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Paul's Journal

paul
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04/29/2006 14:39 #32584

Basra the Freedom Tortoise
Category: pets
I let Basra run free this afternoon. He ate lots of hay and dandelions and violets. Everytime I pick him up he freaks out because he just doesn't want to go inside. I feel bad for him. I wonder if he can possibly understand that it is ever is "not nice out" because we only take him outside durign the warm months. I wonder if he thinks that it is always nice out but we just keep him imprisoned most of the time in his very own bedroom.

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At least I will able to pick him up when he is 150 lbs, although not if he is kicking, as he likes to do when you try and take him inside. In case you are wondering what his name is about, we got him on the day they bombed basra to "free it."
ajay - 04/30/06 00:55
Like Plato's Allegory of the Cave?
jason - 04/29/06 19:29
Home boy is big and strong enough he could weather an all out attack! Go Basra!

04/28/2006 21:59 #32583

Life coaches and a tower
Category: work
I started to work on my thesis for ten minutes when I dicovered I am not meant for editing and re-editing words in human language. To me right now, human language is such a totally inefficient to express what my project was about. I have already written about 300,000 lines of code and 2034 journals encompassing 326,085 words. When is enough, enough?

Anhow, so on to the interesting stuff, life coaches. I don't want one but the TV show I was watching in the background involved 3 straight men going to a life coach (the actress who also plays Dr. Quinn) to learn how to get women to love them. What is this life coach business all about? Is it even real. So i typed it into google, just google it (GOOGLE - life coach). It seems like it is all the rage and maybe it will give someone here a career option they hadn't though of. Is it just a fnacy name for a therapist or is it just something for rich people with too much time.

If I ever get a life coach, please just kill me. Please.

On a side note:

After months of disputes over the future of ground zero, state and city officials finally brought in the heavy equipment and began construction on Thursday on the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower that will rise at the World Trade Centre site.



Just thinking about that building makes me shudder. There is no way I wouldn ever go in it. In fact I would rather use the microwave when slightly open. Why build something that is screaming target so much.


scott - 04/29/06 13:01
There's a very funny episode of Penn & Teller's show "Bullshit" about Life Coaches. Definitely worth renting. (any episode of that show's worth renting, btw)
paul - 04/29/06 01:42
It's bluemchen, she is european super kitsch star that sings in german mostly.
mrdt - 04/29/06 00:55
you really like those happy hardcore beats, I take it. Well anyway, who the hell is that playing at 185 bpm?? I gotta say I love the trance vocals.
as far as a life coach...you shouldn't need one if you have a good life partner or your introverted and internalize your thoughts/decisions.

04/27/2006 01:49 #32582

Codeless Dream
Category: dreams
I had the craziest dreams last night. For one I didn't fall asleep in the throws of programming. Instead I watched Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman TIll I fell asleep.

My dream started out hiking but at some point I was with (e:liz) and realized we were in the midst of some sort of fantasy like war zone. (e:terry) was playing warcraft next to me when I fell asleep, so that might explain it. So in the dream there were these rolling hills of grass and people of the opposite hill were thowing very gold guilded balls of gun powder which rolled toward us and then exploded. We had to run and jump over them like in some sort of video game. Untill we realized their entire army was on some sort of giant red blanket.

Once we realized, we decided to light it on fire and they all started to blow up. We ran over the hill and down to a creek. When we got there we realized there was no way back accept through some crazy maze like environment that requires an extreme amount of balancing and puzzle solving. Their were lots of characters to ask questions to, but most of them were trying to trick us and their were corrupt police we had to avoid.

At some point we moved across a plank over a pit and on the other end was my nonna's living room. Inside was (e:zobar) and (e:dragonlady7) and they were smoking what looked like a big bag of marajuana but smelled more like pine.

I asked them what they were smoking and (e:Dragonlady7) said "don't be silly, it's not marajuana, it is pine but we sprinkle a little ecstacy on it to give it a kick", as she curshed up a little red pill and liberally sprinkled it into the pipe.

After smoking with them, I just don't remember anything else accept that at the end of the maze we ended up in New Orleans were I was presented with the dilema of having to wash some giant plastic tub like thing, although, I full well knew they were rationing water and I shouldn't be doing it.

Normally, I dream about code. I seriously wake up in order to take notes sometimes because I have the best coding ideas in my dream so this dream was truly out of the ordinary.

jenks - 04/27/06 10:03
haha I love it. Dreams in writing crack me out, b/c they sound so much crazier than they really were, I'm sure.

04/25/2006 19:45 #32581

Where do the days go?
Category: programming
I have developed an insane amount of new code for really cool DHTML/AJAX interface kind of stuff but it seems I never have time to implement any of it. Today I had a biweekly meeting with my boss about what i was working on and I decided to print out some of the stuff from this week. There were like 30 pages of javascript of every flavor.

It was so weird to see so much work printed out on paper. It really quanitifies programming while destroying the enviroment at the same time.

Lots of fun with math this time. Math is definately not my strong point but I am getting a lot better at it each day. When that's done I am going to learn italian and then finish editing my thesis.

On another note, I am glad to see someone is graduating (e:holly,139)

I really wish it was me. I guess I will try for the summer. This is getting so fucking ridiculous because (e:strip) was my final project and I would say it has "done enough" for about a year or two. Now I just need to say something about it.

I made so many form widget, but this one is my favorite followed by the adjuster widget which iterates through arrays.

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The cancer viewer using some serious flash AS to manipulate image vectors and change brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, blur as well as zoom - all of then which communicate with the client via javascript sliders that auto save their positions between use.

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An rss reader that uses surebert and poser to bring rss feeds live to the web page on timed animation sequence.
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A javascript based motion capture object that can record and playback animations that can be saved for late ruse on a web site or to push drawings back and forth between user in realtime using surebert
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mrdt - 04/25/06 23:02
ON gas price gouging: If I had invested in energy stock (ie petroleum companies) when I had invested in Google (which I just sold Monday morning for a 30% return) I wouldn't have to work this summer.

04/25/2006 12:48 #32580

$7000 freakin dollars of paint
Category: housing
My dad just called after meeting with the painter for an estimate on painting the house that (e:matthew), (e:terry) and I own and rent. Looks like it is going to cost $7000 to paint the rental property. You can see a picture of it here (e:paul,3373) I think instead I will just spend the next few weekends paiting it myself accept for the high peak. I figure buying even expensive ladders and tools will be worth it because we will need them for our own house at some point anyways. My father is calling aroudn today to see if we can get a better quote. I think that quote is outrageous seeing as the whole first floor is brick.

(e:terry) hates paint and (e:matthew) doesn't want to do any work on it which leaves me kin dof alone although i bet hey will change their mind when they see it cost $7000. I rememeber my grandmother telling this story about how on the other side of the house, where there is no porch, that my grandfather painted the peak by having my grandmother sit on a plank out the window while he walked out on it. He was much more of a daredevil than me. Three stories up on a small plank over a concrete slab backyard sounds like an easy way to die.
metalpeter - 04/25/06 19:26
Wow that is a lot of money. I know nothing about getting a house painted but I would check around and get other qoutes on price.
boxerboi - 04/25/06 17:19
I'll help if you want, I really don't have much of a life.
scott - 04/25/06 12:59
When I was kid, we had to paint 1 side of the house each summer. It took about a week to do it right.

Doing 1 side a year breaks the job up into manageable chunks. That way the house gets fresh coat of paint every 4 years. I'd highly recommend setting a schedule like that if you want to make things easier on yourself. Painting that entire building's gonna take a few weeks by yourself. (Scraping's the toughest part, really.)

You do have other options, though. At those prices, you might want to consider getting the place sided. That might cost $10k, but it ups the resale value a ton, adds energy efficiency, and you never have to paint the place again!

I know my energy bills dropped by about 30% when my house was sided.