Michael's Weblog

I have a confession to make

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:14:00 EST

I've been watching "america's got talent".

Yeah, I know. Guilty as charged.

But I just got a LITTLE more confindence in america's artistic taste: they actually voted an opera singer all the way through to the end. That guy won. Awesomeness.

Now, admittedly, he probably won on THE most stereotypical opera song right now: Puccini's Turandot. But it's still a pretty damn good opera. What he really needs now, should he decide to make this a career, is a voice coach. He has a powerful voice, but he needs language training. Aside from that, he kicked ass. And he deserves his props. (Although he should probably invest some of the winnings into a gastric bypass or something. No offense.).

Oh, and thank GOD those violin-playing hip-hop guys lost. They REALLY sucked. They were horrific. I mean - I commend them on the attempt to combine two art forms, but hip hop as it stands today has fundamental flaws in it. Serious fundamental flaws. And until the culture changes, I don't see them going very far in the real world.

Anyhow. It was all a guilty pleasure. I was entertained. So, I confess =)

Finally, I'm a candidate

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:23:00 EST

On Monday, I successfully defended what you could call a "pre-dissertation". In some departments it's called a "Proposal" and in others it's called "Prospectus".

The purpose of the proposal is to stand up in front of your committee and say "Here is the work I've done over the last few years. And here is the 'last mile' of work I would like to finish. Are you satisfied? Is this good enough?"

That's what I defended on Monday. And I passed =). When you pass the proposal, you are deemed by the university as a "candidate", or in otherwords, you're considered to be "ABD", which means you are in "all but dissertation" status.

Finally. Progress. It's not really until this point where you feel you've jumped every hurdle thrown at you and the end actually looks near. There are several advantages to being a candidate. Should I choose to, I could potentially leave the university and finish the rest of the disseratation somewhere else (which I'm not, but it's an option should, say, a family emergency ever happen.)

The other advantage to going through the candidacy process is: *most* of your disseration has already been physically typed. In fact about 70% of my dissertation is already typed and formatted. All I have to do now this year is focus on the "last mile" of actual work and tack it onto the dissertation at the end.

So, when am I graduating? I'm not telling you. When do I WANT to graduate? I'm not telling you that either. Shit happens. So, you can understand.

But at the very least: the end is close.

The iPhone is Evil

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 09:06:00 EST

I think I'm gonna throw up

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:55:00 EST

McCain, you are a conniving, rat bastard. I hate you. I can't believe he picked this woman. I would have rather listened to Mit Romney's annoying voice for 4 years as a VP than have had the GOP stoop so low as to pick this woman from Alaska as a running mate.

She's an insult to the Clinton Family. And she's an insult to the oil drilling opposition. And she's an insult to Obama. And she is an insult to her own party.

This woman doesn't even have a SINGLE degree in law or politics. She has a bachelors degree in journalism! Listen to the title of her degree: "bachelor of science degree in communications-journalism". Since when was journalism considered a scientific discipline???

And you know what the scary part is? It just might work. It JUST might actually work. Enough idiot Hillary Clinton supporters JUST might actually be stupid enough to vote GOP. And if they do, they all deserve to be disenfranchised and thrown in front of traffic.

What is the world coming to? God help us all.

Just How Much Binghamton Sucks...

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:24:00 EST

Have you ever looked at the Census data for Broome County?

Broom county data from census.gov

God, binghamton sucks. It sucks so much that the population of the county has DECREASED two percent since the last census. Only 22 percent of the county has a bachelor's degree.

That's just pitiful. So, speaking of Binghamton, I've had the good fortune in the last few months to get the hell away from here.

The link includes pictures from Niagara Falls, a Family Reunion in Philadelphia, NYC, and a couple of trips back home to Dallas. If I didn't get away, I think I would've died.

Devil's Advocate for Health Care

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:13:00 EST

Bear with me for a second while I play devil's advocate on the issue of Universal Health Care. Let's pretend like I was a Republican (i.e. the devil): Now, republicans aren't stupid: their main qualm about the health care problem is the money. It's always the money. They think government should stay out of the way - stop interfering with people's lives (which is a euphemism for saying "social programs prevent rich people from making money."). But, let's pretend for a second that there actually was some logic to profit in the health care solution...

The traditional way to put through bipartisan legislation in a capitalistic economy is regulation. So, what would the regulation in this case be? It would be price-fixing. (gasp). Yes, price fixing: i.e. you fix the price of a medical procedure across the country (including the prices of medications.) Now, the kicker for the republican side is: how does this promote competition between hospitals and insurance providers? How will they still make money? Well, you've gotta realize that the premium and deductible systems attached to each health care plan need not disappear: in fact, they should stay exactly the same. The difference is that, if I live in, say, New York - it's highly unlikely that an insurance provider is going to sell me a plan in California for the same price. In fact, they probably won't sell it to me at all - not even within the same insurance company. What this does for the insurance industry is still allow them to foster competition through geographic areas - even within the same city amongst other companies. The main core of the health care problem for people who HAVE insurance is denied claims: if I have a plan, then that should be it. The end. No worries. Ever. Price-fixing would guarantee that your claim would always get covered (except for experimental procedures) because all insurance companies would lose the same amount of money since the payouts wouldn't change. It would reduce the risk for that company and even potentially increase wall-street's bottom line. Just imagine how much the stock market would go UP if 50 million UN-insured citizens suddenly bought health insurance plans because they knew they'd never get denied from a claim? The insurance industry would be rolling in dough...

Now, let's not confuse the issue of insured citizens with UN-insured citizens. Those are two completely different monsters. That's another conversation for another day. But for those people that are insured: I say you should treat your body like you treat your car. If your car breaks down, you have options. But if you have a heart attack, you're screwed. It's not like you're gonna get off the operating table and say "Hold up doctor, how much does this cost?". But if the prices for the procedures were all the same, then the only shopping around that we would necessarily need would be for the plans themselves rather than the individual procedures or medications.

Does that make sense?

Jury Duty

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:26:00 EST

I just finished serving 4 days of Jury Duty. It was extremely educational. I was pleasantly surprised and actually gained a bit more confidence in our legal system. Here's a brief summary without boring you too much about the details.

Surprisingly enough, this was my first experience going through Jury Selection, and I was actually chosen in the first round. Jury selection took ALL day and went through 4 rounds. It was a very long wait. The questions they ask you can be very personal - I didn't expect that. Although it makes perfect sense, because both attorneys are looking for Jurors to serve their best interests. I had just finished getting over a 3-day cold the day before jury selection and really just wanted to go home, but I'm glad I was selected in the end - despite all of my coughing and sneezing =)

This was a local criminal trial. I didn't expect that either. But people told me I should be happy that it wasn't a federal trial. That could've taken weeks. Although I probably would have been excused if I had claimed that jury duty interfered with my schooling. The charge in this case was assault in the 1st and 2nd degree. The way it works is that the 1st degree charges the defendant with "conscious intent to assault" whereas the 2nd degree only charges them with "reckless assault".

Without stating names: the basic story is that a man beat his wife - multiple times in multiple places within the span of an evening. The reason he was indicted however is because the defendant already admitted that he was guilty of the assault itself. There was no question about that. The purpose of the trial was to argue whether or not he "intended to do so": i.e., did he *want* to assault his wife.

However, there was a catch. Before the assault, the man and his wife attended a bar and the man got SUPER drunk. So, obviously, the defense attempted to show that he was "too drunk to form a mental intent to assault his wife". The problem with this catch is that there wasn't enough evidence to prove that and convict in the first degree. Alcohol affects everyone differently, and this man was 300 pounds. The man's blood-alcohol was never taken by the cops and the experts could not testify to his sobriety. As a result of that reasonable doubt, we the Jury had no choice but to acquit on the 1st degree but convict on the 2nd degree.

What I learned about serving during those 4 days was just how vital the 12 jurors are during deliberations. In this case - the man beat his wife multiple times in multiple places around their house - so the prosecution's case was to drill this fact home - to enrage us - to point out how gruesome the crime was and how severe the injuries were. So when we started deliberating, 7 of the 12 jurors (including myself, I must admit) actually did want to convict. But the remaining jurors reminded us that because there was not enough evidence to show intent (or too much evidence to show drunkenness), that we had to recognize that there was a reasonable doubt present. As a result we all recognized that it was not possible to convict in the 1st degree.

What I also learned about our legal system is just how important the indictment process is. Do you know what it means to be indicted? (Well, before now I did not know either, so I will summarize). Basically, before a case can go to trial (depending on its severity), a charged defendant must be indicted by a grand jury. What this means is that a separate "grand jury" is selected to determine whether or not the evidence collected thus far is sufficient enough to allow the case to go to trial. If the grand jury throws the trial out, then those specific charges will be thrown out. As a result, a normal jury will never be called.

Fascinating =). If you ever serve Jury Duty, I hope your experience is as enlightening as mine was.

Fix iGoogle's new crappy style

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 08:10:00 EST

If you use the firefox greasemonkey, plugin you may have noticed that the "Super iGoogle" script no longer works correctly because igoogle added this crappy new style to their homepage layout.

To get rid of the tab on the left side of the screen, simply add the following two lines of code to the "super igoogle" greasemonkey script inside the toggleHeader function found within the script:

// Function to toggle whether the header is displayed or not
function toggleHeader() {
  // Toggle display state of header div
 
  var elm = document.getElementById('col1_contents');
  if (elm) elm.style.display = (headerHidden ? '' : 'none');
 
  /* the rest is the same */
 
  var elm = document.getElementById('nhdrwrapsizer');
  if (elm) elm.style.display = (headerHidden ? '' : 'none');
 
/* etc.... */

Out of Town

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 08:30:00 EST

Be back after independence day.

(Yes, I can still receive voicemails.)

Intolerable

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:45:00 EST

This is offensive to me. It's just one more reason why I watch PBS and not some corporate-dominated media-consolidated news program.

Click on the image for the huffington post article. (I actually found this in the newspaper first).

The Best Digg Yet

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 05:32:00 EST

Digg: the best firefox addon ever?

I'm a victim of identity theft

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:05:00 EST

Why does it always seem like every single day is a battle with evil to keep your money in your pocket instead of in someone else's hands? I'm so sick of how the world revolves around money.

So, today I get this letter from UPS saying "You owe $66 for a shipment to Las Vegas". I have not sent a UPS package in years, and suddenly there's this charge on an old credit card that I don't even use anymore...

And you'll love this part: Guess who the sender was listed as on this "magical" invoice? His name is "none". And the receiver? They are equally listed as "none". Either there's a city in Nevada called "none" or someone's trying to scam me. Ain't that some shit? I swear, man. So I call up UPS and raise hell and they're all like "We're so sorry, sir. We don't know how this happened".

Yeah right. So apparently I've become an identity theft victim for a measly $66, and I'm trying to speak with the credit card company as to how someone got a hold of a zero-balance credit card under my name that I don't even use anymore.

You never think it would happen to you....and then BAM. Trippy, man, trippy.

The funny thing about this particular scam, and I suspect happens to most scams as well, is that the service has already been rendered (i.e. delivered). So, even though I'll get my justice and my balance refunded, UPS just lost that 66 bucks, and without police intervention, that package is already gone.

The damn thing's probably got crack in it or something. I hope the person who shipped it gets caught in front of a drive-by shooting. That would be awesome.

USENIX: Anybody else going?

Tue, 20 May 2008 07:28:00 EST

No, I don't have a paper there, by my labmates are going any, so I thought I'd ask...

English Class

Wed, 14 May 2008 02:07:00 EST

You know, one of the most surprising skills that I never thought I would re-use to such an extreme degree in graduate school is simple reading and writing.

When you come out of high school and college, you have this feeling of: "I did it. I passed that crap. I'm a good writer. I rock.".

Ha. Yeah right.

In my almost 5 years of graduate school, I think I literally spend 50% of my time or more just reading and writing - over, and over, and over again.

In preparation for our latest paper, my advisor and I probably have to churn through some 15 to 20 papers in a little over a month, which is like reading half a dozen full-length novels - and then control all of that chaos with your own work into a magically cohesive paper submission. It's craziness.

God, I really hated English class. But I guess it grows on you. I think of it as a "necessary evil" of science. I'd rather just write code for the rest of my life.

Rallies! Rallies! Gallore!

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:16:00 EST

What a weekend! Wow. I have such a story to tell.

So, as the Pennsylvania primaries are a few days away, both of the democratic candidates were both going to be campaigning just three hours south of me from upsate NY. So, on Friday, I sit there in my chair thinking "Is it really worth it to burn 6 hours of gas to go to some presidential rallies?"

So, I made a leap of faith, packed a spare change of underwear, and sped off down to Philadelphia =)

First let me start off with: I SHOOK BILL CLINTON'S HAND and stood FEET AWAY FROM OBAMA! Since my primary camera broke, I had to go grab one of those crappy dispoable deals - all of those pictures are located here, but before I describe the weekend, here's a couple of snapshots at both rallies:

How exciting! What an opportunity! Ok. Nerves calming down now. So, here's how the weekend went: At first, the plan was to see Obama and Clinton in a single day, but it didn't quite work out that way, and I ended up seeing Obama the day after. I didn't really know how these things worked, but it didn't matter - if either candidate gets elected, it's likely that I'll never see either one of them again ever, so I gave it a shot.

So, I drove down on Friday after lunch in anticipation of 30,000! person rally in Philly for obama at 6pm. But I got there too late (it was a 3-hour drive). There were too many people and I couldn't see squat. So instead of waiting around, I walked about 2 miles outside of downtown to the Clinton rally. The website actually said that Hillary was supposed to be there, but they switched it up on there and sent us Bill. But what was even more surprising was the venue. They gave us FOOD. Real food too - pork, subs, chips, beer - all kinds of stuff. And there were only 500 people there - that was so funny: when just 2 miles away there were 30,000 people at an Obama rally. I couldn't believe it.....

We waited for SO LONG before he came out. It was Bill's sixth stop that evening and I think we were standing around from 7pm to midnight, and I ended up having to walk 2 miles BACK to my car. (Stupid michael). But it was worth it. He did his speech, and came around and did the usual shaking hands and made it over to our part of the crowd. Awesomeness. The second picture up there is my favorite: you can see my ugly face next to Clinton and then there's this "deer in the headlights" pose from the secret-service agent in the background there - so funny.

So, after the Clinton rally, I was really bumbed out that I arrived too late to the Obama rally, and it was 1 AM by the time I got back to my car and there was NO way I was gonna drive around and find a hotel to check into - so, ummm. I just slept in my car. (They don't make car seats like they used to. My car seats feel like couches - they're so comfortable. I'd put my car seats up against a modern car any day =).

Then, after I woke up a few hours later, I stopped by a restaurant and checked the internet to see when the next Obama rally was before I drove back home, and sure enough, he was doing this Train tour where he visited a bunch of train stations across PA. Fortunately it wasn't too late, so I drove a few more miles outside of Philly and got there REALLY early this time. It was high noon and 80 degrees outside and there are already people flowing into the rally. That rally was great, man. People were so much more animated. And for two hours I had these really intense political discussions with all the people around me - these folks were hardcore. Checkout this picture from this guy in the crowd from the Obama rally:

Isn't that hilarious? The sign says "Middle-Aged White Guys for Obama". Love it.

So, to wrap up. I must say I've made my decision about the democratic candidates. And surprisingly enough, it had nothing to do with the issues. It eventually came down to one simple thing between the two candidates: honesty and trust. I simply don't trust Hillary anymore. This is for two reasons. The first is that sniper fire quip. She flat out lied to the country. Plain and simple. The second reason that's actually the most important reason is honesty: in an NPR re-broadcast of the horrendous Wednesday democratic debate, they touched on a response of Hilary in regards to the moderator's question about the beating of a dead horse called "The Reverend"...

Basically, her response summarized to this: She says that since the republicans are going to throw the Reverend's comments at Obama, then why shouldn't she do it too? That's just childish. She has resorted to scapegoating the republicans for her own gain just to win the election and not dismiss the issue nor the debate question for the insignificance that it already was.

Sorry, Hillary. I don't trust you anymore.

Afterwards, I drove back through the PA turnpike completely fired up. If any of you guys get a chance to go to a political rally that's nearby, I strongly recommend dropping everything and speeding off. That was so much fun.

vi versus emacs

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 05:07:00 EST

I found this awesome picture on a website recently .... and I just couldn't resist posting it. (Click to enlarge).

As you probably guessed, I'm a lifelong vi user =).

Battery Revelations

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 05:33:00 EST

I've been reading this blog about this guy who's trying to build his own electric car from scratch and is going through the learning process about battery technology - and I learned a couple of interesting points...

It seems that because the cost of modern battery cells continues to remain relatively unchanged (and high), the biggest hurdle to widespread use of modern electric cars (in addition to the need to change our driving habits to local over long distance) is actually the way you draw power out of the batteries themselves. Modern batteries already have the capacity for electric vehicles, but it's the acceleration that kills them: when you've got punch it to merge into traffic or you want to shift up really fast when you're wife is having a baby, the life of the electric cells decreases dramatically fast even though the batteries still successfully discharge properly - which in turn requires replacements too fast, too soon.

Which got me thinking about a second post in the same blog of his: he commented on the notion many of us have heard: why is that people always tell you to "discharge your batteries completely before recharging them to extend the batteries life?". Well, again, we have the case of battery life over capacity. In reality, batteries aren't just single units as large pools of chemical acids like your standard car battery or a tank-sided backup battery for a large building - the batteries we find in our common devices are actually made up of lots of individual cells that discharge together as the device is being used. As a result, if you get the cells *as a whole* down to 50%, each of the individual cells actually vary wildly in remaining capacity - so the idea is to drain all the cells completely and get them equally empty before recharging. This is why car batteries stay in your car for years before they need replacing - their basically one big unit of battery acid that discharges without any of the individual fluctuations of smaller batteries in consumer electronics.

If we can overcome the engineering difficulties of discharge, battery rotation, instantaneous high-wattage current during acceleration, we could start rolling out electric vehicles tomorrow (save for the need to take care of the whole carbon burning problem, of course).

Out of Town

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 04:45:00 EST

Be back next Wednesday...

Wow, I Got Audited!

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:10:00 EST

What a day, man. What ... a ... day.

Being a young buck, I've never gotten a *response* from the IRS before. So, I wake up this morning and go downstairs to check my mail, and what do I find? A nice friendly letter from "THE MAN" (a.k.a the IRS).

So, as most people know my sole source of income is a fellowship I receive for living expenses at school. And I'm thinking "I reported that. What in god's name could this letter possibly be about, " right? So I open up the letter, and in bold letters, all I see are the bad things: on one page it says "GIVE ME YOUR MONEY" (3-grand, to be exact), and on the other page it says "you could go to jail". Well, ok, not in those words, exactly. But you get the picture. My heart was racing. And then I continue reading: "We are applying an additional tax due to your self-employment". So, of course the IRS got it wrong. I paid my taxes. I'm not self-employed. So, after a swift call to the contact number in the audit, the issues are resolved with a request to write a letter and provide proof of my fellowship.

But the problem with this whole audit thing is not the audit itself: it's the bazillion flaws in the audit.

1. The audit reports that they tried to charge me interest on the claimed tax. WTF, huh? Interest? Are you kidding me? What if I really *did* owe this tax because I screwed up or something? You're gonna charge me interest about a balance that I didn't even know about? That's absurd!

2. This audit was for 2006! Come on! How can you retroactively ask someone for 3-grand? If my original 2006 tax return was "supposedly" wrong, why wasn't the return rejected in the first place? I could have lost my job or broken a few bones since then for all they knew. What would they do then? Put me out on the street?

3. After I called the auditor, I explained to them that my 2007 and 2005 returns are going exactly the same as my 2006 return that was being audited due to the fellowship and proceeded to ask him "am I going to have to go through this again on my 2007 return?" as well as a second followup question asking him "Why wasn't I contacted about this on my 2005 return as well?" The auditor simply had no answer: "I don't know sir. That's all I can tell you sir."

Idiots, I tell you. Goddamn idiots. My words fail to describe my rage at the amazing inconsistency and failure of a crappy system.

Heeding the Signs: replacing your alternator

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:49:00 EST

So, here's another short summary of some recent self-car-repair experience. If you're one of those drivers still sporting a post-100K mile car, then you're probably like me and are deep into the one-by-one replacement of most of the components around the engine block. I got my 1990 chrysler at 80K miles and have driven it to 130K miles in about 5 years, which is a rather low mileage than most people - mostly because I don't commute everyday. Since then I've personally replaced my own radiator, water pump, spark plugs, drive belt, thermostat, A/C compressor, a few batteries, terminals, window motors, headliners, and an assortment of wires and hoses - not to mention random things like body work and even painting (yeah, who does that?).

So the latest component to go bad: the alternator. The alternator is usually a two-fold problem: if the battery dies repeatedly and you don't heed the warning signs, the alternator will have to work too hard to put out enough current, and if the alternator goes bad first then the battery life will go down as well. So if one of the two goes bad and you don't drop by the auto part store, then both of them will probably go bad simultaneously. And 20-degree snow days outside doesn't help the situation either.

So here's my experiences replacing the alternator. First: be prepared to struggle. Although the alternator is on the very top of the drive belt, it's being held up by a very tight space of electrical wires and metal. If your manual tells you that you can remove the drive belt from the alternator pulley by first loosening the alternator bolts and rotating it, *don't believe them*. Sure, you can loosen it and pull the belt off the idler pully, but all belt tensioners are not always easily accessible. You might get the belt *off*, but you HAVE to rotate the tensioner to get the belt back on. My car requires you to jack it up and rotate from underneath, but of course the manual doesn't tell you that part =).

Second: like many others, I was alarmed by the initial price of a "newly" refurbished alternator from the auto store. If you bring in the old part (the core) they'll take off about 60 bucks. So I considered going to the junkyard to buy an older alternator for like $12 (versus a new $130 one), but considering that the alternators in those cars are just as old as mine, there's no gaurantee that it will be in good shape. So the moral is: only buy new electrical components. Stay away from the junk yard on these kinds of parts.

Third: Make sure the new alternator has the same pulley as your old one. Otherwise the drive belt won't fit on the new one and you'll have to go right back to the store. Also: if your alternator isn't already dead, take it to the auto store and get it tested first to make sure you know how many amps the alternator puts out, so that you can correctly match the new part to the old part - otherwise you can just measure the alternator in demensions. That usually works too. So when you've got the right part - then check the pulleys. If they're different, you can politely ask the auto store to swap the pulleys for you: it's impossible to do it yourself. You have to use a force-drill, and unless you wanna go buy one, just have them do it for you.

So, price-wise, assuming you already have the tools you need, having done prior repairs, the amount of money you should expect to save from the repair man goes as follows:

1. new alternator part cost:

repair-shop quote: $200-$300 (w/ core)
do-it-yourself: $100-$150 (from the auto store)

2. new drive belt part:

repair-shop quote: $80
do-it-yourself: $30

3. new battery under warranty: free

Finally, actually detaching the alternator is quite a feat..... it took me 2 hours to get it out, because there are many obstructions surrounding the alternator. So if you have the auto-shop do it, they're going to charge you at LEAST 3 hours of labor time, and at $60/hour, that adds up quickly.

All in all you'll save at least $300 on this latest do-it-yourself job. Go buy yourself some ice-cream or something =)

To KVM or not to KVM

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:19:00 EST

(Family readers, just move along. Jargon alert).

To be honest, I think KVM is great idea, but still too young of a project. As you've probably read, it basically serves as the linux equivalent of vmware, but takes advantage of *direct* hooks inside the linux kernel that have been made available for virtualization (as of 2.6.21 or 23, I believe)....

One performance hurdle, as you probably know, is that you need a VT-x or VT-d chip from AMD or Intel for it to run. Not everyone has one of those, and it will probably take a decade for them to become widespread... Oh wait... actually I think the QEMU-based binary translation does work with KVM, right? (last time I checked) So that should obviate the need for VT-x/d should your comp's CPU not have support for it....

The biggest *functional* hurdle I think you'll run into is filesystem management. VM products have yet to get this right. In the lab, we write our own convoluted scripts to juggle NFS-based filesystem images for our VMs - which should not be necessary. Unless you're running a strictly NFS or SAN/NAS based setup, you're gonna run into a lot of pain trying to maintain or choose a specific file format for those local disk images. The KVM utilities, however (the last time I checked) do not support the ability to run a disk as a "flat file" (basically mount -o loop), but they do have utilities to convert vmware disks between qemu disks and kvm-specific disks and back again. The virtualization community is trying to create disk image standards for those formats, but it will be another couple years before those standards become de facto. It's not unlike the XML document format wars that the big countries and companies are fighting about right now.

As a user, KVM simply may not be stable enough, but it is powerful. Howeever, don't rule out VMware's player's ability right now to *also* support VT-d/x enabled processors as well. KVM is still a very young product. It crashes a lot. The last time I ran it on my VT-x enabled laptop I couldn't get away from kvm-intel kernel module oops errors. In principle, KVM just needs a little more time to mature.

Xen is fabulously stable... but it ties you to a specific kernel version. Newer kernel versions ported to the Xen hypervisor by 3rd parties are likely to be stable and are often already in apt/yum/emerge repositories, but their stability is unclear. If you need outside drivers like (pre-built kernel modules for Graphics and Wireless network devices), they can be hard to find. So if you're willing to stick with 2.6.18, then I recommend Xen. You can take your entire filesystem and stick it in a non-proprietary flat file without worrying about compatibility issues.

If you want to avoid para-virtualization for Linux, then I'd go either with a strictly QEMU or VMware solution (for now). In time, KVM will mature even further and perhaps Xen will have finished integrated QEMU and have binary translation support for HVM virtual machines without the need to paravirtualize, but as of yet that has still not happened.

If you're sick, stay home!

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:57:00 EST

Year...after...year. It seems that your colleagues just don't get it, do they?

We all know the story: you're sitting at work, happily going about your businesses, and then suddenly someone seemingly innocuously sits down next to you. And sure enough they start hacking away at a monster cough!

Stay at home, you idiot!

Sure enough - today when I was driving home, I caught that mess. And am now spending the rest of the night in bed - not to mention the anticipation of the flu-vaccine deficiencies this year.

Thanks in Advance

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 03:32:00 EST

Where the hell did "Thanks in Advance" come from, huh?

What a cop-out.

So, I'm a friend of yours (or even a business or employee) and you ask me to do something for you and before I even get started you tell me (or text me or email me, which is even worse): "Thanks in Advance!".

What the hell is that?

Are you trying to encourage me to do a good job by getting my efforts/empathy on credit for the task you assigned me to do for you? I see it everywhere: in casual conversations, on television, in emails......everywhere.

Is it SO HARD to tell me thank you *on delivery*? Are you that desperate for the favor (or insecure) that you can't wait to say thank you?

I dunno. That bothers me. Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a mole-hill.

Baaaaaad M$ Winblows

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 01:03:00 EST

Here's a quote from a new york times article about Microsoft's attempt to buy yahoo:

"Technological innovation may not have always been what gave Microsoft the edge. It has been frequently criticized for me-tooism and for getting it right the third time. Sometimes, marketing skill and bullying seemed also to be keys to its success. (To be fair, the creative use of those skills can also be regarded as a form of innovation.)"

They hit the nail on the head:

60's: Unix (ms plays catch up 10 years later)
80's: Darpanet: (ms plays catch up 10 years later)
90's: Netscape: (ms plays catch up again)
00's: Google: (large, distributed data centers, ms plays catch up)
Today: Virtualization: (ms is still playing catch up).

In the time it takes them to absorb Yahoo's data centers into its core infrastructure, Google will probably already have built half a dozen more data centers over seas already - because their technical innovation is *fundamentally* different from Yahoo's and Microsofts. I don't think they'll ever catch up.

Latest Piled Higher and Deeper

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:44:00 EST

Piled Higher and Deeper by Jorge Cham		www.phdcomics.com

title: "Anyone's game" - originally published 2/1/2008

Interesting Time to be Alive

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:26:00 EST

If a democrat wins the presidency.....

They will either be:

1. Female.
2. or Black.

Let that sink in for a second.

Doesn't that make this an interesting time to be alive?

Watching Your TV at Work

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:35:00 EST

I've been impressed with how robust the video4linux architecture and support for audio/video capture has been in Linux. After recently setting up a fabulous MythTV installation, I've been a little obsessed with being able to take it one step further: Broadcasting my home TV signal (or any stored media) over the internet to, say, my laptop or other computer.

There are a few ways to do this in Linux. www.linuxtv.com has a comprehensive wiki page of the solutions that work well for specifically transcoding your TV tuner's signal into a http or RTP stream at low-bandwidth, i.e. around 50 KB/s. The defacto way of doing this seems to be VideoLan program, which is available for all platforms and is inside of most repositories. However, I had problems with that program being to CPU intensive on a lower-speed box. But if your comp is a beast, then go ahead and use it.

At 50 KB/s, using an xvid + mp3 transcoded stream, the image looks *great*. I mean, just awesome. It's quite a surprise - and it's LiveTV. To change channels, you can setup xbindkeys shortcuts over SSH keys and use the ivtv-tune command to remotely change channels that the server is broadcasting from - this happens independently of the program itself.

Personally, I ended up using a program called "XdTV" (they have a source forge project) which is based on XawTV, but extends it to do streaming directly from Video4Linux. It's quite a nice program, but surprisingly did not have any pre-built packages in my distribution's repository. This program is *much* less CPU intensive, but the quality of the live-TV @ 50 KB/s is just as great.

Fortunately, Verizon DSL provides me with a 80 KB/s uplink, so if you don't at least have a 50/60 K uplink (like most cable companies as well as AT&T), then you're gonna have to reduce the frame rate or video quality sufficiently enough. But with enough tuning, it should still look just fine.

Now I can watch my TV in....ummm......africa, if I wanted to.

Isn't that awesome? =)

I'm Not Surprised

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:14:00 EST

So, my immediate acquaintances know too well how much I complain about Binghamton's weather:

There's no sun. Ever. None. Nada. Zip. Zippo. Zilch. Zero.

In fact, A friend of mine has sent me statistics! on exactly how pitiful it is here. Of the 365 days in a year, we only get 52 sunny days! That's it. And of the rest of the days, over 200 of them are COMPLETELY overcast (i.e. you can't see a goddamn thing goddamnit).

It's that bad. And probably all of those 52 days are during the summer time - as a direct result of the temperature increase.

But, as soon as winter hits: you're screwed. This is just the motivation I needed to get the hell out of this wretched city.

Geek Love

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:09:00 EST

I love my life. A friend of me sent me this link:

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/66795671.html

Are we really that transparent?

Out of Town

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 11:11:00 EST

I'll be away from home until the 15th....

Be back later =)

Learning from New Hampshire

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 07:14:00 EST

I learned two things from the New Hampshire debates, and ironically, they both came from watching the Republican side of the debate:

The first has to do with Healthcare:

An American population that is *fully* dependent on government-sponsored healthcare becomes an ignorant population. I think the average American sometimes forgets that Hospitals are also businesses. They're not just "sick-houses". They're businesses - and they have a vested interest in doing good business. For example, I randomly asked a few friends online today the question: "What do you think about universal healthcare", and the answer from about half of them was: "It sounds like a good idea." .......... and? A more accurate description of what the public probably needs is "Supplemental Healthcare" - i.e. a Medicaid/Medicare program that's not just directed at poor people and senior citizens. "Supplemental" would mean: if I walk into a day-clinic or a hospital with a broken leg or am about to die from a car wreck then they should treat me now and not charge or ask questions later. What the republicans are worried about is that we could end up creating a nation of idiots who are not being responsible by shopping around for hospital services for procedures and drugs in a preventative manner, rather than being responsible. If you are a middle/working class citizen and you can help contribute to your own healthcare costs, then you should. But if you have suddenly been afflicted with something that would put you in debt for life, then the government should absorb that cost - no questions asked. That naturally leads to "Healthcare for Children". I think that that question is identical to the need for supplemental health care. Children need both preventative and emergency healthcare just like regular adults. There's not really a difference: if a child is born with a chronic condition that's going to destroy the family's finances, then they should not have to pay for it. But if they baby is just suffering repeated bouts of the common cold, then they should get some insurance.

So, it sounds to me like the plan should be: more regulation of healthcare costs, and the addition of income-level supplemental healthcare, with respect to the family's credit history, perhaps. People kind of cringe when they hear someone say: "What? Regulate business? Are you crazy? This is America!". Well, fuck that. If the one hospital's gonna charge me 10 grand to remove some cancer and another hospital is gonna charge double, then something is seriously wrong with the current level of governmental regulation on the healthcare, insurance, and drug industries.

The second lesson I learned from the debates addresses immigration:

A friend of mine was telling me yesterday: "Illegal Immigration is, by definition, illegal, right?" So, by that logic, isn't the term 'illegal immigrant rights' an oxymoron? Well, that statement made perfect sense to me, but it doesn't address the core of the problem: What do we do with the 12 million people that are right here, right now?. That's the hard part. So, the republicans say: kick out the criminals, register the rest of them, and kick out the ones who don't voluntarily register themselves. I think the motivation behind that plan is: 1). Don't breakup the families, and 2.) Collect taxes from the registered illegals.

I agree with that. I think that I applaud Rudy Giuliani's defense on that issue: "That is not amnesty". He's right. My view of amnesty is that they need to pick another word! What they're afraid of doing is: granting asylum - which has nothing to do with money. Asylum in a country says that: "We as a country will fight for you if we provide asylum for you." Basically, if another country or international organization decides to use legal, military, or monetary force (yes, I said monetary force), then asylum says we will fight to keep you here in defense from those forces.. What the republicans were proposing on immigration is indeed *not* asylum, but could be construed as a limited form of amnesty. But they're not afraid of amnesty, they're afraid of granting asylum. So, if they follow their plan: they've gotta stick to it. We'll collect your taxes, let you work, build a family, and have children, but if Mexico wants to extradite you back home because you tried to kill your mother or steal a car, then you're on your own. We'll let them take you away.

Finally.

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 02:54:00 EST

Finally, it's over: the qualifying exams. I passed. There's this urge inside to say "yippee", but I don't feel that way. I feel exhausted. After everything it took out of me, all I can muster out is the word "Finally". Here's a little back-story:

As any grad student can tell you, the Quals are different for everyone - and they're different for every discipline, but they all share the same purpose: you can't *really* move forward until you finish them. You could probably think of them like a rite of passage, of sorts. Sure, you're building up your proposal and hacking on projects in the lab and making paper submissions all the while - but in the back of your mind: it's all meaningless until the quals are over. It's like a background constant hum, incessantly emitted, always there. The truth is, though - they are a necessity.

My quals began at a different school (Florida State), with a friend named Mark and my Advisor, at which the masters had just been completed and it was presumed that I'd be completing the rest of my work there. So I made an attempt to take their Quals. It was ..... a fiasco. It was absurd. There aren't enough negative adjectives in the dictionary to describe how hypocritical and disorganized their exam process was. After months of preparation, their quals consisted of a single day, one hour event, where you walked into a small, congested room and stood in front of a bunch of almighty faculty, where they took turns asking you random questions - taking "potshots" at you, basically. And when an hour was up, that was it - you walked out. It was hopeless. My friend seemed to make it through - somehow - lord only knows. Soon afterwards that summer, my Advisor and I planned to ship off to New York after I finished up at google.

The decision to switch schools was another setback of course. This only further delayed the length of time it took to be done with the Quals - and I knew that. But staying at FSU would have been a big mistake, and it did give me more time to feel comfortable with the material. The Binghamton exam strategy is much more sane, and it is much more traditional - as it should be. It consists of four 3-hour written exams and a fifth exam in your area of expertise from the student's advisor. There's not really much to say about their format. It's as it should be. Needless to say, I had to go through the same few months of preparation that I did before all over again, but at a different school.

But now, its all over. So, what's next, you say? Well, the proposal defense now. We're waiting to iron out some code and submit another paper, and the collection of my submission history will, in-turn, make up the bulk of the proposal. So, in effect, the proposal already exists - it's already written even. It's just scattered all over the place. So, we'll see how that goes. But at least I can feel productive now.

MythTV Rocks

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 10:34:00 EST

I love Linux. I just setup a FREE personal video recording solution at home for under $100 in a couple days, using a matured package called "MythTV" for Linux.

Most folks like me have a couple spare computers lying around that serve random purposes or don't do anything at all. I had this 700Mhz 512MB box with no cards in it sitting on the floor for over a year.... And a couple of days ago, I got tired of staring at it.

So, I souped it up =)

I was skeptical at whether or not an old box like that could handle a DVR system install, but it worked! There are MythTV-specific Linux distributions for Fedora, Ubuntu and Gentoo out there, so I just grabbed one. Then I went to Unicorn in Johnson City and picked up a Hauppauge TV card. Dropped in an open PCI slot and it worked perfectly. It even came with a built-in remote control.

Now I can click a few buttons on the MythWeb server and record and playback live TV shows. I was impressed. And it's free =) No subscriptions needed.

I also never had a reason to use "Logical Volumes" in linux before, but the box had a bunch of hard drives in it. MythTV can eat up disk space, so it made sense to deploy LVM across the disks. It's a waste of time to go buy a RAID controller for such an old box - if the disks die, then, who cares, right? They're just TV shows.

Don't vote for Obama -- Yet.

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 11:28:00 EST

I think it's a bad idea to elect Obama in the primary election (not the presidential election) - and for a very good reason - read on...

I was just talking about this with a friend of mine, and here's what we came up with: (And for the record, I'm a black democrat.) Sure, bush sucks, and all the republican issues have nothing in common with the democratic issues, which is why its more important to me at the moment.... As such, would you say that it's critical to get a democratic candidate in office right now? I think we can agree on that, right? Especially considering that they have taken back the house in congress.

First off: let's say Obama wins the democratic primary nomination and starts to run for office. Do you really think he'd win the presidential election?

Hell no.

There's no way in hell a majority white American public is going to support a black male president before they support a white female president - because in the eyes of older white Americans and younger rich Americans, they would probably consider Hilary the "lesser of two evils" as far as a controversial or history-changing presidential candidate is concerned.

And I think Obama knows this. He's not stupid. He's been teaching this stuff in academia for years....

So, here's the kicker: if it's so certain that he'll lose, then the two biggest questions are:

1. Why not just vote for him anyway in the primaries?
2. Why is he even running at all?

The answers to both of those questions are clear:

1. Voting for Obama in the primaries would decrease the chances of a democrat in general (ANY democrat) winning the presidential election down the road in November.

Meaning: if you support Obama under high-risk as a black American candidate, then you're dooming the entire democratic party's chances as a whole. Now, you could say the same about Hilary, but she's got her husband behind her. Her chances are much higher. She got her civil rights before we did - it's less cliche. And if you vote for Hilary, you also get Bill: in the background, whispering in her ear with prior experience.

2. Now for the second answer: why is Obama even running at all? Well, probably for two reasons: Simply his *presence* in the race for the democratic nomination gives advertisement to the democratic party as a whole, simply because of the historic implications of the candidates running. Just his presence in the race raises the chances of getting any democrat in office. And there's a second reason why he's running: He's young and smart. He's getting paid for this race. Don't think he's not. He's going to be *well off* when the race is over - well enough so that if he decides to run for office again in 10 or 20 years he'd have an even better chance later.

Oh what a tangled web we weave =)

I can take 17 - how about you?

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 02:01:00 EST

My friend kim posted this link: you should take the test...

17

Fishing for the President

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 09:16:00 EST

My profession demands technological attention from future Presidential candidates. Although nowhere close a solution, a president that can at least show technological initiative in addition to being a strong contender on other issues grabs my attention.

As far as I know nobody else has put together a centralized technological proposal for their intentions in the presidency.

Ars Technica provides a summary in the above link. I agree with the article's comments on privacy, but I do commend Obama's efforts here, particularly on R&D funding and pushes for broadband and technology in education. None of my lab mates would be where we are without funding and education.

Without going into too much detail, we're still behind the power-curve technologically compared to some of the other major nations, but without change, it's unclear how long our technological war-fare advantages will keep us competitive before a group of nations bands together and decides that WE should get bombed =).

Traveling Again

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 10:53:00 EST

I'm out of town at the moment.... back home in Dallas again.

Will be back on the 12th.

Email Fixed - Sorry

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:37:00 EST

Sorry everyone. I host my own email. I got a regular expression rule wrong in the config file that screwed up smap-pattern-matching in the postfix server.

Email should be working fine now.

Traveling

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:03:00 EST

I will be away from Binghamton for 2 weeks traveling to Texas and California.

Will return on November 19th. Peace y'all.

Treating Electricity Like Gas

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 02:28:00 EST

Are you as hopeful for electric cars as I am? I found some articles about a recent start-up attempt to take an alternative approach to selling electric cars, which I think is an excellent idea: the company's working title is Better Place, and I think they've got something going:

The idea is to treat electric cars like gas cars or other service-driven technologies: rather than putting batteries in the cars and selling the whole car to the consumer - instead just sell the electric car *without* the batteries and built a "swap-out" infrastructure that's paired with the gas stations.

The biggest hurdle to electric cars is their range - they can't go that far. The obvious solution is to establish a "battery service" contract with each car-owner, and if you wanna take a trip across the country, you can! When you get to the next service station, your car would be manufactured to swap-out your batteries for ones already-charged by the service station over and over again - you would pay a montly fee for subscribing to this service, not unlike what you're already doing for gas.

If they make enough progress, I'd be the first person invest in them if they went IPO. =) I think it's a great strategy rather than packaging batteries with cars in a combined price.

Parallel Port Power

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 12:35:00 EST

Here, I've typed a tutorial of my attempt to turn on and off an external AC-powered device (anything, from lights, to appliances) using the computer instead of unplugging the goddamn thing by hand. There are commercially available (and expensive) solutions for this kind of thing, but it's way cooler to do it yourself if you have a dedicated computer at home. I'm writing this from the point of view of a programmer with very limited EE experience (i.e. most CS students out there). By very little, I mean: you know what voltage, current, power, transistors and resistors are, but you've never actually used them in practice before, and want to know how in a very simple way (and may have even forgotten what they mean).

My motivation behind completing this little project started as the result of necessity (being the mother of invention)... My home DSL modem would periodically reset itself each day, and sometimes the router behind it would fail to acquire a new address, rendering my internet connection dead until I reached back there and unplugged the power-jack by hand.

If you'd like to read the whole tutorial, go to: http://hinespot.net/circuit.php

Bum F**k Egypt

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:51:00 EST

Oh my god, I just hit a deer with my goddamn car.

I have a foot-long crack in the side of my car now because I JUST HIT A DEER WITH MY CAR. It hit me sooo hard that the rear end of the car actually skid sideways a couple of feet before the tires re-gripped the ground and started going again.

You know, I was just starting to get used to Binghamton. Instead this is just more proof that I live in BFE.

I mean, what ... the ... crap? Come on!

This would've never happened in Dallas.

Alright, calming down now. So, in Binghamton we frequently have these extremely dense fogs in the morning. Binghamton is surrounded by hills, valleys, and lakes like most of the northeastern region, and when condensation shows it's pretty face, it's gonna stick around at night when the temperature goes down until the sun comes up.

And, sure enough, that's where the deer came from. On one of the most important mornings ever, god decidedes to HIT MY CAR WITH A DEER IN THE FOG. (I wonder if my insurance will pay for the gash in the side of the car.)

Very funny, god. Haha. NOT funny.

This isn't the first incident either. One frequently finds dead deer, ducks, skunks, ....... everything just out on the roadways. Even Bears! Yes! Bears! Just a month or so ago, a BEAR came down from the hills and started poking around the neighborhood across the street. A crowd gathered in front of my apartment just to watch the police tranquilize a rogue bear.

Sigh.

A DEER HIT MY CAR. What the crap!?!?!?!

Sorry, I'll stop. I need a hug.

Your Cell Phone is Obsolete

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 04:36:00 EST

That's certainly a threatening title, but it got your attention, right? Well, I wouldn't say that if I didn't have a good argument for it. Most people's phones are near and dear to their hearts, including mine up until a few months ago - which is perfectly understandable. So, why is your cell phone obsolete, you say? VoIP. That's why.

So, what exactly are the advantages of a cell?

The top of the list is obviously mobility. Aside from mobility, there isn't much difference between a cell and a land-line. Let's break down the features of today's cell phones aside from mobility.......

Address books. Wireless hand-sets for the home that you get for landlines can do this too. Nothing new.

Cameras. Does anyone really take their cell phone's camera seriously? And how many of you actually fork over the cash to email it to yourself over a WiMAX connection?

Text Messages. What, are emails and IMs not good enough anymore? You lazy bastard.

MP3 players. Who doesn't already have an mp3 player? You'll kill your phone's battery doing that crap. By the time you actually receive a phone call, you've shot yourself in the foot already.

If any of those non-mobility features actually mattered to you, then just stop reading now.

So, then what's the big deal with VoIP. Well, what if I asked you the following question:

If you give up the ability to take your phone with you on the road in your car for a $35/month REDUCTION in your phone bill, would you do it? Let that one sink in for a moment: Instead of forking over $600/year, it would only cost you $200? Sound to good to be true? Let's compare the differences again with VoIP's features:

Address book? VoIP's got it.

Call from anywhere? You can receive and make calls anywhere you take the phone adapter or anywhere you have a computer.

Is the software free? Absolutely.

Are adapter's free? There's about the same price as the start-up fees you pay on a regular cell-phone plan.

You get voicemails *emailed* to you automatically.

You get voicemails in RSS feeds.

Extra phone numbers are dirt cheap.

You can call from other countries when traveling for free wherever you have your laptop and an internet connection. Who doesn't have a laptop these days?

Your address book is stored online. It will never get lost. Ever.

Your work phone number will never change. Even if I switch jobs.

*There are no annual contracts* with VoIP services.

VoIP services usually have *unlimited minutes*.

You can put *entire lists of phone numbers* on block automatically.

You can automatically forward one phone number to another phone number.

Can your cell phone do all that stuff?

No. They can't. Like I said: They're obsolete. And they will be for years to come as long as the cell phone companies are making money off of you. Guess how much it costs the telecomm companies to actually keep the telecommunications system running and their employees paid? $10/month per customer. Which means they're turning a 400% profit out of you. And how about Linux support? (Of course they have windows support). They have SIX different working VoIP programs for Linux. All free. Which means there must be dozens of free ones for Windows.

The only thing you're giving up is the ability to stand in the middle of nowhere in your birthday suit and still be able to make a phone call. But of course, they wouldn't have installed all those call-boxes on the side of the highway for nothing, right? Yeah, I know, I know. We're an age of cell-phone drug addicts. But think about it: $15/month instead of $50/month?

Isn't that a no-brainer?

Did you know

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:49:00 EST

Did you know that almost a quarter of a million people are born everyday?

Just thought I would share that fact.

First-Time Bar-b-que'ing

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:05:00 EST

So, I've never grilled before. Until now.

Sunday afternoon, I'm sitting around working, staring out of the window, thinking, "Damn it sure is nice outside. Well, hell. What am I still sitting here for?"

I don't really know why I never grilled before - doing it *with* someone doesn't really count... I mean getting all your shit together by yourself and lugging out your own meat, grill, and coals and doing it all yourself. Going through the whole experience without help.

That was fun. I didn't think it would be. I was talking to a friend afterwards about how seemingly "primitive" the aspect of grilling makes a man feel - the fact that there is no technology involved in it.

I mean how often does one get to play with large plumes of fire?

Oh, and man.....I was half tempted to eat everything that came off the grill - goddamn it was good. So yeah. That was fun =)

Thank You Dad

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:45:00 EST

Woo-hoo!

I just saved $200 MORE on car insurance.

Sounds like the beginning of a commercial, right?

Well, folks if you have a parent who went into military service, make sure you check if their various insurance policies accept their children.

My new car insurance bill is $25 / month.
(e.g. $160 for six months. That's down from $260 with Geico)

Gotta love it. Thanks Dad!

Waking up early

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:04:00 EST

The funny thing about waking up early is that you can't just "pause" it temporarily.

For the last couple of semesters, it's been prudent that I wake up early for several reasons on a regular basis (reasons including bodily equilibrium with the change of the days, full night's rest, seeing the sunrise and the sunset, getting work done on campus when everyone else is there, finding a parking spot, etc....)

But when the weekends show up, one's tendency is to say, "Ok, it's the weekend now. I can slack off a little." But of course that doesn't work: you can't just order your body to stay awake for 20 hours and then suddenly get back on schedule on the next business day.

So, now it's 8am on Saturday. And nobody's awake.

How boring =)

Government-Subsidized Non-Smoking

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 02:55:00 EST

I have an excellent idea: What if the government or your Employer could help you quit smoking?

Interested? Well, I don't know if anything like this exists already (perhaps within job-sponsored healthcare plans), but here's the crutch of the idea:

What is the one thing on this planet more motivating to an individual to stay alive besides the threat of death? (and besides the threat of hell)?

Money.

Everybody wants money. Your entire life revolves around money. Everybody knows tobacco kills, but the smokers seem de-sensitized to the threat of death.

So, what if the government or your employer came up to you and offered to subsidize you (i.e. keep sending you a pay-check) while you took off work and stayed home for say, 6 months, if you agreed to quit smoking?

This agreement, of course, would need some details:

There would have to be a law allowing employers to offer this (which wouldn't be much different from a retirement plan, except it would be short term).

There would have to be enforcement, meaning a quit-smoking-plan would have to be written out and a weekly or monthly report from the doctor (doctor's visits would be free) should be sent back to the employer or social worker or authority of some kind

There would have to be severe penalties for relapses, ranging anywhere from salary cuts, loss of job, loss of benefits, loss health-care, or some *threating* means (i.e. loss of money) that would maintain the person as non-smoking status.

Only chronic smokers with a relatively significant history of health-problems could qualify to take off work and use the option.

This, of course, is a very democratic strategy, and a very direct strategy that takes themes not only from the idea of social security and retirment but also from the current overtones of health-care issues and employer-discrimination.

There might also be (gasp) a "republican" option:

Make it legal for employers to pay more for non-smoking employees

Yeah, that sounds bad, but does it really? I'm not exactly vouching for a "un-employed smoking under-class" of american citizens, exactly, but like I said: what's an equally motivating reason to stay alive besides the threat of death? I think the threat of loss of money "under the flag of employment" would be a good way to attack the tobbaco industry over the course of 10 or 20 years without a more direct law that just puts them out of business.

This way, the tobacco companies (which are world-wide) would go out of business *slowly* while business gained more healthy, more productive employees in the long run.

Sound cool?

New Phone Number (again)

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:50:00 EST

I didn't like the customer service I was getting with my current VoIP provider, so I switched.

The new VoIP provider is better, cheaper, and has amazing telephone features.

Here's the new number: 607-341-7256

Bye-Bye Cell Phone

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:44:00 EST

And hello land-line:

Well, sort of anyway.

I no longer have a cell phone. I canceled my service plan (for free, which I'll get to in a moment)... The reasons for doing this come from both lifestyle needs and some convictions. My cell will disconnect around the 20th of the month. So go ahead and add 607-341-7256 to your address book.

So, why ditch the cell? There are several reasons:

It's too goddamn expensive, for starters. *Everyone* pays $40 + taxes. Which is actually $50. Everyone. If you don't, you're either married to a tele-communications employee, or you slept with one. Otherwise, you're getting $50 / month extorted from you for service that barely even costs the tele-comm companies $10 to keep running in the first place. And considering I'm a money-saving student, I feel I have an obligation to "stick it to the man" whenever I can as far as money is concerned. (Which was the main motivation behind the last post).

I simply don't use the goddamn thing. I just don't. Of course, that's specific to my lifestyle. In 2 years when I'm done, I may get a fast-paced job and need one, but right now my butt is usually planted *right* in a chair for most of the day and if any communication is required, it generally manages to make it to me somehow through other means.

One less device to carry around is all the better. If you open up your bag, how many battery-powered devices are you carrying around? I looked into my bag and I found *four*. Four devices? Are you freaking kidding me? Nevermind the previous reasons - I don't want my cell phone to sing, dance, cook me dinner, and wipe my ass..... I want it to make a phone call. I don't want a web browser and a music player inside the thing - I want a phone - that's it. One of the other 3 battery-powered devices can handle the rest of the tasks.

I feel like I'm being tagged You ever get that feeling from your cell phone? That you're being pin-pointed, located, identified or tagged? This by no means has anything to do with my confidence in today's technological capabilities in general (or else I wouldn't be int profession that I'm in) - I just would rather have a more "manual" experience to talking on the phone.

What did people do before cell-phones? Nothing! They picked up the land-line. How long have cell phones been around, huh? A couple of decades at most? And how long have land-lines been around? Since practically the beginning of time? (You get the point). Cell-phones are a convenience. Nothing more. A rather expensive one.

I'm fed up with cell-phone culture. I love technology, but I don't want it to be obvious that I'm using it. That's the future of technology: ubiquity. In 50 years, you will be using 10 microchips at even given time, but you won't know that you're using it and you won't even see it either. There's an entire culture associated with cell-phones - how many do you have? how fast is it? Does it look cool? Can you walk around in public and look spiffy with it? No. I'm sick of all that crap. It's all propaganda. Entire populations of teenage kids are being raised on these things stuck to their faces. It limits your creativity, I think, as well as your ability to reach out to people the hard way - which I think is still worth doing.

I'm also going use a phone in the lab at school ... which takes care of making free calls while I'm working. Problem solved.

And, here's another big question: How did I avoid the $200-something early-termination fee?

Honesty, actually. Here's what I did: I figure, if I called the phone company and told them the truth about my financial needs, maybe they'd be sympathetic, no? The last thing the billing department wants is for someone to start defaulting on their bills, right? So, I figured that if I call them up and say something to the effect of "Hey, look. I'm broke. I can't afford this. Can you turn off my service without charging me the termination fee?", would they buy it?

Sure enough, I give 'em a call, and about 15 minutes later after being on hold, the lady on the other end goes, "Sure. No problem. Your plan is now canceled. Thank you for your business." ...... I could barely believe it.

So, I've now turned to VoIP. To tell you the truth, land-lines have gotten expensive as well. I couldn't find one for less that $40/month around here with decent long-distance service. So, I'm going to try VoIP. I'll let you know in a couple months how well that works out, but for the moment, the calls are pretty clear =)