The Universal Stance

Why not... I think I'll categorize my beliefs for all to see... Why? Read the comment at the bottom. ;)

#1. There might be a God, there might not, it's actually unimportant. Live your life in a way that is most conducive to the overall well being of yourself and the world you live in and a compassionate God would never sweep aside your deeds over a simple logistic that you had no proof to support anyway. Plus, there's no promise that even if God exists, that he's compassionate. The directly observable evidence would show to the contrary anyway. (Evil exists in the universe, or at the very least suffering...)
#2. Conciousness can only be proven for an instant, and any given view of the universe may be fleeting. However, it is impractical to live by this ethos. So instead, live your life for the long haul, but your end (and the end of everything) may come in an instant. Fear not, as it is folly to consern yourself with such things that are beyond your control. Also, consider that you may have just winked in too.
#3. The paradise afterlife is nothing but a game played by humans to quell their fear of death.
#4. In actuality we live in paradise now. Yes, living in a place where all our needs are met would be great, but it is impossible to enjoy that paradise without the contrast of suffering to judge it by.
#5. Religion is the opium of the masses. Spiritual advancement makes sense only when you remove the bias of both church and state, and seek insight on your own. Religion does nothing but taint your opinion and bias your view. Instead, seek forums of free spiritual expression and exchange ideas freely with others.
#6. Believing in spiritualisim is sappy, and yet again an act of man (not God) to rationalize all those little nagging questions about their universe that they either can't, or won't bother to answer. As such, #5, although good advice for those who need that kind of 'catch-all' for stuff that doesn't make sense, is unnecessary if one can come to accept that the only way to answer questions is through experimentation and logic. Nothing has to be accepted as-is, and nothing should be.
#7. There are premises that I accept as fact only for the scope of conversations with other people (Because most people really don't want to forego anything that can't be solidly proved), and these premises are useful for interaction with my universe. For example time is continuous, I existed a moment ago, and will continue to exist in the next moment barring death, etc. Without these I could not function.
#8. I believe in the philosophical theory of fundamentalism (Which is completely different from religious fundamentalism.) Human thought is the result of processes explainable (eventually) by science. In time we will discover this process, and may be able to implement it using other means. As such, humanity is in no way superior to animals or plants, we just have a different natural tool for situational adaptation.
#9. All universal combinitions are possible. Even chaos may spring a complete universe for no reason at all. Because of this, it is unwise to assume that anything is fact. There may be an omnipotant thing in the universe, and it may be evil. There's no real way to tell.

I think that's the just of it. Figured it's not fair to dis on someone else's beliefs unless I expose mine and allow them to be critiqued too. Besides, I believe in #5 (duh) and since I'm in a 'sappy, and feel like using religion as a form of entertainment' kind of mood, I might as well. ;)

Pop goes the universe...

Mood: Sappy, and feel like using religion as a form of entertainment. :p

Snooping About, and Responding to Blogspace

Reading Nara's Livejournal... again... (mostly because of all the journals I try and follow, hers is the only one that is regularly updated...)

Today she's talking about a religious argument between her and her mom, and just because I'm that kind of person, I'm going to post some third party comments in response to some of her mothers (and possibly her) statements. See the original post here

Ok Here we go. (Oh and just as a bit of a headnote, I'm not personally homosexual, and don't see the wisdom in it as a practice for genetic propagation, but believe that 2 consenting people should be allowed to experience the pleasure of sex without it leading to issues based on their decisions, despite gender, color, creed, etc...)

amidsthespires: I studied the Bible with a homosexual in NYC and I CAN identify gay men almost immediately but Genny you are dabblling in death-dealing attitudes
amidsthespires: why do you rejoice when people have been misled by Satan into behaviors that will kill them?

?! Homosexuality is lethal? Since when? STDs are just as common in heterosexual relationships as they are in homosexual, so that's not it... As far as I'm aware, the process itself is rather harmless. And although I can see an increased risk of hepatitis A if we're looking at homosexuality in men because of the hoof and mouth problem, the same increase can be found if you don't was your hands after taking a dump.

stardust enigma: If God is Love, why do his followers so love condemning people?
amidsthespires: you should stay away from it and people who delve in it His true followers convey HIS thoughts about it and His Warnings

Isn't this "Don't question God! He is because he is!" And, as of the last I checked, it is impossible to judge who is a 'true' follower anyway. I mean, you can't assume the clergy is a true follower, I mean, consider the pedophilic priests we're dealing with at the moment. Even the Bible itself was composed, and then later tainted, by men who had political agendas.

There are numerous references to 'Satan' in the proceedings... A point which I will contend with one sentence: 'If god is love, then why the heck would he, the grand creator, create suffering?' But remember, I don't even believe in a God as of this particular moment, (more of that Instantaneous consciousness thing)

And a discussion on the rather interesting fundamentalist view of the Jehovah's Witnesses belief structure will be left out for now, seeing as arguing with fundamentalists is a basic waste of time, considering that they hold something to be fundamental, and as such, not up for debate. I definatly want to come back to it however, because it's, well... Not to be rude but... Well I would explain it as entertaining, considering the volatility of the Bible. But at least they don't believe that the Christ was God himself, a point that many of the sects of Christianity seem to miss the plausibility problems of.

stardust enigma: A whole eternity of getting to be around people who hate anyone different.
amidsthespires: they are only repeating what God has clearly stated for milleniums
stardust enigma: Eternal life among JWs.
stardust enigma: I'd rather die.
amidsthespires: it isn't hateful to tell someone that they are skating on thin ice and endangering their life
amidsthespires: you will
stardust enigma: I'm not interested in Jehovah's paradise.
amidsthespires: obviously
stardust enigma: I wouldn't want to live in a place like that.

There's more to this part of the discussion so I recommend you read all of it, but what I want to say is that, after reading about the beliefs of the JWs, I would absolutely have to agree with stardust on this one. JWs (according to the views clarified by the JWs master periodical"The Watchtower", the only people who can go to Jehovah's paradise are JWs. And better than that, they have 6 million members, and only 144,000 of them get to come along for the ride. But the reason I agree is because of their belief on death: they believe that your consciousness dies with your body. Because of this, I have to choose between the pentultimate in "I don't care" (No consciousness tends to do that) or live with 144,000 other fundamentalists Christians whose entire lives where dedicated to getting to said paradise and involved no plans as to what they where going to do with themselves if they ever did actually reach it. 143,999 people with no plans, a fanatical viewpoint, and a religion with no post-apocalypse guidance...

For now I think that's enough religion bashing for the moment... Don't want to start getting any nasty hate mail now do I... ;)

Homosexuality as a way to death... Ya...

Mood: Reflective

SATA and Linux, A Tale of Woe.

Well... A while back I purchased a new video card. I was the happy owner of a ATI 9600 XT. But there was a problem: My poor ol' ancient MB (2 1/2 years old) couldn't give it the support that it needed. The card was trapped using a 4X AGP bus. So I decided that I would replace it. (I had been considering this for some time now, seeing as I didn't even have a USB 2.0 controller...) So I replaced it. The new board (A SOYO KT600 Dragon Ultra Platinum) Was wonderful. SATA, USB 2.0, the whole nine yards. But there was a problem... I wanted to upgrade my aging HDD and install a new one so as to keep my data on a non-faulty drive. So I bought a shiny new 160 GB SATA 150 HDD. Well... Turns out that I may have made a mistake by accepting a new HDD standard before it really hits the mainstream. Seems that neither Windows, nor Linux 2.4 had integrated support for its exotic VIA and silicon Image SATA controllers. This meant that for Windows, I had to configure a special external RAID controller driver. And for Linux, I have yet to find a device module.

So I figured, "Heck, I still have the old 80 GB HDD, and I can have both the SATA and the E-IDE drives connected at the same time, so why not?" This is where I discovered the second problem. Turns out that the ultra schwea gigabit Broadcom Ethernet controller is also not directly supported by SOYO on Linux. Sad for me... :(

But I know that Broadcom has their own driver available for download, so I'll spend some time later and make a pass at installing the driver into a kernel so I can install the network version of Debian.

*Sigh*

I didn't have Linux on my desktop originally anyway, so the fact that it's not on there now isn't too important, it's just kinda inconvenient since I had kinda hoped it would be. ^.^;;;

"The power of DOS compels you!"

Mood: Disappointed

Of Radicalisim and Race

If you've been following my blog for a while now (or at least went back and read the archives) It should be reasonably clear that I have a bit of a liberal approach, and typically am critical of the current administration on many points including environment, taxes, and foreign policy. However I do believe that it's important to realize that I am not against a war on terror. Note: I said A war on terror. This is completely disjoint from the imperialistic conqurefest that the US has been engaging in since 9/11. Basically, the big problem comes from using a 20 lb mallet to drive in a thumb tack. The problem is that terrorism is an act done by a few individuals. The country of Iraq cannot commit an act of terrorism. When one country attacks another it has the common name of 'invasion'. You know, like the one Iraq did to Kuwait back in '90, or the one we did to Iraq in '03? See the problem?

However, terrorists, like Bin Laden, are total wakkos. They do need punishment. They need to be isolated and given their due. However, it's important not to forget that terrorism doesn't have a skin color or national origin. Consider, can you think of any terrorist acts that occurred during the Clinton Administration? You'd better be able too. There's the World Trade Center Bombing in '93 by Bin Laden, the US embassy Bombing in '98 by Bin Laden, and the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 by Bin Laden. Hmmm... I'm thinking... Nope... Missed one... The '95 bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Center by a radical gun totting white American citizen named Timothy McVeigh and his buddy Terry Nichols. True blooded Americans in the since that Jefferson had intended it. So why the heck are we so afraid of Arabs? I mean, consider: 86% of white victims were killed by whites (according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics) and 94% of black victims were killed by blacks. For homicides committed by a stranger to the victim, 3 in 10 are interracial. This means that if someone you've never met before kills you, there's only a 30% chance that you will be killed by someone of a different race. And of all of the homicides, only 2% of them where done by Non-white/non-black people (Including Hispanics, Arabs, and people from the far east.) As it works out, a woman is far more likely to be killed by her boyfriend/husband/ex than she is to be killed by a non-white/non-black stranger.

This kind of discrimination is one of those things that bothers me.

Hah! They frisked Habib, but didn't even bother to check that white guys bag labeled "Warning! High Explosives!"

Mood: Irritated

Memes: Why not?

I was rummaging through some random blogs in blogspace and came across this person who had the answers to 5 questions in their blog. Further inspection showed that they where responding to a special kind of blog called a meme (A replicating idea that spread about weblogs.) So I figured, 'Why Not?' So I'll probably be responding to the Friday five every week (Probably on Monday or Tuesday) from now on, just to keep it interesting.

Friday Five
If you...

1. ...owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve?
Things with rice, potatoes, noodles, cheese, and corned beef hash.
2. ...owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell?
Bandwidth. (Yes, I aspire to run an ISP one day)
3. ...wrote a book, what genre would it be?
Hmm... Either Sci/Fi, Romance, or How-To
4. ...ran a school, what would you teach?
Circuit Theory
5. ...recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it?
Trance and Delirium, mostly because you don't want to hear me sing.

But that will only come with another topic. ;)

Like this weeks alternative discussion: Bochs.

Bochs (Pronounced Box) is an IA-32 Processor and system environment emulator. In layman's terms, that means it is a PC emulator. But why would someone like me, a PC user, even need such a program? The answer is actually very simple, I can emulate a linux console inside of the windows environment without having to reformat my PC. Can't get Knoppix to run on it (lol) but all of my boot disks work with it, and when I have the time I may try installing a full blown linux dist on it. The problem is that, like with any emulated system, the Emulated PC in Bochs runs MUCH slower than a real pc. So I figure it will take me about a day to actually install a minimum text install. But that's the way things go.

Really what makes me excited about this though, is that many of the older DOS only games like CIV I and the like have reopened to me. I can just make disk images, or directly map the the drive and run it in the console. I think I might try cranking up the IPS though, mostly because 500KIPS is actually really cruddy. But then again, I don't think that's the cause, I think it's just that emulating a PC on a PC is a daunting task. Well see when I get the time to mess with it. :)

Now what I really need is a VM system

Mood: Excited

Knoppix: Linux for the Non-Commited

"... and now on location is JimTheCactus, Jim?" "Thanks Diane,"

Well...I'm coming to you live from my latest little experiment: Knoppix. For those of you that don't know, Knoppix is a version of Linux availible for download that runs completely from a CD. It mounts all of your hard drives as read only, and with just a small bit of tweaking, can be configured to keep the home directory on an image file on a USB flash device, effectively allowing you to operate completely independantly of whatever OS is living on the HDD. Amazingly, Knoppix uses something that I guess is like virtual memory, except that it works in reverse. From what I've been able to discern, Knoppix has a compressed filesystem living in an image file that it seems to decompress and store on a ramdisk everytime a file is called for. This method is absolutely wonderful on systems with very large amounts of memory (like mine) but would be difficault to use if you had small amounts of ram. Mostly becase with less ram, you need a larger percentage of it to accomplish the role, but for systems like mine where it allocated 407 megs of ram and left me with about 128 megs of usable ram (Which I might add, it doesn't allocate all at once, but instead allocates it dynamically, allowing you to use more of it if you aren't using too much for file caching...)

In any case, this thing is frickin' sweet. I think I'm gonna shove this disk (Or a copy of it) into my laptop bag so I can use Linux when I want to on my laptop. Not that I recommend Linux to most people as a desktop platform, since it's really more intended for terminal and server use, but who am I to complain? ;)

This disk - is - frick-in' sweeeeeeeeeet!

Mood: Elated

The EU and the Borg: Is it too much?

Hello again my minions... Uh... I mean readers.

I am back from my stint in the FFXI world come to speak to you about an important topic; The EU's punishment of Microsoft for violating anti-trust laws.

Now don't get me wrong; Micro$oft is an evil corporation. I say this not because I support an alternative operating system. I say this because they behave under the same rules that are used to describe lawful evil in the D&D system. And I agree that Microsoft should be punished for their misbehavior as a business. In their attempt to rule the information technology universe, they have squashed literally hundreds of up and coming companies, as well as several major competitors.

But I?m not writing about how I agree with the EU, what kind of blog would that be? Instead I'm writing to discuss one of the many (and once before issued) punishments that the EU is considering: the separation of the browser and media player from the shell.

"Shell? What do you mean shell? It's an operating system, not a turtle!" Ah... Now we come to an important point that most people miss: Microsoft Windows Explorer, the part that we, the users, interact with, is a GUI written to run on the Microsoft Windows operating system. This is an important distinction that anyone who's worked with the *nix clones is very familiar with. An operating system (like Linux) is really of no use without a shell like BASH or CSH or X Windows with an appropriate window manager (like KDE, a good choice for analogy that I'll refer to later). However, the 'integrated parts' that the EU might propose (and the US courts demanded) to be removed, are parts of the shell, not the OS. And, like CSH and BASH in Linux, you can change the shell that runs on Windows (anyone remember Norton Desktop for Windows?)

But this little semantic is far too trivial for my discussion; instead, I plan to approach a much more important issue. To introduce this, let's begin with a similar situation with slightly different details. Let's consider Ford Motor Corporation. Pretend that they developed a car back in the 80's. Then they took that car and tweaked it. As time went on they design a computer that can be used to display your car's location and other important information to the driver. Then some guy at Ford says, 'Hey, know what? We could integrate this new bit of hardware into the car to automatically control the transmission, which will let us completely remove the complicated hydraulic systems that are currently used to run it!' And the big shots pat him on the back as tell him to do it because it will save hundreds of dollars in the manufacture of the car, make the transmission lighter, easier to replace, and allow the driver to tweak their transmission without having to know a lot of gruesome details. Now, let's add in another variable; let's consider that Ford has been buying up all the other motor companies in hopes that they will be the only auto maker in the country, maybe the world. However, the government is wise to this plan and charges them with an anti-trust suit. As punishment, Ford may not include this new computer control system into their car, and instead must make the transmission not only work the way it used to, but also must make it possible for other companies to put their automatic transmission control systems into Ford cars, even though you could put in a new display computer without having to change out the old one.

There, now that we've setup the playing field, let's make the analogy. The transmission is the Shell, the computer control system is Internet Explorer, and Ford is Microsoft (duh...) Ok. Now, it should be clear to everyone who has ever done product development that by integrating I.E. a browser component into their shell, they could save themselves literally thousands of lines of code, hundreds of hours of testing, and millions of dollars. This would also give I.E. the ability to behave like a file folder for things like FTP, while continuing to be perfectly inter-compatible with the Shell, since they where actually the same software package. What the EU might ask them to do is start over and completely re-write the shell, completely excluding the I.E. integration. Based on this premise, KDE, a popular Linux window manager, should also be required to de-integrate the Konqueror software from their system. With KDE it's clearly a stupid thing to suggest, and is equally stupid to request that it be removed from Windows Explorer.

So why are they suggesting this? To be honest, I have no idea. If Microsoft had code in the API to make it impossible to write other browsers, I could understand a request by the courts to remove said code. But I happily have run I.E., Mozillia, Lynx, and Opera SIMULTANEOUSLY on the same machine (why? It's a long story...) No such code exists.

What? The transmission control system is sold seperately?

Mood: Rested and annoyed.

Vacation Time!

Ah... I finally am living my dream. (Oh... BTW... This post is actually from 3:20 AM on Mar 17th... But it's for the Mar 16th wake-sleep cycle...)

My dream in life is, and has been, to stay at home and do what my father calls "nothing". I tend to think of it as more like "playing video games and chillin' with my friends", but it's just a matter of details. In any case, once in a while (Usually 2-3 weeks every year, 1 for spring break, 1 and a half during the summer, and another half at winter break,) I take time off from everything. Time where my only goal in life is to do what I want to do. Live my life as I would given the opportunity. So I spend this time playing the game of the week, eating fast food, and hanging out with my friends. I've found this method of self indulgence to be quite relaxing. Now, don't go thinking that I basically become a slob for a week, nope... I still do chores, do my errands, and maintain my server during this time. I have frequently done things that I like to do outside, but can't because of the lack of time in my normal life, like hiking to my favorite stores, working on experiments, and general horseplay with my friends.

Specifically, today I woke up, showered, and then went to 3 different stores to see if they had the new, totally awe-inspiring (I just can't bring myself to say 'totally awesome' in a sentence... DOH!!!!) Unreal Tournament 2004. Turns out that Game Stop did... But I hadn't reserved it, so they where out. Then I went to lunch at chick-fillet. But the part the I felt was most interesting was the largest, and most boring part of my day (Boring to read about, not actually boring to participate in): I was in a single party for almost 14 consecutive hours. I did nothing but kill mategoras for 14 hours. That's impressive. I went from a low 28, to a mid 30 in only one day. Considering that the optimal exp rate is about 1K per hour, this holds with how much I leveled (Seeing as it takes about 5800 XP per level, 5800*3/1000 = 17.4 hours.) This means that, not only was it one long party, it was one GOOD party. As a matter of fact, the first time the party was disbanded (and the only time) was at the very end, after a SAM, a WAR, and a RDM (myself) took on an IT mategora by ourselves.

Now that I'm 30 with a fair buffer though, I'm going to be spending tomorrow working on getting RNG and maybe NIN. Or heck, maybe even DKN... It could be fun. ;)

Somewhere between 15 and 30 people... That's a lot of party members...

Mood: Exhausted. You try playing video games for 14 straight hours...

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!!!! Oh, wait, no... She's right... It's just a plane.

So... I took my Calc IIIA final Saturday. After going through the test review, I was worried that the test was going to be one of those stupid ones where they assume that in a pure math exam, you implicitly know that A is X'' is Acceleration. Luckily, that was far from the truth. The test was actually really fun (well... fun as tests go,) because the teacher had themed the test around Superman. So we where helping Superman to fight the evil gradient man, leap over tall buildings, and escape the vile kryptonite gas by applying gradients, tangent planes, and multidimensional projectile motion.

Ok, so it's a little bit romanticised, but in general the theme helped add a bit of flavor to what would have been an otherwise boring test, which I am pretty sure I got at least a 90 percent on. (Which means no more Calc IIIA forever and ever... Yea!)

The question then becomes: is that something I would like to see all my teachers do on their tests? Did it help me in completing the exam, and did it help me more thoroughly demonstrate my understanding of the topic? I'd have to say yes. Because the questions where entertaining to read, my mood was kept high, even though I was sitting there churning numbers for 2 straight hours (and on the projectile motion one, doing half a billion large value arithmetic operations.) But the alternate approach gave me another important advantage: in order to relate the problems to the actions of Superman, the problems couldn't be abstract. For example, the gradient problem was formed as

"The nefarious Gradiantman has a kryptonite gas gun and has used it on Superman. The gas cloud follows the function (insert 4D function here). Superman, trying to escape the cloud takes a step in the direction shared with the vector (Insert 3D vector here). Was this a good idea?"

The equation was an ellipsoid (Which makes sense for a gas gun). And with all of this I could visualize the struggling Superman coughing and stumbling about in this thick green cloud. With a little manipulation I could find the center of the cloud and see him moving about in relation to it. It made setting up the problem much, much easier.

However, I can also see how this approach could be detrimental as well. If the teacher spent too much time focusing on the 'unique' presentation, and not enough time on selecting good test questions, the problems could quickly become too difficult to solve in the allotted time. Even worse, it's possible that the presentation itself could be too distracting, and cause some students to wander off into dream land instead of focusing on their test.

None-the-less, I would be more than happy to take more tests setup like this one.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Putter

Mood: Amused

I have spent the last couple of days examining the game of cricket, trying to figure out what exactly cricket is. After my research, here's what I think is the best simplification of cricket there is:

(Special Term: Wicket. The wicket is a set of 3 flexible posts with a small wooden plank, called a bail, placed on top. They are found on both sides of the batsman/bowler area (Which I think is also called the wicket))

The bowler hucks the ball at the ground, making it bounce up, and trying to hit the wicket with the ball.
The Battsman tries to hit the ball away from the wicket.
If the batter connects, he can put down his bat and run to the other side.
He has a teammate on the other side who runs like he does.
If somebody catches the ball, the batsman is dismissed (out)
If somebody can knock the bail of the wicket before the two players can switch sides, it's also a dismissal.
This repeats until 10 of the 11 players on a team have batted
Then the teams witch, and the other team tries to score.

There is a lot more to it, but that's the lesser basics. Thinking about it, the sport (prior to my original impression) isn't too overly complex, however, it would probably be one of the worst sports to spectate next to golf. The games can last for DAYS (I actually mean that!) Who would want to watch two guys switch sides for 3 days straight? Not that baseball's any more interesting... Or football... or nascar racing... Know what? Spectating sports is pretty much stupid in general. Why not just play the sport...

F*** NO!!! You'll have to hit a ball 300 yards into a gopher hole over sand and water, around corners, over trees, and do it in 4 hits or less to even compete!

Mood: Annoyed

Ranting Made Easy!

Time again for one of my favorite pastimes: Bitter, angry ranting, and about my favorite subject too, electronics.

Who am I ranting about? My parents. Why? Is it because I'm a teenager rebelling? Naw, too old for that. Is it because I'm too old and they're "tying me down?" nope, too dependent for that. Is it because they asked me to do something and I don't feel like doing it? Nope. So what is it? Because of their blatant act of stupidity. Put them down for a Darwin, because if they don't wise up soon, they're gonna die in a terrific fire of their own creation.

What makes me say this? Let me setup the scenario for you: Our house has been having renovations done to it for some time now. We've had plans for this for ever, and finally are getting to realize our dream of having a garage. However, the location it is being installed in is right in the path of the power line leading from the transformer to our house. So, to adjust for this the people putting in the garage placed a simple wooden riser to hold the power line up while they worked. Eventually, an electrician was going to come out and cut the power line, run it through an underground conduit beneath the garage and then reattach it to the house. Generally a list a good ideas. However, he is not due here until tomorrow. Ironically, there was a nasty freak storm that blew up and pounded my house. In the process, the wooden riser fell over and yanked on the power lines. In the process, it sheared one of the lines clear (I think. It may have just ripped part of one of the other two wires and that third one was never connected in the first place.) leaving us with only half of the normal current carrying wires that normally run to the house. The symptoms are as follows: Any time the furnace comes on, it causes the whole house to dim and STAY THAT WAY (This is the hint...), many other devices, when activated or deactivated cause major power spikes/drops in the house. The measured circuit voltage over operation of normal devices (Lights, computers, and the furnace) has been wandering between 120 V and 109 V.

Now... For anyone who knows anything about ohms law (Which, alledgadly my father is one of said people) you can quickly show than that for the voltage on the line to drop (when it wasn't before), a resistor of significant value (Using the word significant in the sense of 'significant compared to another resistor in the same circuit') has to have been added. Now, since devices driven by motors act like constant power devices (You know... Watts kind of power,) In order for the voltage to decrease and the power to remain constant, the current must increase. We already know that a higher-than-normal resistance (caused by a thinner wire) exists in the circuit (As shown by the voltage drop), so when we get the power radiated by this resistor, we apply I^2*R and, since both I and R have increased, Power absorbed must have increased as well.

But what does "Power Absorbed" have anything to do with my parents unintentional act of suicide? All that power, since it's being fed into a resistor, and not otherwise being asked to do any other specific kind of work, is being dissipated in the universe's default energy type: Heat. Now this means that somewhere along the wire that comes into our house, there is a hot spot, begging to ignite anything it can get it's hands on. This is the part where the house (Or possibly the new, rather expensive garage) is turned into carbon ash and the scorched corpses of a few human beings. Now, to reduce the risk of danger, several steps where taken: unplugging the microwave and fridge, turning off any unnecessary lights, not using the desktop computer because the laptop is more power efficient, that kind of thing. With discipline, we had managed to get the unexpected voltage drop on the circuit down to a mere 11 volts when the fan on the furnace was just turning on (and consuming the most power.) This is still too much, but the idea is that this high drop is rare, and only found for a short period of about 3 seconds every 30 minutes. Even if the current draw was 100 amps, the total number of joules of energy dissipated into the wire would be easily absorbed by the metal, and radiated off in the cold, stormy air.

But wait? It sounds like you did everything you could, how are your parents trying to commit suicide?

Ah... Now we get to the part I'm mad about.

As we've already covered, motors are constant POWER devices, and will draw all the power it takes to accomplish the job. (There are a whole bunch of things going on here that makes this statement only kinda true, but it get's us close enough.) It can also be said that the power drawn by motors in household appliances like driers and air conditioners, is actually very large (on the 1KW/H level.) Now, let's mix in one more small point, and that's that heating coils cost a little bit more power than they radiate, so if a coil was designed to raise the temperature of 1/4 cubic meter worth of water 10 degrees in 5 minutes,the amount of energy needed is 1/4*10,000*10 or 25,000 Joules. Now... Consider the standing problem. Because of the storm, we need the furnace, and we know we're only safe because of the large periods of down time. Now, let's do what my parents did... Let's turn on the FRIGGIN DISHWASHER!!!

Couldn't it have waited till morning? Maybe the dishes could have been done by hand? No... My parents brought the voltage in the house (Including the furnace, dishwasher, my laptop (60 W), and the lights in the room I was in) down into the low 90's. This means that 30V of energy at dozens of amps, where somewhere in on or around my house, being radiated off as heat. And unlike the furnace, the dishwasher draws it's current for a CONTINUOUS 90 MINUTES!!! That's literally hundreds of thousands of joules of energy being dumped into a wire and some siding somewhere... It's insane...

Didn't they think of this?!

Well, I have to be up early to meet with the electrician... So I'm going to bed... If I'm lucky, I might get 6 whole hours of sleep. :(

Grumble grumble

Mood: Angry

Live Journal and Gibberish

Well, I've decided to make a second place for my thoughts... I've created a Live Journal account, and because of the nature of it's userbase (Mostly because of the engine...) I am going to use it to keep all my random one to 5 line posts. Basically, I plan to post once a day here, and only to rant about the big stuff: AIDS, Cybercrime, The big calculus test. But the Live Journal will pick up the hundered or so smaller posts that I typically discard on a daily basis (Usually before they even hit the keyboard... But not always...) This will clear up my main blog of all the little insanity induced posts that occasionally make it into my blog. Unlike the blog, however, I don't have any intention of having a tenative post schedule (Right now its one post every mon-fri... But you didn't know... :))

Why the change in heart you ask? (If you're confused, see this post) Well, it all comes down to convienience... Blogger is making large strides to make writing custom blogging clients easier to write. But so far, I havn't found one that I really liked (And definately don't have the time to write one.) On the other hand, The first Live Journal client I tried had many, many features to make spontaneous blogging easier. This includes, but is not limited to, automatic login, windows system tray mode (A feature which probably annoys most, but makes me happy, which is ironic seeing as that there is only 3 icons in my tray at the moment... :)), start on windows start, and much more. The whole thing is really convieninet for slamming down a quick note or two. I still hate Live Journal, but for this kind of purpose, that's still okay. The entries will all be about the same quality as the system being used to blog them, so, it makes reasonable sense.

Anyway, I'm off to play FFXI. Chao!

*giggles*

Mood: Happy

As if school wasn't hard enough...

Yesterday I stayed home because I was sick. It sucked. And then I read the response e-mails from my teachers. And it turns out it sucked worse than I had originally thought. Apparently, there's a project that my Calc III class is doing, and I missed the initial discussion day for it. For anyone who doesn't know how things like this go (Not that I expect there are that many,) if you miss the first day of a project (Which I think might be a group project... *eeep*,) you are destined to have only half of the time and absolutely no idea what's going on. *Sigh*

I also have a project due frighteningly soon in my Diff EQ / linear Algebra class. I've chosen a very easy project to do, an Euler model (Pronounced Oiler... Stupid French language) of an already separated differential equation. Thus I write a program that looks something like this:

Declare a function f that accepts the parameter t and returns the change in value at t.

Declare a constant called dT and set it equal to the time step.
Declare a constant called TMin and set it equal to the start time.
Declare a constant called TMax and set it equal to the end time.
Declare a variable t.
Declare a variable y and set it equal to the initial value.

Starting with t equal to TMIN and looping till t is greater than TMax, increasing it's value by dT every loop: add the result of the multiplication of the function f at t against dT to the value of y then display t and the new y.

Where the function F is provided to me by the teacher and TMin, TMax, and the initial value for y are provided by the teacher. Should be easy, but he wants it to make some graphs too. I may just push the output into Excel and have it do it... We'll see.

I need a vacation.

"YAAAY! I GOT A SOBE... YAAAAY!!!" It was on the lid... I swear.

Mood: Ill, tired, spent, and overworked.

Many many posts... Only one day...

Well, I just finished reading a rant by Brian Clevinger about innovation as it pertains to video games. His theisis is that we are playing the same ol' FF with new, useless 3D graphics. His argument is that there is no innovation in the video game industry. And to a limited degree he's right. But to be perfectly honest, Wolfenstein 3D basically capped off all of the innovation in the industry as far as general gameplay goes.

How can you say that you ask? Well, it actually shows up as a simple point: There are only so many different game generes and ALL games fall into one of them. Consider, as far as gameplay is conserned, how many 'innovations' have been made in the RPG industry since Pools of Radiance for the Commodore 64? The answer come out, very little. But unlike Brian, I do not see this as a down side.

Innovation at this level really requires a basic redefinition of the genera. But doing this creates a new genera. Because of this, it is impossible to find this 'innovation' in a given genera. For example, in the beginning there whas shooters. Shooters basically dominated the arcade for 10+ years. But when 3D was introduced into the system, they created a whole new genera of games, the FPS, or First Person Shooter. No one would consider Asteroids to be anything like Half life. But the origins of Half Life, and for that matter, the whole FPS genera, all come from shooters like asteroids.

The same applies to Brians argument. The RPG genera is clearly defined. You play a role, fight monsters, talk to NPCs, solve puzzles, and save the world (Or you pet ferret) from total devistation. But because the genera is so clearly defined, when it came time to innovate and find a new way to apply the 3D system to the RPG genera, they discovered that it basically didn't need 3D to convey it's plot. 3D helped, and definately added to the experience, but RPGs where just well tuned to work in 2D. Just like our daily lives really don't need 3D, neither did the RPG. (Consider that when forced to work in 3D, humanity just breaks things up into floors, which are laid out neatly into discreet floor plans, just multi-layered 3D) In order to truely make 3D meaningful (and more particularlly required, as Brian mandates) we would need a FPRPG (First Person RPG).

Well, in single player, we have those. Zelda: A Link to the Past is an example thereof. But because of it's roots, it's technically classified as a form of Action game. And why? Because there's no overwealming need to talk to every person on the planet. Just whack the mosters (Like an FPS) and solve the puzzles. The only difference is that they don't focus on character development. If Link went and had a breakdown that took us to different periods of his past, it would magically be reclassified RPG and Brian would be happy.

But this takes us to the final point. People who play action genera games don't want to play RPGs, and vice versa. So because of this, no one had made this 'crossover' game. Many lesser innovations have been made to each system, including the totally unique sphere grid system of FFX, and the introduction of true, D&D style coustomized characters as found in Bauldor's Gate, but forcing the player to fumble his way around true 3D worlds (Which, I might add, ours is not) would not make practical sence. It would leave the players with questions like: "If the key to the chest was hidden by the gods to keep people from opening it, then why is there a convieniently placed tool for mortals just lying here helping me to get to it? The role play just wouldn't work.

But enough ranting. My blog is already 2 screenfuls per day, no reason to make it too much longer. ;)

Rant, Rant, Bitch, Bitch

Mood: Conflicted

How do I hate IE's CSS implementation \ Let me count the ways.

Ok. So life happens once again and I find yet another little quirk about IE. Seems my little day count down timer doesn't fit the whole width of the left table in IE. I've hacked it to get it close, but that's all. I've decided not to fight with it because, although it's annoying and unsightly, the CSS is right. So I say screw IE, it's close enough.

In other news, I have been abandoned once again on the forums. It's been a full week since anyone posted on my campaign. Pretty quick here I might just wipe it out and stop worrying about it. I mean, I'm going to loose my third character here in just one more week, and at this rate I will have no more chars in just about 2 months. It's sad really. And It's not like I haven't tried to keep up with the posts. Since I dropped the Saturday update, the longest I've been late on my 11:59.99 PM deadline is 12 hours, unlike my chars, who regularly go weeks on end without posting. It's quite sad really.

Is it worth the effort?

And finally... I've been working with Audigy on the Socially Stigmatic forums on a blinker circuit. A design after my heart, Audigy's been trying to make a thermally controlled blinker that will drive 36 Blue LEDs in an alternating pattern. So I've been happily applying my classes in electronics to aid him in the design of the circuit. It's been terribly fun. Pretty quick here I'll be producing the final schematic, and it's going to be interesting to see if the final design actually works (Not that it shouldn't but there's always the tiny problem of mathematical error...)

Thinking of which... I really need to get PSpice, or something so I can simulate the design before I tell Audigy to melt $70 worth of LEDs.

1.8 Watts... I mean it...

Mood: Happy and bubbly.