As I Suspected

Jesse, Jesse, Jesse... How could you have been so wrong? As a fellow believer of science, I expected better of you. When speaking about a network of roads laid out in a grid pattern, there can be no quicker path than two adjacent edges of the smallest possible parallelogram whose corners are both the starting and ending points, unless of course there is a route that cuts through the grid. Tis simple geometry. To help you visualize your folly, I created the following comparison of our proposed routes:

As you can plainly see, they are the same distance. I know that this must come a shock, possibly blowing your mind, but I think that you will appreciate what has happened here in time.

Simple Pedantry

I checked out www.wolframalpha.com today and for the most part amused myself testing the "computational knowledge engine". It was good times having it plot out number sequences, compare the popularity of names, calculate the date on which I'll turn 10,000 days old, etc. But then I saw something horrible, something that made the fun cease and my blood boil. I had typed "kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte, exabyte" into the engine, and the result was disgusting. The damnable Wolfram engine defined each term as power of 10 instead of a power of 2! Damn them, how could they? The engine is supposed to work with facts and truth, not silly approximations. To define a kilobyte as 1000 bytes is blasphemous under such pretenses.

For those not enlightened with the true values, I'll explain:

1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes
1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes = 1,048,576 bytes
1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes = 1,048,576 kilobytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes

The reason for these values has to do with binary (the base 2 number system which all computer data is represented by). We, being used to a base 10 system, prefer numbers like 10, 100, and 1000, and they can be represented as powers of the base number (e.g. 1000 = 10^3). In binary, 1000 is an ugly number, but 1024 is close enough and a very easy number to use, especially as a power of 2. Using power notation:

1 kilobyte = 2^10 bytes
1 megabyte = 2^10 kilobytes = 2^20 bytes
1 gigabyte = 2^10 megabytes = 2^20 kilobytes = 2^30 bytes

By using the approximations, they have introduced an ever-increasing margin of error. As the unit of data grows, the error grows as well.

KB - 1024 - 1000 - 2.4%
MB - 1,048,576 - 1,000,000 - 4.9%
GB - 1,073,741,824 - 1,000,000,000 - 7.4%
TB - 1,099,511,627,776 - 1,000,000,000,000 - 10%

Hard drive manufacturers have been using these approximations for years when selling their drives. When you buy a "500 GB" HDD, it's actually only about 5 billion bytes (465.7 GB), which is about 7.4% less than what they advertise it as. Of course, if you read the fine print on the back of the box, they admit to their approximation, but it is still misleading.

Hopefully, one can now understand my outrage that the WolframAlpha computational knowledge engine is perpetuating the lie. Fret not, for I have made my disapproval known to them by providing some most unsatisfactory feedback. We can all sleep easy now.

The hate train is on schedule

When I'm working, I have to ask each customer for their phone number and then their first name. I ask hundreds of people every time that I work, but some douche the other day managed to piss me off with a two word reply when I asked his name. I asked, "Name?" and the guy replied, "Still Bill." Fuck you, Bill! Am I supposed to remember you for some reason? Are you that special that I should remember you out of every douchebag that rents from me? I know that your first most likely hasn't changed since you last rented, so fuck off with your attitude. What a waste of life. Fucking Bill, he's probably annoyed that I didn't remember his phone number too. I wish I could've kicked him in the throat.

Since Obama got elected, one thing has been annoying me. All kind of media folks have been referring to how every event is "an historic" event. Why the hell are they using "an"? The word "historic" starts with a consonant sound. The purpose of "an" is so you don't have two vowel sounds in a row when referring to a something. Do they think that it sounds fancier, or that they sound somehow more intelligent than rocks by saying it? It makes me die a little inside every time I hear it uttered. Maybe they think the 'h' is silent... I don't know.

Something that made me happy for a change, was the awesome story of a 9 year old boy saving a girl from a pitbull. It's not the fact that he saved her that's great, it's how he did it. He put it in a goddamn choke hold! I just imagine this kid as a young Doug, choking the shit out of everything. I'd pay money to see a kid choke something out like that, especially a ravenous dog. I also wish I could've seen Doug choke out Bob Dylan guy.

Back to hating things. The word "hack" is getting used way too much. People talking about "lifehacks", and how to hack your shoes, books, and this and that. No! You hack computers, networks, electronics and that's it. And noteverything done to those few things is hacking. Most of the dumb crap people post are just simple modifications. The term "lifehack" is probably the most annoying out of the whole deal. You're hacking your life? What are you assholes talking about? Any idea that seems even remotely clever is now called some kind of hack, and I can't stand it. I'm just waiting for the day when someone actually uses it in a conversation with me and my heart explodes with anger.

Be Careful. The Enemy is using a random Schroedinger warp to approach.

I just finished the final episode. I don't know what to do now... what could be more awesome than what I just saw? It was ridiculous, insane, and absolutely exquisite. What can I do for the rest of the night that won't feel incredibly dull by comparison. I mean, jesus, did anyone end up not being awesome by the end? Lord Genome? Yeah. Kittan!?! Fuck, yeah! It's official now, I love mechs.

I'm not alone

I stumbled across an article today that would've been fairly interesting, but became much more so because of a single part of a sentence within it. The article was about a "Scientific attempt to create the most annoying song ever". Such an article piqued my interest, naturally, as I have not been silent about my distaste for the singing of children. As I read further into the article, wondering what the rest of humanity finds repulsive in music, I blissfully read the following words:

"undesirable elements included holiday music, bagpipes, pipe organ, a children's chorus and the concept of children in general..."

A hahahha haha!!! I'm not the only one who hates children singing, its generally accepted now. I don't have to feel like a bad person for hating children (I didn't anyway); its not me, its science.

I've studied all your moves, baby!

Winning at chess feels good. When your oh so clever strategy plays out beautifully, thereby bringing about the destruction of your opponent's dreams, it's orgasmic! But what's even better than that? Dominating the same person twice in a row. How does it feel Doug? One would've expected you to learn from your mistakes in the first game, but your second was even more pitiful. I almost felt sorry killing your queen with a pawn, almost. I think maybe next time we play, I'll give you some kid of handicap or something. Perhaps I could start with only a pawn, and you could have 10 queens. It might be about even then. Who knows? Regardless, I hope that your appetite for pain is not yet sated; I still have a hankering for some chess.

Business? It's taken care of.

It is nice to be home. Got to sleep in my comfy bed with my comfy wife and catch up on all of the sleep I missed. What to do know? I kind of feel like hanging out with people, but I think I'd rather do as little as possible for a day. I'm getting old; can't handle that intensity without some recuperation time. I would like to do a podcast though, there's so much to sort through after the past week. I'm glad I decided to go at the last second, otherwise I would have missed all of the building, dancing, drinking, cooking, walking, and all around silliness. But most of all, I would've missed this:




Ah, memories...