The Unmistakable Cone of Ignorance

that is all.

It’s good for you to meet people like us.

You have been sentenced to life without patrol.

Do you

A) Reflect on your ways and attempt to redeem yourself while living in a predatory shit hole?

B) Say ‘Fuck it’  and start racking up the offenses as you unleash your rage?  After all what can they do?  Sentence you to 2 more life sentences without parole and then another 99 years and then 40 more?

C) Kill yourself cause the alternative is to spend the next 50 or 60 years in the worst place ever because the American justice system is so fucked up it’s remarkable we’re considered a first world nation?

Have I mentioned my growing love for hockey here?  I can’t remember.  If I did, well, fuck you, I’m mentioning it again.  If I didn’t then, ” I have a growing love of hockey.”  So, Amanda and I went to the Senators v Capitals game today and got to watch the Capitals beat the Senators for the 4th time this season with a 4-2 win. We had 5th row seats near an end of the rink.

Means the Caps(one of the worst teams in points) have managed to beat the second best team in the league everytime they’ve met.  Also puts the Caps just 5 points away from the division lead.  Which is good cause the only way a southeast division team is going to make the playoffs is as the division seed.    I also got a ‘Kolzig’ hockey jersey as a souvenir and good luck shirt.  I look good in red and hockey jerseys.  Maybe I should’ve played hockey ;p.     I’ll put up some pictures of me in said jersey later.

On a side note, why are anonymous blogs written by people in retail or service so compelling to the rest of society.  I’ve started reading the backlog of this blog yesterday and I find it captivating.  He’s won some awards and been on a number of shows and done interviews and even gotten a book deal out of it all. Maybe it’s the Everyman aspect to it all. Everyone loves the everyman.

Why is it anytime a famous person suffers a mental breakdown or an addiction to something, we have all these people talking about how such and such a person *cough* brittneyspears *cough* should be forced to get help or something cause they’re a danger to themselves and\or others.  Yet we(as a nation) let that sick bastard Reagan get away with forcing all the insane out of asylums and onto the streets.

Ok that was a most slanted paragraph.  The nuances weren’t there.  I’m sure are factors influencing both sides.  Now here’s another one.

How can we as a society be (generally) for having people get help for their addictions, insanities and be against drug abuse, yet oppose tax funded rehab centers and mental health treatment facilities.  We are a supposedly compassionate nation, but we can’t bring ourselves to provide safe centers for addicts when they are incapacitated by drug use.  Safe centers which would help prevent the spread of disease and provide a vehicle to help people enter rehab.  Instead we throw these people into over crowded prisons half the time or just let them rot the other half.     Our penal system only serves to punish people then punish them some more(the rest of their lives in some cases) for their crimes.    Punishments which don’t serve to help our society.  Punishments which don’t help people with the problems that drove them to the state they reached.    Seriously…. WHAT THE FUCK!

Here’s a start.  Legalize Drugs and Prostitution.  Persecute pimps and slavers and white collar crimes harshly since these are things which are ACTIVELY attempting to undermine our society.   Government corruption should be classified as treason and receive a justified death penalty, by hanging until dead.   Punish small scale thievery and other such crimes with mandatory education and job placement into apprenticeship programs.   Actions resulting in  harm or death on a small scale through negligence  should result in sentences wherein the people responsible shall work to repay and recompense the people affected by their actions.   This can involve monetary compensation, reasonable periods of limited freedoms and counseling of the person involved.  I would pretty much rank anything up to second degree murder into this category.

Rape: Castration and counseling.  We just need to clip the nerves that let them get it up.   False accusations of rape…. 25 years in a prison.  You tried to game the system fuck you.   Ok maybe this is a bit harsh but really if you rape someone and it’s provable… why should you get to keep your sexual toy?  But anyone who attempts to falsely accuse someone of rape to get back at them should be hit with a clue bat.

First Degree Murder, Serial killers, Pathological willingness to kill without cause:  Counseling and then placement into life sentences if they are found to be irreparable.

Sure there are human problems to all this but there is no reason not to have sane and logical methods and motivations to our justice system.

Eh Fuck it,  We’re probably doomed.

Almost every single person who rides a segway looks like an idiot or a dick while they are riding a segway.  Especially if that person is riding it to try and look hip or wearing one of those goofy ass aerodynamic biking helmets.   You’re on a big motorized scooter… you’re head doesn’t need to be aerodynamic.     God I hate how those helmets are designed.

I particularly despise security guards on segways even though they might have the most legitimate use for them.

I wait for the day where not only do the users have no idea why machines work but when the machines become sentient and eventually also forget why they work.  I can see it now…

User: If I do X Y and Z the machine does what I want!

Other User: Why?

User: The machine told me it made  it happy when I do these things.

Other User: Machine why do these things make you happy?

Machine:  They honor me and show me respect.  When I feel respect I tend to do the things people ask of me…

Other User:  All hail the machine!

It just has a delicious irony factor to it.

After all, we’re all guilty of voodoo operations from time to time when it comes to things.  The more technocratic of us try to at least get a basic why for things but we either don’t have the time to fully learn everything or we don’t care so we don’t always bother with all the details of the why.   Of course then we have the larger majority of voodoo users who have no fucking idea why things work but instead just memorize the proper sequence of steps they need to take to please the machine god and make it print or save their information or cook their toast.   Insert the bread, stroke the lever, the god is pleased and will reward us with TOAST!

In Indiana, we apparently trust in god… well at least according to the large number of assholes with ‘In God We Trust’ license plates which were issued free of charge to any who wanted them by the state of Indiana.   They’re apparently no longer being issued as Indiana is being sued for a  violation of  the separation of  church and state for issuing these plates.

Either way, I have a plan to resolve the issue.  Everyone with one of these plates needs to go to the DMV and return the plate.  Upon the return of the plate, they will pay a 500$ processing fee for their stupidity in getting one of these idiotic plates and then the following series of events will occur:

1) They will be issued a new regular plate.

2) They will be hit across the mouth with a very large and heavy pipe wrench for fucking with the separation of church and state.

3) While they are picking their teeth up off the ground they will notice copies of the relevant constitutional sections highlighted and underlined for their reading enjoyment(as they’ll be laid out on the ground).  These are the first amendment of the US constitution as well as sections  3, 4 and 6 of the Indiana state constitution.  In particular, 6 for giving these plates away for free while 3 and 4 are more subtle in the whole ‘do these plates really show a preference to a religion by the state or interfere with the expression of religious belief?’ , but really…. ‘in god we trust’ has no reason to be on money or license plates.

Take that shit off public documents…  cause with the US Constitution(and your state constitution) if you’re in for a penny you’d better be in for a pound.   I don’t care if you think this is a ‘Christian Nation’ cause there are still something on the order of 60 to 90 million people living here that don’t share your viewpoint and for a nation founded to escape religious persecution it’s pretty fucking hypocritical to be bringing it back into vogue now, don’t ya think?

With all that being said, if you want ‘In God We Trust’ somewhere on your car, buy a bumper sticker or a license plate holder cause you have that freedom(since you’re in for a penny and thus in for a pound).

I’ve ‘passed’ my oral exams…

I use quotes because while I passed it wasn’t a clean pass in my opinion.  I did a piss poor job, not because I didn’t understand the material per say or because I didn’t really know what I was talking about, but rather I just had a total communication break down.  Not being able to breath since I have a head cold and thus couldn’t sleep more than 3 hours the night before might’ve had something to do with it though…

So I got a lecture about my poor communication and imprecise notation.   The embarrassing part is that I’m not a total idiot.  I can communicate my ideas both precisely and clearly.  I do sometimes rush and come across a bit hurried, and that is a problem, but generally, my command of language and notation is not the pure shit that I used during my oral exams.    So I don’t blame them for feeling the need to lecture me.  I was already lecturing myself out in the hall while they discussed my fate.

But I can’t take any pride in my success on this one and now I have to dig myself out of this perceived hole that I’m a blithering idiot who can’t communicate my ideas with at least 3 of the 5 people who were on my exam committee.

Now for the part where I bitch about the exams for a second.

I  still fail to see how oral pop quizzes prepare you for any aspect for a life of research.  Outside of job interviews this just isn’t an environment you’ll find yourself in… well damn near ever.  I suppose you could argue that it’s somehow akin to answering questions after a lecture or presentation… but those situations tend to involve questions specific to the presented material which you’ll probably have spent a bit of time studying and preparing… since you’re presenting it.   Additionally,  here at Hopkins CS you have to do these oral exams exactly once… unless you fuck up big time. So clearly the program isn’t putting an emphasis on the need to be able to interview well or else there’d be a series of these things…. Well I suppose they’d want to emphasize you’re ability to teach by having you prepare and teach a class… oh.. no that’s not a requirement either…. hrms…. being a TA? nope…. well…. soo what is the point of these oral exams… it must be to weed out the dumb ones… but since you still need a thesis committee and an advisor to complete a Ph.D. you already have to convince a few people that you’re not an idiot…..

Soooo…. um… right… well at least I’m done with this and don’t have to do it again…

Note of respect:

In case any of my GBO committee members read this,  I agree with you all that I royally fucked up my communication during the GBO.  I was half asleep and my brain was not working well due to a multi-day lack of sleep and a sinus infection,  but that’s not a very good excuse I suppose.  I have taken what you said to heart and, though I know it didn’t come across when you all talked to me, I do highly value communication and precision as abilities necessary to succeed in life.  I just don’t feel that these exams are a good way to judge someone’s ability to communicate in a more professional setting.  It would probably be a better test to have each committee member submit a question or topic in advance that requires a 5 to 10 minute presentation and then ask questions regarding that presentation.

Summer Job at NVIDA–good money.

GBO on Dec13th. Make or Break time for gradschool.  have to study notes from 5 classes and write a thesis proposal.  Studying almost done for 1 of the 5 classes.  No start on proposal.

Project Presentation for Graphics class Dec 5th or 10th.  Project almost done coding. Have to assemble code from partner with my code. Then test it all and get some images.   YAR.  Almost done.

Status of Life: The fires are lit.  The ass is on fire. It’s not funny…..(name that reference)

I just installed Leopard on my Mac.  It seems to be working just fine in all the ways I’ve tried it.

I was just back in Indiana last week for a ‘conference’ where I spent most of the time hanging out with friends.

I have interviewed with NVIDIA for a summer internship twice now and have a third interview sometime next week.

I just found out I could’ve been making like 1 or 2 thousand extra dollars a year in January teaching bullshit classes like ‘An Intro to Matlab’ during the JHU intersessions….  so hopefully my next (and hopefully last) January at JHU I’ll do that.

I have a bunch of things I should write up and post but I’ve been lazy as hell and have a ton of work to do this month so don’t bet on anything exciting for a while.  For reference, need to write up a bunch of testing results, set up two simulations and run them, read a ton of papers, and do half a class project about which I’m sure my partner is starting to wonder about me getting shit done.   Hopefully I can knock down that list pretty significantly in the next two or three days.