Saturday, December 17, 2005
This strange thing happens to me every time I go home to Walla Walla to visit my family: I yearn for the simple life. Without fail every time I set foot in my sleepy little home town I for a moment want to move back.
Now mind you - it’s usually gone within a day or two of me leaving Walla Walla, or if I stay for a week or so it’s gone by the time I leave, but still the simple life calls out to me.
Why don’t I do it? Why don’t I take advantage of an easy life with low cost of living? The answer is as simple as the yearning - Walla Walla is too boring for me. It’s simple with no pressures or stress yet at the same time offers nothing to do.
I just sat down and talked with a very long time friend of mine. I’ve known him since I was of a single digit age, and he’s done the Walla Walla to Seattle to Walla Walla living situation similar to mine, but now he’s back in Walla Walla. When I hear him talk about his life I’m jealous - it’s easy, involves no stress, and he gets by just fine without a car. He on the other hand is bored to tears and can’t wait until he gets his act together to move back to a big city again.
I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. There is no ultimate solution for the likes of me. At least I know that I’ll always have Walla Walla to retire to if I end up an old boring fart.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Look at the image. How different are the shades of gray for squares A and B? Believe it or not they are exactly the same color even though square A looks much darker than square B. I didn’t believe it when I saw it either so I dropped it into photoshop and low and behold - it’s true! I wonder what mechanism tricks our brains into thinking this way.
Friday, December 16, 2005
I’m just finishing up my week at work here. Today was pretty easy - we had a recruiting brunch, and got a chance to relax a bit. It was a welcome relief after being sick for the last couple of days while stressing out on getting everything together for my mom’s new law office.
I’m going to leave work rather early today as I really want to make sure that I get across the pass before things get dark and icy. If it was not for the pass I would just leave after work, but crossing Snoqualmie after dark in the winter can be a scary thing.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Bre over at I Make Things just posted a simply delicious little video: In the future. He asked a bunch of his students what the future will bring and edited them down into something that makes you think.
My question is what would have happened if you asked the same equivalent kids 15 years in the past, and 15 years in the future. How has our child-like perception of the future changes with the onslaught of technology at an ever-increasing rate?
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Check out DirIndexFaker - it’s a slick little anti-RIAA honeypot of sorts that P2Pnet just posted. The MPAA and RIAA have spider bots that crawl around the internet looking for copyrighted material. They then use the logs from those bots to sue people, many of whom have turned out to be innocent.
DirIndexFaker creates a /media directory on your website with fake files that look like they would be in violation of copyright. The RIAA/MPAA then downloads those files and use them as evidence against the owners of the site, however discovers they have downloaded a file of random 0’s and 1’s.
This slows down the spiders and makes them put more efforts into checking their files. I encourage all website owners to put this script somewhere on their server. It sends a message to big media and complicates their attempts to turn technology against people and restrict what they can do with their media and computers.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
So as I had previously reported my camera was behaving a bit erratically and occasionally displaying the dreaded ERR-99 message and forcing me to shut it off and turn it on again. Given that my sisters wedding is looming I took it back into the shop (a Canon-authorized dealer this time) and got a second opinion. It sounds like they need to replace the shutter mechanism so it’s going to cost about $450. Bummer given the timing and I’ll barely have my camera back in time for the wedding.
*crosses fingers*
To top it all off I feel sick today. I’m tired, grumpy, and just want to go home. Luckily tonight is going to be very chill and I can rest up so that tomorrow and Friday go by quickly. Only seven more days until my three week vacation starts - I can’t wait!
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Some sake and sushi with Ken made this evening a success. We are about to go watch some space western and have fun with CSS. Fun times were had by all and now further discussions are ensuing.
