H2Code

For some reason I never thought you'd die.  You always maintained the sharpest young-minded outlook on things.  In your last HBO Special you stooped and you coughed but you were as brilliant as ever.

I will remember you in a vein similar to Carl Sagan, someone who's replacement I doubt I'll ever see.  You both shaped my mental development and how I saw the world.

It always hits me when someone dies with whom I felt I related.  Karl Vonnegut was another.  They shared thoughts and ideas that never occurred to me before, and in that moment somehow I felt close to them, as if we were both now part of an elite group, privy to great enlightenment.

I never gave these people anything but in a way they gave me so much.

Life's not fair.

I've released flexamater.

http://flexamater.rubyforge.org

It's a Flex testing framework, written in Ruby. ;o)

I bought this poem off a guy selling it on the street, along with his own self-bound novel (which is pretty much unreadable, but I bought a copy anyway...gotta admire the guy's effort...)
---
The great ones of any age
have done one thing
that we know them by,
that we admire and envy
and that we are afraid of ourselves:
Whatever they wanted.

They have said whatever they wanted,
walked wherever they wanted,
seen whatever they wanted,
love however they wanted,
killed whomever they wanted,
and died whenever they wanted.

They've never given a rat's ass
for what you've seen heard been told tell
feel or think that they should do.

They'll even trick you
so that you can't move into their tower.

It's lonely at the top.
There's only room for one.
---

I understand why the guy has no publisher. ;o)

The following are a list of things I still do, at 26, which stopped being acceptable about 8 years ago:

1) Shaving once every 3 weeks
2) Not always cleaning my clothes.
3) Wearing nothing but tshirts.
4) Bathe-ing and brushing my teeth on my own schedule.
5) Never wearing deodorant.
6) Cursing inappropriately
7) Interrupting people that bore me.
8) Not shaking hands when I greet people, ever.
9) Farting in public.
10) Acting unprofessional, pretty much always.
11) Not taking things seriously, pretty much ever.
12) Being disrespectful and impertinent towards authority.

At this point, I'm wondering if I'll ever grow up.  Hopefully...not.

My dad was badly addicted to cigarettes.  He would smoke 3+ packs a day.  Then, at the age of 39, he got lung cancer.  He survived, and then proceeded to quit smoking.

When he'd tell the story to others, he'd always say that he wished he could start smoking again, just to go through the process of quitting, because it was the best thing he'd ever done for himself.  I always thought that was odd, at the time.

But now I understand what he meant, I think.  Humans derive great joy from tackling and accomplishing tasks that seem daunting if not undoable, at first.

I weighed 200lbs 2 years ago, now I weigh 150 and can run 5 miles in 35minutes.  I almost wish I could be fat again, just to go thru that transformation once more.

I think we all secretly hope for disaster to befall us or our community.  I wished Y2K was going to happen.  I invite the tsunami to sweep thru downtown Seattle and force me to run for the hillsides.

I wish I'd get fired.  I wish I'd get evicted.  I want to declare bankruptcy.  I want to struggle.  Life's too easy.

Deliver me disaster.

I'll be turning 26 soon.  Some of my life's goals:

I want to pilot a plane, and charter a sail-boat, both around the world.  Race cars on the salt-flats, ride camels across the Sahara, elephants on the safari, and the shuttle to the space-station.  Scuba dive.  Hang glide.  Bungee Jump.  Tightrope walk.  Sky Dive.  Luge.

I want to visit every country, stay in every town, scale every mountain, and explore every valley.  I want to learn every dialect, and meet every person.  I want to relate to foreign people, read all their books, and comprehend all their ideas.  I want to eat in every restaurant, see every play, watch every movie, and listen to every song.

I want to discover a new branch of mathematics, and fashion a new paradigm of programming.  I want to solve NP-Complete problems in polynomial time.  I want to utilize fusion power, and harness the energy of the oceans.  I want to end global warming, eradicate disease, and abolish hunger.  I want to restore the rain-forests, and rebuild the mega-fauna ecosystems mankind has destroyed. 

I want to create the perfect operating system.  I want to run a marathon in less than 3 hours.  I want to figure out how to control the weather.

Then, in my 30's...

I joined match.com, a while ago.  It's weirdly exhausting.  There are sooo many profiles that even trying to make a decision on which one to email becomes a huge task.  It's kind of like trying to buy a new car: there's just too many choices.  Secondly: getting rejected via a profile and an e-mail is actually MORE painful than real-life.  I think a good metaphor for this is: i'd much rather at least get an INTERVIEW with a company and then get rejected, then just get rejected because of my resume.  I always feel unfairly gypped if I can't even get the in-person interview.  But if I get the interview and they don't like me, then it's cool because hey at least I got my chance, and they know what I'm about.

The other aspect of match.com is you have to create a profile.  This is like writing a long essay selling a product.  You're suddenly employed as a marketer: selling yourself!   It's so tiring to try and write that essay.  As well as the mini-fields about your "favorite things", your "for fun:", blah blah.

Then there's the READING of everyone else's profile.  Imagine if every beer company in existence was tasked with writing you a one page essay describing why you should drink their beer.  It would get mother-fucking redundant about 4 pages in.  Every beer would generally sell you the same bullshit points, and you'd be like look I can't really believe any of this crap until I just try the beer: but I've got 10,000 pages of beers here, where do I even begin drinking!  I'll be so freaking drunk!

Anyway.  I found writing this profile, for myself, much more enjoyable:

About Me:

I never buy ANYONE a present on pretty much ANY occasion...especially not flowers or jewelry: I hate them both. I prize functionality over aesthetics, almost always.

I have no fashion sense whatsoever. I wear ratty t-shirts, shorts, and white sneakers every single day. If it's cold out, I wear my one black hoodie and beanie cap that are torn and faded grey from overuse.

I don't ever wash the inside of my toilet bowl because all I do is put my crap in it so why do I care if it's clean? I apply variations of this philosophy to many aspects of life.

I have no sympathy for people who are responsible for their misfortunes: like fat people. And don't give me that genetic/metabolism crap. If you don't eat: I guarantee you'll lose weight.

Judging by the preference of everyone I've ever met (except my half-deaf father): I listen to music and TV way too loud.

I fart quite a bit. Oftentimes: it smells. I also sweat abnormally more than most people, and I rarely use deodorant. My body's highly asymmetrical.

I don't remember to brush my teeth as often as I probably should. I never floss. I only shave about once a week, at best. The quality of my skin is poor.

When I sleep on my back: I snore. I also roll around a LOT while sleeping.

I don't believe in old traditions or customs that no longer have any rational justification, and as such I have no manners, and am not chivalrous.

I'm known by many for saying inappropriate and insensitive things. I'm often the shmuck who says or asks something others are only thinking. I tell people what I think of them or their ideas, regardless of consequences or feelings.

I consider myself smarter than just about everyone. Most people bore me, some amuse me, very few interest me, virtually none impress me.

I HATE small-talk on phones about as much as I hate filling out paperwork. I can't dance, and I hate dancing. I also hate going out to places where the music is so loud that you have to scream to talk. I'm addicted to listening to my ipod everywhere I go.

I like to fancy myself a sailor, but I can only dog-paddle and I can't open my eyes under water. I like to claim I am an outdoorsmen and hiker, but I'm scared of spiders.

I'm a mild hypochondriac. On more than one occasion I've been convinced I was having a heart-attack or otherwise suffering from something horrible. I'm also somewhat obsessive compulsive. I can listen to the same song over and over 40 times in a row, and I have a strong need to keep the things on my desk arranged geometrically.

Sometimes while walking down the street I will recall something funny and laugh out loud for no visible reason -- causing discomfort in nearby strangers. I also am prone to scratching myself in public.

I put my first gallery live, using the flex gallery I've created.

Here it is.

It's a collection of photos taken while hiking Lake Serene on Saturday.

I will be adding more to jubishop.com soon...

1) Amusing:  Just think of how cleverly this program could be written.  The architecture will be so marvelous!  Redundancies will roll up into tight little balls of brilliance.  Inheritance, composition, closures will all flow together in harmony.  I'll create my own design pattern out of it!  It will be at once succinct, understandable, elegant, efficient, and robust.

2) Exciting:  Look!  It's coming together and I've got some preliminary parts working.  Sure, it doesn't look like much, but under the covers it's like 90% done really!  This is going to be my greatest software creation yet.  It will sparkle in perfection.

3) Challenging:  There appear to be some wrinkles I may have not at first considered...but no worries!  The extra complexity will only make the final creation all the more impressive.  It's good to stretch the algorithmic muscles a little, after all.

4) Daunting:  Ok, some of the planned features may not be doable in a v1.  But by scaling back we can make this simpler creation even more perfect.  Besides: the old adage says the art of good software is knowing what to take out, not what to add in.

5) Disappointing:  In some places because of edge-cases and feature-requests we hadn't considered, we've had to...kind of..."poke holes" in our architecture...to make it work...

6) Painful:  This app is so baileywicked 7 ways from Sunday that trying to change it at ALL feels like a meandering hike through the rainforest.  I blame this on others.  We need a rewrite!

i had a zeeks pizza (yes an entire medium pizza) last night around
9pm, then immediately laid down, thinking i was sleepy and i'd get to
bed early.  i'd just done some ab exercises right before i ate...i've
just started doing ab exercises and i suspect somehow that had
something to do with my future pain...

i'm not sure what exactly i did to cause such catastrophe but at
around11pm i was awoken with just about the worst stomach pain (or ANY
pain) i can ever remember.  i figured laying down so immediately after
eating wasn't good, so i got up and started pacing.  about 90minutes
later, i was still pacing. i'd hugged the toilet bowel hoping to throw
up, but nothing...i was short of breath.  i tried putting my finger
down my throat but just couldn't seem to get that to work (or couldn't
have enough resolve to get my finger far enough down my throat).  i
fantasized stabbing myself in the stomach just to relieve the
pressure.

i called Mary at about 2am because i thought i was going to need
to go to the hospital, and she was about the only person i could think
of that'd drive me.  i had a friend recently bleed out from an
intestinal ulcer and all i could think was that i must've gotten
something similar.....Mary's mom was a nurse and she convinced
me i didn't need to go to the hospital...she came over, with a heating
pad, and had me lay flat on the floor, relaxing my stomach muscles
with the heating pad on top of me.

finally things started to digest and by 4am i was able to at least go
to the bathroom...it was an excruciating evening.