Wrapped in an Enigma

Bender bender

2006-01-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

Looks like they got the go-ahead for 4 Futurama movies. It should definitely be interesting. I'm not sure if I'll like movies better than shows.

Why I'm not registered with political parties

2006-01-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

It's true, they're both full of crap. Now there is a study to prove it. My favorite quote:

We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning

My second favorite quote:

None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged

Coming together

2006-01-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

It's always interesting to me when several things in my life seem to follow similar themes.

I'm currently reading this book that Grant lent me. It is about the history of reconnaissance. It talks about balloons that were used during the civil war to photograph troop positions, and moves on to planes and satellites. Overall, it's pretty cool. It really makes you think about what politicians are saying and what they might know. I no longer trust any of them.

Anyway, this morning I got an email from the coworker who was in charge of building Stubby, the 3/4 scale Patriot missile that we have now launched twice. He is starting up a new project to try to launch a rocket with the goal of taking video of Earth from space. There are quite a few difficult parts to this project, including getting a nearly 20 ft rocket to go Mach 4-5 and coming up with a telemetry system to send down real-time video from the rocket. I promised myself after building Stubby that I wouldn't work on another big rocket project unless it is really cool. I think sending a payload to space and taking video of Earth really does meet that criteria.

The spec sheets are currently pretty vague. There will be 2 rockets built. The first one will be testing the telemetry system and home-made solid rocket motors, and the second will be the real deal. It looks like rocket 1 will be shooting for a 50,000 ft ceiling, and rocket 2 will be going for 150 km.

This morning I was reading Ron's post about what makes a person a nerd. I am a nerd because I am building this rocket. I think nerds are people who use knowledge to do something not because it is necessary, but because it is fun. Greg is a car nerd. Ron is an electronics nerd. I am a rocket nerd.

Open mouth, insert foot

2006-01-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

"It's extreme disbelief, from the Polamalu interception reversal to Jerome's fumble, everything seemed to be lined up in our favor. I guess the Lord forgot about the football team."

That from Mike Vanderjagt. If there's one thing I hate about atheletes, it's their insistence that God plays favorites in competition.

If I were God, I would have let the thing play out exactly like it did. After listening to Vanderjagt call out Manning after the playoff loss last year, I would wait until I could make Vanderjagt the goat. Why? Because I would be the God of Irony.

Now I really believe it.

2006-01-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

I didn't really think it could be true. I do not live in the best country in the world. The best country in the world wouldn't put Scrubs on hiatus while looking for the next Friends.

I thought it was odd when I could watch Scrubs in New Zealand, but not here. Putting Scrubs Season 3 on sale in the UK and Australia in Febuary is just plain cruel. They haven't even given us a release date here.

Will somebody please shut him up?

2005-12-16T13:36:00.000-07:00

Seriously, haven't we heard enough from TO. The poor guy feels used. He claims Philly used him to win a couple games. Then when the Super Bowl came, they didn't need him anymore.

Now let's check into reality land. By his definition, I'm being used. The only reason I get a paycheck, is so my company can make money. Over in the NFL, players get paid so teams can win games. The end result is the team can make money.

Also in reality land, have you ever heard a team say, "Well, since x got hurt, we have no chance of winning this week." Would you want a player on your team who didn't think they could win? Of course not. So of course McNabb said they could win the Super Bowl without TO. He didn't think TO was going to play. He would be labeled a defeatest if he had said they were going to loose without TO.

There is only one good thing that has happened out of this whole TO mess. Donovan McNabb has shown that he is a player of true class. Through all of TO's rants, he has taken the high road every time. When he has addressed the media about the situation, he has used more self control than I'll ever have to not take cheap shots at TO.

I guess that's how you know true class. They don't even bother to address the classless.

I'm the sucker

2005-12-15T14:54:00.000-07:00

who went to college. This recent survey says all I really needed to do was learn to read.

Adults with ability to perform challenging and complex reading tasks made an average yearly salary of $50,700 in 2003. That is $28,000 more than those who lacked basic skills.

Start saving those miles

2005-12-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

If you get an Amex card you can redeem your reward points for Virgin Atlantic miles. If you amass 2 million miles, you can get a suborbital trip from Virgin Galactic. I figure I should be able to do that in 10-20 years. I wonder how much a first class ticket runs? Would you get complimentary weightless alcohol with that?

Truth or Consequences?

2005-12-13T08:26:00.000-07:00

What Consequences?

Looks like Governor Richardson is getting in the news again by signing a deal with Richard Branson to build the first commercial spaceport in New Mexico. I can't say this is that exciting to me. Basically, New Mexico is going to fork out $250 million to build this thing. Virgin Galactic then has a lease that will begin by paying $1 million per year for the first 5 years, and then increase to pay off the initial amount in subsequent years. These seems like a good deal of corporate welfare to me. If Branson has already signed up 100 people who have paid the entire $200,000 cost upfront, and another 38,000 people have put down a deposit, I think he should be able to cover a little more of the upfront cost of building a spaceport.

All in all, I think the spaceport is something better funded by venture capitalists, not the state of New Mexico.

This website is trying to make a connection between Roswell and the new spaceport. Someone should tell then that Roswell is over 200 miles from the proposed spaceport. That's something like the width of England.

On the bright side, maybe New Mexico can be know as the home of spaceflight, as opposed to the DWI capital of the world.

Yeah, but have you ever been in an annual report?

2005-12-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

Damn it, he has been. See page 13 (pdf).

By the way, if you look at many stocks, you will probably see some with earnings growth like Ixia's, but you won't see many that have margin growth like them.

More New Zealand Pictures

2005-12-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

These aren't mine, but it's always interesting to see what other people take picures of. They even did the Routeburn track, for which I have a set. I think the Routeburn was the best time I had on the trip, and some of the pictures really are spectacular.

Finished, kind of

2005-12-05T10:58:00.000-07:00

All the pictures from the trip have been posted. Feel free to look through them and comment as you see fit. They have been divided into sets by the rough proximity of where they were taken. They all have some tags, but I haven't finished populating the tags. When I'm finished they should all be tagged by location, date, and content. I will also try to add some description to some of them, depending on how motivated I am. If you really like pictures, you can order prints of them through Flickr, they run 15 cents for a 4x6 plus shipping.

Oh yeah

2005-12-02T22:10:00.000-07:00

As I was perusing Amazon this evening, I noticed they were selling the two seasons of Arrested Development for $42...total. And while I was checking out, they offered me two free months of Amazon Prime. And it's a Friday. It's hard to beat that.

"We want to give you a leadership award"

2005-12-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

So a couple days ago, I got a phone message from a representative of Congressman Tom Reynolds (R-NY) on behalf of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Tom wanted to give me some kind of leadership award. Since the last time I did anything remotely considered to be leadership was when I was a captain of Caltech's soccer team, I was a little bit skeptical.

So when I called back, I was relieved to find out that being a leader in business means little more than starting a corporation. It's not like QVI has been that successful. Sure, we own a rental property, but we don't even have any employees. Does that mean I should be given some kind of "Honorary Chairmen" status in a small business group? It does if I'm willing to fork out $500 to the Republican National Congressional Committee.

So as appealing as going to the President's Dinner is, I don't think I can use up the corporate profits this year on plane tickets.

Here's a picture from the botanical gardens in Christchurch:

Indigestion

2005-12-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to think Flickr wasn't the best way to go with the New Zealand pictures. I've had nothing but problems since I started using the Flickr Uploadr. I think the problem is that Flickr isn't meant to deal with the amount and size of pictures I'm trying to upload. So why did they even offer a service with 2GB per month upload limit if they can't handle it? It appears that Uploadr has a problem with large amounts of data. I can pretty regularly get 12-picture uploads, but beyond that it sometimes doesn't upload them all. When it doesn't upload them all, it doesn't put them in the set I want them in. It also seems to randomly decide what order to upload them in, so I have to go through individually to see which ones it decided not to upload. Oh, well. Just don't expect to see all the pictures too soon.

Here's the plan...

2005-11-29T12:11:00.000-07:00

now that we're back. I'm going to try to upload the pictures first, and then do a day-by-day, linked photo-rich journal of the trip. So far the pictures have turned out really well. For reference, I used the Nikon D50 Camera with the pictured lens as well as this lens. As you can see from this picture, even an idiot like me can take some great pictures with it. The final trip picture count is 1035. I'm not sure how many I'm going to upload, but it will be at least several hundred.

If I had to use one word

2005-11-18T14:21:00.000-07:00

to describe the food here, it would be "stacked". Luckily, I have a blog, and can use as many words as I want. The seem to like to stack all the food on top of itself. This morning, I had scrambled eggs with bacon, potatoes, and toast. The put the toast on the bottom, followed by the potatoes, bacon, and eggs. It seems like all the food is made like in a fancy restaurant. It is all very visually pleasing. In addition, the portions are huge. Marie and I have been ordering from the "light meal" sections of the menu, instead of the mains because they are so huge. By the way, the bacon is huge. It is much larger than the mere slices back in the US.

A note for Ron: it seems that every restaurant we go to is looking to hire. If you decide to go into the culinary world, you should consider NZ. Unfortunately, the real estate is not cheap, and the interest rates are around 8-9%

Quick notes

2005-11-16T19:57:00.000-07:00

It rains a lot here. We have been here 4 days, it has rained all 4.

The food is pretty good. A lot of meat, a lot of potatoes.

The beer is good. More later.

"It feels like I'm driving an automatic car"

2005-11-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

That was Marie's comment while I was driving the car from the rental facility to the hotel in Christchurch. It's really a pretty scary thing to drive on the wrong side of the road. It's much like when you first learned to drive. I think a big part of the reason driving gets so much easier after practice is that you relegate some processes to subconcience. You know, things like your blinker and driving in the middle of the road. When the move the blinker to the other side of the steering column (and the steering column to the other side of the car), you have to think about those things consciencely again. I think we are finally getting used to it.

In other news, if you go to New Zealand, don't expect anything to be on time. You can also assume that you will not be able to eat breakfast until after 8am. There seems to be little correlation between the posted and actual distances between towns.

For those of you with maps, we flew into Aukland on the North Island, then on to Christchurch (you pronounce "Christ" like you would in "Christmas"). We went through the botanical gardens there and tried to overcome jet lag. We then drove to Arthur's pass, which turned out to have a population of around 100. Had we read the entry in our New Zealand book that said Arthur's Pass not only attracts bad weather, it creates it, we might have just passed on through.

We are now in a small town called Hokitika on our way to Franz Joseph Glacier for a few days.

New pictures up

2005-11-09T16:38:00.000-07:00

Featuring dogs, sunrises, sunsets, and deer.

Fantasy football?

2005-11-07T11:13:00.000-07:00

You mean Nightmare Football. LaDainian Tomlinson had 4 more TDs than my entire team. I think Ty Law broke his ankles and lost his jock and shoes on that TD reception. It was such a great juke that I fell off the sofa. The dogs were then flagged for unnecessary roughness for jumping on the pile and disqualified for biting the head.

Please make the movie

2005-11-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

With all the garbage they put on TV today, they really should make a movie out of this. Sure the FCC wouldn't like it, but isn't that really the point. You know the ratings in the male 28-45 demographic would be astronomical.

In case you missed it

2005-11-07T08:28:00.000-07:00

You can listen to the Family Guy FCC song here.

Awesome

2005-11-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

I'm the #1 hit on Google blog search for Amazon 1969. Someone even linked to my blog post.

Where was this when I had to do book reports?

2005-11-04T14:14:00.000-07:00

Google Print has been getting a lot of bad press due to some copyright infringement issues. I ignored it for a while thinking it would be pretty useless without copyrighted books. As it turns out, it has the copyrighted books, but you can't just go through and read them all. However, the entire text of books is searchable. So if you are curious about the context of fleur-de-lis in The Three Musketeers you can do a quick search. Now that I'm not writing any book reports, it probably won't be that usefull for me. In addition, it has the capability of easily proving me wrong when I make false statements about books I've read.

Y2K?

2005-11-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

Many people were worried about what computers might do at the end of time. I find it much more interesting to see when they think the beginning of time is. For the satellites I used to work on, t = 0 was Jan 1, 2000. Days before that were negative. For Amazon, it appears that Dec 31, 1969 is the beginning of time. It also corresponds to the release date of Twin Peaks, Season 2. I expect Ron and Grant to jump in thier time machines to pick up a copy. Perhaps they can come by my house and play it while I'm trying to sleep. Stranger things have happened.

It didn't know Halloween was today

2005-10-31T10:24:00.000-07:00

That's probably why one of (link not save for arachnophobes) these sexy insects appeared in my garage yesterday. It was a little freaky. Not because it was in my garage, but because it was right next to the small confined place where I've been cutting my teeth as a plumber. Needless to say, the spider didn't make it to Halloween. It is now a rather large spot on the garage floor.

For those of you who haven't made the acquaintance, the black widow can be deadly. They can be identified by the large black abdomin with a red hourglass shape on the belly side. If you see one, I highly recommend introducing it to the bottom of your shoe.

Where is the personal responsibility?

2005-10-26T11:45:00.000-06:00

I give Jeb Bush some credit for taking some responsibility, as well as telling people they should have been able to get 3 days of food and water BEFORE the hurrican hit. However, this is ridiculous. Is it really that bad for 1 relief site out of 11 in Miami-Dade county to run out of supplies in a day? Is it horrible that cell phone coverage is spotty? People definitely had things better 30 years ago when there were no cell phones. "This is like the third world", someone says after she had to wait several hours to get gas. Does she have any idea what the third world is like?

Do yourselves a favor. Go out and by a few gallons of bottled water. Make sure you have enough food to last a few days. Is that really that hard? These people knew for a week that a hurricane was coming, and weren't ready at all.

As I read a couple more articles, I realize that depending on what you read, you get drastically different stories. In the AP story linked above, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez isn't at all happy with the relief effort. In this Reuters story (page 2) he says, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you need water, just turn your faucet on."

Having solved all of humanities problems...

2005-10-26T07:22:00.000-06:00

... Rome is working on fixing life for goldfish. Did you know leaving them in bowls can make them blind?

I'm all for imprisoning people for abandoning animals, and I think docking tails is just plain mean. At some point they are just going too far. They have a 500 Euro fine for people who don't walk thier dogs 3 times a day.

Anyway, my favorite sentence is:

"Rome stands out for recognizing that fish are interesting individuals who deserve our respect and compassion every bit as much as dogs and cats and other animals," said Karin Robertson, with PETA's "Fish Empathy Project".

They have a "Fish Empathy Project". If they really want to empathize with fish, maybe they should try swimming underwater without coming up for air.

Trinidad and Tobago

2005-10-21T15:29:00.000-06:00

You have all heard of them. Words that seem to need each other. Trinidad and Tobago, delusions of grandeur...the list goes on and on. So here's one that has become that way, but shouldn't have. "It's like deja vu all over again." Seriously, when was the last time you heard "deja vu" without "all over again". I'm tired of it. I've had enough. Please make it stop.

Voter fraud

2005-10-20T10:54:00.000-06:00

This has been a huge issue in New Mexico, where ACORN workers have been known to throw away voter registration papers for Republicans. Megan McCardle has a good post on how when we let dead people vote, we are disenfranchising someone else. So the solution is that we want to put into place voter fraud prevention that will disenfranchise fewer people than it stops.

Wait for it...

2005-10-18T08:02:00.000-06:00

Coming to an NBA game now...Ghetto suits. Players wearing suits with pants around their knees. You know its coming.

Up next, a retro look not seen since the 90s...a belt.

It would be like watching a train wreck

2005-10-08T16:25:00.000-06:00

Imagine a man so tied up in the Red Sox that he made a career out of documenting his pain. He writes a book and goes on a book signing tour for publicity...during the playoffs. He happens to end up in Chicago for a book signing DURING game two of the Red Sox-White Sox series. There he is, in ESPNZone, surrounded by White Sox fans, watching the game and signing his book. Then the Red Sox choke. I'm pretty sure they could have put that on pay-per-view and made a killing.

It really is fun to laugh at other people's pain.

And the winner is

2005-10-08T15:55:00.000-06:00

I don't know. It seems that while DARPA makes some really complicated things, they can't seem to get a webpage right. It looks like Stanford and the two Red Teams have completed the Grand Challenge, but thier times didn't stop when they finished. There are three other bots still going, but at paces that probably won't finish in the allotted 10 hours. The Caltech team looks to have finished 21st, among a group of 6 teams that finished fairly close together.

I give DARPA a lot of credit on this. The path this year looks much more difficult than last year. There are places where there is two-way robot traffic, bridges, cattle guards, tunnels, and a narrow, winding path complete with steep dropoff. They knew that the teams would be much better after 18 more months of development, so they tried to make the course that much harder. A total of 22 (of the 26) finalists made it farther than the best team did last time.

Gentlemen, start your robots

2005-10-06T08:04:00.000-06:00

Its almost time for Grand Challenge 2005. You might remember 18 months ago when a bunch of autonomous vehicles tried to drive themselves from in the California desert. They're back at it again, and they are much better this year. The Caltech team has retired Bob in favor of Alice. You can watch the webcast Saturday, October 8.

It's like Einstein telling you you're a great scientist

2005-10-06T07:54:00.000-06:00

Marie sent me this review of Serenity by Orson Scott Card.

He brings up an interesting point about the die-hards that saw the movie six months ago--no one told. I won't tell either. Right now Grant's walking around like Jesus. His cross is the secret of the movie that he can't talk to people about. So please watch the movie so he can stop bugging me about it.

Almost famous

2005-10-03T10:40:00.000-06:00

My uncle made the cover of my hometown newspaper. He looks pretty scary until you realize he's like 5'4".

Lloyd sucks!

2005-10-01T10:07:00.000-06:00

But at least they have put something in their Wikipedia entry for the Caltech House System.

I expect Ron to remedy the situation.

Serenity Review

2005-09-29T12:55:00.000-06:00

No spoilers here.

I might be biased because I really liked Firefly, but the movie was great. I never felt bored, and I was always entertained.

As Grant said, they definitely left it open for a sequel. In fact, most of the cast has signed on for two more movies if this one goes over well.

I really want to see more, so go see the movie.

You can call me Trump

2005-09-28T12:01:00.000-06:00

Marie and I have finally jumped into real estate investment. Our offer for this place was just accepted. Somehow it was the best of the 9 they received, and we even made it through the lightning round unscathed. I chalk up our win to shrewd thinking and complete inexperience.

Technically, the place will be owned and managed by our shady investment company named Quo Vadimus Investments, LLC. We are hoping to have our first bored meeting in a few weeks, where I hope to be conferred the title "Supreme Commander". If anyone is bored enough, you can work on a corporate logo for us.

I know...

2005-09-25T12:30:00.000-06:00

... it's about time.

I finally got enough motivation to create a blog. You might ask: what would create that motivation? Is it keeping in touch with friends? Something I feel really needs to be talked about?

Nope, it is so I can see a movie for free.

Grant made me watch Firefly this summer, and has now been talking incessantly about the movie based on it called Serenity. Synopsis:

Joss Whedon, the Oscar® - and Emmy - nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE, ANGEL and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film centers around Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the losing side) of a galactic civil war, who now ekes out a living pulling off small crimes and transport-for-hire aboard his ship, Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew who are the closest thing he has left to family –squabbling, insubordinate and undyingly loyal.

I have to say, the show was really good. So here is the website. Go see the trailer. I will post some type of review of the movie after I see it on Wednesday.