Worst movie

I made us watch Battlefield earth tonight. It was still bad.

More work fun

So today, after lunch we get back, and they've painted ANOTHER van in the engineering lab. A) We've got paint booths. They are nice. They are
expensive. They Work! B) Really, with the amount of grinding/welding/dust/everything else done in the shop, I can't imagine the paint job is really that good after an hour or so. C) Our air in the engineering department is sucked in from said engineering lab, one of the great mysteries is why that was done. Instead of leaving like I could, I decided to stay to try to finish up something else I was working on. Now, the paint fumes being funneled directly into our enclosed area are pretty fun. First, they tend to burn my eyes a bit, but it doesn't get worse with time, pretty much as soon as i come in contact with them they burn. Next, I can tell I'm getting rather high off them, every time I minimize a window, my desktop wallpaper, and icons just amaze me. This makes it a tad bit difficult to do real actual work, since my brain's operating at about 1/10th speed. So instead of doing real work, I'm just sitting here maximizing + minimizing windows.

Also I looked up the effects of using paint as a way to get high, and found this site. Here's the effects:

Dizzy rush. Alcohol-like intoxication. Distortion of senses and perceptions. Delusions of grandeur. Dizziness, euphoria, feeling of weightlessness. Dissociation from environment. Silliness, awkward movements, muscle weakness. Altered speech, slowed reactions, altered judgment. Sensitivity to light, double vision, dilated pupils, ringing in ears. Drowsiness, sleep, anesthesia, depression, hallucinations, delirium, disorientation.

And my checklist:

• Dizzy Rush--Not really


• Alcohol-like intoxication--2 beers


• Distortion of Senses and perceptions--Check


• Delusions of grandeur--How can I tell?


• Dizziness--a bit


• Euphoria--pretty happy


• Feeling of Weightlessness--hrm, not really


• Dissociaiton from environment--Yes


• Silliness--See this post


• Awkward movements--Typing speed=decreased and I keep hitting the wrong keys


• Muscle Weakness--Um....


• Altered speech--not that high


• Slowed Reactions--they're pretty impared right now


• Altered Judgement--not that high&


• Sensitivity to light--Eyes burning


• Double vision--Only see one monitor...for now


• Dilated pupils--let me go look....Hrm, don't know what size they usually would be. Looks normal to me.


• Ringing in ears--none


• Drowsiness--a bit


• Sleep--nope


• Anesthesia--Not even gonna test that..


• Depression--Not really


• Hallucinations--I can't focus on my monitor anymore.


• Delirium--Nope


• Disorientation--nope

I'd say the indications are good, I'm high.

ARGH~

Now that I've almost finished my project, I get to deal with the fun stuff that Bryan gets to frequently. It is time to deal with the asinine part numbering system (which no one ever can explain how to use). Apparently its a big deal to keep track of changes in my software. I want a description of the software and changes that anyone can see that would look like this:

Software_1_0_0: Initial Release
Software_1_0_1: Changed operation of Clock, so it was not reset every powercycle
Software_1_0_2: Fixed problem with _________________________.
Software_1_1_0: Software no longer causes spontaneous combustion.

Now, ideally I would have a database where I could enter these. I don't. That leaves 2 obvious choices, Excel or Word. I don't need calculations, so Excel is overkill. Word would be perfectly fine (or notepad for that matter). So what's the problem? We need to have things on a "drawing", so that means AutoCAD. WTF! Talk about overkill. The reason for doing it in AutoCAD? So the draftsmen only have one file type to edit. There's a reason for having computers, they can do more than one thing. They multitask quite well, in fact I'm running many different programs now, and my computer hasn't kicked me yet today. Also we all have Office on our computers, so its not like I'm asking them to buy some software that costs $1000 a seat. There are about a billion things you can use to edit a simple text file.

I think I'll start programming C in AutoCAD, just so the drafters can look at my code easier. I'd hate for them to have to load up something else. Maybe I should write things in MS Paint too, bitmaps are pretty standard and everyone can edit those too!

I'll also get to start filling out paperwork every time I need to make a change. That'll be fun. I'll waste plenty of time doing that once we really start testing. I'm all for controlling versions so people know what changed, but if you make it a pain in the ass, I'm less likely care about keeping it up to date. In fact, it pretty much encourages me to ninja fix things, and not tell anyone. Less stupid work for me = the win.

Automatically Flushing Toilets and Spontaneous Combustion

In case you were wondering, no, there was not an accident involving fire and a toilet that I witnessed today.

While automatically flushing toilets are nice, I hate when they don't work. When I'm sitting there taking care of business, I don't want that thing to flush if I make the slightest movement. I could do with out the cold refreshing spray caused by this action. Even worse, it happened twice....then, when I was finished, and left the stall, the bugger didn't flush, so i had to hit the magic button to make it work. At least they're no more automated than flushing, I'm pretty sure I couldn't handle it if they were.

Next, How would you like to live here? I pointed it out to Bryan, and after a quick google search, he came up with this page. It does a good job listing some facts about the area and investigating some possibilities which might cause the type of fires seen in the village.

Passion of Christ

I've finally gotten a chance to see the movie and it was everything I had hoped it would be. There are enough reviews out there that I won't bother writing one, but I would recommend that everyone watch it once.

I actually got to see the movie for free because the local Church of the Nazarene sponsored the first night. I just hope I didn't offend them when I refused to take their brochure. I wasn't really at a speaking stage at that point, and just sort of held up my hand and grunted a bit. I'm sure I made the guy wonder about me.

Economics of Space Travel and Voting

First, Electronic Voting. Its a good idea, but so far has been poorly implemented and controlled. Because of this, there is a push for a paper trail. To me, this does not solve the problem, nor does it benefit anyone in any way. If the machines are "hacked" as the fear is, it would be ridiculously easy to hack the printing routines, probably even more so than it would be to hack the actual recording of the vote. It also does nothing to get rid of the paper ballots. If you're required to generate a print out of the vote anyway, why change the system? It would cost less to simply continue using paper ballots, and invest in better punching machines.

Electronic Voting has also not been controlled properly. Too many states have different requirements, and every company does things slightly differently. You want strict control on how the systems operate? Then a commission needs to be established, heck, give control of the systems to the Nevada Gaming Commission, and I assure you they will be the most secure systems known. Good slot machines are amazingly secure. Why? A broken machine might cost the casino quite a bit of money, either through paying out more than it takes in, or through not paying out enough, and causing the casino to be fined. Its crazy that gambling has stricter controls than voting, especially when they are essentially the same thing.

Next, Why does space exploration cost so much? Because it has not been privatized. If private corporations were allowed to develop and promote space flight/tourism, costs would be much lower. What happens when you allow private companies to attempt this? You get projects like this for the Xprize. My only fear is that when a tragic accident occurs (and they will, anyone that says different is a fool) that the government will step in and throw down crazy regulations.