is a blog by Brendan
In case you’ve tried to call me in the last couple of days, or will be trying again tomorrow or the day after, sorry. My mom came to visit and accidentally stole my phone; each of ours is currently in US Postal Service transit back to its owner.
I still have the best answering machine message ever, though. Maybe you should call just to listen to it.
Want to see me having a field day? This is me having a field day. I am having a field day, right now, with the correlated results of Doonesbury’s poll regarding Hunter S. Thompson.
“[M]eaningful self-expression is not just a tool for success in the academy and the professional world (though it is that, too), but an essential component of finding and living our call to be human.”
Beautifully written and perfectly described. Sean’s a better diarist than I, and he’s the teacher I’ll never be, but this excerpt from one of his letters says exactly what I try to say whenever I discover a new and interesting human: clear thought and writing are rare, and powerful, and of tremendous value in the world.
If I read your blog or friend your LJ, it’s because I am fascinated by your finding and living of the call to be human.
Today is 03/04/05. It’s 3-4-5 Day! Bet that makes you think, huh? I bet you probably already missed 01/02/03. That’s something to regret, right there. Are you aware that this is the only 3-4-5 day you will ever see? You’ll be dead before the next one! You’re such a waste! Why don’t you THINK!
Happy 3-4-5 Day!
Well, presumably until the relevant copyright cartel fights it for a decade, screaming that it will be the death of them, then eventually gets beaten into submission and makes twice as much money from the new model. As usual.
Charity ad seen on the back of a bus:
Donate Your Car To Us
& End Homelessness
“The Hausenbildenmächina works at last, Greta! It could be change the future of the world! But the reaction only occurs at exactly 88 miles per hour.” Hans shakes his head in despair. “I can’t go that fast! Not even on my European racing-style bicycle!”
“Ach, Hans!” Greta takes his hands in her own. Her eyes are full and bright. “I always believed in you, always knew–if only we had some way to obtain one car! Any car! But our German-or-possibly-Austrian credit doesn’t carry over to these United States.”
“Greta,” says Hans, face suddenly alight, “I may just have a plan!”
I get this every time I buy something with a PayPal button and change my funding source to be a credit card instead of my bank account. The advantage of paying with my credit card is obvious: I have a 20-day grace period to actually pony up the cash, while the thing I’m buying is shipped immediately. The disadvantage to PayPal is also obvious: electronic bank transfers cost them nothing; credit card usage requires a per-transaction merchant fee.
But it’s still sad that they’re trying to talk me out of using my credit card like this, and that their reasons are so flimsy. Look at that: it says “the benefits of paying with your bank account,” but none of those things are benefits. They’re implicit conditions of any reputable interweb transaction. I mean, “you’re still paying instantly and securely?” That’s not a benefit, that’s explicitly the same! And am I to assume that credit card payments are somehow delayed, or that they don’t keep my credit card information “safe and secure?” (Note also that “military-grade encryption,” historically, has not been that great a qualification.)
I signed up for Netflix, in spite of their popup ad policies and my own better judgment. Why? Not because I watch lots of movies–although SAHMD might change that–but because for me, it has the potential to be the poor man’s TiVo. Only the TV I want! Whenever I want! With no commercials! The eventual investment will be significantly higher than just buying a real TiVo, of course, but I get like twelve channels, so a real TiVo wouldn’t be that great anyway.
My queue so far further evidences my dorkhood by being full of CSI: Season Two and Nova mini-documentaries, which is what brought to my attention the fact that only on PBS does Hitler get to be the star.
I know how to hash things in programs, despite the fact that the applications of hashing got like two weeks of coverage total in my almost-six years of comp sci study. Therefore, every time I’m sweating a bad O(n^2) algorithm and suddenly realize that I can use hashing to significantly reduce its average-case complexity, I feel like some kind of mighty computer genius. But I’m not. I just know how to hash things.
Possibly the reason I feel this way is that nobody else with whom I’m working on said algorithms–including my professors–seems to understand what I’m talking about, like most of you right now.