Blurry shot? You probably have acne.

Want to feel shitty about yourself? Here's what other people accomplished at your age. At my age, Napoleon conquered Italy. Great.

And finally, a really hilarious list of terms coined about online debates. It's ridiculously left-skewed, but an open minded person will see that these terms apply to everyone who debates online, and they're patterns I see all the time, especially on the g.tobin mailing list.

riddle me this

Dear Everyone in my Office,

What could possibly possess you to come stand in my doorway for 20 seconds, staring at my officemate's empty chair, sigh and fidget audibly, and then when I continue to ignore you, ask me "Where is Molly?" (Names have been changed to protect the innocent). Seriously. What could possibly be going through your pea-sized brains? You have to know, from repeated experience, that no one EVER knows where their officemate is, if they're not at their chair.

A rat generally won't bite a piece of electrocuted cheese more than once or twice before learning his lesson. I'm considering getting a high voltage tazer and applying it to the genitals of anyone performing the aforementioned action, and seeing how quickly they learn. Maybe I'll print up a chart on the wall outside my office, and you can all compete to see who the fastest learner is. At the end of the week, I'll give the winner a cookie.

Fuck you,

Tobin

busy

I've been really busy with work, and honestly, I haven't thought of very much interesting to say, or read very much online. We're getting closer and closer to deadline at work, so I'm finding myself putting in quite a few 15 hour days. My wrists are starting to hurt from typing all day.

Anyway. I was thinking last night that it's funny that a lot of young kids are growing up saying something is "off the hook" when they've never actually seen an old fashioned phone that really could ring "off the hook".

Also, caffeinated milk is really silly.

So is Saudi Arabia banning the export of sand because they're worried about a "sand shortage". You've got to be kidding me.

Don't forget to watch the full lunar eclipse this Saturday at 5pm PST/ 8pm EST.

Kyoto Accord and much of global warming hype based on false premises

Pay attention. This is important.

The Kyoto Accord has just been pretty much debunked.

The British Journal, Energy and Environment, has just released a paper showing that much of the science behind the Kyoto Accord was based on bad and biased data, and incorrect calculations.

We've all seen the "hockey stick" graph showing how the last century has shown a huge spike in global temperatures, making it an outlier in global climates in the last millennia. This isn't actually true.

Over the last few years, scientists have been showing that solar variations are far more influential in global temperatures than man-made emissions. However, there was a paper in 1998 that all the environmentalists touted about, "proving" that our century was anomalous, and this was used to push the Kyoto accord, and as the backbone of much of the global warming hype we've all been hearing.

Most of you probably even think that man-made global warming is an established fact.

"Mann's claims that "temperatures in the latter half of the 20th century were unprecedented," and the IPCC's and Environment Canada's confident assertions that the 1990s was "likely the warmest decade" and 1998 the "warmest year" of the millennium, are wholly unsubstantiated."

"Correcting and updating the proxy database used by Mann and his co-authors and then repeating Mann's methodology, McIntyre and McKitrick showed that the MBH98 study in fact reveals that the late 20th century Northern Hemisphere temperature trend is unexceptional compared to the preceding centuries."

That's right, the cornerstone paper of the global warming movement has just been shown to have purposely omitted key data, incorrectly calculated on incorrect data, and basically is a steaming, embarrassing pile of shit.

Read for yourself.

http://www.nationalpost.com/financialpost/story.html?id=06C603EF-5B3F-49CF-ACAC-50D9F895E7DE

political compass

Here's an interesting site that will give you your point on a political compass (Thanks Dean).

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

As usual, some of the spin of the authors comes across in some questions, so they're impossible to answer in a way that satisfies me. For example, questions like "No one chooses their country of birth, so it's foolish to be proud of it." are really stupid, because they imply that we're too stupid to judge a country on a basis other than being born there. IE, pride in your country should be based on its deeds, not on whether you're supposed to or not. But hey, it still got me mostly correct, although I'm surprised that my Libertarian number wasn't higher:

Economic Left/Right: 8.50
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.95

Also, just for Gopi, Apple fucks up again.

Still the best news on television

As I (and many others) have been yelling for years, the Daily Show is the best news on TV.

What's amazing is, it keeps snowballing. After Jon Stewart's Emmy, people have started doing some serious ratings comparisons. The results are astounding:

According to a new ratings report, "The Daily Show draws an average 640,000 views among 18-to-49-year olds. That beats Fox News Channel's 527,000, CNN's 286,000, MSNCB's 162,000 and CNBC's 72,000."

So, basically, Jon Stewart is the most watched "news" program of all the major cable networks.

Man, is that cool. It gives me hope that we have a discerning public that's really sick of bullshit and spin. Sure, Stewart may be much more liberal than me, but he never offends me, because he's an outraged, smart guy. He doesn't pander to sides, he tracks down everything false, foolish, and condescending to the thinking public, he drags it out in the open, and mocks it mericlessly until it's unveiled as the cheap and pathetic sham that it is.

I love that show. Stewart should send a xerox of his ass to CNN.

Weirdest fetish ever

What. The. Fuck.

NPR

Oh man, I almost spit soda out my nose when I read this blogger's description of NPR as mating ritual:

For both the male and the female, listening to NPR sends a signal to a prospective mate: “Despite my current income, in a few years I will have a house in a neighborhood with good public schools, and I will drive a Volvo stationwagon.” Women are sending an additional signal: “I consider myself smart and sophisticated and if I get pregnant, I will have an abortion. I might consider a three-way.” Men signal back: “I won’t try to stop you from getting an abortion, but I’m not afraid to cry if you do. I don’t like guns, but I’m manly enough to camp and mountain-bike. I just love nature! A three-way sounds intriguing.”