Am I on Drugs?

This is the most bizarre thing I have ever seen. I...I just don't get it.

Changing tide?

Could this steal from Ron Paul's votes?

Technoviking > All

I post this for Ian. I can't dare take credit for something that was so clearly found by him.

It smells like burning

Irvine, California
October 21, 2007

Sandstorm

There were sandstorms up here yesterday, and I think thats cool. Here are some photos from a rainy day, and the sandstormy day.



Looking towards Big Bear.



The pass called "the narrows" to get from the I-15 to our place.



View of the Mojave River.

Overall, it was a really interesting experience. The winds were whipping clouds of dust up seemingly out of nowhere, the gusts would cause you to swerve a bit as you were driving, and it looked like dust was dancing across the streets. Petty cool stuff. Sadly, it is quite dangerous too.

God Hates Hugs

Network issues

I realized something about the network her at work today. We have 1 full time tech guy, and the network hasn't gone down once. At my previous job, we had 5 full time tech guys, and the network went down regularly. I can't help but think that PC networks (with PC workstations) require more people to be less stable with more downtime.

One of the common arguments I hear about PCs is that they are cheaper than Macs. Lets assume a PC is $200 cheaper than a Mac. Now, some will argue that a $999 PC isn't really equal to a 1199 iMac, but that's not something we'll deal with. Lets just say $200.

We'll assume each network has 25 computers, and 25 users making $15/hour and that the tech team makes $20/hour per full time employee. For the PC network we will assume 4 hours of downtime per month which, from my experience, is pretty accurate.

5 Full time tech support = - $208,000 per year
PCs at $200 less than Mac = + $5,000 one time cost
25 user downtime for 2 hours = - $18,000.00 per year

One year of operation, assuming no replacement parts on the computers would cost:
($208,000) + ($18,000) - 5000 = $221,000

Now, for the Mac.
1 Full time tech support = $41,600
Cost saving = $0.00
25 user downtime for 0 hours = $0.00

So, the cost of 1 year of operation is $41,600.

So it looks like a PC network costs you $ 179,400 when you add in the cost of employees and downtime impacting the rest of the staff. But hey...at least you saved $200 on all those nice new machines.

Outside Opinion

So I saw this logo on the way into work this morning, and was really caught off guard. While some logos are so abstract there is no way to associated them with the company they represent, others are designed to be an icon of the trade. So the meat company that yields this logo wanted a design that was in the shape of a cows skull I presume. Instead, it looks like they sell jock straps more than anything. I guess it shows the value inherent in asking other people's opinion of the work you create.

Location, Location, Location

This would not be good location...assuming of course this isn't the actual name of the dentist office.

Cool Weather

I woke up this morning, and the sky looked really cool. I had just enough time to grab my camera and shoot a few shots without being too late to work.

This is looking South-East from our guest room balcony.



This is looking due south. I love how the clouds separated enough to really highlight the vegetation surrounding the Mohave River. As you can tell, that is really the only green stretch out here. Makes for some very interesting contrasts though.

Ahh...the desert

Some coworkers and I were wandering the desert today after work to find the "right" Joshua Tree for a project I am working on, and we stumbled across something interesting.



That would be a live round, just chillin' off the road. We found another one in the same location. Crazy stuff out here. We saw some stink bugs too, but they weren't nearly as interesting. I did get some great rocks for an upcoming photo series I am working on.

I love bugs...

Therefore... I love the desert.

We found this little guy scurrying through our place tonight. Very cool looking!

Looks like here he wanted to model for me a bit. He was ready for his close up... to him. It got a little uncomfortable when we locked eyes for a moment, but he realized he was stuck in a cup... so there wasn't much he could do. That and the fact that I could smash him a toenail clipping. Once our "shoot" was finished, I let him roam the burning wasteland that is the High Desert on his own.

PoMoness

There really is no better place for this post than our blog. At least that is what my truth says.

How to get rich.

Today I parked my $2,000 1998 Saturn next to a one million dollar 2007 Ferrari -- AT CHURCH.
Seriously people -- how does anyone make enough money to buy a new Ferrari? I can barely afford groceries.

Money and power. Curious things.

PG

Looks like we are rated PG. Not sure if that is good or bad. I'm sure this might tempt some of you to ramp up the questionable behavior to see how much we can change the grade.

Gloiven

iShame

I don't know what happened to me, but I have completely bought into the iPhone. I just finished updating all my contacts in Address Book, will use iCal from this day forward, switch from Firefox to Safari, and have watched all the tours on the apple website. Last week I said "I want to wait until version 2 comes out so all the bugs will be fixed". Today I say "forget that! I WANT IT NOW". Curse you Steve Jobs!!

Victorveng

Well, its official... we are moving to Victorville. I just got offered a job at a church out there (high desert church), and I start July 1. Should be good times. They seem to have a very sound grasp on theology, and live in a way that exhibits their faith. Should be good learnings... to me.

Who's your neighbor?

Click here to find out who you don't want to bake cookies for...

Don't make me...

start breakdancing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOfAPHJTagY

Adverse Possession

I'm about to take title to this blog through adverse possession. Let it be known that the takeover is hostile, open and notorious, adverse and under a claim of right, and continuous, starting now.

Crack this code

Here's a brain teaser: what does this sentence have to do with mathematics:

"How I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the nasty hangover involving painful throbbing."

Bar Haze

Three days I shall dine in hell,
Testing twenty four hours is gonna smell.

Must wait five months to know if passed,
A fifty percent chance is truly nast.

If I fail, I cannot work,
Instead, until February I will lurk.

A Juris Doctorate is worthless until,
I pass that damn Bar, what a thrill.

The Mystery of Dreams

Any comments on this post are welcome. I wanted to share a little bit about my thoughts on dreams, and a recent bizarre example of what the brain can do when it starts defragmenting the unconscious mind.

About a week ago I was "stuck" for hours in a dream about numbers. Not just any numbers -- prime numbers. My mind was calculating primes, searching for the highest prime it could calculate. I was trying to determine the primality of numbers up in the thousands. In my waking moments, I might think to myself, "oh, those weren't real prime numbers...it was just my imagination making up what it thought was prime numbers..."

However, upon waking from my dreams I sometimes have a remnant memory left on the forefront of my consciousness - this time is was a table full of prime numbers. I rolled over in bed and said to my wife, "what does 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19..." have in common? She looked at me like I was crazy -- I said "they're all prime, and they were all just in my brain upon waking from calculating non-stop for the highest prime I could find." She looked at me like I was crazy -- and I felt crazy.

I regularly see a psychoanalyst for reasons apart from my crazy dreams. Psychoanalysts are trained not only with a Doctorate in psychology, but they receive even more extensive training in working with people's unconscious mind. An analyst will welcome any remembered dreams during a session. One thing that the analyst will do will ask "what comes to mind when you think about X (detail of dream)?"

My answer to this one was, "Well... prime numbers are strong. They are independent, and indivisible. They can't be broken up by any multipliers other than one and itself." Again, the therapist asks a follow-up question, using free-association -- "and what comes to mind when you think of that?" My first thought - unconditional love. Unconditional love cannot be broken, divided, or comprimised by anything. It is strong. It is unbreakable. Kind of like a prime.

Maybe that's why my unconscious mind was searching for the highest prime number.

Slain and Pwned

Guten Tag!

My name is BP and I'm here to say,
My friends are on this blog in a major way.

I'll try to keep it clean, sorta BUBBS-style,
Otherwise this place will surely be defile-d.

Justin is cringing as I pop this rhyme,
He be like 'whuddup!', face puckered like a lime.

Thank you b! Ian for letting me be a guest here,
I try not to abuse it and say anything too queer.

Aufwiedersehen!!!

Guest Nerd

Just as a heads up, we have a guest blogger. For legal reasons, I will identify him as "BP". But if and when he wishes to accept our invite, he may identify himself as whoever he wants.

A little superficial background about BP - it will remain vague for legal reasons. He is a man of passion and smarts. Topics ranging from circumcision, Christianity, guns, intellectual property, and CrotchRockets... not to mention, he can sue me up the yin-yang.

...and he has a nice dag named Teddy...

we await your response BP!

b

For Ian

Ian's Birthday and the Zoo

I'd love to post something worthwhile about friendship and good times, but my memory keeps going back to the Tapir's colossal "tail."

How about those capybaras, huh? Those were cool!

So.

An underwear-shooting cannon, huh?

Heyo

Urban Christians

This very interesting article was passed along to me by a respected friend of mine at Grace Brethren Church. The article makes some very interesting points about the way contemporary Christians interact (or don't) with the secular culture. One quote that I enjoyed:

So we must neither just denounce the culture nor adopt it. We must sacrificially serve the common good, expecting to be constantly misunderstood and sometimes attacked. We must walk in the steps of the one who laid down his life for his opponents. (-Tim Keller)

I am also going to pick up Two Cities, Two Loves: Christian Responsibility in a Crumbling Culture by Dr. James Montgomery Boise, from which the idea that major cities have the greatest influence on shaping society stems. If that is the case, perhaps a move into the city is in order!

Culture Shock

BBC World Service has a great radio broadcast called Culture Shock that I listen to weekly. I heard today's edition on the way in, and thought y'all would enjoy it as well. They typically talk a lot about creative oriented stuff as it relates to trends globally. In this edition, they talk about product design and how it has become the core of western business. They reference a comment made by a new hire to GM and his announcement that GM is in the "entertainment business". Because of the affluence of the west, the products that were once designed to meed out needs are now designed to satisfy more than that - thus a car no longer being solely for transportation, but instead, a form of entertainment. Too much good stuff to articulate in here, so give it a listen.

TCG Scorecard

Last night, pwnage belonged to Frank and I. I got good draws, and Frank is a tough guy to beat lately. Matt didn't get his "discard your hand, draw a new hand, then discard that as well" cards, and Ian made a valiant effort with his equipment, but his Warrior always takes about 7 turns to reach 60mph.

We missed Justin, who I think was at a poetry reading. And that's not a joke.

the power of art

I just heard an interesting program on Fox News. They were chatting with a guy who came back from Iraq, and were asking him questions about how the media portrays what's happening there. He said nothing that he experienced in Iraq caused him as much distress as seeing how the media is presenting the war.

The conversation moved on to two photos that ran in newspapers today (I think the NY Times was one), and they connected the fact that many of the photos being used by major news organizations are from the same guy. The photographer recently graduated from Boston College, and now works for a French news organization. The conversation then moved on to how these photos are helping us shape our perspective of the war, and how it is in conflict with what many soldiers are actually experiencing. Of course the assertion was made that France being anti war, and many of the photos coming from a photographer working in France seemed to be connected.

After hearing this, I was tempted to email the Army and have them send their own team of photographers to shoot things from their perspective so we could have another view of what is happening. It's amazing how powerfully images can be used as propaganda and effectively shape our opinions of the war.

So then, be careful little pens/brushes/cameras what you draw/paint/shoot.

Dangly Thing & Onyxia

Mike is coming up to join us tonight to defeat-vanquish Onyxia! I'm looking forward to it. Should be good times.

Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarlie! Candy Mountain, Charlie!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPONTneuaF4&eurl=

You guys should watch this.

Huh?

When can you guys come down and experience the wonder that is my place? Next tuesday? Some other day? My place itself is sort of awkward, but we can play the cards over at the graduate lounge, or smoke our pipes, or... you know... stuff.

This is less of a blog than it is a chatroom.

THIS CLASS SUCKS!

God vs. Drugs

I have a sinus infection. I have missed three days of work over the last week because of it (which isn't normal for me by any stretch). I returned today and found that there were some projects I needed to catch up on. I emailed someone back and apologized for my delay in getting stuff to print and all that, and explained that I had been feeling under the weather. She responded with "may God heal you soon".

My first response was "thanks", but it just didn't feel right. Thinking through it, I began to think through what it is I trust in to heal me. Quite frankly, I know and trust without a shadow of a doubt that God is a healer. Not a priest/shaman/druid in WoW, but a real life healer. I truly believe that he is more than able to heal anyone of anything - including death. Scripture backs that up, and it is a huge part of his ministry.

With my particular condition however, I don't feel that I am "relying" on God to supernaturally heal me. I am relying on the medicine that the doctor prescribed. Even in writing this my perspective has shifted a bit from its original intent. I hate when people make things overly spiritual, and beyond distaste for it, I think its problematic. If a parking spot opens up in front, it isn't a sign from God that you should be at the mall. It's a sign that someone is leaving the mall, thus creating an open parking spot.

I guess more than anything, it raised a question in my mind. If, for example, we are taking medicine, should we still pray for healing? Is it OK to "depend" on medicine? Don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to get all Christian Scientist on ya, I'm just curious as to wear the healthy balance is. Thoughts?

Got a Wii

Amy and I camped out yesterday morning and finally brought our baby home. It's a beautiful new Wii.

Schooled

Frank and Amy and Justin schooled Matt, Ian and me last night at WoW: TCG. Amy was a priest, Frank was a Rogue, Justin was a Poet-Demi-God, Matt was a Priest, Ian was a Warrior, and I was a Warlock.

Amy and Frank first destroyed Matt, then killed me, then finished off Ian. They also went down with little or no damage to themselves. Amy had like 20 allies out, too.

It was fun. I really want revenge.

A new years toast

A toast to where we girls was born.