Apparently, the Apple Cube is still alive and kicking according to this Wired article. Neat-o. I know that I love mine.
In other news, I’m going to buy a house. More details to come.
More spider updates: won my 2nd game in 255 moves and 37:08. This time, the victory was unmarred by evil undos.
Update: after playing 123 games, I’ve finally won my first one. It took 268 moves and 49:18. However, the victory was sullied, since I had to use undo. In my defense, I did not use the knowledge gained from cards revealed and then covered back up; rather, I saw that I should have used different strategery, and backed up to the point where I could use it.
I have lost vast amounts of my life this weekend as I’ve discovered an addicting solitaire variant known as “spider”. Getting a free version to work on Mac OS X was a bit of hassle, but here’s how I did it.
Note that pysol should also work on Windows, provided you have a decent python distribution. I haven’t verified this, however.
In any case, I’ve played over a hundred games, and haven’t won once. The best I’ve done is to clear a single suit to the top row, and I only managed that about 3 times. I still suck, even after reading the spider solitaire strategy. Sucking sucks.
Finally, after about a two month ordeal, I finally got the license plates for my motorcycle. At first, the seller couldn’t find the title. So he wrote out a power of attorney form and had it notarized. That wasn’t good enough for the DMV, as they wanted it on their own form (that didn’t need any notarization). So he filled those out, but in the meantime, found the old title and gave me that too. Upon bringing that to the DMV, they declared it was a salvage title, and thus the seller had to fill out yet another form. That form came back, and now my bike finally has legal plates.
Of course, this was all complicated by the fact that the seller lives in Florida, and all of the form signing and communication had to occur through the US Postal Service. And while they can sponsor a pretty good bicycling team, they sure ain’t no FedEx.
In other news, living in a house with no A/C really sucks.
Got in way over my head last night with a bike ride that was suggested in the local newspaper. I knew before starting that it was 45 miles long. That didn’t bother me (at first). What I didn’t know was how damn hilly it was. That did bother me.
At about 20 miles, I was ready to give up. I ate my one and only packet of Gu, thinking that it would give me the energy to get to the halfway point (27 miles), whereby I could call for a support vehicle to bring me home. The Gu helped, but at 27 miles, there was no cell phone service to be found. Not even analog roam.
So I had to gut it out. The last canyon was way too much for me. By this point, I had been out of water for about 1/2 an hour and had zero energy left. Embarassed, I had to swallow my pride and walk my bike up that damnable hill while getting eaten alive by mosquitos.
At the top, it turned from dusk to night, and I was faced with the prospect of bombing down a twisty canyon road in the dark. Luckily, I had a front and back light, so that cars see me and make at least a half-hearted attempt to avoid me. I flew down the switchbacks at around 35 miles an hour, praying I wouldn’t hit a pothole or patch of gravel, getting back at the bugs by eating them.
Four hours after I started, cramping and dehydrated, I managed to limp back to my house with an aching back and sore neck.
It was a valuable learning experience. I need to get stronger and bring more food and water. Also, I might as well save myself from having to carry the extra weight of a cellphone because it was fucking worthless out there in the boondocks. Knowing the route will help in the future, because I was totally demoralized by not knowing how much further I had to go.
When I can survive this ride, I’ll be able to attempt Estes Park (90 miles roundtrip).
Long weekends are good. Lots of stuff has happened lately.
Climbed my first 14er with Keldon on Friday. We hiked up Mt. Elbert, and then started the Black Cloud trail in reverse. We traversed the ridge, summitted South Elbert, and then escaped down the saddle rather than climbing Bull Hill. Getting back to the Twinlakes trail proved arduous, as we had to navigate a large talus field and manzanita mazes. Ugh.
Finally got the title to my motorcycle. Whee.
Saw Terminator 3 and The Hulk at a drive-in theater tonight. A few thoughts — drive-ins are for atmosphere, and not for watching movies. If you want to watch a movie, go to a movie theater that has a real sound system, stadium seating, and a decent screen. If you want to breathe (or create) cigarette smoke all night, swat bugs, watch jerkoffs open and close doors, listen to kids running around, then go to a drive-in. On the other hand, it’s probably easier to participate in sexual activities at a drive-in.
As far as the movies go, T3 was… meh. A decent diversion for a few hours, but nothing to write home about. I particularly enjoyed how they filled a huge plot hole with a single line. As John and Kate are running towards a plane, Kate says, “I can fly this! My dad trained me on it!” (or something like that). Excellent way to allow the plot to continue forward.
The Hulk sucked. It could have been better had there been some gratuitous nekkid scenes with Jennifer Connelly, but alas, it just plain sucked.
Finally — I bought some new approach shoes — La Sportiva Dragonflys. They are an extremely lightweight hybrid of trail running shoe/clog/sandal sort of thing, with one of the most interesting features being a collapseable heel. Theoretically, they’ll fit inside a pack and be a good descent shoe. We’ll see how they perform, because a good descent shoe is worthless unless it is a good approach shoe first.
I received a ticket in the mail today for running a red light. In Ft. Collins, they have cameras rigged up at selected intersections that automatically detect red light violators and record your law breaking. And as much as I hated getting this lovely piece of correspondence, I’ll have to admit that the proof is pretty good.
There were four pictures enclosed. The first one showed my car before it made it into the intersection, with the light clearly red. The second showed my car in the intersection with the lights still red. The third picture was a closeup of my license plate, and the fourth picture was a closeup of the driver.
Now maybe I have too much faith in the image recognizing ability of the average judge or juror, or perhaps I have too little faith in the ability of a scum-sucking lawyer to “fix” my ticket, but that fourth picture looks an awful lot like me. It’s a bit blurry, but any sane person would be able to tell it’s me. Which is why I’m just going to pay the fine, and not deal with the extra cost and hassle of getting served personally and going to court.
They got me square, but was it fair? I don’t think it’s black and white. Look at it this way: you don’t get a ticket from a police officer every time you get pulled over for a traffic violation. If you can make your case to the officer, you’ll get off with a warning. Not so with these traffic cameras. They capture damning evidence, but they can’t get all the context.
I argue that humans are the ones operating cars — not robots — and therefore a human should decide whether someone is operating the car in violation of both the letter and the spirit of the law. The human decision maker should be present at the scene to understand the context in human terms, and make the decision whether to issue a fine or not. One should not have to pay extra fees for the privilege of having this human decision made.
In other news, I’ve decided that Mormonism is about as legitimate as Scientology, Wiccanism, or voodoo. Check out this page on why Mormonism is a scam. The author has lots of external references if you’re not convinced by his arguments. Also, meta-religion is a huge time sink, but fascinating reading.