Wandering with Grizzlies

It starts off very innocently:  I was looking for a bit of programming code which exemplified some behaviour I needed.  That's about it, really.  About 2 hours after I found that, though, I'm reading up on Timothy Treadwell and his last day.

After a painfully and pathetically exhaustive search, and after reading an accident report, two accounts from eye-witnesses on the scene the day after the attack and a handful of statements from authors or snippets from various (then-) upcoming books, I've made up my mind (or changed it):

• I fear Tim Treadwell was, indeed, a suicidally loony nutjob.  After chasing one addiction after another, he took a bear-hoarding addiction as his last.
  
• I fear that he placed his too-trusting, starry-eyed girlfriend into a position of terrible danger; not willingly and despite known risks, but as he lied to himself as to the danger of his latest habit he also was unable to respond adequately to his girlfriend's very healthy unease around these powerful and indiscriminate animals.
• I'm not ultimately surprised that he was mauled by a bear, even if I am disappointed it was fatal (x2).  I'm only surprised he wasn't seriously injured on the 12 years of bear-stalking that preceded his 13th summer.
  

Werner Herzog, the director of the Grizzly Man movie edited from the Grizzly Bear footage shot by Mr Treadwell, seems to agree, in parts:

“What haunts me is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears, and this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food. But for Timothy Treadwell, this bear was a friend, a saviour.”

-- Werner Herzog

That, I think, is the best quote of them all.  I understand when kids do something completely bone-headed; but the hope is that we adult-types all understand our place in the grand machine that is the harsh and unswerving universe -- that we have the sense to come in out of the rain.  The proliferation of Santa cults suggest otherwise, though, and that we're all wonderfully special snowflakes individually protected by our chosen Santa.

Despite the fact that no one's ever poached the bears Mr Treadwell claimed to be protecting from poachers, I'm still curious as to how many Greenpeacers we can get up to that campsite on a Poaching rumour.  The subset of them who will go are the very ones I'd prefer to be there.  It's a good start.

Well, crap.   You got all the way down to the end of this stupid post and didn't find a coherent or relevant thought in the whole thing.  Suckerrr !

Talking Cats, or, Distractions

Youtube is a seriously addicting thing.

I have to stop.

Translated:

Okay. Enough.

Awesome Cinematic ODST Trailer

ODST stands for Orbital Drop Shock Troopers  -- highly mobile shock troops, used to lead assaults or invasions, but in this case dropped from orbit.  It's obviously sci-fi, but only so much.

The trailer, though, absolutely insane. See for yourself:

What they're selling, of course, I can't use. I'm not a good demographic anyway, but the actual content is amazing.  They're speaking Hungarian, by the way, and yes, that gorgeous bit of animation required a full-up effects studio to do -- but isn't it insane?  I already love this advert more than I liked Starship Troopers, the bad adaptation of Heinlein's best work.  More than 1 and 2 combined!

Wait.  There's a third?

Silent Night! I Keel You!

This is late, like every other card I ever sent in the post.

Please tell me you know who Achmed the Dead Terrorist is.  It's not funny otherwise;  in fact, it's pretty tasteless.  But if you're in the know, then it's the bomb.

Who knew you could find such a big fish in the middle of a desert?

I read Metafilter, when I remember. A recent article entitled Who knew you could find such a big fish in the middle of a desert?, or link, really, carried with it some truly interesting comments -- and from similar MeFi (abbreviated) readers who have a clue or background in some subject material, which really enrich the entire site.

In this one, we have a former casino employee talking about the official policy against Gambling Addicts and how it's not enforced, and someone actually calculates the odds of someone making money on something where the odds are weighted ever so slightly in favour of the House. The results of the experiment, what I understand, are illuminating at least. Hint: the chance of anyone making money after the first bet rapidly diminish even when the house wins 50.1 percent of the time.

Then it gets awesome. A Nevada lawyer weighs in on the debtor (I mean fraud) law in that state. Many former casino employees offer up chilling tales of lost souls, and someone notices that addicted gamblers don't actually stop playing until all the money's gone -- and that the deeper pockets the House has can actually turn even a truly fair game into all but a beatdown for anyone who cannot control their spending.

The comments are truly valuable and great, and it's harder to emerge from the storm still in support of personal accountability in light of how an addiction to the thrill of winning is exploited by the machinery of casinos. How this affects the younger societies in our region, and those of us bound to support them in their every endeavour since we're guilty of the crime of having successful conqueror ancestors, is left as an exercise only Sisyphus would prefer.

(and if you now become addicted to the flow of enriched awesome that is metafilter, like I have, then all I can say is, "suffer, bitches!")

The Frakkin' Tube

It all started with a clip on Youtube.

Then it was a series of Mash-ups, most of them featuring The Gorillaz.  I think about an hour in, I realized I was completely freakin' lost.  Lost.  That's about the only thing I think I didn't see on Youtube:  the Lost show.

Meh.  But the rest?  Yeah, so for a while there I was all over the place looking at mash-ups of of Requiem for a Dream, which we know was the theme for the season-1 promo and summary of the miniseries for BattleStar Galactica, and it was Awesome:

So awesome that I spent another 2 hours finding this clip. The sad re-creation is more common than this one, sadly enough. But, before I wrote this post, partway through searching for this very clip for an hour before, I found this too:

It really sounds like Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) doing the narration, almost;  a bit clipped, maybe.  Part two is here, when I wrote this.

Of course, I had, had, to find the song All Along the Watchtower, and then find the piano version that was arranged for the episode .. you know, the one where .. aw, just see the clip:

That's not the real scene, of course, but a fan-edited series of clips which finally helps us spell out just what the song was -- if I remember, the phrases they were repeating weren't in sequence and were completely out of context at the time (of course, in retelling the story and finding the clip, I came across this , and especially this ).  And don't forget why the entire theme is ultimately important anyway.

And then I remember chasing a link where someone - almost as detail-addicted as I am - actually reverse engineered the clip to get the score the actor was playing, and then figured out as much as possible of the arrangement derived for the episode.  I spent some time watching it once, and then again as I wrote this.  Go see it if yow want.  Or get a fan-created MP3 clip of the reverse-engineer of the arrangement derived for the 4th season of the show which itself is a re-creation of another .. I gotta stop this.

But I had to find it the video again to write about it. I spent another 2 hours trying to re-create the past 2 hours I lost, just so I had some accounting of where my mental whimsy took me.  Yes, I've wasted 4 hours surfing Youtube, the second half of which was just chasing the leads of what little I remembered about the first two hours.

Hey, look: I don't claim to understand the things my brain coughs up, or why certain things become rat-holes and some things do not. But some time, when my retelling ability approaches the pace at which my brain soars off onto tangents, maybe I can start figuring it out.  Until then, try to hang on, and watch the closing doors.

Seinfeld and Superman, again

Okay, here's the other one.  Is it a prequel?

So stop buggin' me.

Hail to the King, Bab-uh, oh Crap

What?!?

No.  It can't happen.  It didn't happen.

Russell did not win Survivor.  How does that happen?  The most cunning mastermind since Rob C, formerly the "smartest player [who] didn't win the game", didn't win this one.  Skill and cunning can't win, it seems.

Worse than Richard Hatch, too, Russell was all but transparent about his evil plans; at least to us.  He crowed early and often about the way he felt he was controlling this game, and he was correct that not much happened without him expressly choosing it.  I never did understand the burning of the socks, though, but I suspect the perma-gloomy Jaisòn (or 'Jason' before it was mutilated) did something to set up the easily-incensed Russell.  We can forgive the guy because, really, we still all want to be on his side after his second-half performance.

Look:  I fear that Russell may be a little too self-concerned than is healthy, but I hold out some faith that it was careful editing of a persona well-played and not a fair assessment of the guy's true personality.  He was one of the more interesting and entertaining guys to play the game since Rob C and Rupert, so I guess I know why he can't win, and I know why the bunny won.

The winner was chosen by 9 people, at least 8 of whom were completely snowed expertly by this guy.  Choose between the smug bald guy or the vacant blonde floater?  These people still have feelings, and that's all they were using when it came time to vote.  They were played, and no one likes to be reminded they're not the smartest one on the island, so they voted the charity vote and they let themselves get an ounce of superiority back.

I have a few final thoughts.

1. If your folks named you something stupid, call yourself Mike or Jay when you're on television.  At the very least, it's easy for people to spell on the ballots.
   
2. Please, TV people, can you edit out the part where the batshit crazies start talking the Santa-cult talk?  It's not endearing, and it certainly can cause us viewers to judge the poor innocents harshly.  In turn, this harshes my buzz, and I want to watch something else.
   
3. People, understand when you've been well and soundly beaten, and give the man some freakin' cash for his performance, already.  Shambo said it right, imho:  Feckless and Coattails.

I firmly suspect Russell is back for the 20th season, and since Hatch can't come back for it,  they better have him in there -- who else will keep out Rob C in check?  Rupert may steal the odd shoe, but it's not his style.  Jenna or Parvati would wrap him around their finger, but who'd blame him?  Toss in Rudy, Colleen and Stephenie, and we could have ourselves a show.  If they get that Johnie guy on there, they'll need some watchable people to keep us fans tuning in, anyway, and wondering who's most deserving of the other 13 candidates.

Superman and Seinfeld

My Nemesis at the Sweatshop suggested I check this out.  It's excellent.

I mean, what do super heroes DO when there's no people to save?



There ya go.  One lame post down, millions to go.

Spanning the Tree

What interesting Day Off reading. I just fell across a Spanning Tree Protocol writeup on a site called Route My World:

In case of identical root path cost, resulting in a tie, the following criteria is used in the decision-making process (in order):

1. Lowest root bridge ID
2. Lowest root path cost to root bridge
3. Lowest sender bridge ID
4. Lowest port priority
5. Lowest port ID

Pretty dry crap, no?  Let me break it down, though:  Say I have a site - maybe a pet store or a regulatory office which sells licenses; whatever - and I want to link its internal network at its public office to its head office, and maybe ALSO to the home office of the manager or owner.  That home office also has its OWN link to the head office, ideally (I mean, it could all link through the public office, and use that, but when the public office loses its net signal (power failure or Ma Bell sucks) or if it's a slow signal anyway, you want the backup link there).

If you have three sites - home office, public office and head office, each with links to both other sites - though, while each site can see each other site and potentially share resources, what you create is a big loop in this bridged network.  Spanning Tree Protocol - because it uses a funny model to see where data can go - is what's used to detect and (temporarily) break up the bridge.

It's very useful stuff, and while I knew a fair bit about it, the post at this site has some great detail that I was missing -- and I'm very glad I found this thing, deep in the rabbit hole in my surfing.  My overall goal of having a single spanning bridge through all the blue routers (so, say port 4 is a super-net port) is that much closer and possible at all thanks to what I learned about the spanning-tree tech, and the one thing I didn't learn about the whole bridging concept in general.  Yes, if you want to share printers upstairs to downstairs or link a home office and a work office, we should definitely talk.  There are downsides, but only one noticeable one.

Here's the obligatory perverted-example-net-from-hell diagram:

It's a neat picture, and techies who know that 5 disjoint networks can be merged so that everyone in all networks thinks they're on the same network cable in the same room, that's kinda neat, but it's more than we'd probably use except at the zoo or sweatshop.  This doesn't fly for Atlanta, and doesn't fly for here, but it's neat.

Pretty pictures.  Ooo-ooo.

Incremental

Having almost busted one of the blue routers (yeah, it was Bunny) this last weekend, I've been working on a replacement software load for it.

You see, it's like this:  the blue box seems to use a fixed size for its firmware load;  it starts out with only so much functionality, in a certain amount of its on-board storage, and anything added after the fact occupies what looks to be a different area of its storage.  I think I didn't explain that right.

The end result is that if you need a tool on these things that's not in the initial software load, then you have to add it in.  You only have so much space in the 'add on' area where you can store added stuff, or you run out of space like I did and hate it.  Thing is, that initial software load reserves a bunch of space, whether it uses it or not!  So the job here is to develop an initial software load that will give you what you need and prevent too much added in after the fact.  Make more sense?

Anyway, so I've been rebuilding my build framework.  To say that another way, I was building a decently derived software kit for these things, and I lost it when I lost a hard drive a ways back.  I'm working on making it go again.

It's steady work, but ultimately rewarding for a guy like me.  It's like my own little Farmville, but with a crop that about a dozen people can enjoy.

Worst. Photos. Ever

I got back, last night, from the yearly family gathering.  I think it was as much fun for who was there as it was sucky for who didn't show up.  I dunno about you, but I was really hoping to see some cousins who turned out to be no-shows.

As usual I need to apologize.  Not for the usual stuff, like rat-holing on details, the persistent questioning, any of that.  I need to apologize because it seems I'm completely unable to use an auto-focus pro-sumer camera.  Did you see some of those hideous pics?  If you want to know which pics have some guy scratching his ass, a shot of someone's snaggly teeth or some anonymous butt-shot, just look for the only freakin' shots which were in some semblance of focus.

I hope against hope that some of the other pics taken were

• in focus
• in light
• in frame
• level frame
• and sent to me

.. because that's the only way I'm gonna have pics of this event that I don't hate.

Or maybe I should fix my chipped tooth and not frown so much.

Explosion-proof?

I need a new cord. Well, really, I need a cord for my cord.  Yeah yeah, that sounds like porn because I said "my cord."

Confused? We all know just how freakin' lazy I am, right?  So I have some stuff I'm pluggin' in (that sounds dirty too).  And I'm pluggin' it, and I'm unpluggin' it, and I'm getting reeeally bored of the pluggin' part (shut UP, Dlae and Joey, with the sick comments).  Well, the pluggin' part's okay, but the 'move a whack of crap and lurch myself under the desk to find the freakin' outlet and unplug the wall-wart from it, then plug it back in' crap was gettin' really old really quickly.  So what I want is a cord for that cord I have to unplug and re-plug-in a lot, so that, instead of the digging through the tech debris like a search party in a Radio Shack earthquake, I can just *click* hit a switch and do the plug dance.  Just like that.  Wouldn't that be awesome?

Why does everyone have this addiction to lamps with the stupid rotating switches up near the light so ya have to reeeach your hand up under the lampshade (look, Joey and Dlae, I'm totally warning you about the porn thoughts, although I never noticed how much a skirt looks like a lampshade, for hot chicks) and flick the switch (Boys, that's it.  One more warning) without getting burned all to hell (story o' my life).  People place these annoying, antiquated switched lamps in the stupidest places, like behind end tables or over couches, or maybe even on the other side of the pit filled with pointy wooden stakes and the fire-breathing turtle-dog hybrids that ya cooked up in the evil lab, and .. where was I?

I ask you:  what the hell is with those little pinchety switches ya have to rotate exactly one click to turn off, while avoiding the white-goddamned-hot bulb, and hope to hell you can manage to turn off the light without wrecking it, the flesh on your hand or your back from leaning so far over the stupid end-table.  (I'll end that table, I tell ya) .  So anyway ..

So I'm hitting up Google - which, according to my favourite Bro, is indeed my bitch - and I saw it.  And I knew I had to have it, so very much I had to have it that I write an entire fucking cuss-laden googley blogger bit on it just so I can show you this picture:

What's this, you ask?  Well, it's an extension cord with an in-line switch, mostly, and it's like the number above there, but for one thing.

It's explosion-proof.  Don't you see?  Explosion-proof.

Now you know why I simply must have it.  I mean, c'mon, man, it's the only cord in the word which can't be blown up.  What's not to like about that?  Now I just have to find some explosions and I'm golden.

Ham Daquiri

This youtube clip is either so full of ungodly shiny bits of super-win, with sprinkles .. or a festering unholy romp in culinary hell.



Can't. Stop. Watching.

You People are in So Much Trouble

I just got a Google Wave invite.

Mom - google wave is a new experiment in gluing chat, email and collaborative editing together.  Chat messages are really email messages, which are really like attached documents that (like google docs) we all can edit in realtime, and attach stuff, etc.

Yeah, I know, it's been out for about 2 months, now, and I still haven't gotten an invite.  I was starting to feel a bit left-out.  Me, one of the biggest Google fans out there, and I didn't even have a Wave invite.  I was crushed.  I was heartbroken.

So there I was on one of my usual website haunts, and some guy was advertising invites.  I pinged back, and here I am.  I have a wave testing account.  Yay me!

First thing that pops up are the following names of people in my gmail address book who already have wave accounts:  AtlantaJames, JonathAn, Michal, JaynesDogNick, Droodlebug, MrSack, Pascal, GBored and Auroran.  What, some of my closest friends and some of my family, and you guys couldn't share the freakin' love?  You suck and you're all in my bad books.

The only hope for all of you, now, is some serious Latté debt pay-off.  Bastards.

If you need me, listen for the sound of my Wave discovery:  "Oooh.  Ahh!  Those pricks. Wow!"

I have 5 invites.  MrSack was my very first thought for an invite, and then it was AtlantaJames, Crackbaby, JaynesDogNick, Xotz, Illie, JonathAn, Droodlebug and Auroran.  From my 8 original invites, minus those selfish bastards (sniff), I've got 5 left.

It's Who You Know, Silly

I just spent about 40 hours doing a 10-minute job.

The short story is this:

• The task involved some technology I don't know a thing about.  It's old, and the company who released it about 8 years ago got bought up by one of those cash-cow-milker super-companies (you'd know it) who haven't fixed any bugs or updated it since they bought it and laid off all the original guys.
• The locals who know about it and provide the technology internally aren't outsourced (yet, and they're totally getting shafted) and thus are at the Zoo instead of the Sweatshop, so can't do the work because the Zoo is telling the sweatshop to do it (still following your money?) .  These stay-behinds know they're being shafted worse than we were, and I figure they're pretty disgruntled about everything; and while we used to work closely with them a year ago they really can't be arsed to help us figure out how this crusty old technology works with anything, let alone how it merges with their existing service (oh yeah).

Now, 10 minutes of the job is just so mind-numbingly easy that it takes more time to describe it than it does to actually do it.  Copy a directory of files, add in some configuration here, and that's it.  10 minutes, really, tops.

The other 4790 minutes were spent, this week,

• trying to figure out what the technology does
• Asking the stay-behinds how it works properly; getting told flatly that it's a security risk to tell me anything about it, even in non-specific terms.
• trying to get it to work with anything newer than the stone age
• asking the stay-behinds to get their config work done
• attending meetings as to the status
• on the telephone with their project manager explaining why it's not done yet
• hosting my boss's boss's boss, and his boss, in my tiny cube and explaining why it's not done yet
• explaining to my two regular bosses why the two jobs I'm already behind on are delayed by this stuff they signed me up to do

The laughable part was that, part-way through the week, the word came down that my (here it goes) boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's customer's boss's boss's boss's boss (two steps away from a very recognizable regional figure who looks like my uncle-in-law), if I have that right, was personally interested in the project.  So, the part of the work that was being delayed because "it wasn't important enough", well, they've handled that.

Because it's not that the works is nearly impossible, 99% not my job, requires crusty equipment that no one who knows how to use it is really inclined at all to assist me, even if we were having coffee regularly last year, and can't officially help me anyway.  No, the real problem must have been that it wasn't important enough.  Glad that's been taken care-of.

Laid Out

Welp, that's it with the highly custom layout.  Seems new posts were just getting mangled in the new Blogger infrastructure, so I've started from Scratch again.

Stuff's not working, stuff's not visible, and, the biggest disappointment of all, the page doesn't look like complete ass in Internet Exploder.  Sadly, the googley people have already done a heap of fixes to the web code so that all the IE rendering gaffes are hardly noticeable at all.  It's a bit of a bummer because if we stopped coddling that an app I think is really sick and broken, people may notice how broken it may be and give it up.

A fantasy, I know, but the idea that it's the worst Internet app ever to be pushed upon the unsuspecting unwashed masses isn't cutting it as a reason to ditch it.

When I see it, I can't but think of a soap box racer on bovine growth hormones, or maybe one of those apartment blocks you see in pictures, the ones in southeast asia in places where it seems corruption has overtaken any kind of building code inspection.  To a few people, IE may just be the falling-down un-braced firetrap of a 4-storey slum walkup without plumbing or reliable power, but which is always packed with people blatantly ignoring the fact that the next earthquake will completely screw them over permanently.

Wait.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, so I ditched the old blog template, started poking at a new one, and I still need to fix it a bit more.  So there.