Category: general

I didn’t even know who the guy was until bloggers everywhere began mourning his suicide. After finding out more about him, I’m not really sorry to be so “uncultured”.

Take this, for example:

The widow of journalist Hunter S. Thompson said her husband killed himself while the two were talking on the phone.

[…]

His son, daughter-in-law and 6-year-old grandson were in the house when the shooting occurred.

So, he thought that it was so important that he go out with a bang that he didn’t bother to think about his family, his grandson. Or maybe he thought it would be “cool” to have his family in the house when he died. Sure, that’s fine, if you die naturally. What kind of sick bastard kills himself with his wife on the phone and his child and grandchild in the next room? With a gun? Blowing his brains and blood all over the room for a six year old child to find? It’s obvious that the only thing this man cared about was himself. God, just thinking about this man’s utter disregard for his family disgusts me.

Of course, his wife could only react with guilt and self-judgment, like many an abused woman:

Anita Thompson, 32, said her husband had discussed killing himself in recent months and had been issuing verbal and written directives about what he wanted done with his body, his unpublished works and his assets.

His suicidal talk put a strain on their relationship, she said.

“He wanted to leave on top of his game. I wish I could have been more supportive of his decision,” she said. “It was a problem for us.”

“I wish I could have been more supportive of his decision”?! Jesus Christ!

It would be so much fun!

Here’s an article on JapaneseFood.About.com about Hina-Matsuri. I want to try the food!

• Chirashi-zushi – sashimi (raw fish) and colorful toppings on sushi rice.
• Ushio-jiru – clam soup
• Sakura-mochi – sweet rice cake
• Hina-arare – colorful pop rice *order or buy at Asian grocery stores near you.

I know I can get chirashi (8 or 10 pieces) at Mikoto, but I guess I would have to make the clam soup and rice cake. It could be fun, though :) (I could also make the chirashi, if I was feeling particularly daring.)

I’ve also been wanting to do a traditional Japanese New Year’s meal, packed in a jubako. They’re so pretty! Maybe next year…

And, of course, I also want to start eating bento for lunch :>

Via Slashdot, Revenge of the Blog People!

A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. (Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of “web log.”) Until recently, I had not spent much time thinking about blogs or Blog People.

McGoogle
I had heard of the activities of the latter and of the absurd idea of giving them press credentials (though, since the credentials were issued for political conventions, they were just absurd icing on absurd cakes). I was not truly aware of them until shortly after I published an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times (“Google and God’s Mind,” December 17, 2004). Then, thanks to kind friends with nothing but my welfare in mind, I rapidly learned more about the blog subcultures.

My piece had the temerity to question the usefulness of Google digitizing millions of books and making bits of them available via its notoriously inefficient search engine. The Google phenomenon is a wonderfully modern manifestation of the triumph of hope and boosterism over reality. Hailed as the ultimate example of information retrieval, Google is, in fact, the device that gives you thousands of “hits” (which may or may not be relevant) in no very useful order.

On your left, you’ll find a remnant of the Paleolithic era, railing against the technological advances that assail him on sides even as he continues to support the archaic filing systems that give his life meaning.

Where does the phrase “Blog People” come from? It is by far one of the stupidest terms I have ever heard.

Ah, well. As they sang in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, “We don’t like / What we don’t / Understand / In fact it scares us.” I guess Gorman is out to kill the Beast.

His position ultimately seems to be that information in books is more valid than information rendered in pixels, that the only true way to learn is to read print materials. (That kind of makes the name of my website seem pretty sad, doesn’t it?) But it shouldn’t be hard to see the logical fallacy in this argument. Just because something has been published doesn’t mean it is automatically worth reading. There is plenty of trash out there–yes, even in established academic literature. What Gorman may truly be afraid of is the fact that easy access to textual information would de-glorify quite a bit of the writing on which his livelihood is based. It would not only make his current job obsolete (which he claims doesn’t concern him), but it would call into question the integrity of his work at the most basic level. People will start asking things like, “This study is completely unscientific. Why was it housed in this great library?” Clearly, digitizing academic texts spells doom for the legitimacy of librarians.

No text, digital, print, or whatever, should be glorified. Everything should be accessible so that merits can be judged across the board. Digital texts are accessible in libraries that have computers, but printed matter is not accessible on computers, because computers don’t typically come with libraries. So, we need more computers in libraries, and we need more texts digitized. And those poor, library-less children in California could learn at their home or school computers if the texts were made available in a digital format. Wouldn’t that, in the long run, be less expensive than building library sites, purchasing hundreds of thousands of books, employing librarians, and then attempting to keep an archive of print materials up to date?

I’ve been neglecting the news, basically due to stress, so I’ve had a lot of RSS feeds to plow through. I’m totally not done; I’ve just gone through News Aggregates, Odd/Weird, and Local News. Here are some highlights.

Via Slashdot, New Scientist: Software learns to translate by reading up:

Translation software that develops an understanding of languages by scanning through thousands of previously translated documents has been released by US researchers.

Most existing translation software uses hand-coded rules for transposing words and phrases. But the new software, developed by Kevin Knight and Daniel Marcu at the Information Sciences Institute, part of the University of Southern California, US, takes a statistical approach, building probabilistic rules about words, phrases and syntactic structures.

The pair founded a company called Language Weaver in Los Angeles, US, to sell the software as an automated translation tool. They already offer technology that can translate to or from English with four languages – Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish.

The key to their “statistical machine translation software” are the translation dictionaries, patterns and rules – translation parameters – that the program develops. It does this by creating many different possible translation parameters based on previously translated documents and then ranking them probabilistically.

It sounds…Google-esque. And pretty common-sensical, too. I wonder if using texts translated 10 or 20 or 50 years ago would affect the results of modern texts, or if languages don’t significantly change in those time periods…there are oodles of studies that could be done using this software. (I haven’t read Language Log in ages…maybe they’ve already talked about this…)

Via Slashdot, Earth Reactor Forums: LOKI TORRENT LAWSUIT :: THE FACTS

Ed Webber knowingly manipulated the p2p community into donating a large amount of funds while during the same exact time, without the knowledge or agreement of the p2p community, closed a deal that potentially puts each and everyone of his supporting bit torrent community and website visiting members at risk.

I’m not really sure what I think about this, but whenever it seems like people are defending their right to own copies of television shows and movies without paying for them or having to watch commercials, I get skeptical. I mean, I don’t think it’s ethically bad to download something that isn’t available for purchase, but if there are DVDs available, you don’t need to download rips from the DVDs. You need to buy the DVDs. (And don’t give me the whole “I’m just downloading it for a preview, and if I like it, I’ll buy it” argument. How many times have you actually bought something after downloading it? [Unfortunately, it would be self-incriminating to answer that question…])

Via BoingBoing,a freaky helipad tennis court that I could so not play on, for fear of running after the ball and careening off the side.

Via BoingBoing, a crazy-cool ergonomic desk solution. Also via BoingBoing, an ergonomic pen.

Well, according to Reuters (via Yahoo! News – Oddly Enough), I’m not the only one bad at geography. (They should all play these web games!)

And finally, young Japanese women see no need to get married. Well, obviously, they all want to follow their careers, and enjoy their lives, and keep themselves available to be my mistresses. Um, I mean, good for them! Obviously, they realize that Japanese men are fucked up, and want no part of that. Er, that is…uh, too bad about the possible future population decline, right?

Back on the 19th, I mentioned a picture I’d taken in Japan that was very similar to a picture someone else had taken. It’s happened again.

Here’s a picture I took in Takayama:

Joanne recently went to Takayama, and took this picture.

Neat, huh? It really makes the world seem like a smaller place.

Yesterday at around 3, Robert told me that the go-live date has been pushed back again. So, I don’t have to have all the menus done by Monday. This means I don’t have to work full time today or come in on the weekends, and that next week I can just work half-time and I should still be able to get it all done just fine.

I had managed to calm down about it, so this news didn’t really faze me, but I’m finding that I’m very, very tired.

Last night, Mari and Brooke and I went to see Cathie Ryan and her band perform Celtic music at the Depot in Thomson. We were all dressed up :) I did this weird thing with my Hairagami: first, because I like to have a wisp hanging down, I pulled a small clump of hair out on the left side of my face and held it in my mouth while I wrapped the rest in the Hairagami. Then, I was trying to follow the instructions to make a particular kind of bun, but I couldn’t figure out what I was doing. I wrapped my hair around the thing, then curled it, then snapped the bands into place, and what ended up happening was I had a ponytail coming out the middle of a circle that had blue Hairagami showing at the top and a half-bun of hair at the bottom. I thought that it must look ridiculous, but I liked it from the front with the wisp hanging down along my face and the ponytail flipping back and forth behind my head, so I went with it.

I also wore the size 12/14 purple velvet dress that has been sitting in my closet, unwearable, for longer than I’ve been married. (Weight loss = teh gud.) I finished off with nylons, calf-high black boots, and a matching set of junk jewelry earrings and a necklace. It really wasn’t a bad look. (Sean kept saying “you look good” and finding excuses to touch me when I got home later.)

We were all charmed by downtown Thomson and the Depot building. It is really neat down there.

The concert was great. I don’t know that I am a huge fan of the more “contemporary” stuff…I would have been happy to listen to all the songs in Irish rather than English. But Ms. Ryan has a very pretty voice, and she is funny to boot. It was very entertaining.

Her backup fiddler, Hanneke Cassel, was amazing, though. I think I stared at her the most during the concert. Her long thin arms and the intense look on her face as she played reminded me poignantly of Kristanne. I wonder if Kristanne can fiddle? (For those of you not in the know, Kristanne Harden went to high school with me and Jazz, and we were all in kung fu together, along with Michael Jennings, who was a grade ahead of us. Kristanne is a violinist. She now lives in Germany with her husband, Kilian Kubala.)

The concert lasted until nearly 10, so we couldn’t go to Mikoto. We headed back to Augusta and went to Denny’s instead, where I doubled my caloric intake for the day o_o All in all, it was a very satisfying evening :)

The most incredible part was during a song called So Here’s To You. It’s a song rife with blessings and promise, and Ms. Ryan had the audience sing along. I’m not sure I can really explain why, but I cried my eyes out.

It starts like this:

When first we met, complete total strangers
We did not know if we could be friends
How soon we’ve come for to know each other
So now I know we will meet again

I couldn’t help but think of Mari and Brooke and how we first met. How I didn’t know how things were going to be with these new people, whether or not we would have anything in common or like each other at all. “How soon we’ve come for to know each other.” It seems like we just met yesterday (actually, it was 2003), but already I have two of the best friendships of my life.

I was filled with the feeling of friendship and parting, and the certainty of meeting again. That’s how I feel with Mari and Brooke. We all three live different lives. Mari’s in North Augusta in a house with her husband, bellydancing and working at social security. Brooke’s downtown in an apartment, working at Shepeard blood center and running with a computer gaming/party crowd. (Or something.) I’m here in western Augusta/almost Martinez, living in an apartment with my husband, working part time and spending the rest of my time reading and writing on blogs. We’re not terribly disparate, but our lives don’t always match up. We all have different things to do, and time passes with us apart.

But we always know that we have each other, and we always know that we will meet again.

So here’s to you and our time together
I’ll share with you now a parting glass
And bid adieu with a smile and laughter
Our time apart will be short and pass

I stayed up until midnight. Sean didn’t get off work until 10, so I wanted to make his dinner for him. After that, I was watching Friends season 4 and had to force myself to stop. This morning, I fell asleep repeatedly while sitting on the toilet. Fun.

There’s a flu/fever going around that everyone at work seems to have gotten. I hope I don’t run myself down so much that I catch it too. That would be a bad thing. I’ve heard some horror stories about pain and vomiting…I haven’t thrown up in years, and I’m not really eager to do it again.

Anyway! Down to business.

My blood pressure was 124/74 just now.

Rock!

I ended up going back to work at around 3 and staying until 7:45. I took some headphones, and with them was able to block out the rest of the office. It was great, just what I needed. So, I guess I have a solution to that sort of problem. I was able to get a full restaurant menu ported over into our new system.

Now, just 19 to go…by Monday o_o

Somewhere along the line I got overwhelmed, and I couldn’t concentrate. I needed to be able to concentrate so I could work on what I needed to work on so that the deadline can be met. But I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t tune out the background noise of the office. I couldn’t stop listening to what was going on. Everything that was said made me more and more frustrated, until I snapped at my coworker for paying me a compliment. It was like I couldn’t handle any outside information.

Completely unable to function, I came home. And while I’m feeling a bit better now, I know that if I go back there, to the busy office where phones ring and ring and ring and the dispatch phone beeps and wails all the time and people speak in very loud voices, I will still not be able to concentrate, and I may very well go nuts all over again.

I don’t know why I’m like this. I think maybe the overemotional part has to do with the hormones I’m taking. Maybe that’s feeding the overwhelming feeling of a deadline I don’t know if I can meet. But why can’t I concentrate? Is that an emotional thing, too, or is that part of my personality? I have trouble concentrating a lot in the office. It’s too loud in there, and I can’t focus. Wearing headphones and playing music to myself to block everything out might work, but it would also be rude, and I would also feel like I was missing stuff. Maybe it’s not that I can’t cut out background noise, but that my personality doesn’t want me to, because I’m obsessive compulsive?

Gah…whatever it is, I hate the helpless feeling I have when I get to the point where I can no longer function. I hate getting to the point that anything anyone says makes me so frustrated I could cry. (Like, “You know where you’re losing [weight] now? In your face.” Yeah. A nice thing to say, and I got so frustrated all I could respond with was, in a choked sob, “I’m in a bad mood.” WTF?)

I just want to be normal, to be capable of handling things. Why am I so emotionally unstable?

I’m going to go watch Friends season 4 for awhile, then see how I feel about going back in. Robert needs me to do that data entry, come hell or high water. I will be working on it on Saturday almost definitely, given today’s delay. Ugh. I don’t want to go back today, I just want to go to bed and sleep forever. But, you know, when you leave everything until a week before the go live date, there’s no time for weakness like mine.

Monday: Freaking out!
Tuesday: Feeling damn good!
Wednesday: Freaking out!

Bah.

I’ve been going nonstop for several hours now, and I’m in a much better mood :) I love this kind of work, where I have a huge pile and I can just plow through it. Audrey stayed and answered all the phones, and did the majority of the dispatch work, so I was free to do my thing with minimal interruption. It was glorious!

Still covered in a mountain of tasks, so I’ll wrap up here. One final thought: I haven’t even started the stuff Robert said would keep me here until 5.

Oh well, at least there’s the Intarweb.

Slashdot has a story about a computer that has cracked 5×5 go. This would have made an interesting plot point in Hikaru no Go. Maybe. If they hadn’t freaking ended the show without a real ending!

SAI!!!!

Ahem.

I guess getting invited to Bush’s ranch is a huge thing, because Reuters (via Yahoo! News) can’t seem to get enough of it in this piece about Bush’s recent meeting with French president Jacques Chirac. I’m glad at least to see the president trying to reconcile. And I’m glad President Chirac is so open to it!

Designer knockoffs for the homeless! This is a very cool story. I mean, if people absolutely have to be homeless, which sucks, at least they should have some dignity. And they seem to like the clothes :)

Okay, now back to taking deep, long breaths.

I haven’t calmed down, but at least I laughed. Thanks, Partially Clips!

Friday and yesterday I had to work full days, 7 to almost 4 pm without any semblance of a break. Yes, that’s right friends, no 15 minute breaks, and no lunch break. It’s impossible to take breaks when the phone could ring at any moment and you’re the only one to answer it. My situation may be similar today, if my coworker hasn’t gotten over her fever yet.

The scary thing is that she has to work like this every day. Sometimes 10 to 4, but sometimes 10 to 10.

It makes me angry to think about this. It also makes me angry to think about other things that I want to fix and don’t have the authority to do anything about. It makes me angry because I feel that my ideas are ignored rather than implemented. It makes me angry because I literally see no way out of this situation.

Once again, I’m thinking about quitting.

But I just need to calm down. I’m emotional because my period started over the weekend. And I’m unhappy because I have to do work I hate right now. But things are (supposedly) going to change, and if I just hang in there…

How long have I been telling myself that?

My blood pressure was in the 140s/90s this morning. I guess that’s not all that high when you think about the fact that my coworker (previously mentioned) had a blood pressure of like 210/140 recently (due to stress over work). But I don’t want it to be that high. I want it to be back at 120/70 or so, or 110/60, the range it was when I was recovering from cancer. (I didn’t check it much after that, so I don’t know how long it stayed in that range.) Cutting down sodium isn’t going to help if I can’t calm down. This is caused by stress. And, from what I understand, my “second stomach”–the fat in my upper belly–is caused by stress. Stress does no good whatsoever.

There are people out there who can handle stress, though, aren’t there? Don’t I just need to stick with it until I figure out how to cope? Isn’t bailing out now the same as wussing out? What makes me think I have it worse than anyone else?

I need to calm down.

From Yahoo! News – Oddly Enough:

Scott Thurner, 57, was the only person aboard the Cessna when it crashed Wednesday. He survived the accident with only scrapes and bruises.

Thurner then dug a shelter in a snow bank and used a door from the twisted wreckage of his plane for a roof. He started a fire with papers from his briefcase and donned all the ski clothes in his suitcase.

[…]

The team located Thurner by following signals from the plane’s emergency beacon. Thurner pulled the device from the plane and fashioned a makeshift antenna. A military satellite picked up the signals before Thurner shut it down to conserve batteries.

This guy rules!