Divine Lunacy

A look into the everyday life of your not-so-ordinary geek:

…In a battle to the death. Please comment.

Greg on his death bed: “Just one more digit of pi and I’ll set the world record…”. For those of you who know me, I’m sure you understood that…

Imagine a world with no Official languages. A world in which each village has own dialect. A world in which communications between groups of people is impossible. Official languages prevent such a world by “forcing” everyone to speak the same language, but that’s a whole different topic. I don’t want to get started on why we need to make English our official language before the Spanish people assimilate us in our own country. Anyway… If I am so inclined, I can send an email to a mac user in England (I use Linux). The mac user in England will be able to read my email because although our computers are running different operating systems, they speak a common language. This is ensured by standards such as ASCII, ANSI, and ISO. I am using ISO 8859-1; the mac probably isn’t using ISO 8859-1, but it most likely knows how to read it. The character set is specified in the email headers. I can go to a variety of websites, and my browser of choice, Firefox, will have no problem displaying them. This is also due to standards. The w3c, or world wide web consortium was formed in 1994 to oversee open standards for the internet. Without a single organization overseeing standards, different websites would be coded in different languages, and not all browsers would be able to display every website. The internet would be much like the hell described at the beginning of this paragraph.

While many websites willingly comply with w3c recommendations, some seem to go out of their way to shit all over standards. Myspace is one of these websites. Even though I believe myspace is the root of all evil, I’ve been on it a lot more lately. Each time I type myspace.com into the address bar, I loathe Tom even more than before, and fear his horrible coding will yet again crash Firefox. Any website that crashes firefox doesn’t deserve to live. I’m not trying to say Firefox is perfect. (I know it isn’t.) Firefox’s poor memory management could be used to frighten small children. (adapted that from a Linus quote). In many respects, Opera is a better browser, but this post isn’t about which browser is better—it’s about which website sucks at life. That website being none other than myspace. Anyway… Just for fun, I figured I’d run my profile through the w3c markup validator. The profile is over 1000 errors away from being flawless XHTML 1.1. Tom wouldn’t know valid [X]HTML if it challenged him to a duel.

In addition to using bad markup, myspace goes out of its way to promote the use thereof. The default style of a myspace profile is boring to say the least. To remedy this, users have taken to using CSS and HTML to spice things up. Unfortunately, myspace was not designed for this kind of customization. Profile customizations are hacks at best, and some effects can only be achieved by blatantly disregarding standards. Fortunately, the casual user is not at fault in this case. The myspace profile system is lacking in many areas. A system similar to the blogger template system would be quite nice.

For those of you who haven’t noticed, I do a lot of whining, but rarely do anything about it. Well, I’m not doing anything about myspace either. I would jump at the opportunity to help design an open, compliant, alternative, but I lack the resources, time, and funding to undertake such a project by myself. I just hope someone gets to it before myspace corrupts the whole world. If we’re lucky, Google will own the world before that time, and Google Groups will challenge myspace groups to a battle to the death… Robozombie Google Vs. Myspace. (Google will kick Myspace’s ass any day. {robozombie or not} Their 52 week range is roughly $116-$358. Kick ass.)

I submitted three quotes to the yearbook, each a different length, and each quoting Linus Torvalds. Apparently, senior quotes should be ’serious thoughts’. To someone who doesn’t know what ftp stands for, to someone who hasn’t a clue in the least who Linus is, and to someone who’s knowledge of computers barely stretches past pressing ’start to begin’, my quotes may seem ridiculously jocular, but to someone who knows that ftp stands for ‘File Transfer Protocol’, to someone who knows that Linus is Linus Torvalds, to someone who knows that Linus is a BDFL, and to someone who actually knows what a BDFL is, my quotes are actually quite serious. Does the title ‘Yearbook’ advisor give Mr. Goudreau the right to define serious? Apparently. To quote Obi Wan Kenobi in Episode six, “you will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” Perhaps solemnity is a point of view. And perhaps from Mr. Goudreau’s “… point of view, the Jedi are evil!” (Darth Vader - Episode III).

I’m told my ambition doesn’t quite cut it either. Perhaps I am a little too ambitious. Getting a doctorate in math and conquering the world is a lot to do in only one life time, but who is Mr. Goudreau to crush my ambitions?

As a yearbook adviser, it is apparently his duty to ‘uphold the integrity of the yearbook.’ If my quote isn’t quite serious enough for the yearbook, and my ambition jeopardizes its integrity, he is free to remove it, but it is only fair to remove all of the equally ‘funny’ quotes as well.

More annoying than the fact that my quote cannot go in the yearbook while other quotes, equally laking in seriousness, will be posted, is the fact that mine will not be posted because a certain yearbook adviser is too lethargic to sit down in front of a computer, and run a few Google queries in order to better understand them, and too rigid to change his mind even when/if he does realize that his judgement of seriousness is largely incorrect in this matter. I am fine with my quotes being left out for a good reason, but I don’t consider a yearbook adviser’s lack of knowledge a good reason.

Quote 1:

My name is Linus, and I am your god.

Before you tell me that this quote isn’t serious, please read the thirteen-thousand Google search results for ‘worship of Linus Torvalds’. To quote Wikipedia, “Many Linux fans tend to worship Torvalds as a kind of god.” There you have it. “The Free Encyclopedia” verifies (as I knew it would…) the fact that Linus is a god figure. Saying this quote isn’t serious tells all the ‘Linus Worshipers’ out there that you think their idol is a joke. Linus Torvalds is not a joke.

Quote 2:

Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it

Mr. Goudreau doesn’t know what FTP is. He can’t put anything he doesn’t know in the yearbook. He’s human; there’s a lot he doesn’t know. A simple Google Query would tell him that FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Read in context, this quote is quite serious.

Quote 3:

When you say “I wrote a program that crashed Windows”, people just stare at you blankly and say “Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*”.

Again, taken in context, this quote is quite serious.

As for the ambition… I don’t just happen to have any old yearbooks lying around. If you have one, please comment with stupid/funny ambitions (and quotes) that jeopardize the integrity of the yearbook.

If your name is Mike, please click here. (I’m guessing that everyone will click there out of curiosity.)

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.

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.

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.

If you read my away message on Sunday, which I suppose you probably would have out of shock, you probably know that I was off Biking. My family decided to go to some bike trail around Providence. I don’t really know where we were… I just biked… Anyway, The trip was supposed to be about 30 miles, but I doubled back so frequently to allow the rest of the family to catch up that I ended up doing 51.55 miles in 2 hours and something minutes for an average speed of 18.4 Miles per hour. ( I guess it would have to be about 48 minutes. ) My doubling back caused me to pass some people up to five times. Thankfully, I went the whole day without being passed, even by the biker dudes(I passed them…). Had they passed me, I would have become angered and forced myself to go faster than the normal 21 mph. I then would have over exerted myself and died… You know, I have a thing about that… All of the hardcore cyclists have the tight pants, shirts and biking gloves. That biking attire screams “Hey sucker, I’m faster than you, piss off!”, yet I was faster than them… this angers me as well. They really need to live up to the reputation of their clothes. I think I’m ranting now. I’ll stop.

We stopped at that Greenville shopping center thing on the way home. I bought graph paper and a new router at Staples, and a HUGE caribiner (lager than my other huge one.). We also stopped at Radio Shack, where I had hoped to avoid being attacked by the evil vulture-like employees. DO I LOOK LIKE I NEED HELP?!? Anyway, by the time I was attacked, I was already on my way to the registers. I thought I was free at that point, but I guess I was wrong. The vulture asked me if I have a cellphone. I said no. He said why. I said that I despise phones. Hiss boss said “Maybe phones don’t like you.” I said “Maybe they don’t…” Then I left!!! I still haven’t gotten around to debricking the router :’(. I bricked and debricked the new router all within five minutes. All hail boot_wait.