findingmyname.com

Yes, it’s Nickelback. Though I don’t typically listen to such bands, this song has come up on Bob once or twice, and I have to agree with the sentiments expressed. Here I am, with a new house, no money, no job (well, for a month, anyway), a computer monitor on the blink…I could go on, but I won’t.

I guess it’s just life, but that doesn’t make it any easier. I would surmise that (nearly) every guy has a persistent yearning for companionship, but my social circle dwindles. The last two girls I asked out turned me down. I suppose I could understand if I thought it was based purely on appearance–I do have 25kg or so to drop–but that’s not the impression that I got, especially from LR. There’s little chance I’ll get a reason, but a reason would only provide me with a sense of closure, not satisfaction. And I didn’t get a reason from LD or BE either, so they’ll just join the crowd.

Okay, enough with the self-pity. Trekkies and some Trekkers may have known this, but I only found out this past week that Scotty (from ST:TOS, a.k.a. James Doohan) never shows his right hand on the show–because he was missing the middle finger of that hand, caused by one of six gunshot wounds sustained during the assault on Juno Beach at Normandy on D-Day. According to Wikipedia, the injured hand can still be seen in certain episodes of the show, despite his efforts to conceal it.

Right–since this is my first entry in quite some time, I’ll note that I’ve been living in my new house for 16 days now! The recent rainfall has allowed me to verify that my sump pump does indeed function, as does everything else in the house. There are few things I’ll need to actually fix, none of which are truly “broken”.

• There’s a small gouge in the wall in the kitchen, thanks to the appliance movers, easily repaired.
• The access panel to the attic was disturbed by the thunder in a recent storm and needs to be re-seated, possibly hinged in place.
• The doorstop for my front door is slightly shorter than necessary, so I’ve elected to replace it with a wall stopper (the kind that comes in contact with the doorknob, rather than the base of the door).
• The Internet is…limited, at the moment, to a single room in the basement. I must put up a shelf, install the network switch, and put ends on all these cables. Additionally, I’ll have to somehow coerce my other computer into recognizing its Ethernet port for it to have access–my wireless router doesn’t seem to be getting its signal to the wireless card in the computer, even from 2 inches away.

Those are the “broken” things. On top of these, I “need” to: build a deck, install a pair of garage door openers, get some internal decoration done, install window blinds, plant a lawn, finish the basement, et cetera, et cetera. I’m certain, at least, that I have the tools for the job–I just need a bit of help for some of it.

Despite having been out of it since my last entry, I was able to return to dance class last Monday (the name of which is, apparently, “Lindy Bombers”) and do a passable job. One partner was anticipating my moves, especially when we were practicing a single thing, which made it a bit difficult to dance with her, but when we got to the “free-dance” portion of the evening, it wasn’t so bad. I must concentrate on not extending my arm–I’m making too much work for myself. In the physics sense, I greatly increase rotational inertia by doing so, thus I must expend more energy in overcoming the inertia to continue with the dance. At 125 kg myself, even if I have a light partner at, say, 50 kg, the center of mass could be as much as 40 cm away. I’m not going to do the integration, or guess at my speed, but it’s no wonder that I get tired so quickly. Dropping weight would help, but so would a more controlled swing-out.

I nearly fell asleep during a meeting this morning, though I don’t suppose that’s anything to be ashamed of, seeing as it was a “coordination” meeting with the FAA–we go over all the projects that we’re working on, and make sure the FAA is happy with how they’re proceeding. Or not proceeding, depending.

The rest of the day at work was spent in near perfect boredom. I can’t locate for the life of me my old ELT programming code, which would be handy as a reference at least, as I am rewriting it.

Visited the house after work: not much new, just grout on the entryway tiles and a few more slats of wood in the kitchen and dining room–though these were the complicated ones, so I don’t fault the guy for taking his time.

Dance class was about the same. I couldn’t do a swing-out to save my life. There was one move we were supposed to be learning, which involves catching the girl with the other hand. I thought I missed completely–grabbed air–apparently I brushed something I shouldn’t have instead. Only once, though, fortunately, but I was embarrassed enough. My Lindy circle was deplorable as well.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better. Oh, wait, I get to review software changes for eight straight hours. How exciting.

Today I ran CAT-6 cable in my house. The pictures will be up in the usual place soon, probably sometime tomorrow afternoon, though there isn’t a lot new to see. The city inspector came by, for the frame inspection, and had the supervisor, Mike, stuff some insulation in a few spots. Seems kinda strange, since he (Mike) called the insulators as soon as the inspector left, who will be in the house either this weekend or early next week. Seems to me that they could have done the job, but, ought to please the inspector. I told Mike to hold off calling the drywall people, so hopefully Jeff can come down and help fill in the cracks left behind by these other guys. If, however, Jeff can’t make it down before Wednesday, we’re out of time, and the Sheetrock must be installed (Did you know that “Sheetrock” is a trade name for gypsum board? Until now, I didn’t…).

Before running the cable, I needed to come up with a drill. I may do second-hand, but I don’t do second-rate, so I bought myself a four-pack of DeWalt cordless power tools. I may not need them all right now, but in a couple of months, I expect that they will come in handy. And yes, I may have been able to get it cheaper online, or the combo-pack with just the drill and circular saw (I don’t see the reciprocating saw being used nearly as much, but who knows?), but I decided to go ahead and get this one. I also bought a bigger toolbox and a nice wire stripper for myself while I was at it.

I’m still having trouble with the database program I’m trying to write–MS Access is returning 0 rows from a test data set when it should be returning…well, more. The only option that comes to me at the moment is switching to Python and pickling the data set. Perhaps every time the program is closed. One advantage this would allow would be the use of the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex algorithm in searching for names. I’ve an implementation of NARA/American Soundex, but I don’t think it’d be as useful or apt in this situation. Figure that out tomorrow, in any case. Sometimes (okay, most of the time), computers, and more specifically, the act/art of computer programming, can be frustrating.

As you can tell from the title (if you’re a DC-comics/cartoon geek), I’ve been watching Teen Titans. Great show. They don’t make ‘em like they used to… Tomorrow I may finish watching these and watch Rollerball (the 2002 version) after I get my hair cut. I also need to do my dishes. Oh, wait–strike the former. My priority list for tomorrow will be as follows:

1. Hair cut
2. Dishes
3. Groceries
4. Programming
5. Television

Not quite as pleasant, but certainly a better way to do things.

Don’t worry, no spoilers here.

Rorschach’s Journal. October 13th, 1985. On Friday night, a comedian died in New York. Somebody knows why.

Alan Moore’s exceptional graphic novel takes the silver screen (without mentioning his name…some personal fallout there, I think) and stays quite true to the spirit of the story. Rorschach’s journal–most of his lines, even, were direct quotes from the book. Certainly, corners were cut for the sake of time–three hours was a good job by the editing folks. A story this complex cannot be easily told. The ending, though significantly different from that in the book, was perhaps more believable. I won’t deny that there are probably thousands of netizens and comic book faithfuls who would disagree, but Zach Snyder gave them a nod (though one must be quite observant of the details to have noticed it–I missed it, myself).

For those who heard it was pornographic in nature: yes, there was a giant blue guy walking around naked for most of the film–honestly it’s part of the story. There were a few sex scenes, but I have seen worse before in R-rated films. The gore was quite profuse, and unrelenting, as one might expect from such a film. If you’re offended by any of these, read the book, the sex scenes are limited to 5 or 6 panels (total, in the book…though I didn’t count, so don’t take my word for it); Dr. Manhattan…is not drawn with that much detail, and the gore is slightly more artistic in nature.

If you want to read Hollis Mason’s autobiography, “Under the Hood” or read “Tales of the Black Freighter”, you’ll have to read the book, or at the very least wait for the DVD/Blu-Ray (there are rumors of the “Tales” having been filmed in their entirety–just no time to show them in theatres)

Remember when a computer game would easily fit on a 720K 5 1/2″ floppy diskette? I do. Then along came the games that took up most if not all of a 3 1/4″ disk. I worked my way up to games like “Aces over Europe” and “X-Wing” that used up to six disks for installation (I’m not quite old enough to remember the days before hard drives). Eventually, as was inevitable, games grew to occupy the entirety of a CD, then multiple CDs (the game “Silent Steel”, if I recall correctly, was on 22 CDs, but was/is of a unique genre), then DVDs came along. Until recently, I’d not heard of games requiring multiple DVDs, but what I find ridiculous is a game demo that requires multiple gigabytes! The demo for “Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3″ is approximately 2.7GB; the demo for “Portal” is a whopping 6.6GB! Granted, things may be slightly different with STEAM, which is what I use to get my games now, but that’s a lot of space!

By the way, “Portal” is an awesome, awesome game. It’s a thinking game, far more than an action-oriented one, though I have only played the demo thus far. I hope the levels are more challenging in the full-blown version, as it took me half an hour to run through the demo–but that’s what it’s designed to do: teach the mechanics of the game, and leave you wanting more!

I have known about Sam Hughes for quite some time, mostly for his work on the International Earth Destruction Advisory Board and his quotes, and his essays on large numbers, namely in the compact construction of numbers far larger than easily expressible by Knuth’s up-arrow notation, Conway’s chained-arrow notation, or Steinhaus-Moser notation.

Today, I discovered his original, imaginative, wonderful fiction. Take a look. Start reading Fine Structure. I think you’ll like it, a lot! And if you find it confusing at first, keep reading–it’ll eventually make sense.

Current Mood:  excited

Here! My house is going to go there! So exciting!

So…as I gear up to purchase a house, I’ll need to have roughly $12000 at closing. But with things happening the way they do, I spent $730 to get my car back from the dealer, and my furniture at this apartment is already falling apart, and I’m desperately trying to hold off buying one of a certain group of items, any or all of which, though luxury items, I admit, would make life more enjoyable, if even by a bit. Those items are: an iPod, a second computer monitor (and/or a KVM switch), and 2GB of RAM.

Time to recap the past month, as best I can recall. I’ll start with the holidays, because I’ve still got two days I don’t have to think about work, and I’m not going to spoil that now. It ended with last minute software changes and last minute trips to Boston and last minute travel arrangements from St. Louis…forget it.

I helped dad put together a light table for mom, which she can use for tracing her stained-glass window patterns. Jeff and Arletta came over on Sunday after church, at which point we opened each others’ presents. I got “Cranium: Family Edition” and “Apples to Apples”; Jeff and Arletta got money for a camcorder; mom got the aforementioned light table; I can’t recall what dad got.

The next day, mom and I went shopping, because I was in dire need of clothing. At Steve & Barry’s going-out-of-business sale, I got five shirts for $16, including tax. At JCPenney I got a pair of jeans and another shirt. At Burlington Coat Factory I got a pair of gloves, and at Target I got 13 pair of socks and Season 1 of Eureka (thanks to Jeff and Arletta’s gift to me).

Christmas Eve I basically sight-read a song for the church service, but the service went well, despite not having a sound guy or a light guy (we had one guy trying to do triple duty upstairs).

Christmas Day we had dinner at mom’s place: mom, dad, myself, grandma, grandpa, and an uncle and aunt. After company left, I left as well, arriving back in Wichita that evening.

I stayed up until 3am with the intent of cleaning the apartment for my brother and his wife’s visit on the 26th, but wound up basically making piles. I woke up on the 26th (gave myself about 6 hours of sleep) and quickly shoved stuff near enough to where it needed to go for Jeff and Arletta’s arrival. At least they had a place to sit. We had some good conversation, then I took them out to lunch at Jimmy John’s.

On the way back, fortunately on a side street (but unfortunately over all), the linkage (apparently cables) between my shifter lever and the transmission broke. Again. Third time in less than 46000 miles! I am definitely buying Japanese next time. It’s not like I’m hard on it; I’m not speed-shifting or doing any racing–it’s a tiny four-cylinder American-made engine, so trying to race it would be a ridiculous idea in the first place. Anyway, we waited an hour for the tow truck to come, and four of us were crammed into the cab of the tow truck, including my eight-month pregnant sister-in-law. An hour or so later, I had a rental car from Hertz–the last one anyone in town had, apparently, a Ford Focus. At least I fit behind the wheel.

We had a delicious dinner at Johnny Carino’s, then went to my cousin’s place to catch up on things, mainly for Jeff and Arletta, but I hadn’t been there in a while either.

The next day, we had a late breakfast at IHOP, stopped in to look at the model of the house I’ll be getting, talked through a few ideas concerning it’s construction, then went to another aunt and uncle’s place for lunch, meeting one of their sons and his wife as well.

I left the farm around 2pm for a Batman Beyond marathon, that had been in the works for months, and we finally got around to putting it together. By we I mean not me, but I joined them as they put in the “Return of the Joker” DVD–my entire reason for going. Excellent movie, by the way, so long as you get the PG-13 version. I’m not sure what they took out, but the TV edit can’t be as good.

I picked up my car on Monday afternoon. When I first put the car into reverse, then into first, I thought, “This doesn’t feel right.” I thought it was broken right out of the shop, it shifted so easily. Then I realized that I had comments from the few other people who had driven my car that it was extremely difficult to shift, so I’m guessing that it was supposed to be this way all along! However, even when I bought the thing, with only 56 miles on it, it was stiff. But it’s good now–I just wish I didn’t have to spend $1000+ to get it to work properly.

Between that evening and New Years’ Eve, I did little but watch television and play X2.

New Years’ Eve, a group of us went to the Wichita State men’s basketball game against Bradley. WSU lost in the last 20 seconds by two points, after an amazing second half rally. In other words, it was a typical WSU basketball game.

After the game, we returned to JR’s house for a murder mystery dinner. I played Monsignor Cheque Penne, a French banker. Other players were Sherlock Tracy (police detective), Jackey Pressen (dry cleaner), Yuni Verz (”smartest person in the universe”, rocket scientist, Tracy’s cousin), Mag Niffie (Tracy’s ex), Bameril LaCrosse (television chef, formerly in the employ of Tracy), Dolly Dee (doll designer), Pepper Keegrip (television producer), Bryan Seafoam (host of Tracy’s television show). Long story short, we had a lot of fun, and LaCrosse killed Tracy in the adjoining room with the champagne bottle! (Nobody guessed it right)

New Years’ Day, in the evening, I paid Andy a visit. I had finished watching his sister’s Batman Beyond DVDs, so I returned them. We then went to a new restaurant in town: Smashburger. Though a bit pricey, they put together an absolutely delicious burger. In fact, I’d probably put it at number two on my list for “best bacon cheeseburger ever”, and number one in this town. After dinner, we returned to Andy’s and watched the original 1986 “Transformers” movie. With the death of most of the popular Autobots, I’m not surprised that people may have been upset, but apparently they were revived somehow when Transformers returned to the small screen. But I’ve seen it now…

I returned home and spent until now watching television and playing X2, save my workout at the Y yesterday morning. In an effort to reset my biological clock (an effort which backfired, unfortunately), I remained awake for 33 hours, from Friday at 1pm, when I woke up, until Saturday at 10pm, when I finally got to sleep. I awoke this morning just in time to miss church. Hopefully tomorrow morning I’ll be able to wake up in time for work.

Current Mood:  accomplished

Alright! I’ve got Synergy installed and functional on my computer. Still only one monitor, so I still have to switch it from one to the other, but on the whole, I get to use my good keyboard and mouse with both computers–a big plus. I don’t think the application has had any attention since about April of 2006, though… Even if someone were to give it attention, the lag I’m experiencing likely has more to do with the connection I’m using than deficiencies in the software itself. My last bit of configuration will be to assign slightly more static IP addresses to my computers here…I’ll have my router hand out the same IP to each machine when either connects, instead of assigning the first available IP to the first computer that requests it. Good in theory, but PseudopolisYard here for some reason can’t resolve the name TowerOfArt into 192.168.1.3 (or whatever it happens to be), so I’ll need to add that to the hosts file.

Had a Geek Group brainstorming session today. We’ve got a few ideas–more than enough, most likely, to keep us busy until I get my house.

I went to a swing dance “thingy” this evening! There was, as I expected, a shortage of leads, but by the time everyone got there (9:15 or so), it wasn’t too unbalanced. If I go twice a week, as I’m going to try to do–Sundays and Mondays–I might actually get the basics down. I was barely starting to feel comfortable by the time we finished up and I had to leave. Considering what time it is right now, I could’ve stayed and danced a bit longer, but I do work tomorrow and should be in bed right now.

Tomorrow night: Bible study
Wednesday evening: meeting with banker
Thursday morning: physical examination at the doctor’s office
Friday: huh…no plans yet

Current Mood:  curious

Given:

• a convex irregular polygon
• the length of every side

Find:

1. the interior angles
2. the area of the polygon

Obviously, once (1) is found, (2) is easy, but vice-versa that’s not the case. Consider a pentagon, sides (A, B, C, D, E) measuring 41, 150, 149, 59, and 213 (respectively, adjacent sides lettered clockwise). I know the typical way to find the area of an irregular polygon is to divide it into triangles, but I don’t have enough information to find the area of the component triangles. At least, not that I know of. If I could come up with (x, y) coordinates for the vertices, I could use the surveyor’s formula (I know where to look that one up), but I believe that this, once again, is easier said than done. Besides, given vertices, I could come up with the information necessary to determine (1) and (2).

A CAD program would be capable of finding this information; I want to know how to do this with a pencil and paper.

[Edit 12/1/2008]: Okay, my supposition was incorrect. A polygon with n sides (convex or concave) can be solved (parts 1 and 2) only given n-3 angles. So, to solve the above pentagon, two angles must be defined.