Flat tire

I'm upset. I'm upset because I have a flat tire, the second one this year. I also didn't notice the flat right away, so I drove on it and surely wound up shredding the tire.

I'm waiting for AAA to come change the tire for me. I could do it myself, but I have other things I'd rather do, and besides, it's hot out there. I'm paying for the AAA service after all, so I may as well use it.

I have to wait an your for the guy to come by. On the other hand though, he can change the tire more quickly that I would, and I can use this time to get stuff done.

But rats, rats, rats, rats, rats.

Frustrated with AT&T DSL

I am really frustrated with AT&T DSL.

First, whenever my DSL connection slows to a painful trickle, they try to diagnose hte problem remotely, then declare that they have to come into my house to complete the diagnosis. And each time, without even stepping through my door, they discover that the problem is something outside my home. Each time, the problem coincided with issues that other customers were having. Like they couldn't have figured that out beforehand?

Second, there are times when my network connection drops out for about 15 minutes or so. This gets to be truly aggravating. They can't figure out what's causing this problem though, probably because they don't have the right logging systems. They say that I need to call when the problem is actually occurring, BEFORE it gets resolved. Ugh.

And finally, late last night, when my network connection did drop out, I called them immediately and got no reply. They were out. DRAT!

Tipping annoyances

There's this one group of people that I used to have lunch with on almost a weekly basis. One of these guys was a bit of a social misfit and a control freak. For example, after eating, he would compute everybody's 15% tip down to the last penny and insist that we pay that amount.

The rest of us thought this was inconvenient and annoying. One of us said, "Look, do we have to do this every stinkin' time? The tip doesn't have to be exact. Besides, some of us will pay more, and some will pay less. We'll all pay whatever we think is right."

"But 15% is the standard. It's the correct tip to pay."

"No, it's not." we replied. "You might want to pay more for good service or less for lousy service. And maybe some of us are a bit strapped for cash and can't tip as much as we'd like to. Either way, it should be an individual decision."

"No," he said. "We have to do this the right way."


This same bozo would also complain if anybody left pennies as part of their tip. I remember the ruckus he raised one day. Another person replied, "So, what's wrong with that? It's legal tender. There's no rule that says you shouldn't use pennies to pay your tip. Besides, they can always get the pennies changed for larger coins if they need to."


This guy was a character, to say the least.

Comic book comments

Comments on some recently released comic books:

Avengers/Invaders #3: Boy, Ross and Krueger are really playing Bucky up as some sort of bad*ss, aren't they? I love it, but I do think that the way he managed to get a vital access code out of some highly trained SHIELD agents was a bit implausible. (And under 23 seconds? Puh-leez.)

JSA Classified #39: Does Mike W. Barr even know what "rope-a-dope" means? It's NOT a good strategy to use against multiple opponents! Sheesh.

Quadruple-cytokine ELISPOT assays?

So they've got quadruple-cytokine ELISPOT assays now? I never heard of such a thing. Double-cytokine assays are well known, though not exceedingly common. But a quadruple-color ELISPOT assay? Analyzing those things must be a real challenge, especially when it comes to disambiguating the mixed-color spots.

Things I'm enjoying

A few things that I've been enjoying:

• The Straight No Chaser 1998 concert DVD. I especially liked their showstopping comedic rendition of "The 12 Days of Christmas."
  
• The Discovery Channel's "Boom De Yada" promo. Now that's a catchy tune.
  
• Disney's Enchanted. Great movie.
  
• Pixar movies.
  
• Heavy cardio workouts
  
• Weight training
  

Wall-E

If you haven't watched Pixar's Wall-E yet, go out and watch it right now! This movie was absolutely amazing! It was incredible to see how much emotion they could squeeze out of two robots with minimal vocabularies and scarcely any physical features.

Just consider all the different ways that Eve said "Wall-E!" and you'll see what I mean.

Biogeochemistry?

I just learned a new word today: biogeochemistry. According to Wikipedia, it is a scientific study that covers the chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes and reactions that govern the composition of the natural environment. It also includes the cycles of matter and energy that transport the Earth's chemical components in time and space.

That's a new one for me.

Incompetent C++ programmers

I love C++. I love the power that it provides. Unfortunately, it seems that good C++ programmers are really hard to find.

I'm sick and tired of programmers who think that using 'get' and 'set' functions makes their designs object-oriented, for example. Heck, it doesn't even make for proper information hiding!

I remember a grad student who tried to use the Visual C++ AppWizard, just so that he could claim to be a C++ programmer. What a ripoff. Sadly, that's how a lot of people market themselves as C++ programmers.

The Apprentice

Season One of Donald Trump's The Apprentice was released on DVD shortly after the season ended. The show was a smash hit, after all. Amazingly though, the powers that be decided not to release the subsequent seasons.

Why? Why the heck? Why? Darn it.

I'd love to be able to analyze these episodes. A lot of these episodes do offer helpful business insights, especially in the first few seasons. Subsequent seasons became more comical, though.

I want a vacation

I want to take a nice, long vacation. I want to work on some technical projects, and I also want to spend a few hours each day in intensive cardio work. I'd love that.

I'd also love to catch up on my readings. For example, I'd love to read a bunch of books on marketing techniques, philosophy, physics, chemistry, and history. I'd also love to read some poetry and plain old fiction.

And dang it, my driveway and yard need work. Dang it.

Legal advice on immigration

On more than one occasion, this certain young lady has asked me to analyze her immigration proceedings and explain what she should expect. Several times now, in fact. While I was willing to help -- up to a point, that is -- I did strongly advise her that she needs to read up on immigration law if she wants to avoid difficulties.

"Oh, but I don't want to have to do that!" she said.

"Well, if you want to avoid problems with your immigration proceedings, you're going to have to read up on the matter. You need to knwo what to expect, and you can't expect your attorney to do everything."

On the one hand, I understand that she wants to avoid the effort required. On the other hand, it seems to me that if your entire future is riding on such matters, you SHOULD do your very best to educate yourself. That's just common sense.

Trying to keep cool

Keep my head cool, that is. I'm under a lot of stress.

I find myself getting really frustrated with equipment around the house, for example. I got really infuriated at this shoddy piece of wiring used in my satellite dish service, for example. After tugging and tugging on the thing, I got really upset and pretty much blew up for a while.

Now I'm trying to calm down. Getting upset often leads to medical problems down the road, after all.

I remember getting infuriated a few day ago when a car cut in front of me on the highway during a pouring storm. I had to press on my brakes to avoid hitting him, and I started to skid a bit. I pretty much leaned on my horn to let him know that he had done something really dumb and placed me in danger.

It took me a while to calm down after that.

Love the new Discover promo

I just love the new Discover Channel promo -- the one that goes "Boom de yada, boom de yada."

I want to make up my own lyrics to this song.

"If you don't like this tune,
Then something's wrong with you.
You have no freakin' clue.
You must be dead inside.
Boom de yada. Boom de yada. Boom de yada. Boom de yada."

I'm exhausted

I'm exhausted. I'm beat. I'm really, really tired, and I'm not getting enough sleep. In part, it's because I have so much work to do AND I'm also trying to squeeze in extra exercise so that I can slim down for a change. It's tough.

If I were more attractive, then I might not be as concerned. One has to work with the hand that one is dealt, though. One has to do one's best.

Difficult people

I remember way back when I had to work with two labmates, D and G.

D was an arrogant loudmouth with a horrible temper and extremely poor people skills. Everyone was constantly concerned that he would mouth off to the wrong person and get himself fired or chewed out. (Amazingly, he was fairly popular with the ladies. This goes to show that some women do love the dominant types who don't treat people well.)

G was a racist bastard. He was active in his church, but outside of his church, he was cruel and harsh. He would continually refer to Indians as "Hadji," as though oblivious to the fact that he was uttering a racial slur. (Honestly though, I'm sure he was aware of it. He just didn't care.)

Both of them were supposedly adults, but they acted more like 14-year-olds. I'm glad I don't have to deal with them anymore.

AT&T DSL: I'm annoyed

Well, AT&T finally fixed my DSL connection. Finally. And they didn't have to enter my home to do it.

The thing is, I wish they had figured that out beforehand. It seems to me that they should have been able to do so. The customer support rep said that other subscribers had been affected by this outage, so I'm surprised that they didn't make that connection.

Of course, I don't know the whole story, so I won't say that for sure.

The AT&T junction box is across the street from me. From past experience (yeah, it's happened before), I know that the repair techs sometimes have to go to this box in order to effect repairs. Well, I saw an AT&T van right by this box yesterday morning, so I suspect that they had some idea that it was a hardware problem outside of my home. I also saw a van there this morning, right after my network access started working. Go figure.

My DSL connection

I am deeply annoyed.

A few days ago, my DSL connection degraded into a slow trickle. It was worse than dial-up... many times worse. Argh.

I called tech support, but they couldn't really help. After trying a few unhelpful tests (tests which I could pretty much tell were shots in the dark), they agreed to send a technician over in three days. (I was going to be out of town for two days; hence the delay.) Unfortunately, this required that I leave work early and wait for the guy.

Well, after waiting for over an hour, I called and asked where he was. The customer support rep didn't know, but he did ask me to wait longer. Argh.

A few minutes later, I got a call, stating that the problem was traced to some circuits outside my home. I was informed that they would not be sending a technician over after all.

Grumble. They couldn't have figured that out sooner? After all, it had been three day since I reported the problem. You'd think that they would have made the logical connection by then.

Now, I won't be hasty to judge. I don't know the whole situation after all. Still, it was bloody annoying.

Travelling alone

I wish that I had someone to travel with. That'd make all this travelling a bit more enjoyable. Flying by myself and staying in a tiny hotel room by myself gets to be pretty lonely at times.

Noisy kids on airplanes

Today I had the unpleasant experience of sitting in front of a loud, noisy kid on an airplane. This child was talking loudly through most of the flight, and was carrying on conversations with children in some of the other rows (his siblings, presumably).

What's more, he kept tapping my seat. (Remember, he was seated behind me.) On more than one occasion, I had to to turn to him and say, "Please stop hitting my seat."

Unfortunately, some parents don't bother to keep their children under control. They'll let the children talk loudly during flights, as though they were oblivious to the fact that other passengers are trying to rest or get some reading done. Argh.