alex chiang: web 6.0

Not really a real entry here — just some quick notes to myself about stuff that’s happened thus far in case I incapacitate my brain to the point where I lose all my memory.

• arriving in EWR at 12 AM on the 24th; driving immediately to NYC with brothers and cousins to pound pitchers of Yuengling, hot dogs, and 30 year old scotch; arriving back in NJ at 6:45 AM on the 25th
• spending all of the 25th hungover; eating dinner at parents’ golf partners’ house; driving up to Randolph to stay at Jake’s house in order to get an early start on drive to GunksFest 2004
• froze ass off all day on the 26th at GunksFest 2004; managed to lead City Lights (5.7), and top-roped Maria Direct (5.9), Frogshead (5.6), Pas de Deus (5.8); returned to Randolph in the eve, drank in Morristown with Schultz, Tosso, McInerney, and Dana; late-night political conversations in Dunkin’ Donuts
• back home for most of the 27th; ran about 2 miles to try and work off some of the fat; extreme gluttony during free hot wing night at 10th and Willow in Hoboken; somehow made it back to Randolph to sleep
• watched Napoleon Dynamite on the 28th; helped Schultz install new head unit in car; drove down to Atlantic City with Schultz and Kendelski; parents pissed that I haven’t really been home yet
• won $100 at craps at Resorts, lost $100 at craps a few hours later; proceeded to lose another $90 in blackjack; won $22 playing no-limit hold ‘em at Taj Mahal; total loss was about $70

Today’s the 29th. I think the plan is for steak dinner gluttony in NYC with cousin Mike.

Ye gods, my body hates me.

I’m going back to NJ until Jan. 2 to visit my folks and friends (or alternatively alliteratively, my kith and kin).

I am reminded of how much I hate packing. Flying during holidays too.

I saw Super Size Me last night. Entertaining? Yes. Meaningful? Not so much.

Morgan’s amazing morphing body over the course of 30 days is impressive, but I’d be much more interested in seeing his results after 90 and 180 days of this diet. My guess is that his numbers and stats, especially those related to his liver, would have started levelling off. Although they may not have improved with time, I’m fairly certain that they wouldn’t have gotten significantly worse over time.

What he did was the equivalent of a teetotaller deciding to suddenly drink a case of beer a day. Of course your body is going to hate you and start going haywire — until it adjusts to the new demands you’re making on it and your systems have a new definition of “normal”.

I’m not making the claim that eating McDonald’s is good for you, but rather that the dramatic experience that Morgan went through, where his liver functions started going nuts, is because he was so healthy to begin with. Had he been a slobbering fat ass who already ate McDonald’s at least twice a week, his body would not have deteriorated so rapidly.

Oddly enough, rather than being disgusted after watching the movie, I had cravings for McDonald’s. Today, I went and got a Big Mac value meal for lunch.

I think there’s something wrong with me.

Su-Jin Yim writes about the obvious: not drinking makes you a dork.

To be fair, she does have a partial excuse:

So why don’t I throw back a few? Partly, it’s because I can’t drink alcohol without turning red — deep, luminescent, blushing red. As one of the unlucky Asian Americans who suffer from this flush, my heart races and the back of my neck gets hot and prickly if I overindulge.

I get that way when I drink too fast. But I am willing to go above and beyond the call of duty and continue down the path of complete and total inebriation in order to defend the good name of Asians out there.

Snow sees spending slashed in Bush 2006 US budget.

The crappiest quote from the article:

Social Security is projected to remain in the black until 2018, when benefit payments begin to outpace payroll-tax receipts. The trust fund will not run out of money until 2042.

That is 38 years from now. I am 25 (26 soon). That means there will be no more money when I am 63 (closer to 64 really, but who’s counting). I sure hope this system gets reformed by the time I’m ready to retire at 65.

ugh.

Joseph Farah write about why he believes in creation. His reasoning? Dragons. (thanks to Fark for the link)

I checked my new favorite website, Stephen’s Guide to Logical Fallacies, for a quick label to slap onto Farah’s “arguments”, but apparently, Farah’s ramblings aren’t even rigorous enough to qualify as any sort of logical fallacy. His column is basically just a jumbled mush that he diarrhea’ed into his computer and called good.

Furthermore, many of the dinosaur fossils discovered in various parts of the world were found right along human footprints and remains. How did that happen?

And what about the not-so-unusual sightings of contemporary sea monsters? Some of them have actually been captured.

There are also countless contemporary sightings of what appear to be pterodactyls in Asia and Africa.

The best I can figure is that this is a combination of the fallacy of anonymous authority and hearsay (”which is a variation of the fallacious appeal to authority”).

Where are the references to the discovery of dinosaur fossils and human footprints? Who are the people who have seen sea monsters and pterodactyls? Why is he using weasel words: “what appear to be …”?

Suffice to say that applying rigorous thought towards picking apart his column would be a waste of time. I merely point it out so that others may read it and form their own opinions. The scary thing is, more people will read his article than will read my blog post.

On the internet, everyone knows you’re a moron.

Odd things are afoot in the enterprise unix world. First, this press release, dated December 2: HP and VERITAS to Accelerate HP-UX 11i Virtualization.

Today, these two articles, dated December 16: Symantec to Acquire Veritas Software and More questions than answers in Symantec/Veritas deal.

Not quite sure how to read the tea leaves on this one, but my intuition tells me that this ain’t all that good. I won’t be surprised if Symantec implodes a few years from now, and all the analysts look back and wonder if it was smart for Symantec to expand beyond their core competencies through acquisitions. The obvious implication is, if HP has partnered with Symantec for a key part of their virtualization strategy, what will happen if (when?) Symantec screws up?

And finally, here in Colorado:

In related news today, Intel Corporation reached agreement with HP to hire HP’s Intel® Itanium® processor design team based in Ft. Collins, Colo., strengthening its investment in the Itanium architecture and bolstering the development of multi-core, multi-threaded processors.

Translated into English, a few hundred people are leaving HP to work for Intel. More information here: HP Extends Commitment to Itanium 2-based Integrity Server Leadership, Invests $3 Billion Over Three Years.

I’ve already setup this blog so that if you try to post a comment and link to a *.info domain, it won’t let you. Tonight, I added an .htaccess file to block referer spam. Anyone with *.info in the HTTP_REFERER field is simply denied access to all of chizang.net. Here’s the rule:

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer ".*\.info/?$" BadReferrer
order deny,allow
deny from env=BadReferrer

Over at Digital Media Minute, he is blocking all domains with two dashes and ending in .info, but I’d rather just nuke the entire TLD. Also, looking at the regexp he is using, I’m not convinced that it will actually work. Looking through my apache logs, it seems that most .info referers actually end in .info/ — that trailing slash makes a difference, and simply trying to match on .info$ won’t work.

Are there any legitimate .info domains? My impression is no. Advance apologies to anyone who is actually coming from a .info domain, but if my site is that important to you, send me email and we’ll figure something out, or read it through the google cache.

Otherwise, fuck you.

edit: added ? as per comment’s suggestion

Went to the eye doctor today for a checkup, where among other things, he dilated my pupils. As a result, I am now useless at work, since staring at my computer monitor makes my head hurt. A side benefit for you, dear reader, is that I was motivated to go find out the differences between dilating my pupils, an event that will occur many times in my future, vs. dilating my cervix, an event that will occur zero times in my future.

Pupils are dilated with chemicals called “mydriatics”.

• http://webeyemd.com/faq/faq_meds_dilation.htm

Cervixes (cervices?) are dilated with prostaglandins, which are basically horomones your body produces anyway. Dilating a cervix artificially (to induce labor) is called “ripening” it. Odd term, but it makes sense in a visceral sort of way. And in case you didn’t know, a fully dilated cervix is 10 cm, which means the baby is ready to come out.

• labor induction methods
• cervical ripening agents

Here’s the weird science site of the day:

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/icespikes/icespikes.htm

How to make ice spikes in your freezer.