The Runcible Blog

While scratching my head earlier, I plucked a tick from my scalp! It must've been attached to me since yesterday, when I walked around an interesting field in the Methuen backwaters. I thought I had searched myself thoroughly yesterday, but somehow this little bugger managed to burrow under my radar and probably enjoy a day's meal.

Ticks are unbelievably gross. My mother said, "What if you get lime disease?!" as if I had gone out and tried to attract ticks. You don't have to try with these varmints -- they wait around all day with their arms waving around, waiting to grab any eligible animal that passes. (If only girls were more tick-like! Actually, isn't that what happens when you get married? The parasitic woman burrows under your skin, lays eggs, and drinks your hard-earned blood? Ba-Dooom! Chssss!) But seriously, folks...

So, to help prevent any future tick encounters, I shaved off most of my ignorance grass. It was time for a change anyway. Unfortunately, my hair is very inflexible. I've only really had three different hairdos in my whole life: the Bowl (when I was very young and stupid), Baldy (which comes and goes with the changing seasons), and Almost Corporate (longer, parted, but with unwieldy sideburns).

Actually, there are probably "official" names for my stupid haircuts, but what do I know? I cut my own damn hair, and it shows. I haven't been to Supercuts (the pinnacle of precision grooming) in eons, and I'm proud of it! Sure, I'll never win a beauty contest, but at least I'm $12 richer than those slaves to Supercuts! Yeah!

Get it? more-on me? uhh. anyway

I updated my home page with more helpful information about myself and with a pleasant (to my eyes) CSS layout.

Next step, a resumé. Then, memoirs.

If ticks somehow evolved wings, the human race would be doomed. I lay awake at night, fretting the thought of winged ticks.

I've had the same alarm clock/radio for about 10 years, and it still wakes me up instantly every day. The noise it emits penetrates my skull, twists my nerves, and sends a pulse of rage throughout my body. After being interrupted from a peaceful sleep, the only thing I can think of is extinguishing that awful sound.

My father, who has the same kind of alarm clock, said that it gives him the urge to kill. The perfect, pulsating alarm that GE invented must have caused hundreds of violent acts over the years. I imagine that if I had to listen to that sound all day, I'd burn down the house and strangle anyone within view.

Here's a short clip of what I hear every day:

I like taking pictures of cute chicks. Here's a new one:

I called the jury duty hotline (1-800-THE-JURY) today because the confirmation slip said I was there for only one day when I actually "served" two days. The first time I called, the operator said that because their "system" was down, he couldn't look up my file. But he said I should call back later and that my problem happens all the time. He also reassured me, "I don't want you to think you're dealing with some big, faceless bureaucracy." I felt much better knowing that I wasn't dealing with a faceless bureaucracy while wading through the phone-tree and speaking with a total stranger. I think that line must be part of their script:

1. "Welcome to the jury hotline, blah, blah, how can I help you?"
2. "Sorry, the system is down. Call back later."
3. "This is not a faceless bureaucracy."

The second call, I received a quick and painless response. The operator looked up my name and said she'd file the appropriate paperwork to fix my juror confirmation. That's when I got a glimpse into the comedic government system. She had my information on a computer, but after hanging up she would fill out a paper form, call the courthouse to confirm that there was a mistake, deliver the form to the courthouse in Salem where it would be placed in a plastic "todo" bin on a desk made of Mahogany in a corner office. Within 48 hours, a court clerk would discover the pile, find my form, transfer the contents of that form onto a different form, call up Rusty, the court officer, to ask him to verify what the form contents (because the clerk is nearsighted). After his lunch break, Rusty will return to help the clerk, but by that time the clerk will have gone home for the day. The next day, a different clerk who isn't nearsighted will accurately transcribe my form and mail it to the processing center in Pittsfield. Bear with me...

On the third floor of a small Pittsfield office, a team of government workers receives every juror confirmation from the Commonwealth. They make 4 copies of each (two copies on yellow paper), shred two and a half of those copies, and mail one remaining copy to Boston after sealing it with a special anti-counterfeit wax which contains 16% witch's blood.

Once in Boston, my form makes its way to the Juror Confirmation Headquarters in an undisclosed bunker somewhere underneath the Charles River. There, chemists sample the witch's-blood-wax on my form to verify its authenticity. If it contains at least 15.65% pure witch's blood, they carefully remove all traces of the wax, make another copy of my form on papyrus (for archivability), reseal the form in a new envelope, and mail it to the Jury Hotline call center.

At the call center, my original operator prints out a list of every caller she's dealt with over the past week and heads down to the mail room. Because of the vast amounts of mail and the fact that the system constantly breaks, she must manually sort through the incoming forms, correlating the names with the list she just printed out. When or if she finds my form, she walks down the hall to a "computer room", scans the form into a ca.1992 DOS computer, and views the form on the 12" monitor. Finally, after memorizing the form, she returns to her desk, logs into the system at precisely 1:12PM after the hourly scheduled reboot and types the contents of my form into a new "juror confirmation certificate".

After that, the system takes care of the hard part -- printing my certificate and automatically, automatically inserting it into an envelope! Unfortunately, the postage label component of the system doesn't work as advertised, so another department has to put blank labels on top of the incorrectly printed addresses and write my address by hand. Finally, finally, finally, the Post Office takes it from there!

The system is a technological marvel of efficiency. What's more impressive is that the whole process, from my phone call to the time I receive a corrected form, takes only 6 to 8 weeks! Personally, I'm amazed that humans can work so quickly. I'd love to see the system with my own eyes someday.

Until then, I'll just be glad that my tax dollars are going to such a a well-oiled governmental machine.

Have you seen that QVC commercial with the two teenage boys waiting for a ride from some soccer mom? When she pulls up, the boys straighten themselves out, trying to impress their friend's mom. One of them calls "shotgun" to the chagrin of the other. I think the implication is that if you're a middle-aged woman who uses QVC "beauty products", teenage boys will fawn after you. That seems a little dirty to me. I guess QVC knows the lonely soccer-mom audience better than I do.

During jury duty I had lots of time to finish reading Junk Politics: The Trashing of the American Mind by Benjamin DeMott, English professor from Amherst College (check out a radio interview with him from WBUR). Listening to his interview, he sounds even more curmudgeonly than I imagined. But his criticisms in Junk Politics have real bite. Most pages drip with outrage -- not cynicism like much of Noam Chomsky's essays but no-B.S. criticism of today's politicians and the political atmosphere.

DeMott focuses most of his obtuse book on the kind of "compassionate conservatism" and "I feel your pain" anecdotes that are increasingly the norm on both sides of the aisle. He says that politicians substitute sympathy for substantive policy. For example, when John Edwards spoke about being the son of a mill worker, the idea was that "common people" would identify with him and think that he would know what's best for middle-America. But he appealed to emotions ("I'm the sensitive country boy who knows what it's like to be poor") without having to provide any kind of concrete ideals. DeMott argues that it's not enough to "feel bad" for poor people -- in fact he almost discourages such sympathy -- rather, he asks, what can we do about poverty, racism, and inequality?

One interesting chapter deals with the changing management styles during the 80's and 90's that seem to mirror the "compassionate conservative" act. Best selling books on management approaches taught that effective bosses are those who can be sensitive to their employee's needs -- it wouldn't hurt to shed a tear occasionally -- but also be able to act aggressively and ruthlessly so as not to undermine their authority. That kind of bipolar management sounds familiar to me, but I didn't know that books actually recommended such an attitude. DeMott exposes those theories as a con-game to make employees seem happy while squeezing the most productivity from them.

He draws the "effective boss" parallel to the current breed of neo-conservatives who have learned that most of the electorate won't stomach typical conservative policies unless they are dumbed down and dressed up in "common folk" clothing. They've discovered that the uninformed and uninvolved public responds to issues framed as good vs. evil and to leaders who mirror (however disingenuously) the common man. Just look at Bush -- the perfect neoconservative: he's a "straight shooter" from Midland, Texas who loves baseball, was an average student, and bumbles over his own words (hey, he's not perfect!). No wonder he was adorned by the Right -- they knew that they'd rather have an empty suit they could control in the whitehouse than any Democrat. You could also see a similar thing happening during the California recall, when the Republicans tried to kick out every other challenger and eventually anointed Gov. Arnold. "Electability above substance" seems to be the prominent political fad these days.

Junk Politics varies in its clarity and coherence. I think his criticism is right on, but someone a little more to-the-point would've written a more effective book. For instance, one chapter breaks into a first person fictional narrative about a no-politics/junk politics enthusiast who relishes in celebrity gossip and the entertainment of political one-upmanship. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit the tone of the rest of the book -- or if it does, it's lost on me.

One chapter assaults L.L Bean on the basis that it promotes a return to an American past that never was. DeMott criticizes L.L. Bean for creating a world -- he calls it Beanland -- which erases disharmony between the races and the sexes and imagines a society of rugged-individualist-conformists who wear L.L. Bean clothes and subjugate their wives. Personally, I've never seen an L.L. Bean catalog, but DeMott certainly takes issue with it (and feels guilty for browsing through it occassionaly).

Another thread throughout the book deals with the "assault on the past": attempts to avoid social change by declaring an end to inequality. He blames Hollywood black/white buddy movies for unfairly minimizing the very real, pervasive differences between blacks and whites. He hints that guilt drives the attempts to deny that there is inequality in America. Nobody wants to admit the Native American genocide or the centuries of black oppression existed, let alone apologize for it.

I'd like to keep my comments on the book shorter than DeMott's 262 pages...In retrospect, I should've borrowed Junk Politics from the library instead of buying it. DeMott makes some great points but wastes a lot of space with circular references that only an English professor could appreciate.

I never mentioned my secret government mission from a couple weeks ago: jury duty. Unfortunately it wasn't exciting, and the jury didn't get a chance to deliberate because the judge dismissed the case half-way through. It turns out the plaintiff (it was a civil case involving a car accident) didn't have enough evidence to prove that she was not at fault for taking a left turn in front of the defendant. The judge spoke with us to explain the law after dismissing the case.

What bugged me was that the plaintiff's lawyer must have known that he didn't have enough evidence, yet they pursued with the suit anyway and dragged it through the system. I felt bad for the defendant, a janitor who doesn't speak English, because he had to go through all the legal wrangling and financial burden for something that most likely wasn't his fault.

So, I guess that if somebody had lots of money to pay an attorney, he could sue whomever he didn't like and hope that that victim runs out of money, goes bankrupt, whatever. And it wouldn't matter that the plaintiff had no legitimate case. Sounds unfair, eh?

But anyway, jury duty was a very eye-opening experience. I think people shouldn't be so reluctant or angry about serving. After all, it's the only form of direct democracy prescribed in the constitution. I'd say that's a pretty big deal and not something to take lightly.

You know the feeling you get after riding a bike or ice skating for a while, where you feel like you're still doing that activity? I feel that way after being around Anna. The experience sort of lingers for a while. I think that's a good thing.

This morning I had a few very odd dreams that I can't remember, but I do remember dreaming about sleeping. Then my alarm went off in real life, I hit the snooze button and went back to dreaming about sleeping and waking up. That cycle continued several times as I kept hitting snooze.

Here's my summary of Bush's speech tonight:

Terra, terra, terra, terra. ummm....9/11, 9/11, 9/11, terra, terra, terra, evil doers, terra. Stay the course, terra, lessons of 9/11, freedom, democracy, eye-rak, eye-rak, terra.

It went something like that. I think he also mentioned "suiciders" and that he was disappointed with the Iraqi military's performance. I'm a little confused about that.

The worst part is that even though he must've been coached for hours before the press conference, he still managed to come across as a bumbling idiot.

Here's a picture from the press conference (hot off the wire):

What's that on your lip, W? uhh, I think it's supposed to be a turd.

The other day while killing time at a book store I paged through "The Python Cookbook" and felt so refreshed to read such elegant and simple code. I'm really impressed with Python. Within a couple days of learning Python, I had written a multithreaded application with configuration files, logging, and other nifty things (it was just an exercise though). It's too bad we're not using Python for anything at work.

I'm already getting tired of Java, mostly because I think it's overrated. Java seems infested with marketing dweebs with fetishes for acronyms, buzzwords, and XML files. I'm tired of using such ugly, counterintuitive interfaces (NetBeans, Eclipse, etc.) to do even rudimentary things in Java. "Java people" are in denial that the language they love is still slow and bloated after 10 years and still looks crummy on OS X.

I think that if a language basically requires you to use a big, fancy IDE to develop with it, you've got a problem. And specifying each JAR file you need to use on the command line when you run a class gets old quickly.

Here's a very unscientific comparison between Java and Python. I wanted to know how much resources Java takes when it's not doing anything. Here's the shortest bit of code I know to have Java sleep for 10 seconds:

public class JavaSleep {
    public static void main(String [] args) {
        System.out.println("Sleeping...");
	    try {   
                Thread.sleep(10000);
	    } catch (InterruptedException ex) {
	    }
    }
}

pretty needlessly verbose.
Here's how to do it in Python:

from time import sleep
print "Sleeping..."
sleep(10)

Ahhh...that's more like it!

And here are the results from top:

PID COMMAND      %CPU   TIME   #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT  RSHRD  RSIZE  VSIZE

955 python       0.0%  0:00.14   1    12    37   816K   376K  1.44M  27.5M
956 java         0.7%  0:00.43   9   150   110  23.8M  12.4M  8.32M   235M

The JVM uses 9 threads, many megabytes of RAM, and more CPU time just to sit there sleeping. To be fair, Python isn't known for its speed or its memory footprint either.

Anyway, that wasn't much of a comparison, but my complaint still holds. It seems like Java and its IDE's encourage programmers to be lazy and unsure of themselves. Type-ahead editing is nice but very easily abused. I've seen it in action: you start typing something, hit period, wait 10 seconds for a long menu of methods to pop up, and find the right one. "Java people" will say, "It makes me more productive!", but I'd argue that if someone experienced with Java still relies on code completion for every task, there's probably something wrong with Java (and the programmer).

That's my Java vs. Python rant.

• I think there's a cult living down the street from here. The house/church on the corner is called "The Lighthouse Baptist Church". I know that only because some of the residents canvassed the neighborhood with their propaganda.
  I don't think I've ever seen adults around their house, but I always see a bunch of idyllic, somewhat Aryan kids who look like transplants from 1953 playing in the yard or standing around outside. And the weird thing is that the kids look happy. There must be something fishy going on...
• While eating lunch at Papa Gino's today, a man in his fifties with his three little kids strategically chose the seat where he could stare at two hot high-school girls sitting in the next booth. I noticed his forbidden, devilish glances between bites of pizza.
• I walked to the ATM to deposit my check, and it felt great! (the walk; not the deposit) A few more brisk walks like that and I'll be ready for the marathon, for sure!
• A house on Haverhill Street has a sign on the lawn: "room for rent/share a 2 bedroom house/seeking female roommate/Call Eddie". I laughed to myself but then thought, "what a great idea!"

I think one sign of racial progress in America is that whenever I see Condoleezza Rice, I don't think Black Woman; I think Deceptive Bitch.

You know that feeling after someone you know dies and you ask yourself, "what could I have done to prevent their death?" even if it's an irrational question? But then later you admit to yourself that there's nothing you could've done? Well, the Bush administration completely skipped that first step after 9/11. In fact, they pulled the plug on the respirator and wiped their hands of the situation (metaphorically speaking) then quickly and vehemently came out declaring that there was nothing they could've done.

Buck Fush!

I'm on a secret government mission that I can't talk about until tomorrow. Stay tuned.

The other day while I was at work, my Toyota Camry was towed away to that great dump in the sky. It lasted nearly 20,000 miles in little more than a year with me.

Godspeed, good buddy!

They only want you when you're 17.

When you're 21, you're no fun.

I just filed my taxes online and am ready to cry now. Somehow I owe more than $900 to the government. Between my meager paycheck, my recent car purchase, the very high car insurance cost, and rent, I'm getting clobbered. Even though I'm pretty frugal, nay miserly, my savings have disappeared. I love hearing "it's never too early to save for retirement". Yeah right. I think I can afford to put a nickel in a jar every week for my retirement. That'll add up to $114 by the time I'm 65 -- a healthy nest-egg if you ask me.

And what's the deal with electronically filing? Why can't the government offer that service? Why do I have to go through several private companies' sites, giving out my personal information to some corporation? If the government wants my money, why don't they make it easier to collect it by having just one electronic filing service?

And don't get me started on this stupid tax code. I bet if I paid some accountant to do my taxes I'd be getting a nice return rather than paying a hefty bill. There are too many loopholes and hidden ways of keeping more of your money. Millionaires can find a way to weasel out of paying any taxes, while slobs like me have to make up the difference.

Isn't America great?

Why does milk hate me so much?

Friday night I decided to get poked with an ink-filled needle at Masterpiece Tattoo in Salem. I wasn't sure what to expect of the pain because everybody responds differently. At first, during the outline, it felt like a razor was scoring my arm slightly (I actually know how that feels). It wasn't too bad, but about ten minutes in, my ears started going blank, and my eyes started to fade out into blue. I felt like I was going to throw up, pass out, or fall asleep peacefully, but I didn't do either. I closed my eyes for a little bit and eventually started feeling normal again. The endorphins must've kicked in by the time Joe (the tattoo artist) started filling in the Pi. It felt much milder by that time, and I chatted with Joe a bit (cool guy). After about 45 minutes it was done, and I was happy, I think. Actually I don't remember feeling anything. It was as if π was already on my arm; I just had to get it filled with ink to see it. Pretty deep, huh?

Err, well as to why I picked π, unfortunately I don't have a plausible explanation or justification for it. Someone else wrote an explanation for his π tattoo that sounds good to me. I think it's fascinating to know that because the decimal expansion of π is infinite, everything I write and everything I read occurs somewhere in the digits of π. That's hard to imagine. For instance, my birthday occurs starting at 60,467,529 places after the decimal point in π, and my phone number occurs 12,964,862 places after the decimal. If you could search through the entire length of π (which you can't), you'd find everything -- every string of numbers and every string of characters converted to numbers. Imagine that!

But if that justification doesn't appeal to you, I suppose the easy thing to say is that since π is an irrational number, I figured it'd be a perfect tattoo for an irrational guy like me.

I'm sure I'm not done with tattoos considering I'm the kind of person who wears his beliefs on his sleeve. I want my grandkids to know what a big dork I used to be (assuming I don't become a dorky octogenarian).

I made it to Lowe's just in time for the start of Hellboy, but the theater was nearly packed. There are always a few people who come in late, looking silly as they try to find a seat in the dark.

As luck would have it, at the top of the theater in the center of the room sat a solitary seat apart from the other seats in its row, tailor made for lonely guys. Needless to say, I was more than happy to see that Lowe's no longer discriminates against dateless moviegoers. If only more businesses were as tolerant. For instance, restaurants should have more tables with just one chair, car manufacturers should get rid of the passenger and rear seats (who needs em?), and any item that's sold in a "his and hers" set should have an "only his" option. Also, sidewalks should be made narrower for those of us who aren't strolling side-by-side with a significant other, and beaches should be shorter to accommodate people who don't enjoy long walks by themselves.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, even ones without dates." I have a dream that one day at the Pizza Hut in Methuen, creepy, single, white males and smiling couples will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that loners like me will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the cars they drive but by the content of their blogs. I have a dream today.

Oh, and Hellboy was pretty good.