So I got a migraine last night.

I was doing a little work on the computer, and all of a sudden realized that, as I was typing, I couldn't see the letters that I had just typed. I had a small blind spot just off to the left of where I was focusing. Immediately I got that feeling of dread, like "I know what's coming."

When I was younger, migraines felt like a death sentence. I had some medicine, but nothing that really worked very well. The only thing I could do was lie in bed, literally moaning in agony, for about 6 hours. The pain was deep and throbbing, but at the same time, it felt like my brain was hot... like my brain was actually heating up. So, you can see why I get a little panicky when I first notice a blind spot.

Last night, as soon as I noticed the blind spot, I took my medicine. 50mg of Imitrex and 2 other pills that are some mix of caffeine and some pain killer. Then, nothing to do but lie down in a dark room and wait for it.

The blind spot grows, starting out as a small spot on just one side of where I'm looking, and expands towards the side of my vision, moving sideways as it grows, until it's a weird big flashing crescent.

Try this: put your left hand straight out as far as you can reach, straight out in front of your face. Keep your eyes looking straight, and move your hand about 1.5 feet to the left and waggle your fingers. Even though you're not looking at them, you can still easily see them out of your periphal vision. That's about where the blindspot starts. Now move your hand more to the left, still keeping your eyes straight ahead. You should be able to still see your waggling fingers until your hand is just about straight out from your sholder. During the migraine precursor, for me, most of that vision is gone.

So if I can't see, what's there? It's weird how your brain fills in the blind spot with information. If you've never done it, try this blind spot test. The affected visual area kind of flashes and pulses. It's definitely not a big black area, that's for sure.

And as quickly as it started, the blindness goes away. Without medicine, the pain then would start. With medicine, that agonizing pain is reduced to a moderate discomforate. Last night I got in bed, buried my eyes under the covers while Diana worked on the laptop next to me. My head still gets a bit of a burning feeling, and I get a moderate headache, but totally manageable. That lasts for about 2 hours or so (by this point, though, I was asleep for the night).

Today, I called in sick and have just been lazing around all day. My head hurts if I bend over or if I sneeze, and I generally feel a little foggy, but nothing that can stop me from playing some Guitar Hero or doing the dishes. By tomorrow, I should be right as rain.

So, there you go. Everything you didn't want to know about getting a migraine.

It struck me recently why I have such happy memories of high school. I had a lot of friends. Some were "best" friends, and some were just friends, and some were just acquaintances, but regardless, I got to see those people every day. As a grownsed-up person, the idea of having lunch with all my best friends, all together, every day of the week, is pretty much the coolest thing ever. And pretty much impossible, unfortunately. I don't remember any really significant problems or bad times in high school... just a lot of fun times with good friends.

After work on Friday, I met Diana at her school and we went out to dinner and killed some time before heading over to the Torrey Pines Homecoming football game. Just the week before, we were driving by TPHS and stopped in and walked around the campus, and it brought back a flood of memories. Going to the football game that night was a lot of fun. Not only did TP kick butt, but it's fun to watch the kids be kids, and to revel in my own nostalgia. I loved going to the football games back in the day, and cramming into the stands with all my friends. We'd do silly cheers, and have a million inside jokes, make fun of cheerleaders, and generally be self-centered jerks (which is actually a really fun thing to be until you develop a consciousness that is bigger than yourself... after that, it kinda sucks). Anyways, Diana and I stayed until about half-time, and then bailed out.

And speaking of good friends, I had a great night on Saturday night. A whole group of us got together pretty spontaneously on Saturday night for dinner. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood. Eryn had just gotten back from a torrid Brazilian vacation, and was the fuel for a lot of "over-under" wagering and general joking around (I hope he didn't think this joking was at his expense, because I don't think it was intended that way at all!). After dinner, we headed back to Little Buhr's pad and played some games. The first was a game where a trivia question is asked, and everyone writes down an answer. Everyone reveals their answer, and then wagers can be played, roulette-style, on the various answers, and the correct answer wins you money. A nice, light game. We then played a game of RoboRally, which is possibly the nerdiest game ever, involving "programming" a robot (by playing cards on it), and trying to maneuver through an environment, touching flags in order. With 8 robots all trying to touch the same flag, chaos ensued. I think everyone was having fun, but the game was dragging a little and it was getting late, so we threw in the towel. All in all, though, my cheeks were sore from laughing and smiling all night, and it was from nothing more than being around some folks that I enjoy (half a dozen drinks spread out through the night didn't hurt, either! :) I just felt giddy the whole night. If I had my way, my friends who are outside of San Diego would all move back, and we'd all get together every day for lunch and games... But until that happens, I'll take what I can get when I can get it.

So I recently pre-ordered a game called "Defcon". I'd read about it recently and thought it sounded interesting. Pre-orders were only $10! What a deal.

Defcon is ripped straight out of the movie WarGames (which is going right to the top of my Netflix queue, so help me!), and they nailed it on so many levels.

In the movie WarGames, our hero Ferris (whatever) is a high school gamer who can't wait for the next big game to come out. So he attempts to break into the software company (online, not physically) and grab an early copy. He finds some computer system with games on it, and assumes it's the right one, and begins to play "Global Thermonuclear War" ("How about a nice game of chess?" the computer asks. "No... I want to play... global... thermonuclear... war" Ferris responds, speaking as he types. "Fine" says the computer. Classic!).

The game that subsequently begins is the basis for Defcon. A huge world map, drawn in vector graphics, scrollable and scalable. Each player controls one of 6 territories, and begins by placing radar, missile silos, airbases, and naval fleets. And then the Defcon counter begins counting down, from 5 (peace) to 1 (let the nukes fly).

Both games (Defcon and GlobalThermoNuclearWar in Wargames) simulate a full-world nuclear war. Defcon simulates WarGames' primative vector graphics and glowing screen. There is this really creepy mood music playing, and you can't help but imagine that you're in a secured underground bunker somewhere. The tension builds during the game, as players create and break alliances, secretly move hidden subs right off each others coastlines, and eventually all hell breaks loose as Mutuall Assured Destruction comes to pass. When a nuke hits a city there is a white glow, a single, brief piano note stands out from the constant mood music, an almost inaudible rumble, and a message pops up: "London hit, 5.1m dead". The juxtaposition between the massive violence of the game (if measured by "body count") and the graphical quality of that violence (which is to say, completely non-existant) is really moving. It's eerie.

In WarGames, the game that Ferris started running was actually a military simulation, and that simulation begins looking for the winner of a nuclear war, trying tactic after tactic. The simulations run faster and faster, the screen going crazy with flashing lights as the world destroys itself over and over again.

US first strike. Winner: none.
Soviet first strike. Winner: none.
China first strike. Winner: none.
China-US versus Soviet. Winner: none.
China-Soviet versus US. Winner: none.
India (Soviet ally) vs Pakistan (US ally). Winner: none.
Israel vs an Arab state. Winner: none.
... and a hundred more.

Finally, the screen goes dark, and the computer says "A strange game... The only winning move... is not to play."

A Defcon game ends after everyone has shot their nukes off. There are a few different game modes which modify how a winner is determined (either most kills, most survivals, or a hybrid of both). As the game ends, we are left with a mostly obliterated world map, glowing green fallout clouds covering most major population centers, and the message that no one really wins the game as much as everyone loses, but someone loses the least, becomes clear.

I've played games where I've killed zombie demons with chainsaws or gunned down UN security forces trying to defuse the C4 bomb that I planted, and worse... who'd have thought one of the most thought-provoking images of violence would be a single spot of white light on a map?

---

I was listening to the radio on the way to work, and there was a commercial for real estate loans. A while back, they'd advertise how low their rates were, especially getting an adjustable rate mortgage at like 3%. Now, they say "Stuck with an ARM that is going through the roof? Refinance now with our low 30 year fixed..."

Those guys are bastards.

---

For the past few days, I've been obsessively thinking about this Netflix programming contest. The idea is that they want to improve their recommendation system. They are offering $1 million to anyone who can improve their user->movie prediction by over 10%, or $50K a year to anyone who can improve it by 1%. To do this, they provide 100 million data rows looking like (userID, movieID, rating). They also provide a test... that is, about 3 million users and movies, but withhold the ratings. Our job is to try to predict what the users actually rated the movie.


The main strategies appear to be as follows (given user U and movie M)

1) Find other users who have similiar tastes as you, based on ratings over common movies, and find what those users rated M. Take the average of that, and there you go.

In other words, if I trust my boy Iwan (meaning, we share a lot of common ratings), and Iwan tells me he really liked movie M, I will probably like it too.

and/or 2) Find movies that are similiar to M, and find out what users rated those. In other words, if movie M is a lot like movies A, B, C, and D, and I liked all those, I'll probably like this one as well.

Pretty interesting stuff. It's an easy problem to wrap your brain around, but not easy to solve. The first obstacle has been dealing with 100 million data points. The second obstacle will be finding solutions for 3 million rows. If my algorithm takes 1 second per row, that's still over 3 days of processing time. Ugh.

I have a date with a workboy tomorrow to see what we can come up with. I've got some good ideas, and he's a pretty smart guy, so we'll see how it goes.

Ciao.

So today is International "Talk Like a Pirate" day...

Normally, I enjoy and embrace my geeky heritage, but honestly, hearing a bunch of computer geeks trying to sound like pirates has crossed the line of what I can stand. It's like a bad Rennaiscence Faire (with an 'e') right in your own office! Good times.

In other news, a while ago I wrote a program that tracked mouse and keyboard movement. I didn't know what to do with it, so I converted pixels moved to actual distance moved (using a combination of screen resolution and physical monitor size). So, it was pretty neat at the end of a day to see that your cursor travelled 0.348923984 miles. I talked to a friend of mine at work and asked if he had any cool ideas, and he thought doing some sort of art program would be neat.

So, I added some basic drawing stuff to the program, and let it run in the background for a little. Dots are drawn when the mouse is moved, and when I click, a larger circle is drawn. Colors are incremented, again based on movement. I'd like to add more features (different responses to keypresses and dragging, for example), but I'm pretty stoked on the results.

Here's my first hour or so at work...

Just a couple quick hits for you.

I got a spam email this morning. The subject was "eastbound diaper". For some reason that cracked me up.

Thank to Norm for bringing this comic strip to my attention. Funny stuff. I'll definitely be cheering for my people of European descent in Survivor.





We found a dead mouse in an old trap that we'd set and forgotten. We found it via sense of smell. Gross.

Diana and I started watching "The Virgin Suicides" last night. Diana fell asleep. I finally said to myself "You know, I could be doing something much less boring than watch this movie", so I turned it off and stared at the walls for half an hour. I like to think I'm not a big "explosions and mayhem" kind of guy, and can appreciate subtle movies, but jeez, I need SOMETHING to happen to keep me interested!

I've been playing Guitar Hero still, and I can't seem to progress anywhere. Texas Flood and Crossroads feel like they should be 5-star'able (with Frankenstein shortly behind), but I just can't seem to get it all together. I haven't even touched CfH or BatM... Ugh.

I was away this weekend visting my mom and relatives in Montana, which was a lot of fun. It was my Mom's (and her twin brother's) 60th birthdays. My dad had the thought that it would be fun for my brother and I to fly out and surprise my mom, which we did. We were supposed to fly out, meet in SLC, and fly the last leg together, but his plane was late getting in, so he missed the connection. Bummer. As it turns out, the President was landing in SLC at that time, and that delayed a bunch of flights since they completely clear the airspace around his plane. I got to see Air Force One land, which was kinda cool, I guess.

Anyways, I got to my parents house, and my pops got me to a bedroom without my mom knowing (this was at midnight). The next morning, I got up before she did, and when she came out, I said "Hey! What's for breakfast?!" She pretty much turned into a blubbering mess. It was cute. :) My brother got the earliest flight, and again surprised my mom by showing up for lunch that day. Pretty cool. My mom's twin brother was there, as well as her older brother and his wife, who are a ton of fun to hang out with. It was really great to see them. Hopefully Diana and I can invite ourselves up to P-town sometime soon to see them and my cousins.

S'about it for now. FOOTBALL starts tonight, which is awesome. It's been a long wait, but finally, it's here. I'm excited.

Smell you later.

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So I've really enjoyed having this time off from work! As I posted earlier, Mike was in town for a week, and Fwats cruised down for a couple days, and it was a ton of fun to see both of them again. We played lots of games (football, Guitar Hero, RoboRally, Puerto Rico, etc, etc...) and held our annual fantasy football draft. All good times. Click the picture above for more pics.

Diana and I have taken some time to fix up our other, non-landscaped side yard. We cleaned up the dirt area and planted some new plants (including veggies!), and I'm excited to see how those grow. And where they removed the brick against the house, we laid down some flagstone and filled in around those with loose river pebbles. It looks pretty good. Maybe not perfect, but not bad, either. Those were fun little projects.

Iwan, as it turns out, is in Vegas for a couple days on a work trip, and has a hotel room with a spare queen bed. Diana and I, not having anything to do for the rest of the week, are going to bomb out there tomorrow morning and see if we can't have ourselves some fun. I'm not sure how long we'll stay (one or two nights), but we'll just kinda play it by ear.

I return to work on Monday. That will be a change. It seems like forever ago!

  

So, I'm back.

14 plane flights in about 5 weeks. It's been a crazy summer, and while we've had a ton of fun on all our trips, it's nice to be back home.

Montana was great. We spent a lot of time playing with little Ben and hanging out with family. I didn't catch any fish, but had fun trying. A really good time.

Discostup is in town, and Fwats flew down for our big Fantasy Football draft over at Papa Roston's. As always, an absolute blast. It's great to have Doc Mike in town. What a guy. I hope he's having fun before he has to head back to the war.

That's it for now. More news and pictures later.

Back from Tahiti!

We're home for less than 12 hours before flying out to Montana, which is a little overwhelming, but no complaints here!

Tahiti was really, really great. Perfect weather. Perfect snorkling. Lots of reading and relaxing. A really nice time. Leaving Tahiti and landing in nasty, smoggy LAX is kind of a downer.

Now we're back. I've dumped pictures, and will put up a hastily thrown together slide show. Click the pic to get there.

Hope things are good with all of you!

Woo... just after settling in, we're leaving on another vacation. We've rented a car to drive up to LAX (a PT Cruiser!), which we do this evening in time for an 11:45pm flight to Tahiti! I think we get in local time at like 5 or 6 in the morning, then take a hopper to Bora Bora. I'm really looking forward to the trip.

We've enjoyed our time here at home. Diana's worked on some of her summer graduate classes (with just a couple one-unit classes she moves to the next pay scale), and I've been playing "Ultima Underworld" again. For anyone who has never played it, I HIGHLY recommend checking it out. Download "dosbox" (a free DOS emulator), and "Ultima Underworld" from some abandonware site, and you're on your way. Good times.

We've also changed our Montana trip a bit. We used to have a week or so between Tahiti and Montana. Now, we've changed it so that we get home, have about 24 hours, and then back to the airport to Montana. So, we'll be back early enough to catch Discostup on the San Diego leg of his R&R. Hopefully, at least. Changing plane tickets, uh, sucks.

That's about it for now. Gotta go take care of last minute stuff before the trip(s). Take care, everyone!

So, we're back from the first of our three summer vacations.

There's really too many pictures and too many thoughts/memories to do it justice, but here's a bit of an overview.

We first flew to Maryland and stayed with Dave and Elaine and Ben. In spite of the weather being pretty rainy, we had a great time hanging out. Ben is such a fun little guy. He's very interactive, and just fun to watch him run around and do stuff. Memorable parts of the trip were when the basement flooded, and we ran around in a lightning storm trying to get pumps working to clear the water out. Fooling around with electricity while standing in 6 inches of water didn't seem like the safest thing, but we soon got it all squared away. Diana and I also took a little day trip to Gettysburg, and drove around the battleground while listening to a CD-tour. That was really interesting.

We then jumped on a plane to Gothenberg, Sweden by way of Copenhagen. I was pretty giddy to be in Europe (Adam: "I can't believe how many SWEDES there are around here!" Diana: "Ok, that's enough..."). We'd rented a car, so I got to drive around a foreign city in a stick shift after a sleepless night. That was pretty crazy. Anyways, we made it to Alicia and David's apartment, and it was great to meet up with them.

That first day is a total haze. We stayed up as late as we cool, walking around and seeing the sights of Gothenberg, and ended up going to bed at around 6pm, and sleeping for about 12-14 hours. Nice.

The next day, we drove up to David's mom and step-dad's farm in the countryside, and had a very nice evening up there. They live on some estate that was established in the 15- or 1600's. The house has obviously been updated and so forth, but it was still pretty impressive. We spent the evening with their family, eating and playing a game that was kind of like horseshoes.

The next morning, Diana and I parted ways with everyone, and drove north to Olso. I was a bit nervous to head out on our own (Alicia now speaks pretty fluent Swedish, which was obviously handy, and a lot of fun to watch), but we made it through without any problems.

We got to Norway, and got on a train which headed across the country to Bergen, which is on the west coast of the country. The train ride was pretty incredible, going up over the mountains and showing us some really nice sights.

Bergen was a beautiful little city. Our train arrived at around 11pm (but since it was full dusk out, it felt like 6pm), and we were able to find our hotel and get settled.

The next day was the big "Taste of Norway" tour. I thought it was going to be some big organized tour, but it was actually a series of tickets that took us on trains, a boat, and busses around the area. The boat trip through the fjords was pretty cool. It reminded me a bit of Glacier National Park. Just beautiful. That tour lasted all day, and then it was back to the hotel for the night. The next day was hiking around Bergen (especially the cool twistly little streets), exploring the fish market (I tasted a free sample of whale meat. It was pretty good. I hate myself), and then back on the train to Oslo.

Oslo, by the way, was a mess. We had a hell of a time finding our way around, getting lost, etc. We finally pulled off the main road to look at our map, and found we'd pulled right up to our hotel. Sweet. Similiarly, we couldn't find our parking garage until we basically stumbled right into it. We didn't have much time to explore, just spent the night and drove back to Gothenberg the next morning.

Back in Gothenberg, we returned the rental car, and spent the next 5 days hanging out with Alicia and David, staying at our hotel at nights, and cruising around the city in the day. Alicia, as I said, is basically fluent in Swedish, which I found really impressive. The days were all very active. We went to various museums and parks, as well as a mini Magic-Mountain type fun-park. We took a boat tour along the canals of the city. We went to an "ice bar" in the fun-park, which was pretty neat.

David and Alicia had just moved into a new apartment when we first arrived, so by the time we got back from Norway, they were mostly moved in. They have a nice little setup. Their apartment is up on the top of a hill, which made for tiring walks to get there, but beautiful views when we took our dinners outside to eat.

Alicia hosted a Fourth of July party for about 10 peeps, and that was a lot of fun. People from multiple countries were there (Sweden, France, South Africa, Austria, US). Everyone spoke English, and it was really a lot of fun to talk to people about various cultural differences between countries. I tried to rationalize why American's didn't embrace soccer as much as the rest of the world, yet can watch baseball (arguably "boring") or football (commercials every 30 seconds seemed like a pretty big deal to the guy I spoke with). Another girl said that she understood that talking about money (like, someone salary) was kind of an uncomfortable or rude topic, and how it's totally not in Europe. All very interesting.

For the party, Alicia asked people to bring something "American". People brought Budweisers and Cokes, and someone busted out an American football. I showed some of the guys how to throw it, as well as the basic rules of two-on-two street football (though we didn't actually play). We played a game of "water balloon toss", where you throw the balloons back and forth, getting further and further apart each time. It was all very nice.

It was sad to leave, but we said our goodbyes and made it back home without much problem. All in all, a great trip. Gothenberg, to be honest, isn't really a hot tourist destination in and of itself, but seeing Alicia and David was great, and we had a lot of fun every day. For my part, just going to the grocery store, or sitting in a park watching people, and just being in a foreign country was cool.

I have a little subset of pictures to put online, as well as a host of other memories and experiences which are too intricate to try to type out here.

Now, a few days rest, and then a brief trip to Tahiti. We leave in the middle of the night on Wednesday, and are gone for a week or so. Woot!

I know, I know, more pictures. But we're excited! Click the picture for more before and after pics.

So I go to the bookstore to buy a book for our upcoming vacation. While walking by the magazine section, and noticed a girl (young teen, probably 14 or 15) reading a magazine. I happen to glance down and see the bold print title of what she's reading: "62 Ways to Blow His Mind in the Bedroom" Awesome. I can't help but make the comparison: somehow this seems more dangerous to me than a 14 or 15 year old boy playing a violent computer game.

I bought "Tai Pan", apparently the next book in the Asian Saga (following "Shogun") by James Clavell. I can't wait to read it. I'm halfway through "Planiverse", and in spite of hearing good things about it, it's just boring me to hell. It's about a professor and his students who happen to make contact with a two dimensional universe (the humans view the universe from the side). It has some interesting bits about how life and society might work in a 2D universe, but is high on minutia and low on "cool". In my opinion, at least.

So why did I buy "Tai Pan"? We're leaving for the first of many journeys on Saturday!

Here's the rough schedule:
San Diego to Maryland to visit Dave, Elaine, and Ben.
Maryland to Sweden to visit Diana's sister and boyfriend.
Sweden to Norway to see the sights. We're taking some train across Norway which is supposed to be incredible.
Back to Sweden for more visiting.
Home July 8th.

Then a few days later, off to Tahiti for about a week. That's going to be some wacky time changes, Sweden to SD to Tahiti.

Then, home for another four days or so, and off to Montana for a week. Then back to San Diego, off for a few more days, then back to work!

It's going to be pretty crazy, but should be lots of fun. I might try to add some vacation time to the end, just to have some time at home to recover before going back to work. We'll see.

And we're leaving just as landscaping is getting all tied up. Today they are putting in lights and grass, which I believe is the final step, aside from planting a few more bushes and stuff. I can't wait to see it when I get home.

So, that's about the size of things. I'm not sure what my net access will be over the coming weeks, but I'll be taking lots of pictures and will post something up when I can. Smell ya all later!

Oh, by the way... Someone hit the fire hydrant right outside our building the other day. It created a five storey high geyser, a TON of water, and ended up flooding out the bottom of the underground parking garage. Here are some pics:

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So I've been watching a fair amount of World Cup, and while I really enjoy watching soccer, I really dislike one particular aspect.

Cheating. Intentionally breaking the rules and trying to get away with it.

The games I've seen are chock-full of players playing a weird sort of meta-game against the ref, where they try to get away with anything they can. Any replay will show players grabbing the hell out of each other. If someone is barely nudged, they'll take a flying leap and roll around grabbing their ankle. And everyone knows they're doing it. It's pathetic, and somehow it's an accepted part of the game. The fact that there is a penalty against taking a dive just proves my point. It's out of control.

Another prime example is when the player is awarded a penalty kick at some random spot in the field. Almost invariably, the player will grab the ball, and when they bend down to place the ball, they actually throw it forward with backspin so that they get it an extra five or ten feet up the field. But what's the point? In 99.9% of situations, an extra couple feet on a penalty kick will make no difference. But yet that kinda of cheating mentally seems to be so ingrained that it's just natural. (Now that I think about it, maybe I should start doing that when placing my ball to putt in golf. Just toss it forward a few feet and hope no one notices).

I'm probably an idealist, but it really bugs me.

There's a popular phrase "if you're not cheating, you're not trying", but I think that's BS. Games, by definition, need rules and structure. I agree that a third party (read: referee) is almost always needed for impartial judgement, but players in any game need to have some sort of self-control.

Otherwise, it just turns into chaos.

I was playing CounterStrike last night, and we had an obvious wall-hacker on. For those not familiar, a wall-hacker is someone who cheats by using software that allows him to see through solid walls. Because you can jump into the head of any player and see everything from their point of view, I was able to observe him looking into a blank wall, track sideways to the corner of the wall, and then shoot the player as soon as he appeared at the corner. Stuff like that. His record was like 28 kills to 5 deaths, which certainly isn't unheard of, but is pretty damn good.

Just makes me sad.

Statistics crack me up... During the Ghana/Italy world cup game today, after Italy scored the first goal, they talked about how they've previously lost games where they were the first goal scorer. They also said that "only 14% of teams that score the first goal go on to lose, so it just shows you how important getting that first goal really is." The commentator was all into this critical stat.

But they made it sound like getting the first goal was more like a random choice, like flipping a coin to choose sides, and whoever got it had a big advantage. But what I think is more likely is that there is a strong correlation between "getting the first goal" and "the team with the better players".

There was a recently a Slashdot article written about how a random phone poll was conducted, and those polled were not that concerned about the recent reports that phone companies had turned over all their call records to the NSA. Someone made a very insightful comment that there is probably a correlation between [people who don't care much about their privacy] and [people who respond to telephone polls]. To put it another way, people who DO care about privacy probably don't participate in telephone polls. To put it even ANOTHER way, 100% of the people polled said that they participate in telelphone polls. Get the idea?

Diana was really the person who opened my eyes to not just reading statistics, but really understanding and questioning the entire issue. Statistics can seem really cut and dry, but often deserve a closer look.

In other news, the progressive-thinkers in Oklahoma have passed a low to make "inappropriate" video games akin to pornography, with regard to displaying and sales to minors. Inappropriate games are ones that "feature glamorized or gratuitous violence" (uh, that's like, half the games right there), and "trivializes the serious nature of realistic violence" (oops, there goes Counterstrike, or any FPS that allows you to reload your game when you die), and "uses brutal weapons designed to inflict the maximum amount of pain and damage" (I guess Doom's chainsaw wasn't a big hit), "or depicts lead characters who resort to violence freely" (So, World of Warcraft will apparently have to include some sort of diplomatic, non-combat solutions to solving quests and getting rewards). Awesome.

I'm certainly not saying that all games are appropriate for all ages. But I AM saying that we already have a non-governmental group, the ESRB, who issues ratings for games, just like the MPAA does for movies. I don't want to get all Big Brother here, but do we really want the government to start rating our movies for us? What about TV shows? Books? News broadcasts?

Luckily, I believe I read that the case isn't over, and since games may or may not be protected by the First Amendment, then states don't have the right to override that. So, we'll see what happens.

Sorry. I guess I had that all bottled up and needed to get it out.

In case you missed it, here's another magic video!.

Also, I figured out how to do another one that is REALLY cool. I'm currently practicing it, and hopefully will video-ize it soon!

PS: Iwan, I want Sara's comments, please! :)

Diana apparently has a magician in her class, and she showed him my previous YouTube magic videos. He wrote me a little message on YouTube, and I got inspired to make another movie.

So, digital camera films the movie. Got it. Picasa grabs it and sorts it. Check. Windows Movie Maker, which I've never used much before, was a breeze. Download the "Dating Game" theme, which should be a pre-requisite for ANY magic video, says me. Upload the whole deal to YouTube.com. I notice a little "Embed" tag, which I just cut and paste below to get the video embedded into my blog.

Easy peasy. I'm pretty much in love with technology right now.

UPDATE:

So, it turns out that if I embed a YouTube video in my blog, then my blog address is visible on my YouTube page. And since one of Diana's students is aware of my YouTube presense, and she really doesn't want students to be in here, I've removed the video.

Yesterday, while waiting on something at work, I wrote a program to track keyboard and mouse usage. Why? I have absolutely no idea. But it seemed like a fun thing to do. I'd never writing something that lives in the System Tray before (down by your clock in the lower right), and the technology that allows it to intercept keyboard and mouse action even while in the background (keyboard and mouse hooking) is interesting and useful. So, it was a fun little exercise.

Today is 06/06/06, and news heads are all yammering about it. But they're not yammering about anything useful or relevant. They're all making a big deal about people making a big deal about it. Dumb. As if the antichrist were really stupid enough to show up on 06/06/06... In related news, the previews of the new "Omen" movie REALLY freak me out. I don't like scary movies.

In even other news, Netflix is about to ship "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure". I can't wait!

Sooo, buttons.

The weather is getting pretty nice out, and luckily I've had some opportunities to take advantage of it. My work peeps had our quarterly "team building" event, where we went to see a Padres game last Wednesday. The first cool thing was that we sat in one of the suites in the Western Metal Supply building out in left field, which was pretty cool. Nice box seats (in the shade!), with free dogs and stuff. Good times. The other cool thing was, in spite of a relatively boring game, we pulled out to a lead, and in the top of the 9th, the bells started tolling and Hoffman made his sloowww jog from the bullpen in center field, all by himself, out to the mound, while the crowd was going crazy. 10 or 11 pitches later, the game was over. That guy rocks.

Yesterday Diana and I headed over to our boy Andy's apartment, where we met up with Eryn and some other peeps for a little frisbee golf and BBQ'ing. That was a really good time. I think frisbee golf is pretty fun, in spite of the frustration of missing little 10 foot "putts". All in all, a good time with good peeps. My frisbee throwing muscles are a bit sore today!

The house is still coming along. It's now a different color! We painted it a medium green color, with white trim. It looks pretty good. I don't think it's EXACTLY right, but it's certainly not awful enough that we'll have it redone. I'm a little concerned with how the new stone facing looks against it. The stone looked awesome with the warm-y peach color, but it's not quite as good up against the cool green color. But, it'll probably have to do, but it's just not quite right. With the painting done, and the hardscape/tiling mostly done, I think that just leaves planting and final landscaping, and it'll all be done! Woot.

My latest invention in Second Life, which allows players to create and speak their own languages and which I thought was going to be a huge hit hasn't sold many copies at all. I'm disappointed. I need to get in the game and try to generate some buzz. I bought a workboys PS2 and a copy of Guitar Hero, and Diana and I have both been jamming out. It's really fun to watch her get better and better.

So, there's the state of my life in a nutshell. :)