the life and times of Jacob

I'm a millionare!?

2012-02-06T15:41:00.000-06:00

Apparently in September, mint.com thought I had 16 million dollars:

Next time I have that much money, I'll be sure not to spend it all in one place...

building LLVM + clang

2012-02-04T21:27:00.001-06:00

The "Getting Started with LLVM" tutorial is way too long.

If all you want to do is build clang+LLVM (Linux or OS X), without reading that big long tutorial, it only takes 4 lines and about 45 minutes (on my 5-year old MacBook Pro*):

*I really can't call it 5 years old anymore...pretty much everything in it has been replaced. But the things that haven't been replaced seem to be holding it back a bit...

Tricks to avoid divergent branches in CUDA

2012-01-29T20:55:00.000-06:00

Note to my regular blog readers: this post is possibly uninteresting to you, in that it contains no strange anecdotes about, well, anything. There aren't even any pictures! You can read it anyways, though, if you so choose...

Intro
CUDA is a parallel computing architecture developed by NVIDIA which enables computational problem solving on (NVIDIA) GPUs. I took Illinois' intro class on CUDA this semester (which you should take!) and had a lot of fun - I even learned a few things, despite it being at 9:30 in the morning...

People have done lots of cool things using GPUs for high performance computing. Sadly, my few measly shares of NVIDIA stock have done nothing but become more measly since I bought it.

This isn't an "intro-to-CUDA-programming" post, so I'm going to assume you know the basics of CUDA. In particular, if you don't know what a "warp" is, you might get confused rather soon.

Divergent Branches?
Recall that in CUDA, instructions execute in warps of 32 threads (16 threads on older GPUs, maybe?) - think SIMD, kind of. To get the best performance out of your GPU, you'll generally want to have full warps of threads executing.

As they say, the devil is in the details: this makes writing fast code for CUDA GPUs a bit more tricky NVIDIA would like it to be. Consider a warp of threads, indexed 0-31, that is executing and encounters a branch like this:
Recall that a group of 32 threads must execute (every instruction) together. However, if any thread other than thread 7 executes line 2, the result will be incorrect. And that's not good, because some code later says:
The hardware handles divergent control flow by forcing the two groups of threads to execute separately. Thus, one group of 31 threads (with one wasted slot) will skip the branch, and one group of one thread (31 wasted slots) will take the branch. This is called "branch divergence", and it will end up making your code slow, serialized, and sad. As my professor liked to say: if you write code with divergent branches, bad things happen.

Divergent Branches!
For our final project for the course (a pixel ranking algorithm for H.264), I wrote some code like this:This didn't strike me as particularly unusual code when I wrote it, but it turns out that it suffers from (you guessed it) branch divergence! nvcc comes up with the following 54 lines (!!, although not all will translate into actual instructions...) of PTX assembly code for the above switch statement:Say all threads execute together - that is, bcount is the same for all threads in a warp. In the best case (bcount = 0), we execute ~8 PTX instructions*, while in the worst case (bcount = 3), we execute ~18 instructions. Not the end of the world.

However, what if threads in a warp can have different values for bcount? For example, assume bcount depends on threadIdx.x % 4: we then must execute all possible paths in the above code, in serial. Assuming that scheduling overhead is zero (again, I believe this is true for most CUDA GPUs, but they don't like to give out too many details), this gives something on the order of four times as much execution time - we execute 40+ PTX instructions. Not so good: definitely the end of the world.

Instead of the switch statement, consider the following:This compiles down to only 8 PTX instructions (reordered by the compiler):Much better! Here, there's no branch divergence: all threads in a warp will execute together, no matter what bcount is. Plus, it's just as fast as the best case of the 'switch' statement - both take 8 PTX instructions. It will also earn you +5 nerd points, and you'll gain one bullet in your foot. As an added bonus, it actually works (assuming bcount is actually limited from 0 to 3).

Conclusions
If you're willing to be a little tricky, understand the hardware your code is running on, and remember to comment your code (so your future self doesn't murder you), you can write faster code. In a kernel that was already pretty highly optimized, the above managed to shave off even more valuable cycles: ~10% faster for two lines of code isn't so bad!

I'll probably post a few similar tricks later, but that's all for now I think. I've got a burrito to buy.

References

A few references, if you're interested.

CUDA Programming Guide
CUDA - Wikipedia
University of Illinois: ECE408: There's good stuff on here - lecture slides, audio, etc.

*The numbers given are obviously approximate: I just counted the PTX assembly instructions. NVIDIA isn't keen on giving away details on how these translate to actual hardware instructions, although I assume it's relatively straightforward.

Amazon Recommendation #6794

2012-01-09T09:07:00.000-06:00

Another in my series of odd Amazon recommendations:

One of these things is not like the other (in that the recommendation actually makes sense).

A bidet toilet attachment? I don't want to know what that has to do with a spatula...

Pre-Christmas Happenings

2012-01-03T16:08:00.000-06:00

I tried to post this about a week ago from my phone with no luck (I think this means that I need to get an iPhone!). So here are some old pictures!

1. My laptop died. The hard drive went kaput, apparently, so it's out of commission. Now I'm using this thing.

This poor thing has seen better days. Sadly, it has also seen worse...

2. You are not good enough to drink our coffee. Sorry!

Our coffee is spelled with a capital C!

3. They now sell...solar powered keyboards. How useful!

Things I doubt: that this actually works.

4. Best Buy sells USB cables for...$20. What a steal!

That's like, a 100% profit margin!

5. These towels cost MONEY!

Maybe this person decided to sell all of her towels?

6. Apple sent me an email saying that my original (!) iPod Nano could catch on fire. I mailed it back, and Apple very kindly sent me a brand new one! If only they'd do that for my laptop too...

I kind of regret getting this: an iPod on fire would be much cooler!

Phoenix Photos

2012-01-03T14:28:00.003-06:00

We went to Phoenix last week and saw all sorts of fun things, including this cool church:

Chapel of the Holy Cross

I put some more Phoenix pictures up at Flickr. Enjoy (or not)!

Friendly Phone

2011-12-25T23:54:00.001-06:00

My phone is so nice! I hope you have a nice trip, too, Mr. Phone Message Writer Guy!

Frankenprinter

2011-11-28T22:34:00.001-06:00

Note: This is a (true!) story about a printer. As such, you may not want to read it. Presented four times, in case you miss it the first three times.

Short version: The printer I use at work just went insane, but I eventually got it to work so I could go home.

Long version: Today I was at work, having a jolly old time working on some projects and eating some of my delicious snack food:

The marshmallows are not for the hot chocolate. They are just for eating.

Then I decided I wanted to go home, so I printed a few things off to work on later that evening. Or so I thought: the simple action of hitting "print" led me on a journey that would do nothing less than change my very being*.

When at first my documents didn't print (none of the six I wanted!), I took the rational step of making sure I had sent them to the correct printer. They had apparently gone to some printer named "smudge", which I had never heard of, and was certainly not our lab printer**. So I set off on a trip around the entire building, searching for a printer named smudge. It was nowhere to be found.

I was perplexed, so I sent an email to our trusty sysadmin. While my message was traveling through a bunch of tubes to reach him, I visited our lab printer (not named smudge!) again and found that it now had an error message. I restarted it. Another error message: "49.205A". How...useful***! Google told me that restarting would fix the problem.

I restarted again. Same error.

I restarted again. Same error.

I restarted again. Same error. Did Google lie?!?

I noticed a sheet of paper taped onto the table next to the printer. Apparently our lab printer is named 'smudge'. Whoops. Still broken, though.

I eventually, on a hunch, loaded the feeder tray with paper instead of the regular tray and restarted. Suddenly it worked!

My elation soon turned to horror as I discovered that, by merely restarting the printer, I had created a monster that ate paper for breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner****:

WHY SO MANY PAGES???

It ended up printing several hundred pages of ????. In fact, it printed so much that it couldn't print anymore:

"Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all human kind sinned against me?" - smudge

25 minutes later, it came to its senses and I finally got my documents. Then I left.

Unembellished version: Someone submitted a job to the printer requiring paper from the feeder tray. There was no paper in it, causing the printer to emit some indecipherable error message. Print jobs piled up on the server all day until I finally put some paper in the tray, letting all the jobs from throughout the day finally procede. Then my documents printed and I left.

Twitter version: DIE HEWLETT PACKARD DIE!!!111!!

*Or waste 45 minutes of my time. Same thing.
**Lesson: never trust me if I tell you I am certain of something.
***This message was not actually at all useful. Had the printer exploded, I would have at least had a good story to tell.
****Couldn't keep it down very well though, it seems.

Stalking* a Stocking

2011-11-28T00:59:00.001-06:00

I just bought a stocking at Meijer to hang up in my apartment:

It's red!

You may be thinking, "What a normal looking stocking! What a waste of money". You could not be more wrong. I do not buy "normal" stockings**.

MY STOCKING IS GIGANTIC:

My stocking wants to (and could) eat you. Watch out.

A few factoids about this gigantic stocking:
- If I had a nickel for every piece of candy that would fit in this stocking, I would be able to pay my parking ticket and buy Chipotle for everyone on the planet.
- It would take roughly 13,071 of my roommate's super-lame dinky stockings to fill up my single awesomestocking***.
- You know a stocking is something special when it has to be measured in feet rather than inches.
- A 7-year old child could legitimately get lost inside of this stocking.
- If you wore size 117 shoes (you don't), this stocking would still be too big to fit on one of your feet.

*This post has nothing to do with stalking. It has everything to do with stockings.
**As of today, apparently.
***This just became a word.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

2011-11-27T02:40:00.001-06:00

I mean, I really like Radiohead, but...

found in Texas

2011-11-23T02:33:00.001-06:00

Not sure why I didn't buy this thing that I found when I lived in Texas:

Paula's Jumbo Butter Warmer:
Because you never know when you'll need an entire quart of melted butter!

Also, I haven't died of a heart attack yet. But remember: correlation does not imply causation.

certified!

2011-11-23T00:35:00.001-06:00

The State of Illinois has (as of October 21, 2011) certified me as having sound ethics.

Yes. I hung this up.

What that means is that I am now a reliable source of lies, deceit, and senate seats. I'm probably on the no-fly list now. If I ever have to go to court, having this certificate certainly won't look good.

spam

2011-11-14T19:17:00.001-06:00

Only the most sincere spam makes it through Gmail's spam filter:

I think it might be twu wuv. (click image to make bigger!)

I'll email you straight away, my dear*. I'm so glad that you choosed-ed me and thankful for your offer to fill my hollow doorstep with joy and happiness.

*I will not.

you know you're a bit too much of a nerd when:

2011-11-13T22:39:00.001-06:00

Amazon recommends this book to you, based on "items you own and more"*:

*To be clear: I would never buy this book.

Pictures

2011-11-05T14:56:00.000-06:00

A few pictures...

Watched the sunset while driving over to Springfield, IL. I should watch more sunsets.

???*

My evil roommate bought me candy corn. I apparently thought that "on top
of my toothbrush" was a good spot to put it...

* I promise, I do pay attention to the road when I'm driving. How else would I have seen this bumper sticker?

YOU NEED THE INTERNET

2011-10-13T01:02:00.001-06:00

...or so says this ad I saw in Dallas this summer (I think it was at a bus or train station...):

Virgin Mobile: YOU NEED THE INTERNET...or you DIE!!111!!!*

The light beige/white part = no coverage*** (= the Arizona desert).

I guess you die. :-(

Also, from a grocery store in Dallas:

...with seeds****!

From some big Meijer/Wal-marty type of store:

If you can email it, wouldn't you...email it? I don't think I understand.

That is all.

*Also: consider not keeping your pet rattlesnake** in the backseat of your car.
**Perhaps you should consider not keeping it at all.
*** As of 10/13/11; see: http://www.virginmobileusa.com/check-cell-phone-coverage
**** There are SEEDS in this watermelon!

Fall Pictures

2011-10-08T14:37:00.004-06:00

I'm clearly on a roll* with this whole blogging thing.

Here's some pictures (click to see the rest). I think they have pretty colors.

I might have cheated a little with iPhoto to make the colors a little more vivid. But now it's prettier!

I also made some apple crisp:

After I made it, I took a really bad picture of it.

Then I ate it. It was delicious.

That is all!

* I am not.

State Machine

2011-10-08T00:47:00.001-06:00

Above is a fairly accurate depiction of how my life works.

16 Exabytes

2011-10-07T20:25:00.002-06:00

WindowServer is using 16 EB* of virtual memory. Hmmmm.

*16 EB is ~16 billion times 1 GB (it's a lot). Activity Monitor is clearly lying to me.

Non-news

2011-09-23T02:17:00.003-06:00

My poor corner of the Internet has been neglected ever since I got back from Texas. I'm sorry, little corner. I've been busy, but I'll try to treat you better, I promise.

Some things that I've done recently:

1) I became a grad student. I get to teach* a class** and do research. They pay me for this***?!?

2) ...I'm pretty sure that's all I've done.

3) I started (...need to start...) memorizing 1 Timothy. Apparently, my Bible study is going to be hard core like that. At least I get to take some time doing it...

4) I drew a picture (ok, it's a graph; it has about 3 lines. I have low standards.). Unfortunately, my scanner isn't hooked up, so I will have to post it at some later date.

5) I cleaned out my email. I now have just ~~700~~ 500 (I got distracted when I started writing this...) emails in my inbox. I'm sure you don't care at all, tiny little corner, but this is very exciting to me.

On a completely unrelated note, there was some cool stuff in the "news" (= things I read online) today:

1) Some apparently-very-smart scientists may have found some particles that are faster than light. That's very fast.

2) Strange but true (apparently): some people at UC Berkley can reconstruct YouTube videos from brain waves (kind of).

3) Super-cool timelapse photography of the northern lights from the Space Station.

---

At some point, perhaps I will write about more exciting things.

Probably not, though.

*For some definition of the word "teach".
** If you are in my class and reading this: you don't have better things to do? That's sad.
*** Yes, they do. Although, if they paid me more, I wouldn't complain.

New Post!!!!!!

2011-08-28T01:35:00.000-06:00

As a peace offering to appease those who are angry that I haven't posted on my blog for the entire month of August*, here are some pictures that you might find humorous**. I apologize if you've seen these before (I think I've posted some of them elsewhere...).

1. I went to the Dallas Art Museum. There was some cool art. There was also this:

If you're thinking, "But wait - isn't that just a pile of rocks, arranged in a circle? My 3-year-old cousin could do that!", you'd be correct: this is just a pile of rocks. It is arranged in a circle. And it could easily be recreated (or dare I say, improved upon) by your 3-year-old cousin. It was not, however, created by your 3-year old cousin. It is apparently on loan from some other collection (as in: they picked up all the rocks from somewhere else and dropped them in a circle in Dallas).

Needless to say, I was quite inspired by this sculpture***.

2. I moved into a new apartment on campus. There are lots of wireless networks. Two good ones:

This has inspired me to name my wireless network "PIE!!!!!!!!!!!!".

I guess Canadians aren't cool? Sorry, guys.

3. I went to Walmart to buy a shelf and some candy.

This person went to Walmart to buy every hand towel ever produced. Mission accomplished.

????????????????????

4. I had to go to TA training. I have a car now (!), so I drove to campus. After I put $1.50 in the meter (an entire hour and a half!), it did this:

Likely outcome of any attempt at parking on campus.

This is not particularly funny, even though I promised it would be. I was rather upset. Parking meters are a scam.

5. I bought lemons.

"Makes fresh lemonade"! Shoot - I was hoping to make apple juice with these things!

*Bueller? Bueller?
**To be clear: these are pictures that I myself find humorous. If you happen to find them humorous as well, you may want to see a psychiatrist.
***I was mostly inspired to laugh.

Eisenhower State Park

2011-07-24T13:38:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I went to Eisenhower State Park, right on the Texas/Oklahoma border; about an hour north of Richardson. It's on Lake Texoma (wonder where they got that name?).

Things that I did (because I'm sure you're dying to know):

1. Went hiking. This was fun, until I...

2. Almost passed out a few times. I apparently was either too hot, too out of shape, or too dehydrated. Probably all three. At any rate, this was rather exciting. Everything started to turn all white and I couldn't see anymore. Neat!

3. Took some pictures*. You can see them over on Flickr. Woohoo!

That's really all I did, so this is the end (of this post, not the world**). Cookie time.

* My sole goal when taking pictures is to supply myself with new desktop-background material.

** As far as I know.

How To Hunt A Scorpion

2011-07-16T18:21:00.000-06:00

After a rather long day at work today, I finally got home and decided to relax by eating brownies on my bed (they were delicious).

Then the unthinkable happened: out of the corner of my eye*, I spotted a lightly colored creature dashing across my carpet, heading towards the underbelly of my bed. A scorpion (clearly). I obviously had to expel it.

If you ever have to hunt a scorpion, here's how it's done:

1. Hide all of your worldly possessions from the beast.

It helps if your worldly possessions are few in number.

I also have some clothes.

2. Remove the lampshade from your lamp, so that the lamp can be brandished as an instrument of pain and fear against the enemy.

This thing can inflict some serious damage.

3. Move all of your furniture away from the walls, so as to flush the tyrant from his cowardly hiding place. This is very important.

No scorpions here.

No scorpions here, either -- anymore.

4. Ready the containment vessel.

Ziploc to the rescue!!

5. Catch the scorpion!

At this point, you may find that the scorpion is actually disguised as a gecko. Incognito scorpions are the most dangerous kind, though.

I looked danger in the eye, and it...ran away.

6. Take a mugshot.

Be careful, because it wants to eat you.

Now if you ever need to catch a scorpion, you'll know how!

* I should note that I can't actually see. It might have been an elephant.

Social Networks, 2011

2011-07-16T16:41:00.001-06:00

Because I have now joined Google+, I drew this picture (click to see it a bit bigger):

I learned a lot from this little art experiment:

1. I can't draw. None of these lines are straight, and the circles are only (somewhat) circular because I traced around a tube of Disinfectant Redi Wipes© to make them. I had to draw everything out separately and then piece the whole thing together using Acorn, which is like a poor-man's Photoshop for Mac.

2. I have too much time on my hands.

Stay tuned for my post on how I caught a scorpion*, which I was writing last night until I accidentally fell asleep...

*Spoiler alert: I didn't actually catch a scorpion.

happenings of late, part++

2011-07-14T00:53:00.001-06:00

And so we meet again, blogger.com.

Of late, I have:
- Gone to Six Flags. I don't really like roller coasters. Put another way: I really don't like roller coasters. We (myself and couple of guys I went to school with) had a good time, though - I went on a few insane death machines* and managed to make it out alive.
- Lost, and then found, my phone (I really need to stop losing things). This also happened at Six Flags. Had I lost it, I could have bought an iPhone...drat.
- Had some intern-folks over for intern-dinner. We tried to make spaghetti but that idea went down the drain (literally) when we tried to strain it**. This is (thus far) the saddest thing that has ever happened in my kitchen.

Too sad to make a sarcastic comment.

Fortunately, I had an excessive amount of pasta (on the order of 4-5lbs I think...) and we had enough extra to still stuff ourselves. Hooray pasta!
- I got to tour Cowboy Stadium, which is brand new (as far as stadiums go), and extremely nice. We got to go on the field:

They really like stars in Texas.

You can look at a couple other pictures of the stadium on my shiny new Google+ account.
- I made pancakes in the middle of writing this post. They were delicious. I had real maple syrup...I don't know if I can ever go back.

* Also known as roller coasters.
*Is that what it's called...straining pasta? It seems like there should be a more...Italian name for it.

lions and tigers and toes, oh my!

2011-07-02T23:46:00.001-06:00

Things I've done the last couple days:

1. I lost my wallet (apparently). I wouldn't really care, except:
a) It has my driver's license in it. No good: I can't go get one in Illinois 'till August.
b) It has my credit cards in it. I don't really care if someone else uses them (I've got $40 till my credit limit - go wild!), but now *I* can't use them. I will run out of milk soon. I will probably die.
c) It has my free drink from Espresso Royale in it.

Hopefully I'll find it. If not, c'est la vie (pardon my French); worse things could (and certainly do) happen. I just want some milk.

2. I broke my toe.

I don't think my toe is actually broken. But it definitely hurts. I can send you a picture of a pretty wicked bruise if you want to see it (not advised).

I decided to race my parents down the stairs (they took the elevator). I was winning until I put my foot down at a 90-degree angle as I was running and crushed my poor toe. I pressed on with courage all the way to the bottom, and would have won, but the door was labeled "Emergency Exit Only"*. So I had to go back up the stairs and take the elevator down.

This was an entirely disappointing experience. To illustrate, I've created this...illustration:

I added the red stuff in post using Photoshop. Everything else is the original photograph.

3. We went to a soup/sandwich place for lunch. I ordered baked potato soup, which has BACON in it!

They were out. I got a free brownie as a consolation prize. I love brownies, but there is no substitute for bacon.

4. All the gas disappeared out of my car. Seriously. I had almost half of a tank this afternoon; I drove 2 miles, and now it's on E. Note: this is not a joke. My gas literally disappeare.

I got to do some more exciting stuff too!

5. Went to the JFK memorial / museum in downtown Dallas. I'm not a big history buff and I usually get bored by museums like this once my gum loses its flavor. I think we all really enjoyed our time there, though; maybe because there were so many pictures. It was supposed to be pretty solemn and quiet, so the tours were on little headphones you had to wear around the museum. I couldn't help but chuckle** at the sight of hundreds of people walking around with the goofy headsets on, though. At any rate, it comes highly recommended. Plus they have air conditioning.

6. Went to the rodeo. This was pretty fun...definitely a glimpse into a different part of America than I normally see. I'm pretty sure I would have been offended/insulted if I were:
- from any state other than Texas (Utah is full of polygamists, California is broke, and Arkansas is full of idiots, or something like that)
- from another country (apparently people from Poland can't talk! And everyone from Mexico is an illegal immigrant.)

- A cow/bull/steer

- Mormon (see comment about Utah)
- A woman
- A liberal (too many to mention...)
- etc...

At any rate, it was pretty enjoyable to watch all the events, and now I've seen what (some parts of) Texas are really like...

I also ate five (5) dinner rolls and about a pound of beef for dinner. It was awesome.

7. I got new tires! Now I'm supposed to be set for 70,000 miles. Driving that far is going to cost me a lot in gas money if my tank keeps spontaneously emptying...

*Thinking back: I should have gone out the emergency door. Toe in pain = world crisis. Unlike my eyesight, hindsight is 20/20.
**Why did this get named after a guy named Chuck? Why not "jacoble" or "jakel"? That'd be way better.

roommate love

2011-07-01T23:20:00.000-06:00

This is how I find my mail when I get home in the evenings:

Nope, I still live here. Just because I'm not home when you looked through the mail doesn't mean I've moved away*.

Sometimes they're already in the mailbox, ready to be stolen away by the nice** mailman.

Cool.

*If I moved out, I'd definitely have a better chance of getting my mail. Had I not just paid rent for the month, I would consider this option.

**I've never actually met my mailman, but at least he *tries* to deliver my mail.

typical

2011-06-28T16:57:00.001-06:00

wow!

2011-06-28T00:17:00.000-06:00

This is definitely the coolest thing that has ever happened to anything I own:

This was made by a real fire! With danger and stuff!

The power adapter for my Macbook Pro caught on fire. There were lots of sparks, and there was smoke, and cool electrical-fire-y sounds. Sadly, I unplugged it before I thought to take a picture, and now it won't catch on fire again. Believe me, I've tried.

Anyways, it could have done something really cool like burnt down my house, but instead it only made my mom (who happened to be on Skype with me at the time) think I was insane. I showed her the awesome fire that was happening, and she didn't exactly give me the stamp of approval.

Sadly, said awesome fire killed my power adapter for good, and my laptop refuses to function without power (labor strike or something, I think). So, my poor Mac will remain unused for the time being. Soon, I'll have a new power cable, and I can a fire with that one in another four years - hooray!

For all my computer-y needs*, I now must use my work laptop, a Lenovo T61p. This thing is a grade-A piece of junk. It crashes every morning when I get to work (no joke) with a blue screen of death, just as a means of welcoming me back to the office (thanks!). I routinely feel compelled to throw it out of our third-story window, but the window doesn't deserve that**. The sticker says it was built to run Windows Vista, which offers some insight into why it's so worthless.

*Somebody has to make these blog posts, and you certainly haven't stepped up to the plate!
**However, I did find the stairwell that has roof access. Coming soon to a blog near you, "I Threw It On The Ground", ft. Andy Samberg and this laptop. Maybe some LaserCats too.

happenings, yet again

2011-06-23T00:28:00.000-06:00

In the spirit of my last few posts, here's a list of all the exciting things that have been going on in Dallas-land for those who are interested:

1. My parents are coming to visit soon! Hooray!

2. Another intern and myself introduced a third intern to Gushers. How he has managed to ~~live for~~ survive for ~20 years without eating a single Gusher, I will never know. I imagine it's been terrible. At any rate, he has now been rescued from his suffering; my work here is done.

3. Speaking of work, I actually got some work done last week! My (many) hours of fixing compiler errors actually turned out to be productive, and yielded some good results. This was both exciting and unexpected (but mostly unexpected). Today, I contemplated hacking up gcc to further benefit my cause; after looking through the source, though, I think I've decided that it wouldn't be worth it**.

4. My mom's side of the family had a family reunion! I unfortunately couldn't make it, but it sounds like they all had a good time. Hopefully I'll be there next year! :-)

5. I decided that this summer would be a good time to get (a little) organized and (a little) less lazy, so I'm finally doing the Navigators TMS (Topical Memory System). This is not a particularly exciting happening as far as happenings go***, but if you're interested in doing it as well, send me an email at jacob@sheckel.net (any address that you have for me works) - I'm not too far along yet.

I think that's really about all; I lead an extravagantly boring**** life. Hopefully I'll have something more exciting to report next time; I've got a few entries queued up from the past semester/year that I need to finish editing and get posted, so those should be out shortly (read: within the next few years)!

Finally, in the spirit of blog-posts past, a quote:

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets. - Will Rogers

*Gushers are easily the best food ever (excluding all other foods I have called "the best food ever" on my blog, of course).
**Plus, pursuing this course would likely result in suicide.
***For evidence of this assertion, see (1),(2),(3), and (4), which are clearly much more exciting.
**** I thought that I was going to coin this phrase, but a Google search proved that someone beat me to it. This makes me sad.

on being stalked

2011-06-15T20:30:00.000-06:00

My blog apparently has recently gained two followers. Hooray? Hooray!

I know this because a little message showed up when I logged in telling me that I had two followers, and I had never seen said message before*. I didn't even know my blog could have followers, but apparently you all know something I don't (not surprising).

So I clicked the link with the little green people and now I have a button that says you can follow my blog. I think I've followed a few blogs, but I'm not exactly sure what it does besides put picture of my head on some random websites. That doesn't really seem like "following"...it's more like "defacing". However, all my friends have nice faces, so you wouldn't be defacing my blog by adding your picture, don't worry. And even if you're hideously ugly, it's OK - I won't be offended! Just don't follow my blog**.

At any rate, Google sent me to this link that added a "follow" button to my blog. It's basically a pre-built button that you can click to tell me you think my blog is awesome***. Don't worry, I won't let this get to my head.

You can also not click it (and hence, not follow my blog). I would understand your decision completely, as this whole "following" concept seems rather pointless.

To summarize your options, you may either:
1. Click the button, or
2. Not click the button.

*How odd. I'm usually so observant****.
** I'm just kidding. You can still follow my blog. Really.
***If you wish to convey a different message by following my blog(i.e., "I love gorillas!", "You're mighty fine looking!", or "I hate you"), just send me an email and explain. But the default is going to be "Your blog is so awesome that I want to stalk you!"
**** This is a lie.

happenings of the week, week two

2011-06-14T22:59:00.000-06:00

1. I went to Chipotle with a couple of other interns. This, and this alone, easily makes the past week the best one I've had since I arrived in Dallas.

2. I went to Luna de Noche, a Tex-Mex place, with my mentor from work for lunch one day. It was pretty tasty...I'll have to head back there sometime.

3. There was an ice cream social (?) at work! There was also some weird thing before we got the ice cream where we had to build stuff out of pipe cleaners. That's not what I signed up for...I signed up for ice cream*. You can't promise people ice cream and give them pipe cleaners; it's wrong on so many levels (but mostly on the level that involves not getting ice cream).

4. I crashed my bike. It was unpleasant for both me and the cement. I'm all better now, though. Lesson learned: skinny tires (they're like skinny jeans, but for a bike, and totally make me a punk) + grass = fally-over.

5. I bought a car! I've never owned a car before, so this was kind of exciting. It's this '04 Honda Civic:

This is not my car, it's just one I saw on the street**.

In other car-related news, I tried to convince my mother that I bought a Lamborghini. She has somehow learned to see straight through my lies.

6. I drove to the Target. I drove to WalMart. I drove to Kroger. I drove to Cisco.

All in my own car!

7. My project at work is to reduce the memory usage of an application that my group develops. I spent the entire week working on that; when I tried to run it on Friday, it crashed before it even made a phone call (which, by the way, is the sole purpose of this application). As it is now Tuesday and I originally meant to post this on Sunday, there is further news relating to this. But you'll just have to wait 'till next week to find out what happened.

If I get a call from the police, I'll know it was because the suspense killed you.

8. I went to Fry's Electronics. That place is magical...it's like Best Buy, but without the ridiculous prices and that annoyingly blue shade of blue. And it's only 2 miles away. I might*** return often.

9. My credit card bill came. No one told me I was going to have to pay for all that stuff - I thought Discover was going to take care of it for me, because we're pals?

10. I went grocery shopping.

I know what you're thinking: awesome story****. But it's not even over yet.

At the grocery store, there was a man getting cherries. He didn't just pick up a bag of cherries like I would have expected, though. Instead, he found an empty bag, and proceeded to hand-pick through every bag of cherries in the store until his own bag was satisfactorily full with (presumably) only the best cherries.

I thought this was...unconventional. Do people do this? End of story.

Also at the grocery store: I bought blackberries. The sign said the price was "10/$10 Each". $10 for 6 oz. of berries seemed a little steep, so I assumed they meant 10/$10 total.

They cost me $2.39/box. I was very confused.

---

Maybe I should make this a weekly top-ten list, Letterman style. I need some celebrity guest stars. Let me know if you'd like to make an appearance.

* I actually forgot to sign up at all. I think the girl that organizes the intern-y events is getting kind of annoyed with me...I don't think I've RSVP'd to a single one yet.
** It actually is my car. Bet I had you fooled.
*** You will notice that I used the term 'might' here. What I really meant was 'will certainly'.
**** Seriously: I love grocery shopping. It's awesome. If it was the only thing I ever did for the rest of my life, I would die happy in two weeks (of obesity).

computer disrepair/repair: my macbook pro

2011-06-12T23:00:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, my laptop is slowly but surely transforming into a doorstop.

For the unenlightened, here's an abridged* version of what is/has been wrong with it:
- Battery dead (got a new one, so it's all better now!)
- F6 key missing. I know where it is; it's just not in the keyboard anymore. Don't ask.
- Trackpad button doesn't work
- Occasionally refuses to recognize that it has a built-in Airport card/CD drive/other assorted peripherals
- Display backlight randomly stops working (so I can't see anything - adventure!)
- Kernel panics once or twice a week due to failing graphics card
- Several cracks in the case
- Doesn't wake up from sleep;
- Doesn't go sleep in the first place
- Latch that keeps it closed refuses to release
- Fan on right side louder than a belligerent monkey (or, at least it was...)

Everything's more fun with pictures!

????????????????????????????????

No - I didn't need to restart my computer until this stupid message popped up!

Hooray, yet another chance to run the disk recovery tool!

Most of those problems I can deal with (although I don't know what I'd do if I ever actually needed to hit the F6 key...). With the fan broken, however, my laptop was basically unusable; it's already prone to overheating, and running it without 50% of its cooling power is essentially a recipe for laptop death.

I was inspired to fix up** my desktop computer (see the previous post) as I figured out how to fix my laptop. Being too cheap to take it to an actual repair shop, I ordered a used (but "GUARANTEED WORKING", according to eBay...) replacement fan online for $30 and opened up my laptop to replace it when it came in the mail.

This is where things took a turn for the worse. Being the careful person that I am, I snapped (read: broke) the plastic connector off of the logic board when I was taking out the old fan - meaning that I could no longer connect my brand-new, used $30 fan. How unfortunate.

The non-broken left fan. I broke the socket for the black plug coming from the middle of the fan.

Fortunately, I know how to solder***! I figured I could just solder the wires directly to the motherboard and it would work fine (why wouldn't it, right?). I was in ECE395 at the time, so I had access to some decent equipment. So, after the last final of my undergrad- the last Friday of the year, at 10PM - I went over to the lab to either fix or completely destroy my laptop.

Fancy temperature-controlled soldering iron!

After accidentally breaking off a few more parts (hopefully those weren't important!), I ended up with the following (very poorly soldered) monster:

If this doesn't blow up eventually, I think I've failed somewhere.

Much to my surprise, the fan actually turned on and blew air out the back - imagine that! And, here I am almost a month later typing on the thing and it's still going strong****.

That said, the whole ordeal would have been much less complicated if I hadn't broken the socket in the first time.

In summary:
1. Hooray for eBay! Except PayPal. I now hate PayPal with a burning passion*****.
2. Being careful is overrated. If you're not careful, you get to play with cool toys!
3. If you ask me to fix your computer (which is fine, unless I don't know you...), keep in mind that I might attack it with a soldering iron or a with paring knife I heated on the stove.
4. I need a new laptop, before mine burns down my house. Feel free to email me if you have $20,000 burning a hole in your pocket, need help moving it out of Nigeria, and pay at least 10% commission.

*It's abridged because the real version of this list is so long that no one would actually read it.

**"Fix up" is used very loosely here.

***Not really - I'm actually really bad at it. But I refused to spend more money on this thing.

****The fan, not the computer in general. On the whole, the computer would probably be more useful as a sandwich than as a laptop, and it would make a very bad sandwich.

*****I don't actually care enough to hate PayPal with a burning passion. But if I did, I would.

computer repairs, part one: dell sc440

2011-06-12T16:33:00.000-06:00

As some of you may know, my ridiculous laptop has been on the brink of death for the last several months. This will be covered in a another post shortly, and nature will breathe a sigh of relief when the stupid thing finally dies for good.

At any rate, faced with the prospect of a dead laptop several weeks ago, I decided to fix up my other computer. This underutilized beast* is a Dell SC440 (small-business class server) that I got a few years ago for something like $200. It's kind of slow and it takes a while to do just about anything, but at least all the parts are working - more than I can say for my laptop!

The main problem with this machine is the graphics card - it's an on-board ATI something-or-other, and it's terrible**. It can't seem to handle outputting video to my 1440x900 display***, which is unfortunate because I have no other display to hook it up to. To make the situation even better, Dell was kind enough to make it impossible to install a decent replacement graphics card, so I was out of luck.

The SC440 is missing a x16 PCI-Express slot - the size of every sane graphics card. The closest it has is an x8 slot (which should be usable with an x16 card), but they even ruined that option by molding the plastic on the end of the slot to prevent anyone from installing a larger card in the slot.

So, being the wannabe engineer that I am, I bought a new, x16 graphics card that didn't fit and decided to...make it fit.

This made my computer very unhappy, and it made for some very unfortunate smells. I thought I had more pictures, but apparently I only have two:

In red: the old on-board chip. This thing is seriously garbage.
In blue: the x8 slot where the new card is now.

Pretty much impossible to see, but this part of my motherboard (left side of the blue box above) is no more.

Computer surgery tools: stove and knife. The knife will never be the same.
Also, please ignore the note that has my password on it.

I got rid of said plastic molding by essentially melting it away. I tried first with my soldering iron (which will also never be the same), but that didn't work out so well. So I cut/melted it away with the knife above. After half an hour or so, I finally got enough plastic cut away for the card to fit****. And, much to my surprise, after installing a few drivers the computer booted up working better than ever!

Lessons learned:
1. Dell is smuggling drugs by mixing them in with plastics, based on how they smell when melted.
2. You know you have to work on your reputation as a normal human being when: your roommates walk into the room, see you standing over a computer wielding a red-hot knife, and have no reaction.
3. Sometimes, buying cheap parts actually works! This little graphics card (I got it for something like $7 after a rebate) worked like a charm in my SC440 and is now humming along in my dad's computer at home.

*Note that by "beast" here, I actually mean "cheap piece of junk that I probably shouldn't have wasted my money on". It is underutilized because it is essentially useless.

**By "terrible", I mean that I could build something better with a pair of pliers and chicken wire.

*** Also kind of a piece of junk. Perhaps someday I'll learn...
****Dear Cat Stevens: the first cut was not actually the deepest.

Happenings of the Week

2011-06-06T01:53:00.000-06:00

In which I discuss the goings-on of the previous seven days of my life.

- I went to two Baptist churches. Canyon Creek Baptist Church, and The Heights Church. They were quite different. The Heights was huge (a couple thousand people were there I'm sure), and seemed rather non-denominational (not unlike Grace Baptist Church turned Grace Church in Mahomet, just much bigger and with decidedly more money). Canyon Creek was smaller - 400 people - and was quite Baptist-y, at least as I would picture it. I'm not quite sure what I thought of either one. We'll see what comes of that.

- I bought way too much music. Amazon.com will be the death of the credit line on my Discover card. Including:

Chris August - No Far Away: I'm not a huge fan of this guy, but it was $5 and I like a couple of his songs. So why not.
David Crowder Band - Summer Happiness Acoustic EP: I'm a sucker for acoustic stuff. Plus, I already knew I liked the songs on here. Certainly worth $3.
Death Cab for Cutie - Codes and Keys: Haven't listened to it yet...but yet again, it was $5, and I like the other album I have by them. Plus, now I can feel like a wannabe hipster - real hipsters are way past Death Cab for Cutie.
Eminem - Recovery: No good excuse for this one. Maybe it'll make good running music?
Jay-Z - The Blueprint 3: I'll admit it, I'm a closet Jay-Z fan. Empire State of Mind is too catchy to not own.
Maroon 5 - It Won't Be Soon Before Long: ?????? Adam Levine.
Paul Simon - So Beautiful Or So What: Paul Simon, of Simon & Garfunkel fame. He can still write music, and sing too (mostly). Worth it, if you're a Paul Simon fan at least.
Taylor Swift - Fearless: Be impressed, I admitted it.

I'm not sure I'd recommend any of the above, at least at this point. We'll see. If you're looking for good music, check out Raphael Saadiq - that's some good stuff. Spent under $50 and got entertainment for the next couple weeks at work. Worth it, until I have to pay my bill next month...

- I rode my bike to/from work every day, and didn't get hit by a car a single time! However, I did see two too many snakes.

- I spent forever getting nothing done at work. Sigh. Perhaps next week will be better?

- I decided to go look at a car to buy, but it got sold before I got the chance. Not cool. Other ones I'm looking at are more expensive (not cool), out of state (not practical) or in bad shape (not good).

- I ate lots of pasta and carrots, and not much of anything else. That's...healthy, right?

- I went to Target (~4.5 miles) to buy trail mix to eat at work. I ended up buying: (1) 5lbs of trail mix; (2) Milk Duds*; (3) gum; (4) chocolate covered raisins; (5) raspberry lemonade; (6) cups for said lemonade. Proceeded to pour myself a cup of the lemonade right outside of Target and drink it. It was delicious. Ate pretty much everything besides the gum and trail mix when I got home. Mmmm...dinner!

- Learn that "Simply Lemonade" means "sugar water with some fruity flavoring". That's why it was so delicious. I'm hooked.

- I found a cockroach. Ugh.

- I watched way too much Burn Notice. I really need a life.

- I discovered that granola is the best food ever**. I'm unforgivably upset with anyone and everyone who reads this blog for not telling me this. I expect better of you***. Superman's breakfast probably eats granola for breakfast, so if I eat it, I'll probably be the #1 awesome person in the world (which is my goal). Plus, I'm immune to the effects of kryptonite (so far as I know).

- I wrote a long blog post, which came to a close in this annoyingly self-referential bullet point. That's all I've got.

* Milk Duds are easily the best candy ever, tied with chocolate covered raisins, starbursts, jellybeans, gummy worms, gumdrops, hot tamales, skittles, candy corn, and anything chocolate. I think that about covers it.

** Have you ever had it? I'm being completely serious here (for once). It's awesome.

*** I'll forgive you if you read my footnotes.

lesson of the day: don't buy bikes from walmart

2011-05-30T01:56:00.000-06:00

I (accidentally) wrote a very generic footnote this time that applies to most of my life. Be sure to read it every time you seen an one-asterisk footnote.

So, as most of you know, I live in Richardson, TX now, a suburb of Dallas. As it turns out, Dallas is...big*. The mass transit isn't very good, so it's kind of a pain to get around without a car/bike/Segway/helicopter/etc**. I've been getting around the last few days by walking everywhere, which is kind of slow*.

So: I've been looking for a bike or a car, and decided to get a bike first because I wanted to be hip and go green. After giving up on finding one on Craigslist, I went against my better judgement and decided to get a bike at WalMart.

The following is a partial synopsis of my day (starting at around 4PM):

1. Look up bikes on walmart.com. Decide to get this one for $89, knowing that it was probably a piece of junk.

2. Call local WalMart to see if they have said bike in stock. They play "Build Me Up Buttercup" 20 times while I'm on hold. Half an hour later, they hang up on me***.

3. Call again. New person is actually somewhat helpful and says that they have two of the bikes, and that they are even on sale! I decide to go buy the bike.

4. Walk to WalMart. It's a long ways, probably 4 miles****.

5. About ten minutes after leaving my house, get asked by guy to help him move his TV into his house from his car. Help him move his TV. It was...heavy.

6. TV dude (complete stranger, but seems nice enough...), who turns out to be rather unhappy with life, gives me a ride the rest of the way to WalMart. Manage to avoid getting mugged / robbed / shot / killed / etc.

7. Get to WalMart. Find the bikes. Get told that they don't have it in stock* (hmm...) by an employee who looked like he really wanted to help me*****.

8. Get sent to the electronics counter to order one online, and have it shipped to the store by "today".

9. Get sent by the somewhat confused electronics guy to the customer service desk.

10. After 15 or so minutes, customer service guy confirms that they do not, in fact, have the bike in stock at the store*. He finds one at a store 5 miles away, which isn't helpful because I'd have to walk down a couple of interstates to get to it. He also tells me that if I order online and "ship-to-store", the bike would be coming from Arkansas and likely wouldn't make it by "today", despite the promises of the WalMart website*.

11. Go back to the bikes. Pick out one that is twice as expensive and just as junky. Steal allen wrenches from the tool section and adjust bike to my liking. Pick out a bike lock and cheapo helmet (because I already have a nice one at home :)). Check out. Decide to buy allen wrenches too. Cut finger while cutting all the zipties off the bike.

12. Leave, somewhat disgruntled, but with a rideable bike. Start riding bike. Works better than expected (the pedals turn, the brakes seem to stop the bike, and the wheels resemble circles).

13. Get a mile or two away from the store, taking a slightly more circuitous route than I would walking, in order to avoid traffic and test out the bike. Hit little bump. Tire pops*. Groan loudly.

14. Walk ~5 depressing and very hot miles home with my useless bicycle.

15. Get home. Skype with parents. Write this blog post. Realize that I like to complain a lot. Resolve to complain less.

16. Cook dinner. Burn pancake. Why is my stove so terrible? Now *that's* something I could complain about.

*For some reason, I wasn't expecting this. The reason might be that I'm a little dumb. Maybe.
** A pony, batmobile, flying unicorn, space shuttle, aircraft carrier, or 1995 Ford Ranger would all also work.
***Why did they build me up, and then let me down? Worst of all, they never called when they said they would!
****For some reason, they really seem to hate sidewalks in Texas. Not cool.
*****This is not true. He did not want to help me*.

in dallas

2011-05-22T15:21:00.000-06:00

My internet is terrible:

"Grade: F" = wonderful.

That is all.

today I learned...

2011-05-01T00:27:00.000-06:00

...that I'm not a real person!

I almost relegated this to my shiny new Twitter account, but decided that news this big* deserved prime blog placement.

Exhibit A

*It was news to me, at least. Perhaps you've known all along.

blah blah blog

2011-04-17T23:46:00.000-06:00

There has been a precipitous* drop of late in the number of posts per week on this blog. My time has instead been consumed by the following worthy** enterprises:

- ECE 395
- ECE 396
- Reading The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis [interesting book; you should read it]
- Reading Radical, David Platt
- Making cookies
- Making brownies
- Making breakfastlunchanddinner
- Eating cookies/brownies/breakfastlunchanddinner
- Filing/complaining about my taxes in Illinois
- Man Breakfasts
- Constantly listening to The Civil Wars, whose album I just bought. I'm a bit of a sucker for that whole singer/songwriter duo genre, and anything acoustic.
- Cleaning/un-cleaning my apartment
- Deciding to go to Illinois for grad school
- Grading papers
- Eating cookies

Back to the topic at hand (lack of blog posts). Based on a survey I conducted, I have discovered that people either:
- Like this blog, or
- Hate this blog

So now I'd like to address both groups.

1. If you like this blog, I'm sorry there haven't been very many posts. There will be more in the future. Or, maybe they'll be in the past if I finish the time machine.
2. If you don't like this blog, you're weird***.

Remember, you can always catch up on my latest happenings on Twitter, which I reserve for only my most important 140-character thoughts:

In a lecture on "Garden Folklore". My life is a joke. So is this university, apparently.

Tonight: Work. Mario Kart 64. Pie. Baking bread. Cookies. One of these is not going to happen.

Twitter is stupid.

Actually, cookies are a pretty important thought.

*I do not actually know how to spell this word, nor do I frequently use it. If it's spelled incorrectly, blame Google. If it's used incorrectly, blame one of the following parties that surely deserves blame for one thing or another:
- the Democratic Party
- the Tea Party
- the dinner party
- the Donner party
- the after party (in the hotel lobby)
- the Pirate Party
- the birthday party

** As you'll see by the list, I used a very loose definition of the word "worthy".

*** The people who don't like my blog either (1) will never read this post, in which case they will be oblivious to my unwarranted insult, or (2) will read this blog post, which justifies calling them weird (doesn't it seem silly to read a blog you don't like?).

helpful error message

2011-03-30T17:54:00.000-06:00

Since I'm on the subject of malfunctioning software (see previous post), here's a helpful error message that I just got from Adobe Acrobat:

I wasn't really OK with this, but I wasn't given much of a choice...

bad day on the stock market

2011-03-30T17:21:00.000-06:00

Oops.

The stock market lost 100% of its value? That can't be good.

life's all a-twitter

2011-03-28T19:17:00.001-06:00

I realize I'm almost 5 years late on this one, but I finally got an account on Twitter. Prediction: Twitter will soon become popular.

I know, I know -- I should be ashamed of myself. I am. But, I had good¹ reason to get an account.

Norm Hubbard made me do it². He posted³ this a few days ago:

Charles Barkley may be the most entertaining commentator in the tournament. "I've seen Speed 2. Just go to bed."

Norm has somehow (probably using either magic or his magical hair, or both) linked his Twitter account to his Facebook account, so I saw this. Although I had been watching the postgame commentary with Mr. Barkley, I had somehow missed this piece of advice and had foolishly watched Speed 2. It was, hands down, the second worst movie I've ever seen⁴. Summary: Crazy leech-man on jetski drives cruise ship into hotel with remote control.

So, in order to avoid missing crucial advice like this again, I have obtained a Twitter account. As a rather fortunate side effect, I no longer need to log in to Facebook⁵ to see Norm's witty comments.

¹Good only in the "not-actually-good" sense.
²He didn't actually make me do it. In fact, so far as he knows, he had nothing to do with it. So the sentence corresponding to this footnote could be considered (by some narrow-minded people) a lie.
³I'm clearly much too hip to use a term like "tweeted".
⁴For reference, the worst move I've ever seen: Warriors of Virtue.
⁵I happen to hate Facebook (although, not as much as I hate pickles -- I have a Facebook account, but I will never, so help me Meijer, own a jar of pickles).

stay classy, Illinois

2011-03-24T16:52:00.000-06:00

The University of Illinois sent out the following text message this morning, around 10:43 AM:

(Active Shooter/Threat) Active shooter at BUILDING NAME/INTERSECTION. Escape area if safe to do so or shield/secure your location.

Thankfully, this turned out to be a mistake - someone accidentally hit "send" instead of "save". How is this even possible? Sending out a mass alert to the entire campus shouldn't be a "push-one-button" type of thing.

This isn't exactly the way we want to make the national news. There was also a 3-alarm fire on campus yesterday that triggered the alert system, and they kind of bungled that situation as well.

We're also in the news for raising tuition 6%, and losing to Kansas in Tulsa. Way to make us proud, U of I.

new church website (!)

2011-03-23T23:04:00.000-06:00

After a few months of work and/or procrastination, Nathan and I have finally (kind of) finished the Mattis Avenue website. Check it out, if you're so inclined!

http://www.mattisave.org/

ramblings on James, and Romans 3

2011-03-06T22:44:00.002-06:00

Note: I finally found a way to get footnotes to work¹!

Disclaimer: I'm not a theologian, a writer, or even all that good at studying the Bible (or studying period, says my exam last Thursday morning). I thought it might be beneficial to someone, however; God works in mysterious ways - perhaps even through a post on my blog.

Disclaimer 2: Conciseness is not a strength of mine; my apologies...

I've always had some trouble with James 5:16:

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

Now, that first part -- I like that. It sounds good; who can argue with being healed? Nobody I know is against that, not even non-Christians. I'm pretty sure that the idea of healing is viewed positively pretty universally.

And what should we do to be healed?

First, James says, we should confess our sins to one another. Now, if vulnerability were our strong point as humans, then we'd have no problem following this advice². Generally speaking, however, it's not something we're very good at (note that by "we're" I especially mean "I'm"). For some reason, I seem to be fine with confessing my sins to an all-knowing and all-powerful God, but balk at the idea of telling the same to a fellow sinner.

This seems a bit backwards to me (I tend to do a lot of backwards things...). God is a righteous and perfect judge, and we are commanded to fear Him (which I won't attempt to get into here). We (I) have nothing to fear from other Christians, however.

Two deep thoughts (as you will soon see, these thoughts are not actually very deep):

Perhaps confessing to one another should be like walking down a road with someone -- both of you on a journey. And while you walk, you help one another as you stumble and fumble and tumble and fall on the rocky road, and you point one another back to the path when you've been enticed into straying left or right. And you share in the sunshine, and in the lemonade that you got from the child with the smiling face in the last town, and in the cool breeze, and in the trees along the road reaching toward the heavens³.
Perhaps confessing to one another should be less like being thrown into the Pit of Despair ⁴.

Now, that really doesn't sound all that bad (and it's not). In fact, it can be a great encouragement. And praying for each other (the second thing James mentions we ought to do so we might be healed); I'm pretty OK with that too. Christians don't usually have anything against praying for one another; not only does it sound like a good idea and a nice thing to do for your nice friends, but it's also in the Bible (in about a zillion different places). For most Christians, it's hard to justify disagreeing with something that a nice person would do and that also happens to be in the Bible⁵, so those are the things that we seem like to do (or say we'll do).

The last part of this verse is what really gets me. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Everything's all nice and happy sounding until you get there. Even this part of the verse sounds pretty good until you think about it a bit.

I've always read that and said to myself, "What reason do I have to pray?" If the condition for powerful and effective prayer is righteousness, I can never even pretend to satisfy it. And if my prayers aren't going to be powerful or effective, is there really a point in praying at all? What good is weak and ineffectual prayer, anyways? It certainly doesn't sound like something I want to waste my time on. It would seem that James 5 manages to suck away my confidence in any sort of effect when I pray (yikes).

So that's where I stop. Not righteous; why pray?

If that were indeed the case, there would not be reason to pray. Praise God that this is not the situation.

Paul, in Romans 3:10-12, gives us a stinging summary of the human condition:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”

There is no one righteous, not even one -- not even me; especially not me. But, Paul goes on to say (Romans 3:21-23):

But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

This same idea is echoed elsewhere⁶; see, for example, 2 Corinthians 5:21:

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

That's a pretty radical statement: through faith in Christ, we can claim as our own the perfect righteousness of Christ. We are not simply "saved"; we are seen as righteous before the most holy and perfect God.

If I am justified through faith in Christ, how could I discredit his saving power by counting myself unrighteous when I pray? Yet, for so long it seems I've been paradoxically convinced that this righteousness that I claim doesn't apply to James 5:16.

Sometimes I fear that the message of the gospel is lost on me, perhaps due to some sort of supposed familiarity. Case in point: none of the above is new to me; putting those ideas together, however, is. The gospel is applicable to every area of life; this is something I often seem to forget.

I think I've finally reached the conclusion of this unexpectedly long blog post: despite my unrighteousness, God in his great mercy sees fit to look upon the righteousness of Christ as my own. So, here's the kicker: my (and your!) prayers can indeed be effective and powerful.

¹ Cool, right?!? The asterisks were going to get a bit unwieldy for this post so I had to write these in HTML. I'll probably stick with the star system if I've got just a few, but good to know this works!

² The idea of vulnerability being one's strong point seems a bit self-contradictory to me, but I suppose it's possible...

³ Yes: I really want it to be warm and sunny again.

⁴ However, I'm not saying that approaching God is like being thrown into the Pit of Despair; to the contrary, God's throne is one of grace and mercy, and the writer of Hebrews notes that we ought to approach it with confidence [Hebrews 4:16].

⁵The focus of Christianity has (read: should have) nothing to do with being a "nice" or "good" person and everything to do with following Jesus. They're not mutually exclusive, but they certainly aren't the same thing.

⁶I don't have time at the moment [I'm really hungry...] to write up a list of references or I would. If you'd like some, let me know.

unofficial st. patrick's day

2011-03-06T03:19:00.000-06:00

Friday was Unofficial St. Patrick's Day in Chambana, our wonderful annual holiday which celebrates all things green and alcoholic. Not wanting to be party poopers, Ethan and I joined in on the fun and made something that is neither alcoholic nor green: pies.

PIE*!

I made blueberry and chocolate; he went with pecan and pumpkin. All were delicious.

For posterity, here's the recipe we found online for blueberry pie. It involves real maple syrup, which is pretty tough to beat. The fresh blueberries were also good, but a bit expensive at $4/pint (I needed 4 pints...). My chocolate pie recipe came from an old Betty Crocker cookbook.

This time around we mostly used pre-made crusts; next time I might be more adventurous and try to make my own.

*PIE!!!

spam

2011-03-02T16:18:00.000-06:00

Hands down, best spam I've ever gotten (arrived today in my inbox; for once, I'm grateful for the failings of Gmail's spam filtering):

From:
Date: 2011/3/2
Subject: Sale!
To: greenspam@sheckel.net

Sale!

1. Heroin, in liquid and crystal form.
2. Rocket fuel and Tomohawk rockets (serious enquiries only).
4. New shipment of cocaine has arrived, buy 9 grams and get 10th for free.

Everyone is welcome, but not US citizens.

ATTENTION. Clearance offer. Buy 30 grams of heroin, get 5 free.

Prices upon reqeust:

Our email: kalulos@yahoo.co.kr

PHONE 0093 (0) 20 2100451
FAX 0093 (0) 70 0105910

Afghanistan

Question: Why do I get spam at "greenspam@sheckel.net"? It seems like a bad idea to send email to an address with the word "spam" in it. The strange thing is, I've never even used this address (I only get it because I set up my mail as a catch-all address for my domain).

Sourdough bread...

2011-03-01T13:19:00.001-06:00

... I declare success! It's not perfect by any means, but it looks like an actual loaf of bread. Time to make a sandwich. It turns out that the secret ingredient was baking it in a bread pan*.

*At least, I hope that was it, because I don't remember doing anything else different besides adding extra sugar.

recent adventures

2011-03-01T00:33:00.000-06:00

Public Service Announcement: none of these are actual adventures. But people who have actual adventures can only dream about doing things this cool.

1. I made actual food:

Homemade chicken noodle soup. I think it's the most delicious thing I've ever cooked.*

2. We got this circuit board made for a project (it involves a Nintendo 64 -- "coolest project ever!", I know). Besides the free chip clip I got one year, it's the coolest thing I've ever gotten from the ECE department. And I'm not even going to be able to keep it; bitterness abounds**.

Because my soldering skills are elementary at best, the nice guy at the ECE parts shop did the surface-mount soldering (you can see this in the picture on the left below) for us. The traces are only 1/100th of an inch wide, which works out to be about 3 atoms thick***.

I took this terribly blurry picture, and then
realized that my camera lens was covered in dust.

Camera dust removed! An original Jacob Tolar design, with much help from the guy in the parts shop down the hall.

3. I tried to register at xilinx.com to download some software I need. It didn't work.

I hit "Submit" and the entire page changed from English to Chinese. Thanks to Google Translate, I found out that I had made the mistake of not entering my first and last names in Chinese as well as English.

4. Unacceptable excuse of the day:

Office hours > baby****.

* Excluding pie, brownies, cookies, and cakes. Anything with five cups of sugar in it automatically trumps something with vegetables in it.

** This is false.

*** Also false.
**** Dear future wife: If you exist and happen upon this, I hope that you take the time to read the footnotes. This was sarcasm. Of course office hours are less important than babies. No comment on where bacon fits in, though.

Face in Space!

2011-02-24T01:05:00.000-06:00

You'd be silly if you didn't send your Face to Space*!

* Yes, I actually did this.

a sad day for America

2011-02-22T23:44:00.001-06:00

This was one of the top news articles on Google News today (it was in the top 4 almost all day). It was right up there with the turmoil in Bahrain, the murder of several Americans by Somali pirates, and a devastating earthquake in New Zealand:

More than 900 supposedly self-respecting* reporters - including one that works for the LA Times - thought it was a fantastic idea to write an article covering this groundbreaking story. None of them were worth reading***.

* Make that 899**; I don't think you can be self-respecting and work for "Hollywood Reporter".
** I looked again; it's 1500+ now.
*** I didn't actually read any of them, but I'm quite confident in this statement.

items in large quantities

2011-02-21T23:58:00.001-06:00

I noticed that have several things in unusually large quantities.

1. LEDs:

This involved lots of soldering, some poisonous fumes*, and a few burns on my hand. But it works!

2. Receipts from Chipotle:

I love burritos**.

3. Papers to grade:

Woooo grading.

4. Books:

Including: Cookie cookbook, U2 by U2, Bible, three generally worthless textbooks, Eric Liddell bio, journal, guitar songbook, The Bourne Supermacy, and The Problem of Pain.

5. Cereal:

Now that I eat breakfast (!), I spend way too much on cereal***. But I love Honey Nut Cheerios.

6. Hamburgers:

I made 12. Lunch for two weeks****!

* Is it bad that I think they actually smell good?
** See: (1), (2).
*** However, I also save much more on cereal!
**** Maybe just one week...

having a job would seriously impede my ability to be lazy

2011-02-14T00:36:00.001-06:00

Unfortunately, this was the snarkiest caption I could come up with*. How boring.

Notes:

1. is it "impede" or "impede on"? I used "impede on" originally, but after some thought I think it should be "impede" sans preposition. If you replace impede with hinder, "on" no longer makes sense. This is why I don't take English classes, but should.

2. I think I'm going to have a job now. Bye bye, free time; it was nice knowing you.

*I don't even have any fun footnotes**. What is the world coming to?

**Also: I'm not entirely sure that these are supposed to be called footnotes. Endnotes? Asterisk-notes?

bread, to completion

2011-02-13T19:04:00.000-06:00

It's been a while since my last bread update. In summary form:

- Day 10: Put in more flour and water. Stirred.

- Day N: Put in more flour and water. Stirred.

- Day N + 1: Jar of sourdough starter got full. Decided to make bread, even though I wasn't quite sure the starter was ready. It had been something like three weeks since starting, so I figured it was do-or-die time. This was Wednesday the 9th.

First: Added a couple of cups of the starter mix, plus some oil/salt/sugar, and a bunch more flour to the starter:

Looks suspiciously like cookie dough. Sadly, tastes nothing like cookie dough.

Second: measured some stuff.

This is a measuring cup, but you already knew that.

Third: Once it was all nice and mixed together (and very sticky), I took it out of the bowl onto my counter, which I had conveniently covered in wax paper.

Still tastes terrible. Uh oh.

Then I kneaded it. For everyone's sake, I'll avoid making a terrible pun at this point. Kneading is no fun. It took 20 minutes, and I didn't really know I was done - I just wanted to quit.

Time to rise!

I left it out overnight with a towel covering it so it would rise. Went to bed not expecting it to work.

Awesome towel, right?

Woke up the next morning. Unsurprisingly, it had not risen at all. Instead, it had completely dried out. Whoops.

Fortunately, the Internet exists and is (generally) awesome. Someone suggested placing it in the microwave with a boiling cup of water and letting it sit for the day. Supposedly, all that wonderful warm moisture in a closed space would make it rise. When I got home later that night, I saw this:

This is not what the website said it was supposed to look like.

Apparently, it rose! Excitedly, I took it out of the bowl, flattened it, and rolled it into a loaf-y shape.

I used the wax paper trick again. Pretty good idea, if I do say so myself.

A loaf. Also not what it was supposed to look like.

Then I left it in the oven to rise again overnight. The next morning (Friday) it looked like this:

The whole rising thing didn't really work out.

Whoops. I was hungry though, so I baked it. Final result:

NYOSLOB*

Didn't turn out quite right. Kind of flat. Lots of cracks and weird holes in it that I wasn't expecting. The bread online looked so pretty! It was a bit crunchy and I couldn't make a sandwich with it, unfortunately.

On the bright side, it was good for snacking**, and tasted quite sour like sourdough is supposed to. Plus, I've got lots of leftover starter, so I can try baking it again the next time I feel like having a loaf of bread I can't make a sandwich out of.

This post had far too many pictures. That was entirely accidental.

Here's a few of the sites I used to help me along:
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/sour.htm
http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/11/how-to-make-sourdough-starter-day-0.html
http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2008/03/follow-sourdough-day-7-we-knead-bread.html

*Not Your Ordinarily-Shaped Loaf Of Bread.
**One of my favorite hobbies, second only to eating actual meals.

amazon.com: free MP3s

2011-02-07T17:44:00.000-06:00

It's just a $2 credit, but as they say -- two is better than (n)one! The promotion code you have to enter on Amazon is: "VDAYMP3S".

best day ever

2011-01-31T18:27:00.000-06:00

I got five (!) free burrito gift cards in the mail from my new friends at Chipotle*. They even came with a nice little thank-you card!

Each one reads, "You did something right, or you're really lucky". Or the people at Chipotle are awesome; of the three options, I think that's the most likely.

The only way this could have been more awesome (awesome-er?) is if there had been actual burritos in my mailbox. I imagine that they've tried this and run into problems with hungry mailmen.

*We have actually been friends for quite some time, but anecdotal evidence suggests that Chipotle was only recently made aware of this fact.

sourdough starter, day 7 to present

2011-01-31T00:16:00.002-06:00

Things were looking bleak on day 6 of my journey to culinary happiness; I was beginning to have doubts about my dough*. It was time for a drastic change.

On Thursday night, change hit that floury mix like a lamp dropped from the Sears Tower** smashes into the ground. I threw out half of the mix and stirred in more flour and water, this time adjusting the mix to be much thicker. I stirred it for a while, and then went to pursue some higher goal (it likely involved cookies), leaving my renewed concoction by the radiator vent in my room.

I stirred it again Friday. Nothing much happened bread-wise. In other news, Illinois took advantage of a fantastic opportunity to not lose a game on Friday by not scheduling one. It was a close call, but they pulled it off in overtime and managed to go into the weekend with the same record they had after Thursday's loss to Indiana.

Saturday: A spark of hope. The starter appeared lumpy, but the lumps were not flour -- what could they be? I stirred it and let it be, and then didn't listen to the Beatles song of the same title. Surprisingly, Illinois still didn't lose.

Sunday (today; day 9, I believe): It's bubbling, like it was supposed to do a week ago! I was (am) quite (extremely) excited. Just like...day 4 of the blog I'm following. Illinois astonished yet again, holding on to their 14-7 record for an additional 24 hours despite a scare against Penn State, whom they play on Tuesday.

Look at all those legitimate bubbles!

*In short: I was having doughbts. Not to be confused with donuts, which I have no doubts about.
** A metaphor! My writing skills have grown - just as a seed, when planted in a fertile blog, grows into the most awesome tree ever***. However, like most metaphors, it is completely inaccurate.
*** See previous note on metaphors.

sourdough starter, day 4 to present - plus some other fun items

2011-01-27T22:27:00.055-06:00

This is from January 27, I just forgot to hit the magical "Publish Post" button. I think I can backdate it to then, so we'll see how that works...

---

Aside: It would seem that Blogger needs to offer subtitles for posts, as that was rather long.

First, the update on the homemade sourdough bread starter:

Day 4: No change.
Day 5: Added some flour/water. Moved to a warmer place. Still no change.
Day 6: No change.

I'm starting to notice a trend:

In order to tell which bubbles came from which source, I hand-popped every bubble that was created after either stirring or shaking the mix. The previous statement may be a complete fabrication.

A lesser man might have given up by now. Not I.

On to the "other fun items" as promised*:

- Would-Be Suicide Bomber Killed by Unexpected SMS From Mobile Carrier

- Waggle dance.

- Top Gear. "That is the worst looking car in the whole world."

- I put some new pictures up on my neat-o Flickr page. My favorite of the bunch is definitely the one with the big blobs of color - it is of our Christmas tree all lit up (it is just nowhere near being in focus). It has joined a small but elite legion of photos I have taken that are available to serve as my desktop background - quite an honor.

- I am reading a book! The Bourne Supremacy (like the movie, but completely different).

It's not a real book with substance or meaning, but maybe that'll come next (probably not going to happen).

- The contents of our fridge currently include about six pounds of butter and at least four or five pounds of cheese. Most of it is mine. Next week, my plans include dying of heart disease and then having a massive heart attack.

* You may notice that not all are actually fun**. But if you noticed that, surely you also noticed that a brief mention in a title is by no means a promise.

** You're wrong. They're all fun.

homemade bread, dia tres

2011-01-25T10:46:00.000-06:00

Mmmm, bubbles. This has a distinctive non-delicious scent.

On day 3 of my breadmaking challenge (yesterday), my sourdough starter still looked the same. To make myself feel better, I took this picture right after shaking it, so it would look nice and bubbly like the picture on the aforelinked website.

This picture is deceiving. My homemade bread really just looks like an applesauce jar with the label ripped off full of smelly off-white flour-water.

in which Chipotle makes my day

2011-01-24T21:13:00.000-06:00

A Chipotle-loving friend of mine is studying abroad in Madrid this semester. Sadly, Chipotle has no locations in Madrid. Wanting to help (as no one can survive an entire semester without Chipotle), I sent them this heartfelt email:

Dearest Chipotle,

Hope you are well. I haven't seen you or your delicious steak burritos in over three weeks; the last time I avoided you for so long was probably a year or two ago. If you'd ever tasted a homemade Christmas dinner, or Christmas cookies, perhaps you would be able to understand.

I understand if you're a little jealous or upset, but my mom's homemade Christmas dinners and delicious leftovers for three weeks following the holidays have been a tradition for all of my twenty two years now. It was a tough decision, but I'm just not sure I'm ready to introduce you to my family yet. "But your brother loves me!", you're thinking. I know he does...it's my mother that I'm worried about. Just give it some time, Chipotle; we can work through this. I'll come in soon and we can talk about it over lunch, perhaps.

Now, on to the real reason for my letter. Given the above, I'm hesitant to continue...I hope this doesn't put any further strain on our relationship. But I just have to ask.

You see, a friend of mine is studying abroad in Madrid this semester -- yeah, that Madrid, the one in Spain! It's a pretty cool place: they speak Spanish, have cool soccer teams, grow lots of olives, and you can buy fresh churros there. However, dearest Chipotle, there is nowhere to get a good burrito! I think you know the kind I'm talking about - meat hot off the grill, fresh salsa, warmed tortillas - the works. Do you think you'd be able to visit Madrid for a few months and see how you like it? Of course, you'd still be here in the U.S. during that time; just look at it as a time to branch out a little. At first, you should just try it out for six months or so - then you can come home if you really don't like it there. Now, I can't predict the future, but I think you'll want to stay come July.

I hope you'll give some thought to this, Chipotle. Hope to see you soon!

Love, Jacob

I never expected to hear back from them. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I found the following in my inbox today:

Dearest Jacob,

Thank you for expressing your love, and we have indeed missed your affection lately. Why withhold your love for so long? And we think it's about time that you tell your family about our relationship, don't you? I am sure they will approve! I don't know if we're ready to share our goodness with Madrid yet, but we'll think about it. For now, we hope that you'll be our one-and-only.

If you send me your mailing address, I'll send you some free burrito cards - maybe that will entice you to introduce your family to what we've shared together. Please, don't keep your love from us forever.

Yours truly, Chipotle

Don't worry Chipotle - between the time I wrote you and the time you got back to me, I had already visited you at least once, and I'll likely be back again this week. I'm glad our relationship has been rekindled; I sure did miss you (my wallet, on the other hand, did not).

---

My posting has been uncharacteristically prolific over the past couple weeks. I'm not entirely sure what's gotten into me, what with all these blog posts and using big words like "prolific". Don't worry, I'll soon be back to my regular rhythm of eating store-bought bread and expressing myself using an elementary vocabulary.

Also: I made homemade mac and cheese tonight for dinner. It's a lot more expensive than the $.50/box Kraft variety, but it's much more delectable (would that make it delectabler?). Plus, I have leftovers!

bread making, day #2

2011-01-24T02:56:00.000-06:00

I'm on the second (of 10-12ish) day of my sojourn into the land of free bread for life.

It suspiciously looks...exactly the same as it did yesterday. The ever-wise internet says I'm not supposed to do anything but stir it. I obliged, but I have my doubts.

Mmmm. Flour and water. Smells delicious*.

Aside: don't drink and type. I just spilled water all over my face, keyboard, desk, and phone. It seems like they're all going to be OK, although my face may never be the same. Plus, now I have to get up to get more water, which is a major inconvenience: the sink is at least fifteen feet away.

Second aside (kind of like second breakfast for hobbits, I suppose): I consolidated 4 email accounts into one this weekend. In addition to sorting through all the mail in my inbox, which ended up numbering into the high thousands, I also had the distinct pleasure** of transferring twenty or thirty thousand emails from the three old accounts into the new one.

I used this nifty Perl tool called imapsync to sync all my emails from one account to the other. It worked fairly well, but failed on all the chats (which turns out to be Gmail's fault), a few messages with big attachments, and a few other messages with no discernable pattern. I might write up how to do this in a few days; it's nice because it lets you take all your folders with you to your new account (which doesn't work with Gmail's POP3 fetcher). If you ever have to do this, I recommend one of three options:

1. Changing your mind.

2. Deleting all your old emails.

3. Buying lots of stamps, and using only snail mail (and Fedex for attachments).

It wasn't really all that painful a process, but it took about three straight days of my computer talking to Gmail for it to finish. It seems like there should be a better solution...

*To clarify: it smells like flour. I kind of lied. I'm sorry.

**Enjoyable in the same way that being hit by a bus is enjoyable.

homemade bread, day 1

2011-01-23T09:05:00.000-06:00

I was inspired to make some homemade sourdough bread. I say "inspired", but I can't recall anything in particular that inspired me. At any rate, I found this cool guide online that I'm following. The person there ended up with a scrumptious looking loaf of bread, so perhaps I have a chance of making something edible.

My other (read: only) motivation is the perhaps-incorrect assumption that homemade bread costs lest than the store bought variety. I suppose I'll found out soon enough.

I have this neat-o blog, so I figured I might as well take pictures of it and post them on my blog until my eventual triumph (or disgust, depending on how this whole thing turns out). As I said, I'm hoping for a loaf of bread, but odds are I'll end up with a jar full of mold. That would make for a nice picture anyways.

Without further ado, here is my sourdough starter mix on day one (Saturday):

Not applesauce anymore.

Stay tuned for more exciting pictures of wet flour in a jar!

Alcohol & Bars

2011-01-20T04:28:00.001-06:00

mint.com classified my transcript order from the registrar as "Alcohol & Bars". Seems pretty accurate.

for future reference: a public git repository on nearlyfreespeech.net

2011-01-18T02:36:00.002-06:00

Just in time for the new semester to start, I've learned something! I wanted to sync some files that I work on across a bunch of machines; git seemed like a reasonable choice (and unfortunately, Dropbox wasn't going to work).

Thus:

#First, create a bare repository on nearlyfreespeech.net
ssh user@ssh.phx.nearlyfreespeech.net
cd /home/public
mkdir -p git/dotfiles_repo.git
cd dotfiles_repo.git
git init --bare
git --bare update-server-info
mv hooks/post-update.sample hooks/post-update
exit

#Then, clone repo onto local machine
git clone http://mysubdomain.nfshost.com/git/dotfiles_repo.git .dotfiles
find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name ".*" -exec cp {} .dotfiles/ \;
cd .dotfiles
git add *
git commit -m "initial add of files"
git push ssh://user@mysubdomain.nfshost.com/git/dotfiles_repo.git

# test out your commit
cd ~
rmdir .dotfiles
git clone http://mysubdomain.nfshost.com/git/dotfiles_repo.git .dotfiles

#update your local copy
git pull

# update the public repository copy
git push ssh://...

Note that placing your files in the 'public' directory makes them open to the world. If this isn't what you want, place your repository in /home/protected/ or somewhere else safe.

some sights and sounds

2011-01-16T23:08:00.000-06:00

Well, really just sights.

1. Things I learned in college: Your oven is really just a gigantic match!

This image took me a depressingly long time to create.

2. Hmm....

I wonder if they found the pot of gold?

3. See: bottom left corner of the bathtub. "Before" is black. "After" is white.

So the "NEW BATH" people don't clean your bathtub, they paint it. A helpful service, I'm sure...

That seems like an unconventional place for a window.

4. Apparently it's a federal offense to go up/down the wrong way on an escalator.

I think they might be onto me...maybe I can post to my blog from prison.

Thanks for keeping us safe, TSA.

an announcement

2011-01-05T02:10:00.001-06:00

Because it is now the milestone year of 2011*, I decided to update my recently-established website, where by "update" I mean "completely replace". You can now visit sheckel.net for all your pressing Jacob needs. It even includes my email address.

The observant among you may notice that there's actually nothing useful there. To you I say: you could not be more correct. But I think it looks kind of nice, in a "cool-I-made-something-that-wasn't-completely-and-totally-butt-ugly" kind of way. It probably needs some nice pictures and some additional colors besides gray and other-gray. But it's a start!

*Note that 2 + 0 + 1 + 1 = 4. From this astonishing fact, we can logically deduce that the world will come to a crashing halt on December 21 of next year. Hope you're ready.

year in review

2011-01-04T19:00:00.005-06:00

Preface: It seems everyone likes to do these year in review posts. My favorite is always Dave Barry's:

Let's put things into perspective: 2010 was not the worst year ever. There have been MUCH worse years. For example, toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, Earth was struck by an asteroid that wiped out about 75 percent of all of the species on the planet. Can we honestly say that we had a worse year than those species did? Yes, we can, because they were not exposed to "Jersey Shore."

So -- I'm doing one myself! However, unlike all of the previously mentioned crazies, I'm actually doing mine after the year has ended (How can you review the year if there's still half a month left to go??).

It seems that 2010 was my most bloggy year yet! After a precipitous decline since the inception of this blog, it appears to be back on the upswing as of 2010.

See for reference the following series of insightful graphs:

The Blog-o-Meter*

Trend in blog postings over the years

The month-by-month breakdown

Here's my prediction for the next few years:

Based on a completely scientific** analysis of the data.

That's all for now!

* As opposed to the Blago-meter, which is a measurement of how close one's hairstyle resembles that of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.

**I made these numbers up.

my favorite new blog

2010-12-27T02:14:00.001-06:00

check it out:

http://facesofbruce.tumblr.com/

phone

2010-12-21T00:15:00.000-06:00

This nice phone I have seems to be more trouble than it's worth...

Tonight it decided to turn off when the battery ran out. Other than the battery dying about twice as fast as usual, a pretty normal thing for a phone to do.

So, when I got home, I plugged it in and turned it back on.

Except it wouldn't turn on. It would boot up, go through all the normal goofy Verizon screens that show up, and just before getting to the point where I could use it to call someone, it would decide to reboot. Thanks to the internet, I found that this is called a "reboot loop".

This repeated for about an hour while I searched for solutions and tried all of them. Most involved takign out my battery and waiting for a while; some were more elaborate. None worked.

Eventually, I managed to get into the bootloader (thanks to rooting my phone a few days earlier...more on that later, perhaps). I was able to do a full backup of my data and ordered it to reset my phone to the factory default mode (deleting all my stuff). It finally turned on once I did this. I later wiped the phone and flashed it with CyanogenMod 6, which has been humming along quite smoothly for the past few days.

I unfortunately haven't yet figured out how to restore all my data, so all of my (wonderful) pictures, to-do lists, text messages, Angry Birds high scores, etc are all gone. :-(

Moral of the story: Back up your stuff. Or buy an iPhone. I checked; they seem to have at least an order of magnitude fewer complaints like this than Android.

moving!

2010-12-21T00:06:00.000-06:00

My blog has moved!

Well, kind of.

Now, sheckel.blogspot.com will forward to blog.sheckel.net. It's the exact same blog as before (and still hosted by Google), but it now has a shorter URL. I think that should be about the only noticeable difference. You can also hit up www.sheckel.net for an exciting website (see also: recursion). Someday I'll come up with something more professional sounding, but today is not that day. Hosting is by the super-duper people at nearlyfreespeech.net.

If you see/find anything broken, let me know!

-

Amazon.com thinks I should buy my mother a subscription to Seventeen Magazine for Christmas (not happening -- sorry, mom). They must get a lot of under-2-year-olds ordering magazines for their 17-year-old mothers, I guess...

project for the night

2010-12-14T22:54:00.001-06:00

Finishing this:

By writing these:

Why did I stress out about this* for the last six weeks when I knew I was going to do it the day before it was due, anyways? I could have saved myself a lot of trouble**.

Sidenote: I want to apply for the model position on the ECE website. I think I'd make a good "blurry guy in the background with a white shirt".

Interesting things online I have found while procrastinating:

1) Fascinating story from Fox News on the attack on Iran's nuclear program. It's an engaging narrative that reads like a scene out of Mission Impossible; pretty scary that this sort of thing actually happens.

2) I actually learned something cool while studying for one of my finals***(!). Apparently the tilt of the earth is not constant; it varies from ~22-24.5 degrees with a period of 41,000 years. The impact of this on the climate is nontrivial, and is part of what is called the "Milankovitch cycles". This means that in a few thousand years, they'll have to publish new textbooks containing the numbers for the angle of the Earth's axis. I'm not certified to give investment advice, but this sounds like a winner of an opportunity.

3) One of my friends sent me these Calvin & Hobbes snowmen cartoons. They're hilarious. "Eggplant casserole tonight?"

4) Why electrical engineers are cool: biopsy results in five minutes, instead of a few days to a week or more. Unfortunately, I'm not an electrical engineer...

Sigh. Time to finish these essays.

* OK, I wasn't very stressed out. But I did think about doing it a few times.
** To be clear, the exact trouble that I would have saved was: thinking about doing the essays. But hey, to some of us, thinking is quite the hassle...
*** I justify wasting away my time studying for finals by researching (ok...googling...) topics I run across that seem interesting. That way I actually learn something new -- which is the whole point of school anyways, right?

give me liberty or...

2010-12-10T23:33:00.002-06:00

I think I'd rather die a thousand terrible deaths than write my personal statement for grad school*.

In other grad school related news, I think the final list of schools I'm applying to is:

Illinois
Michigan
UT Austin
Carnegie Mellon
Wisconsin

Well, Wisconsin is a maybe, but I'm definitely doing the other four. Since pros and cons lists are supposedly helpful, here's one for grad schools that I just made:

School	Pro	Con
Illinois	Right in my backyard	Right in my backyard
Michigan	New place/profs/etc, but not too far from home	I'd have to cheer for the Wolverines...
UT Austin	Good school. It's in Texas. I've never been.	Austin sounds way too hip for me. I don't think I'd fit in.
Carnegie Mellon	Requires the shortest personal statement.	I think I'd be embarrassed to cheer for a CMU sports team.
Wisconsin	Big Ten. Isn't Purdue. I kind of like Bo Ryan. Application isn't due for a while.	Snow.

Unrelated fact: My website is almost done! It's kind of cool, I like it.

Unrelated news: I made chocolate chip cookies today! They're easily the most delicious thing I've cooked all semester, beating out my butter-filled-apple-pie, about twenty pans of brownies, and about fifty meals of only eggs. Close runners up include: the Jan Hagel cookies I made Wednesday for the Navs Christmas party (yum!), spaghetti tonight (with meatballs, jalapeños, and onions!), and lots of chicken fajitas.

I got three hours of sleep last night and didn't take a nap all day. Time for bed, I think; this personal statement can wait.

*I'm only half kidding. As in: I'd rather do my personal statement than die a thousand terrible deaths; however, five hundred deaths would be an acceptable tradeoff.

twenty questions

2010-12-04T15:26:00.001-06:00

Consisting of: questions and comments.

Not consisting of: answers or importance.

Note that there are not actually twenty questions. It seems I was a little ambitious with that title.

1. Why does the college basketball season start during the last few weeks (err, last several weeks) of school? It's going to ruin my GPA!

2. Why did Illinois lose to Fresno State...again? The final play of the game was Eddie McGee getting sacked...seems fitting.

3. What does this new NASA discovery even mean? I should have paid attention in biology, perhaps...it doesn't seem particularly earth-shattering to me, but what do I know?

4. How did my room get so messy in the last five days? It was spotless when I left for break.

5. What kind of cookies should I make for the Navs Christmas party? I don't really have time to make cookies, but maybe I can do it while watching a basketball game...

6. Why have I not had Chipotle in over two weeks? There is no acceptable answer to this question.

7. Is it bad that I haven't gone running in over (?) a month? It's not as bad as the 21 years I went without running before September, I suppose...

8. What does it mean? It's so bright, so vivid...

9. How much longer can/will I procrastinate writing my "personal statement" for grad school? You should guess high.

Edited to add:

10. Why do cans of food say, "Use care: Edges may be sharp."? In my entire life, I have never opened a can whose edges were not sharp.

thoughts on refrigerators

2010-11-17T15:01:00.000-06:00

Our fridge is either always too cold or too hot (cue Katy Perry song). There's no middle ground: it's either frozen or room temperature (ok, not quite...). At any rate, not wanting our food to be spoiled, we leave it on the cool side.

Cons:
- Defrosting fresh carrots before you eat them isn't particularly convenient.
- It's hard to pour frozen milk.
- Frozen eggs crack and get stuck in the carton.

Pros:
- Cartons of apple juice are magically transformed into cartons of apple slushie.

some news

2010-11-12T01:52:00.000-06:00

Various items of varied interest below.

- Poor Cisco had their biggest stock price drop since the 90's. Uh-oh:

"Cisco is big enough, and that miss was bad enough, that it's hard to argue that it's just company-specific," he said.

At least people seem to think they'll recover. Go Cisco!

- In other news, I finally asked a few professors for recommendation letters for grad school yesterday and got back one "Sure, I'll do that" already...hooray!

- Further news: I took some cool (in my own humble and -- of course -- correct opinion) pictures with my new camera. I uploaded my four favorite ones on Flickr - I hope you like them!

- In a nearly penultimate piece of news, my landlord quite annoyingly decided to cash my rent check from June 1 that they said they never got in the mail. I had my dad drop off a check in person so they definitely got the money for June, but it seems they conveniently found the long-lost check and also forgot that I had already paid them (funny how that works...). Fortunately they didn't force my account to be overdrawn (which would have been a major hassle), although it came pretty close...an unexpected $300+ coming out of your bank account is quite the surprise! Hopefully I can get it back ASAP because I actually had to use the money...

- Next: I'm going to be super busy next week...all my professors decided "I'd hate to make them study over break, so let's have the exam just before break!" I think I have at least 3 exams next week, plus a bunch of fun-sounding homework to do, plus grad school apps. I'm going to have an exciting weekend, I can tell already...

- Finally: Thanksgiving Break is only about a week away! I don't know why I'm so excited, because I haven't had hardly anything to do all semester. At any rate, it will be nice to see my family in Phoenix, and eat turkey, and pie, and feel yet another year older when I come back to school...

wow...

2010-11-03T14:27:00.002-06:00

...I'm so old:

welcome to November

2010-11-02T08:05:00.000-06:00

As my own special way of welcoming in the wonderful month of November, I voted (thanks for the ride back to Mahomet, Jackie)! So should you - while waking up at 6:30 falls into the "not cool" category for me, getting to fill in bubbles with an ink pen instead of a #2 pencil made it totally worth it.

Sidenote: How did we get to November already?? I could have sworn it was just August. It would seem that time flies with no actual regard for fun.

PaperBecause

2010-10-25T17:47:00.000-06:00

So today while wasting time on YouTube between classes (OK: I admit, I was watching this), I hit one of those annoying YouTube ads. I was slightly intrigued, because the advertisement was for some new PR campaign for...paper (the white stuff you can print on). So, I bit (you're welcome, YouTube) and clicked through and found the mildly-hysterical PaperBecause campaign, complete with great quotes like:

Great ideas are started on paper. The world is educated on paper. Businesses are founded on paper. Love is professed on paper. Important news is spread on paper.

That's why we love paper.

this:

From your first paycheck to your finest presentation, I've always been your partner.

and, my personal favorite:

So, don't worry. I'm not going anywhere. We've had some great times together — and this is only the beginning.

While I'm not a paper-hater (I print lots of things), most of those things aren't even true anymore, except the part about my first paycheck.

As it turns out, this campaign was started by none other than (drumroll...) a paper company! I wonder what motivated them to start something like this...

At any rate, I felt that this little blip of humor ought to be shared so I sent a tip into TechCrunch (which is the one of the top tech blogs in the world). And lo and behold, they wrote up an article on it - the "tipster" in that article is me!

interviews

2010-10-22T13:14:00.000-06:00

Ahhh.

I hate interviews.

I don't do well under pressure, apparently. I just spent ten minutes devising an overly complicated (and wrong) solution to a problem I had to answer during an interview.

Of course, after the interview when the answer no longer mattered, I got it in about ten seconds.

Sigh. Such is life. Such is my life, anyways...

At any rate, here's a cool wind turbine I got to go see last week!

computer sadness

2010-10-06T14:34:00.001-06:00

The blue screen of death on a Mac is not all that much more useful than the one on Windows...

thoughts on trust

2010-10-03T00:48:00.000-06:00

To clarify: not my thoughts, but rather, things I've run across the last few weeks in Daniel (which my Bible study has been looking at) and Psalms. So, more like, observations from the lives of Daniel and David. A lot of them aren't even my observations but things that we discussed as a group. I keep forgetting to write in my journal, so the below will suffice:

Daniel consistently chose to trust God, regardless of the external circumstances. Actually, there is nothing in the text to suggest that Daniel even believed there was a choice: trusting God was the only action (yes, action) he ever even considered. For example, see 1:11-17: Daniel asks to be fed only vegetables (... inexplicable, I know...) and water for over a week in order to keep from defiling himself with the royal food he was offered; God responds by making Daniel and his countrymen the healthiest guys around. Or see chapter 2: Daniel fearlessly comes before the king to interpret a (crazy) dream which is nothing but bad news. God reveals to Daniel the meaning and the king responds by installing Daniel as a ruler over Babylon. Or see chapter 3, when Daniel's friends famously say, "but even if he does not...". Or chapter 4 (another crazy dream), or chapter 5 (yet another crazy dream) or chapter 6 (a den of lions).

Do I trust God as Daniel did? Is the Lord my ever-present help in times of trouble? Would I say "but even if he does not", or would I bow down to the king? When faced with a decision, is entrusting it to God the only option I consider?

David writes in Psalm 25:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, O Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; my enemy will say, "I have overcome him," and my foes will all rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.

David is obviously not at a high point in his life when he writes this; he feels far from God, downtrodden, nearly destroyed. "But I will trust in your unfailing love", David says, "my heart rejoices in your salvation". Even when it seems that God's love is failing, David praises the goodness of God.

Does my reliance on God's faithfulness depend on the circumstances of my life? Or do I trust as David did - saying "how long, O Lord" while trusting in His unfailing love?

Finally and completely tangentially, I was encouraged a couple days ago by Paul's simple description of God's grace in Romans 5:15. I'm not sure why it stuck out to me, but it did and I'll forget unless I write it down:

"But the gift is not like the trespass."

another conglomeration of random images

2010-09-26T21:55:00.000-06:00

I went to the Illinois vs. Penn State volleyball match on Friday night, in which Illinois broke Penn State's 60-something game Big Ten winning streak. There was quite the crowd there; apparently, the first sellout since 1992 (says the article I linked to). All in all, it was pretty exciting; and a lot free-er than a football game!

Someone serving. We had good seats!

Saturday, a bunch of Navs guys went down to the City Museum in St. Louis. It was a bunch of fun (not necessarily evidenced by these pictures):

"The Path of Total Awareness: Hot! Fresh! Corn Dogs."

???????????

A big slide on the roof. This place likes their slides; there is also one
that spirals down ten stories to the first floor.

Finally: I started running two weeks ago, which I haven't done...ever. The trend over the last week is rather disturbing:

Time to write my paper, I suppose...

iPod

2010-09-21T01:14:00.000-06:00

It's a very sad day...I'm afraid my trusty old iPod is on its last legs. When faced with a choice between going running with me today (for the first time ever) and dying, poor old "Jacob Tolar's iPod" chose death.

To be fair, I was also considering death over running. In the end, the opportunity for free Papa Del's tomorrow (easily the best pizza place in town) swayed me towards life.

I hadn't used it since I charged it on Saturday; when I got it out tonight, the battery was completely dead. I think it'll be usable for the time being if I leave it on the charger 24/7, but its days are numbered :-(

Me and that little iPod have had quite the journey together; it's taken many a road trip with me around the country, and has flown to Arizona, California and Mexico. It has listened to me sing loudly for countless miles and brought me Hunt The Wumpus. The day we part will be a bittersweet day indeed.

-

Too many days of job fairs [specifically, too many days of my attendance at said job fairs] these last couple of weeks. I've become more and more convinced these last two weeks that job fairs are nature's cruel way of punishing students for existing.

socks

2010-09-16T14:37:00.001-06:00

Really, someday soon I will put up more than silly pictures.

But I ran out of socks. I wanted to order some more to ensure that this crisis does not occur again. I had a little trouble.

First: Why are those poor words in quotes? They've done nothing to deserve such treatment.

Second: You're going to charge me for shipping if I spend more than a million dollars on socks? I'm afraid you just lost my business.

Finally: Why are these headphones the most popular men's socks that Amazon sells? I do not understand.

más fotos

2010-09-14T23:43:00.000-06:00

Here are my cool photos for the day (only one of which actually comes from today). I post them not because they are of any particular artistic or comedic value, but instead because going to bed means that I am one step closer to the job fair. Since I would really rather not go to the job fair, I'm avoiding going to bed - as if that will help my situation at all.

Thus, the following assortment of pictures.

Golden Gate Bridge, looking up. I wish the colors came out this neat when I took it, but they didn't. Thanks to Jackie for
showing me how to make the colors nice and bright!

Artsy-fartsy photo number two: in which I attempt to color only one of the flowers yellow (conveniently, the one which is best in focus) - despite the fact that such a thing would never occur in reality. I believe this was taken in Stanislaus National Forest in California.

Exhibit C: In which it is demonstrated that Amazon.com knows me far too well. If it weren't the 21st century, I believe that I would find this creepy.

Someday, perhaps, I will post on more varied and insightful topics. Today, however, is not that day.

no more water

2010-09-14T14:37:00.000-06:00

Great news hanging on the front door of my apartment building when I got home today: it appears that my landlord forgot to pay the water bill, and they're going to shut off our water in 10 days.

On the bright side, as of September 24, the leaky faucet in our bathroom that our landlord never remembers to fix will finally stop leaking! As an extra special bonus, we won't have to do dishes anymore!

noise

2010-09-13T16:51:00.000-06:00

I wonder if I can call the police on the sorority next door for violating some sort of noise ordinance. I'm seriously considering it...

uh oh

2010-08-30T21:50:00.001-06:00

Good thing I never used this account. Otherwise, this would be slightly disappointing. "All email messages...have been deleted."

AT&T High Speed Internet was successfully installed.

2010-08-28T00:47:00.001-06:00

"Now you're ready to start browsing the web!"

I didn't know you could install the Internet, but I guess AT&T is way more advanced than the rest of the world. To install the Internet, I had to use Windows (go figure), which wasn't so handy since all three of us here use Macs. Thank goodness for VMware Fusion. But it made me wonder, what are you supposed to do if you don't have access to Windows? Phone a friend? Poll the audience? All I needed was a username and password to enter into my modem. Surely a Mac can handle that.

We're not off to a good start, AT&T...although, to be fair, the 45 minutes I've spent on this is much less than the time I spent dealing with Comcast last year.

state fair goat

2010-08-24T16:03:00.000-06:00

I think this is the best photo of a goat I've ever taken:

It also may be the only photo of a goat I've ever taken...

words of wisdom

2010-08-22T22:54:00.002-06:00

From the GRE review book that I just got:

"The CBT [computer based test; the GRE] is _not_ a computer game; you don't win any points here by zapping the enemy blindly."

Shoot. I thought clicking through it as fast as possible would score me an extra bonus round.

In other news, school starts back up tomorrow. Time to figure out when I have class I suppose...

Aretha Franklin

2010-08-13T22:47:00.002-06:00

Dear Pandora,
Why is Aretha Franklin in my U2 playlist?
Love,
Jacob

bathroom note, part two

2010-08-09T09:09:00.000-06:00

I submitted my photo to passiveaggressivenotes.com and they put it on the website! Ha!

http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/2010/08/08/hard-times-with-hard-water/

Cisco internship...

2010-08-07T03:44:00.000-06:00

...done! After a long few days finishing everything up, I celebrated tonight by buying way more ice cream than I can eat before I leave on Sunday, and then eating some of it.

~~Tomorrow~~ Today my plans include:
- Waking up in the morning, feeling absolutely nothing like P. Diddy
- Brushing my teeth with non-alcoholic, generic brand toothpaste
(Ke$ha* references ending...now.)
- Making some lunch to pack away
- Taking a 2 hour bus/train trip to San Francisco
- Walking/sightseeing my way over to the bike rental shop
- Doing a cool bike ride called the Golden Gate Ramble which came highly recommended from some people at work
- Riding the ferry
- Doing some more sightseeing
- Figuring out how to get back home. Perhaps I should plan more ahead on this one...
- Packing!

*I have now referenced Ke$ha twice in a week now, I think. This does not bode well for my mental health.

Negative 4%

2010-08-04T22:23:00.000-06:00

So, I'm considering buying a new camera. One, my camera got some dirt stuck in it in Mexico and hasn't quite been the same since. And two, because it'd be fun to learn how to use a manual camera.

I decided to search for deals using Bing, because there was a Bing ad in my Google search for this camera saying I could find great deals with Bing. But I think it's time to go back to Google:

Check out "Price if purchased separately". Now check out "Price you pay" (both work for the rebate). What a deal...that's like a -4% discount!

sights and sounds from California

2010-08-03T19:55:00.001-06:00

The title was just an attention-grabbing lie, as there's no sounds to be seen (or heard) within this post. I think that's called artistic license or something.

Exhibit A. The powerpoint slide says "See Wiki for less information.", I think. I didn't actually look at it, but I that seems consistant with the general message of the page.

Exhibit B. Over the past few months I have come to the conclusion that everything in California causes cancer and/or severe birth defects. Just thinking about California probably causes cancer.

Exhibit C. Needs no comment beyond "..........".

Exhibit D. My dad noticed this sign at the apparently world-class San Jose Rose Garden. I guess they know something we don't?

BieberBlocker

2010-08-02T21:44:00.001-06:00

Dear World,

[update, a few minutes after I posted: this already exists! I have to admit, the other one is better...but it just blocks out the Biber videos in blue; mine eliminates them completely. To each his own...]

I have done you a minor favor and created this wonderful little bookmarklet to hide annoying[1] videos on YouTube. Certain (see [1]) videos are seem to pollute the popular music categories on YouTube, making it hard to find all the other wonderful (see [2]) content online.

So, you can just drag the below link to your bookmarks bar. Whenever you're on an excessively problematic YouTube page, don't panic! You can fall back on your trusty sidekick - the aptly-named BieberBlocker - and all will soon be made well.

BieberBlocker (drag to address bar)

You can go from this...

Bieber-ful :-(

to this...

Bieber-less! :-)

in an instant! It's like magic, but better; I've never seen a magician remove Justin Bieber videos from YouTube; and even if he did, he'd never give away the secret - let alone let you try it at home!

It's probably not perfect[3], but it's a great way to keep your kids safe out on the wild frontiers of the Internet. Ultimately, it's only a stop-gap measure until someone from YouTube puts in a more permanent solution...but that may never happen. If it blocks a non-Bieber video...better safe than sorry, I say.

It should work nicely in browsers like Safari/Firefox/Chrome. I don't think anything is stopping it from working in Internet Explorer (?), I just have no intention of trying it.

Sincerely,
Jacob

[1] Justin Bieber.
[2] That was a slight exaggeration. Ke$ha is not particularly wonderful. But she beats the alternatives (see [1]).
[3] Heck, it might not work at all for you. But it works for me.
pro tip: Just change the regex in the bookmarklet for more blocking fun...you ~~could~~ should block Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus in one fell swoop!

the popcorn button

2010-08-01T01:55:00.000-06:00

Microwave manufacturers need to rename the "Popcorn" button. The popcorn button has literally (yes, literally) never been used to cook popcorn properly. Any of the following would be much a more suitable name:

Burn!
Undercook!
Fire Alarm!
Render Inedible!
Surprise Me!

The same odds of getting good popcorn from pushing the popcorn button are about the same as the chances of winning the lottery. Actually, they're worse: people have actually won the lottery. It's high time I stop gambling with my popcorn.

You have failed me for the last time, Popcorn Button.

None of us need to deal with that.

2010-07-26T21:57:00.002-06:00

Flickr has a "Blog this photo" feature. Neato.

But it didn't work so well...below are the remains.

None of us need to deal with that.
Originally uploaded by Jacob Tolar

I think my favorite part is that it starts with "please", so as to not offend anyone.

additional readings

2010-07-25T21:42:00.000-06:00

C.S. Lewis is great:

The permanent nature of wood which enables us to use it as a beam also enables us to use it for hitting our neighbour over the head. - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

The reading spree continues. I think this is the third book I've read (err...looked at...) this summer. I think that's a record high for the last few years...

In other news, the chicken came first. Glad we finally got that one settled.

In other other news, I've only got two more weeks left in California before I head back to my other favorite bankrupt state. So, I have about one and a half weekends remaining to see the remainder of the state.