I would start this post with something like I'm not sure if you get those spam emails about penny stocks, but I know you do, so moving on. According to a Spectrum article, the emails actually work. The spammer buys the stock, sends out the emails, stock momentarily spikes, spammer sells. Assuming the spammer does it right she/he can make a decent return.
Now if you are not the spammer, by the time you get the spam it would be hard to buy in time to ride up the spike. However, I imagine you would have time to prepare for the top of the spike. Well, what good does the spike do you? Sell it short. If as soon as you got the email you started looking for the increase in price you could sell the stock short and in a few days when it comes back down from the spike you've probably done about as well as the spammer. Having never sold something short I have no concept of if you could actually find a buyer in time or if people who trade in derivative are too smart for that. And I in no way actually recommend this (if I did I would be doing it, rather than writing about it here), but just thought it was an interesting idea.
Something I do recommend: if you are ever in a situation where you do not have aftershave (such as you avoided bringing liquids on the plane and the hotel brings you a bunch of stuff, but not aftershave), try using mouth wash (which hotels do seem to have). It actually works really well, and assuming you did not cut yourself it is not painful.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Interesting graph
I was reading the IEEE Spectrum and saw this graph:
The top green line is world wide deaths from natural disasters. The middle brown line is world wide deaths from technological disasters. The red bottom line is world wide deaths from terrorism. The x axis is by year from 1982 to 2003 and the y axis goes from 0 to 100,000. I realize the picture is fairly fuzzy but I think it still gets the point across and makes me feel less bad about infringing on their copyright. I would say more about it but I think it makes its points on its own.
Yes, the first picture I posted on my blog is a graph, oh well.
The top green line is world wide deaths from natural disasters. The middle brown line is world wide deaths from technological disasters. The red bottom line is world wide deaths from terrorism. The x axis is by year from 1982 to 2003 and the y axis goes from 0 to 100,000. I realize the picture is fairly fuzzy but I think it still gets the point across and makes me feel less bad about infringing on their copyright. I would say more about it but I think it makes its points on its own.
Yes, the first picture I posted on my blog is a graph, oh well.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Random Ramblings
It has been a bit since the last post so I'm not going to bother trying to tie this post together with any sort of theme or transitions.
First off - Go Democrats! Now don't screw it up!
A few messages to the media. First to Republican pundits - when your party was voted in you called it a mandate for Republicans to do whatever they want, but now that Democrats are in you are saying it is a call for reaching across the aisle - I say you had your chance, now fuck off and give us a chance to fix your mess. Second I am a little weary of stating that this vote was America's way of saying it is tired of the Iraq war. If the vote would have gone a little differently, let's admit it could have gone the other way and Iraq would still be a horrible tragedy and a large portion of America would still be pissed off about it. So let's say that the Iraq war is going horribly and needs a change of course because it is going horribly and badly needs a change of course, not because the election tended to one side in our two party system.
I guess this is what happens when I post after watching two episodes of the daily show and listen to the bill maher podcast.
As I am sure many have noticed, the governator held true to his promise of coming back. While there are some issues where I very much disagree with him I am somewhat glad to see someone people can get excited about running the place rather than someone who pretty much became a joke.
I voted by mail for the first time and it is awesome - well once you rescale based on the maximum excitement voting can be. It makes so much more sense since instead of standing in a booth trying to remember who to vote for and which proposition is which (and as was recently proven having a significantly higher probability of just picking the first name I see) and worrying about the line behind me, I sat in my living room (or whatever you want to call the non-bedroom in a one bedroom apartment) and used the internet to research each issue. Obviously my choices were not super well informed since I did not already know exactly how to vote, but it was a ton better than if I had just showed up at a polling place. For those who are a bit lost - California allows you to sign up for vote by mail which is basically absentee voting without being an absentee.
Ok, I got that off my chest now maybe something about me. Well the lack of posting is due to my two week trip to San Jose/San Francisco/Nappa Valley. Don't I have internet access there? Yeah, but for some reason I don't post when I'm up there, probably has something to do with having TV in the hotel rooms. I was up in San Jose to work with the company that tests the integrated circuit that I have been working on. It was quite a bit of work and I will censor many of my comments since this blog is on the internet and all. It was interesting to actually use a tester after having designed parts of testers. Although it was not a Teradyne tester we were using (nothing against Teradyne, it was just that the company I was working with already had a lot of experience with another tester). Luckily, my coworker decided to snap us out of eating at the same restaurants and staying at the same hotel that we have been spending tons of time in and arranged for us to stay in San Francisco. That was fun walking around the city and eating in China Town and North Beach (little Italy) and it didn't hurt to eat in the restaurant on the 46th floor of the hotel we were staying in. It also didn't hurt to trade in working all weekend to take a day to head up to Napa Valley to go wine tasting. We hit several well known wineries, although a lot of the wine actually did not strike me. And the last one we stopped at was willing to just keep pouring so we switch over from tasting to drinking. At Cakebread (where what I might spend on a bottle would buy a small glass of wine) they showed us around the wine making factory which was interesting especially since a lot of it actually looked a lot like the test floor where we were testing the chips. Maybe all industrial machinery just looks the same to me. Although I guess the test floor did not have $800 oak barrels (french oak - which is apparently far superior to american oak). But slowly getting around to the point, we were talking about my abilities as a bitter detector (thanks to Eric for naming my "ability") and the guy said I must like pinot noir - which is what I typically name as my favorite grape. His explanation is that it has thinner skin and thus less tannin (which is what makes wine acidic and bitter). This might also have something to do with me not being struck by much of the wine I had in Napa since they are known for different grapes.
Walking around San Francisco was interesting because it was enjoyable to be in a real city (sorry LA, but as much as I like you, you are a spread out mass of people, not a city) but at the same time I think growing up in Kansas did have an impact on me because when I thought about living there I missed my space and cleanliness and ease of driving places. Not saying I wouldn't mind finding myself living up there at some point, but that bit of Kansas impact was definitely there. Oh, and if you are ever looking for a great place for a crazy taxi ride, San Francisco could be the place. It has all the traffic of a big city combined with some very steep hills, definitely the place to pretend you are on a ride rather than in a car being driving by someone you have never met before. Although what was more freaky to me than the cab ride was looking up at a car that at least seemed to be at a 45 degree angle (yes I know it can't have actually been that steep) and knowing that my life depended both on the quality of their breaks and the person not getting distracted and letting up on the pedal for a moment.
Well I get a few days in San Clemente before heading off to KC for thanksgiving (as usual if you know where I live, I would appreciate it if you not rob me). It is interesting how easily I lose track of time when I spend the majority of my time traveling. It is almost as if the time I spend traveling is removed from my mental timeline so if something happened three weeks ago in SoCal I would think it just happened a few days ago. That's my odd way of saying that if I have been ignoring you it is like being offended that the guy near a blackhole hasn't returned your calls. Besides the fact he probably preoccupied by keeping himself from being stretched into spaghetti, to him it hasn't been that long.
I want to clear up some comments I have made about the movie serenity in the past. I often say some fairly negative things about it. But that is only because I do not think it lives up to the firefly tv series. I do actually like the movie and have watch it an absurd number of times (usually as a nice ending to watching the series again). Oh, and while I am on the topic, am I the only person who required multiple viewings of the firefly series before noticing that at the beginning of the first episode (during the battle of serenity) Mal kisses a cross (yes, I get the point of it, I had just never realized that they actually explain why he's so down on religion)? I also just noticed that all of the scenes in the opening are from the first episode?
Something interesting that I learned about myself (well, interesting to me) is that I remember stuff a lot better if I actually care about remembering it. I have often had a lot more trouble remembering day to day stuff than certain engineering/science related stuff and in both categories typically pale in comparison with others I met at MIT and in the general category I'm not sure how hot I line up against the general population. But the other day (see earlier comment about my messed up timeline - it really had to be 2 or 3 weeks ago) I was driving somewhere and reading some directions I had written down. And the third or fourth time I looked at the paper to get the same street name in about a one minute period I decided that was just too absurd (I'm not joking when I read directions I often forget the street name as soon as I'm done reading it). On the fourth or fifth time I said to myself, I'm going to remember it this time! And, I did. I think that all those other times I knew that the name was written down right next to me so I just didn't bother with remembering it. This is probably kind of obvious but it has definitely shifted how I try to remember stuff (as in I bother to care). Well, hopefully none of my ex-girlfriends are reading this or have made it this far into the post and are saying to themselves "damn it, all those times he forgot stuff it was cause he just didn't care". And if you are reading this, I'd say this is still in the hypothesis stage so lets not get too excited about it.
I just realized that I flew home on Thursday instead of Friday and have to go to work tomorrow so I better stop with the rambling. I just realized that this post is too long even for me to read back through so if you made it to this point - sorry about that (both the length and lack of proofreading).
First off - Go Democrats! Now don't screw it up!
A few messages to the media. First to Republican pundits - when your party was voted in you called it a mandate for Republicans to do whatever they want, but now that Democrats are in you are saying it is a call for reaching across the aisle - I say you had your chance, now fuck off and give us a chance to fix your mess. Second I am a little weary of stating that this vote was America's way of saying it is tired of the Iraq war. If the vote would have gone a little differently, let's admit it could have gone the other way and Iraq would still be a horrible tragedy and a large portion of America would still be pissed off about it. So let's say that the Iraq war is going horribly and needs a change of course because it is going horribly and badly needs a change of course, not because the election tended to one side in our two party system.
I guess this is what happens when I post after watching two episodes of the daily show and listen to the bill maher podcast.
As I am sure many have noticed, the governator held true to his promise of coming back. While there are some issues where I very much disagree with him I am somewhat glad to see someone people can get excited about running the place rather than someone who pretty much became a joke.
I voted by mail for the first time and it is awesome - well once you rescale based on the maximum excitement voting can be. It makes so much more sense since instead of standing in a booth trying to remember who to vote for and which proposition is which (and as was recently proven having a significantly higher probability of just picking the first name I see) and worrying about the line behind me, I sat in my living room (or whatever you want to call the non-bedroom in a one bedroom apartment) and used the internet to research each issue. Obviously my choices were not super well informed since I did not already know exactly how to vote, but it was a ton better than if I had just showed up at a polling place. For those who are a bit lost - California allows you to sign up for vote by mail which is basically absentee voting without being an absentee.
Ok, I got that off my chest now maybe something about me. Well the lack of posting is due to my two week trip to San Jose/San Francisco/Nappa Valley. Don't I have internet access there? Yeah, but for some reason I don't post when I'm up there, probably has something to do with having TV in the hotel rooms. I was up in San Jose to work with the company that tests the integrated circuit that I have been working on. It was quite a bit of work and I will censor many of my comments since this blog is on the internet and all. It was interesting to actually use a tester after having designed parts of testers. Although it was not a Teradyne tester we were using (nothing against Teradyne, it was just that the company I was working with already had a lot of experience with another tester). Luckily, my coworker decided to snap us out of eating at the same restaurants and staying at the same hotel that we have been spending tons of time in and arranged for us to stay in San Francisco. That was fun walking around the city and eating in China Town and North Beach (little Italy) and it didn't hurt to eat in the restaurant on the 46th floor of the hotel we were staying in. It also didn't hurt to trade in working all weekend to take a day to head up to Napa Valley to go wine tasting. We hit several well known wineries, although a lot of the wine actually did not strike me. And the last one we stopped at was willing to just keep pouring so we switch over from tasting to drinking. At Cakebread (where what I might spend on a bottle would buy a small glass of wine) they showed us around the wine making factory which was interesting especially since a lot of it actually looked a lot like the test floor where we were testing the chips. Maybe all industrial machinery just looks the same to me. Although I guess the test floor did not have $800 oak barrels (french oak - which is apparently far superior to american oak). But slowly getting around to the point, we were talking about my abilities as a bitter detector (thanks to Eric for naming my "ability") and the guy said I must like pinot noir - which is what I typically name as my favorite grape. His explanation is that it has thinner skin and thus less tannin (which is what makes wine acidic and bitter). This might also have something to do with me not being struck by much of the wine I had in Napa since they are known for different grapes.
Walking around San Francisco was interesting because it was enjoyable to be in a real city (sorry LA, but as much as I like you, you are a spread out mass of people, not a city) but at the same time I think growing up in Kansas did have an impact on me because when I thought about living there I missed my space and cleanliness and ease of driving places. Not saying I wouldn't mind finding myself living up there at some point, but that bit of Kansas impact was definitely there. Oh, and if you are ever looking for a great place for a crazy taxi ride, San Francisco could be the place. It has all the traffic of a big city combined with some very steep hills, definitely the place to pretend you are on a ride rather than in a car being driving by someone you have never met before. Although what was more freaky to me than the cab ride was looking up at a car that at least seemed to be at a 45 degree angle (yes I know it can't have actually been that steep) and knowing that my life depended both on the quality of their breaks and the person not getting distracted and letting up on the pedal for a moment.
Well I get a few days in San Clemente before heading off to KC for thanksgiving (as usual if you know where I live, I would appreciate it if you not rob me). It is interesting how easily I lose track of time when I spend the majority of my time traveling. It is almost as if the time I spend traveling is removed from my mental timeline so if something happened three weeks ago in SoCal I would think it just happened a few days ago. That's my odd way of saying that if I have been ignoring you it is like being offended that the guy near a blackhole hasn't returned your calls. Besides the fact he probably preoccupied by keeping himself from being stretched into spaghetti, to him it hasn't been that long.
I want to clear up some comments I have made about the movie serenity in the past. I often say some fairly negative things about it. But that is only because I do not think it lives up to the firefly tv series. I do actually like the movie and have watch it an absurd number of times (usually as a nice ending to watching the series again). Oh, and while I am on the topic, am I the only person who required multiple viewings of the firefly series before noticing that at the beginning of the first episode (during the battle of serenity) Mal kisses a cross (yes, I get the point of it, I had just never realized that they actually explain why he's so down on religion)? I also just noticed that all of the scenes in the opening are from the first episode?
Something interesting that I learned about myself (well, interesting to me) is that I remember stuff a lot better if I actually care about remembering it. I have often had a lot more trouble remembering day to day stuff than certain engineering/science related stuff and in both categories typically pale in comparison with others I met at MIT and in the general category I'm not sure how hot I line up against the general population. But the other day (see earlier comment about my messed up timeline - it really had to be 2 or 3 weeks ago) I was driving somewhere and reading some directions I had written down. And the third or fourth time I looked at the paper to get the same street name in about a one minute period I decided that was just too absurd (I'm not joking when I read directions I often forget the street name as soon as I'm done reading it). On the fourth or fifth time I said to myself, I'm going to remember it this time! And, I did. I think that all those other times I knew that the name was written down right next to me so I just didn't bother with remembering it. This is probably kind of obvious but it has definitely shifted how I try to remember stuff (as in I bother to care). Well, hopefully none of my ex-girlfriends are reading this or have made it this far into the post and are saying to themselves "damn it, all those times he forgot stuff it was cause he just didn't care". And if you are reading this, I'd say this is still in the hypothesis stage so lets not get too excited about it.
I just realized that I flew home on Thursday instead of Friday and have to go to work tomorrow so I better stop with the rambling. I just realized that this post is too long even for me to read back through so if you made it to this point - sorry about that (both the length and lack of proofreading).
Saturday, November 04, 2006
GO VOTE!
<rant>
GO VOTE!
I would say something like I don't mean to be preachy, but I'm going to be preachy so why lie.
I know that unless you are in a few particular states your vote will have no impact on the results. However, showing up and voting is how you let politicians know they have to worry about what you think. Especially if you are young GO VOTE. Young people don't vote and politicians can't waste their time and effort on a group of people that doesn't vote. A friend who worked in D.C. for a summer said the guy she worked for wanted to do stuff for young people, but couldn't because it wouldn't do him any good in the polls.
GO VOTE! - especially if you are young.
</rant>
In other news I just saw the Borat movie - I laughed so hard my jaw hurts.
I've been spending my weeks in San Jose and weekends back in Orange County and LA. A bit tiring, but hey for miles, hotel points, and free meals I'll put up with it. And this week got to meet up with Dad in Palo Alto.
Over the last month or so I've gone to Hollywood and Venice Beach. It struck me that those are two of the big LA tourist attractions and are also the two main places for crazies to hang out in LA. Made me think that if someone came to visit LA they might get the impression that people out here are all a bunch of nuts and that this would lead to stereotypes of the city... oh wait. Well anytime I think that maybe LA needs some PR advice I think of the Hollywood sign. It's a sign that is a tourist attraction because it is famous. Why is it famous? Because it is famous. How amazing is that? The city has bootstrapped the fame of a sign to a point that the fame is self sustaining!
While I'm on the topic on Hollywood and craziness - near the chinese theater there are people dressed up in various movie costumes and you can pay them to take a picture with them. Everyone is a recognizable character, except this one guy who has been there every time I've been there who is some very strange but fairly elaborate devil like character. Anyway in Borat when he goes to hollywood the devil guy is there - it was interesting watching the film in Orange County because I got the sense that the people around me also recognized him. There was also a lot of mumbling between people when Borat went to Orange (for those in the cheap seats, Orange is a city in Orange County).
<rant>
One last:
GO VOTE!
</rant>
GO VOTE!
I would say something like I don't mean to be preachy, but I'm going to be preachy so why lie.
I know that unless you are in a few particular states your vote will have no impact on the results. However, showing up and voting is how you let politicians know they have to worry about what you think. Especially if you are young GO VOTE. Young people don't vote and politicians can't waste their time and effort on a group of people that doesn't vote. A friend who worked in D.C. for a summer said the guy she worked for wanted to do stuff for young people, but couldn't because it wouldn't do him any good in the polls.
GO VOTE! - especially if you are young.
</rant>
In other news I just saw the Borat movie - I laughed so hard my jaw hurts.
I've been spending my weeks in San Jose and weekends back in Orange County and LA. A bit tiring, but hey for miles, hotel points, and free meals I'll put up with it. And this week got to meet up with Dad in Palo Alto.
Over the last month or so I've gone to Hollywood and Venice Beach. It struck me that those are two of the big LA tourist attractions and are also the two main places for crazies to hang out in LA. Made me think that if someone came to visit LA they might get the impression that people out here are all a bunch of nuts and that this would lead to stereotypes of the city... oh wait. Well anytime I think that maybe LA needs some PR advice I think of the Hollywood sign. It's a sign that is a tourist attraction because it is famous. Why is it famous? Because it is famous. How amazing is that? The city has bootstrapped the fame of a sign to a point that the fame is self sustaining!
While I'm on the topic on Hollywood and craziness - near the chinese theater there are people dressed up in various movie costumes and you can pay them to take a picture with them. Everyone is a recognizable character, except this one guy who has been there every time I've been there who is some very strange but fairly elaborate devil like character. Anyway in Borat when he goes to hollywood the devil guy is there - it was interesting watching the film in Orange County because I got the sense that the people around me also recognized him. There was also a lot of mumbling between people when Borat went to Orange (for those in the cheap seats, Orange is a city in Orange County).
<rant>
One last:
GO VOTE!
</rant>
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