Awesome.

I just got a new phone. My old cell phone was a wonder. It was perfect for me because of two main features. 1) It was virtually indestructible and 2) it had sudoku.

As it turns out, you can get sudoku on just about any phone. Until that fad dies out and once again we are playing minesweeper as if it were fun.

But indestructible. God, that is where it was at! I am not a clumsy man. Nor am I prone to dropping phones into toilets. But I feel a certain contempt for little gadgets. Especially ones that can interrupt me while on said toilet. As such, I keep the gizmo in my pocket full of keys and knives. Casually bumping into things turns my pocket into a meat grinder. And phones made of less stern stuff don't last.

So sure was I of my old phones invulnerability I would stab the thing with keys. With a smile I would show just a few scratches and continue to drink.

This new fangled phone though has so many wicked cool features! I would tell you about them, but I am too busy figuring out how to turn them off. I could be sitting in a class trying to make some erudite point about economic factors in immigration when my pants will suddenly announce "please say a name to make a call" in a voice surprisingly needy for a machine.

Coincidentally, the Chinese restaurant in my phone book is saved under the name "China". I am sure in my Chinese history class I have accidentally ordered a large Sun Yatsen with a side of Chaing Kai-Shek. Sometimes I will even go to the restaurant on the off chance I did in fact oder something. Have a bit of fun reenacting the Nationalist flight to Taiwan with an eggroll for a barge.

And there is also a camera on it. Same problem. A shift of my leg and then "CLICK" the camera says in a fair impersonation of a real shutter. I have scores of photos of the inside of my pants and not one of them is remotely racy.

Now I am paranoid about a new phone. Its resilience has not been tested and I am babying it. Now I keep it in the pocket with my wallet. But someday, while drunk I am going to look into that little eye of the camera and I will become Odysseus, and it will become the cyclops. In an epic struggle the two of us will exchange blows and I will have glass in my fingers, and a broken camera phone.

stay tuned for updates.

So, (e:jim) recently wrote about how I am learning to program. Oh god, why, o why!

Last weekend Jim took me a long to a programmers conference. Looking around it was an awesome sight.

Guys. Around my age. With Beards sparse and thick. With mops of hair unstyled and uncut. bellies small and bulging. Facial piercing. Tattoos. Drinking problems they openly joked about.

But above all. Each of these people seemed like they could do porn and not fear losing their real job.

This is my secret criteria for my second job. The job I get after I am fired from teaching.

I have no actual desire to do porn. Ya, I like a good penis, but not one with more screen time than Orson Wells. But I crave the freedom to do it. As if someone would approach me with an offer to do a scene or two and I, drink in hand, would say 'what the heck'. Shrugging off the non-existent consequences.

The other day when I was doing observations at a school I had the opportunity to sit in on a middle school health class, adolescent sex ed. There were a few things said I really didn't like. Notable a binary gender model and an attitude of compulsory heterosexuality. After, I asked the teacher about these things. She told me that she has no free hand in the content, it is decided by the community. Even in the high school they are not allowed to use words like 'gay' or 'condom'. And really, if you need to cover any two topics in sex it is 'everyone is unique' and 'don't get the Clap' would be them.

Would they ever let a porn star teach kids anything? Do real people actually teach, or are they just charecters in a moral allegory? Programmers though...

"Hey Bill, what did you do this weekend?"
"Oh you know Janice, got doubly penetrated in that jail bate film"

How awesome is that?

Hi,

Jim took me on a romantic get away last weekend. We went to a computer programming conference in Charlotte, NC or SC. It was right by the border and I wasn't sure what state we were in.

The weekend went like this. Jim went to talks and schmoozed with people, building his contacts and what not. I am really glad he went, great opportunity for him. I, however, had a strange weekend.

Trapped in a hotel is odd. There is nothing to do. You have to travel around to find anything to do. And so that is what I did.

Of corse, Charlotte is a very bad town to do this in. You see, it has two downtowns: the historic downtown and the new downtown. We were staying in the new downtown, and I couldn't get to the historic downtown; the roads in between either turned into eight lane highways or became frightening to walk down alone and unarmed.

The new downtown must have been built in the last 20 years. It was full of massive towers housing hotels and banking corporations. There was a network of a dozen of these towers connected by skybridges. On the level with those bridges was endless shopping and restaurants. I thought that was really cool, accept nothing was opened on the weekend. Venturing out of that complex to the streets there were two things open 1) a fried chicken fast-food place and 2) Mert's: the god damned best soul food place ever. EVER! Seriously, I learned why people willingly eat okra.

Anyway, in my wanderings downtown I thought it would be good to find an ATM. Charlotte is a banking city, they told me. There were Watchovia and Bank of America ATM's all over the place. Every street corner practically. But I could not find the World's Bank, HSBC anywhere. So, I find this little sandwich joint and walk in to get breakfast/lunch/holy-cap-you-cannot-even-get-coffee-on-a-saturday-in-this-town.

I ask "Say, can you help me find an ATM? From an HSBC bank?"
The clerk "A what bank?
"HSBC"
She scratches her head "What does that stand for"
I smile, loving the name of my bank "The Hong Kong, Shanghai Banking Corporation"
Her eyes bug out of her head, she turns to the kitchen behind her and yells, in the most unpleasant mountain yokel voice I have ever heard "Hey Earl! Do we have any of dem Hong Kong, ShimSham banks?"

seriously, Hong King, ShimSham. I nearly shat myself it was so funny.

anyway, you kids have a good day.

Holy shit.

I was just in the middle of the biggest collective nerd orgasm and I feel like a long shower.

Hi,

Stephen Fry has a delightful blog of no particular subject, but the man loves to chat about his gizmo obsession. In his latest piece he references Umberto Eco's little ditty on Mac's vs. MS-DOS (think proto-windows) and how both are like Catholics and Protestants.

I would send you to read it, but here it is in its entirty.

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the "ratio studiorum" of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach - if not the Kingdom of Heaven - the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counterreformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It's true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions.....

And machine code, which lies beneath both systems (or environments, if you prefer)? Ah, that is to do with the Old Testament, and is Talmudic and cabalistic.




And it struck me that this seems a little out dated. Windows does not have a likeness to the Anglican Church. And certainly much less likeness to a John Hodgman character.

You nerdy-nerds can pick that apart if you like. The rest can have fun reading Fry's blog.