I finally got approval today from my supervisors to move my work time from 7:30-4:30 to 8:30-5:30. I asked to do this because not only will I get more sleep (hopefully) I also will be able to ride my bike in day light at least one at and avoid traffic both ways. Neither of them really understood why I'd want to ride a bike, they both thought it was because I didn't have full access to a car. Almost no one older at work actually seems to understand why I ride to commute and view it as a crazy death wish. Winter might be riskier but on nice days its just as fast and cheaper than driving. It seems like such a generational disconnect on how we think of cars.

Speaking of winter, I really want to get these studied tires and dayglo fenders for my bike. It'd be such a nerdmobile.

After work yesterday, (e:Terry) and I rode our bikes over to meet (e:YesThatCasey) at the PAI Power Hour at Niagara and Rhode Island. PAI is the Public Accountability Initiative group that tries to expose connections and conflicts of interest between powerful people and decision makers. I actually have heard about them before in the news and never knew they were based out of Buffalo!

The director, Kevin Connor, talked about what the group did, before leading a sort of walk through on how they approach an issue. They take an issue, list the power brokers involved, and start to find relationships between them to see who and how can be leveraged into accomplishing a change. One example they did was identify the Center for Sustainable Shale Development(fracking), allegedly an industry/environmentalist group for fracking, as a sham. PAI investigated all of the environmental groups involved and found they were funded by the Heinz Foundation, which was controlled by natural gas directors. The report the produced ended up causing three people, including the president of the Heinz Foundation, to resign and pretty much ended the CSSD. Link

The example we ran through was with Buffalo Public Schools, which ended up getting derailed into pretty pointless discussion.

One of their main tools is a site called Little Sis. It's kind of a database of important people to list their connections, donations they've made and recieved, organizations they're in etc, and can dynamically generate charts showing the relationships between different people. It was really an awesome tool, and was basically developed by Kevin and another developer out of NYC. Apparently it's all PHP and MySQL now, but they're working to migrate it over to Ruby. I wonder if they ever considered open sourcing something like this, it looked powerful.

Not that I really expect privacy using Google/NSA services for free, but I got this email the other day after reimbursing (e:Paul) for his services (really it was for a restaurant I think?).

Hello Joe,

It appears that you may be sending transactions that violate our Terms of Service for Send Money with Gmail.

Your Google Wallet account has recently come under review for a Terms of Service violation. Your transaction on 25 Oct 2013 for $25.00 to paulsidekick@gmail.com with the memo, “hookers and blow”, is in violation of Sections 6 and 7 of the Google Wallet Terms of Service for Send Money with Gmail. We may decline to process such transactions or close your account if we identify in the future that you are using your account for these purposes.

You can review the Terms of Service at: .

Please note that replies to this message are not monitored. If you experience any further issues with your Google Wallet Account, you may visit support.google.com/wallet .

Sincerely,
The Google Wallet Team

I think that is super creepy and a violation of privacy for them to be reading information put in Google Wallet memos, but I did agree to it in the Terms of Services agreement that I did not read.

Transaction Information: For each transaction, the transaction information about Google Wallet from us can be collected. This includes the date, time and the transaction amount, a description provided by the seller of the goods or services offered, photos that you have attached to the transaction, the name and e-mail addresses of the seller and buyer and the client and the recipient, the payment method used for your description of the reason for the transaction and, if the offer associated with the transaction.

Note to anyone using Google for anything financial related: you can opt out of sharing your transactions with marketers here.

I have so many projects and things I want to do and not enough time. I feel like outside of work I am going pretty much all the time, or feel guilty if I'm not. I have been so motivated lately that I don't want to give them up.

I want to :

Arduino/Raspberry Pi - There are so many awesome projects that I've seen and (e:Paul) and I have thought up, and we almost have all the hardware we need. The Arduinos themselves can be super frustrating to deal with but I think there is a lot of potential in what we can do if we can get around all the hardware and software quirks.

PHP - (e:Paul) got me back into programming. It's definitely much better this time around without slogging through . If I get good enough I want to freelance. Terry may have clients who could use help and there doesn't seem to be a shortage of work on Craigslist. Plus brushing up on my programming skills makes things at work and my other projects easier too.

Deutsch learnen - This has no practical use besides talking to (e:Paul) and (e:Terry), but it's really satisfying to learn so far, mostly through Duolingo. This is the first non-technical subject I've studied in almost 5 years, so it's nice to switch it up. Apparently second languages slow brain decline as you age (http://news.discovery.com/human/bilingualism-protects-brain-into-old-age-130108.htm) Sorry I don't have a link to the OG study. I want to get to A2 (basic) level by March, which would be about 6 months.

Get more sleep - I'm practically narcoleptic lately. Hopefully this will change soon since I asked my boss to start at 8:30 instead of 7:30. It'd make it easier to bike to work.

This doesn't even count all the projects at my parents house that need to get done with whatever time on the weekends, or things like the tree planting. Or the fact that I should really try and see my old friends more and meet new people. Or doing things that don't really have any use but are still fun too.

A hustla's work is never through.

(e:lilho) came back into town. Friday night (e:terry), (e:lilho), (e:mike), (e:libertad) and (e:casey) managed to pry (e:paul) and I away from the Arudinos for a few hours to go out to Cathode and then Marcella's. Another weekend, another crazy fun night.






Cray eyes







All decked in plaid - schwul!



Crossing the fence


twerkin it like a champion