Entry 120: Labor Day Weekend

Alright, it's actually Memorial Day Weekend, but same difference, right?  They should just call them End of Spring Holiday and End of Summer Holiday.  That's really what they mean to everybody.  It's not like I'm visiting the Grave of the Unknown Soldier this weekend, and it's not like on Labor Day I'm paying tribute to Eugene V. Debs.  I'm just enjoying the Mondays off.

One of the nice things about having a standard 9-to-5 job is enjoying a long weekend.  You can't really do it as a student, because it always comes mid-semester, and you end up using it more as a time to catch up on work than you do as a time of leisure.  On the whole, you get more time off as a student because of the between-semester breaks, but for just the long weekend, it's better to have a typical job.

 [Random shot of geese xing.  Is snapping pics while driving illegal?  The elephant looking guy on the dash is the Hindu god Ganesha.]   

Although the long weekend does pose some problems for S and I, because we're very different in how we like to spend our free time.  The difference is that she doesn't really like having free time, and I love it.  For me, you do all the things you have to do, so that you can have some time to do the things you want to do.  I have a lot of hobbies, S doesn't really have any.  "You're my hobby," she says whenever I suggest she take something up, which is bad because I'm not a very interesting hobby.  Programming a baseball simulator (my newest project) is fun, watching me program a baseball simulator is not so fun.  Then, inevitably, so that she won't be bored, S will find something that we "have" to do, but it's not really something that we have to do, it's just something that we can do.  For instance, assembling the dresser for the baby's room.  She's not due until September, but that's on her agenda for this weekend.  And it's not like I can say, "Hey, go for it, knock yourself out," because it requires some lifting, and S is good at a lot of things, but lifting certainly isn't one of them, and that's true even when she isn't with child.

[Another random shot of geese, this time with a chick.  I didn't get too close.  Geese are kinda assholes.]

I wish my job paid about triple what it pays now, then I'd have a better defense for my idleness, "I spend all week making money, at least I should get my weekends off!"  But this doesn't work very well with what I make now, especially since she makes just as much (maybe even a little more) than I do.  Oh well, when the baby comes, I'm sure this will all be moot, as then there will be no such thing as free time, at all.

In other news, beer league softball has started again.  Our team won our first game and then got crushed the second game, although we were without some key guys that game, and couldn't field a competent defensive team (although, I must say, I was pretty damn good in center field, Griffey Jr.-esque, without the grotesquely swollen jaw).  The other team weren't dicks or anything, but they did a few things that I think are pretty weak in beer league softball.  For one, they took extra bases like it was Game 7 of the World Series even with a huge lead even.  For two, they were trying to hit everything to right field because our right fielder couldn't catch very well (i.e., at all).  Here's my thought on that.  If you can legitimately drill the ball the other way, then by all means, go for it.  But if you're taking a giant step off the plate and hitting an anemic popup to right that you get a "triple" on because our right fielder is a chick in rolled-up jeans, who's only playing because her friend is on the team and we needed another player to avoid forfeit, and who's not moving and just standing there with her glove extender and her eyes closed, well, then that's pretty stupid and cheap, in my opinion.  For three, when said chick in rolled-up jeans came up to bat, they moved all their outfielders to the infield, because she didn't have the strength to hit it out of the infield.  You're winning by 20 runs and you're going to completely eliminate the already miniscule chance this girl has of getting on base.  Nice sportsmanship.

In news of things that actually matter, Dharun Ravi, the Rutgers webcam guy, whom I've written about before, was sentenced earlier this week.  He received 30 days in jail and, also probation and mandatory counseling, I believe.  It's a little harsh in my view.  I think the probation and counseling (along with the infamy he'll endure for years to come) would have been enough.  But on the flip side, he brought this all on himself, and I still don't think he believes he did anything wrong.  He never said he's sorry, and he never owned up to his own actions.  Instead of saying, "I messed up.  I'm immature.  I was weirded out by my roommate being gay and didn't handle it properly.  I had no way of knowing what he was going through," he prevaricated and tried to cover up evidence of his most egregious misdeeds.  The judge recognized this and punished him as he saw fit.  It's tough for me to argue with this.

Staying in the courtroom, more is coming out with the George Zimmerman trial including the release of pictures showing closeups of his injuries.  They're not inconsequential, but they're hardly proof of a life-and-death struggle.  I mean, if the loser of every fistfight shot the winner, we'd have dead bodies piled up in the gutters.  I find it very difficult to believe that Trayvon Martin was going to kill this man in the street with his bare hands and the only way he could be stopped was a bullet to the chest.  But much more to the point, Zimmerman started the entire thing for no reason.  He was in the wrong in stalking Trayvon, and he was especially in the wrong for confronting him in what was almost certainly a hostile manner.  Zimmerman might deny that this is what happened, but his story of being blindsided by Trayvon doesn't cohere with the few established facts of the case, and it really doesn't pass the common sense smell test.  I can understand keeping a watchful eye on somebody unfamiliar in your neighborhood, but unless he's doing something wrong, you have no right to take it further than this.  If you do, and it turns into a fight then that's mostly on you, and if you shoot somebody who's unarmed during this fight then that's all on you, and you should pay the consequences.  That's how I see it anyway.

Alright, I'm spent, until next time...

Entry 119: Pregnancy and Politics

Note: I wrote the entry below this morning, but didn't post until now.  Between then and now I thought of something I have gripe about with the iPhone.  I hate that when using the audio player, the play/pause button is sandwiched between the back and forward buttons (see below).  Too many times to count I've went to pause something and ended up starting it over or skipping it, completely losing my spot.  It's annoying and easily avoidable, just put the play/pause button near the top of the screen by itself.  This way it will be foolproof even for fat-fingered fools like me.

  
My sister sent me a link the other day of rude things said to pregnant women.  Some of them are pretty funny / obnoxious.  Before I talk about it though, let me express my annoyance about this new slideshow format that is apparently becoming more and more popular.  It drives me crazy.  I just want to read a normal story / list.  I don't want to click the slideshow.  And sometimes it's even worse, you have to click to the next slide and then click a link to a separate page altogether.  What's the purpose of this?  Do people not like normal article format?  Is it an advertising thing?  A page hits thing?  I don't know.  Whatever it is, I don't like it.  Nine times out of ten, if I click a story and see it's a slideshow, I just immediately close it (it has to be something really interesting or something somebody sent me for me to look at it).  Yahoo! is the worst offender (though MSN my default home page on my work computer is bad too), so much so that I refuse to open Yahoo! stories anymore.  I've been fooled too many times by an intriguing headline only to find a boring story, an annoying slideshow, or a stupid video "Yahoo! News Minute" clip.  Even if I see a headline on Yahoo! that looks interesting, I'll find it somewhere else and read it there.

Anyway, about the rude things said during pregnancy, I think the "kiss your life goodbye" is the most obnoxious.  One I hear S complain about a lot is "Oh, I couldn't even tell you were pregnant" despite the fact she put on 20 pounds, has a noticeably protruding belly, and can't fit into normal clothes anymore.  In general, I think S is getting a little bit self-conscious about her weight, which is absurd because she's, you know, pregnant, i.e., carrying another human inside her body.  But, it's not a rational mindset (I blame Project Runway, those 6 feet tall 75 pound models are a bad influence and they're not super attractive either, most guys I know prefer curvier girls, plywoodesque isn't really a sexy shape).  I try to console S by telling her that this is the time she can get big without judgement, so she should enjoy it, but I don't think it helps.

It also probably didn't help that I pointed out the fat content in her homemade "protein bars" (very high).  But in my defense, I'm not saying that she shouldn't eat them (I eat them too), I'm just saying that she shouldn't delude herself by thinking that they're particularly good for her.  They're delicious, very delicious in fact (that's the problem), but they aren't exactly wheatgrass and tofu in the health department.  Here are the ingredients, chocolate (not baking or semi-sweet chocolate, but the fancy dark chocolate that you see at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods), peanut butter, peanuts, rolled oats, apple sauce, protein powder.  A quick back of the envelope calculation shows that the fat content of a single bar is through the roof.  They aren't protein bars so much as they are candy bars.

[Protein bars or dessert?  It's a fine line.]

When I pointed this out to S, she protested a little, "But I used applesauce instead of butter!" (as if you can magically cancel out calories by adding apple sauce), and I think she was a little annoyed with me at first for being the messenger (admittedly, I'm not usually the most gracious messenger), but she understands that it's not my fault that chocolate and peanut butter are so high in saturated fat (and such a delicious combination).  I'm just the guy doing the math.  

The thing is, it's not something that's really open for debate.  You can't argue down fat content.  Something is either high in fat or it's not, regardless of what anybody says.  The only thing we can do is make an honest assessment and act accordingly.  This is how many things in life are, which is why politics drives me crazy.  Way too many politicians are incapable of assessing issues through any lens other than that of political currency (or they're capable of it, but chose not to, I don't know which one is worse).  As a result they try to use ideology to shape reality instead of vice versa.  Unfortunately reality usually doesn't care who wins an argument.  It just happens the way it's going to happen.  Climate change is a perfect example.  One's "opinion" on climate change has no effect on whether it's actually happening or not.  It either is or it isn't, so we all should be trying to figure out which is the case, in earnest.

The economy is another great example of this.  People love to argue about the economy, but what they seemingly fail to understand is that the economy is moving independently of their debate. You might convince a lot of people that your views are true, but unless they really are true, you haven't done anybody any good (unless of course you're a politician, particularly a Republican politician, in which case it will help your career, which is the whole problem).  This is why I love reading Paul Krugman.  He gets criticized frequently for having a leftist bias -- and he is unbashedly liberal on things that actually are up for debate (e.g., what's a "fair" tax rate) --  but when it comes to factual, evidence-based economic analysis I haven't read anybody more objective or accurate than he is.  (You can listen to him give an interview here.  He's been making frequent media appearances plugging his new book, pictured above.)  He talks largely about our economic woes here at home, but his analysis of the crisis in Europe, in particular, has been dead on since day one.  It's been pretty remarkable (and sad) to see things pan out almost exactly as he predicted they would up to this point so far.  It's also been pretty remarkable, given his prescience and given the desperation of the Euro-zone countries, that his warnings still aren't being heeded by the powers-that-be.  But, apparently American politicians don't have a monopoly on obstinate recklessness.  Well, it's not like the stakes are high or anything.  It's only the prosperity of an entire continent and our biggest ally on the line.

OK, I gotta quit here before I get too depressed.  Until next time...

Entry 118: The Ceiling Function, Gay Marriage, and Breastfeeding

Funny moment at work this week.  It makes me look kind of stupid, but still it's funny, so I'll relay it.

As I've mentioned before I do a lot of computer coding at work.  For a task I was working on, I had to use something called the ceiling function.  It's a simple function that takes a number and rounds it up to the nearest integer.  The call in C++ is ceil(), so for example ceil(1.3) = 2.  To use this function in Visual Studio C++ (the programming environment we use at work), you have to include a file in your project called math.h.  The .h extension means it's a header file.  You frequently have to include header files when programming in C++.

Anyway, for some reason our software engineering team couldn't get my code to work because of this ceil() function.  It lead to a long email chain trying to resolve the situation.  I had to go home for the night before it got completely resolved, and the next day I had an email from a coworker saying,

"Instead of ceil, you have to use the function clion.  If it doesn't work, include the file cmammal.h."

Now, this was a joke.  Seal, sea lion, sea mammal, get it?  I didn't.  I got the "sea" connection, but instead of thinking it was a joke, I thought it was some sort of weird, cute naming by the Visual Studio C++ people (there is a programming language called Python, so it's not that absurd).  So, I actually changed all the calls from ceil to clion and tried include the file cmammal.h in my project.  Of course, it didn't work because there is no such thing as clion or cmammal.

I still didn't get that it's a joke, so I went online and started searching for documentation on this stuff.  I Googled, "clion C++", "clion ceil C++", "cmammal C++", etc.  Of course nothing meaningful came up because, again, there is no such thing as clion or cmammal.

I literally spent about an hour trying to figure out what the hell is going on.  I was getting really frustrated when the guy who made the joke called me to talk about something else (we aren't in the same office).  Here's the end of our conversation.

Me: Hey, also, I can't get this clion stuff to work.  I can't even find any documentation for it online.
Him: [Pause] Uh... Yeah... That was just a joke.  We got everything to work with that last night.   Seal, sea lion,... no? 
Me: [Everything clicks and I feel kind of stupid] Oh!... Hahahaha... Oh, OK, I didn't get it... Hahahaha
Him:  You didn't actually spend time on this, did you?
Me: [Lying] Uh... Naw... Just a few minutes.
Him: Uh, OK.  Sorry about that.  I was just joking around.
Me: No worries.  I, uh... I, uh, just didn't get it.

And that was that.  Nerd humor.      

Shifting gears completely, the big story this week is President Obama's announced support of gay marriage.  Well done, Mr. President.  This will hopefully go a long way in advancing gay rights.  I never know what to think of the progression of gay rights -- the right to marry, in particular.  On the one hand it seems inevitable.  All polls point to a steady increase in support of same-sex sex marriage.  In fact, the NY Times blogger Nate Silver, who provides a lot of good political statistical analysis, says here that support now outweighs opposition.  And yet whenever it comes up as an initiative, it seems that voters roundly reject it.  What gives?

I don't really know what gives, but my theory is that a lot of people who support gay marriage do so because they don't really care much about it.  I sorta fall into this camp.  I'm very much in support of gay marriage, but it's not one of my "causes".  It's not super high on the priority queue of things I'd like to fix with this country.  With me, you start with getting our economy moving again, then you go to healthcare reform (preferably universal healthcare), then you go to preventing people who can't adequately provide for a child from having a child (or five), then you go to fixing education, and then you have a few dozen sub-items off these main items, and then somewhere down the list you get to gay marriage.  It's not that it's unimportant, it's just that we have to do some serious triaging in this country and denying gays the right to marry is more of a black eye than a hemorrhaging artery.

On the flip side of that coin, the people who are against gay marriage are adamantly against it.  It is high on their list because they have screwed up priorities and think that two lesbians having a slip of paper that gives them hospital visitation rights and some tax credits is on a par with the collapse of our financial system.  After all, The Bible says "homosexual offenders" will not inherit the kingdom of God, but it doesn't mention anything about housing bubbles.  So, when it comes to a survey in which all people have to do is answer a yes or no question, gay marriage looks good.  When it comes to an official vote in which people have to campaign and mobilize and actually vote, it doesn't look so good.  I have no idea if this is actually true or not, but it's my theory.

 [Hmm... Thought-provoking.  Maybe I have to rethink my support of same-sex marriage.]

Another big story this week is Time Magazine's cover of a woman breastfeeding her three-year old.  This is relevant to me because a) I breastfed until I was about three, b) my wife is pregnant.  Here's my take on it.  I am all for breastfeeding, but I don't like the photo.  It's sensationalistic and gratuitous.  The woman is too attractive, too done up (without trying to look done up), and in kind of a strange, seductive pose.  If you airbrushed out the kid it would be a really hot photo, which is extremely unsettling.  It's like somebody trying to show the sexy side of breastfeeding, and I am not for that.  I mean, if I have any oedipal feelings or if there exist any Freudian links somewhere in my brain between breast feeding and sex, I want to keep them deeply, deeply repressed.
 
Also, I understand that sometimes women have to breastfeed in public.  If a kid has to eat, a kid has to eat, but a little discreetness isn't such a bad thing.  You can try to use a cover or find a private area or turn toward the corner.  I mean, by the same token, when a kid has to crap, a kid has to crap, but nobody wants to see this kid on the cover of Time dropping a baby deuce.  What, isn't outputting food just as natural and beautiful a process as inputting it? 

Well, that puts a bow on this entry.  Until next week...

Entry 117: Escalator to Heaven

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul.
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold.
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last.
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll.

And she's buying the escalator to heaven.

[This is a poem I wrote entitled "Escalator to Heaven"]

I had an out of body experience on my way to the Nationals game yesterday.  I took the bus to the metro, took the metro to the stop for the ballpark, got out of the metro and started to ascend to ground level.  But something seemed off, I wasn't experiencing reality.  It was more like a dream, not even a dream, something else.  I was in D.C. and yet there were no Nationals fans to be found anywhere.  I was ping ponging through an obstacle course of Phillies fans.  Everything became a blur -- I was lost in a red sea of floating script Ps.

I managed to find the correct direction to go.  I just followed the obnoxious chants of "Let's Go Phillies... [clap, clap, ..., clap, clap, clap]".  I still couldn't quite comprehend what was going on.  I wasn't even moving anymore, I was just watching myself move, watching myself trying to fight though the throngs of faceless, soulless Chase Utley-worshiping minions.  I saw myself step on the last escalator to ascend to ground level.  I was convinced that the exit -- the exit to the metro stop and to this surreality -- was at the top of this escalator, when I arrived I would be myself again.

Instead, I looked up and saw only whiteness.

That's when I realized this was a glimpse of existence after death.  I had somehow entered a portal that was giving me a look at the afterlife.  It's apparently full of obnoxious frat boys in flip-flops and sideways Phillies caps, and obese couples in matching cheese steak stained Ryan Howard jerseys.

Dear God, I don't want to die.

Anyway, that's my take on my transit to the Nationals game yesterday.  I bought a 9-game ticket package with some friends of mine, and the first one was yesterday against the Phillies.  As you might have gathered, there were more Phillies fans than Nats fans in attendance.  That's actually pretty typical at Nationals games, as D.C. is a very transient city and a relatively small percentage of the people who live here are from here.  Anytime a team with a strong fan base comes to town, especially one from a city within driving distance, the stadium becomes awash with away-team fans.

I'm not a Nationals fan, but I find the infiltration of the stadium annoying, so I bought a Nationals hat and played the part of one.  The beauty of this is that the Nationals, previously the whipping boy of the NL East, are actually good this season, maybe better than the perennial division-winning Phillies.   In the game, the Phillies took a one run lead, and then the Nats rattled off seven runs and won easily.  It was a pretty satisfying win.  Leaving the stadium and watching all the dejected Phillies fans was fun, although most of them had left early, especially the obnoxious ones.  That's part of being an asshole fan, you annoy and taunt when your team is winning or the game is close, and you split as soon as things turn the other way.

In other non-sporting news, S signed us up for birthing classes.  I can't really say I'm looking forward to them, but I'll go because S wants to and I want to support her.  The class looks to be a bit on the hippy-dippy side (in our confirmation email, the woman who runs the class attached a "birthing poem" entitled "Ode to My Doula"), but I'm keeping an open mind.  In reading the blurb on their website it's obvious that they are really into "natural births", at home with a doula, no drugs, etc., which is fine.  I was born at home after all.

This is my take on it.  I know lots of people who've had natural births and everything went great, the kid and mother were fine.  I know lots of people who gave birth at the hospital with an epidural and everything went great, kid and mother were fine.  So, it doesn't really seem to matter other than personal preference. 

That's basically my general take on everything.  What's going to happen to if I do A, and what's going to happen if I do B.  If the answer is the same, then there's no reason to get fired up about it one way or the other.

Alright, that's all for this entry.  Until next time...