So I'm at work today, even though it's a holiday and nobody is here, and I hate it.

I lost too many hours over the preceding days. Friday (the second half thereof), I worked less than the recommended 4.

Monday and Tuesday were both disastrous. Monday I got in at almost noon, and I had to leave at 5:30ish; Tuesday I got in late and immediately went to an almost 2 hour team lunch - and I left at 7 or so.

Wednesday I got in about 10, good(by my standards...), but I had to leave around 5 again. And so, I wound up about 6 hours down.

So here I am. I have 6 hours to make up; I can either burn leave of which I have almost none, work 10 hour days next week, or be here... I chose the final option. Especially in light of the fact that the exercise classes we've been going to start early enough (6:30) that staying until 8 or 9 every day is just not an option.

It's lonely and sucky.

Long entry probably to follow. But you know how I am about that sort of thing.

Update: Okay, no long entry, I don't have it in me. It was fun to compose at home though. I'm just not THAT upset with things in general to write that sort of entry. I am on the sad side of my moods, but only a little; nothing worth dumping on LJ.

Especially because Chau and family want to play Euro games with me. Hehehe :).

I made it back safe and sound - although immigration, customs, re-check, re-security check (the third one!), and so on meant I almost missed the last leg of my journey.

I am tired. And, I have perfect material for writing the kind of long entry that gets cut. I'm not going to write it now - I'm writin to let LJ know that I made it back okay.

Yay. First world. Water you can drink, air you can breathe, streets you can survive.

Today I visited the summer palace - a rather picturesque place, best told by pictures I'm not about to upload (I'll do it after the Japan pictures... ha!)

Anyway, one thing I've come to realize about this country is that nobody here follows the rules. I'm not referring to the rules involving politically sensitive things (how would I know?) but simple things - like no eating on the subway, no smoking in front of a no smoking sign, or no touching statues at museuems and historical sites. Or anything to do with driving (on the way here from the airport, our taxi driver did some "lane splitting" - in a taxi - wearing no seat belt while talking on the cell phone!).

As you may know, I'm a goody-two-shoes. My big rebellion... well, if you don't know what it was, now is not the time to ask. I used to speed at times; but for the longest time the difference between speed limits and realistic driving practice drove me crazy.

So this situation here, it just makes me crazy. When people happily reach way over a barrier to touch statues, for instance (while leaning on a no touching sign!). In one instance, museum staff told the person in question not to touch, but he argued with her - saying in effect (based on his gestures) - hey, everybody touches it!

I'd be kind of embarrassed if I was told not to do something like that - but here... they just don't seem to care.

Tomorrow I'm going home. It's not a moment too soon if you ask me - considering I survived the great blizzard...

(Edit: blizzard link changed to something else (accuweather offered no permalink), but now points to wikinews)

1) Breakfast!!! So good! Unlimited bacon, omlettes, milkshakes...
2) my hair is more manageable than ever before (and i have no idea why)

So I made it and... so far, it's just... sketchy. The constant fog? Well, it's more of a... smog. The water? undrinkable (but at least it somehow makes sense to always drink beer). The constant attempts to hustle? The most annoying of all. Whenever an asian person tries to speak english to me(unsolicited), I flat out ignore them - it's the only way to avoid the constant scams and hustling.

I miss Japan - it's similar in its asian-ness, but just less sketchy and ghetto. You can drink the water, for instance. And look across the street without the smog being obvious. Also, I miss knowing as much of the language as I did. I know 0 mandarin - not even yes or no.

The sights themselves were cool, but we didn't get serious about visiting them in the hopes that the weather would change and blow the smog away. We meandered about tianamen square, and the huge mall, which was hilarious in a kind of sad way.

Also, I can't find any mingle contacts for TWEWY. Which I am in love with. I have hopes for the return flight from Narita - especially during the layover

Speaking of which - in Japan they even have better electricity....

I just hope it doesn't snow too much. Here's hoping the weather modification works out.

There are few things I hate more than being sick. Because it wastes so much time to no real effect.

I have a cold, I think. It's no swine flu - I have one stuffy nostril, some fatigue, and a funny feeling in my throat. Maybe it's a very mild flu? Eh. I'll live. I don't feel like doing anything, though. Which is what bothers me. I should be at least playing video games - if not cleaning up, getting ready for my trip to China (Which is Friday) driving to Chau's place, working out, being social, etc.

Last night was quite a lot of fun. My costume was a minor scandal. If public pictures show up somewhere - and I feel like they will, since I got my picture taken a lot - I might admit that they are of me.

So I had a pre-approval for a certain medicine at 25mg. I'd talked to my doctor and decided to lower the dose to 20mg. The result? Instead of paying $10, I pay $180.

Oh sure, in the end I'll recoup say $130 of that, though my insurance will never cover the "full retail" price of the medicine.

Did I mention it was a generic? Boo.

And yes, I need it now - so I don't have time for the pre-approval bureaucracy to sort itself out. Uggh. I miss Aetna =\.

Everyone I know loves fall, and for reasons besides football (though this hasn't been a good year...). Usually the reason involves the word "crisp" in some way.

And I do not dislike cool mornings and evenings, and warm days. That is all fine. A high of 70 with a morning low around 50 is quite alright by me.

The problem, though, is twofold - shorter days and WINTER. And at no time do we lose daylight faster than we do now.

Of course, some people like winter, too. Usually because of things like snow and hot cocoa, and perhaps, because they no longer feel obligated to go outside. Of course, nothing has more obligations than winter, with its fierce display of family holidays requiring you to behave in a socially acceptable manner with people you only see once a year and buy gifts. I only have ever enjoyed buying gifts for romantic partners; other gifts seem to be a careful game of avoiding social awkwardness. Or just giving something stupid.

As for snow, well, we know how it goes - a week of 20 degrees, followed by a weekend of rain, or, if we're lucky, "wintry mix" or "freezing rain" or some other non-snow.

Now as for fall... what does it mean? I can't help but feel the foreboding all around - that it's time to stop tending the plants, because winter is coming. The elaborate dreams of long hikes and bike rides - better do them now because cold and wet weather is coming. The days of berry picking are past.

All those plans we had - the countless ones for what we would do on our non-existent idle weekends - those need to be made real in the next month or two. They probably won't be. The pool is closed.

Suddenly the world of potential that stretched so long in May seems so short.

There are some echoes with life in general, but, I never will stop dreaming big. It's part of my personality, I think - I do prefer the potential to the realized. That's probably why I don't like Fall, you see. How much I like a month is almost directly proportional to the amount of sunlight - June being my favorite, and November my least favorite. I think this is because November seems like - everything I wanted to do this year, the book is closed on that. By May or June, the year is open again.

Probably in 10 years, I will have big plans for what I will do when my kids are off, graduated, etc, and I am empty nester; then it will be what I will do when I retire. There will always be an imagined future to plan big for.

Oh, I know, I have much to post about, and I didn't. I have been putting off posting about my travels, about the second of those 2 tickets, about work, and about HOI3. As for the latter, 1.2 absolutely fails to deliver, with more than 2 dozen bugs or major balance issues encountered in my recent game. If you look around you might find a post I wrote on the forums complaining about that at no short length. Good news - most of the bugs are reported (?).

Heck I could even complain about Virginia is set to go winless this year (and Maryland only won their Div I-AA game in OT), or how the redskins didn't manage to get a TD against one of the worst teams in the league - but there, I said it, and that's that.

Monopoly city Streets is major fail, too. Tonight's "Surprise Rule Change" has made the game untenable, as if the cheating weren't bad enough.

I could certainly say a thing or two about Chau - but on her computer, with her in the shower, and in a public post is no place to do it! So let's end this on a public note.

I think the Hospital theme from Earthbound is one of the greatest songs ever written. Done. Now off to watch dancing anime before she is done drying her hair.

( Part 1: Thoughts and Background )
( Part 2: Obstacles )

( Part 3: From Here )

Those are my thoughts for now. Yours are appreciated - whether "You should talk to X who could help you", "You should add feature X which would be cool", or "The best way to manage parts is to copy what site Y does". Even "Give it up!" is appreciated, in a sense.

I may post more or add more later. Later, LJ.

Re: my last post : while enticing at times, the extremely long winded radical right wing blog to which I previously linked has holes. It has holes that are more deeply hidden than the usual "OMG the JEWS are out to ZIONIZE the world", but holes they are. With so much research done, they can be obscured, though.

If I ever get time I will discuss further - it's interesting to examine the merits of the "benevolent dictator" (or the enlightened dictatorship), without worrying about the genocidal tendencies of Stalin, Hitler, etc. Do totalitarian regimes necessarily result in these sort of things? It's an interesting question.

After all, one imagines, if one had a strong, central authority, in the least, you wouldn't get stuck in legislative gridlock. But I'm veering into the actual discussion I wanted to avoid.

Yesterday I was strongly possessed of the will to post. Why, you ask? Because I discovered UR mostly. (It is not for the faint of heart, the unwilling to read HUGE text blocks, etc.)

IT's... er, all kinds of weird. But it has me wondering.

What if you were a right-wing radical - but you were such not because of racism or nationalism. What would that make you?

Can you be a right wing radical and not be a Fascist or Nazi? What does that make you, anyway?

Ahh well. I'm going to bed.

I should probably get a "blog" set up. I realize that in the past, when LJ-friends have set up blogs, I've interpreted it as "that separate thing that doesn't show up on my friends page so I will never read it", but I want one now to express my thoughts on things besides me.

One of those things is "We must hire rockstars" phenomenon; I often read (Joel on Software) or get the impression from companies (Google) that the only programmer worth hiring is the one that is not merely competent, but brilliant, hyper self-motivated, and lives and breathes computers. I disagree - both with the notion that they're the only ones worth getting, and with the notion that you can really filter them out with n rounds of interviews.

That's not to say I consider the average programmer per se competent. Rather, the 95th percentile is enough. And most tech companies wind up hiring them anyway. (We only accept the top n% of applicants is something of a fallacy that's been explored elsewhere).

For that matter hiring people is only half, or less, of the battle. How bureaucracy, politics, etc., can kill software development is another post.

nother thing I want to intellectually explore, if not challenge per se, is this notion of unit testing EVERYTHING. I keep finding situations where unit testing is not the right testing metaphor - generally, in Javascript. I want to know "in browser X, this page looks half reasonable", and I don't know how to write that as any sort of automated test.

I think automated testing is awesome, and we need to realize/accept it's more than unit testing, instead of getting wrapped up in "Well, that's functional/system testing, so that's no good/I don't need to do it". I keep seeing that happen, and I don't get it. Sometimes you are writing things where unit testing doesn't make sense - but one of those other ones does.

So that's my public post. Friends only post to follow.

I will say that the song I'm currently listening to comes from an album that bills itself as "Lo mejor de la musica disco de los 80's". =)

Update: I instinctively marked this one friends-only, it shouldn't have been. Fixed.

I realized I haven't posted Since at least when I went to Race For The Cure on Saturday.

The quickest way to summarize things would be to say work is boring, and I have no idea where my time goes. Thanks to mint.com, I now know where the money goes, and surprise! It all goes to health/medical. And rent, but health has been worse the past two months. So far this month, 89% of my spending has been health or rent, leaving everything else to tiny slivers, even the cable bill.

But the time? It was easy when it was Monday and I played HOI2 in the morning. But yesterday? I don't know. I left work at 6:30. We went to eat dinner, and pick up some stuff from my place. When we got back it was 9:30. How did that happen? We didn't even eat at a full service restaurant!

I wish there was a mint.com for time. I'd feel somehow vindicated to see that, yes, I spend 5% of my life at a certain damn light.

Oh, and this weekend is no better. Tonight/Tomorrow, Taste Of The Town in Reston. Tomorrow Zoo/Georgetown with Chau + Cousin + Friend. Sunday = Tour de Cure, Chau's Parents Return, AND No Doubt concert.

Not much to say about work - other than that I had to dig pretty deep because the investigation starting now means Mina's out of the country. I even had to use David's name, because he really wanted people who I saw pretty often in VA. I scrolled through my list of names in my cell phone many times and that's all I got.

Also, NIN/Jane's Addiction Show? Great fun! Getting to Merriweather Post sucks (but you knew that). NIN was awesome and played many of the songs I'd like to hear. Jane's Addiction? Not so much, really. I knew one song (I don't think they did Jane Says). There were also way too many long guitar solos - not really my thing. But other than that Trent Reznor looks like a pretty normal 40-something guy, NIN was awesome, so it was all good.

And that's your "I woke up 30 minutes before the alarm and thus before Chau on a Friday" post.

Okay, so I did suffer for staying up so late, but no matter. Chau's almost here! Chau's almost here! Chau's almost here! YAY!

Interestingly enough... the return trip is much more southerly than the outbound one. Must because of the Hadley cells.

Last night I woke up with a start, being mid-dream. As my thoughts assembled themselves (and the reality that Chau was just a dream sunk in), I realized I could see; I had gone to sleep with my lenses in.

I think these sorts of errors of omission will be on the rise, because I'm getting very tired. Right now I am wondering, did I take my medicine twice this morning? I did count, and I don't think I took it, but I wasn't willing to wait the 30 minutes to see if I felt any subjective effects. So far, signs are I didn't take it, and I'm in the clear, but.... I'm sort of worried.

I haven't been getting much sleep - the sun shines right on my face at 6:30 every morning, and I don't want to go to bed until 11 or later. Bleh, I need my Chau!

I also have a laundry problem. Since I was at work until 9, and didn't get home until after 10 (stopping at Chau's to water plants and feed fish in the interim)....

As far as the car goes, some of the behavior suggests loose wiring - but only the tiniest bit. That is, with the ignition off, the temperature guage tends to sag, even with the engine running. Sometimes it goes all the way off, sometimes it pulses - the sort of thing you'd expect with a loose connection. But the tach stays steady, as does, more notably, the engine (and implicitly, the ignition and fuel pump). The tach and the temperature appear at the same point in the wiring diagram. The only explanation is... the dme...? But even with the DME main relay pulled, which should ween it off terminal 15, the lights stay on. Notably oil light, battery light, and the odometer.

It also turns on the dome light when I turn the car off - which to me means the off signal is getting processed by something. I think it does that so you can exit the car with light... I'm pretty sure it normally does that.

My car also features a wonderfully named "General module", but I don't expect it either. I may pull that, but that would require taking out the glove compartment, and my passenger seat is already full of other parts I pulled.

My brother suggested the BMW forums, the forums suggested an exorcist. I'm not kidding. *sigh*. I had responses like "Woah, never heard of this! I'm subscribing to see how this turns out!"

I think I have a date with a multimeter in store. Can anybody tell me a good place to get a cheap, digital one by the weekend? "Radio Shack" is an acceptable answer. (If you got one there that you like

A normal person starts and stops their car in a fairly straightforward way. Not I , though. I have to disconnect and/or reconnect the battery every fucking time. Plus, I have to lock each door manually, because when I disconnect the battery, the doors are all locked. Great. The fun is even more; since the car never thinks its off, it doesn't complain about the lights being left on when I get out of it, so, say, tonight, I forgot and left the lights on. It didn't start at first, but I disconnected the battery (which I am getting pro at) for a few minutes, reconnected it, and it had enough charge to start. I hope it does tomorrow.

This is bullshitty.

( A tale of shorts and relays )

So yeah, my girlfriend is out of town, my car is broken, and today I got a bill from the hospital, for $2,074, so yeah, I'm having a blast.

It's all temporary. So I'm not super bitter. I'd be surprised if any of these things were still getting to me next week, and it was good seeing pepole tonight. But things like my car not starting add to my stress level a lot. As does not being able to figure out how to solve my dojo grid problems, which is just taking too long.

Good news is my 360 is fixed ( somehow, unplugging it and plugging it back in fixed it). Bad news is my car is broken in the weirdest way - it won't turn off. Yes. It won't turn off.

I came to it this afternoon to find a few of the lights turned on. Interior lights - the kind of lights you might expect if the engine was off but the car still on. (Like parking brake indicator, check engine light, etc.) Strange, I thought, worried that something I did meant those lights were left on and the battery was dying. but I turned it on and it ran fine. I stopped to get gas and noticed that it stalled after I took out the keys. It took me a second to realize - taking the keys out was not stopping the car.

But it was turning off the radio.

Oh and while I was researching this, my mouse decided to break on me. Fantastic! It was the batteries - but when you're already tired from having to get up at 7:30 and then trudge around in driving rain and then sit on the steps (inside, but steps, still), because there was no seating for.... 4 hours, and blah blah blah, I'm cranky already.

Overall weeked was fair. [Brother's] graduation was long, and tedious; the drives were mostly traffic free but also long, and tedious. My mom lost it, but only for about 15 minutes, and then she behaved. I wish my shit wasn't breaking all over the place. I sense a $2k trip to BMW in my future.

I'm wondering if now is the time to fall on that grenade, because - maybe - I can borrow Chau's car. I'd really like to get the passenger door leak fixed. It's not even a little leak any more. I had to bail it out today, and that's just sad. There were probably 12 ounces of water in the passenger seat.

Chau left. I'm sad. I was also up late last night helping her pack and such. So I'm tired too! That's all about that (perhaps in a more private context I might have more to say).

I am making a grid (for work) that needs to be continuously updated. Do you have any recommendations for this? Is there a Rails+Dojo+Comet way? I looked at orbited, and was overall... not that impressed. Mostly because it's STOMP and not comet. Polling is fair, but when I try this in dojo, it winds up reloading itself every time the data changes, which is "not the desired behavior". I will have to see if supressing the "loading..." message is sufficient - if it allows selections and such.

Interface design is a tricky thing in any event.

I am going to my brother's graduation in Newport News on Sunday. I need to get to Newport News in time for dinner tomorrow (Saturday) night. How can I best accomplish this task? What I really want to know is, if, say, it'd be much better to leave at 10 than 2, or if I'm screwed no matter what. My last I-95 experience was so painful... that what I'd like to do is go tomorrow at, say, 10, and arrive at 1. But no. I have to be there for dinner. So how can I minimize the pain?

In Malcom Gladwell's Outliers, he introduces an IQ test question as an example of the kind of really hard question a genius can solve. He reveals the answer following the question, and goes on, never explaining the solution.

(The question being this, if it accepts being hotlinked - if not, copy and paste.)

It's driven me crazy. I spent a truly inordinate amount of time trying to sovle it, and failing, searched the internet for a solution, mostly to stop wasting time. That's where it got me, though - I couldn't find a solution. Oh yes, I know which answer is correct, but what's the pattern?

I have seen several solutions mentioned that seem to be very... arbitrary. For my part, I keep findiing rules that seem to hold true for every case except the answer. There's only one clear pattern, and it suggests some things, but not enough to solve it.

If you know the solution, please tell me. Thanks.

TWO UPDATES:
1) My version (ie, that was printed in the book) transposed the top left entry in the question and the last answer (H) vs. the question.

2)I said dojo updated whenever the data changes, but what I meant was, it went all "loading" on me on each polling cycle. The solution may be to manually figure out if the data changed, but that's hackish as fuck.

Chau leaves in about 24 hours. It makes me sad. There is the supposed of upside of time to myself, but as there is no game I desperately want to play, it's not much consolation. The closer it gets to time for her to leave, the more I realize I don't want her to. But oh well. It's only 2 weeks! When I dated Mirna, 2 weeks was such a small amount of time that I wouldn't get sad about it. Plus, apparently, friends are coming back over those two weeks - nice timing - so I won't be lonely.

Still... Chau and I are all but joined at the hip. I'm going to be a lost puppy without her.

Speaking of games, Fallout 3... wait, what? That's the best I can describe how it ended. I mean the ending had a cool sequence and revelations and all that, it just came way early. It felt like I was halfway (or less) through the game, and in terms of places visited and content, I probably was. I did manage to use my speech skills to wiggle my way out of a few things, but still. Where's the content? Oh, it's all out there in the wasteland. But shouldn't beating the game be one of the hardest tasks? Shouldn't doing all those side quests help you better prepare for the main quest?

Fallout 3's inventory system is another mess. I spent way too much time stopping to juggle my inventory between me and my pack mule... er, companion. And repairing stuff (you can cannibalize one item to make another better quality - and in so doing, free up the space). Half the time I discovered a nice cache of stuff, I'd think, fuck, I'm already full - do I want to trek all the way out of here just to unload it into some containers?

And since you can use most of the stuff to make homemade gear.... You want to keep a lot of the "junk".

I'm definitely going to go back and do most of those side quests. I'm just a little disappointed.

One other thing I meant to post about before I go (I'm on the precipice of tardiness as it is!), is the caps. I meant to post yesterday about their sweet Overtime Game 6 victory, and how tense the series had been with 3 games going into overtime. Yesterday should have been more of the same, but instead the caps fell apart at Verizon Center, and their season is over.

As per my tweet, it was excellent. (I saw the 7:15 showing at Udvar-Hazy, FYI) I don't have time to discuss it in depth. If it had a fault, it's that I wanted more. It almost felt like we knew how the movie was going to end about half way through, and yes, now that that's out of the way, MOAR. So in that way it feels ever so slightly weak - it builds something great, and the plot that follows almost feels like an afterthought. I sincerely hope they keep going though - they've shown this cast, etc., works.

Overall it's a great movie, but the plot just a bit lite. We have a great cast, wonderful effects, and really, a script that gets them all together in pretty awesome fashion... it just needs another... another movie (or maybe... series?!), really, to take this cast and do something awesome!

To quote a metacritic review, "Ultimately, when the end credits roll, we're left with the sense that Star Trek represents a good beginning. As a film tasked with getting all the characters together, re-booting a timeline, and finding a way to return a veteran actor to his beloved role, Star Trek works. "

And so it does. The effects are great, there's even some T&A, but not in a campy or tacky way.

Also, both Chau and I enjoyed it - it's friendly for both Star Trek Fans and non-Star Trek fans.

I loved the interior sets, but the exteriors of the ships, not as much. However, others in my party had other opinions.

More tomorrow. I almost feel that I'm being.... hypocritical? "complaining" about the predictable plot. Because the movie is so much fun, and it's so pretty, and its' not a bad plot. I mean shit goes down, real, meaningful, stuff that I didn't think would happen. It's a hell of a lot better than... well, most star trek plots. It's just that the focus really is on assembling the cast and establishing their relationships - in that regard, it feels a bit more like a pilot than a movie.

One random thing I did notice - didn't I? - was a California State flag in one of the final scenes.

Go see it, really. The IMAX is not necessary - none of it seemed to be in IMAX, and it was a little disconcerting seeing every pore on Leonard Nimoy's face.... But then again, maybe the bigness was entirely appropriate for that summer blockbustery feel.

Anyway, I must tarry no further - so that's what you get for now.