I am a little intrigued at my sudden ability to drop bad habits like a bad habit. Last week, not reading my usual political blogs, to stop the mountain of stupid that was crushing my soul; two weeks ago, going cold turkey on snacks at work, to stop my gut from crushing my pants. Both are things I assumed I would be powerless to affect, but I don’t even miss them very much. Sunday my PC’s video card died, rendering useless my game machine, and the replacement came today; I’m even wondering if I should bother installing the new one.

Talked to my therapist yesterday, and she suggests that I’m feeling overwhelmed. I think I’m getting along with that explanation. The whole health care debate has really been a big weight on me — not so much the health care issue itself, but seeing all these people who are so drastically mistaken, and angrily so. And it’s just…well, I’ve known for a long time that people are dumb, so in itself, people being dumb about health care is no big surprise. But I guess the rational part of me held the belief that, with proper discussion and reasoning, people can general be brought out of the ignorance and into the light. Or at least halfway out of the darkness, to a place where they understand that the only place “death panels” exist are in the minds of those who fear.
Read the rest of this entry »

I seem to have traded my World of Warcraft obsession for a dual Team Fortress 2/Demigod demo obsession. It’s sort of at once better, and more insidious. Neither TF2 nor Demigod are engrossing enough to sink a lot of time on, but one can capture my attention for a half hour, and then as I try to get back to programming, the other one seems interesting enough to spend a half hour on. And then it’s 12:30 and I have to get to bed.

I do have to admit I’m having more fun with them than I was Warcraft. Turns out I’m not all that great at the game, really. I got into a really good guild, and then was surprised to find that I was just mediocre. I thought for a while I’d be able to tolerate being a second-rate player in a first-rate guild, but in the end my pride couldn’t hack it. And as the only other choice available to me was being a first-rate player in a second-rate guild, I didn’t really have much that I wanted to do in the game anymore.

I did make a bit of distance on A1, though. It’s grabbing captions in an ajaxy way, but I have some polishing to do on that part. I’m kind of lost on the whole sorting/voting part, though, but I haven’t really sat down and planned it out yet, which I really have to convince myself to do. I was getting really frustrated last month because I figured I should just be able to sit down and start typing out code and then the damn thing could be working already, but I should know better than try to start coding a project without getting a clear spec from the client.

In case you missed the recent MSNBC appearance of Orly Taitz, the de facto queen of the Birther movement, I’ve put together a summary:

I’ve been using the phrase “Geek wins!” a lot recently. It’s my summarized victory speech after I puzzle out a particularly tricky computer problem, or get around someone else’s technology road blocks to get what I want. The latter category’s generally petty and nearly more a testament to my stubbornness rather than my brain, but life’s just a set of word problems to me anyway, so I’ll still add it to the big board.

Here’s an example. Today, Greg posts a link to a Tom the Dancing Bug comic.

Read the rest of this entry »