Timmerov's Blog
poker tax
poker is a game played for money. when you're sitting at the table and you don't know who the mark is, you're it. taxation is a game played for money. if you don't know who the mark is, you're it.
scams
i know a guy who picked an optometrist at random from the phone book. paid like $600 for an exam and a pair of contact lenses. dude you could have gotten contact lenses for $80 at this other place. but he absolutely refused to believe he'd been screwed. he argued his contacts were much better. (they weren't.) he gets multiple appointments. (which he has to pay for.) his arguments were incredible in their absurdity. how come people can't just say, ouch i got screwed? hang their head, and learn from their mistake? they can't. this is what allows scams to work time after time. people aren't willing to admit, even just to themselves, that they've been boned. and they get fleeced over and over.
phony transcripts
yeah i know rush limbaugh's phony soldiers comment is old news by now. i really try to ignore people like him. i sympathize though. i don't always say exactly what i mean. i think most people fall into this category. but you clarify what you meant. you don't say X then insist you said Y. which is what you meant. especially not when you were recorded on tape saying X. you look like a lying sack of shit. even if you sold a nasty letter from congress for $2.1 million and gave $4.2 million to your own charity for children whose parents are dead because you thought sending them to war would be a good idea.
division
divide and conquer. that's what i always say. we are a nation divided, politically, religiously, intellectually, racially, and economically. the white house and congress have such abysmally low popularity numbers because everything they do divides us more. choose us or them. we're ripe to be conquered. pray the conquerers come from within. or be prepared to learn chinese russian arabic.
my crow's aft
the boys and i were working on phonics the other day. and we noticed that microsoft vaguely sounds like my crow's aft. the largest software company in the world is named after a bird's behind. works for me. given all the shit they produce. and bill gates is the head bird butt. which just gives me the giggles. more so than calling him the big bird butt.
new patents 2
i'm working on a great new invention. a thneed is what everyone needs. i try to keep it secret. but microsoft hears about it. and they blow a gazzillion dollars and get their thneed done before i do. i'm screwed. they own the patent. scenario #2. let's say apple hears about my cool new thneed and they make an i-thneed. because an i-thneed is what everyone needs. i take them to court. they're clearly infringing. so they owe me whatever i can convice the judge my patent is worth. apple's legal team blitzes the court. and convinces them that apple could have made equivalent zneeds for much less development cost. and the thneed is really a tiny fraction of the whole product package that apple's selling. so i'm screwed again. it doesn't matter that apple botched the marketing of this product and i could have made a ton more money selling it on my own. not relevant. i get a sliver. maybe even enough to pay my lawyer. thank you patent reform.
new patents
new patent rules go into effect in a week. the patent system has been around for hundreds of years. and now all of a sudden it's a whole new game. we will be first-to-invent instead of first-to-file. just like every other country in the world. currently, the little guy can force the big guy to stop selling an infringing product. the big fish buy up the little fish. big fish cross-license their patents with each other. but next week the stroke of a pen has made everything differnt. goliath can infringe at will and let a judge decide the value of david's patent. the value of innovation goes down the tubes. i'm all for refining the patent system. it's not perfect. but these things need to be done slowly so industries have time to adjust. and policy makers have time to catch the unforeseen consequences of their changes. sigh.
climate change
religion and climate change are like blind men examining an elephant. the atheists are facing away from the elephant saying there's nothing here. some have found a leg and say it's getting warmer because of what we're doing. others have found a trunk and say it's gonna get colder because we're approaching another maunder minimum. others found the tail and said it's getting warmer but it's not our fault. okay. so it's not the best metaphor in the world. do better in your blog. i'll link to it.
an illogical truth
i didn't like gore's movie. in math/science class it's not good enough to get the right answer. you have to show your work. and your work has to be correct. most of al gore's facts are true. watch it very carefully if you don't believe me. however the facts are presented in a way that leads the audience to draw a particular conclusion that isn't supported by the given data. sneaky politician double speak trick. it doesn't matter that the conclusion is correct. the work is garbage. fail. it's actually a bit more complicated. and disheartening. he starts with good assumptions ie we're changing the climate. and draws garbage conclusions ie all we have to do is conserve and be more efficient. double fail.
nobel gore
i think it reflects very poorly on the world when the "best" candidate for the nobel peace prize is a guy and a group who aren't specifically dedicated to promoting world peace. or even to regional peace. or maybe it just reflects poorly on the nobel committee that does the picking. or maybe it's both.
told ya so
according to numbers from the irs the richest 1% earned 21 percent of all income in 2005. up from 19 percent in 2004. it was due to a surge on wallstreet. right. tax cuts for the rich had nothing to do with it. nothing to see here. move along. move along. looking at it another way... last year 99 people gave me $120 dollars each. 25 of them voted for bush and 50 didn't vote at all. thanks suckers! to the others i say, i'm so sorry. no you can't have it back. [btw- i'm at the low end of the top 1%. others got $1200 to $12k from their 99 suckers.]
interviews
we make our interview candidates write code. simple stuff. like strlen and atoi. and we have standard solutions. and then we have my solutions. for example my strlen uses 25 characters between the curly brackets. int strlen(const char *s){return*s?1+strlen(s+1):0;} can anyone do it in fewer characters? my atoi checks for null pointers, leading white space, leading + and -, divides the digit string in half, recurses on each half, and combines them while checking for overflow, to return the right answer. i didn't do each part in its own thread but i thought about it.
contrast
compare and contrast ww2, iraq1&2, and the cold war. nazi germany's military buildup went unchecked and uncountered. and boy oh boy did that mistake come back to haunt us. the soviet union having learned the lesson matched the u.s. build up missile for missile. at least until it helped bankrupt their corruption prone government. neither super power could step too far out of line without risking annihilation by the other. in iraq1, bush1 obliterated the would-be hitler's ability to conquer his neighbors. iraq2 is what might have happened if we had pre-emptively invaded germany to keep them out of poland. woo hoo! we stopped the second coming of hitler. well, it stretches the imagination a bit to think he actually could have pulled a hitler. but whatever. i understand the need to justify sending our sons into a meat grinder.
detergent 2
apparently someone at the detergent company reads my blog. i should be flattered. i praised the design of the spout that automagically catches the dribbles and drobbles them back into the bottle. at the same time i flamed them for putting the spout on backwards. so imagine my excitement when a newly re-designed bottle appeared in my garage. i turned it so the label was facing me. and grabbed it with my pouring hand. the comfy hand grip scored well. then i unscrewed the top. yay! the fucking spout is no longer bass-ackwards. hooray for bloggers! changing the world one spout at a time.
patents
gotta love the patent office. i suspect the patent office workers get paid by the number of patents they approve. actually that's a fine way to pay them. however, when one of these
gems comes along they should be docked double what they were paid for it. heck, they should pay the observant individual that first challenged it. i'm gonna be so rich.
cake
garrett got a pirate ship for a birthday cake this year. we baked three chocolate cakes in bread pans and carved them up so they stacked like legos and looked somewhat like a pirate ship. dark brown frosting on the sides. light tan frosting for the deck. orange m&m's for the railing. yellow m&m's for port holes. the beautiful and talented alisa made sails out of black and white construction paper. we used skewers for masts. and an egg carton for the crow's nest. the final touch was a half dozen lego pirates. aaarrgh! it was a huge hit.
government
judge a government by the way it treats its people during wartime. if you keep your civil rights during wartime then be happy. your government is run by the good guys. if you lose your civil rights then your government is run by neo fascist nazis covered in their own white wash.
bad cat
that bad cat of ours knows she's only allowed on the bed on top of the comforter. she is definitely not allowed on the sheets under the covers. which is where i discovered her one blurry-eyed morning. i gave her a verbal warning. she ignored me. i hissed at her. still no affect. finally i got real mad and shooshed alisa's pajamas right onto the floor. that'll teach em.
cat trick
we used to have a kitty door so katz could go in and out whenever she wanted. then a local raccoon discovered it could come in and eat katz's cat food whenever it wanted. so the kitty door went. now we have to let katz out whenever she wants. i trained her that the sliding door opens suddenly and closes quickly. and if she doesn't instantly zoom through that door at light speed it'll squish her. so one day the sliding screen door was shut. when katz's whiskers touched that screen door her front end came to an absolute and abrupt halt. the ass end of the cat continued moving forward until the cat was 3 cms thick and looked like a fuzzy black pancake. then katz went all terminator 2. the front end of the cat suddenly appeared where the back end of the cat was a split second ago. and katz took off in the opposite direction at light speed before the door could squish her. now katz finds someone else to open her door.
lumberjokes
had a crazy dream the other night where the future is kinda hard on everyone. folks looking for work. dreamed about an unemployment office in the distant future. name? global warming. skills? changing climates. references? the amazon rainforest. sir, the amazon's a desert. it is now.
haircut
garrett and i went for haircuts. there were two cutters available. so we got cut at the same time. he was in the chair next to mine and was being extraordinarily cute. my stylist kept making comments to him and about him to me. she kept asking me the same small talk questions. it was clear she wasn't really paying attention to what she was supposed to be doing. my hair got shorter and shorter. ah well. it'll grow back.
bush iran
many folks were pretty pissed we'd let ahmacrazyguy speak in this country. well. that's what that whole first amendment thing is all about. it's not there to protect popular speech. it's there to protect unpopular speech. like larry flint's hustler magazine with its pink shots. and ahmacrazyguy's we got no homos here. we were pretty rude to him. about which i have mixed feelings. what i'd like to see is bush speak in iran. won't happen though. bush fears hecklers to the point he's willing to violate their civil rights so he doesn't have to face them. imagine him in front of a truly hostile audience.
cement mixers
when i was in middle school i thought it was cool to write my name in such a way that it could be read right side up as well as up side down. i was reminded of this today when i saw a cement mixer. they had their name and logo printed on the side of the mixer. from one side it looked great right side up. but from the other side it looked really stupid upside down. garrett was home today with atypical chicken pox. the kind you get after you have your vaccinations. so we spent some time figuring out how to make upside downable words. i figure someone could make a fortune designing logos for companies to put on cement trucks. i'm gonna be so rich.
obviousity 2
apparently, it's not obvious to everyone that you can't spread democracy at the end of a gun. i'm just really baffled as to why not. [i originally wrote this up as a flame. but changed my mind.] perhaps it's all marketing. ie the turn of the phrase. perhaps in the future i should say guns are a great way to spread fascism. and/or guns are not the best way to spread democracy.
speed
apparently i'm quite the speed demon. or at least my car is. i had just dropped off some shit at the doctor's (literally). on my way to work i passed one of those radar speed limit signs. the speed limit was 35. which is how fast i was going. until i passed the sign. then out of the corner of my eye i saw it change to 62 and start flashing an angry red. like yeah. i suddenly accelerated 27 mph in the blink of an eye. there were no cars behind me. i'm kinda hoping a ticket shows up. i'm kinda afraid a ticket will show up.
udder bull
we got a kiddie movie called barnyard. it was really bad. it was really really bad. the boy cows had udders. it was really really really bad. boy cows don't have udders. they have penises. are we as a nation so out of touch with our sexuality, not to mention our food chain, that we not only can't show anatomically correct animals but we have to show anatomically *incorrect* animals? sheehs.
wires
i read an article on research that suggests brains that call themselves conservative and brains that call themselves liberal function very differently when faced with situational changes. conservatives being steadfast, loyal, rigid, and unyielding. liberal being nimble-minded, tolerant, wishy-washy, and fickle. introspection ensues. i like to think about how things could be different. but i'm extremely resistant to actually making things be different. so i'm a virtual liberal? hmm...
dust
the henry coe fire launched a huge cloud of dust over the entire bay area. our policy of fire suppression at work. and i was wondering about any connection between it and climate change. the thinking goes like this: all this nice combustible fuel builds up. instead of many small fires you get one big one that's hot enough to destroy species of plants that would have survived the smaller fires. change the vegetation change the climate. it's possible. i'm also thinking the big fire might launch more dust/soot/crap higher into the air where it stays for longer and affects a larger area. it might just be a coincidence but the heat wave here ended with the fire. i really don't know if this is true or not. i could just be blowing smoke.
discreditation
i heard someone refer to the hockey stick as discredited. as if it were all complete garbage that you should just toss out and ignore. heh. you wish. far from it. the shape of the hockey stick was never seriously questioned. it's the conclusions that were legitimately challenged. the authors originally claimed a much higher confidence level for the assertion that the 1980's were the hottest decade in a million years. they represented it as quite certain. whereas upon further review plausible would be a better choice of words.
stupid climate guys
i swear the climate guys must be frikken dyslexic. what pisses me off about their data is the damn charts are all backwards. the time arrow points right to left. i always have to flip them over to make sense of them. time progresses left to right. everyone knows that.
here's a good (i mean bad) example. not only do they have the time arrow backwards but they also screwed up the vertical axis for the ice volume. low is high and high is low. sheehs. idiots. no wonder there's so much confusion in the field.
ice
it was hotter during the previous interglacial period than it is in this one. the polar ice caps didn't melt then. some folks think it's quite likely the polar ice caps will melt during this one. one wonders, why? it was hotter then than now. what's different? perhaps it was a celestial thing. like the sun shone on the equatorial regions more than the polar. or perhaps this time the heat is somehow being more uniformly distributed across the planet. which would much more likely be a compositional thing than a solar forcing thing. ie stuff people do.
