Prayers to the Atheist God

Apparently, I can't photoshop.

2011-08-23T21:19:00.002-04:00

Why there is no "Citizen Kane" of video games.

2010-01-14T19:58:00.003-05:00

Video games as a medium are fundamentally different from any other sort of art. Imagine you're writing a great novel. Now imagine you're trying to make that great novel into a choose-your-own-adventure story, without losing the quality of the story. Can you do it?

The big difference between video games and choose-your-own-adventures on the one hand, and paintings, sculptures, literature, and film on the other, is that in traditional media the artist has total control over the work. The sculptor sculpts, the writer writes, and then you look at the work. The programmer, however, must create an outline for the player to fill in however they wish. The artwork must be a collaboration between total strangers. This is new and difficult, and people are still trying to figure out how to do it.

On deriving morality from first principles

2009-12-18T14:08:00.001-05:00

1. You are not special.

2. Therefore, hypocrisy is bad; the same rules should apply to you and to others.

3. Therefore, the golden rule.

4. Therefore, the rest of liberal ethics.

Conservative ethics [the difference] has some extra bits that may not be derivable quite so easily. Being quite liberal myself, however, I'll stop here.

Looking at NYC

2009-11-17T20:33:00.002-05:00

Looking at Manhattan from a 20th floor balcony, I see the tiny people down below.
I see the size of the people, and I see the size of the buildings.
I see the size of the people.
I see the size of the buildings they have built.
I look further, and see the rows of those buildings.
Row upon row, upon row, upon row.
As far as I can see.

Old links

2009-09-09T04:50:00.004-04:00

I've had these lying around for a while, but haven't posted them.

A review of Transformers 2
A video explaining the health care reform debate
The stand-up economist translates Mankiw's 10 principles
Tim Minchin sings a song that you may find hard to listen to
Last, a funny clip from The Muppet Show

On up-to-the-minute news

2009-08-27T01:42:00.007-04:00

I was reading RISKS:

In the November 2009 election in Kentucky, there was a serious discrepancy between how ES&S's iVotronic voting machines worked and how some voters were instructed. Some voters were apparently falsely told that touching `Vote' completed the voting process. However, that only displayed the review screen, whereas subsequently touching `Cast Ballot' was required. Conspiratorial election judges were then able to modify the ballot and cast it. In addition to the fraud, it is clear that the `vote' screen should have instead been labeled something such as `review'. Five insiders were indicted -- including conspiracy to commit vote fraud, extortion, and tampering with grand jury witnesses in a subsequent attempt at a cover-up.

I was just thinking how lucky it is these people were caught. Then I realized... "will have been caught"? Or are we living in Minority Report now, and are arresting people for precrimes?

More info, including accurate dates, here.

Companies whose motto is apparently "do be evil"

2009-08-22T01:28:00.005-04:00

Insurance companies (including mine... I need to get a new one...) say they won't stop weaseling out of contracts with customers who have the gall to get sick.
Fox News (Yeah, I know, total shock to see them under this category, right?) fired two reporters for refusing to falsify their story. They sued, but Fox won on appeal, with the argument that there is no "law, rule, or regulation" against their lying (or compelling their employees to lie): the FCC rule is just a "policy". Fox is now suing them for millions in legal fees.

On locking up innocent scumbags

2009-08-15T19:12:00.006-04:00

I caught the second half of a This American Life episode a little while ago. It was about Hemant Lakhani, who an undercover agent posing as a terrorist tried to buy a missile from. When he couldn't get a missile, another undercover agent sold him one. While he was willing to be an accomplice to mass murder, there's no evidence he was able to do so, which makes it arguably entrapment.

The part of the story that really bothered me, though, is a bit near the end (0:51) where they quote the prosecutor, Chris Christie (now running for Governor of New Jersey), as saying it didn't matter whether he was guilty or innocent, because he was a "bad person"!

IntenseDebate problems

2009-08-11T20:11:00.004-04:00

IntenseDebate seems to be having some issues with not showing comments. The comment count will be accurate, but some of the comments will not be visible. It seems to mostly affect replies to other comments.

This isn't just happening on my site, and it's not a small problem. I mean, showing your comment to other people is what a commenting system is supposed to do.

For the time being, try reposting your comment as a reply to the original blog post, instead of as a reply to a comment. I'd really rather not go through the bother of switching comment systems again, but if this becomes a recurring issue, I won't have a choice.

Edit: The problem seems to have gone away for the time being. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

A geometry problem

2009-07-29T15:14:00.002-04:00

Look at the cover of Godel, Escher, Bach. The blocks are carved such that each of the directions casts the shadow of a different letter. Now, it is clearly not possible to do this with any three shapes. What conditions are necessary for it to be possible?

I suspect the answer to this is if each shape contains a point somewhere on every horizontal and vertical line, that guarantees that you can build the block. If this is not the case, as in the letter "I", restrictions are created on the other symbols: "I" "I" and "O" could be done, but "I" "O" and "O" couldn't.

This assumes that the block can be in pieces, though. If any of the shapes is disconnected, like an "O" with a dot in the center, the resulting block will be disconnected, too. Is there a set of shapes, though, where each shape is connected, but the resulting block must be disconnected? I can't think of any, but I'm not sure.

Iolanthe

2009-07-15T14:40:00.002-04:00

I've been busy practicing; I'm in a performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe in a couple weeks. If you're in the DC area, check it out! Call CHAW for tickets.

Family Circus meets Them!

2009-07-06T14:22:00.004-04:00

Seriously, what the heck? This is just creepy.

Look out, 1989 London!

2009-06-15T00:21:00.007-04:00

London, England, 1989: people are living in fear of a gang of vigilante nutritionists, whose drive-by vegetablings have cost at least one man his life.

Yelling at the "liberal" media

2009-06-07T17:18:00.002-04:00

I'm so sick of hearing news readers say "the man who killed abortion doctor George Tiller". How about we call a spade a spade and say "the terrorist who murdered doctor George Tiller"? I admit that my wording isn't any more objective than that I'm criticizing, but it's not much less.

After the con

2009-05-26T15:54:00.002-04:00

I just got back from Balticon, and I'm completely exhausted from the combination of too many people, too little sleep, and too little food. Also, I was feeling a bit lonely for much of it—you're never so alone as when you're alone in a crowd.

A couple of questions

2009-05-14T22:40:00.002-04:00

1. What's the most important lesson you've learned in your life?
2. What lesson has had the biggest impact on your life?

Hey! / Now we're going back in time! / Check it out, gotta keep 'em federated.

2009-05-11T20:45:00.008-04:00

I consider myself a Star Trek fan. I've seen a few episodes of TOS, much of TNG, all of DS9, most of Voyager, and a bit of Enterprise, but I don't plan on seeing the new movie. The decision was made provisionally after seeing the original trailer, and nothing I've heard since has made me think my first impressions were wrong.

My first thought on seeing the trailer was "Why is this an action film? Did they get Michael Bay to direct it?" When coming up with adjectives to describe Star Trek, "Awesome" and "Extreme" are not at the top of the list. This isn't Star Wars. Trek has never been action/adventure—it's more exploration/diplomacy. In DS9, in the middle of all-out war, more time is spent on the internal politics of keeping the alliances together than on battles. If a ship fires at the Enterprise, the command is not "Return fire!" but "Open a channel." This is a show that spends screen time on staff meetings, for goodness sakes! Don't think I'm impressed by a trailer full of eye candy and people driving off cliffs.

I'm not thrilled about the use of time travel to hit the reset button, either. I've never been a fan of Trek's time travel plots, and I'd miss the canon. But that's fairly minor, and I'd still be lining up to see it, if it didn't have the wrong attitude. When George Lucas stuck politics and technobabble into the Star Wars prequels, they didn't fit. In a universe like Star Wars', senate proceedings and "midichlorians" stick out like a sore thumb. Similarly, dramatic action shots and people hanging off cliffs doesn't fit Star Trek's style.

Edit: The Onion, it seems, has summarized my complaints quite well: "Star Trek fans are decrying the new film as a fun and watchable action-packed thrill ride... There's not even one scene set at a long table where interstellar diplomacy is debated in endless detail."

o/` ...throw it out the window, the window, the second story window... o/`

2009-05-06T19:00:00.005-04:00

Our second story window just fell out the window. Yes, you read that right. Apparently, it's designed to tilt inwards so you can clean the outside, but it wasn't installed correctly (which explains why it wouldn't stay in position all these years). Today, while my mother was trying to ~~clean it~~ open it, it fell out entirely, landing on the clay two stories below. Surprisingly, it didn't break, so I figured out how it went in and put it back, properly. Now it stays in place if you raise or lower it!

On the reputation economy

2009-05-03T15:42:00.006-04:00

The internet economy doesn't run on cash.

That is to say, the market economy does reach online, but it is not the primary mode of transaction here. Instead, we primarily have a reputation economy: your wealth is your fame. It works a little differently: in a market economy, you show your appreciation by giving someone money, which makes you poorer. In the reputation economy, you link to them, which doesn't.

People understand this instinctively, if not always consciously. If you steal a bit of artwork someone else made, and put it on your site with a link to the creator, the creator is unlikely to get mad (and unlikely to get sympathy from the rest of the internet if they do). On the other hand, if instead of linking back to the creator, you imply that you made it, people get very angry; see Todd Goldman or eBaum's World [explicit lyrics] for examples. This is a pattern on the internet—if people are complaining about someone being a thief, they're much more likely to mean a reputation thief than a money thief.

Interestingly, there's no Wikipedia article on the subject, although I don't seem to be the first one to describe it. There is one for "attention economy", which is close, but not quite the same thing.

Crazies in the comments

2009-04-30T13:48:00.002-04:00

How do you deal with nutcases who leave comments? The sort who could benefit from a psychiatrist, but won't see one for fear of being given mind-control drugs? Do you politely disagree with them, slap them down, or just delete their comments?

Truth, lies, the media, and the Columbine shooting.

2009-04-28T22:29:00.002-04:00

What do you know about the Columbine massacre? Some misfit loners in black trenchcoats got sick of being bullied and shot up the school, right? Wrong. The media made up a story, and then didn't let the emerging facts get in the way.

Via Kevin Pease's LJ.

A stupid Passover story

2009-04-17T10:26:00.005-04:00

With the end of Passover, I thought I'd tell a story. One of the traditional holiday songs is Daiyanu. Daiyanu (or Dayanu, or Dayenu—the correct spelling is דַּיֵּנוּ) is a Hebrew word meaning "it would have been enough", and the song is a list of gifts from God.

When my sister was little, after singing the song, she once asked "Why do we want anu to die?"

For anyone familiar with the holiday, here's a Facebook haggadah. People who have never been to a ceder may enjoy it too, but they'll miss a lot of the jokes.

On the title of this blog

2009-04-05T22:45:00.005-04:00

People have remarked on the title of the blog. It comes from a post I read in the xkcd forums: something like "Pray to God, or your atheist god, that it never happens." I thought it was pretty funny example of completely missing the point. (Although they wouldn't be alone, 21% of Americans who identified themselves as atheists said they believe in god¹.)

I chose it mostly because it was a funny and memorable phrase. It works on other levels too, though. It's a reference to my single-digit readership: I'm talking, but nobody's listening. It's a little bit of a stretch, but you could even say that other people are the closest thing an atheist has to a prayer-answering god.

My mother is kind of ashamed of the blog, though. I don't completely understand why; the best I can figure, she thinks the word 'atheist' is horribly offensive, or something. I was pretty disappointed.

¹ http://religions.pewforum.org/reports, click "Report 2" and scroll down to the second table.

Mangas

2009-03-29T17:19:00.003-04:00

Some really good mangas you might not have heard of:

Anything by Adachi Mitsuru. He mostly does high school sports stories with a romantic interest.

Living Game is a comedy about a guy who's trying to find a better apartment. At least, that's how it starts.

Yotsubato! is a series of adventures of a wide-eyed, cheerful little girl (5 years old?) discovering the world. Extremely cute.

Hikaru No Go is about a young boy who meets the ghost of an ancient go player, and learns the game. You wouldn't think a story about a board game would be so interesting. The anime version is also excellent.

Other than Yotsubato!, which doesn't have much in the way of continuity anyways, these are all completed, so no getting to the end and then having to wait a month for the next chapter. Things like Death Note and Full Metal Alchemist don't get a mention; I assume you know about them already.

New York, New York

2009-03-28T19:46:00.002-04:00

I'm in NYC for the weekend, staying with my aunt. I'm having fun.

Digger: now with a 100% discount!

2009-03-15T13:39:00.011-04:00

Digger is free! You should read it. It has dead gods, oracular slugs, and a very down-to-earth wombat who's quite annoyed at getting mixed up in the whole mess. Start at the beginning. How long does it take before you realize

[show spoiler]

the main character is a girl

Pentagon Leaks Not Newsworthy

2009-02-28T02:31:00.003-05:00

Apparently someone with access to the Pentagon's webservers failed Computer Security 201, resulting in some secret documents becoming public. Not that anybody outside of blogs is reporting on it.

Nature is cool.

2009-02-27T13:19:00.002-05:00

It's windy today, and I'm watching the trees move and bend. An evergreen catches the wind, and some of its branches bend 90°. They look like they should break, or at least be close to it, but the wind has been much stronger in the past and they're still there. The tree is quite tall, and considering the amount of leverage that must give, it seems remarkable that the tree doesn't break, or even get uprooted. The trunk stays in one piece, though, and the roots stay in the ground, as they have for decades, through winds much stronger than this.

On Ted Hagggard in the news, again.

2009-01-30T18:29:00.007-05:00

It's time for Ask Mr. Advice Columnist Man! Today we have a question from Mr. T. H. in Colorado Springs.

Q: Help me, Mr. Advice Columnist Man! I can't stop having gay sex!
A: That's not a question.
Q: How can I stop having gay sex?
A: Don't you have any self-control?
Q: No.
A: Well, then, your best bet is to eliminate any possible partners. Try making homosexuality a crime.
Q: I'm trying, but the damn liberals keep screwing it up. They tell me "Congress is not your personal army."
A: Well, if you can't get them to stop being gay, you could at least make yourself less attractive to them.
Q: But I'm so amazingly sexy! Have you seen my ass? I have a phenomenal ass.
A: It's not all about looks; personality counts too. Try making it publicly known that you think gays are the absolute scum of the earth, and should be treated with all the respect and dignity of a wad of used gum.
Q: I tried that, but some of them will still have sex with me if I pay them enough.
A: You're paying them?
Q: Yeah, they won't have sex with me anymore otherwise.
A: You know what? I think this task is officially hopeless. You'll just have to accept the fact that you're gay.
Q: But...
A: No buts. This conversation is over.

Next time, on Ask Mr. Advice Columnist Man: a shark asks for advice on becoming a vegan! Don't miss it!

(This was originally a comment I made on Evolved and Rational, but I was proud of it and thought I'd copy it here... where far fewer people will see it. I've had better plans.)

I don't want to go on the cart!

2009-01-29T01:04:00.006-05:00

I'm getting better!

So, I'm finishing up what I believe is my first encounter with the flu. It wasn't pleasant, but I think it's just about over now. I only had a 100° temperature today, down from 103.6° on monday. So yeah, I was totally out of it for 2 1/2 days. (Does it say something about me that I want to make that 5/2?)

That's not the bad part, though. I can take a little suffering, as long as I know it's ending soon. The bad part is that about 6 hours before I started having an itchy throat and slight cough, I was at a concert of a bunch of my friends whom I hadn't seen in months, and we went out for dinner afterward, and I probably gave them all the flu.

Next year, I think I'm getting vaccinated.

On updates

2009-01-19T17:20:00.004-05:00

I haven't really felt like writing anything here for a while. I can't even be bothered to put up links. If anybody's actually reading this, post a comment and I'll try to update regularly. Otherwise, updates will probably drop to monthly or less.

Relationships are stressful.

2008-12-24T03:11:00.004-05:00

For most people, this probably isn't something noticeable, but I'm not used to caring what other people think. I've always just done what I thought best, without worrying about others' impressions. I'd be nice and polite, but if someone was offended by, say, my going barefoot, I didn't care. Now all of a sudden there's someone whose opinion of me matters.

I've always been bad at catching subtle cues. It never seemed important before; if someone couldn't be bothered to tell me I'd done something wrong, I couldn't be bothered to care. This isn't true anymore; I'm always worried I said or did something wrong and didn't notice.

My fears are probably groundless, and I know that... but that "probably" is a killer.

If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust?

2008-12-02T15:43:00.003-05:00

Your brain lies to you. It does it all the time. It's for your own good, really, but you have a more accurate picture of the world if you take into account the fact that you can't really trust your own eyes.

Your senses take in huge amounts of data every second, way more than you could consciously deal with, but most of it gets thrown away. If I'm looking at my computer screen, many other things are in my field of view. I can see my keyboard, the wall, my mouse, the speakers, the brand logo on the bottom of the monitor...but I don't notice any of these. The light from them hits my eyes. My brain does just enough processing to determine that they aren't moving. It decides that they are uninteresting, and throws the information away.

Your brain is doing this sort of thing all the time, and is really pretty good at it. It's pretty rare that you're looking for something and not finding it, and it turns out you were looking right at it. I mean, it happens, but it's unusual when it does. Unusual enough to be remembered.

Which brings us to another area where most of the information gets thrown away: memory. You don't remember most things at all well. If there wasn't strong emotion involved, you'll forget an event pretty quickly. If it was memorable, your brain makes a story out of your experience, and remembers the story, and maybe a few important details. When you remember it later, most of the details are reconstructed (made up) to fit the story. This results in amusing stories, but also in reliability issues in eyewitness reports.

Magicians make good use of these little shortcuts and assumptions our brain makes all the time; you do much of their work for them. The same goes for magicians' dark-side counterparts, psychics. There's a lot of money to be made by fooling people, and it's not that hard if you know how.

They way the mind works causes a number of cognitive biases that make it difficult to know whether something is real, or if you're just fooling yourself. Don't worry though, people have come up with a way to work around this problem. We've been using it (and refining it) for a few hundred years now, and it seems to work pretty well. It's called science.

Security worries

2008-11-26T01:49:00.003-05:00

I won't be installing Service Pack 3 for Windows XP on my computer due to the EULA, which says it can periodically tell Microsoft all about my computer "to prevent piracy". Screw that. I spend enough effort keeping spyware off of my system; I'm not going to have it in my OS. I didn't allow WGA onto my system, and I'm not allowing SP3 either if it's going to do the same thing. I am kind of worried, though, that this decision may make me vulnerable to security holes. This may lead to my switching to Ubuntu.

Land of the Free*

2008-11-25T23:25:00.003-05:00

Miscarriages of justice make me furious. I'm too mad to talk.

*Offer not valid in case of technology. Some restrictions may apply.

That tube is for tube-related science, not tube-related fun!

2008-11-16T22:41:00.010-05:00

Cool sciency links:

The coolest optical illusion I've ever seen, with the possible exception of random dot stereograms ("Magic Eye" pictures).
Nobel laureate Richard Feynman explains quantum theory. No math; it's aimed at laymen.
The husband of a fantasy author decides to find out just what it would take to make that werewolf-killing silver bullet.
You're familiar with lolcats, right? Well, cross it with Star Trek and you get LOLTrek.
Theodory Gray decided to collect samples of all the elements to put in his Wooden Periodic Table.
A list of very old sites (the list is from 2002 - that's like 1950 in internet time) fitting this theme, most of which are still up. The LOX barbecue is the only cool one that's died of link rot; check the bottom of George Goble's Wiki page instead.

Not-quite-current events

2008-11-16T21:43:00.003-05:00

The best election headline
I don't know if I believe this or not, but apparently Sarah Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent. I mean, Sarah Palin isn't the sharpest crayon, but I trust the McCain campaign as far as I can throw them. If McCain himself said it, I'd buy it; he's been struggling to hold on to his honor and integrity all campaign. In fact, that's part of why he did so badly. You can win with a clean campaign, and you can win with a dirty campaign, but there's not much hope for "clean — no, dirty — no, clean — no, dirty — but not that dirty!"
A comic on the banking crisis

A sense of scale

2008-11-02T17:22:00.004-05:00

If you shrunk the earth down to 1 meter in diameter, the difference between the highest mountain and the deepest sea trench would be 1.5 mm. The International Space Station is 1.2 inches up, and the Space Shuttle can't go higher than about 3 inches. Geosynchronous orbit is 9.2 feet from the surface. The distance to the moon becomes 100 feet, give or take about 5 feet depending on where it is in its orbit. Mars never gets closer than 2 2/3 miles, and the sun is 7.2-7.4 miles away (we're closest Jan. 3, and furthest Jul. 4). The nearest star, Alpha Centauri? It's more than 8 times the (actual) distance to the moon.

Welcome to the internet, where the men are real men, the women are real men, and the little girls are real FBI agents.

2008-11-02T15:00:00.006-05:00

Linkety-link-link-link.

Bash.org is a collection of funny (often NSFW) quotes from IRC users.
Kiva.org lets you loan small amounts of money to would-be entrepreneurs in third-world countries. You don't get any interest, but these days that's better than the stock market.
I wanna be a Sesame Street Martian for Halloween next year. I won't get around to making the costume, though, so I won't.
Using your TV as a radar. Awesome.
Just how unlikely your vote is to matter, and why (pdf) you should vote anyway.
When restaurants are more clever than clean.
A crazy pastor has a crazy plan to keep Obama from becoming president.
Fundies Say the Darndest Things is a collection of other crazy religious people being crazy.
A silly song about believing silly things. Could be offensive, as you may believe in one of the things deemed silly.
Finally, an odd glitch in most text editors.

On having a blog

2008-10-31T17:59:00.003-04:00

I find that, now that I have a blog, I feel obligated to post stuff in it periodically. The fact that I know very well that nobody but me reads it has little effect on this. This results in my putting up posts that are just lists of links, out of a lack of anything worth saying. This does have a nice side-effect, though--now I can find that cool link I saw the other day, even if I've forgotten where I found it.

They're doing something right.

2008-10-30T23:38:00.000-04:00

Have you considered moving to Iceland?

Here's to Mississippi

2008-10-30T23:14:00.002-04:00

I just saw this which led me to this which reminded me of this.

Bwahahahaha!

2008-10-29T22:51:00.006-04:00

Science is cool, but mad science is even cooler.

Dr. Horrible is a 45-minute musical by Joss Whedon (of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly). It will probably get its own post later.
Narbonic is a (finished) comic strip about the adventures of a mad scientist and her henchmen.
A Miracle of Science is a (finished) graphic novel: She's a psychologist, and a member of a group mind. He's a detective, hunting down mad scientists and bringing them to justice (or at least therapy). Together, they fight crime! 435 pages of mad science, space battles, robots, and true love.
Girl Genius is a (ongoing) graphic novel set in a steampunk Europe. The artwork is just beautiful.
Wikihistory is a short short story about time travel, in the form of message board posts. It doesn't quite fit the theme, but what the hey.
Casey and Andy is a (finished) comic strip about two mad scientist roommates who periodically die. It's not really up to the standards of the rest of this list, but it is funny.

Blogging irritations

2008-09-28T18:28:00.003-04:00

I don't know if this is Blogger's fault, or if it's in the HTML spec, but I can't seem to nest lists, or put multiple spaces between words.

Link dump

2008-09-28T17:40:00.009-04:00

Some cool links:

Guess Sarah Palin's mother's maiden name, win her email!

2008-09-18T11:15:00.008-04:00

So, someone broke into Gov. Palin's Yahoo email account. A good summary of the incident is here. Apparently, nothing particularly scandalous was found, other than the fact she was doing government business on a non-government email account (this sort of thing is one of the reasons that's a bad idea).

The cracker apparently got access by asking for a password reset, and guessing the "secret question" using her Wikipedia article. I hope the media report on this bit, leading to companies abandoning this terrible, terrible idea.

He also apparently wasn't careful enough covering his tracks, and will likely be arrested soon. If it was anybody else's account, he would be free to go and would be the new owner of the account, with nothing the original account holder could do about it.

Thanks to Evolved and Rational.

On the dangers of pyramid schemes

2008-09-17T19:44:00.005-04:00

Apparently, Albania almost underwent a civil war a decade ago when several large pyramid schemes collapsed. Financial regulation in the US may not be perfect (viz the credit crunch), but it could be worse.

I heard about this, oddly enough, on tvtropes.org. [WARNING! This site is a worse time-suck than even Wikipedia! I "lost" an hour and a half reading it this morning, and was almost late for a job interview.]

New comment system!

2008-09-13T16:11:00.004-04:00

Commenting is nice now, thanks to Intense Debate Comments. Unfortunately, I seem to have accidentally erased my existing comment while upgrading. I think I could get it back, but it would be a bit of a pain, and it's only the one. Sorry David.

Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my CPU.

2008-09-10T16:16:00.001-04:00

The last few days I've noticed my laptop making a rattling sound when I move it, like a small bit of plastic had broken off and was loose inside. It was bugging me, so I opened it up today to remove whatever it was. When I got it all apart, I found an inch-long metal straight pin (think a small needle without the eye) on the motherboard. So, I'm very thankful my computer is still working properly. It couldn't have been on the motherboard before I took it apart, or else I would have seen worse symptoms than a rattling sound. I can't imagine how it got in there in the first place. In short, I don't know if I'm very lucky, or very unlucky. I'm just glad my computer still wor+ÏƒéQRPÿ

Frist post!!!!1

2008-09-06T08:06:00.001-04:00

So, I have a blog now. Just sort of on a whim. It's awesome that you can do that now: anyone with a couple minutes to spare can, for free, start publishing their own little newspaper column. No effort required.

Don't expect me to post often.

If you don't understand the title, I envy you. The internet contains far too many people like this.