Divine Lunacy

Everyone even remotely cool needs a list of the top x things they hate, right? Well, here you go. Enjoy. (in no order)

• People who think they can leave class after 15 minutes of the teacher not being there. You’re morons, even though some of you are my friends. Please exercise common sense before spreading your stupidity. If you lack common sense, read the student handbook. If you lack that, or you’re just too stupid, please remove yourself from the gene pool immediately. Now suppose you do leave class. Congratulations. You’re now out of area.
• People who respond “That’s nice” when they don’t really have a comment. I really don’t care if you don’t care. Just say: “/*No comment*/”
• People who spread aim viruses. Are you people link whores or something? Must you click on every link you receive? Did you ever, for one second, think that it might be smart to find out where the link goes and what it does, before clicking???
• People who think ‘lol’ is synonymous with ‘okay’, and people who over use ‘lol’ in general.
• Skinny people who laugh their fat asses off…
• People who come into the projection room and think they own the place. You own nothing. You are a pathetic life-form; please spare me the trouble of being within 10 feet of you.
• People who decide that they are going out to dinner with their boyfriends instead of going out to eat for their brother’s birthday, thus causing the birthday dinner to be postponed.
• People who don’t like any of the following: The Doors, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Pure Imagination, or Aladdin.
• Microsoft. (needed to make sure the list included at least one thing.)
• People who are ignorant enough to make the following elementary mistakes in grammar and convention:
  1. They’re, there, their
  2. your, you’re.
  3. to, too, two
  4. Fewer, less
  5. much, many
  6. further and farther (Ryan’s pet peeve)
  7. I didn’t have breakfast this morning I think this is a run on sentence In order to make a run on sentence I actually had to go back and delete the punctuation ( thanks for the idea mike [there should most definitely be a comma after mike ;))
  8. Good, well. Well is an adverb, people. Get it right. By doing good, you are, in my eyes, doing poorly.
  9. I don’t not hate double negatives.
• “People who double nest “quotes” It’s a bad programming practice, and it won’t compile anyway…”
• Phones
• (People who don’t properly nest parenthetical comments. [as opposed to properly nesting, like this. {I don’t really hate those people. I do it all the time.}])
• Post Secondary Planning
• People or services that fail to use HTML lists when appropriate, especially quizzes.
• Live Journal.
• People who waste ten minutes thinking of more things to hate.

It is quite probable that some items on my list may apply to you. Fear not, for if you are lucky, you are blessed with a level of coolness high enough to outweigh everything about you I hate. Also, note that I don’t really hate the persons described above. Those things just annoy me. And finally, people who improperly nest HTML tags.

In an email from my dad:

Greg,
The DMV computer system (sure, blame the software, not the people who wrote it) will not allow them to issue anything but a provisional license before the 18th birthday. If you go back on Oct 4th or later, you can exchange it for a full license with no charge$. The person I spoke to suggested going to RI Mall around 7 - 7:30 pm just before they close to avoid lines.

I find titles have a funny way of hinting what a post may be about. This post is obviously going to be about yesterday, but even more than that I find that the length of the title also as something to say about the post’s contents. The fact that a post can be effectively summed up in one word means it is important… or something along those lines. Anyway… Yesterday can be split into two distinct chapters: The DMV and the Talent Show.

Looking at my driver’s license, I see that it expires on 10-04-05… Hey, that’s my birthday, and it’s next week. In fact, if today were yesterday, today would be a week before my birthday. The way I saw it, I had two options: Either renew my license before it expired or let it expire and drive around with an expired license until I found time to go to the DMV. Thinking I had life all figured out, I skipped two periods of school and headed on over to the ‘Registry Express’ at Rhode Island Mall. First, I’d like to note that the registry express is the slowest registry I have ever been to. In my experience, express implies speed and simplicity, neither of which can be found at the ‘Registry Express’. It would be more fittingly named ‘The Abridged Registry’. They offer what they call ‘basic services’ and make you wait twice the time on your ticket.

I arrived at the DMV around 1245 and grabbed my ticket which said I had 1 hour and six minutes before my number was called. Yay, thought I, plenty of time to gallivant around town. Unbeknown to me, I really did have plenty of time to kill. When I returned half an hour later, only ten numbers had been called. Thirty numbers remained before my number would be called.

At some point during the ‘waiting process’, I remembered the seinfeld waiting room episode.(which you should watch if you want to have full understanding of the allusion). Aside from being just ‘waiting numbers’, the numbers on the tickets also indicate a person’s standing at the DMV. After a while, I was one of the senior members of the line. I clearly remember sitting there, my head held high, thinking ‘Yo! This is my line, bitches. Hey you, number 121, move! You’re blocking my view of the ‘currently serving’ counter.” And of course number 121 would listen to number 62, who is his superior by 59 postilions in line. So when one’s number is finally called, it’s kind of like winning the lottery. You stand up proudly and look at all your inferiors, a look of victory on your face. It’s like “Hey, bitches, that’s my number! Yeah! see that! I get to go to counter number one. Have fun waiting here for three more hours. hey you, number 63, see you in the photo line, eh?”. After the initial “Yeah, you all suck!” stage, one slowly struts over to the counter and says “Hey! I’m here to renew my license.” to the hombre behind the counter. That’s it. You think you’ve made it at that point. A few minutes of blah blah. Yes, that’s still my address, here’s thirty dollars. OK, so the renewal process only takes 3 minutes. Off to the photo line. (dun dun dun.).

Ah, yes, the photo line. Good times… Well, not really. It sucked. I walked right up to the counter, and that lady looked me in the eyes and said, in a gruff voice, “Not eighteen yet?”. I replied “Next week” and she told me “Because you aren’t yet 18 we’ll have to give you another provisional license.” I didn’t express any objection to this, but I was rather pissed. She then proceeded to ask me who served me. I pointed and said “that guy over there.” She walked over there and they exchanged some words, which ended with him saying “yeah, that’s ok”. I have no idea what they talked about. And here I was thinking I was smart going there before It expired. I hate the DMV… And the moral of the story is: Drive to the DMV with an expired license. If a cop stops you, tell him my story.

That takes care of chapter one. I’m too lazy to write much about chapter two. Let’s just put it this way: I’ve done lights for many events. The talent show last night was one of the more poorly run events I have done. Perhaps it’s just me, but it seems as though the level of organization at these things is going down each year. Mr. Bronco my sophomore year was awesome. Mama Bliss and Mrs. Dethomas had everything under control. They had wireless headsets and mama Bliss was up in the projection room making sure everything went smoothly. They even publically thanked us at the end of that show. I don’t think we’ve been publically thanked since then.

Tapes and CDs alike must go. The poor quality of tapes is enough to kill me, but when I can tell that part of the song was cut out with a cassette recorder… yeah.. hiss pop.. not good. Download.com, people. Download an audo file editor. There are millions of them to be downloaded on the internet. This is what we call using your resources. Don’t fear the computer. Use it. Don’t be afriad to learn. It really isn’t hard to move the mouse around and hit buttons. It’s not like the sky is going to fall on your head or anything. That’s the problem with people. The only way to learn is to do, but people are afraid to try things because they’re afriad they’ll start world war III or something. HEY YOU GUYS!!! Your computer is not a nuke. This has been a public service announcement paid for in part by the C-NRoG. Next time I run something, I am telling people to email me mp3 files and descriptions of what they want for lights. If they can’t understand the concept of ripping songs off of CDs (again, use your resources), I might be nice enough to do that for them. Perhaps I’ll even edit pieces out. (sexy 320 kbps audo… yum…) We’ll see. I just won’t stand for poor organization any more. A thumbs down to the class of 2008…

In more todayish news, I just earned a Sliver Palm. That makes me Eagle Scout, Silver Palm…. Highest ranking scout in the history of my troop. yay for me. I’m special. Free cheers for Greg. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go proofread this thing then click publish.

• PHP Matrix class - I became incredibly bored one day, and this was the result…
• Random Math Functions - I used parts of this for a report that I had to write. Includes a few combinatorial functions, a function to solve quadratic equations, and a modulus function that can handle negative numbers.
• Quadratic Equation solver - A program that takes in put like: -x^2 + x + x 3x - 4 = - 4x + x^2 +15, arranges the terms in general form and then solves the quadratic. (Working copy) [needs rewriting]

Johnny walks in to a Dunkin Donuts and orders a ’small coffee’. What does he get? Well, that all depends on what the date is. Is it late spring, summer, or early fall, or are we into the cold months? Depeding on the time of year, johnny will get either a hot coffee or an iced coffee, without explicitly specifying either. Again without explicitly specifying his preferences, Johnny will get sugar and cream in his coffee. He neither ordered ice, nor cream, nor sugar, but he ended up with all three. Poor Johnny. All he wanted was a ‘Small coffee no cream; no sugar; no ice’. How was he supposed to know that he had to take all of those away? The moral of the story is that when in a Dunkin Donuts store, you should describe your coffee with as many words as possible.

In Google Search query language, johnny’s order might look something like:

small coffee -cream -sugar -ice

Even more fun than the query form of the order is the mathematical equation form:


small coffee = ground_coffee + hot + water + 2*cold + cream + sugar

cold = -hot

small_coffee = ground_coffee + cold + water + cream + sugar
Johnny_wants = ground_coffee + hot + water
Johnny_wants = small_coffee + 2*hot - cream - sugar


Looking at the equation form clearly demonstrates that Johnny must order postivie hot, negative cream, and negative sugar.

The whole point of the story is that I disagree with the way that evil corporation does things. When I walk into a Dunkin Donut store and order a ‘Small Coffee’, I am looking for a small amount of (crushed coffee beans+hot water). Even iced coffee starts hott. Icing the coffee is an extra step that should not be implied…

Hello, I’ll have a small Coffee plus heat, minus the quantity cream plus sugar.

It always happens after school, between 1500 and 1600. Every damned time. The phone rings, it’s for me. It’s one of the armed forces calling to corner me into joining…again. It was the Marines this time. What kind of idiot do these people take me for? He asked me what I want to do after high school, so I told him, truthfully, that I was planning on majoring in math. Here comes the punch line: He went on to ask me what I am planning on doing for a career. Uh oh! I stupidly, and truthfully told him that I was undecided. Well, he set me up. I hung up about then, because I knew that after that he would inform me about all of the great careers in mathematics that the Marines have to offer. He didn’t really think I would fall for that one, did he? I must admit, he did seem quite skilled at working poor, helpess high school students into joining. If I want to join the Marines, I’ll join them without the help of some guy on a phone. This particular guy was lucky. Most of the callers don’t get past: I’m from the <service> recruit… I hang up. If you happen to be a recruiter reading this post, and I’m on your list, don’t call me. I don’t want to waste the time required to listen to your little introductory speil and then hang up. Please, save us both the trouble.

On a second thought. This dude knew both my grade and my school. Who gives these people my name, grade, and phone number? I sure as hell don’t remember realeasing all of that information. Just don’t call! Thirdly, I am now wanted by the army, navy and marines…. What happens if I sign on with all of them? Remember: Uncle Sam wants you.

I just switched to dvorak. Thank god this post is prefabricated…

Google first started dishing out more megabytes to Gmail users in April this year. Each time I have logged into one of my Gmail accounts, I have seen the wonderful storage counter they have on the Gmail homepage. I always figured it would be nice to know how much space they’re dishing out and over what time period, but it was never very high on my to do list. I just happened to have an essay due on Wednesday, and Gmail turned out to be the perfect catalyst for procrastination. Procrastination always gets the best of me. How can a report for English be more important than random mathematical endeavors anyway? Whilst I should have been weaving a story of world conquest, I was busy pouring through the Javascript that makes that hott counter run. The first code of note I came across was a definition of the a multidimensional array:


var CP = [
[ 1122879600000, 2450 ],
[ 1125558000000, 2550 ],
[ 1136102400000, 2950 ]
];


Being a *nix user and programmer with nothing better to do, I quickly realized that the three large numbers were dates written as the number of milliseconds after the Unix epoch. (1st January, 1970). It then follows that the second number in each sub array is the number of megabytes of storage Gmail users will have by the corresponding dates. Content with my time findings for the time being, I proceeded to play around with these numbers. This is where the linear algebra comes in. To find the rate of change between any two ‘installments’ of storage, one must compute the value ‘rise over run’, or similarly, ‘change in Megabytes over Change in time’.

Before continuing it is important to note that the first date is July 1st, 2005, the second is August 1st, 2005, and the third is January 1st 2006. We are currently in between the second and third installments. The rate of expansion between the second and third installments is given as:

Rate = (1136102400000-1125558000000)/(2950-2550) = (1 MB)/(26361000 ms)

Let t be the time, in seconds, since the Unix Epoch. The space available to Gmail users on any given date is then given as:

S=((t-1125558000000 ms))*((1 MB)/(26361000 ms)) + 2550

To be sure of this result and because I had nothing more exciting to do, I decied to write a PHP script to test the theory, which was of course correct. Writing that in PHP failed to waste a sufficient amount of time, so I decided a C++ version was in store… Let’s not go into that. ( C++ version )

Curious to see how Google approached the problem, I continued reading deeper into the source code. They used an equally effective part over whole method.

S=(t-1125558000000)/(1136102400000)*(2950-2550) + 2550

The real question here is: How much space will I have on October 4th, 2005 at 1533:27 EDT? ( Unix time: 1128454527)

S=(1128454527000-1125558000000 ms)*((1 MB)/(26361000 ms))+ 2550 = 2659.879253...MB

We shall see if I am right. In the meantime, it looks like I have quite a lucrative careerer in the field of insanity.

Dead hex people, root, and four thousand digits of Pi are all good, but I feel it is time to enhance my wardrobe with more geek clothes. After all, I need to be able to wear a distinct geek shirt everyday of the week, right? I’m too lazy to decided which shirts to get… They’re all so good. Please comment with your top 3 choices from the list below. (I couldn’t get anything to add to my thinkgeek wishlist…) Comments without votes will be considered unsolicited, and we all know what happens to unsolicited comments, right? Well, in case you don’t I’ll summarize:
[mario@localhost ~]$ mysql -u wpdb -p
Enter password: **************
mysql> \r wpdb

mysql> \q
Bye
We woudn’t want that, would we?

1. There’s no place like 127.0.0.1. (or the ipv6 version.)
2. I’m blogging this
3. Caffeine
4. You are dumb.
5. You are dumb v2. (select either v1 or v2.)
6. //No comment…
7. SELECT * FROM users…
8. $> man women (bash: uh oh…)
9. Oh, how true…
10. Fraudulent?… I like…
11. Radiation… yum
12. Linux

I suffer from indecision and only you can prevent forest fires, so vote or feel my wrath! I’ll post again later this weekend.