heroes among us

"But I don't want this super power. Why would anyone want to know every time someone around them is checking someone else out?

I also have an uncanny ability to know whenever a modem is running on 100%."

another unknown

somedays you just feel like singing in russian.

fun with translations

Excerpt of a chat with a friend in very badly broken German, translated through the all knowing, and terribly misinformed, babelfish:


-how does it go?
-am I well, and you?
-I am very well well, well I may sun
-am you the Kaffee interested?
-yah, unfortunately, I am on Dearborn
-hmpf
-I am sadly
-tomorrow we go on the Kaffee
-a that am good

Guilty tart pleasures

Mr. and Ms. Malibu: you will be happy to know that I have been craving pink berry yogurt, and it's all your fault.

I tend to get very specific cravings and am somewhat obsessed with fulfilling them. So given that I won't be visiting LA anytime soon, this one may cause me problems.

i hate american coffee

How could the same word be used for two very different things.
No, I don't want your percolator with the basket horribleness on top.

google search for i hate american coffee:

I hate Starbucks

I hate Starbucks

Biofuels: another reason to hate American policy

why i didn't get your call

My phone has a colorful striped case (phone 15, me love)

I put the case on the phone (phone 15, me 15)

I do not know your numbers by heart (phone 30, me 15, match point)

When set to vibrate, I do not beep when receiving a text message in a meeting and force someone to set me to silent (me 1,000 phone 30)

Missing on the Moa

It's the first day that is warm enough to not wear a jacket and I've been working with the same eigenvectors most of the day. It is really time to bust out.

But, since I promised Terroni, here is the first installment of New Zealand stories:

National Identities. The kiwi is the name for the fruit, the bird, and the people. New Zealand has this wonderful and strangely focused way of taking fruits from around the world, bringing them to New Zealand, rebranding them, and shipping them all over the world. Take the tamarillo of the Andes, the persimmon of China and Japan and, of course, the kiwi, actually of southern China.

The second kiwi is a very shy, nocturnal, grub and worm eating, flightless bird that somehow became the symbol for the third type of kiwi: New Zealanders. I'm not exactly sure how this became the case but suspect that it was a combination of near extinction of the species and the belief that it was one of the only animals native to New Zealand. While it is not found anywhere else in the world, there is some indication that it may have actually come from Australia. Regardless of the reason why, you must admit that it is a strange choice for people who are widely known as adrenaline-driven risk takers. But maybe that's just another case of rebranding.

never know how we'll end up

I walk the equivalent of five blocks every morning from a parking lot to work, down a lonely wind tunnel with blowing snow. There is a nice carpet rolled out along the right door of the building to catch all of the wet and grime that goes with snowy winters but because I come from the left, desperately and absent-mindedly focused on getting indoors, I always find myself walking to the side of the carpet, mucking up the floor.

I have been having a very bad relationship with this winter. The other day while walking through a sand storm of stinging cold, I realized that I have spent every year of my life save one in winters like these, and my mind finally realized why my body was so angry with me.

word of the day

No kidding, straight out of my text book:

the tayl¹ of the Taylor series, r(x, t₀) is order |x-x₀|²

¹This misspelling of “tail” is standard in the literature for comic intent.

Note to self: there are much better ways to make math more amusing.




Later in the text: "sticky friction, or stiction, ...."

No footnote, no quotations, no apologies this time.