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Friends
May. 14th, 2008
09:13 pm - Sam's Saga
In today's chapter of Sam's Saga, we learn of another of Sam's many encounters with Alaska's seemingly docile yet vicious when approached small game. Today: the mightly beaver.
Oddly, one of the resident beavers at University Lake was perched on a log near shore instead of scooting around the lake or watching cable in its lodge. Sam noticed it, and was of course intrigued. He plunged into the water in hot pursuit, his shoulders half out of the water, did he paddle so hard.
Mr. Beaver dived and came up far away, so our hapless hero never even had a chance to get to say hello in the proper doggie way.
Later, Sam again managed to find the beaver, but this time close to the beaver lodge. There must be kits about, because now the beaver stood its ground (treaded its water?). Well, it turns out that beavers hiss, lunge, bite and can be generally nasty creatures. Fortunately for Sam, we were able to leverage his other neuroses into getting him away from the beaver before flesh was exchanged. Unfortunately, he learned nothing from this except that 'them's beavers in that thar lake, eh!'
I wound certainly not want to tangle with something that chews large trees down daily and wants to bite me.
11:38 pm - Geek miscellany
1. I mostly don't attend cons with Marissa. But I will be attending 4th Street Fantasy Convention. (Conveniently located on 34th avenue!) Maybe you should too.
2. Math philosophy makes me happy. Scott Aaronson muses on the difference between unsolved math questions which might actually impact us and those which seem less likely to do so.
3. I attended a storage conference at UMN on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Maybe I'll blog about it a bit more later. But, I do have a small rant. One of the topics was deduplication, and the use of hashes for finding identical blocks. The prevailing attitude was, as best I can reproduce: "Doing byte-by-byte checking is a performance hit, but we have to do it, because our bank customers won't accept anything that has some chance of corrupting the data."
Well, this is ridiculous. It may be true, but it's still ridiculous. The chance that the bank's data set will contain two different blocks that hash to the same 128 bits is incredibly much smaller than the chance that the code that checks the blocks byte by byte has a software bug. With a 256-bit hash, the chance of a collision is lower than that of the bank's redundant data centers being simultaneously wiped out by asteroid strikes.
( further ranting and a $1000 offer )
08:35 pm - I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords
Ants swarm over Houston area, fouling electronics
The hairy, reddish-brown creatures are known as "crazy rasberry ants" — crazy, because they wander erratically instead of marching in regimented lines, and "rasberry" after Tom Rasberry, an exterminator who did battle against them early on.
"They're itty-bitty things about the size of fleas, and they're just running everywhere," said Patsy Morphew of Pearland, who is constantly sweeping them off her patio and scooping them out of her pool by the cupful. "There's just thousands and thousands of them. If you've seen a car racing, that's how they are. They're going fast, fast, fast. They're crazy."
08:20 pm - sunset
incredible 360 sunset right now, with an overcast sky just starting to clear.
06:25 pm - Free Market = Fail
Q: How should the government respond to record food prices and fattened margin?
A: $40,000,000,000 in subsidies of course.
05:59 pm - This afternoon's great good fun
I got this email this afternoon:
PATTI
I had to get into your loft just now to trace a leak. I don't have a phone
number for you other than the Sentex.
(Neighbor) in #(Unit) next door had a water heater leak and the water
seeped under the baseboards into your unit behind your computer. We put
down towels but didn't want to move anything for fear of electrocution.
Clarence is OK.
The water also leaked into #(Otherunit) and into the garage.
I'll be here if you want me.
Whee! I made a mad dash out of the office. So far everything looks like it's probably OK, but two brand new servers were sitting in a small amount of water. I *think* they're OK but I won't know until later. If not, Neighbor said that either her insurance will cover it or she'll just write me a check.
I do like having concrete floors, though. If you dump crap on the floor, you just wipe it up and that's that-- you pretty much can't damage them.
02:49 pm - 40th Anniversary Celebration for the Anchorage Museum!
Celebrate With Us!
May 18, 2008
Noon to 4 p.m.
The Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center is throwing a party on Sunday, May 18, celebrating 40 years of serving Alaskans and our many visitors with engaging exhibits and education programs.
Come view a new Art of the North exhibition of works from the museum’s permanent collection. There will be back-of-house tours and fun art, history and science activities for the whole family. Admission on this special day is free to honor our anniversary, as well as International Museum Day and Military Appreciation Day.
We'll have face-painting, birthday cake, and lots more. Admission is free all day, hours are from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
www.anchoragemuseum.org
01:37 pm - Waterbed for sale.
I'm selling a queen sized Boyd Flotation Satellite motion reduced waterbed. This is a foam-rail(not wood) softsided bed that takes standard sheets and does not appear to be a waterbed until you sit on it.
Included:
base and frame
brand new safety liner
heater
recently replaced matress top
all needed fill and maintenance equipment
two sets of chem treatments
The bed is in excellent condition and only being sold because I replaced it with a king sized bed.
Can deliver to anch/mat-su valley(for cost of fuel)
Cost: $350 OBO
05:26 pm - OMG When does it ever end?
So in the 2nd round of the US Championship today, Gulko and Yermolinsky took a 15 move draw in a relatively complex position. WTF why do American organizers allow people to do this? It's so pathetic! You simply cannot do this anymore in serious international tournaments.
Anyway it just makes me sick, what goes through the mind of people giving away money that makes them feel like it's ok to pay people for not even playing?
Also in regards to my Samford rant from earlier, I've been told from some sources that Robson and Hess perhaps didn't apply? I find that hard to believe since I talked to Hess's longtime chess coach days before they made the selection, and he was hoping that Hess would get it. But perhaps he was in the dark.
In any case they should probably stop going out of their way to give it to 24 year olds. I mean there won't even be a fellowship next year because they gave the next two years away to 24 year old players! Perhaps my intel on that is wrong and they simply gave away two awards this year, which if they did it would be great, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case.
04:30 pm - PamFood dinner
home-made pretzels!
roasted garlic meatballs and roasted garlic balls for veggies with ratatouille
martha stewart made me make some cheesecake squares
02:13 pm - Indians to Americans: Go on a diet!
International Herald Tribune: Indians bristle at U.S. criticism on food prices:
"NEW DELHI: Instead of blaming India and other developing nations for the rise in food prices, Americans should rethink their energy policy and go on a diet, say a growing number of politicians, economists and academics here."
...
"The food problem has "clearly" been created by Americans, who are eating 50 percent more calories than the average person in India, said Pradeep Mehta" ... "If Americans were to slim down to even the middle-class weight in India, "many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates," Mehta said."
...
"Americans eat an average of 3,770 calories per capita a day, the highest amount in the world, according to data from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, compared to 2,440 calories in India. They are also the largest per capita consumers in any major economy of beef, the most energy-intensive common food source, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The United States and Canada top the world in oil consumption per person, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration."
Via Drudge.
02:41 pm - And the winner is . . .
"So today's computers can compound the programmer's error about 1,000,000 times per second, huh?"
soLidas--please send me a private message and we can arrange our match. Thanks again to all who participated.
11:24 am - The world of tax-free hedge funds
01:07 pm - this is just sick
One more way the libs want to punish success.
We move closer and closer to Socialism.
09:23 am - In the Heart of Dixie
A strange thing happened yesterday. Deep in the rural South,
in a Congressional District in Mississippi which voted for
Bush over Kerry by a margin of 62% - 37%, a Democrat won election
to the US House of Representatives by a margin of 54% - 46%.
Nothing anybody but a political junkie would notice, but with
national implications.
The Democrat wasn't anybody special, nor was the Republican
tarnished or sullied by scandal. The Republican just... lost.
And not for lack of trying. The Republican party threw a lot
of money into the election (as did the Democrats), and saturated
the airwaves with ads trying to associate the Democrat with
Obama, Wright, San Francisco and Pelosi. Didn't seem to have
any positive effect from the Republicans point of view.
In and of themselves particular elections in obscure CDs are
not interesting. But what they portend for November, when many
Republican seats in less-strong Republican districts are to be
contested, is.
11:03 am - oooh!
Sundance is showing the original Japanese version of One Missed Call this Sunday.
WATCH IT. Yay Takashi Miike!
07:46 am - Patrick Hodges, Thief: The Endgame
This was forwarded to me by someone on the Scrabble mailing list yesterday, but I'm rebroadcasting here for my poker-friends who have asked whatever happened with regards to "Patrick Hodges, Thief". I knew the outcome last week, but didn't want to say anything until it became public knowledge.
Mr. Hodges is forbidden from playing in a sanctioned tourney until February 1, 2011. He is also forbidden from playing at a sanctioned club until May 1, 2009. He must make a $500 restitution to the charity of his choice before coming back to play at a club or tourney, with receipt sent to the NSA. If and when he returns to club and tournament play, he may no longer wear a baseball cap and may not in any way obstruct his opponent's view of his eyes as he draws tiles. He has received this message and agrees to comply. And we all acknowledge that we'd like to move forward and leave this behind us. This message is sent in order to communicate the facts and to ensure that our Directors know that they have the NSA support in turning him away should he try to attend any clubs and tourneys during the suspension period.
I applaud the (non-Puzzle Palace)NSA and the advisory board for seeing this matter through to its conclusion with appropriate diligence. This is on the far right end of the a priori outcome distribution. Now that this is done, I might start playing Scrabble again. Larry, if it's not too late, can we move the 2011 tournament to the weekend of January 29th?
0.85 Patrick continues to cheat and isn't caught 0.1 Patrick is observed cheating, but observer remains silent 0.01 Patrick is observed cheating, observer says something, but then lets it die 0.015 Patrick caught, no followup 0.01 Patrick caught, gets warning from NSA 0.01 Patrick caught, gets 1-year ban from NSA 0.0045 Patrick caught, gets 3-year ban from NSA 0.0005 Patrick caught, gets lifetime ban from NSA
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