There is movie night tonight. I'm making farfalle with a red sauce, royal_spice is making a salad, lalabob11 may be making bread, and I've heard rumor that niap_si_efil is making cupcakes, but I don't know. I have no idea what the movie(s) will be.


Random things:

( Look At These Fucking Peppers )

( Curves )

On Friday evening, I put the top down on the jeep because I knew I'd be doing a bunch of driving and the weather would be nice. Movie night went well; some people that don't usually come came, making the crowd about as big as it would usually be excepting that people were away on spring break.

Saturday morning I drove up to Albuquerque to meet popefelix and pick up the bar stools I ordered from Unpainted Furniture. Lunch at Taj Mahal ended up being more complicated than anticipated, but was OK. After lunch I went up to Desert Rat, looked around since I hadn't been in the store before, and bought a tow strap and clevices to replace the ones that were stolen back in January. Next was 328 Chinese to get a bunch of takeout for dinner. Ying and John were both very friendly, chatted with me a bit, and gave me some free crab rangoon and chicken in foil while I waited for the takeout to be prepared. It turns out they've been open since January 26th. When I asked Ying, she said 328 is "just a name; a lucky number." Finally, I went to Unpainted Furniture to get the stools. It had been my understanding that they would be assembled stools I would just need to finish, so I had taken the back seat out of the jeep. They were actually just pieces in boxes that I'll have to put together myself. This is good and bad: it's more work for me, but they will likely look nicer than if they had been pre-assembled. When I got back to Socorro, I bought a hat at Brownbilt's to protect my head from the sun when my jeep's top is open. Finally, we had a big dinner of the take out from 328. The dishes were all as good as before at the old Hong Kong.

Today, Sunday, royal_spice and popefelix came down and we went out to explore in the jeep. We first went out to Garcia Canyon (it's west of Water Canyon) and drove until we ran out of road the jeep would fit on. We then parked and hiked up the canyon and then up the west side for a while. Next was Jordan Canyon (it's west of Garcia), but a short way up the road, there was a locked NFS gate with a "Road Closed" sign. There was a track over some big rocks around the gate that I could have made, but it was decided best by all to just go somewhere else. We instead went back to the Water Canyon road and up the South Baldy road to the top. Up there, we hiked around some looking at the panorama. Once we were tired, we went back down and to Socorro and had dinner at Sofia's. After dinner they left. A good day was had by all.

Photos of 328 Chinese were uploaded to my flickr yesterday. Photos from today's trip will be uploaded tomorrow, probably.

Last Saturday, I drove the jeep to Albuquerque with lalabob11. We didn't drive on I-25 at all. We took dirt roads all the way from Socorro to US-60 between the Blue Springs and Mountainair and then up various back highways until we got to the cement factory on I-40. It took us 7 hours to get up there, but was fun, and that was the point. It'll be a much more fun drive in the summer, with the top down.

On Sunday, houdini_cs and niap_si_efil came over and we did some maintenance stuff to houdini_cs's WRX, installed his front strut brace and also put the air compressor in my Jeep. Now I can air-down and air-up my tires out in the middle of nowhere if I need to. :)

I've taken the first step to deal with my sleep apnea: I have an appointment with my GP tomorrow afternoon so I can get a referral to have a sleep study done. Wheee.

I pretty much back this position:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/news2/2007/01/time_to_remove-print.html

"They helped us load our van," Kutz said. Investigators used a fake identity to access a surplus Web site operated by a Pentagon contractor and bought still more, including a dozen microcircuits used on F-14 fighters.

The undercover buyers received phone calls from the Defense Department asking why they had no Social Security number or credit history, but they deflected the questions by presenting a phony utility bill and claiming to be an identity theft victim.

Elementary teacher Derek Porter witnessed 15 different car collision on icy roads outside his Portland apartment Tuesday morning and caught several on home video.

niap_si_efil posted this the other day:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/040405fa_fact?040405fa_fact
It's a really interesting article about average human heights over time and why the U.S. height average isn't going up.

This service looks neat, but is only available in the Seattle area right now. There might be something similar out here in NM, but probably not in Socorro.

Webcomics: Lunchbox Funnies

I've met this cat:
http://www.stuffonmycat.com/index.php?itemid=2904
It's milkmandan's cat Aleph.

Thanksgiving photos are up:
http://community.livejournal.com/food_porn/3079094.html

Eventually schlake will post his photos from the party and I'll link them.

10th Annual Festival of the Crayons.
Originally uploaded by jarrodlombardo.

royal_spice came down to Socorro Saturday night and we went to the Festival of the Cranes on Sunday. I didn't really get any good photos of cranes, but I got lots of snow geese. Photos from the Festival of the Cranes

I also uploaded the panoramas from last week's North Baldy Trip.

NM election results. There's nothing useful there yet, of course.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/NM/
Notice that it's simple to see the results for your state by munging the end of the URL above.

Perceived Risk vs. Actual Risk from a psychology perspective.

Squid Costumes

I'd like to own this book, but I don't know how to buy it:
http://www.atelier-v.ch/index.htm
UPDATE: I'm a spazz and lalabob11 pointed out the link to buy it. I just ordered it.

Hitler needs a new car.

This Vegan Nacho "Cheese" Dip sounds interesting.

In my last post I appear to have been wrong about when Rocky Horror is. I didn't know for sure. Anyway, there will probably be a movie night October 27th and also on November 3rd. People coming down (for RHPS or otherwise) are welcome to stay at the house, as usual.

I meant to post this on Tuesday, but forgot:
All of my photos from NDK are up. There aren't very many.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jarrodlombardo/tags/nandesukanx/
baronj with a sign, Director Amanda looking Frida Kahloish, and a guy in a banana costume are in there, among some others.

It turns out the Indian Cooking class has been cancelled for a month because too few people registered. I'm trying to get my registration transferred to next month.

8500 Bottle Rockets with 1 fuse:
http://ebaumsworld.com/2006/08/bottlerockets.html

If the Bush Administration was written in C (notice the subtle error):

if (person = terrorist) {
  punish_severely();
} else {
  exit(-1);
}

I got the code snip from flemco who got it from Boing Boing.

The day freedom died in the United States of America: "Freedom died in the halls of the United States Congress Thursday as the U.S. Senate passed White House-sponsored legislation that gives President Bush virtually unlimited power to approve torture of detainees and allows the U.S. military to hold, without due course or Constitutional protections, anyone it considers a terrorist or threat to this country."
The House votes to strip away another freedom: "Another freedom that used to be protected by the Constitution is stripped away, destroyed forever by a Congress controlled by power-mad despots with no concern for basic rights."

I can see some of you really liking this simple organizer:
http://www.pocketmod.com/

Monster Smart Car:
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2012974.html

The quotes in the subject line are a really bad pun based on the code above, if you didn't notice.

I went out with the Jeep today. I wrote about it in my Jeep journal:
http://06wrangler.livejournal.com/3384.html

I'll post the photos tomorrow probably.

http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/004457.html

(Photo by justawave01.)
I'm in the yellow shirt getting beat at Guitar Hero by Mike Krahulik at the PAX afterparty.

All of my photos from my trip to WA:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jarrodlombardo/sets/72157594272058689/
Just the PAX photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jarrodlombardo/tags/pax06/

There was rain in Phoenix, so we took off about 1:20 late, but we landed in Seattle only 1:00 late. I got some possibly good photos of the mountains on the way into Seattle. Next is rental car hell (it always is) and then the drive up to Bellevue. I'll get to see many of the other Enforcers in less than a few hours. Whoo!

Although my computer is still messed up at home, I was able to get the card reader on my office computer to work, so I uploaded all of the photos I've taken recently to my Flickr.

I posted the rough recipe and photos of the casserole I made 2 weeks ago for movie night to food_porn:
http://community.livejournal.com/food_porn/2747864.html

Public Service Announcement (mainly for parents):
I've heard that head lice is a big problem in the Socorro Public Schools and NM schools in general. A number of you have children in school. I also just heard on the radio (from WA over the Internet), that many strains of head lice are now/becoming resistant to the special shampoos made to get rid of lice. To combat this, they suggested a simple, inexpensive method known to work for hundreds of years that the lice are unlikely to become resistant to:
1. Douse the child's hair in olive oil. (Olive oil is much cheaper than lice shampoo. Yay!)
2. Put a shower cap over the oiled hair and leave it for 3-4 hours.
3. Comb through the hair carefully, with a fine toothed comb. The lice should be dead/sticky and comb out easily.
4. Wash hair normally.
5. In extreme cases, you'll need to repeat the above process.

I decided to buy the Wrangler. I took a photo of it with the "SOLD" sign hanging from the mirror, but I can't upload the photo because we currently don't have any computers with working USB ports in the house so I can't get anything off of my camera.

Look at this cool cake amicablebitch made:

Click the image for more info about its construction.

El Camino and Coulson, facing WNW
Originally uploaded by jarrodlombardo.

I only got a few photos on my way to and from work today. This isn't nearly the bad flooding that's been happening. There are more photos here.

Silly:
Amazing, Margaret
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/308
My penis hurts after a big session
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/245
Bug Message
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/226
I can propose you the optimum select software
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/164
Your lover will jump for joy when you do this!
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/107
Women change your life
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/101
Today is the best day
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/82

Cute and Silly:
A shrine to Hello Shiva Kitty
http://riotclitshave.livejournal.com/450291.html

Cute:
Young elephant trunk comin' at ya
http://riotclitshave.livejournal.com/459649.html
Opossum ride
http://riotclitshave.livejournal.com/462342.html

International money tracking:

In the rush to take sides, no one paused long enough to test the truth by checking the record. Here in Shrill City, few bothered to first figure out whether the big news was: a) really that big, b) really that new, c) really something Osama bin Laden and his gang didn't know, and, we also need to add, d) really something all of us needed to know not just in general, but in such detail.

Let me first defend President Bush and Vice President Cheney by saying that I don't mean to imply that they are among those who failed to figure out the truth before speaking. They of course knew the truth that the answers to the first three questions were all no.

Peanut Butter Disaster

I Was Assaulted By This Man Who Identified Himself as a Police Officer and Refused to Provide Me Identification, Photography is Not a Crime
Originally uploaded by Thomas Hawk.

Click here for his full story.

Tomatoes!!
Originally uploaded by jarrodlombardo.

Two tiny tomatos. They're only about 1/4 inch.

I have always found the song reasonably enjoyable, but the video (which I had never seen before) is incredibly strange and detracts from the song.

These are some pretty cool stockings.

wolf359nmt will like this photo of a rooster.

A-Kon is in two weeks and the travel plans are pretty well figured out. This year I have a camera, so some of the silly people will have their souls sucked by me. Also my plans for the PAX trip in August are slowly coming together (Yay, I'll get to spend some in-real-life time with ladymarguerite (who's probably going to attend PAX) and the WA people in addition to working the most fun con I've been to).

Does anyone want to go down to El Paso and see Devo on August 17th?

The Optigan is a weird "instrument."

Many hotsauces came today
Originally uploaded by jarrodlombardo.

DaVinci Code Protesters
Originally uploaded by jarrodlombardo.

Click on the image for more details and a humorous note.

I wrote most of this post on Friday and kept being busy with other things and didn't post it until now.

I hadn't uploaded photos to Flickr in a while. Here are some of the new ones:
Photos of NMT 2006 Graduation.
Photos of redsekhmet's wedding

I was going up to Albuquerque every weekend for over a month a few weeks ago. I was having fun, but going crazy and being frustrated with not getting any of my projects done. I need some time without traveling. This particular weekend there's no way I could have gone up because I had already bought food for Friday, I hosted a graduation breakfast party on Saturday, I went to Commencement, and king_luddite had a graduation party Saturday evening. Overall, I need to be selfish/lazy for a while to stay sane, so I won't be going up to Abq for a while.

Detailed maps of religious adherents by county in the U.S.

Anti-abortion zealots target birth control

A group of ~80 people dress up similarly to Best Buy employees and go into a NYC Best Buy. It's silly in places and also shows us how people react to uniforms as authority.

Q. What could a boarding pass tell an identity fraudster about you? A. Way too much
A simple airline stub, picked out of a bin near Heathrow, led Steve Boggan to investigate a shocking breach of security

Tyson Slocum on gas prices, Charlie Savage on Bush's signing statements. It's an episode of FAIR's CounterSpin. The interview with Slocum gives some excellent information about the price gouging of the oil monopoly.

Topato Breakfast!

This is pretty fucked up:
Anti-choice people are setting up "crisis pregnancy centers" that are advertised to be similar to Planned Parenthood Clinics but actually do everything in their power to intimidate and shun the woman into keeping the unwanted fetus.
http://community.livejournal.com/neph_politics/331893.html

I have a somewhat unusual stance as regards abortion and fetuses. I'm pro-choice, but I also believe that the child's life begins as soon as the egg is fertilized. Until the child is live-born and the umbilical is severed, I believe the child is the woman's PROPERTY in addition to being alive (although still a parasite) and the laws as regard property should outweigh any laws that would regard/protect the child's life. In much the same way that everyone has the right to smash/destroy/throw out their property (or have their property smashed/destroyed/thrown out by a professional they contract with), a pregnant woman has the right to do that to all of her property, including her fetus.

This is unrelated and very cute:
http://www.deviantart.com/view/32029718/

I also made an icon from a cool photo phyxius posted a while ago.

Wiki Inventor Ward Cunningham speaks at Computer History Museum
The video isn't technical and was designed to be of general interest, so even if you're not a computer geek, you might find it interesting.

Does anyone know how to make Bloglines (or similar web-based RSS reader) read protected LJ posts? LJ claims that if you are logged in, your cookie should just work, but it doesn't.

I made a new icon. Portia is still my default though.

Rita brought fireworks to admiral_jc and faeflitt's wedding celebration (click the photo for more photos):



I was surprised at the quality of the images. I had expected worse from my camera (Pentax Optio S6).

There will be a movie night at SJLP tomorrow. I'll be making a Moong Bean soup and I have a few movies at least one of which we WILL watch.

I've been in a non-LJ mood lately, so I haven't been posting, but here's a rough update:

Last weekend's parties were fun. I got a few gifts when I was expecting none (Thanks eparchos, artificialpuppy, baronj and futonsulo). There are a bunch of photos of the food in my Flickr account. If anyone wants any recipies, let me know.

I was sick with a stuffy head, sore throat and extreme tiredness on Monday and Tuesday. I skipped a day and a half of work. I'm feeling better now.

Dining Room Table Complete
Originally uploaded by jarrodlombardo.

With Brad's help lifing the glass, I finished the table today.

Another quote from the yesterday's article about Argentine food:

Dulce de leche is a culinary cry for help. It says "save us, we are baffled and alone in the kitchen, we don't know what to do for dessert and we're going to boil condensed milk and sugar together until help arrives".

This documentary looks good:
http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/
The site uses flash, but has a bunch of video. Of particular interest are the clips from Eisenhower's Farewell Address.

Stompy-stompy tonight. Lots of food shopping tomorrow with some initial cooking in the evening. Lots of cooking Saturday and Sunday. Woo.

( Memes )

4 different people talked about getting/needing new glasses in my friends page today. Within the past 2 days I talked, in-person, with 2 other people about their needing new glasses.

( I went through my OKCupid "Real Friends" and "Saved People" and collated our match and friend percentages. )

Yesterday, Google Reader finally pissed me off enough to switch to Bloglines for my RSS feeds. Reader had a slow AJAX interface, often forgot which articles I had already read, sometimes munged the links "back to original" and also didn't have a simple way to read articles in chronological order (scrolling to the bottom was actually difficult due to the AJAX and I couldn't find a way to reverse the order so oldest was on top). My switch to Bloglines was disappointing at first, but this turned out to be due to some major server issues they were having just after I moved my feeds over. Everything has been nice since the servers started working correctly; I'm much happier with it.

Yahoo has a newish maps thing with images. For Socorro at least, it seems to be using the same black and white aerial images that Microsoft serves, but coloring them with colors from the more recent satellite images. The red roof of Jones Annex is very apparent over the not-yet a building in the photo:
NMIMT campus, centered over the yet to be built at the time of photography, Jones Annex.

In the balance:
Is balanced journalism to blame for the lack of action on global warming?

The classic beginner's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it's the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed (for the love of God, don't forget to drink water).

A strange story about anger and WoW that crossed over into the real world.
http://uploadfile.putfile.com/videos/9907503497.mp3
"I win the Internet and I ruined this 11 year old kid's life."
It's sad about the kid's family, but the story is still funny in an insensitive way.

The party went pretty well. The food largely came out good. I failed to take any pictures because there were a lot of people all working on the food in a hurried but good way. After the food there was some good hanging around and chit-chat. The last few people are leaving/heading to bed now.

I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.
--President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder

David Berlind linked to one of my flickr photos in his article about Improving Wikis with OPML. I feel vaguely famous now; it's cool.

You can download and listen to the discussion Lawrence Lessig led at Mashup Camp here:
http://www.mashupcamp.com/index.cgi?CreativeCommons
It's a really quiet mp3, but it's pretty clear if you turn up the volume. At 11:14 and 52:50 I ask questions (the recordist was sitting very near me, so I'm much louder than Lessig). The 52:50 question is the one I asked due to the argument with Dr. Holcomb last year.

I got "Beyond the Lines" by The 303s from one of the mp3 blogs I read. I liked it a lot. I was able to find a few other songs of theirs on their site and their label's site. I decided that I wanted the upcoming album, "Lines Of Parallel Minds". It's not supposed to hit stores until April 11th, so I preordered it. It arrived today, much earlier than expected. Sweet!

When I was watching "V for Vendetta" last week, I had a nagging feeling that John Hurt (Chancellor Adam Sutler) had played Winston Smith in one of the versions of 1984, which would be some ironic casting. I looked it up today. He did play Winston.

While on IMBD I found some good John Hurt quotes:

We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they're all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.

Someone once asked me, "Is there anything you regret?" and I said, "Everything!" Whatever you do, there was always a better choice.

My birthday being in a few weeks, if any of you want to get me something (none of you are under any obligation to buy me anything), you could get me this or one of the many things listed here. (I wasn't really serious about this, because although it seems really cool, it's unreasonably expensive)

To quote Pirsig, "The truth knocks on the door and we say, 'Go away. I’m looking for the truth'". In the race to clean out inboxes and scratch items off the to-do list, we miss chances to find the thing we’ve created the inbox and to-do list for. Like an American tourist in Europe racing from site to site with barely a moment to take a picture or talk to someone not on their tour bus, we’re trapped in a quantity mentality, despite our quality based desires.

I believe you do a disservice to consumers everywhere when you purchase iPods (or any of the other media players full of CRAP), but for those of you who have them, you might be interested in learning about the iPod diagnostic mode:
http://www.methodshop.com/mp3/ipodsupport/diagnosticmode/index.shtml

A cool video about making fun of video game characters:
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/03/22/abusing-in-game-characters-has-violent-repercussions/

Victoria Falls:
http://local.google.com/local?t=k&ll=-17.925516,25.856731&spn=0.01325,0.015042

Random things:

The Department of Homeland Security gets a failing grade in cybersecurity for the third year in a row.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2723

a German word meaning "little man on the traffic signal"

http://www.overheardintheoffice.com/archives/001698.html

Young boys wearing pink velour dresses and blonde wigs (I don't know why):
http://riotclitshave.livejournal.com/371429.html

Content:

Recently, conversing with two different people I'm getting to know, my usage of the word "useful" was questioned/considered unusual. When someone tells me something about themselves, I say it is "useful" information because it helps me understand the person, which can in turn be used to become closer friends and I could then more effectively help the friend or be helped by the friend in a time of need. I don't mean it in any sort of manipulative way.

LJ just changed the number of userpics paid users get. Every paid account now has 30 pics and gets extra for loyalty. Every three months that a person has been continuously a paid member, they get another userpic. They even did it retroactively, so I now have 38 userpics, which is awesome, since I had been thinking about new icon ideas but note being really serious about it because I didn't want to delete any of my existing ones.

I have a tenant. Woot. It's Sara, my de facto landlord. It's complicated, paperwork-wise, with her being the landlord and a sublettee, but good because we all already get along with her and now we don't need to put signs up around town to find someone.

Last night, lalabob11 and I convinced Sara that she needs to get a LiveJournal account. She's having a hard time coming up with a good username, so for those of you who've met her, you should add some suggestions in the comments.

I was poking around http://www.vw.com again. I got a slick (from a marketing perspective), but somewhat annoying message popup.

The sentence could be interpreted a few different ways:
"Getting what I want requires pleasing people above me."
It's one of the "questions" the the following really coolly designed meme.
( Personal DNA )

I got my tattoo of Samurai Jack's family icon last night. I got it from Oscar Marquez at Addictive Ink in Albuquerque. There are lots of photos here:

In a friends journal, she talked about the possible "bird-flu pandemic." I left a comment which quotes part of her post:

It's hard not to be scared about a pandemic; it's hard not to be scared about dying. Reading about this stuff has changed the way I think. I used to imagine what things might be like years in the future. Now, I do not allow myself to think more than a few months ahead in the future, because there is always the thought in the back of my head that I may not have a future. Other people seem to not even think or worry about this at all, and quite frankly, I don't know how.

I'm much more afraid of being hit by a car when I walk to work than any theorized pandemic because being hit feels more likely and I can identify with the pain it might cause. Only once a pandemic is happening might I become afraid of it (e.g. my current, justifiable fear of AIDS).

I believe death happens and when it does, you have no idea. You completely stop being, therefore you can't feel bad about it having happened since you can't feel anything since you no longer exist. So, nothing to be afraid of with death. Fear of pain and suffering makes sense though. Those are experiences that you can remember.

The future being uncertain is one of the best reasons to think far ahead and dream. "Hope for the best; prepare for the worst" is an appropriate cliche. phyxius's lj is titled "The fact that life has no meaning *is* the reason to live." Living in fear is no good to anyone. Make big plans and dream.

Inspired by phyxius's title and my own words, I changed my journal title and am feeling a little preachy (but don't know how to direct that energy right now).


Mark Twain's Rules of Writing
I don't wholly agree with all of them, but there are things to be learned.

This is an awesome photo.

There were a huge number of comments to my post about touching the other day. I discovered that LJ starts collapsing comments at 50. I don't know how to make that number higher or circumvent the collapsing altogether yet. It shouldn't happen often (I don't think I've had over 50 comments in one post before), but it really pisses me off. (Update: I'm pissed at LJ collapsing comments, not the conversation or having so many comments.)

A crapton of people are doing this meme, so I figured you could respond to it too. I am NOT going to screen comments. If you want to respond but you don't want it publicly associated with you, email me.
If you had me alone...locked up in your house for twenty-four hours and I had to do whatever you wanted me to, what would you do with me?
I responded to the first few I saw, but then decided that putting my reply here would be better:
I'd have you do all of my laundry and help me clean/organize my room. If you are somewhat technically inclined, I'd have you help me with projects like building my dining room table or shelves in the laundry room. If I find you attractive, there might be "bouts of passion" between chores, but not necessarily.

I didn't write up my Mashup Camp trip report yet, but I do hope to do it tomorrow. Today I watched some movies and loafed around until ridingstar's costume birthday party. I went as a Level 1 NetHack Tourist. I got a few photos that will be up tomorrow sometime.

I got a Flickr accout the other day. I'll be using both Flickr and LJ Scrapbook at least until the scrapbook is full. If you have a Flickr account, you should add me to your contacts list. My Flickr page is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/62248962@N00/


The past two nights have been making me think more about sensual/sexual physical contact with people. Long ago, I worked under the assumption that people didn't usually want to be touched and would make it very clear when they wanted to be. I basically had no contact until college due to this.

When I got to college, I met lonespark and we started dating. There was contact there, but that fit with my assumption that people would be very clear about touching. When we broke up in the summer of 2000, I realized that a girlfriend was unlikely to fall in my lap like that again and that I'd need to be actively trying if I wanted one.

I had tried in high school, but was never able to get anywhere, so I now knew that my approach needed to change. I was going to try harder to interpret more subtle signals and be more open to contact than I had been before. That halloween (2000), Cort and Val threw a big party. I went, gave a massage to someone I found attractive after chatting and interpreting her signals, and was then pretty much thrown out for having, in Val's words, "sexually asaulted" the girl. I was really down about things for a while. I also thought my interpretations must be all messed up since I had been incorrect with that girl.

I then didn't have much of any dating or physical contact with anyone until May 2002 when futonsulo and I met. We went out once and it was ok. She was then gone for the whole summer. In the fall, I sought her out during orientation weekend, we spent nearly all of our waking time together until classes started, and ended up dating until late spring 2004. During the entire period between 2000 and 2004 I was still confused about signals, and with the exception of futonsulo without any contact. My blogging started around the time we broke up, so my history with women since then is pretty well documented.

I am still bad at signals. Many of my current friends give signals whose interpretations don't match their following actions (e.g. I get the feeling that someone doesn't want to be touched/cuddled much by anyone and then minutes later is happily covered in people). I've learned not to trust my interpretations, but that leaves me with very little to work with (just direct/blunt statements which are very rarely spoken). The times when I've been the first-actor have almost all gone badly (the worst being the girl at that halloween party years ago), so I'm not really willing to initiate something unless there's already a clear understanding. I feel left out of a lot of the cuddling going on between my friends. Not being an initiator usually ends up leaving me out of the group (when it doesn't, it's usually as an edge "connected" only through lalabob11). I want to be/feel included, but I don't know how.

I know a few of you are be bothered by my wants and the crowds I have generally been spending time with. This post may have been kinda down, but the people I have regular contact with now have made me happier overall than at any other period in my life, so the naysayers can suck it.

I sent an angry letter to UPS customer service yesterday:

Your website says:

Status: Delivered
Delivered on: 02/01/2006 10:31 A.M.
Signed by: NARANJO
Location: FRONT DESK
Delivered to: SOCORRO, NM, US
Shipped or Billed on: 01/25/2006
Tracking Number: 1Z 335 E1F 03 0544 273 2 Service Type: GROUND
Weight: 2.00 Lbs

There is a problem here though. The package was supposed to be shipped to my HOME (address is in the fields above) which has no FRONT DESK and also has no one named NARANJO living there. Where did your driver deliver my package? I know that no one in my house recieved it.

They emailed back and said I could create an account on their website and then file a claim, but it would probably never be resolved since I wasn't the shipper. What would be best for me to do is complain to the shipper (thinkgeek.com in this case) and have them file a claim with UPS.

I ordered personal business cards today so I have something to give out when I make professional contacts. I don't have a copy of the image I gave them handy, but I'll post a scan of the finished product when they arrive.

I also have a new webpage. It's still missing a bunch of information, but it's coming together and looks pretty good for now. http://www.network-science.net/jarrod/

"The United States is the 19th ranked nation in household broadband connectivity rate, just ahead of Slovenia. Want to know why? Because, contends telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick, the Bell Companies never delivered symmetrical fiber-optic connectivity to millions of Americans though they were paid more than $200 billion to do it."

Someone built a difference engine with Lego blocks.

I was listening to the sky.fm classical music station today. A song came on that was unusually familiar, but I couldn't identify it at first. I looked at the title and realized it was the Tristram (the village the game occurs under/in) theme music from Diablo even though that's not exactly what they said the title was. They titled it "Matt Uelmen - Rogue (Blizzard North game soundtrack)".

A helicopter pilot who works out of Mexico City posted a bunch of photos:
http://homepage.mac.com/helipilot/PhotoAlbum31.html

All of the photos from the trip are up in the scrapbook. I just need to tag and organize them now.

I got a degenerate star. Cool. (Yes, I know I'm a math nerd.)

I'm back in NM. I posted a bunch of photos to my LJ scrapbook thing. More are coming. They are all unedited. I think I am too lazy to work on any but the best ones.

I had a good time overall while in NJ. The emotional highs and lows were more extreme this year than usual, but the average was still good.

This is very cute if you haven't seen it already:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/riotclitshave/266164.html

Although the internet claims that a Fuji NP-40 battery is the same as a Pentax D-LI8 battery, in reality, the Fuji is about 0.3 mm thicker and has 110 mAh less energy. The second doesn't bother me much, but the first means that although I can put the battery in my camera ok, I need to carefully remove it by prying it out with a knife. The way I can do the prying, it isn't damaging the camera, but it is annoying. I'm going to try and use the Fuji batteries as little as possible. I'll try and order a spare pentax battery and have it shipped to my parent's house.

I took a bunch of photos of my new house today, but I can't do anything with them right now due to my current computer situation. I might be able to read the SD card on my machine at work.

I only played with it a little bit, but my new camera is cool. It is tinier than I expected (I did have the dimensions, but I didn't visualize them well enough). It is still ok for me to hold in my big hands. The shutter button halfway position is a bit weird and I have to press quite hard to get to the all the way position, but I'll get used to it with use. I haven't taken any photos I've not deleted yet, but I'll take pictures of the house soon for you all to see.

My lunch failed me today. It smelled fine when I took it out of the tupperware. It smelled fine when I took it out of the microwave. Once I tasted it though, I knew the potatoes had gone bad. I was still able to have something for lunch though, because Mark brought donuts in this morning.

Sometime in the next week or so I'll post a skill-set thing here for the benefit of antipreneurship. It would be cool if we could figure something out and work on it, but none of the project ideas I've read about so far sound really good to me.

This is one of the most generally enlightening articles I've read about security in a long time. It's written in simple language and the reader doesn't need to be well versed in the study of security to understand all of the concepts. Here are some of the ( particularly good bits )

With the extensive help of wolf359nmt, I got most of my stuff moved into the new house on Saturday. I've slept there the past 2 nights.

My camera should be waiting for me at my old house. UPS kinda failed at keeping the tracking info up to date though:
( Tracking Info )

Buy.com still can't seem to get any of the camera I ordered. I shopped around some more and found a place that has them in stock and for $8 less. I ordered from them and canceled my Buy.com order. I really want the camera before my NJ trip in December at the latest and Buy.com might not have had any in time.

For those of you using the ljnotify thing I set up on the clan server, I changed the output a bunch today, making it much less verbose. You'll see the difference the next time your friends list changes. If anyone wants to be added to it or know more about it, look at this post: http://www.livejournal.com/users/jaberwockynmt/142229.html

Last night, two_pi_r and I had an argument about comment emails. When I had a free account, I know I had it checked and working, but they seem to have changed the policy since then, disallowing Free accounts from using it:

Paid, Permanent, and Early Adopter accounts can also receive notifications for comments that they write, by selecting the "Receive copies of my own comments via e-mail" option. This option is disabled for Free accounts; however, email notifications for received comments is available to all account types.

Also, this is a pretty nifty page:
http://www.livejournal.com/tools/recent_comments.bml

I haven't seen the 3rd Harry Potter movie yet (the second was sooooo horrible I gave up hope on the third and never saw it). People have been saying that the 3rd was much better than the 2nd and the 4th also sound reasonably good. The plan is that I'll see the 3rd and the 4th tonight. I may end up just seeing the 4th. I've read the books through 6, so I won't have any trouble having skipped movie 3.

I started cooking last night. Thursday will be awesome, hopefully.

"Sony is pulling its rootkit CDs from the market and not a moment too soon. Though we don't know what Sony will come up with over the long term to replace it, it is ultimately the best conclusion anybody could have asked for. It's proof that public outrage can work. Now, if only we can apply that same outrage to the real problem, then and only then will things start to look up."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2177%E2%88%82=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Some of these photos are really gorgeous:
http://jacekjedrzejczak.pl/

houdini_cs lent me his video card. It is a GeForce 4 something something. Even though it is below minimum requirements according to the D&D manual, it works great at 1600x1200 "Very High" quality. I've only played for about 20 minutes so far, so I really have no opinion of it so far. I find the play controls awkward, but I think that's just from not having played any computer games in a few years.

I'm more interested in my work lately, which is good.

I have to go deal with Jeff Arbuckle's fucking clearance investigator now. I'm going to be doing the initial prep for my Thanksgiving dinner at the same time, so it won't be too bad, but dealing with them is still always annoying. Also, because Jeff is such a generally useless follower who doesn't think for himself a lot about political things, I can't even answer "yes" for the "Do you think he might support the violent overthrow of the government?" question like I would for most of the people I know who have/want/need clearances. Bleh... annoying disappointment.

( Red States Turning Blue )

Rumsfeld fighting technique:
http://www.poe-news.com/features.php?feat=31845

A bunch of "important" links today:

Digital Restrictions Management:
"Imagine for example if Ford told us we could put Ford-approved gas from Ford approved gas stations into its automobiles while GM told us the same thing with respect to GM-approved gas stations and its cars. Consumers would put them out of business in a heartbeat. So, why do we put up with this crap here? Want to put an end to this shameless behavior on behalf of our technology and content providers? Stop buying the technology and the content. Stop now, before its too late."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2157%E2%88%82=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

Another article on DRM, this time explaining the recent history of proposed laws and how they affect you:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2161%E2%88%82=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

More DRM, but this time about the Sony rootkit:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/still_more_on_s_1.html

"In what is practically a requiem to the Internet because of what it forecasts, Doc explains how our most beloved public technology is about to succumb to privitization and big business in ways that will destroy everything that it has ever stood for, and everything it has the potential to be."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2168%E2%88%82=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog

The SaveTheCourt.com Stop Alito petition:
http://petition.savethecourt.org/fwd/campaigns/savethecourt/register/ecbd276ddb48f485f8bc94a47144ead9/

scottbateman animated "Uptight Maggie":
http://www.batemania.com/bateman365/day091.html

Depeche Mode - Violated:
http://www.depechemodeviolated.com/
It's not as good as I hoped it would be, but it is interesting.

Cute dog + Yoda =
http://www.livejournal.com/users/riotclitshave/227176.html

When the train is moving: be careful of boiling water. (WTF?)
http://www.livejournal.com/users/elysesewell/35339.html

The NSA wants you to become a furry haxxor:
http://www.nsa.gov/kids/

"The House has been very supportive of anything that would strip the innocent of a fair hearing. This bill will ensure that more innocent people will be put to death." --Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA)
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/013079.html

The Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain:
http://googlesightseeing.com/2005/11/11/circuit-de-catalunya-barcelona/

Blinky

I had my doppler ultrasound this morning. The technician (her name was Tiara, which I thought was silly but did my best to stay straight-faced) had a really new, sleek machine. It was a laptop computer, about double the thickness of a modern IBM ThinkPad with a small qwerty keyboard and a bunch of extra sliders and specialized buttons and an ultrasound wand coming out of the side. It had many fans and was as loud as my desktop (if you haven't heard it, it is loud). The unit the technician had in Albuquerque a few months ago has a much smaller screen and the overall unit was roughly 2x3x5 feet. Anyway, my leg: She could see parts of the old clot still in my gastrocs veins, but nothing that looked like it was blocking. She said that parts of the original clot will probably never go away, and they probably don't have to. The body finds alternate routes to send the blood when there is a small blockage and the bits that are left, stuck to the vein walls are unlikely to break off and cause any problems. My leg is feeling a lot better after a few days of trying to use it less and applying a heat-pad when I can. The tightness and swelling probably just have to do with soreness from the cramp on Saturday.

I did order the Pentax Optio S6 on Monday. Everywhere that it was in stock was $325 or more, but a bunch of places had it on backorder for more less than $300. I ordered it from buy.com since they are the most reliable of the companies who had a good price and were on backorder.

This book came in yesterday.
http://www.irwinlaw.com/books.cfm?series_id=3&pub_id=120
It should be good (Yeah, I know I'm a huge nerd).

DRM Crippled CD: A bizarre tale in 4 parts
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2005/10/drm_crippled_cd.html
He's a bit over-dramatic about parts of his issue, but it does demonstrate how DRM is bad for consumers and can be bad for artists.

This relates to the previous link and is very malicious:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/sony_secretly_i.html
It increases my desire to never buy DRM stuff even more.

This guy looks nothing like fusiongyro, really:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/riotclitshave/212619.html
Try and read the text below him too.