Taren's Journal

lol cop drama

2008-10-07T18:05:41Z

I don't know what it's like in other parts of the country, but in Phoenix valley area, the police love to do this "mobile speed trap" thing. It's basically a big, white minivan with radar and photo equipment inside that is designed to catch speeders. One of their favorite spots is by the Arco just off the 101 in that abandoned lot. I see it there all the time, because I kind of live near there.

Today as I drove past, I saw the light flash on top of the van, which means it caught somebody. Who, me? I looked down, I'm doing no more than 35-36 in a 40 zone. There was no construction, and I've driven by faster with no issues.

Oh cops, just get your lazy asses out on the streets if you want to catch speeders. Then you wouldn't have to spend all this money on party vans like this only to find out they're calibrated wrong.

I'm sure if enough people get flashed like this they might notice something's wrong. They should know the general traffic flow, and the percentage of speeders, so if the hit count is too high it should be obvious it's off.

I really don't need to be worrying about stupid shit like this, but I'm interested to see what happens. I think this happened to be before, not sure. But I do know I have out-of-state plates and no voter/vehicle registration in AZ. Let's see them try to send me a ticket.

At this point I think it's safe to say I oppose traffic cameras period. I don't know about other drivers, but they scare the bejesus out of me- I don't like knowing that Big Brother is always watching for you to slip up.

Anyone else ever had this happen to them?

ALL RIGHT

2008-10-05T08:02:36Z

warning: video game nerdery!

Air/Reach, Legend Road, and Cardinal Gate. Rank #2 on all three, shucks. I suck at this game :D
Not pictured:
-me beating P.Hades on Extra... after accidentally leaving the speed on x2.
-me failing Era Nostalmix twice on MGL's Extreme because I wasn't trying and the pads are awful.
-me getting my ass handed to me by FELMO. Holy crap what a retarded chart.

GE-GE-GE-GET DOWN

enjoy my sexy sexy sweaty arm! I hit 203 again today. I was about 10 minutes into CG and I decided I was gonna go for it. (As well as 201 on Air, and 200 on LR.) It seems like the only way to break 200 for me is to really really really push. But I took some Advil (3) so I'm all good.

COOL

It was especially nice to be able to go outside and not have my face melt off from the heat. It was in the 80's or so.

I made some fursuit stuff but I'll post about that later when people are awake so I can get comments++.

CHECK IT OUT

MY NAME'S JEFFREY

Ebay feedback scores are worthless

2008-10-05T05:23:19Z

If there was any doubt as to the uselessness of ebay user feedback ratings, this seals the deal. I haven't sold anything on Ebay for a long time, so I didn't realize this policy has been in place for some time now.

When you sell, your buyer's payment may be placed on hold by Paypal until certain conditions are met, one of which is a positive feedback rating. That just happened to the fursuit we just sold, because my rating is too low and the item price is too high. It's supposedly a security measure in place to protect buyers from scammers. I have no doubt that it will help in such matters, but what they probably don't realize (or don't care about) is that this completely undermines the credibility of buyer feedback.

Payments placed on hold, like ours, can only be cleared after receiving a positive feedback from the buyer. What if the buyer is dissatisfied with our service for any reason? I presume that a neutral or negative rating will keep that money in limbo, requiring follow-up action to turn that score into yet another positive. So people are going to be passing along more positives just to keep the money flowing!

My suggestion would be to eliminate neutral and negative scores altogether. They're already meaningless and rarely used; why bother with them? Sellers cannot leave buyers poor reviews anyway, which further inflates these ridiculous so-called "ratings". And what's sad is that shoppers are likely very fickle about these imaginary numbers. If you're not at 100%, it's a mark of shame.

As long as you're a buyer, you will have a 100% positive score. And as a seller, you can't get paid for some auctions unless you get positives. So how is this "feedback"?

so i herd u liek integrals

2008-10-02T06:38:33Z

Found at the bus stop today at University and College, of all places.

What's funny is that it's actually correct. The variable mud is treated as a constant because the integration is only w.r.t. x, which doesn't appear in the function. Since it's being integrated from 0 to "kip", then the solution is simply that constant times the limits of integration: (mud*kip - mud*0) or, simplified using multiplication by juxtaposition, mudkip.

Wolf/Coyote Fursuit for sale!

2008-10-02T03:04:51Z

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130259862341

Woof!

Auction ends Saturday evening- you can have it in time for Halloween!
Thanks for looking!

Look what I found today

2008-10-01T04:31:16Z

RainFurrest pictures!

2008-09-30T13:58:05Z

Here's what happened to my sewing machine. Bam! My good one is on the left, and the one I broke at the con is on the right. I was going around the base of a hat, so I had the pedal down pretty far. The fabric went through so the needle wasn't piercing any fabric, and something decided to jam/strike.

http://superwailingbonus.com/passion06/folders/18823/20080924RainFurrest

ffffffffff more pictures

Here are all the hats I made

Shit, I'm missing one...

Moral dilemma resolved!

2008-09-29T02:07:49Z

HEY GUYS
I haven't had interwebs because those douchebags wanted $10/day for it.

Thanks for all your advice regarding the sewing machine problem. As of now is all better: I BROKE THE NEW ONE. So it's getting RMA'd anyway. I was using it normally and BANG- no longer picks up thread from the bobbin housing.

But I have a plan, everything should be okay.

tl;dr: I made a fuckton of money at this con holy shit

oh well, I need to go finish my take-home commissions

Epic Journey Post #1

2008-09-24T17:21:19Z

I called up Student Services regarding my tuition situation, and not only did I get transferred once, but now I have to talk to the CSE office to figure out why they thought it'd be funny to award me only 3/4 of my tuition. Lady at help desk: "You should have received $700-800 more...?" Telephooooone

Now for the fun stuff: I'm sitting in Coor Hall's basement holding my "office hours" between two classes I teach. After my second class, tabbicus (tabbi is a douche) is going to pick me up and take me to the airport. My flight leaves at 4-something, so I'm going to have a Phoenix Airport Con all by myself. Then I get to go to ~~Mormon Central~~ Salt Lake City for a transfer, then to Seattle.

By the way, I have the COOLEST confirmation number ever. I'll post it when I get back so nobody steals my seats el oh el.

What's even better are my bags:
Bucket 1: 46.5 lbs
Bucket 2: 39.3 lbs
Backpack: 20.4 lbs
Me: 150 + clothes + junk in my pockets
= I'm carrying at least 70% of my body weight in STUFF. Make sure your friends buy shit from me, seriously.

I had to reorganize a LOT before I made it under the 50 lb limit. I hope TSA doesn't search my bins because you literally have to sit on them to close them. Not to mention that I hope their scales work right. I double checked with a postal scale AND a bathroom scale that the bag was under 50 pounds, so I better not get any grief from the ticketing counter about the bukkits.

I don't like waiting for stuff to happen, ugh.

Here is a matrix showing how much people will miss each other:
-Each row shows how much that person will miss the others.
-This matrix is not invertible.

	Taren	Sema	Annee	Qoppa	Ellie, Hannah, Luke	dirty dishes
Taren	1	2	1	1	0	-2
Sema	1000000	0	0	0	0	0
Annee	1	0	0	0	0	0
Qoppa	2	0	0	1	0	1
Ellie, Hannah, Luke	0	0	0	0	0	0
dirty dishes	50	0	0	2	0	1

Excelsior!

1.5 more days

2008-09-23T05:04:39Z

imma jump on ur balz

Qoppa and Annee went to training class today. Qoppa fell off the slide, ran around, and even got detention! Annee won't listen to me. I'm shy in large groups at first.

I hooked up the printer to Sema's computer and printed out some pretty snazzy promo material for my table at RF. Burned through a TON of ink too. I have so much shit to bring with, I'm hardly going to be able to carry it all. Seriously, I'm pushing the baggage limits. I just hope their baggage scales at check-in are at least SOMEWHAT accurate, because I can just picture it now- my bag weighs 49 lb on my postal scale and bathroom scale at home, but 51 at the airport and I get slammed with a fee because their machines are trashy. Is that a valid concern to have? I remember weighing one of the bags once and I swear it was something like eight pounds off. My buckets are freakin' HUGE. I'll almost be carrying my body weight in "things" through the terminal.

My class went okay today. Not really great, but still not a disaster. I'm terrible at Mondays. I pretty much roll out of bed, eat breakfast, go teach, THEN wake up. Never sure how in-depth I want to get with OOP concepts to students that probably don't care.

The evil project I'm working on is in the clear now, thank god. It just so happens that there's a really nice- AMERICAN- student that works in my office, and he's very familiar with the trials and tribulations of certain development environments.

After I'm done with these projects, I hope I never use Eclipse again, unless by some miracle I find a reason to use it over Notepad++. I've got this obnoxious, crowded interface, and then I'm using Jigloo on top of it, so my actual "write your code here" space is the size of a business card instead of a whole screen. Then when I'm typing, it lags while it constantly spell-checks and then forgets to give me a method list half the time.

And there's no way to write and compile a simple program unless you want to go through the process of setting up this huge project environment. You will need to specify a folder for source, a folder for class files, libraries, packages, imports, external support files, tax documents, residency status, social security number. No- just compile it. cmd can do it, why can't you?

Bad coding practice #23: Building your GUI in NetBeans, jerry-rigging it in Eclipse with some conversion library, and then enhancing it with even MORE third-party software while never changing the default component names. So instead of "IPField1" and "receiverPort", I have "jTextField2" and "jComboBox6". welcome to the real world baby

But I got everything I really need to done, and I "put the ball back in their court" by requesting a better explanation of wtf I'm supposed to be doing with it all.

yes I have other icons too

who gave taren a ride

2008-09-22T18:44:04Z

Can anyone local give me a ride to Sky Harbor on Wednesday afternoon some time between 1-2pm? I don't want to pay out the ass for parking, and Sema will be at school.

FASH2

2008-09-18T03:38:28Z

Remember back in the day I wrote a very primitive search engine for FA? Well, just for shits and grins I decided to run the processor one more time to see how their new hardware is doing.

BEFORE: FASH "I can process up to 800 entries in an hour."
AFTER: I just processed 100 entries in just under four minutes.

So their ability to spew pages has more or less doubled. I was expecting it to be a lot better than that, but it could be due to other constraints like the network or other data transfer BS, perhaps even something on MY end like database updating. So their hardware has AT LEAST doubled in speed. Likely a lot more, but I can't tell for sure.

My Information Retrieval/Data Mining class is currently discussing how to write search engines. The first part of the project deals with this sense of how to determine relevance and ranking. We're doing stuff like tf-idf weighting (no pun intended) and cosine similarity, and it's really exciting!

Perhaps this class would give me a good idea on how a good search engine could go for FA. Not that it's ever going to happen, though, right? I could always start with the data I have to play with.

big/little projects

2008-09-16T07:45:39Z

I think I've decided I don't like large projects anymore. If I have to decide between doing 10 small projects or 1 large project that requires the same amount of work as the 10, I would pick the handful of smaller things.

My issue is that with larger projects, things never seem to get broken down for me in a timely manner. The only hurdle is 'the whole thing' that looms on the horizon for ages until it finally comes crashing down.

Agree/Disagree?

I guess what it comes down to is that I don't like having faraway deadlines, or having to wait for things. I have a phone interview tomorrow that's quite frankly a waste of my time, and then a teleconference with some people that I've never met before. The only reason I'm doing the interview is to not burn bridges, and I just can't stand teleconferencing. Phones have awful reception in general, and after 30-40 minutes your elbow starts to HURT. I'm probably going to do it from in bed so I can fall asleep PRN.

I'm also tired of being out of my element. I want to pick something up that I'm reasonably good at, and become great at it. No more of this "struggling to keep my head above water" bullshit. If you tread water long enough, your legs get tired.

Today's daily gripe is Eclipse IDE. I like to dive right in with things, but apparently this isn't an option with this program. I've used a number of editors to write Java code in the past. First I used Notepad because it just works, then Notepad++ because it has nice syntax highlighting, but now I need something with an actual "compile/run" feature. You'd think that a program developing to facilitate Java development would actually let you run Java programs, right?

I downloaded Eclipse, but I can't figure this thing out for the life of me. I got the syntax highlighting how I like (note: I am extremely particular), but there's no Compile option at the moment. Just... fuck it, batch files and cmd for me! I want to write a program, not contract ADHD.

I've made do with what I have before, so why should this stop me? I've done linear regression in Excel, written applets in Notepad, and done 3D mathematical function graphing in Powerpoint. It's not about the tools you have, but how you use them, I believe.

Qoppa's Birthday Party

2008-09-13T23:57:21Z

And you're not invited

WE LIKE TO PARTY
WE LIKE
WE LIKE TO PARTY

THE PARTY BUS IS COMIN'

googlebus

2008-09-11T18:27:51Z

REPENT
GBUS IS HERE

Brunswick Zone's Bonus Zone is BUSTED

2008-09-11T14:49:56Z

BZ has this deal where if you sign up for their newsletter (i.e. give them demographic information for marketing purposes) they give you coupons for cheap bowling. Well, about a year ago they stopped sending out 99-cent coupons and started making it 1.99/game, which quite frankly sucks.

My theory was that once you were enlisted for so long, they switched them out on you because they had you "hooked", so I signed up under a different name. Unfortunately, my theory didn't hold true, and I was still getting shitty 1.99 deals there too.

Recently they've sent out some .99 deals, but it's every so often. Sometimes they'll send out .99, and other times it'll be 1.99. Whenever they rolled out with a new coupon, it was the same offer for both emails, even though they were signed up for two different houses. Until today! It must have something to do with what location you're signed up for, because the BZXL is pretty swanky compared to the lowly "regular" house. Too bad these coupons are accepted at any location.

BUSTED!

fuck this shit let's hit some balls

2008-09-11T03:22:46Z

That's about how I feel right now.

In my jerky class, there's a huge project due Saturday. Part 1: design a browser from scratch. No problem, I just translated the textbook from Chinese and followed the instructions. Part 2: write a five-page paper on shit nobody cares about.

I reeeeeeally don't see that paper happening. Especially after I found out that this fake "SOC workshop" paper is worth only half as many points as the browser. I just hope he doesn't plan to do this stupid paper-writing bullshit on every assignment.

1) I already have a 4.00 GPA
2) Employers don't care about your graduate GPA
= Who fuckin' cares? It's just a cushion now.

Right? Right?

I'm also really upset with LD right now: I got done teaching at 11:35, and had to wait until 3:30 before I could talk to him. Our meeting was as follows: "You should look at the papers from our meeting last Friday and come up with some questions for when you go to Tucson. Let's meet again tomorrow to talk about them."

THAT'S IT? I WAITED ALMOST FOUR HOURS FOR THAT?! akljhfaklsjhdflaksjhdlfkasjhdf But on the bright side I got a LOT of homework done. Pretty much all of it. So all that's left is getting caught up with TA stuff and COMMISSIONS D: (tabbi is a douche, Khortl's hand paws are cut out but not sewn yet)

*party time*

good job

2008-09-09T18:34:47Z

I need a new nickname for a certain professor of mine... maybe "big jerk?"

To bring you up to speed, he's assigning homework from the textbook that HE co-authored, forcing students to buy his book and give him royalties. The book was almost $90 and features Times New Roman font on laser-printed printer paper with B&W images. Basically second-rate stuff that a quality printer would never do.

Here's the new dirt: apparently there was little or no QA/editing going on, because in the 12-15 pages that I had to reference for my homework, there was a SLEW of critical typos. Not like misspelling a word here or there, this was syntax errors in code that students are supposed to copy into their homework assignment. Incorrect variable names, omitted variable definitions, complete fuckup typos.

For example, there was a part where I had to grab text from a textbox on the application, and his code called it "textURL" on one page and "txtRUP" on the next. And another radio button was called "btn20miles" even though the button's label clearly indicated that it was "15 miles".

But thank god for my minimal VB6 and Visual Pinball programming experince (imagine that), as I was able to cut through the bullshit and get it more or less complete. Just have to go back over it with a fine-tooth comb and make sure it's up to whatever standards.

But he also left the door wide open today- there's a quiz in class, and he's allowing crib sheets. One page, both sides, handwritten only. I just crammed two weeks' worth of notes onto the front side of an 8.5x11 paper. I was really tempted to use one of Sema's 18x24 drawing papers since he didn't specify a size restriction (i.e. giant fuckin' loophole) but I really wouldn't want to deal with an frustrated man with a thick accent. Ohhh does my hand hurt from all that writing.

Also, I'm going to Tucson on Friday. Probably won't have time to hang out with anyone or go anywhere. Somebody else is driving, too. I'll be in town from 9-12 and probably in meetings the whole time...

Photoshop Disasters

2008-09-09T01:07:05Z

Got some goodies in the ad pack today.
Don't worry, I've already informed PSD.

Whoops

You have a SMART kid.
Your kid thinks they have three eyes and three mouths.
But we're working on that one.

Also,

Water laws

2008-09-08T17:14:15Z

One thing that's always been a souce of amusement for me is seeing how many places around here charge for a glass of water. According to some old cowboy law, it's "illegal to deny somebody water in Arizona". For obvious reasons- when it's 110 outside, you get dehydrated really fast.

My latest adventure in this experiment was at Golfland last night. During my last set, I ran out of drinks: I had brought two 32 oz. Powerades and a half-liter water bottle. Then I decided, let's do that really long and brutal course called "Cardinal Gate"- with about 3200 steps in a 10-minute period.

Okay, made it through, then I went to their drinking fountain. It's usually good water, but last night it tasted horrible. Lukewarm and flavored with something I probably shouldn't be tasting. So I turned to the snack counter and asked for a cup of water. "Actually, that's ten cents."

"Forget it," says the man with beet-red face and sweat dripping from his face. Water probably wasn't the best drink to have at that point due to the potential electrolyte imbalance, also it's just the principle of the thing. What happened, I think, is that they charge for the "cup" and not the "water". I would offer my empty bottle to fill, but that's probably in violation of some health code.

I ask for water almost everywhere I go because 1) it's almost always free, 2) it's better for you than a bunch of fake sugar, and 3) I got tired of fountain drinks having the wrong mix of syrup and carbonated water. I'd say 80-90% of the places I go don't charge for water, but every so often it'll be a quarter or something. I think there was one place that charged me full price for a water.

But maybe they are okay since they have a drinking fountain. The law just says 'water', not 'cold water', after all.

What do you guys think, is the water law really relevant today? It probably doesn't get enforced anyway since it's kind of outdated and relatively minor compared to other laws.

20 hats!

2008-09-08T05:31:35Z

[HAT]. Your katamari is as big as 20 of these.

Today I made four husky hats! That brings my total up to twenty. I still think I'm screwed unless I go all-out for the next week or so- flight leaves on the 24th.

I might change up the colors a little, maybe make 3 or 4 more husky hats, then move on to a different species. I haven't done a lot of feline types, but to be honest they all kinda look the same.

My big big big thing is that I also want to make up unsewn pieces to do in person at the con. While I was making these four today, it made me think of those Japanese steakhouse chefs you get at JMK, Shogun, or Benihana. I make it right before your eyes and put on a show.

That brings me to my second point:
Has anyone used Etsy for selling stuff? sjmomma suggested it to me today. Their fees look reasonable (20 cents to list + 3.5% commission on sales) but what I'm concerned with is demand. Would my silly hats sell on there? I'd probably only sell generics or premade face-hats, like the smileys. Custom designs are too tough to crank out.

I figure maybe if my stuff doesn't sell at RainFurrest I could toss it all up on there and see what happens.

stupid meme shit; alt-f4

2008-09-06T08:13:32Z

"Comment and I'll give you a letter; then you have to list ten things you LOVE that begin with that letter. Afterward, post this in your journal and give out some letters of your own."

Funbags (semjay) gave me Y so here it goes

Yards (of the lawn variety)
Your Body (oooh you said it's the weekend, you're gonna go out and do WHAT?)
Yoshitaka, DJ (foo you gonna car)

山に上る (yama ni noboru - climbing mountains)
Yahpp (of BanYa fame i.e. Mr. I Cut And Paste Generic Audio Samples To Make PIU Songs)
"You've Got Mail" (receiving mail, not the cheesy movie)

"YOU'RE FIRED"
"Your Floor - Your Floor is Now Clean"
Ynternets

YOU (yes you)

It's a car

2008-09-04T07:23:39Z

I saw this on my way back to Brickyard today!

Still not feeling good

2008-08-31T18:15:40Z

So We think We have laryngitis. All of Our symptoms seem to match up. Hoarseness, urge to clear throat, fever (a little), fatigue, throat pain, cough.

It didn't help that last night We were dragged to the Phoenix Furness room party. We ended up talking about Ourself far too much, and really making Our throat sore.

And on Tuesday, We must go teach a class full of bright and eager students.

Perhaps a large enough katamari will cure Us of Our illness.

See if you roll up a katamari this big (1337m) in this much time (45 hours). Any longer than that, and the King of all Cosmos

cannot be expected to wait.

HURRICANE FOOTBALL

2008-08-30T17:56:53Z

Here are some pictures from the damage done by ~~the monsoon~~ HURRICANE FOOTBALL.

The monsoon had winds of "around 100 mph" according to the news. It also tore the shit out of their eight-million-dollar inflatable fabric indoor football training stadium bubble thing. Owned.