Random rants part two, holiday edition!

So recently I was looking through our school's book drive selection and found a moderately interesting book about Hanukkah. So I picked it up and was looking through it and found the holiday referred to as 'Chanukah.' What? since when is Hanukkah 'Chanukah?'

Anyway, glad to have that out of my system. The Internet: great place for venting.

So here are my least favorite things about Christmas.

1. 'I want a dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown!" GRRRRRR! This one made me mad. I was watching A Charlie Brown Christmas on ABC a couple days ago and an ad came on for another Peanuts Christmas movie: I want a dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown! So I thought, cool! Another Peanuts movie! So I watched a little bit and then I realized: It wasn't the same voices! Charlie, Linus, Lucy, and Rerun (give yourself 4 points if you knew Linus and Lucy had a younger brother) all had really strange voices, And I was just very very very very very very very very very very very very ANGRY! SO I turned of the TV and skulked (I like that word) for a few minutes. (Bonus Peanuts Trivia question worth 50 points: what instrument does Charlie Brown play?)

2.Not being able to think of more than one thing I don't like about Christmas.

So, as I write this it's raining pretty hard here in Pacifica. It's 3:30 on December 21st, 2012. School recently ended until January 11th. I'm happy. Anyone else?

A friend once asked me...

A friend once asked me if Amazon, Firefox, Google, Apple, Internet explorer had a fight, who would win?

Here's what I wrote back to him:

Internet Explorer, with its weak speed and links, would be KO'd by Firefox almost immediately. But wile Firefox was gloating, Google would delegate Chrome, its fastest member, to sneak up behind Firefox and drive one of its many apps right through Firefox's links. With IE and FF out, Windows and Apple would secretly team up, since Google can only exist in them. But while they tried to find Google  It would seek refuge in neutralist area Linux, where it could begin its plot. Meanwhile, Amazon would be slaughtered at the hands of a thousand iPads, despite the Kindles they had sent against them. Apple and Windows would go to war, with Androids infiltrating and stealing Intel from Apples base and Apple firing their giant lawsuit cannons at them as they left, and managing to get most of the spies. But while they did this Windows would plant a gaming bomb in their base and completely demolish their apps & games wing of their base. But in this disarray, Windows would be assaulted on all sides by the Android phones they had commissioned to aid them, since they secretly reported to the newly returned Google. Google would command them to attack and Windows's phone section would be captured, but their hardware area would be protected due to its heavy defenses. Apple, meanwhile, would execute a pincer move and trap Google between Apple and Windows, causing Google to be destroyed in an instant. All areas of windows except for their Apps & games &and hardware sections would be bombarded until surrender, but Those two would hold out. Eventually, though, Siri charmed her way into the hardware section and caused complete chaos by impersonating the voice control app and ordering the evacuation of all areas. With the Windows army flushed into the open, a bloody battle would take place until the Windows army was beaten down to their last few survivors: The director of the Windows Games section and the last three surviving Windows Phones. The three would beheld captive until at one point, the three Windows phones manage to escape through the weakened Games section of the headquarters of Apple, taking the director og Windows Games with them. The four would escape to a faraway place, perhaps Ubuntu, where they would bide there time and regrow their empire, even bargaining with Ubuntu, gaining A few thousand Linuxian soldiers in exchange for partitioned support on Windows 7. Eventually, Windows would grow into a new breed: Windows 8. And they would return to fight with the titans subsequently created by Apple such as The IPhone 5 and The Ipad Mini. But that's another story...

Perhaps someday I will tell you the rest of the story, but technically it's still being written right now. So someday, look for 'The Battle of Windows And Apple!'

Maybe I should write a book.

The strangest sentence in the history of the universe

I read a series of books called Artemis Fowl,  involving the personality transformation of a 12-year old criminal mastermind to a less evil 17-year old genius. And there's faeries with laser guns. Definitely read it. But anyway, there are eight books in the series, all of which I have read. I was recently rereading the fifth one and I came across what I believe to be the strangest sentence in the history of the universe:

"It's easy to imagine jumping into an inter-dimensional crater when you're rolling your cocooned classmates into a pit full of dung."

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems like a stranger sentence than you normally see in your everyday scifi/fantasy book. And I've seen some other strange ones:

"The etheral figure steppeed forward, his body glowing with an aura of bright green light he said, in deep bass tones: 'Pull my finger.'"

I'm not even going to go into the other ones that I've seen. But that's beside the point. I think emphatically that the first one is more strange. And, I'm interested to see what you have to say. Vote for one of these, or submit your own.

Go ahead! Vote!

Dude, I'm still alive

I play Minecraft. many of you know this. It's in my ASCOTWP, which by the way I don't like the way the computer wrote that.

Anyway, some background. Minecraft is a survival game where you start of with nothing. First you have to get some wood by cutting them down with your bare hands. Don't ask. Then you make the logs into planks, and some of the planks into sticks, and some of both into wooden tools like swords, pickaxes and axes. Then you mine up some stone and make stone tools. Then you mine up some iron, smelt it, and make iron tools. Etc.

In Minecraft, there are many monsters, such as:

Zombies. These monsters walk up to you and punch you. They're pretty easy to kill, you can do it with out a sword most of the time.
Skeletons. These monsters have bows and arrows, but they're otherwise like the zombies. They can shoot you from far away.
Creepers. By far the most annoying, these demons walk up behind you silently and then blow up, damaging not only you.
Spiders. Spiders can move very fast and climb walls, but they're less powerful than other monsters.
Endermen. The most difficult of monsters, they do the most damage, have the most life, can pick up and move pieces of the world, and can teleport. Weakness: water.
Slimes. Found deep underground, Slimes come in four sizes: tiny, which can't do damage and one punch will kill them, small, who split into four tinys when then die, mediums, who split into four smalls when they die, and larges, who split into four mediums when they die.

There are even more than that, but that's not the point. In recent times, my friends and I have been playing on servers with the modification "MineZ" which makes the game into a zombie apocalypse. Only zombies can spawn, they move a lot faster than normal, they do more damage than normal, and they have more health than normal. The idea is to survive for as long as possible.

One time I played on one of these servers and teamed up with a very nice player whose username I forgot. We had just begun to travel when a player ran by with about 15 zombies on his tail. We immediately ran with him toward the nearest city of Romero, where the zombies would disperse. When we got there, I lost sight of my ally while defending myself. Suddenly he said in the chat "NOOOOOOO" and then "You will be remebered". I finished off the zombies and responded.

"Dude I'm still alive."

"lol."

Fail. What made it even more funny is that I was murdered in the next 30 seconds of that exchange.

Sigh.

Random rants, part one

I wonder if football players and coaches care that their every move at a game is being televised, right down to the seemingly private moments on the sidelines when their mug shot fills the screen. What's up with that also? I don't want to see random photos of some guy's face on my screen! I want to see the flipping GAME. Well, not always. In fact I don't always watch foot ball. But still. They do it with baseball too, which ticks me off to infinity, since baseball is a game I do watch.

The number infinity irks me. There are only two mathematical functions which can equal infinity at all ever, and they're two that a lot of people might not recognize: summation (∑) and limits (abbr. lim). Those are both calculus functions by the way. I've noticed that not a lot of people I meet understand too much about calculus. What is this world coming to?!

Another irksome number is infinity's evil twin, epsilon (ε) or 1/infinity. It's a strange number, because if ) 0.9999999... equals one (proof at the end of this post) than 0.00000...1 must be zero, right? Apparently not. Because 5-ε<5, or so they say.

Proof:

Step one: 1/3=0.33333...
Step two: 2/3=0.666666...
Step three: 3/3=0.9999999...
Step four: 3/3=1
Step five: use "if a=b and b=c then a=c" proof format: if 1=3/3 and 3/3=0.999999..., then 1 must equal 0.9999999...

Q.E.D. :)

Current events

I don't usually talk about what any casual CBS watcher would term "current events". Political stuff I don't even talk about in person. But I'm going to give it shot. Don't judge me by this one post if you are just coming here. If you want to see what I'm all about, go to the post "I'm sorry."

Onward!

Umm, well, so I watched part of the presidential debate and I was thinking (honestly), these guys must spend like 5 hours just styling their hair for these debates! Well, maybe not Obama. I know I would so totally spend a good chunk of my day on that if I were running for president. To me, It just seems like these guys were just saying over and over the same things. Basically Obama would say: "blah blah blah taxes blah blah blah education blah blah blah $5 trillion tax cut blah blah blah Romney is bad." And Romney would say: "blah blah blah taxes blah blah blah No, seriously, I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut blah blah blah No, I don't! what do I have to say to make you believe blah blah blah No! No! No! No! No! blah blah blah thank you Mr. president."

Side note to the U.S. government: If Wait Wait Don't Tell Me can get away with that without retribution, than so can I.

Also, what's up with these replacement refs in the football? They blew that call in the, what was it, Cheesies v. Really Tall Guys? Oh wait was that last week? Oh, the replacement refs...are...gone...now...ummmm... so....

[awkward silence]

Aw, forget it. I couldn't do current events even If I decided to stop getting a laugh and actually learn about things going on in the world...oops. You didn't read that! I totally didn't fake my ignorance of the...umm...


:-(


Note: Please post your favorite, crazy emoticons in the comments! I'm trying to accumulate enough to start a dictionary. My faves so far:

Headphones:    d-_-b

Thumbs up: d->.<-b

Rockstar: \m/->.<-\m/

Snowman: c|(:-)(...)(  )

Tears of Joy: :?

(Tears of Joy isn't very good, I know, but it's cool.)

The "Alien Gazzette", September 13th, 2054

Earth: Behind the blue
Grimjaw Slugspade

Earth, it seems from the outside, is a paradise. The blues and greens, the shining yellow "eyes" at night, the tall, bipedal creatures called "Huemuns". But strip back the image and actually travel there, and what do you see?

As it happens, the "Eyes" are actually artificial lights, polluting the sky so they cannot see our glorious planet in all its, well, glory. The Huemuns, it seems, have all but destroyed their atmosphere (which for the less then casual AstronomyTube watcher is a protective sphere around some planets that shields against things harmful to the planet's residents; e.g. Earth, asteroids, Neptune, the ten billion gorfles of "bacon cheeseburgers" that Earth expels into space every spicicle). They are building huge "skyscrapers" all over the once-beautiful landscape. And what's worse, Footlongs are now SIX DOLLARS! The Gomjabbermanity!

We spoke with a Gomjabber who traveled to Earth and a captured Huemun. See if you can guess which is which.

1:  "We've seen the falsehoods behind the mask, and it has not pleased the masses. Huemuns are hostile and unstable, and their decline into psychopathy has been slowed only slighty by Bustin' Jeeber."

2: "AAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE! OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD! HELLLLLLLLLLPP! WHAT'S THAT TUBE?! NO! NO! NO! GOD NO! NOOOGLMGRRRGLMRLGMRLGRMGLRMGRLGRMGLRMGRL!

Easy, right?

Well, the good news (or from the Huemun's standpoint, bad news) is that after the event the Huemuns call the "Apocalypse" (obviously after beloved but deadly Mars-ian governor P. H. Uhpocaalips), Earth will be ripe for the picking. Take note, resort investers!

Grimjaw Slugspade is the most highly acclaimed columnist in all of Mars.

Inventing gravity

I recently read a book called F in exams: the very best worst test answers. One of the questions was "What did Issac Newton do?" The answer given was "He invented gravity."

I saw something similar while researching Native American inventions for a report. One site claimed that Native Americans had "invented hair." What?! People don't invent things. People discover sombinations of things that can do something else. by the current webster's definition of "invention" ("dicovery, finding") a child with a never before created combination of legos has "invented" something. Nobody thinks like that, for some reason. Inventions, by human standards, have to be unique and difficult to produce. That seems some what random to me.

On a diffeerent note, wouldn't it be cool if we could invent things such as gravity and hair? I can imagine the eminent professor B. X. Glockensphichielenheimerverrestyxinmitomer inventing the "completely automatic weight system-gravity!" And all the students clap and cheer and try it out free for 30 days.

Hey, I just invented something!

For The Win

I have a friend. I'll call him Quinn because that's his name. He taught me the funny saying "FOR THE WIN!", which I filed with my other ones (stop being a centipede! & ITS OVER NINE THOUSAND!). But I think we need to go for the win all the time.

In everything you attempt, there is almost always a challenge. Climbing that mountain. Building that treehouse. Walking to the refrigerator. It's...so...far. But you cannot accomplish your endeavors to your full ability unless you do it FOR THE WIN (I will be referring to FOR THE WIN with the abbreviation FTW. If you thought that meant something else, shame on you). People need stop settling. People always talk about living life to the fullest. You cannot do that without FTW. In my humble opinion, you should never go for the low-hanging fruit. Go for the highest fruit and eat before your back on the ground!


Example: You are building a treehouse. You can make it a smallish, traditional box o' wood with a ladder and maybe a desk. Or, you can make it with 5 rooms, electricity,chairs, desks, tables, and drawers. My advice? FTW.


For clarification, winning is not going for the most complicated thing. It's going for the thing that will make everyone happiest. and sometimes, that's the wood box.


On a completely unrelated note, can anyone find the trick in this "proof" that 2=1?


a=b
a^2=ab
a^2-b^2=ab-b^2
(a-b)(a+b)=b(a-b)
a+b=b
because a=b
b+b=b
2b=b
2=1

Reality interrupted

Recently I went on a two-day trip to Seattle. It was pretty beautiful, and I especially loved the Chihuli Glass and Garden installation. But then came the ride to the top of the Space Needle.

I don't normally get vertigo. I've been to the top of some of the tallest buildings in San Francisco, and could look out without incident. But on the way up in the elevator, You can't really see anything holding you on to the structure (the elevator is well windowed). And for some strange reason on some strange level, I felt a touch of fear.

I think a lot of vertigo is a placebo effect. You stare up at that tall thingy and think how scary it's going to be when you get in that elevator. And when you DO get in the elevator, it feels just like you thought it would. Heads up, folks! The human brain cannot effectively imagine being in a situation or feeling a sensation that it has never before experienced. So when the sensation occurs, it projects what it thought it would feel like rather than be wrong. So if you feel scared, just force yourself to believe that it will feel like eating a bar of chocolate.

But I digress. When I got to the top of the Needle, all vertigo vanished. This may be a.) because we had stopped moving, b.) because the area was open and the fear I was feeling was actually claustrophobia, or maybe c.) that the observation deck was clearly attached to the ground. Then I went outside. Still no fear. I later remarked that this could possibly be possible because I wasn't interpreting it as real. My brain having never experienced this, managed to project this situation in a placebo-ish way. I was seeing it as though it wasn't real, even though I was consciously aware that it was. 

So, in a way, my reality was interrupted for 20 minutes last Tuesday. That may sound weird, but it wasn't that bad. If I could train myself to placebo any new situation, I could eat nutritious dirt and survive by forcing myself to believe that it will taste like, again, chocolate. (What? It's good!)

as a closing challenge, post your "reality interruptions" in the comments. I will say whose is the best, who is second, and who is third with a gold/silver/bronze notation, a la Olympics.

Page views reached 750 this week-thanks to all of you who read, and keep it up!

Back to School

Hi, diligent readers, sorry I was out so long. I was at a camp.

Anyway, back to school. First, let me voice my complaints about having back to school sales a month and a half before school actually starts. It makes people like me nervous that school is right around the corner when in reality we still have a month left. I bought my school supplies Tuesday, and we still aren't done, so we have to go back.

Also, school supplies have this thing that they all go on sale when everyone has gotten to them and all that's left is a few random packs of gum and some sparkly markers that nobody wanted. Hopefully the skullcandy backpack I wanted will still be there next week when we return, and hopefully it'll also be on sale.

A short post today. I'm pretty tired out from that Wizard of Oz symphony thingy yesterday.

Keep reading! Ideas for rants or other things would be great; send them to rainydaysat340@gmail.com.

Chess

Now, don't get me wrong. I like chess. In fact, it just so happens to be one of my favorite board games. (As an aside, I also like Monopoly, Bannagrams, and Stratego. But I digress.) But if you look closely at the game, there are things that annoy me.

One such bone I have to pick with chess is the way people symbolize movement. I look at the chess challenge in the SF chronicle and the list of previous moves is all like "Cxbh3" and "D4xF2". I'm sure those would make sense if I had ever learned them. but no, I remain ignorant of the secret codes used by chess players all over the world. My life is hard, isn't it?

Another is that it seems so unfair that pawns can only move forward one space every time excluding en passants. the first move, and when they take someone. I'm always rooting for the little guys, encouraging them with little onlookers (Winnie-the-Poohs in rubber outfits my sister gets from dispensers. No, really.) that cheer them on with squeaky little voices. but them they get pinned against some big rook bully and the spectators get a bit down. Now that I think about, though, they do the same thing in Monopoly, too. Maybe they're alive. Brrrrr. I just got a shiver.

A final gripe is that chess never gets really exciting, if you know what I mean. When someone lands on your boardwalk with a hotel, you can laugh in their face and count your new riches with evident showmanship. But when you take someone's knight in chess, you rarely hear the cries of "IN. YOUR. FACE!  IN. YOUR. FACE!"

 So I recommend that we try to change these things. Do away with the secret codes. At least allow pawns to move backwards. I mean, pawns don't have to be pawns if you know what I mean. And bring gloating into the game. Just once, I'd like to see Magnus Carlsen jump up and down yelling when he wins.

I know I will.

I'm sorry

Apologies, in my opinion, are overrated. You can apologize to someone about something, but the human "error" in this equation seems to blot out everything. You can say the words: I'm sorry. But for them to actually mean anything...well, that's a different story entirely. There are a couple factors that go into an apology being sincere (or not).

One factor is age and/or experience. I'm lumping these two together because they generally correspond. When you're young you have no reason to apologize sincerely, because generally the people you have to apologize to are not going to take it too hard if you aren't totally genuine. And you won't feel bad when someone apologizes to you insincerely, because they will generally be your own age/experience level. You don't often find an adult apologizing to a child for anything other than "oops, I got you chocolate ice cream instead of cookie dough. Life is hard, isn't it?"

Another factor is magnitude of the apology. If you're apologizing for accidentally stepping on a relative/friend's foot, they aren't going to feel insulted if you mumble an apology and go off to play football. But if you're apologizing for dropping and breaking a $500 china plate, the apologee (yes, I just invented that term right now. There is a little red line underneath it, which for some reason ticks me off) is probably giving you the if-you-don't-have-tears-in-your-eyes-I-will-kill-you-in-your-sleep (The computer seems to think I somehow placed dashes inbetween those words by accident. !#%@ little red lines) look.

Yet another factor is timing. If you drop that plate when no one's looking, you can blame it on the dog, or play innocent ("It broke"). If you can time your apologies to when the person is tired, or on a roller coaster, or meditating, or singing, or in Tahiti, they will likely not be too offended if you aren't sobbing.

A final factor is delivery. Apologies that are not face-to-face are much easier too fake. You can write a "heartfelt" email about that plate while laughing you head off about that vein in your grandma's temple that just kept pulsing. Apologies in which the apologee is actually looking at the apologizer's face are a lot harder to skate over. I suggest always trying to get apologies owed to you face-to-face (it's do fun to watch them struggle) and give your apologies through email or phone.

On that note, taking into consideration all I have just written, I sincerely apologize for any one who was offended by this post. I had not intended it to be an attack on people who regularly  apologize genuinely, simply a humorous article on the difficulty of acquiring a sincere apology. Please forgive me for my actions, and leave a note telling me how I can do better next time.

Oh, who am I kidding. I'm not sorry at all.   

Ideas that catch on

Ideas come quick and in large quantities. The part of your brain that controls idea production must have drunk about 400 cups of espresso for it to be that quick on the uptake. But only one idea in about a million is an idea that could catch on, and when that does happen, We usually don;t recognize it. Like when you're straining to get your new !#$!$^$# television to work and the "helpful system" is attempting to get you to feel as bad as possible without launching the blankety-blank machine out the window, and you have a tickling of an idea at the base of your skull telling you you could make millions by marketing a TV that has REAL ease of use, not this. But at that point you're usually banging your head against the wall and pressing the buttons randomly, hoping one of them will turn on "Glee".

But let's do the math for how many wildfire ideas you get in a week.

(about 5,000 notable ideas per day   /    1,000,000)  x  7=  0.035 wildfire ideas per week.

                                                                                               =  1.825 wildfire ideas per year.

                                                                                               =  18.25 wildfire ideas per decade.

                                                                                               =  about 150 wildfire ideas in the 

                                                                                                   average person's lifetime.

With a number like that, I would suggest making every one of them count, and making sure you don't ignore any ideas. Anyone of them could be the best thing that ever happened to you.

email: rainydaysat340@gmail.com

Watson's Effect

This effect does not in any way represent me or my family. It is named Watson's Effect simply because I came up with it, not for any other reason.

You are a kid in fifth grade. (For some of you this may even be true or at least a metaphor for your life.) You are a decent kid with an average level of intelligence and average grades (all of them at least C+'s, let's say). Your parent, however, are not happy with your performance in school. They want you to work your grades upwards of an A- in every subject. You feel that your performance is okay, and a C or B here and there is not going to hurt you career.

But your parents won't listen. They pressure you into working incredibly hard and long on your work, and sacrificing many other things that make life worth living, such as reading for pleasure and cake. You work harder and harder. Your grades slowly creep upward...and then it hits. You fall into a delirium from lack of food and exercise. You slowly turn into a zombie from focusing upon your work so incredibly hard. Your words become incomprehensible. You earn the nickname "Guolaosi", which in Mandarin literally translates to "death by overwork." (that is a real word. Look it up.) This combination of your degenerative state and your personal atmosphere at school leads your grades to drop into D's and F's. You drop out of high school once you reach it and spend the rest of your life producing methane, which eats away at the ozone enough to allow solar wind through, and all electrical systems fail. The Aurora Borealis are seen all over Earth. And most importantly, everything on Earth is vaporized.

 This is an example of what I call "Watson's Effect", which states thus-

There is a point at which high expectations cross the line into "repercussive expectations", a point at which the expectation has harmful consequences. The caused effect, thus dubbed "Watson's Effect", can have many repercussions, hence the name "repercussive expectations." That Point, called the "repercussive boundary", can be measured as such that it is the Point at which expectations leave the necessary and enter the realm of emotions such as pride, vanity, and greed. This can lead, as stated, to uncomfortable, harmful, and possibly irrevocably horrible effects, dubbed as the "repercussive extremity".

Watson's Effect is a dangerous thing, I believe, and I think we can all strive not to expect things of our peers past the repercussive boundary. This could be tough. It will most definitely not be easy. I will be putting this somewhere on the blog where it is always visible at the top of the first page of posts.

I beg you to take this under consideration, for while the story may have had a humorous air, it is indeed a metaphor. Mark this, and mark it well-the expectations of the world at large are well beyond the repercussive boundary. But that does not mean they will stay there.

   

If I ran the world (or at least the state)

This is a traditional topic that provides a commentary on the flaws in the way our society is fun while still maintaining a humorous atmosphere, therefore at least partially pardoning me from any repercussions that may be drawn from my possibly incriminating statements forthwith. Actually, it's more just a way for to point and snicker at the California state laws.

First and foremost, I would instead of having multiple taxes I would smash them all together into the "Tax" (always capitalized). This would cut down on the complicatedness and stressfulness just general 'ness' of the tax returns. Plus, it would cut two extra letters off this type of conversation:

Before:

"Have you paid your taxes yet?"

After:

"Have you paid your Taxes yet?"

Second, I would pour millions into scientific research like cancer, room-temperature superconductors, and human-weight-supporting grappling hooks (what? Don't tell me you've never wanted to be Batman). This would probably a.) keep all the researches well-funded and therefore happy, and b.) probably come with some pretty darn awesome results.

Third, I would shorten the average school week to two, hour-and-a-half days (Monday and Thursday), all math of course.

What? I'm still young enough to not like school.  

Email: rainydaysat340@gmail.com 

Breaking the rules

In my household/city/general area of existence, we have rules. Lots of rules. Some rules are good ones, like no playing in traffic on days that end in 'y'. But we have other rules too. Rules that are...well, to be frank, bad with a capital 'B'.

1. No Technology until 7:00. I still don't get this one. I never understand why I can't use the computer at 6:00 when I've finished all my chores and homework. every time I ask my mom why the rule is in place, she answers, without fail, "we've already had this conversation." I could probably accept it if she had a legitimate reason for the rule, but if it's unchangeable simply because my parents don't like to change rules, I'm against that.

2. No having your headphones on when no one is doing anything. Ok, the flaw in this one is quite obvious to me. If no one is doing anything, that seems the perfect time to isolate yourself from the world. But apparently not. I have to sort of just walk aimlessly around until I find something to occupy my time for a couple of minutes.


3. Ummm, I ran out of bad rules. didn't expect that to happen...
 

My Saturday schedule

This is a transcription of what I do on Saturday. That may sound a boring topic, but trust me. I know what I'm doing.

Saturday

1. 7:30--Awaken. I rise most mornings at 7:00, but not on Saturday. On Saturday I sleep in. 7:30. That's why they call me the "daredevil." After arousing from sleep, I generally lie blankly in bed for a little while until I become fully aware of my awakeness. Then I either turn on KNBR 680 sports radio, read a book, or listen to a podcast of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. (It's a great book/audiobook by Eliezer Yudkowsky-parody of the Harry Potter series.)

2. Around 8:15-8:30--Eat breakfast. I don't go out to breakfast very often, but instead eat things at home. I generally eat Joe's O's, from Trader Joes. They are AWESOME. Sometimes I have pancakes or square waffles. I always have a tall glass of milk. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

3. 8:30-5:00--Do whatever it is that my parents planned for me. Go to a friend's house. Have a friend over. Go to the mall. Sit at home all day. Go to some event or museum. Speak in public. Perform in public. Watch someone else speak or perform in public. The list goes on and on.

4: 5:00-6:30--Do chores / homework / boring stuff. My chores are unloading the dishwasher and watering the plants. I don't generally have homework over the weekends (in your face), but there is the odd report or math assignment (no complaints to the latter).

5. 6:30-9:00--Use the computer / watch TV / stare at the wall and drool. Some of my favorite games on the computer are Minecraft, Elephant Quest (on kongregate.com--look it up), and Portal. I also enjoy watching Mythbusters and Stormchasers on the Discovery channel, and Restaurant: Impossible of the Food Network.

That's it! is this similar to any of your schedules?

The few, the proud, the sane

It occurred to me recently that sanity is actually quite a rare and coveted commodity. If you look around at our community (or at least mine, in a small town just south of San Francisco), insanity has taken up a lasting residence here. Prop 8 passed a while ago, outlawing gay marriage. I myself am not gay, but I know people who are, and outlawing a certain type of marriage is Insanity. Crazy Crazy Crazy.

Look around your own community. I'm sure you can find insanity in all forms. Persecution. That annoying person ahead of you who's driving 20 mph in a 60mph zone. (If that applies to you right now, please turn off the phone and keep your eyes on the road.) The restaurant which uses canned food when it would be cheaper to make their own.

And there are the ones who are sane. To name a few, Albert Einstein, Al Gore, Abraham Lincoln, Eliezer Yudkowsky (look him up), and several others. If I were to inventory the sane people in this world, I'm guessing the number would be staggeringly low, Like around 5,000.

If you want to find out if you're sane, take the following quiz.

 

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

If you answered a on the first question, b on the second question, and b on the third question, you are sane. Probably.

3 fears I used to have

This is a follow-up to the previous post of "My five greatest fears". I hinted I would be doing this, but I could only think of three fears, not five. So this will be shorter than M5GF (I think you know what that stands for).

1. The light at the end of the hallway. At the end of the hallway there is a little box set on the wall that was part of the alarm system (it's no longer in use). The box has a red LED inside of a plastic window that lights up when it detects movement. Being young(er), I was quite afraid that that box was...I'm not sure really. Maybe I thought it was a robot. Or a Transformer. That remains a mystery to me.

2. The painting at the other end of the hallway. I don't know what it was about that hallway, but for me there were terrors at either end. At one end there was the light. And at the other was a painting. It was a painting of a black man, but at the time I thought it more of a monster of the evil depths. Or maybe a slightly sinister guitar. (It was NOT AT ALL in the form of a person. The only humanoid features are the eyes [actually just circles next to each other]. I don't have anything against black people. That is insanity. Actually, I am part black.) Wherever I went, it seemed that the demon/guitar was watching me. If you could see it, you would understand.

3. Moths. This may seem strange, but when I was little, I saw a moth fly close to my eyes. Those antennae with the weird protrusions just sent shivers down my spine. They still kind of creep me out. Anyone with me on this?

For those who wish it, the email is rainydaysat340@gmail.com.

My five greatest fears

(I realize that some readers [who have a very good taste in literature] may notice this topic in a book by Scott Adams. Full credit for the idea goes to him. Although I could claim that it's different because he wrote about TEN fears, not five. So really, I'm doing him a favor.)

1. Fire, earthquake, bombings, hurricanes, the Rapture, the Sun exploding, tidal waves, and all disasters which I have no control over. When I lie in bed at night and find myself excruciatingly bored but for some reason unable to go to sleep, I often find the slightest noise such as the incessant ticking of the clock to sound exactly like someone yelling at me about some sort of tidal wave/bombing/fire/earthquake that is occurring right this instant. This is most likely the most evil, annoying, and (although it hurts my pride) frightening thing that I have ever encountered.

2. Giant spiders. This is going to take some explaining. When I was young, around five or six years old, I suddenly developed an irrational fear of the "enormous daddy long-legs" sitting just beyond the shower curtain, waiting to pounce. noticing the action of smaller spiders when suddenly exposed to light, I always turned on the light for the bathroom AND the light for the shower. This, I reasoned, would scare the spider away. It developed into a bad habit, a habit I carry to this day.

3. My cat. One night a while back, I got up to refill my water bottle and go to the bathroom (the two were probably linked somehow), I tripped over a huge furry lump and had several heart attacks and a stroke before I realized that it was just my cat, Ginger. Ginger was quite thin when we got her from the shelter, but now she is pushing the size of the Chrysler Building (hyperbole). Ever since, I open the door very slowly at night to make sure she isn't waiting right outside. I also spend the minimum amount of time in the 2-and-a-half-foot stretch between my bedroom and the bathroom. That requires me cutting down on my time worrying about giant spiders.

4. Norovirus. This is time-specific since it is a epidemic at my school which cannot last forever. But at the moment, half the school is out with a extremely violent stomach flu, or as the cautionary fliers say, 'Norovirus'. If you ask me, that makes it sound a lot worse. Like it's not just a stomach bug, but a stomach bug that steals your possessions, eats all your food, replaces you brain and vital organs with clever play-doh models, and scrambles your auto-dial list. I am very lucky not to have been infected yet, and I think that the virus is finally coming to pass. But you never know...

5. Running out of books. Books are basically 50% of my entire life. I live for books. If I ran out of books, 50% of my life would be over. I'd trip over a rock and bleed to death. I have so many books that I recently moved several boxes of books into the garage and I still have books overflowing out of the closets on the floor. I have read at least 80% of them. The others are either books I started and didn't like (15%) , the 0.01% that are books that I have overlooked, and the rest are invisible or utterly and completely destroyed. At some point I'm going to run out of viable books. But by that point I hope to be either a) able to write my own books or b) dead.

That covers it. Another blog post, maybe the next one, will be about five fears I used to have. Lord knows that will be interesting.    

X, Y, Z, and thensome

First off, don’t take this post the wrong way. Math is one of my favorite subjects and I love doing it. But I just think that there are some things that could be improved or added. Sometimes I just have these…epiphanies. And I thought I would write about them. Sometimes I think about long division and think, there must be another way. So I decided that we should just invent a sort of shorthand for all those bothersome, messy symbols. So instead of: 5790÷234 You get: ∀∈ Ehhhhhh, it’s complicated. Just forget I said anything. Another thing is that some new numbers should be added. Like common fractions should have their own symbols. Like 5/6 could be ð, 3/5 could be º, and 1/2 could be Ħ. I think this could improve messiness (that’s a pet peeve of mine) and the symbols could be manipulated to become ratios or percents. Final thing: I want to combine algebra and calculus to make…wait for it… ALCULUS! It could be a 3-year course from high school senior to college sophomore. Imagine these two wonderful sequences combined. (1+x)^n=1+nx/1!+(n(n-1) x^2)/2!+⋯ f(x)=a_0+∑_(n=1)^∞▒(a_n cos⁡〖nπx/L〗+b_n sin⁡〖nπx/L〗 ) Goosebumps. Just imagine what I could do with combinatorics… (P.S. these equations don't show up very well on the blog)

Dilbert

(This was written on my kindle, so please excuse any spelling errors) Dilbert is the name and main character of one of my favorite comic strips. Dilbert is an 'underling' of the PHB, or ppointy haired boss in a large corporate company. He works on fail-filled projects with his coworkers, Wally and Alice. Wally is a decided and experienced work-avoider, having turned it into something of an art form. Alice is a highly trained and talented engineer (Dilbert & co.'s profession) who is constantly being under-appreciated and antagonized by the PHB. And then there's Dilbert's faithful dog Dogbert, whose metaphors and mightier-than-thou spiel add crazieness to Dilbert's personal life. There's Catbert, the evil director of human resources, who strives to create a horrible environment for all employees. Finally, there's Ratbert. The rat in Dilbert's house who won't go away and just wants to be a part of the family. I think that covers everything. BOCTAOE. (Any true Scott Adams fan will know that term. BOCTAOE. Occam's razor. Goodbye.)

The end of the world (and why I don't care)

If you ask me, the end of the world is overrated. It doesn't matter to me if the world ends by the hand of God, tidal wave, hurricane, global warming, or attack by a giant spaghetti monster. Oh, and aliens. Did I mention the aliens? Or better yet! A combination!

It doesn't bother me that the world is probably going to end by 2050. I'm assuming that technology will race ahead to the level where time machines come with the warranties on kid's toys. Then, I can go to back to 2012 and rewrite this blog post. As a test, I have devised this: If there is pi to 30 decimal places on the next line, then I have been back without myself knowing to today and written this without me knowing. The me right now, I mean.

3.141592653589793238462643383279

Ummmm, okay, so that worked. Didn't expect that to happen. Wait, am I writing this or am I writing this? I mean the me whose actually me from the time that I didn't come from...agh! You get the idea.

...Was that me?

The cake is a lie-but I wish it weren't

You’ve probably heard the quote, “the cake is lie” from the video game Portal. Incidentally, that is one of my favorite games, with Minecraft, Portal 2, and Mari0 (that’s Mario with a portal gun, a device which I won’t explain now). It is based on the false promise of cake from a sadistic robot called GLaDOS if you finish the tests which will more than likely kill you. That is funny on so many levels.

For one, cake is not an adequate reward for completing life-threatening tests. You eventually learn that the recorded (supposedly) robotic messages from speakers were originally designed for orphans whose self-esteem and expectations were intentionally lowered through insulting videos about their “lack of parents”. I guess that cake would be a good enough incentive for them.

For two, the producers obviously designed this quote so that it stuck in your head like gum on a steel trash can. It is so catchy that it has been on t-shirts, the backs of books declaring nerd supremacy, radio shows, everywhere. Seriously.

For three, the producers actually made it possible through the developer’s console to input a code (noclip) that allows you to fly through walls to the surface, or even to a chamber where you can find cake. It is possible to get to the cake room and the surface without cheats through a glitch in a portalable surface.

 I would love to be the story artist who came up with that one. Not just because he’s probably rolling in cash, but because it would give something to talk about at parties.

Am I crazy, or am I just cake-deprived? Is there a difference?

Lacrosse

Lacrosse is a sport that, if you’ve never heard of it, involves throwing rubber balls using aluminum poles with baskets on the ends. The baskets are endlessly customizable, which makes it attractive for fashionistas. Actually, the women’s side of the sport is just as recognized as the men’s, if not more.

I play goalie most of the time, being the only player on our 14-person team who has any training. By the way, you need 10 players on the field at a time-3 attack (yes, it’s actually called that), three defense, three middies, and a goalie. When I’m not playing goalie, I’m mostly playing middie.

This is my first season of lacrosse, and my mom was skeptical about signing me up after she realized the lacrosse was a full-contact sport, including stick-to-body and body-to-body. In fact, we are encouraged to hit (whack, slam) the other team in order to make them drop the ball, push them out of bounds, or just annoy them. In fact, we recently learned about the coma slide, a move that our coaches said, and I quote, “involves putting the player with the ball in a coma”.

How are you feeling about sending your kid/going to lacrosse camp now?

life without puctuation

what if language had no punctuation whatsoever it would be really confusing dont you think i have had problems with remembering to capitalize letters because i type so fast some of my teachers have noted this especially my 6th and 7th grade teachers and sometimes my dad makes me capitalize stuff so this is a relief to not have to do any capitalization this is an open ended post comment about the things in punctuation that drive you nuts

ps if my teachers get ahold of this please tell me immediatley so that i can flee country i can speak a little latin and spanish

ola means hello

donde esta means where is

videre mallus bestina means i see a horrible beast do you think insulting people will help me survive cause i dont

Annoying things at night

        Many things annoy me at night. I just have these pet peeves that I can never deal with. Here are a few:

        The light at the end of the hallway. At the end of my house’s hallway there is a little box that appears to do absolutely nothing except make a little red light. At night, that light can scare the bejabbers out of you. I used to be terrified of it.

        The temperature of the pillow. The pillow I use is engineered (or at least I like to think so) so that It’s always to warm on one side and to cold on the other. Why can’t someone just invent pillows that have a little remote that makes the pillow warm or cool?

        Flushing the toilet. This one causes a huge dilemma. Our toilet flushes fairly loudly. So when I occasionally make a nighttime jaunt to the loo, I find myself trying to figure out how many people I would wake up in the process. Can they really hear it through 2 doors and a hallway? If they can, is it loud enough to wake them up? Is it appropriate to not flush the toilet and then try to explain myself to my parents the next morning? By this point I’m just not flushing it and promising myself I’ll be in the bathroom first tomorrow. 514^th time lucky, you think?

        Running out of water. I always sleep with a water bottle next to my bed. But when I drink some, I somehow always end up drinking half of it. I also get an uncontrollable urge to drink some when I fill up my bottle right before bed. This usually causes it to be empty by midnight. Usually I’m asleep through the night. But sometimes I get thirsty in the middle of the night, but I don’t want to get up to fill my bottle. Sometimes I suck it up and do it, but most of the time I just lie there in bed, hoping that I won’t die of thirst by morning. It’s not a good feeling, let me tell you.

        This may have been funny, but beware. One of these things will probably start happening to you approximately…now!