Timmerov's Blog
busted
yeah okay it was quiet and empty at work. most of the desks had been cleared of stuff: monitors, computers, staplers, etc. including the ceo's. the new owner had taken up residence in the conference room. the door was currently closed. the pr person was minding her own business. and all the other executive offices nearby were empty. the ceo's desk and chair were still there. empty. lonely. inviting. i started to wonder what it would be like to sit in the big chair. so i did. one potato, two potato, click. the door next door opens and the new owner walks out. busted! totally busted. he might not have noticed except i got a case of the giggles. it didn't fit. not at all.
onlive
so far my new job is interesting. i'm still trying to figure out what my new role is going to be. i'm pretty sure it's not going to be code hermit.
yay!
i have three monitors on my desk again. i bought a new video card for work. at least, that's my story and i'm sticking to it.
stupidity 2
continuing yesterday's post. i was subject to the loud phone lady because i was fleeing the loud stock guy. he had a system for vegas. and it wasn't: don't play. so right off the bat we know the guy's an idiot. he also has a system for wallstreet. buy stocks that are super cheap. cause it only has to swing a few pennies for there to be a large percentage gain. and there are super fast computers out there that somehow make penny stocks swing that much. which might be true. so okay. but it seems like there might be a reason why a company's stock is priced so low. like maybe cause the company is worth crap. and there's significant risk they'll go out of business. at which point you lose your whole investment. which is okay cause it's so cheap, right! sheehs. this particular stock pick was an ethanol company. two things. there's a drought driving up the price of corn and driving down the profits of the ethanol companies and hence their stock price. so it seems like the smarter play would be sell short. second, even the slowest of folks have sorta gotten the idea that turning delicious food into crappy expensive fuel is dumb. but anywho. someone's gotta feed wallstreet.
stupidity
people are stupid. even people who can afford to fly. while travelling last week i eavesdropped on some conversations. well, eavesdropped in the sense that i couldn't find a seat far enough away from someone talking too loud. so instead of reading my book, i eavesdropped. anywho. one lady was ranting about how her 13 yo daughter wanted a cell phone. and she couldn't have it. she'd have to use payphones instead. or pay for it herself. grandma was paying $170/mo for her cell phone. now, maybe i'm out of touch here. but that sounds kinda like a lot. we pay less than half of that for two cells phones and a land line. sheehs. b started high school yesterday. (ack!) he can have a cell phone whenever he wants one. apparently, he doesn't feel the need for one yet. we'll probably get smarter phones when he does. so our bill will probably go up. as will our utility. would like to keep it below $100/mo for three phones and a land line.
tap
on my way home from work one day, i was stopped at a red light. i was sorta daydreaming when i realized i need to run an errand just down this street. so i made an unplanned right turn. several blocks later i found the place i was looking for. inside i didn't find exactly what i was looking for immediately. so i asked the nice lady for help. i need a piece of clear plastic construction paper. she laughed. but led me to the samples. the first one was too thick. the second one was too thin. the third one was just right. it was also way too big. it was more farah fawcett poster sized than notebook paper sized. i bought it anyway. even though it seemed expensive. at home, i cut out a c. and taped the ends together to make a protective ring for the now completely finished new lampshade in our bedroom. voila! that one can now be completely removed from the honey-do list. yay!
offers
oh my god. well. i think the former onlive employees who didn't get offers at the new entity shouldn't have too much trouble finding a new employer. i've received three already. "We are looking for a master coder who is interested in the full stack and is algorithmic in their thinking." master coder, check. algorithmic thinking, check. interested in the full stack, che... wait, what?
onlive
i have a new job. it's the same as the old job. heh. this feels kinda familiar. years ago, onlive laid off everyone. and onlive the delaware corporation ceased to exist. everyone was immediately rehired by onlive the california corporation. this time is a little different. only a "large percentage" of onlive employees will be offered positions at the new entity. i'm not going to say anything that hasn't been confirmed by our press releases. so don't ask. just google and try to guess which rumors are true and which are not. i may be employee #3. but i'm not privy to any of the business aspect. i'm a technical person who's touched every aspect of pushing the bits from the user's click of the mouse to what shows up on the screen. i know the answer to virtually any question about the secret sauce. but i cannot tell you. you'll just have to trust me. i guess technically, i'm between jobs. my old job ended friday while i was out of state on vacation. my new job starts on tuesday. will use the long weekend to address the honey-do list. onlive the corporation no longer exists. onlive the game service will continue as if nothing happened behind the scenecuts. onlive is dead. long live onlive.
camp
most years we'd still be at camp michigania today. however stuff happened and we couldn't get flights back home today. so we left a day early. we might have left a day or two later but b starts school on monday and g starts school on tuesday. and i still need to buy a bike. heh. camp was the same and different. the weather was completely out of phase. it was calm on sailing days, windy on tie dye day, and raining cats and dogs on regatta day. internet access was sporadic. boating got new life vests. burgers on the beach became burgers on the hill. so basically everything was the same. a good time was had by all
ryan
sigh. okay so by choosing paul ryan as his running mate, the mitt romney who's running for president is not the mitt romney who was governor of massachusetts. but is, words attributed to grover norquist, a man who does not need to come up with budgets or laws or a plan. he just needs ten digits with which to sign the bills they put in front of him. bummer. the romney/governor vs obama question is much more interesting. ah well.
income effect
apparently someone's been reading my blog. i've posted on this topic before. if i cut your wages you will work more hours to make up the difference. which clearly does not benefit you. but it does benefit the economy. ie you have incentive to do more economically valuable things. if i got the lingo correct. cutting your wages is good for the economy. at least this is the line of reasoning taken by someone trying to sell me on romney's tax plan. romney's suggested tax plan raises taxes on the middle class. you taking a pay cut and you eating a tax hike both reduce your effective wages. which apparently is good for the economy. romney also suggests preserving the tax cuts for the rich. which puts the so called job creators in the opposite boat. they have incentive to do fewer economically valuable things. specifically, by gop logic, they'll create fewer jobs. which is bad for the economy. a wash? more/less. course the difference is, you work more and rich folks work less. well, to be fair, the growing ranks of the unemployed work less too. i seriously don't know how anyone can think this is a good plan.
tax eats
heh. i think it's extremely unlikely that romney paid $0 in taxes over the past 10 years. it's possible given that pretty much everyone's portfolio tanked by 30% to 50% during the dot com bust. reid should put his mouth where the money is. romney can send his tax returns to reid. and if they show he paid more than $0 in taxes, reid can eat em.
bad minton
four olympic teams were ejected from the olympics because they intentionally lost a match. yes it was embarrassing. yes it was not in the spirit of the olympic competition. yes it reflects badly on the sport. but it's the rules that are broken. not the teams. their best play for a gold or silver medal is avoid matches where they'd be playing for a gold or bronze medal. how the heck is that cheating? how can the badminton federation in good conscience punish someone else for an error that is clearly their own as the rule makers? the ioc should have said, that's real fucking embarrassing. fix your rules so this shit doesn't happen any more. or you won't be here in 2016. seriously. a bicyclist intentionally crashed to get a restart in hopes he'd get a better start. he did. and won. possibly because of it. the ioc should strip his medal and toss him too. i'm not saying the schwaiger sisters intentionally lost the set after the historic set where they beat misty and kerry for their first loss in olympic competition ever. they clearly need to be investigated to see if they played their best when the score was 20 to 8. or if they maybe dialed it back a little. to concede that set, get a rest, and bounce back themselves. and win the match in the third and final set. apparently strategy is allowed in cycling and beach volleyball. but not in badminton. bad ioc. no biscuit.
who?
so i took
this little quiz to see who i should vote for. i actually took it twice. the first time i answered everything according to my actual preferences. the second time opposite. i wanted to see if it was an honest quiz or a trick to convince me i should vote for candidate x. here are the results: jill stein 88% (5%), obama 79% (34%), ron paul 60% (63%), and mitt romney 30% (81%). my initial reaction was: who the fuck is jill stein? heh. she's the green party candidate. so like yeah, i'd love to vote for you. except i need to play the min/max strategy. ie minimize the worst possible outcome. ie vote for the person most likely to beat the worst choice. i'm kinda disappointed in obama's crackdown on marijuana. i shit a square brick when he threw a metric assload of stimulus money into the economy. i like our foreign policy. bin laden is dead. ghadafy is dead. kim jong il is dead. mubarak is dead for all practical purposes. assad could be dead any day now. iran still doesn't have the bomb. and best of all possible worlds: we are no longer the bad guys. hoo-fucking-ray. the ron paul numbers are interesting and confusing. he should be viewed favorably by me. and simultaneously by opposite me. which seems kinda counter intuitive. and suspicious. like he sponsored this site. heh. ron paul has the same problem as jill stein. i really like what he's done with gaming the delegates. that's awesome. more conservatives need to wrest control of their party from the nut jobs who've hijacked it. mitt romney is an enigma. i don't like what he's saying. at all. but i pretty much like what he did as governor of massachusetts. can i vote against romney the right wing shill and for romney the good governor?
socks
i have fewer socks than i used to. i didn't realize this until the boys went to boy scout camp for a week. i ran out of socks. strange. i usually have plenty to last between loads. ah, there's the rub. when the boys are home they pretty much double the amount of laundry produced per week. so a load of socks and undies gets done every week. before kids we did a load every other week. so we needed twice as many socks to get from load to load. i don't really remember doing laundry when i was a bachelor. i don't think i had 4x as many socks as i have now. i think i just washed everything together when the need arose.
moneypoly
suppose i have a monopoly on food. ie if you want a meal, you have to trade me something i want for it. pretty quickly i will have everything i want. and i will start demanding more and more and more from you. and yeah you can try to give me lectures about how god wants me to share and i'll go to hell if i don't. but at the end of the day, you're going to be hungry. so pretty much, you're my slave. i have everything. and you have nothing. you would never give anyone a monopoly on food. so why are we so hell bent on giving a tiny number of people a monopoly on money? you buy food with money. you buy water with money. without money you get very little of anything you need. just like before, you will give me anything and everything to get money. again, you're my slave. so why are we so hell bent on giving the super rich a monopoly on money? they've already got most of everything. why are we even considering cutting their taxes? are we fucking stupid? are we so desperate to preserve our lifestyle - which depends on money - that we're willing to give the elite anything they want? shifting taxes from the middle class to the rich is one of two things that can dampen the slave-making effect of a monopoly on money. the other is the guillotine.
b&bs
it's romance week. so we got the hell out of dodge. and drove north. there was a slight delay crossing the golden gate bridge. we had to wait for the marathoners to finish. great. well, at least it wasn't bay to breakers. i really need to check san francisco's event calendar before we drive to it or through it. anywho, we stayed at the roundstone farm b&b in olema. it was perfectly adequate. we also stayed at the sonoma orchid in guerneville. the facilities were adequate. the hosts were wonderful. fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. two well organized menu books. the red one was for really nice restaurants. the blue one for more casual. our plan was to go to the farmhouse. it rates a michelin star. but we left our nice clothes at the roundstone. so we went to willi's instead. their small plates seemed to be aimed at palates deadened by a day or two of wine tasting. which just didn't work for me. sigh. instead of hiking around the russian river, we returned to point reyes. which is so big we found ourselves alone most of the day in a beautiful place. which is sort of the point of romance week.
green
so driving through northern california this week we saw more than a few improbability cows. they were definitely cows. but they were perched on hillsides steep enough to make a mountain goat giddy. which was kinda cool. they were busy turning grass (which humans cannot eat) into milk and beef (which humans can eat). and they were doing it on land that could not be used to grow human food. i know a bunch of vegetarians who would eat meat except it's not green. heh. well, some meat is greener than other meat. which is good. i like steaks. a lot. it's nice to know that when the world's population peaks one can still enjoy a nice grass fed sirloin without feeling like one is stealing food from hungry people. grass doesn't feed people. grass fed beef does.
petaluma
i've never been to petaluma. but i think i need to go. we more/less drove all the way around it to start romance week. it seemed every road led to petaluma. as if there were no other concentrations of human activities that mattered. sort of an all roads lead to petaluma thing. there were very few franchise establishments where we were. mostly mom and pop shops that have been there forever. we stopped at or saw several places we stopped at or saw on our first honeymoon. the area didn't seem to have changed much. i bet there are starbucks and walmarts in petaluma. so maybe the road signs are there to indicate the direction of the civilization gradient. which is a useful thing. we wanted to be where we were.
romance week
the boys are at boyscout camp this week. romance week has started. yay!
