Soda one Soda all

Whenever I am on the road I only stop at gas stations, not because I don't like smelly rest stops (it's true though). It's because I like buying different drinks. No, really. If there is a gas station that I stop at and I don't go in to see if they have any crazy new drink I feel like I might have missed an opportunity to find my true love in the beverage world. (Surge was my soul mate until Coke killed it and replaced it with the impostor Vault... It's ok Vault I still like you, just not in THAT way.)

Anyways Coke has made a machine that is made of hopes and dreams:



Coke has placed a couple of these in the wild down in Atlanta, let's see what the natives think:



If there was one of these machines anywhere in Oklahoma I would make a pilgrimage to see it.

Peach Vault, you may still yet win my heart.

Awesome begot Awesome

Apparently Woot! had their 5th birthday yesterday, and to celebrate it a company called ChronoShark (random watch-a-day deal site) sent Woot a marching band and cupcakes:



How awesome is that?

Now the question is would the company that you work for do that, or get that from a rival? Probably not, you know why? Because companies have decided that they are in business to make money and not have fun. Woot on the other hand doesn't take things too seriously and has awesomely funny jokes and great deals. They enjoy making their money. People see that, they like it, and they treat Woot better for it.

Isn't that how we should work and live? I guess another word for it is karma, but I like the term "Awesome begot Awesome". We spend too much time just getting by and not trying to go above and beyond, we need to do that. And not to make quarterly profit totals or whatever cooperate BS companies have, we need to do it to make the world awesome. Woot does it, Chipotle does it, the business model works.

You say Hammer, I say...

Anybody who is anybody at my work uses a yellow legal pad when they take notes. So not to be one to miss out on a trend I too use yellow legal pads (actually, I think it is more of a case that in the office supplies we only have yellow legal pads, but whatever). But I don't like getting a new pad when I use up an old one, instead I like to find and use pads that someone else has started to use and then abandon it. And that is rather easy to do here since there are a couple of kids that come to work with their parents once in a awhile. Usually I can find a pad that has the first couple of pages drawn on and the rest of the pad ready for my more sophisticated notes (i.e. my Master's level doodles during meetings).

In one of the pads that I started to use I flipped through first first couple pages of drawings to find a building list: a Nail, then a picture of a nail, a Board, then a picture of a plank of wood, then:
That's right, a Wamer. I believe that wamer describes to function of the tool way more than hammer. I propose that we use the name wamer from now on.

Normal Plushies and Etsy Stores

My wife, Nicole, has always been the crafty type. When we were dating (if you would call it that... we didn't actually go on that many dates) she would make candles, clothes, and wrapping paper out of candy wrappers. When we got married she continued on her crafty ways with making Christmas cards, knitting, and sewing pirate costumes. Now that we have a house she has found new hobbies to add to the list. Stained glass, very fancy Renaissance dresses, and making soft toys.

Recently though she has been working over time with the crafts, the reason is that she has made an Etsy store and people are actually buying the things that she is making. The name of the store is Nausicaa Distribution and it features things that are statistics (and math) related. So far the most popular item is the Normal Distribution Plushie.

She has been so successful with the store that she has made enough money to buy a new table to make stained glass on, and even buy her own domain NausicaaDistribution.com. Last night I sat down and fixed up her web page so that it looks all pretty, well, at least for Firefox users (my rigorous testing was of me making sure it looked fine on my browser).

If you have a minute go check her store out, the audience is kinda specific (those that like cute and statistical things), but maybe you will fall in love with math all over again.

2 smart 4 knives. (or the padded path to doom)

Just a reminder about banning guns: if we ban guns we will just ban knives next (because criminals will just use them instead). And we aren't just talking about big knives but I also mean steak knives. It sounds stupid but England is showing us our society without guns:

"As knife crime remains a problem in many of our towns and cities, it beggars belief that so many traders are still prepared to sell potentially lethal weapons to children," said Ron Gainsford, chief executive of the Trading Standards Institute (TSI).

...

Knives have become a status symbol among some young people and the increase in searching by police officers means some young people dash into shops to buy knives for "instant arming".

article

Yeah.

How about we just hold our children accountable and make them responsible. It is the child that is babied his whole life that utterly fails when grown up, the same is true for societies.

False Security

I don't know exactly know why, but the only logical reason I can think of as a justification of having to change my password on my company computer every couple of months is so that in the rare case that I leave the company I can't access the computers after a couple of months.

They (the IT guys) tout this measure as added security but I believe that my passwords are now less secure. Why? Well because I was able to remember them, but after so many changes I can't think of anything else that I know I will be able to remember after a weekend. So what do I do? That's right, sticky note next to the computer. Anyone at my desk can now find my password by just looking, not by guessing like that had too before. This is far less secure.

However there is even a more sinister security hole that is made with frequent password changes that require many types of characters -they appear to be strong words when in fact they will be very predictable.

For example, a typical password choice might be: 12#$TY . Seems pretty secure right? I doubt it is, and I bet it is on the short list for password crackers. Why? Because the password is just 1234ty, with shift being held down for the 34ty part. It is easy to type, easy to remember, and satisfies the three types of characters requirement.

So are our computers any safer now that we have to have complicated passwords that rotate every so often. I doubt it; determined hackers will easily be able to find patterns in the passwords or physical evidence of passwords. However, is it a pain in the butt to have to keep coming up with new passwords?

Y0ubEtch@

Jones for the Green

I general I don't care much about cars. Sure some look cool, or would be fun to have, but if I was handed millions of dollars I wouldn't go out and buy some fancy car -cars just don't interest me.

That is except for Green Mustangs. Red Mustangs, eh. Green Chargers, pass. But paint a Mustang Green and I think it is the coolest car ever.
That is all.

1984? More like 2009.

Really, was 1984 not required reading in England? It have been.

First they put up CCTVs everywhere. But it's not just to record public spaces in the case of crime, no, they have people watching them at all times and even scold people who are behaving badly. There should be public outrage, but there is little.

And its not like the English government is trying to cover up what they are doing. Here is an actual poster made to promote the new CCTVs:
How does this poster even get made? It is almost flaunting the fact that England was 15 years late to 1984.

Now, just to make life "better" famous quotes will be broadcast in the subway system. Sure it is a good idea to do, but not through government mandate. That will get all too old all too fast. And when will "anti-terror" quotes start to get slipped in?

It is amazing how someone can so fully understand people and foresee what will happen, and then actually write the prediction down. Bravo Orwell, you win again.

Friday Fun

I have many things I want to write about (such as why people that have no idea what the normal procedure at a restaurant is feel like they should give orders to others who go there all the time) but I found this clip and, well, it is more entertaining than I would be.
Enjoy:

The start of the end

First watch this video (it is from Project Natal, on the XBox 360):



If half of this video is true we are in serious trouble; it will be the start of computers replacing people as companions. Sure there are a couple people right now that attach themselves to the odd story book hero, anime girl, or new hot American Idol, but those characters can't react back to your affection. This program on the other hand, has a personality, idiosyncrasies that take time to learn, interaction in both physical and mental.
It could be argued that the interaction that is taking place (at least from the standpoint of the human) is real. And as long as it feels real for the human it will push all the buttons that a real human interaction will normally push, this means that there won't be a reason to have human relationships. Why try to date somebody that will just break your heart in the end? Why have a baby that will wake you up in the middle of the night? Why put so much effort into a kid that will not appreciate the effort until far too late in life? All of these can be replicated in the program, and you get none of the inconvenience.

The human race might have just met its hardest foe yet -can we survive when the other option is bliss?

Cure Terrorism or the Flu -I'll choose the latter.

After getting a warning email about how we all need to get more proactive to prevent terrorism, such as notifying authorities immediately upon finding an unattended bag, and being aware of people that frequently visit the Middle East I started to do some reading up on death tools.

"Using State Department figures, he [Alan Harris] assumes a worldwide death rate from international terrorism of 1000 per year--that is, he assumes in his estimate that there would be another 9/11 somewhere in the world every several years."

full article

So say that even including regular 9/11 terrorism this number is a bit low and terrorism is on the rise, so 2000 people a year world wide will die from terrorism each year (twice the projected rate).

Also:

"According to the CIA World Factbook, as of July, 2005, there were approximately 6,446,131,400 people on the planet, and the death rate was approximately 8.78 deaths per 1,000 people a year. According to our nifty desktop calculator, that works out to roughly 56,597,034 people leaving us every year. That's about a 155,000 a day."

full article

So 155k people die each day (56597k a year!), compared to 2k a year from terrorism worldwide.

Even if all 2k people died in one day the death toll for the day would probably not be significantly higher since so many other people die every day.

The flu kills 56k a year in just America according to the CDC. If all terrorist deaths in a year were to occur in America you still would have 28 times the chance of dying from the flu. If we get the flu do we start writing our will?

In the US 43k people die each year in car wrecks. Do we still drive to work every day?

27k people in the US die from poisoning each year. Do you take a food tester with you and use it every time you are about to eat something?

We don't need to shriek in terror from unattended bags, we don't need to "keep an eye on" the tourist from Egypt, and we don't need big brother to "keep us safe".

The fact is that you will not die in a terrorist attack. But you will be affected by the laws that are placed to stop an event that has such a small chance from happening. Our fear is causing us to sacrifice our precious few freedoms, and fear mongering will not help us survive any longer.

To make a real impact on our chances of surviving we should just wash our hands more.

Things I can't do

I think that I can handle almost any task that I am assigned. If I don't already know how to do it, I think that I would have no problem learning how to do it. I figure if somebody else can do something then I should be able to figure it out as well.

However there is something that I am finding out I am terrible at: wiring down letter or numbers while someone tells me them to me. It often happens at work that I get a customer on the phone that I will need to contact later after I have some time to work on the problem, so I must either get their phone number or email address. Oh how I fail at this simple task. Phone numbers I can somewhat handle because they are a set length and there are only ten options for each space and each number sounds different.

Email addresses on the other hand shut my brain off. As soon as letters start getting rattled off I lose all function to write and remember and after I get the first two letters down I am lost until the domain.com part. Then I have them say it again and I get another couple of letters but that is it. I just can't do it. To save the customer from repeating it a third time I just guess at what the other letters should be (usually it is their last name, or can be found in our companies database) and get to work on their problem.

Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest.

Weight Watchers Points Diet

Callie has decided to go on a diet, and after a bit of complaining about the normal boiled chicken diet routine she said that she was going to try to points diet. If she hadn't said anything I would have suggested it because that diet is the only one that I have seen that actually works. (I stole the rest of this from the comment I left after her blog post.)

I never have needed to diet, but people in my wife's family have had to and the points diet is very good, and it will work as long as you follow the rules.

The reason it is so good is the reason why other diets are so bad. Other diets deny food and force a life of crazy weird tasteless food. Who wants to live the rest of their life eating boiled chicken and not sweets, even if they are thin?

The points diet is so good because it teaches people how to eat healthy. And yes even cheese burgers are healthy if eaten in the proper portion, with other food to go with it. The points diet does not deny food, but just makes you justify eating chocolate by showing how many points could be used instead to have a huge dinner.

The best thing is that even after you get tired of counting points you will have a good idea about what you should eat, and how much to eat of it. So a person on the points diet becomes a better person after the diet is over, whereas a person on the other kinds of diets have no better chance as staying fit than before when the diet started.

Cargo Bridge

There is something about the "build something and then see how well it does" genre of games that I really like. Cargo Bridge falls right into this category (Fantastic Contraption is another game of this type that I like). The point of Cargo Bridge is to make a bridge that spans a gap or two that is constructed well enough to hold the workers and the cargo. The trick comes in that you only have a limited about of money to buy supplies with so some planning has to be used. The game starts with just wooden pieces that are light and cheap. After a couple of levels there is also an option to use metal pieces which are more rigid, and can have longer spans, but are heavier and cost more. The challenges given always seem fairly easy but they have twists thrown in, so different building style has to be used. This game is getting heavy playing time on my computer, you might want to give it a shot as well.

Oh, also the workers give off a satisfying yell as they fall to their death, so even when I don't make a good bridge I still get some entertainment from it.

Mom knows best. (p.s. Mom = Government)

Well... it's not like this is a surprise.

The Senate Finance Committee today is hearing proposals on how to pay for President Obama's proposed universal health care plan, which is expected to cost more than $1 trillion. Among the proposals, as Consumer Affairs reports: A three-cent tax on sodas as well as other sugary drinks, including energy and sports drinks like Gatorade. Diet sodas would be exempt.

"While many factors promote weight gain, soft drinks are the only food or beverage that has been shown to increase the risk of overweight and obesity, which, in turn, increase the risk of diabetes, stroke, and many other health problems," Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is pushing the idea, said in his testimony. "Soft drinks are nutritionally worthless…[and] are directly related to weight gain, partly because beverages are more conducive to weight gain than solid foods."

Previously on "As the Government Bans":

You came for the drugs, and I said nothing, because I had no drugs.
You came for the cigarettes, and I said something, because I saw where this was going.
You came for my food, and I am getting really pissed off.
(full post)

Due up in 2012: Ban on trans fat
In the batting circle in 2016: Ban on large portions of food
Clean up in 2024: Ban on "unhealthy" food
(full post)

The "in" thing right now is for cities to ban smoking in public places. This is because "innocent" people (who choose to go to the restaurant or work at the restaurant) have to breathe the second hand smoke.
(full post)

A sin tax is the first step to bannage.