Mid-May, and no progress yet. - 15 May 2007

Yep. No job yet. Still working on that part. I suppose it was a bit unrealistic of me to think that I could land a job so quickly out of college. As with most things, I guess I’m going to be average. (Which is not intrinsically bad - the average is not “no job, ever”, so I’m okay.) Besides, now that all the schooling’s done, I can finally cool off of that “have to be remarkably good/best at my studies” bit that’s been my major schtick. In other words, now I get to diversify! Haha!

Much of the day today was spent catching up on the various episodes I have lying around, which has cleaned my desktop up considerably. Maybe tomorrow I’ll actually get around to tackling the demo disc of .hack//G.U. part one that I got when I bought the .hack//Roots box set.

I suspect the general reaction around the United States was a raucous cheer when this news broke - Jerry Falwell is dead at 73. He will be survived ideologically by several members of his own coalition and others that share his views. Including, apparently, Chuck Norris who wants to speculate on how to outlaw Christianity. It’s been said that Fred Phelps will be out picketing Fallwell’s funeral, something that will not doubt make people make pot-kettle references. More on Jerry - Common Sense points out a lot of his shortcomings, and Brad DeLong points out parts of his past that may have led to the Falwell we knew. Whatever the opinion on him you have, he now has to answer to the power that he believed in. A kind and loving deity could probably find a reason to let Jerry into heaven. I’m personally not sure that the god that comes forward to give him judgment and the reward for his devoted following is one. Only Dante would be able to tell.

One of the things Falwell leaves behind is Liberty University, a place that might be so strict that Falwell himself might flunk out. Here's a look at (some part of?) the disciplinary code and the things that can earn you reprimands. I suspect most of us would probably have been asked not to come back after one semester.

Don Imus’s firing now sets a precedent - CBS just axed JV and Elvis after remarks made on the air by a guest about the rape of the Secretary of State and the Queen of England. Maybe this goes all the way back to Howard Stern’s movement from radio to satellite. Anyway, it seems that accountability is a little bit more prevalent on the airwaves.

Yesterday was the required day for American ISPs to ensure their communications easier to tap by the FBI and FCC, to comply with the current interpretation of the law. So, to our new listeners, we hope you have a court order, and welcome to the show.

Keep an eye on the guy in this article - he might end up in a Darwin Awards book - because he shot himself without actually using a gun as he was emptying bullets from their brass casings with a vise.

A positive example of transgenderism is the case of Christine Daniels, nee Mike Penner, a sport columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Newsweek has an interview with Ms. Daniels on the process and the worries involved in this change, or you can look at Woman in Progress, her blog on the process and reaction to get the words from her own mouth.

For the geek who wants to get exercise while working at the computer or engaging in marathon gaming sessions, a stand-up comptuer terminal equipped with a treadmill is just the thing. It’s being touted as a way of curbing obesity at work. I think the idea has some merit. Keeping in the workplace, France's workers are the biggest complainers about their jobs, according to a new study. The United States is definitely in the top ten there, despite having the highest incomes. We make more, so that we can be jealous of more. We’d even complain about Jons of the Post-Apocalypse, were we to have them or be looking for them. The last thing to come out of the work section, though, is One thousand ways to waste time at work, arranged A to Zed.

Microsoft takes shots at Linux, claiming that parts of the operating system violate patents held by the Redmond software company. At least according to the article, Microsoft is not saying which patents are in violation yet. Sounds suspiciously like the tactic that the *AA organizations are taking against those they think are pirates. Speaking thereof, the Attorney General has proposed that "Attempted software pirating" be classed as a crime, removing the need to prove that some copyright violation has even taken place before sending people to jail. No word on any action forthcoming, but that the Congresspeople haven’t laughed in the Attorney General’s face on this matter is not an encouraging sign.

A drink previously calling itself "Cocaine" has changed its name to "Censored", responding to pressure and criticism from the FDA and state officials. What I find more disturbing is that it has over a gram of caffeine in it. How much do you take before it kills you or seriously screws up your life?

Last for tonight is a cheer from the oppressed corners of your local public high school - a bully victim successfully sued the school on their unwillingness to fix a bullying problem, to the total tune of $1 million. Even if there are appeals, I sincerely hope this finally gets administrators and teachers to do something about the bullying that goes on in the schools. As bradhicks writes, it's when the administration doesn't do anything that the problem gets worse, preferring to call it “character-building” or to refuse to punish the athletes (or other alpha-types) of the school when they engage in bullying. It’s that attitude that creates school shooting situations, he says, and I think he’s right.

Anyway, I’m going to go snooze. Sleep is not only for the weak, it is for those who want to stay sane.

The grind continues - 16 May 2007

It’s sort of evolved into a waiting game, now, where I look for something, send in something, then wait to see if they even acknowledge my presence or not. This is probably how the job market works for everyone, and now I get to see it firsthand. I suppose it’s the first major “setback” I’ve had so far, in the sense of “would like this, am actively trying hard to get it, and have had no luck”. Hope springs eternal, because there’s a telephone interview tomorrow for me in the morning. I hope this one turns out to be worth something.

The daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Yolanda King, died yesterday . Which sort of says something. Upon Falwell’s death, I knew about it almost immediately - there was some delay on Yolanda King’s death. Priorities in this country, maybe? Or just what’s news and what’s going to be next in line to be news.

Jesus’ General had a special guest contributor to mark the occasion of Jerry Falwell’s death - a eulogy written by Tinky-Winky, which, if you read it well, says a lot about other figures and their orientations. Some of them may still be unrepentant. In a more serious note, Ameicans United for Separation of church and State had a few words to say about the occasion, mostly formal. It’s a fairly sober statement. With as much as Falwell’s type of Christianity is vilified, I would have thought stronger words would have been said.

The Pope certainly wasn’t mincing any words when he said that natives in South America were “silently longing” for Christianity and the conquerors from Europe. The reaction to such remarks has been to wonder what Ratzinger was smoking when he said such a thing, not just from the natives but from Catholic priests as well. Sounds like Catholicism’s getting a good dose of fundamentalism, too.

Perhaps because of people like Falwell, there are members of other religious groups that still keep their faith a secret, because they fear consequences. Those described for the most part are social consequences, but it’s not too far of a flight of fancy to see how social consequences could translate into physical consequences, with teasing of children or job threats or perhaps a “performance-related” dismissal of some sort. The current climate is not very conducive to anyone other than Christians being open about their religion. Which is sad.

The BBC also reports that gender discrimination is still a significant problem for girls and women worldwide, starting at conception (for son-heavy cultures) all the way through their lives. Educating girls and holding to the conventions, treaties, and agreements already in place are big steps needed to help stop gender discrimination.

Politically speaking, the Republican Party candidates continued to unveil their plans for the Presidency in their second debate. Mitt Romney wants a bigger Guantanamo, several candidates are accusing each other of not being conservative enough, and Rudy Guliani says that the party needs to get united around a candidate that can beat Hillary, namely him, rather than focus on issues. There was even a candidate, Representative Ron Paul, who blamed the 11 September attacks on the United States’s involvement in Iraq in 1991. Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the Republican party, these are the people who want to be the next President.

The Airport security procedures are supposed to help us feel safe and stop terrorists, right? Well, A news crew crafted some fake IDs and manages to get through security checkpoints using them. Many of which, if you stopped and looked at them, would probably not actually look like any ID at all. This probably proves one of the maxims of pulling off a good con - if you look like you know what you’re doing, and don’t show that you’re trying to pull one over on someone, it probably works. The props just have to look close to the real thing. Speaking of terrorism, a trapped cache of weapons and explosives were found, thought to be used for an attack, were found... in Alabama. Six men were arrested for the matter, and the country is reminded that not all threats and violence come from an outer source, and many of them may not have anything to do with Islam.

The police in Australia are having similar troubles that the police in America have when it comes to the mentally ill - much of their training is to shoot threats first, rather than negotiate with them. The examples cited in the article, however, are ones where there was likely a justifiable cause for it, namely “has a weapon and intends to do harm to the officer”. I guess that this additional training is supposed to be for those situations before there are active threats to the officers. Good luck. It would just be nice if every country had a mental health system that could handle both the people who can be cured and the people who can’t and not leave them out on the streets to suffer.

Programming is getting easier to learn. The Ruby language and the Ruby on Rails framework made it somewhat easy for me to build an application that did what I wanted it to, and I learned this in the course of 14 weeks or so. MIT is aiming for a younger crowd by introducing Scratch, a programming language intended for grade-schoolers that uses jigsaw-shaped pieces to represent programming concepts. By putting the pieces together in the right order, the code can be executed.

A different kind of art, one that might trigger some memories for people who have had to wear them, or been in places where they would have been useful - a gas mask becomes a shower head. I don’t think I really would want to bathe from that. Something a little more plebian, perhaps.

Next to last is something that is probably making too much of a silly thing - but then again, serious analysis of silly things often results in new knowledge. Silly analysis of serious things often results in new ways of thinking, so they work with each other. Anyway, it’s basically a longwinded and circular introduction to the link between slang, l33t, image macros, and lolcats, relating all of them together in a geeky and possibly linguistic sort of way. I like it, and I think that maybe this serious analysis of the silly is worth something. Who knows? Maybe we’ll start being able to predict what the next subculture language will be.

The last thing for tonight is both cute and scary - namely a character that looks like a very young girl performing wrestling chokeslams. Since I can’t read the language in question, I have no idea whether the girl is young or just looks it.

Anyway, got to go to bed - early interview tomorrow. What I’ll do afterward, I don’t know. But it’ll probably be entertaining.