* The stoplight question from a few days ago? The reason it came up was that I was reading a fascinating book about traffic and automobiles, and in a discussion about relative corruption levels and traffic laws obeyed, he brought up that point — that even at 2 AM, when the roads are deserted and you’d have just about the perfect opportunity to get away with running the red, you still stop. Stopping at red lights is that powerfully engraved in your psyche. Of course, he points out, the same can’t be said about speed limits. ;)
Anyway, fascinating question, and that’s why I thought I’d bring it up. My thanks to ,, and for engaging me with it.
* I crossed the halfway point tonight. I’ll update the graph later, and then open the betting pool for when I’m going to cross the 50k mark. ;) Sadly, there will be no prize other than our happy recognition and cheers for being the closest.
* Had a bit of a meltdown at work; talked with one of my coworkers; she gave me some really good thoughts. Yah, I think the rest of this year is going to be getting myself aligned and ready to hit the ground running in 2010. And yeah, I’ll be looking just about everywhere I can.
* Came across a bumper sticker on the drive home tonight that read, “It’s time for America to bless God!” You know, the funny thing is, I thought it worked the other way around…
* If Paypal will hurry it up, I’ll be going to the Bay Area for the Night of Writing Dangerously, as the last bit I need is coming across that way. My thanks to everybody that helped. There will be a longer post about this in the next few days, once things are confirmed.
* And that’s about it.
Thoughts?
PS: Google Chrome DOES NOT play nice with WordPress. It just kinda ignores it when you hit the publish button…
First of all, and I know this is becoming annoying, please donate to help send me to The Night of Writing Dangerously. I just need 15 more people to donate $10 each, and the clock is starting to tick down. (I have to make it to the goal by Nov. 18!) This is what I’d like for my birthday, so if you can spare a bit, I’d appreciate it.
That said, I’m taking a zero day today. There’s a strange concept at work these days called work, and so I’ve been doing that. And then there was school. At least it’s the class I like, so there’s a good thing.
I’m feeling a bit better tonight, although I suspect the chronic low-level depression won’t go away until I address some of the structural problems underlying some of it. This is harder than it looks.
And with that said, I’ve got an interesting question for you to chew on. It’s two AM, and you’re driving a lonely highway. As you approach a red light, you can clearly see that there’s nobody around at all.
Another post just to have something up. I promise you all that I’ll try to write you a longer one tomorrow — well, after I do some other things I’ve been slacking on.
I’m feeling a little better emotionally, but I’ve got a bit of a cold, so my head hasn’t completely been in the game. I still remain two days ahead of where I need to be in NaNoWriMo land, so that’s good.
Yeah. And I’ll name a character after you if you donate some scratch here. C’mon, please?
[PS: Take a wild guess who forgot to change the timezone on her blog back after the timechange last weekend? Am going through and fixing all my November posts now.]
it’s a bit of a complicated story about why I’m going to Ukiah, but nonetheless, it’s where I’m going.
Anyway, I should be back this evening and maybe then I’ll do the dump of what’s in my head. There’s a lot up there and I should probably write it down.
First of all, I’m on swine flu watch, as one of my groupmates was pretty seriously ill yesterday, and my teacher forced her to stay in class until the midway point while he lectured (when he had first told us we had a quiz and the presentations and then she could go) and then we all shared a mic in giving our presentation. I’m hoping that she didn’t have the flu and thus, I won’t get it, but…this year, you can’t be too careful.
Anyway, if you didn’t catch my edit yesterday, this is what you missed:
So the quiz got postponed. However, our presentation didn’t go overly well today. The Star1/Star2 problem we were having I pointed out in discussions, but our main programmer couldn’t talk Access into doing what we wanted. We were fairly dinged on that one, but it was an Access toy database problem. But here’s a big hint to professors: when you require 3-5 tables in the assignment, it’s not fair to chew us out for including 3-5 tables when we could have done it in one.
To explain, here’s our Entity Relationship diagram in our presentation:
(You can click on that to make it bigger.)
Here’s how the prof said we could (and should!) have done it.
id
name
married to?
1
John
3
2
Jeff
5
3
Jill
1
4
Jim
6
5
Jacob
2
6
Jean
4
Besides the fact that this table assumes poly relationships aren’t acceptable (which, of course, in the US is true, but not in other places in the world), I’m not sure how you’d handle marriage dates, as obviously John and Jill would share a marriage date. And since our assignment said not to track divorces, I guess if John and Jill got a divorce, then we remove both their entries from the table. But what happens if Jill meets Johann and he sweeps her off her feet and they get married? Would I need to re-enter Jill at that time? Wouldn’t it be easier if her record already exists?
And that’s still not excluding the fact that the prof told us to use 3-5 tables in the assignment. I was pretty sure we could do marriage in two tables, but that still didn’t meet the three to five requirement. And as for the poly thing, he said we could make our own assumptions when I went up there and asked about things like gay marriage. So we made an assumption that poly was okay. Grr. And interrupting the flow of our presentation by asking us questions in the middle of it? *sigh* I dunno, I guess it’s a teaching style, but it seemed a little rude.
Grr. yeah. This is still eating me today, but i’ll try to drop it.
You know that dream about how you walk into class and everybody’s in there taking a test you didn’t know about?
Yeah, it’s like that. At least I’m not naked.
More later, perhaps.
[Edit: So the quiz got cancelled. However, our presentation didn’t go overly well today. The Star1/Star2 problem we were having I pointed out in discussions, but our main programmer couldn’t talk Access into doing what we wanted. We were fairly dinged on that one, but it was an Access toy database problem. But here’s a big hint to professors: when you require 3-5 tables in the assignment, it’s not fair to chew us out for including 3-5 tables when we could have done it in one.]
So I have fortune set to run when I log into my shell account. Here’s the one that came up as I was logging in today:
Your fortune for the day:
Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
Already learned my lesson on that one, guv. (Hint: Do not wish for the hurricane that shares a name with you to be ‘big enough to retire the name.’ You will get your wish, but your name will also become an adjective.)
And I celebrate by posting my absolute favorite Cal Sports commercial:
It never gets old.
Anyway, things look good for my Bears. We’ll see what happens, but we’ve got as good a chance as any of winning the Pac-10 and going to the promised land. And now that I’ve said it, I’ve jinxed it, but it should be a fun season either way.
First off, I know my hometown is rather Republican. It’s part of the reason I don’t always feel comfortable up there, but people have a right to their politics despite how much I may disagree with them. But this video makes me embarrassed to be from Redding:
Alright, so again, there’s a first amendment right to say as you please, no matter how dumb you come across sounding. The guy has a right to protest, so I don’t mind that he’s a teabagger sort. Folks have a right to say what they want. However, the bit that just makes me angry is that bit about being “a right-wing terrorist”.
Again, I know that folks have the right to say what they want to say. But labeling oneself a terrorist is a bit like yelling fire in a crowded theater. If you want to pull the Feds down on your head, there’s only a few worse things you can say. But alright, fine. First amendment and all, even though the first amendment doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences for what you say.
The things that make me embarrassed to be from Redding in this video is by how loud the crowd applauds. I mean, they literally cheer for the guy — a guy who has said that he’s not above blowing up buildings and killing innocent people for his cause. Let’s not beat around the bush (or the Bush, for that matter) here. A terrorist is somebody who uses terror — the threat of hurting innocent people to cause fear — to achieve a political goal. I’m willing to give the guy in the video a pass in the sense that he meant another word and said the wrong one, as much as that is a really bad slipup, if that’s the case. However, the crowd cheering at those words — in essence, approving of terrorism — is what appalls me.
Then there’s what the Congressman said, which makes me embarrassed to admit that I think I voted for the guy once. You see, Herger was pretty good, despite his political affiliations, of doing what was right for his constituents. He even listened kindly to me when I asked him at a town hall meeting how he could help in regards to the cost of attending college. In the end, he might not have done anything, but I got the feeling he was taking me seriously and at least thought about what I had said when the next bill to help with college aid came up.
But again, there’s a line you cross when you say to somebody who’s just declared himself a right-wing terrorist: “Amen, God bless you, there’s a great American.” I don’t really think our representatives ought to be encouraging those who would stoop to violence to achieve their political goals, whether they share the same political beliefs or oppose them. There’s a line of decorum here that shouldn’t be crossed.
I know Republicans don’t want this health care bill, and I can vaguely understand why. But, that said, some of this rhetoric is getting a bit out of control.
(BTW, don’t give me the it was a joke bit. There’s some things that just aren’t funny — and I hate to say it, that didn’t sound like a joke on the tape. He sounded dead serious, and to cover it up by saying “Haw haw, it’s a joke, it’s supposed to be funny, you liberals have no sense of humor” isn’t right either. My mom taught me that some things just weren’t funny no matter if you meant it as a joke or not, and terrorism is one of those things.
That said, this bit in that editorial is spot on and something I can agree with:
If there’s a lesson here, maybe it’s about the need for everyone to turn the volume down. Left and right alike slap the vilest labels on those with whom they have political disagreements. Critics slag both “tea-bag” activists and Acorn organizers as “Brownshirts” – as if voting differently on the “public option” is the equivalent of slaughtering millions, as the Nazis did in the 1930s and ’40s. What will we say if real Nazis ever show up?
Is it so hard to be polite and respectful to one another even though we disagree? Can we stop with the hot-button words?)
But between this video and the news that Ted Kennedy died, some part of me this morning is sorta feeling like, there went my last best chance to become a productive citizen. I’ll have more to say on that later, when I’m not rushing off to work, as it’s a story that’s going to take a bit of time to tell.
I’m going over to the Bay Area today after I go take a shower and get out the door. My main reason for the trip is to see as he continues his whirlwind TAFF trip through the North American continent. He should be at tonight’s BASFA meeting, which works for me as I’ve been looking for an excuse to go to BASFA for a while.
That said, if anybody wants to catch up with me, feel free to email me, as my email shows up on my phone. Email address is: katster at retstak dot org. (Or if you actually have my phone number, feel free to call me.) I do have to be in San Jose before seven, but other than that, it’s a pretty clear afternoon.
That’s Ebony, inside a paper bag I brought home from the yard sale today.
I’m not feeling especially profound lately. I’m not quite sure that this is a depressive state, but it sorta feels like it. Either way, I could use your good thoughts.
(1) I’ve neglected my blog again. Sorry about that — I’ll endeavor to do better.
(2) If you are waiting on a response from me and have wrote me within the last week, I’m getting to it. It’s been a busy weekend, but the next two ought to be relatively calm as the folks won’t be here.
Anyway, the point of the matter — in the last week, I’ll get to you shortly. Anything before that, you might want to poke me.
(3) I really hate waiting for checks to clear. It’s annoying to have to remember that there’s money that’s been accounted for that still happens to be in the bank account and thus, I cannot spend that. Hopefully, now that Worldcon looms, those checks will finally get cashed. I don’t know *how* people managed in the time before online banking and debit cards. ;)
Anyway, that’s it. I’ll hopefully have interesting and erudite things to keep all five readers of my blog happy. *grin*
