11.30.05
Funny Software
This is funny:
DSL for short. It’s a 50MB desktop Linux distribution. I haven’t played with it, but the name makes me giggle more than it should.
11.29.05
Quote
The theme for the day is “gnarly s**t I can’t solve.” —Bob Jamieson, full-time C&C consultant
11.26.05
Is Nothing Sacred?
So I understand they’re making a new pink panther movie. Am I the only one that thinks this is a Bad Thing ™ and a disservice to Peter Sellers and Inspector Clouseau?
Peter Sellers was not an actor playing Inspector Clouseau…Peter Sellers was Inspector Clouseau. There are some characters that are so tightly linked to the people who play them, that no one else will ever be able to play that character quite the same way. Other examples, although on a slightly smaller scale, are Leonard Nimoy as Spock and John de Lancie as Q.
Steve Martin will play Inspector Clouseau. I heard he’s not bad in the part. Steve Martin is a great comedy actor, but no matter how good a job he does, he will never be Inspector Clouseau.
Edit: I just watched the trailer. It looks horrible.
11.24.05
Burger Hut
So yesterday (Wednesday) for lunch I went to Burger Hut, I was picking up a burger for me and one of the guys at work. The guy at the counter was reading the paper and we got to talking about the Tacoma Mall shooting and concealed carry…he was like “Yeah, I had a concealed carry license in Florida and I need to get it transferred here…I need to do that with my food handler’s card, too…”
Uhhhh….well, at least he has a food handler’s card in Florida. 
The sad thing is, it didn’t register with me that he didn’t have a WA food handler’s permit until I was halfway back to campus. I didn’t really care, though…I don’t put much stock in the food handler’s permit, really…I could teach a monkey to get a food handler’s permit.
11.23.05
Quotes
How can you get bored when you have firearms? —Dan Dameron
That’s a bag Matt, it’s not your cape. —Brian McNally, co-worker
Because you’re a f***ing moron, that’s why!!! —Miles Crawford, former co-worker and all-around nice guy
I just don’t want to crush my hair… —James Malone, co-worker
11.21.05
They said I was crazy…
OK, so people actually say this to me about a lot of things, but this is a specific thing. And I’ve been vindicated.
So, I got my CPL (Concealed Pistol License, that’s what we call it here in Washington) a few weeks ago and most of my friends had responses along the lines of “why would anyone ever want to carry a gun!?”. Lesson 1: Don’t tell people from Seattle you want to carry a gun, even if they seem like they’re normal. Lesson 2: If you didn’t pay attention to lesson 1, ignore all the responses you get:
http://www.komotv.com/news/story_m.asp?ID=40360
Some nutjob hauled a rifle into the Tacoma mall and started shooting people before holing up with hostages in the Sam Goody there. After 4 hours he surrendered to the SWAT team. The gun-toter injured six people, one critically.
<sarcasm>Yes, why would anyone ever want to carry a gun?</sarcasm>
Yeah, I know that having a gun wouldn’t necessarily help in such a situation, but unless you do something stupid, it’s not going to hurt.
It’s worth noting that no one died in this whole affair, which probably would not have been the case if an armed civilian had defended themselves. However, one person almost died, 5 others were hurt, the shooter was unhurt–I guess different people will have different opinions on whether or not this was “acceptable”, and whether or not the shooter being killed to avoid some or all of these injuries would have been “acceptable”–neither of these scenarios is really ideal, but…welcome to the real world.
11.19.05
Saturday
Went to the shooting range with my dad today. They have a nice range in Bellevue. I’m pretty sure it had been at least a year since I’d fired a gun, even longer since I’d fired a handgun. I rented a few .45s there, I really liked the Glock 30–I’ll be getting one as soon as I scrounge up $550…
I tore up the targets pretty well considering that I haven’t shot for a long time, and never really did it enough to get good at it in the first place.
I’ve been sitting around for the past 4 hours with nothing to do. I should do homework…but…yeah, I’m lazy. I’m getting some new music. 
GMT
I need to sit down and figure out how daylight savings time works with GMT…because the time on my server now appears to be off by an hour…*sigh*
so do we (we being the PST time zone) always have a GMT offset of -8, and well-written software is supposed to compensate…or do we change to -7…or is it -9? during daylight savings??? Don’t tell me, I want to figure it out for myself.
Nerd fact: UNIX-based operating systems keep track of time in the number of seconds elapsed since 12:00am on January 1, 1970. This means unix-based OSes never had a y2k problem–although there will be a problem sometime in 2038 because the number gets too big for 32 bit hardware to deal with. If you’re still using 32 bit hardware in 2038…well, you deserve whatever you get. ;-P
Physics Class
You know you’re in the wrong major when…
-Your professor, talking about the upcoming exam, says “It’s hard to find problems that are easy enough for you to do…”
-Your professor explains a concept, then turns to the class and says “But judging by your faces…maybe I won’t put that on the exam…”
-And the number one way you know you’re in the wrong major: You don’t like your major.
11.15.05
Weekend
Weekend update:
Friday: UCF was going paintballing on Saturday. I went to Buch’s gun shop on Aurora Ave. to get a barrel sleeve, and check on the price of a glock 36 (the glock 36 was entirely unrelated to paintball, you’ll be happy to know). After that I decided to check out Wade’s shooting range in Bellevue (I want to actually shoot a Glock 36 before I buy one, and Wade’s rents a lot of different guns at their range). Wade’s was cool. I bought a book on Washington State gun laws. Then I drove home. That is to say…I almost drove home. I was a block away from my house when someone started to pull out of the U-Village parking lot onto 25th…I locked up my brakes very nicely but wet pavement is not conducive to quick stops. So the front of my car went smashing into the left front fender of the car that pulled out in front of me. No one was hurt. I don’t seem to have any permanent damage to myself–my neck is a little sore but it seems to be getting better. My poor car did not fare so well. The front got smashed up pretty well, the radiator is gone, my parents rented a tow dolly and towed it home Saturday morning. I like that car. 
We might see about fixing it–if the front wheels are still straight repairs will be trivial. I’ll try to get some pictures up at some point. My poor car. And of course…it’s probably totaled, and I doubt I can find another vehicle that reliable for the amount of money we’ll get for it…*sigh*…
No official UCF Friday night, but a number of us gathered at Greg’s (one of the pastors) house to sing and hang out. I was planning to drive…it turns out to be a 45 minute walk.
Saturday: paintball. The paintballs the field was selling were TERRIBLE–they were breaking in my gun all the time…very sad. But I still had fun. I didn’t do particularly well, but I had a few good shots.
Sunday: Went home in the morning to look at my car. Preliminary tests indicate the front wheels were mostly straight (I don’t understand this laser alignment equipment nonsense…I can do the same thing with two sticks and a piece of string…and the piece of string is only necessary if you want to do a fancy alignment job)–I didn’t have that much time to really look at it, and I don’t want to mess with it too much before the insurance guys get a chance to look at it. No homework got done over the weekend.
Monday morning: Came back to Seattle.
Random thought: It has come to my attention that I hate most of my music. I need new music…any suggestions? No rap, no hip-hop, nothing with a pounding baseline, etc…
11.14.05
Visitors
So I’ve been looking at my website traffic reports. Apparently people actually read my blog….or at least, they visit it…the traffic reports can’t tell me whether or not they actually read anything. Anyway…I find this interesting. I’m wondering if maybe people would like to comment on things, but don’t because I’ve had commenting cranked down to registered users only due to comment spam. I’m thinking this is probably wishful thinking on my part. Even so, I’ve decided to remove the restriction that only registered users can post comments. I’ve installed a spam blocking plug-in for wordpress that should eliminate most of the comment spam…we’ll see how well this works. In the meantime, enjoy your commenting freedom.
11.11.05
It makes a big whirring sound
So I was talking to Becky on IM…and her client just sort of croaked, so she looked like she was online, but she wasn’t writing back to me. So I proceeded to tell her why I was going to learn to fix sails (actually, it was more like talking to myself). Here’s how it went:
- I get to play with sharp things
-and power tools
-granted…the power tool is a sewing machine
-but it’s an INDUSTRIAL sewing machine
-with big needles
-and a big motor
-and it makes a big whirring sound
-ok…a big whirring sound isn’t very impressive
-but…..yeah…
11.10.05
Quotes
And then you will see that…I’m not lying. —My physics 228 professor, assuring us that the next part of this long proof (well, it wasn’t a proof per se) would cause what we had just done to make sense.
General Lucifer leads the army of fallen angels…General Christ leads God’s army. —My English professor, on Paradise Lost.
Intelligent Design
This is seriously ticking me off, but I’m not exactly sure why. This…thing (I refuse to call it an essay at this point) is unfinished, unpolished, and mostly random ramblings and parrotings of things I’ve read over the years. However, I keep reading about this issue, and I can’t keep my mouth shut anymore.
First, let’s get something straight–Intelligent Design (ID, hereafter) is not Young-Earth Creationism (YEC, hereafter). Again, ID is *not* YEC. If ID resembles any type of creationism, it is that of Old Earth Creationism, which doesn’t really conflict that much with evolution.
Even if ID were to be YEC it would by no means spell the end of real science. Physics, chemistry even biology work the same way whether they were created or evolved. All the old physics experiments aren’t worthless if a creator exists. Science is based on observations of repeated experiments–intelligent design does not change this. Physical properties that have been observed for years are not at all affected by origins. Cell biology and natural selection, as observed, remain unchanged. ID changes nothing about what we already KNOW.
For the record, ID will always remain a theory (as, I expect, will any theories on origins)–the beginning of the universe (and ID and evolution agree that the universe DID begin at a finite point in time) cannot be repeatedly observed in the laboratory. No class on origins is ever a “science” class in the real sense of the word–it’s a class on working theories based on scientific evidence–interpretation of the evidence is another story.
Evolution should not be immune to critcism. It is fraught with holes. So is ID (some incarnations of it more than others). An honest and intellectual discussion (as opposed to a biased and dogmatic discussion–yes, ID and evolution supporters are equally guilty of this) of these problems only furthers the academic process.
At the risk of alienating every single reader, I’ll go on to say that ID is a pretty broad theory. God using “evolution as a tool” would probably fall under ID. Old Earth and Young Earth Creationism, in all their incarnations, also fall under ID. I don’t know that ID requires that life be directly designed in a single word and “out of nothing (ex nihilo)”.
Teaching ID instead of evolution will not affect the fact that our kids are already lagging behind the rest of the world in science education. That deficiency is mostly in mathematics and the hard sciences, neither of which the teaching of evolution vs. ID has much, if any, bearing on. Physicists are sometimes concerned with origins, but not the biological side of things, and they are about as likely to subscribe to ID as they are to evolution.
If most people understood this I don’t think there would be nearly as much noise as there has been about this ID in schools thing.
Honestly, I think the knee-jerk reaction by evolutionists is the result of fear. Evolution as it is taught in schools today is fraught with holes–it is inevitable that evolution will be supplanted by ID (I give it 30 more years at the most, perhaps much sooner), and I think the evolutionists realize that.
And you’re probably wondering what my personal beliefs are? The short answer is “I really don’t know”. I reject outright evolution as it is taught in schools today. I guess this puts me squarely in the ID camp. I’m a Christian so having the Christian God as my creator narrows it down a bit more. But as I’ve said, ID is extremely broad. Beyond what I’ve just stated, I have been unable to find a framework that sufficiently satisfies me both theologically and intellectually. I’ve also become very disillusioned over the years because *no one* has anything new to add to these arguments. Everyone has been saying the same things for last 30+ years. It also upsets me that this debate cannot be civil, even among Christians disagreeing on creationism, the debate borders on nasty. I refuse to be a party to any of this nonsense.
For Christians, we need to remember that ID is NOT a Christian doctrine. It is a purely secular concept (it probably has its origins in Christianity, however. It’s basically creation, and I use the term “creation” very loosely, without a particular God). It’s a vast improvement intellectually (in my opinion), and maybe slightly better theologically, but it’s nothing to get terribly excited over. Christian Creationism will never be taught in schools (and shouldn’t be)–and it’s probably just as well, since we can’t even agree on what our own version of creationism is.
11.08.05
Quote
“Computers are for putting Linux on.” —Jesse
In reference to the desire of nerds to put linux on any electronic device, whether it’s useful or not.
11.01.05
I…Hate…Computers.
You may have noticed my blog was offline for a few hours today…along with every other application on my server that relied on a database.
I’ve been working on installing a photo gallery program to manage my growing collection of pictures, and it has some…issues. Every time the photo gallery connects to the database all the other applications (email, blog, etc) can’t access it anymore until I restart the daemon. Anyway, if you see an error message about not being to connect to a database, it’s probably because I’m troubleshooting the photo gallery program.
I’m working on an update for the Fall Retreat. Hopefully soon….