Other Life Updates

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It was pointed out to me by Casey when I ran into him, Jen, and their daughter on the bus yesterday as I was heading home from school that, with the dearth of posts here lately, I’ve been letting down those (poor, sad) souls who depend on my rambling here to live vicariously through me. Sorry ’bout that!

Overall, things keep plugging along. The quarter went pretty well overall (I’m pretty sure of A’s in Programming and English, History could end up either a low A or high B), but school and working retail in the Christmas season have been taking more than their fair share of my free time.

Now that school’s done with, we’re rapidly approaching the end of the holiday shopping season, and various and sundry other concerns have disappeared, we’re looking forward to taking some time to relax. We’ll be visiting my folks in Alaska in a few weeks, flying up to Anchorage on Christmas day and returning to Seattle just before New Year’s Eve. We’re really looking forward to this trip — with Prairie’s family close, we’ve seen a lot of them over the past few years of holidays, so it’ll be nice to get my family in the mix this time; plus, this will be Prairie’s first visit to Alaska (and in the dead of winter, no less). We’re hoping to be able to show her the Northern Lights, at least one moose, and if we can track down one of the silly touristy companies, see if we can get her on a dogsled ride.

So there you go — more goodies for your vicariousness…or something like that.

Another Quarter Done

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No final in English (just a final paper that was turned in last week), my History final was yesterday, and my Intro to Programming final was today. I think I annoyed some of the other students (hopefully only mildly) and amused the teacher in the programming class, though — I goofed up the time for the final, and came in half an hour late. Sat down, got the test, and was done in ten minutes. Handed it back to the teacher, who said that I’d probably just set a record, and headed out with three or four students still in their seats. Heh. Oops? ;)

The programming class was a lot easier than I’d expected it to be, actually. While I’ve been working with HTML for years, I’ve always avoided looking into programming because I’m not much good with math and numbers. Since the class was all based around JavaScript, though, I’d spent enough time banging my head against it while futzing around with various website projects over the years that I did better in this class than I’d figured I would.

The teacher also encouraged me to continue on with CSC142 (I think that’s the right number, at least) next quarter, when the classes start working with Java and go into more advanced topics. I’m giving it some serious consideration.

Geeks and Film

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Three amusing articles, all via /.:

  1. Top 20 Hackers in Film History:

    My fellow Geeks! Below you will find a list of the 20 coolest, funniest, dare I say sexiest hackers and computer geeks that have graced the silver screen. While we may be misunderstood and maligned in everyday life, geeks have always been portrayed with a certain power, mystery and intrigue in movies. Practically since the word ‘computer’ entered the American lexicon, Hollywood and the public have been fascinated with the people who make these strange electronic boxes do such cool shit.

  2. Servers in the Movies:

    There are two guidelines for this list. One, they must exist only in the world of movies or TV. Second, they need to fit the following definition: A server is a computer system that provides services or data to other computing systems—called clients—over a network or other communication device.

  3. What Code DOESN’T Do in Real Life (That it Does in the Movies):

    I understand that Hollywood needs to dress things up to make them more entertaining, but in the case of programmers, code, and hackers they’ve done more than dress things up – they’ve morphed a little stuffed teddy bear into a cybernetic polar bear covered in christmas lights and phosphorescent hieroglyphics with a fog machine pumping rainbow smoke out of his ass. In other words, they’ve layered a ridiculous amount of extravagance on top of something that in reality is very grounded.

Gaiman, Webley, and Toasty Tuckuses

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Nifty randomness of the day: seeing Neil Gaiman quote and promote Jason Webley (by way of someone posting the video to Eleven Saints).

Nifty plan for the afternoon: three movies have been rented (Clerks 2, Scoop, and Slither), much warm finger food has been purchased, and the couch has been covered with an electric blanket so we’ve got a warm place to sit as we spend a quiet evening at home.

Snowy Days

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Three more header images have been added to the rotation up above, all taken over the past few days of snowfall.

Y’know, I moved out of Anchorage to get away from this kind of weather. ;)

It’s been entertaining, though, amid all the frustrations. The mall was dead yesterday, as nobody wanted to go out on a jaunt, so the Powers That Be sent out a notice that the stores could close whenever they wanted so that their employees could get home safe and sound. We had some higher-ups coming through to check the store out, so we weren’t actually able to close until around 8:30, but still — it was nice that we had the option and could close when we got the chance.

Seen lots of accidents, photos of accidents, and stories of accidents. The local news is a hoot, from the perspective of an ex-Alaskan — the first twenty minutes of each broadcast can be boiled down to, “stay home, it’s slippery and you don’t know how to drive.” Then, maybe, if there isn’t a new front moving in, they might fill us in on some of what’s going on in the rest of the world.

And that’s it. Blizzard 2006 in progress. Whee!

No Snow Day for Us

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Why in the world, when the WSDOT is telling people to stay home, King 5 is telling everyone to stay home (in between breathless reports of doom, destruction, car accidents, and OMG the END OF TEH WORLD!!1!!11), and nearly every other school in Washington is closed…what’s up with the Seattle Community Colleges (and, specifically, North Seattle Community College) staying open?

Grrrrr. It’s not just that I want my snow day — and sure, I do — but it’s dangerous out there. Demanding that students and teachers fight their way through this crud to get to school is stupid and irresponsible.

Rainier and the Flood

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Looks like the scenery is going to be a little bit different next time Prairie and I are able to head down to Mt. Rainier for a weekend getaway. The heavy rains and flooding of the past weeks have hit Rainier National Park hard, including quite a few of the areas that we went through this summer.

All park roads and entrances remain closed. Crews continue repair work on Nisqually Road at Sunshine Point and on Longmire utilities.

Extensive damage to backcountry bridges and trails. Sections of the Wonderland Trail may be unusable next summer.

The suspension bridge and boardwalk damaged at the Grove of the Patriarchs. The Grove is covered in a thick layer of silt.

More than two miles of the [Carbon] road are severely damaged. There are washed out sections in at least four places.

The main channel of the Nisqually River is pushing closer to the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) building. Parking behind the building is gone.

The [Sunshine Point] campground, located directly on the bank of the Nisqually River, and the dike that protected it, is gone with the exception of a few campsites.

The [Longmire] main campground road is completely removed at the road fork immediately behind the Community Building.

About 200 yards of the [Nisqually] road is washed out and impassable at the former entrance to Sunshine Point Campground.

Both lanes [of SR123] are washed out at MP 11.5 to a depth of 60-80 feet.

And those are just some of the key, most recognizable areas (well, most recognizable to me after a whopping single visit to the park).

There’s a collection of images and videos surveying the damage on this page. Pretty impressive.

Best Bad Review of the Zune

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Andy Ihnatko does a wonderful job of slaughtering the Zune, Microsoft’s new iPod competitor…

Yes, Microsoft’s new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I’ve spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face.

“Avoid,” is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that’s so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.

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The Zune is a complete, humiliating failure. Toshiba’s Gigabeat player, for example, is far more versatile, it has none of the Zune’s limitations, and Amazon sells the 30-gig model for 40 bucks less.

Throw in the Zune’s tail-wagging relationship with music publishers, and it almost becomes important that you encourage people not to buy one.

The iPod owns 85 percent of the market because it deserves to. Apple consistently makes decisions that benefit the company, the users and the media publishers — and they continue to innovatively expand the device’s capabilities without sacrificing its simplicity.

Companies such as Toshiba and Sandisk (with its wonderful Nano-like Sansa e200 series) compete effectively with the iPod by asking themselves, “What are the things that users want and Apple refuses to provide?”

Microsoft’s colossal blunder was to knock the user out of that question and put the music industry in its place.

Ouch.

(via /.)