monkey nonsense

snowstorms always make me want to do a lot of stuff… i guess because i’ll be stuck for awhile with a lot of free time?

i think like 4 years ago, i did a 101 list… i’m just going to make a list of things i want to do during snowstorms this winter. we’ve already had one, about to have another, and supposedly there’s another one midweek next week so i should have lots of time to get everything done.

1. finish reading books – green revolution, dexter
2. practice more guitar. not guitar hero. real guitar.
3. finish organizing all my files
4. start that nerdy project i’ve been wanting to start for some time now…
5. finish an online project i’ve been putting off… this one’s got a due date of march!

so obama’s budget cuts has constellation amongst the programs being cut. constellation was the program that was supposed to follow up the space shuttle program (ending this year) with the goal of getting man to the moon again by 2020.

supposedly the plan is for NASA to invest in space technology research and pay private companies to develop the technologies instead of doing it themselves. NASA outsourcing!!

i don’t know how much it costs to send a man to the moon. i imagine it’s pretty expensive. so those private companies that millionaires pay to get them into space… they might not be making a profit when they charge millions for the ride. but i wonder if in the future, if NASA is going to end up having to pay a private company a fortune each time (after all, those companies have to be able to make money too so they won’t be charging at just cost) they try to send someone to space. if it’s just going to be spending more money later (to buy private companies), i’d rather NASA just keep its own program and forget funding private companies.

does that make me less capitalist? i think i’m just biased because i’ve always loved space and astronauts and going to the moon, etc. etc.

read an article on usa today that got some very interesting internet comments. for sanity sake, you can’t read too many of them because they start to get ridiculous. but at least in small quantities, they provide entertainment!

usa today article: Do you use more energy than your neighbors?

some amusing comments:

• “turned on every light and electrical device in my home and cranked my AC on full blast with the windows opened last earth day. I’ll do it again this year.” hahaha
• people saying everyone’s going to start to go angry mob on the neighbors that use more electricity… uh, the report is only for yourself and won’t reveal the exact neighbor who uses more than you. similarly, you won’t be revealed as the energy hoard of the neighborhood so you don’t have to worry about the angry mob showing up at your door.
• “My house is smaller than my neighbors, plus thay have a bigger family. Course my bill will be lower.” Other people asking if their 32984923 kids will be factored into the comparison… teenagers using more electricity than a small village, etc.

if you read the description in the article, the reports aren’t a means for you to police your neighbors’ usage. but it’s to help you get a gauge of your own usage. cars report their MPG, but for home energy, it’s a lot harder to get a gauge of your usage. you can compare it to your previous year’s bill, but what if last Feb was unseasonably warm and this year is unseasonably cold?

so i’ve been watching “the sing off” on hulu. i’ve always enjoyed acapella music and with all the hype with glee, it’s nice to have a show with different acapella groups singing without the drama of glee! i’m always amazed when humans can mimic instrument sounds, like a drum beat. so i was watching episode 2 when the all women’s mormon group is singing a coldplay song that usually has violins so they’re mimicking it with their voices.

now there’s not much musically that i can usually comment on as an expert. but if there’s ONE thing i’ve mastered during my many years of school orchestra… it is faking violin bowing!! in my humble opinion, fake violin bowing requires the same, if not more, skill as actually playing the violin! as when you play the violin for real, you need to make sure your bow is going in the same direction as everyone else. timing wise, you need to make sure that you pull your bow at the correct rate… otherwise, u’ll be on your up stroke when people are still going down! then, the angle at which you bow matters. you can’t be stroking the E string (angled upwards) when everyone else is on the G string (angled downwards)! finally, if you’re faking it, you need to make sure you don’t actually hit the string! otherwise, you might actually make a bad sound (not even joking here… my middle school orchestra teacher complained about the sound coming from my violin. he blamed it on my strings and “cheap” fiberglass bow. no… it was definitely the operator, not the equipment!!)

so when i saw them start their songs by air violin bowing… i was not impressed. their speeds were not matching! they were not in sync! it was terrible!! butchering the art of fake violin playing! i was outraged!

p.s. i feel like all dude acapella sounds better than all girl… and heck, even better than coed. my 2 favorites are the bubs and nota. man, they make every song sound awesome.

so i am, by the far, in my humble opinion, the coolest non-nerdy person i know. ok, so some of that is an exaggeration… i’ll settle for non-nerdy

but i’m going to have to go a little nerdy for a second… and yet so not very nerdy since it’s an example of my ineptness at programming. i remember in college, we were programming some big project that i honestly had no clue (and still don’t have a clue) how it was supposed to work… so not surprisingly, it exploded like all my programs do… i think because i had a memory leak of some sort. i was probably declaring things and never cleaning up after myself… (that’s why i like java… trash collector right??). and i think i might’ve been spawning off threads and not really paying attention to what i needed them for, if they ever came back, or whatever. well… here’s an example of even worse…

it’s not really multi threading or allocating memory. it’s just opening up excel spreadsheets and not really closing them…. please remember to close stuff… it was kind of annoying having to kill all these processes…

I was reading a CNN article about black friday deals, saw one for Thomas the Tank Engine.

I remember watching the show before and liking Percy… but i forgot most of the other trains. so I read the wikipedia article on them. There’s apparently a Emily train! only female train… so what’s up with that? how come so many children’s cartoons only have a token female? (i.e. Smurfette) how does that work with the storyline? all the male trains (or smurfs) will be trying to woo the female (remember handy smurf and his crush on smurfette??)… it’s just encouraging little kids to start enjoying love dramas- unrequited love… love triangles… terrible!

turkey day is my favorite holiday. it’s a holiday entirely devoted to overeating! if there’s anything i’m good at in this world, it’s overeating! so having a holiday where you can do just that? it’s awesome!

i think im going to start marking my calendar by turkey day. so happy new year! only 364 more days until the next turkey day!! oo, i should start a countdown!!

i guess the other part of turkey day is that whole thanks part. i dunno. to me, turkey day has always been about food. yes, the pilgrims were thankful to squanto… but they were thankful because he brought food!! say squanto just came over to say hi to the new neighbors… would the pilgrims really be that thankful? no. (btw, read the wikipedia article on squanto… it is NOTHING like what they taught us in school. in school, squanto comes walking up to the pilgrims holding cornucopias of food…)

but anyways… for this year, i’m turkeyful for

• continued health for family, friends, and self… it’s scary to think time progresses… when you’re a kid, i feel like time barely moves! now… i feel older each day i’m glad my maternal grandparents are still alive and playing old school japanese video games, my parents are healthy and having fun, and for so many healthy baby additions to the family (yay cedy, hugo, and other cousin’s baby who i don’t know its name… don’t even know it’s gender!!)
• finding a house! after “looking” for so many years… and then really looking for half a year… find a house that feels like home! no more moving!!!
• changes! i usually hate change but i think the challenge of a new job is good for me! and driving a rice rocket isn’t all that bad… no, i take that back. i still miss the camry…
• fun! i like having fun! i feel fortunate that i’m able to have fun…. playing games, playing outside, eating food, or just goofing off. anyone want to play with me???

my old office made the dcist!

http://dcist.com/2009/11/increased_urban_walkability_for_the.php

of course the pic is from 1992 before my old company even existed… and before they were located in that area. i like to look at old pictures of areas… see how much the area has changed and what hasn’t changed…

i should’ve been a transportation/traffic engineer…

my new favorite blog to read right now is: http://unsuckdcmetro.blogspot.com!

oh man, finally a place where people share my similar hatred towards metro. seriously, i thought the metro system was ok in high school because i rarely rode it. but once i started working in dc, the commute on metro was just terrible! i can actually get to work faster driving some times than metro-ing! and the cost is outrageous. there should be NO reason why driving into DC and parking should be cheaper than metro-ing in… but it was for me!! (granted i parked in a ghetto parking lot, but whatevs)

my favorite post so far:
http://unsuckdcmetro.blogspot.com/2009/08/if-i-ran-metro-i-would.html… i think one of my “when i rule the world” posts was actually about metro!

so it’s been a few weeks at the new job… and i’ve noticed some things that both my current company and previous company have in common. things that i’m surprised about.

• “non-casual tuesdays”/”tie tuesdays”… so both of these companies have pretty casual dress codes. flipflops (havent tried this yet at the new job… but that’s because it’s fall/winter), jeans, etc. and for whatever reasons, both companies feel compelled to have a non-casual day to allow people to dress up. and for whatever reason, they’ve targeted tuesdays as the day for non-casual-ness! when i got the meeting invite for “tie tuesday” at my new job, i cracked up because it was as if they wanted to match up with my old company’s “non-casual tuesdays!”
• meeting free times… old company had a meeting free zone on thursdays. interestingly enough, new company tries not to put meetings on tuesdays and thursdays! i think this is a pretty good idea though… i hate having my whole day consumed by meetings.

some things are very different…

• my desk has no wheels… my old company had everyone’s desk on wheels… and we would re-configure and roll around our desks pretty often! my new desk does not seem mobile.
• i have a phone number… but no phone! there is no phone at my desk. if you tried to call my number (and i don’t even know it), i’m not sure where it’d go… we all have numbers. i was given a phone list on my first day… but very few people have phones!
• so both my first job and second companies were in the process of merging (one as the acquire-e and other as the acquire-r) with a canadian company. this time, there does not appear to be any canadians in sight!! maybe i shouldn’t say that too soon…