Achievements:
Lol.. this sounds like my wife:
And the best for last:
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Relief Efforts for Haiti/Catching up.
So, I haven't really posted much lately with various issues popping up. Well, now that I have a few moments, I'll post a couple things.
First and foremost, I'd like to thank the drunk teenager driving a black post-2005 Accord for hitting my parked mini-van in front of my house, then running like a coward. I hope the police end up catching you. Ironically, he took the corner in front of my house too quickly, drove on my sidewalk (see previous posts.. lol) and rear ended my van. The damage was not excessive, its just a pain in the ass.
Anyways, while working like a dog getting ready for an upcoming oral exam/defense, I noticed a few specific things about the relief efforts for Haiti after their earthquake.
I'm generally impressed. Many aid organizations and governments went in with "boots on the ground" rather than throwing money at the problem. All too often, people assume that donating cash money to a charity equals a significant help and/or impact on a specific issue. Generally speaking, these charities skim the donations for operational costs. Some charities/organizations, such as the Red Cross, are better than this than others in this regard - maximizing the amount of benefit per donation dollar. The difference between "cash" charaties and "boots on the ground" charaties was made very clear to me by a presentation I was lucky enough to go see, given by Lt-Gen Romeo Dallaire (Ret), Canadian Senator. ( http://www.romeodallaire.com/ ) Having commanded the peacekeeping forces in Rwanda during the civil war/ethnic cleansing in the 90's and being forefront in many charitable causes for third world countries (see his website) Mr. Dallaire has an interesting point of view on charaties.
Unfortuantely, I do not have direct quotes, but essentially the message was:
Charities that have "boots on the ground" such as Doctors without Borders, Engineers without Borders, Canadian Forces (yes, not a charity, but does immense humanitarian work that rarely is covered in the media), etc, are much more effective in creating positive change and actually helping out people in third world countries than "cash based" non-governmental agencies (NGO's).
I am pleased that many organizations (governmental or not) are making a serious effort to help Haiti. However, I wonder how effective most of these groups are. I mean, its nice that there was a massive telethon hosted by various celebrities, but how effective is that actually going to be in saving lives or helping to fix the immediate problems in comparison to the Canadian Forces D.A.R.T. or the Red Cross?
The long run will show us.
First and foremost, I'd like to thank the drunk teenager driving a black post-2005 Accord for hitting my parked mini-van in front of my house, then running like a coward. I hope the police end up catching you. Ironically, he took the corner in front of my house too quickly, drove on my sidewalk (see previous posts.. lol) and rear ended my van. The damage was not excessive, its just a pain in the ass.
Anyways, while working like a dog getting ready for an upcoming oral exam/defense, I noticed a few specific things about the relief efforts for Haiti after their earthquake.
I'm generally impressed. Many aid organizations and governments went in with "boots on the ground" rather than throwing money at the problem. All too often, people assume that donating cash money to a charity equals a significant help and/or impact on a specific issue. Generally speaking, these charities skim the donations for operational costs. Some charities/organizations, such as the Red Cross, are better than this than others in this regard - maximizing the amount of benefit per donation dollar. The difference between "cash" charaties and "boots on the ground" charaties was made very clear to me by a presentation I was lucky enough to go see, given by Lt-Gen Romeo Dallaire (Ret), Canadian Senator. ( http://www.romeodallaire.com/ ) Having commanded the peacekeeping forces in Rwanda during the civil war/ethnic cleansing in the 90's and being forefront in many charitable causes for third world countries (see his website) Mr. Dallaire has an interesting point of view on charaties.
Unfortuantely, I do not have direct quotes, but essentially the message was:
Charities that have "boots on the ground" such as Doctors without Borders, Engineers without Borders, Canadian Forces (yes, not a charity, but does immense humanitarian work that rarely is covered in the media), etc, are much more effective in creating positive change and actually helping out people in third world countries than "cash based" non-governmental agencies (NGO's).
I am pleased that many organizations (governmental or not) are making a serious effort to help Haiti. However, I wonder how effective most of these groups are. I mean, its nice that there was a massive telethon hosted by various celebrities, but how effective is that actually going to be in saving lives or helping to fix the immediate problems in comparison to the Canadian Forces D.A.R.T. or the Red Cross?
The long run will show us.
Monday, January 25, 2010
ITS ALIVE!! MUHUHUHWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
Well, after many years of hard work, my research produced something.
My generator harvested its first energy today.
Granted, its not alot, nor is the device "complete", but it validates YEARS of work.
My generator harvested its first energy today.
Granted, its not alot, nor is the device "complete", but it validates YEARS of work.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Well, I think I'm about ready to be done with Social Networking..
Ah Facebook.
I joined Facebook "late in the game", meaning that I purposely delayed joining, put it off, and dragged my heels in the sand because of my previous experiences with forums and message boards. I assumed that much of the asshatery that would occur on forums and message boards would not occur on Facebook, since, you know, people would know EXACTLY who said what.
Although I haven't received any threats of physical violence on Facebook, (lol.. 3 from various forums, if I have my math right..) the asshatery is still there, but slightly different. The difference is trading the anonymity of a forum for the physical disconnect of Facebook. For some people, that's enough to "pull the trigger" and be a complete jackass online.
I'm tired of it.
Its the same kind of stuff that you get on various forums: Someone posts something, you calmly post a reply a differing opinion, then someone random comes and "teaches you reality" by simply stating your opinion is wrong, without reasoning or logic. A "just because I say so" mentality. No discussion, no thought about the opinions being presented, no logical thought, nothing. Just a simple: "You're wrong, shut up. Fuck you."
Or my other "favorite" situation: posting a joke or statement as your status, and then having people beat you over the head for it. Why? What happened to intuition, reading comprehension and simple common sense? While, in the same general circle of friends, someone else can post literally anything as inflammatory, controversial, whiny, confrontational as they want and nobody skips a beat.
Yeah, I'm done with it. Tired of the double standards. Tired of being continually grilled for having an opinion.
I'm just going to go back to toiling. You know, do something useful for society rather than taking random shots from random people about having an opinion.
I joined Facebook "late in the game", meaning that I purposely delayed joining, put it off, and dragged my heels in the sand because of my previous experiences with forums and message boards. I assumed that much of the asshatery that would occur on forums and message boards would not occur on Facebook, since, you know, people would know EXACTLY who said what.
Although I haven't received any threats of physical violence on Facebook, (lol.. 3 from various forums, if I have my math right..) the asshatery is still there, but slightly different. The difference is trading the anonymity of a forum for the physical disconnect of Facebook. For some people, that's enough to "pull the trigger" and be a complete jackass online.
I'm tired of it.
Its the same kind of stuff that you get on various forums: Someone posts something, you calmly post a reply a differing opinion, then someone random comes and "teaches you reality" by simply stating your opinion is wrong, without reasoning or logic. A "just because I say so" mentality. No discussion, no thought about the opinions being presented, no logical thought, nothing. Just a simple: "You're wrong, shut up. Fuck you."
Or my other "favorite" situation: posting a joke or statement as your status, and then having people beat you over the head for it. Why? What happened to intuition, reading comprehension and simple common sense? While, in the same general circle of friends, someone else can post literally anything as inflammatory, controversial, whiny, confrontational as they want and nobody skips a beat.
Yeah, I'm done with it. Tired of the double standards. Tired of being continually grilled for having an opinion.
I'm just going to go back to toiling. You know, do something useful for society rather than taking random shots from random people about having an opinion.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Well, since I can't sleep, I'll postulate the Law of Conservation of Douchebags!
For whatever reason today has been, more or less, a complete waste of time. Usually, when I say this, there's a reason. I slept in, I goofed off, something extraordinary and out of my control happened...
Today however, has been odd, and I'm literally at a loss.. lol.
I woke up today and felt fairly ill. I sometimes feel off until I get some food and coffee into me. That's been usual for me since I could remember. Mornings were never really my friend. Anyways, had a cup of coffee. Started getting dressed, and then felt chilled. Fine. Put on a sweater, started heading out to work. Get to the bus stop, and my stomach turns. Make it back to the house just in time to "release" everything. Struggle to accomplish anything while making constant trips to the bathroom all afternoon. Started to feel fatigued at 5:30 PM. Managed to nap a bit... which was a mistake. I don't nap for a reason.. because now I'm wide awake at 2:30 AM local.
Awesome.
This is exactly the kind of stuff I need to put up with when I need to be effective at work.
On another note, I've been WoW-free for roughly two months. Kind of interesting to say it like that. I gave up the game to focus more on real life and work, but its interesting to look at it now as a quasi-outsider trying to keep in touch with friends in-game and keeping up to tabs with the events and occurances that happen in-game. I suppose the thing I miss the most out of WoW at the moment is bullshitting on vent with my guild. It's an odd thing. Unless you've experienced it in some way, shape, or form, bonding with a gaming group of any kind is a hard thing to explain. You've never actually met any of these people, but you consider them friends, moreso than say a co-worker. I suppose WoW stopped being a "game" for me a long time ago, and more of a task that needed to be completed on a weekly basis, like TA'ing, or experimental work - probably why I was effective at the organizational/leading portions of the "raiding treadmill".
But yeah, I miss the people, moreso than the game. I guess that's what kept me going back all these years. Although, every once and awhile, it is funny when you come across someone that you had dealings with in game that ended badly. It's even funnier when, for example, you come across it randomly. When you recognize a name, or a email address, and you make the connection and figure out that this person is the one that, for whatever reason, went absoultely "emo" over really inconsequential bullshit. Here in my insomniac stupor, I came across an absolute gem:
Sempelis, Zoi Dia Thanatos, Garona.
Now, if someone from my guild, Intrigue on Garona, happens to stumble on this they'll be confused at this point. They won't recognize the name. Why? Because in WoW, you can buy a second chance and anonymity for $25 with a name change. I'll take the time to explain. The guildies with long memories will remember.
When Wrath came out, I leveled my Priest, and leveled quickly since I had quite a bit of foreward knowledge from the beta. I knew where to go, what to kill, what routes to take, etc. I was able to cut alot of corners, so eventually that meant that being ahead of the curve on my server, finding instances at later levels, you ended up running with the same people. That's where I first met Kiexel. Yes, Kiexel. The older guildies are now probably snickering to themselves.. lol. I eventually got Kiex into the guild, where after putting my ass on the line repeatedly because he would quit the guild, due to loot issues, a total of four times. The last time he left (at this point under the name Kovacs, because, you know, he must of pissed someone else off, and cribbing names from Watchmen = original!) in a torrent of drama over a legendary mace fragment. People who raided Ulduar in WoW know EXACTLY the kind of drama I'm talking about.
The drama was legendary. He not only quit on the spot, he ranted and raved on his blog about how horrible our guild was, and how we'd never, ever, amount to anything. Essentially how we held him back, yadda yadda (insert typical "I've never really experienced real life, 18 year old bullshit here"). At that point, he dropped off the radar.
Ironically, cleaning out my bookmarks on my laptop, I came across his old blog, which of course, got deleted to hide his asshattery. A quick google search later (because I wanted to read the post again for old times sake) I wasn't able to find the post, but was able to find this:
http://sanctifiedretribution.com/
Turns out, my "friend" decided to get yet another name change (if you're counting, $75 now) and has been raiding on Garona for about two months now. Heh. Apparently he's landed a spot in a top 5 (was top 3, but seeing that I haven't really been online, nor can't be bothered to go check the multitude of "ranking" websites out there, so top 5 is a good guess). Ironically, he used another guild, Divinity, as a loot pinata to gear up to get in, but systematically trashes it on his blog. Same kind of "I need to justify my getting up and leaving to the world, but yet, I won't say a thing to the guild that carried me, because, you know, I'm much better than they are"-type bullshit. Sounds like he's happy now, well, until he gets passed over for loot. You know, life depends on getting a digital sword.
I suppose it just goes to show you, for every good person you meet through gaming, life, etc, there's an equally douchebaggy person to offset them. Probably some sort of cosmic/karmic equivalent of Conservation of Mass or Momentum - Conservation of Douchebags.
As I'm considering how to end this post, I can't help to think how ironic it is that my brother-in-law, whom I met playing MohAA and fixed up with my wife's sister, and the above douchebag are both named Joe.
What's the odds of that?
Today however, has been odd, and I'm literally at a loss.. lol.
I woke up today and felt fairly ill. I sometimes feel off until I get some food and coffee into me. That's been usual for me since I could remember. Mornings were never really my friend. Anyways, had a cup of coffee. Started getting dressed, and then felt chilled. Fine. Put on a sweater, started heading out to work. Get to the bus stop, and my stomach turns. Make it back to the house just in time to "release" everything. Struggle to accomplish anything while making constant trips to the bathroom all afternoon. Started to feel fatigued at 5:30 PM. Managed to nap a bit... which was a mistake. I don't nap for a reason.. because now I'm wide awake at 2:30 AM local.
Awesome.
This is exactly the kind of stuff I need to put up with when I need to be effective at work.
On another note, I've been WoW-free for roughly two months. Kind of interesting to say it like that. I gave up the game to focus more on real life and work, but its interesting to look at it now as a quasi-outsider trying to keep in touch with friends in-game and keeping up to tabs with the events and occurances that happen in-game. I suppose the thing I miss the most out of WoW at the moment is bullshitting on vent with my guild. It's an odd thing. Unless you've experienced it in some way, shape, or form, bonding with a gaming group of any kind is a hard thing to explain. You've never actually met any of these people, but you consider them friends, moreso than say a co-worker. I suppose WoW stopped being a "game" for me a long time ago, and more of a task that needed to be completed on a weekly basis, like TA'ing, or experimental work - probably why I was effective at the organizational/leading portions of the "raiding treadmill".
But yeah, I miss the people, moreso than the game. I guess that's what kept me going back all these years. Although, every once and awhile, it is funny when you come across someone that you had dealings with in game that ended badly. It's even funnier when, for example, you come across it randomly. When you recognize a name, or a email address, and you make the connection and figure out that this person is the one that, for whatever reason, went absoultely "emo" over really inconsequential bullshit. Here in my insomniac stupor, I came across an absolute gem:
Sempelis, Zoi Dia Thanatos, Garona.
Now, if someone from my guild, Intrigue on Garona, happens to stumble on this they'll be confused at this point. They won't recognize the name. Why? Because in WoW, you can buy a second chance and anonymity for $25 with a name change. I'll take the time to explain. The guildies with long memories will remember.
When Wrath came out, I leveled my Priest, and leveled quickly since I had quite a bit of foreward knowledge from the beta. I knew where to go, what to kill, what routes to take, etc. I was able to cut alot of corners, so eventually that meant that being ahead of the curve on my server, finding instances at later levels, you ended up running with the same people. That's where I first met Kiexel. Yes, Kiexel. The older guildies are now probably snickering to themselves.. lol. I eventually got Kiex into the guild, where after putting my ass on the line repeatedly because he would quit the guild, due to loot issues, a total of four times. The last time he left (at this point under the name Kovacs, because, you know, he must of pissed someone else off, and cribbing names from Watchmen = original!) in a torrent of drama over a legendary mace fragment. People who raided Ulduar in WoW know EXACTLY the kind of drama I'm talking about.
The drama was legendary. He not only quit on the spot, he ranted and raved on his blog about how horrible our guild was, and how we'd never, ever, amount to anything. Essentially how we held him back, yadda yadda (insert typical "I've never really experienced real life, 18 year old bullshit here"). At that point, he dropped off the radar.
Ironically, cleaning out my bookmarks on my laptop, I came across his old blog, which of course, got deleted to hide his asshattery. A quick google search later (because I wanted to read the post again for old times sake) I wasn't able to find the post, but was able to find this:
http://sanctifiedretribution.com/
Turns out, my "friend" decided to get yet another name change (if you're counting, $75 now) and has been raiding on Garona for about two months now. Heh. Apparently he's landed a spot in a top 5 (was top 3, but seeing that I haven't really been online, nor can't be bothered to go check the multitude of "ranking" websites out there, so top 5 is a good guess). Ironically, he used another guild, Divinity, as a loot pinata to gear up to get in, but systematically trashes it on his blog. Same kind of "I need to justify my getting up and leaving to the world, but yet, I won't say a thing to the guild that carried me, because, you know, I'm much better than they are"-type bullshit. Sounds like he's happy now, well, until he gets passed over for loot. You know, life depends on getting a digital sword.
I suppose it just goes to show you, for every good person you meet through gaming, life, etc, there's an equally douchebaggy person to offset them. Probably some sort of cosmic/karmic equivalent of Conservation of Mass or Momentum - Conservation of Douchebags.
As I'm considering how to end this post, I can't help to think how ironic it is that my brother-in-law, whom I met playing MohAA and fixed up with my wife's sister, and the above douchebag are both named Joe.
What's the odds of that?
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