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...

Entry 116: Kid-ding Around

I might be kid-ding around, but I'm certainly not kidding around, when I say S is pregnant.  She has been for a while, about five months, but she wanted me to wait a bit before I announced it on my blog.  Although, I doubt it's real much of an announcement as the four people who read this blog probably already learned this news a long time ago.  Regardless, we are both pretty excited.

 ["Three Men and a Baby."  This movie is funny because it's men trying to take care of a baby.  Can you believe that, men?!  And not just one man but three of them!  (Take that "Mr. Mom"!)  Oho!  The only thing that could possibly top this is if it was three men trying to take care of a little girl instead of a baby, but Hollywood could never be that clever.]  

When we tell this to couples who already have kids the conversation often goes something like this.

Us: We're having a kid.
Them: Oh wow!  That's so awesome!  Congratulations!  We're so happy for you guys.
Us: Thanks.
Them: You're life is going to change SO much.
Us: Yeah, we know.  It's pretty exciting.
Them: No, I mean everything changes, EVERYTHING .
Us: That's what we've heard.
Them: You won't believe it.  It's just going to change SO much.  Our lives just changed SO much when we had our son.
Us: Well, we're preparing for some big changes.
Them: Hahaha... you can't prepare for this, you think you can, but you can't.  Your lives are just going to change SO much.
[Etc., etc.]

I know most people are just excited and want to give their perspective, but this conversation is growing quite tiresome.  Yes, our life is going to change, we get it.  And if we don't get it, because you can't ever get it without actually going through it, then you standing here telling us about how we don't get it isn't really accomplishing anything, now is it?   We're having a baby, it's a big deal to us, but it's not like several billion people haven't done this before.

This is actually a very comforting thing to tell myself when I freak out.  Well, I don't really ever freak out, but it's a comforting thing to tell S when she freaks out.  Everybody has or has had or will have a child, literally (well, almost literally).  If there is one thing people can do well, it's have babies.  Our entire evolution, our entire being, essentially boils down to this.  Parents do not constitute a very exclusive club, and if everybody else can do it, then so can we. 

In Bill Bryson's terrific book A Short History of Nearly Everything, the author comes to the general conclusion that the only discernible meaning of life is to propagate -- to create more life.  Unless you're religious, that's pretty much all there is to it -- keep your species going -- which probably explains why so many people are religious.  It's pretty unsettling to think that all we are is a widget in a self-perpetuating system that's completely pointless outside of itself.  But, if there is more to it than this, it's lost on me.

 [This book is great.  I highly recommend it. I recommend Bill Bryson in general.  "In a Sunburned Country" is great also.]

Alright, I think that's it for this entry.  I'm short on time, because I spent the past two days doing work around the house.  I hate work around the house.  In fact, I hate work of any preposition the house -- around the house, on the house, in the house, about the house -- it all sucks, but sometimes you have to do it.  We bought a lawn mower, and I cut the grass yesterday.  It's an old-school motorless mower, which is perfect for our smallish yard.  It works well, it's ecofriendly, and you get a decent workout.  Also, we finally had time to finish painting the room we started a few weeks ago.  I think it's going to turn out a-ok.

Well, until next time...

Entry 115: Bob Loblaw

The title of this entry is a character on the short-lived TV show Arrested Development. Scott Baio played attorney Bob Loblaw purveyor of Bob Loblaw's Law Blog. It was a typical joke for that show. They did a lot of play on word humor like they had a joke about a character who was a cross between an analyst and a therapist and his business card said "Analrapist", and a character who was in love with somebody named Lucille got his hand bitten off by a "loose seal", and the name of a boat on the show was "The Seaward" (Get it? The c-word.).

I always liked the show, but not as much as some people. Although it was canceled after only three seasons, it gained a devout cult following. It's final four episodes were shown in a two-hour block opposite the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics (I remember it being opposite the 2006 Super Bowl, but Wikipedia says otherwise). Rumor has it that the show's network, Fox, was trying to bury it over some sort of power struggle with the show's producers. In response, the producers made incest a big theme of the last episodes, as apparently Fox never liked the story arc involving sexual tension between cousins. As a result, these episodes are really weird, and not very funny, in my opinion. Actually, I thought the show really started to go downhill toward the end in general, so I'm not particularly interested in the prospect of a new season (supposedly coming to Netflix in 2013) or a movie.

[Random picture of the Embassy of the Republic of the Congo near my house.  I think somebody lives upstairs, but the rest of it is completely dilapidated and a window has been knocked out.  I guess it's fitting, the country isn't exactly a pillar of stability.]   

Anyway, it's a blah day today in our nation's capital. The weather is blah, wet and dreary, and I'm feeling blah, tired and weary. A large tropical storm is supposedly passing through the area with very high winds and heavy rain coming this evening. I guess we need the rain, it's been too dry so far this year, but the timing is quite unfortunate as S is scheduled to arrive back from a work trip tonight. I'm worried that a storm will affect her flight. Also, my work has a big conference scheduled over the next few days, many clients are coming in from out of town, and it will suck if the weather is shitty the whole time. I mean, I don't think our clients will hold the weather against us, but it would be nice if they have an overall positive experience and enjoy the area, and that's much easier to do if it's sunny out. But what can you do? As Andre 3000 says, "You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can't predict the weather."

Although, you actually can predict the weather. What do you think meteorologists do? There are many websites and an entire TV channel devoted solely to predicting weather. The lyric should be, "You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can't predict the weather very far in advance with great accuracy." That's a much better line. I should be a rapper.

I actually used to write raps as a kid.  In third grade, a friend gave me The Beastie Boys' License to Ill for my birthday, and I used to play the beats on one tape deck and record them on a different tape deck and the rap in between them.  So you'd hear the opening bells from "Girls" and then a stop and then you'd hear ten-year old me rapping and then a stop and then the bells again.  I still remember part of one of my songs, "Making Money". It went like this:

You go downtown for an occupation,
You get a quick one with no vacation.
You quit right away, and get no pay, 
And your mom gives you lip, when you get home that day.

Making money, it's the hardest thing to do,
Making money, it's all up to you.

I clearly was just doing my best to parrot The Beastie Boys' lyrical style, but still, c'mon, that's not bad for a ten-year old.  Then, when I was in seventh grade I wrote a parody to "Ice Ice Baby" all about the Gulf War.  I remember performing this in front of my class.  The first verse:

All right stop, yeah I said yield,
Hussien is back in Desert Shield.
Tryin' to start a war with the USA,
Bombs will drop from night to day.
Will it ever stop?
Yo, he hopes no,
Even at night it'll glow.
To the extreme, he's gonna shoot a scud,
We'll fire a Patriot and pray it ain't a dud. 

I think I have the original copy of this masterpiece somewhere.  I wrote it on thick off-white paper using a typewriter, and I remember that my dad found it and mailed it to me at point.  If I can find it, I'll scan it and post it.  I recall it being hilarious. But not as hilarious as the clip below.



In other news, I went out last night and stayed up way way too late. I was pacing myself with the drinks, so I'm not very hung over, but I feel like I could crawl back into bed and sleep the afternoon away. I have to wake up early tomorrow too, so I'm in that weird limbo where if I take a nap then I might not be able to sleep well tonight, but if I don't take a nap and don't sleep well tonight for some other reason, then I'll be even more sleep deprived tomorrow. To nap or not to nap? It's a real dilemma. Why does life have to pose such difficult questions?

Well, time to stick a fork in this entry.  I'm going to go to the grocery store so that the day isn't a complete waste and then I'm going to give that nap some serious consideration.

Until next time...

Entry 114: Paint Your Wagon

["Gonna paint that wagon, gonna paint it good.  We ain't braggin' were gonna coat that wood."]

Only in this case, it's not a wagon. We (S, S's mother who's visiting, and I) spent a large chunk of yesterday painting a little room in our house. S started the process a few days ago taping all the edges. She asked me to tape the ceiling and top of the door frames, as she has trouble reaching these areas even on a stool (haha, she's short and I'm not). I told her I wouldn't do it, because I could paint the edges without tape. See, back in 1995 I spent a summer painting houses for AAA Student Painters, and they taught us a technique where you put your brush right against the edge, "cut the edge" was the phrase they used, and apply the paint perfectly without using any tape. It's easy to do with a little practice, but S was highly skeptical that I could do it.

Turns out she had good reason to be. I tried to cut an edge, got paint all over the ceiling, and then made the bold proclamation that we should just tape all the edges. Between I-told-you-sos from S, it all came back to me. It wasn't a summer I spent painting houses in 1995. It was a week, and I was terrible at it and hated it. I never actually learned how to cut an edge. I didn't learn anything except to crack down in computer programming classes, because I'd starve as a blue collar worker. It was such a miserable job that I "quit" (I use quotes because my supervisor wasn't exactly begging me to stay) to become a dishwasher at The Old Spaghetti Factory. Yep, getting lectured because the butter crocks weren't properly stocked, by a mustachioed, 23-year old, community college dropout, was actually a step up from house painting.*

Anyway, we painted the room. We got the job done. Well, half done. It looks like shit right now, actually, but I'm confident that we can make it look decent with another coat. A big part of the problem is that we're painting over a darker color with a lighter color and you can tell. It looks really patchy in parts.  But, like I said, I think we can smooth it over with another coat. Home improvement projects just aren't my bag. My plan in life has always been to make enough money doing things that are my bag, so that I can pay somebody to do home improvement projects for me. We're getting there -- still can't quite justify paying somebody to paint a small room, though. It's better to do a slightly substandard job and save the money.  Especially, when you have a wife who takes advantage of the fact you rarely look at your bank account and spends money on something that you don't really need online every other day. Although, I can't give S much crap. Lately, she's been right, and I've been wrong. She bought a SodaStream to carbonate water, and I told her that within a week it would be in the basement gathering dust. Turns out it's awesome.  We both use it all the time, so I have to eat my words on that one.

Speaking of S, she left this morning for a weeklong work trip to South America. Her mom is still here. I'm giving her a ride to the airport tomorrow. Actually, S's entire immediately family (mom, dad, and sister) was here last weekend. I like it when they come to visit. It's nice to have in-laws you get along with. By the way, isn't the term "in-law" a bit strange? It seems really formal for family members. "Hey, this is my brother... in-law. We have no personal connection, it's strictly a legal matter."

[Dhosas abound when S's mom comes to visit.]

Anyway, when S's family is together, they speak a hybrid of English and a South Indian dialect. To the outsider it sounds something like this, "Ba dub ba dub ba dub dub gym by 9 in the morning. Ba dub ba dub Dupont Circle..." This is good for me, because I tend to tune people out even when I speak their language, so this just gives me a great excuse. Although, usually I can figure out what's going on by the tenor of the conversation. Like the other day, a few friends were over for dinner, and S's mom came in with a bowl of food. S said something to her and then she responded, and I knew that S said that she was overfeeding us, and her mom said that we could just eat what we wanted and leave the rest. I could tell even though I didn't understand a word they said. I think I'm pretty perceptive that way. I can usually read social situations pretty well. This is probably a talent I honed as a teenager through years of having to recognize all the girls who didn't like me. It was a survival thing. I had to correctly ascertain the situation to avoid critical embarrassment.

[I mentioned 1995 above and I mention baseball below, so this clip is completely appropriate.  The single (or should I say, double... haha... good one) most exciting moment in Seattle sports in the last 30 years.  (And that's sad being that it was only the ALDS and the Ms lost in the next round.)] 

Changing subjects completely, baseball season is underway. The Mariners look like they might be OK, by which I mean they have a chance to finish third in a division of four. When your team hasn't made the playoffs in 11 years, that's considered OK. Ozzie Guillen, the outspoken, funny (in a jackass sort of way) manager of the Miami (nee Florida) Marlins, was in the news this week as he received a five game suspension for jokingly praising Fidel Castro. Several writers have chimed in on what an overly harsh punishment this is. I agree. It's part of a weird phenomenon in our culture where the outrage ratio of what people say over what people do is way too high. (I agree with the author of the fangraphs article I linked to above who implies that Ozzie perpetuating beanball wars -- for which he receives little or no punishment -- is much worse than saying stupid things.)

Take Mel Gibson, as an example, he's said and probably will continue to say, idiotic, derogatory things. He's slurred several different ethnic groups (which is especially stupid being that one of these groups essentially runs the industry he's in). For this, his career is basically over, rightfully so, perhaps. But now take Chris Brown. A few years ago he beat the shit out of his girlfriend. I mean, not just slapped her, but actually bludgeoned her face. Today, he's back on top -- playing the NBA All-Star game, winning Grammys, and referring to himself as a role model. Now, who more deserves career-ending treatment for what they did, Mel Gibson or Chris Brown? And speaking of award shows, Brown was embraced at the Grammys, but the guy who said "fag" as part of a joke was kicked off The Oscars. Does this make any sense to anyone?

[Ozzie Guillen]

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that. I just wanted to go out on a quick jag. Until next time...

*I quickly learned to just ignore the manager. The one advantage of being the low man on the totem poll is that you don't have to take shit from people. What, I'm going to lose this minimum wage job? Oh no. It's the booming '90s. I think I can find somebody else to pay me $4.90 an hour (my actually wage). If you want things to go faster quit trying to chat up the underage hostesses, put on an apron, and get back here and help, otherwise shut up and leave me alone with my dirty spumoni saucers.

Entry 113: Tons Of Guns

The topic today is guns, because there have been several prominent stories in the news lately of which guns play a large part. I, myself, do not own a gun. I've thought about buying one -- and by "though about", I mean I've literally thought about it, I've never actually considered it as a realistic course of action. It might make sense for some people to own guns for protection, say, if you live in a very bad part of town, or you live in an area without prompt police service, or you're well-trained in the use of firearms, but none of these apply to me. I look at it from a mathematical standpoint. If we assign a positive value to all the good events that can occur from me owning a gun (the largest value being me saving myself or a loved one from critical injury), and assign a negative value to all the bad events that can occur from me owning a gun (the largest value being an accident or provocation causing critical injury to me or a loved one), and multiply each value by the probability of that event occurring, and add everything together, by my estimation, the sum would be overwhelmingly negative. So, I shouldn't buy a gun. We have an alarm system and cell phones to call the police. This is almost certainly the best bet in the unlikely case we ever need protection.

[Gang Starr's "Tonz of Guns".  Best line: "They like the feel of chrome in their hand, the shit makes 'em feel like little big man.]

"Guns don't kill people, people kill people," is the well-known tagline for the National Rifle Association. While this is technically true -- there are many cultures with many guns and very low gun violence (Switzerland is the classic example) -- I find it disingenuous. It's not the guns that lead to violence, it's the gun culture that leads to violence, and I think the NRA, in large part, perpetuates our gun-crazed culture in the U.S. They play the constitutional-right-to-protect-oneself card, because that's the best argument politically (and surely some of their members are honest people who really feel this way) but I suspect that for a lot of gun owners it's more about paranoia and power. They are paranoid about the "bad guys" taking over, and having guns makes them feel powerful -- powerful in a delusion, vigilante, unrealistic, super-heroic sort of way, but powerful nonetheless. And it's dangerous when groups like the NRA push this fringe un-reality into the mainstream via bills like Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law that infamously came to the forefront because of the Trayvon Martin shooting.

Speaking of Trayvon Martin, I keep waiting for something to come up that at least makes some sense of the situation. It seems nearly inconceivable to me that what allegedly happened -- a man tracked down and shot an unarmed teenager simply for looking suspicious -- is what actually happened, but it's been a while, and nothing more of substance has come out. Maybe that is actually what happened. The shooter, George Zimmerman, claims self-defense, but I don't see how he can possibly make this claim when a) he was clearly the aggressor, b) he was armed and Martin wasn't, c) he has no serious injuries (he said that he was, in fact, badly hurt in a scuffle, but video footage taken immediately afterward belies this).  So why hasn't he been arrested? Even with the Stand Your Ground bullshit it seems to me like the case in there.

As everybody knows, there is a racial component to the shooting.  Martin was a black teenager and Zimmerman is a white/Hispanic man. Martin was also wearing a hoodie, which apparently is an article of clothing associated with thugs. (I honestly didn't know hoodies had this reputation. Doesn't every teenage boy wear hoodies? I had (and still have) a bunch of them.) It brings to the forefront the perception we have in this country of young black males as being particularly criminal and violent.  This is a really charged topic, one that most people (particularly white people) aren't comfortable discussing. It's a topic that I don't want to go into now, not because I want to dodge it (on the contrary, I think it's an important issue and would like to share my thoughts on it), but because it requires a whole lot more words than I want to type on the subject right now. One thing I will say is that Adam Carolla has been speaking out on this issue a lot on his daily podcast lately. His feeling is that everything stems from the nonexistence of fathers in too many black families. If, as a society, we could solve this problem, all the other problems (the crime, the violence (real and perceived), the prejudices, etc.) would largely be alleviated. While I hardly take Carolla's political commentary as gospel (the best thing I can say about a lot of his cringe-worthy political rants is that they're kinda funny), I agree with this particular assessment almost 100%, and it would be nice if leaders of all races would make this a focal point. But, this is a broad issue and doesn't really apply specifically to the Trayvon Martin case. From where I stand, given the information at hand, his death is a tragedy and an injustice, plain and simple.

[Hilarious scene from "The Simpson's".  A quote from Homer from the same episode, "When I held that gun in my hand, I felt a surge of power... like God must feel when he's holding a gun."] 

On another gun-related topic, yet another school shooting went down this week. This one at, Oikos, a small largely Korean Christian university in California. The shooter One Goh is apparently a disgruntled former student. No other motive is being report. Although I think I know another motive: the dude is a fucking lunatic. Whenever this type of thing happens the media always searches for some deep reason, and nothing satisfactory ever comes from it. It's never, "The shooter, a very wealthy and social man, had uncovered a ring of pedophile rapist-terrorist, who were planning a cross-country crime spree culminating with the destruction of the White House. By shooting these people, he saved hundreds of children and perhaps the entire country." It's always, "The shooter is described as a loner and has displayed evidence of mental instability." You don't say? Lining up your former classmates, picking them off one-by-one, and then admitting you did it to a supermarket clerk -- mental instability? Huh, go figure.

Speaking of "the media", this (gun-related) story is a perfect example of why many of our major media outlets suck. All facets of the political polyhedron like to claim there is a media bias, and there is, a bias toward money. Media outlets want eyeballs, so instead of reporting, more and more, they sensationalize. Just read this headline, "Police draw guns at home of Torii Hunter", what types of images does that conjure up? Now read the story (it's very short). Can this even be called "a story"? Police followed protocol in response to an accidentally tripped alarm -- that's a nonevent. Hunter is quoted as tweeting, "The cops that were here today had there (sic) guns drawn but pointed downward in for safety. Those guys handled the situation like trained cops," and "The police department did a great job of protecting my home. Thanks guys!" This is such a bullshit article. But, in part, it's my own fault. I should know better than to click a random Yahoo! headline. For every ten times I click, I read one half-interesting story.  That's a .050 batting average.  Well, no more.  This is it. No more clicks, Yahoo!. You've fooled me for the last time.

And this is it for this entry. Until next time...

Quick Update: After writing this, I noticed that ABC News release "enhanced" footage of George Zimmerman showing what could be a big gash on his head.  It still seems fishy to me.  He still sought out Martin.  He still could have prevented the entire ordeal simply by listening to the 911 attendant.  Also, does getting in a physical altercation that you basically started warrant shooting somebody?  Like I said, it's still fishy to me, but since I specifically mentioned Zimmerman's apparent lack of injury, I wanted to put up this update.

Entry 112: Jetleg

I'm super tired today. I got in from San Diego late last night and slept horribly. I have a mild case of jetlag, or as I like to call it, jetleg. It's one of those words that I always want to say the wrong way even though I know it's the wrong way. Another one is copyrighted. It's copywritten to me, despite the fact that makes no sense.



The conference I attended was good. I mean, you can't really go wrong with a trip to SoCal on the company dime, but aside from that, I learned a lot of general things, and a few things I can apply to my everyday work. This was my first corporate conference, and it was interesting to see the difference between it and an academic conference. As you might expect, the corporate conference is much better funded. There is much more free food, well, maybe free is the wrong word since the attendees pay a steep registration fee (usually covered by the attendees' employers), but nearly every meal is catered and there are snacks between sessions as well. Although, I wonder if the organizers got confused about the average age of the attendees (probably late 40s), as they were pushing sugar on us like we were a group of 13-year-old kids who were away from their parents for the weekend. Breakfast was donuts or some other pastry, between-session snack was ice cream bars, and the only available soft drink was soda. Would it be so hard to put out some granola and yogurt, a veggie platter, and some sparkling water?

[The hotel I stayed at in Palm Springs. I brought my swimsuit, but never went into the pool. What a waste.]

Another thing I noticed is that there was an emphasis placed on making the conference "cool". Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen pumped through the sound system before the plenary talks, beer and wine were made available at the end of each day's sessions, everybody dressed casually (some in shorts, Tevas, and ball caps), there was a dodgeball tournament ("live by the ball, die by the ball" the apparent motto), and you could just tell the organizers were trying to create a laid-back, "we're hip" feel. The keynote speaker epitomized this. He gave a reasonably informative and interesting talk, and I think the audience mostly liked him, but his style seem contrived and bombastic and really annoyed me. The Onion once ran a really funny article titled "I'm Quite Eccentric Within Accepted Societal Norms", and I kept thinking about this when watching the keynote speaker.

In general, I'm not sure how I feel about work being "cool". It depends on how cynical a mood I'm in. On the one hand, being cool is better than being boring and depressing. On the other hand, it's a bit phoney. It misrepresents the employer-employee relationship as something akin to a friendship, which it isn't. Unless you work for yourself, no matter how much you're paid, you're still essentially just a toil. If you aren't in some way making money for somebody at the top, I doubt work will be too cool for you regardless of whether or not your office has a Nintendo Wii. Anyway, I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. It's just a thing, is all. It is what it is, as the saying (which I've never really liked) goes.

[San Diego is a weird city in that the airport is right on the bay near the downtown area.]

On a different topic, I got to see my uncle T and two cousins, A and Ca, while in San Diego (the conference was in Palm Springs, but I went to San Diego for a few days to work from a colleague's home office). It was really nice. We all went to dinner Thursday night along with A's girlfriend and her cousin who also happened to be in from out of town. Toward the end of the night Ca's friend (girlfriend?) also showed up. We had a leisurely dinner that ended around 10:30, and then some others went out to enjoy the San Diego nightlife. I went back to the hotel as I was already dragging (east coast time) and had to wake up relatively early the next day (and be on point) for a meeting with coworkers.

Apparently I missed out as when I saw A the next evening, he told me that, through some strange confluence of events, he, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend's cousin were invited by a Pro Bowl football player to hangout with him in the VIP section at some club. A said the guy was really cool and kept buying them drinks. As one might expect, A also said he then spent most the afternoon trying to sleep off a hangover. This shows how old and lame I'm getting as my first thought wasn't, "Damn, I missed a chance to hang out with an NFLer", it was, "Whew, good thing I went back to the hotel or I'd be hung over and miserable today, too". Yep, still crazy after all these years.


Alright, time to wrap it up so that I can go for a run before dinner. Gotta work off all those extra calories I ingested throughout the conference. Until next time...