Lexical Unit

Sam & Ruby and Vienna Teng & Alex Wong

2009-11-13T22:34:02Z

Saw Sam & Ruby and Vienna Teng & Alex Wong last night as Stubb's. The concert went well into the am, ended around 2am and started around 10pm. And it was totally engrossing the entire time.

If you've never been to Stubb's, it's this BBQ Joint/Concert Venue in the middle of downtown Austin. This concert area is downstairs in this little room with a stage at one end and a bar at the other. It's about 10 feet wide and 30 feet long. Small crowd but you could tell every person there was there because they were really excited to see Vienna Teng, and that made for some great energy in the audience.

Sam & Ruby started off, they're this Nashville-based duo that are a blend of R&B, folk and pop. Ruby has an awesome voice, very smokey and sultry. Sam also sings in about half the songs. Heaven's My Home -- check it out.

The video shows them on stage with a few other people, but last night it was just Sam & Ruby by themselves. Just a guitar and vocals, nothing else. It was a very personal show, with Sam relating his experience with his father dying being the inspiration for one of their songs, for example. They were also talking about Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Randy Newman.

Later Vienna Teng & Alex Wong got on stage and pretty much blew everyone away. Vienna was on the piano and Alex was on pretty much everything else all at once. He had a lot of weird instruments that I've never seen before. And both of them had a little box that could record sound loops and play them back either forward or backward. Vienna used the box to play some piano notes backwards for her song Gravity.

Vienna has one of the most beautiful and powerful voices I've ever heard. You might listen to some of her songs on youtube and think, [i]well ok but that's her studio voice and it's probably auto-tuned a little bit too[/i], but nope. Her live voice was just as clear, crisp, and strong as it is in her studio recordings. If not stronger and more exciting for being live.

Also they are total nerds. Vienna was talking about how one of her songs was inspired by a bash.org comment she read one day. :D The song was about the people living upstairs that "are either having sex or moving their furniture around and agreeing with each other a lot."

She covered songs buy Radiohead and Simon & Garfunkel, and later pulled Sam & Ruby up onstage from the audience and got them to join in a few of the songs. Sam & Ruby seemed pretty embarrassed (and also really happy and excited), like they didn't expect Vienna to call on them to join in.

She ended the night by getting everyone on stage up near the front, away from their mics. Asked the audience to crowd in and join in with the song. She wanted everyone to be rowdy and interrupt her song as she was singing it. To yell out randomy, to clap along, to snap their fingers, whatever they wanted to do. She taught everyone the chorus and then launched into the song, which was more like a poem/monologue from the perspective of her grandmother who disapproves of her profession.

My favorite song was definitely Harbor, which Vienna described as her nerdy song because she stitched it together from complex or unusual time signatures, trying to get it to work regardless.

And the most haunting was certainly Blue Caravan which really demonstrates Vienna's vocal talent.

Pinhead Teacher Trashes Linux

2008-12-10T23:52:43Z

Not much to say really. Take a look at the kind of people educating children these days. Reading the father's response is awesome in a totally fuck yeah way, so enjoy!

Games I'm Looking Forward To

2008-07-02T16:30:47Z

Oboro Muramasa Youtouden

Spore

Brutal Legend

Fallout 3

Sonic Chronicles

Mother 3

Sonic Unleashed

Next Gen Prince of Persia

God Strikes Again

2008-04-04T16:43:28Z

So I found this article on reddit earlier today about a Illinois Democrat ranting about atheism. Go ahead and listen to the mp3 at the bottom of the page to hear the exchange. What you'll hear is people clapping and applauding the legislator. What you'll hear is someone refusing to let Sherman, the man being addressed by this rant, respond to the attack. What you'll hear is Sherman being totally polite and respectful even in the face of extreme prejudice.

In short, what you'll hear is a women so twisted and deformed by religion, that she can't think properly. And atheism is supposed to be the dangerous "philosophy"?

If Davis, the ranting legislator, is going to throw out a straw man argument and say that Sherman is detestable because he's not doing anything to prevent gun violence, then how about I throw out some of my own straw men? Why isn't religion doing anything to stop the rape of young boys by pastors? Why isn't religion doing anything about the spread of AIDS in Africa? Why isn't religion doing anything to prevent the teaching of misinformation in schools? Why isn't religion helping advance the potentially life saving science of stem-cells? Why isn't religion helping to stop the violence in Iraq and the Middle East?

Davis says that kids knowing about atheism is dangerous. This is nothing more than the age old religious adage of "stay stupid forever." The reason it's dangerous for kids to know about atheism is the same reason it was dangerous for slave owners to let their slaves learn to read. Knowledge is power. It's easier to control ignorant people. The irony here is that Davis herself is black and should have learned from her ancestors and her past the lesson that trying to control people in this way is doomed to failure.

Scott Watson, Closeted Douche

2008-03-17T22:07:32Z

So earlier today I was checking my facebook profile as I usually do whenever I have some downtime at work and I noticed a new friend request. Scott Watson wanted to be my friend! "Oh boy," I thought, "what a neat thing this is." I wondered how I knew this person. Surely I knew Scott somehow because otherwise why would he want to be my friend? Well I just didn't know. Maybe I met him when I was so drunk that I forgot it all happened (Something Scott is all too familiar with, see picture below). Regardless, I sent him a message asking for a bit of clarification on the matter.

Me: Friend request? And you would be...

Scott: jesus christ u are a faggot

Needless to say I was a bit surprised; I had no idea Jesus Christ was a faggot! Also a bit appalling was Scott's miscapitalization of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. I'm sure it was just an honest mistake, I mean it must be hard hitting two keys on the keyboard at the same time when you've only got one free hand. Well, I assume Scott only had one free hand at the time because in my mind I envisaged Scott typing up that response while watching some quality hardcore Saviour on Saviour action, possibly a pornography involving Jesus Christ and Muhammad. I mean the revelation that Jesus Christ is a faggot had to come from somewhere, right? I know I personally believe everything I see in a pornography! Honestly though, I'm not sure how Jesus would feel about his relationship with Muhammad being made into a 21st century pornography. Especially regarding that whole Muhammad icon taboo thing.

Well, whatever gets your rocks off there Scott, I don't fault you really getting to know yourself and your Messiah a little better while you were typing out that response, even if it meant you had to forgo the little things like spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. Don't worry, your message came across loud and clear: You're a closeted homosexual and you want me to help you by being your new friend! Well of course I'll be your friend, pal. All you had to do was ask, and you did!

Oh but then I got to thinking further. Maybe I'm misreading his message? It's hard to tell because of the missing punctuation and all. Damn that money-shot scene involving Christ cumming on Muhammad's chest! If only Scott's favorite pornography were less explicit, then I'm sure Scott wouldn't have had to gently stroke on his cock to relieve himself while he was typing up his reply to my query.

I thought, it's possible Scott is just very confused and frightened about being closeted. Maybe all his friends make gay jokes all the time and he secretly wishes he had the integrity, honesty, and courage to tell them to stop degrading his sexual orientation. Maybe it finally got to him and his mind snapped. You could read his message to mean that he thinks I'm Jesus Christ, and I'm a faggot. Oh that poor boy. He may very well look up to me and seek my forgiveness and blessings. I had to figure out which it was. Did he mean I was gay Jesus or just that Jesus was gay? So I sent him another message. I tried to be nice and reassuring while also pointing out that I certainly wasn't Jesus nor was I a faggot. Bisexual sure, but I always associated the word faggot with strictly homosexual. That or a bundle of sticks and branches, but hopefully Scott isn't so confused that he mistook me or Jesus for a bunch of dry twigs. I mean, no one's that stupid, right Scott?

Me: Last I checked I wasn't Jesus Christ or a faggot. But maybe if you ask me real nice I can be, just for you.

I added that second sentence just in case he really does think I'm Jesus Christ. I didn't want to bring him down too hard, so I had to make it seem like I was willing to be a part of his fantasy world. At least for now, until he gets used to the idea that neither I nor Jesus Christ want to bang him in the ass. Well, at least not bareback anyway! Come on Scott, think about hygiene for Christ's sake!

Well anyway. While I eagerly await his next reply I printed out some pictures of him (seen below) and put them in my wallet. Sometimes when I get lonely I just sneak a quick peek at them and remember: Somebody thinks I'm a saint.

God bless ya, Scott. ttyl!

Here's Scott having a quick shot of something to wash down his beer.

Here he is pitching his new idea to his drunk boss.

Scott on the job cleaning up tables at a local restaurant. Can't let the beer go to waste!

Scott forgot which beer was his so he just drank both of them.

"Scott! You don't need another beer, you've had too much to drink already!"
Scott: Whaaaaa, Nigga please!

Scott found some corn in his pants; what a surprise!

Look at him daydreaming in the background. Oh Scott, I'm thinking of Jesus's cock too!

Tries For Fun

2008-02-22T07:10:25Z

So for a while now I've been working on implementing a really nice trie in C++ in the style of a STL container. The reason for this was that I wanted to use a trie to implement a search in my photo website. The problem with that is I had to write it in PHP, which sucks. Since I hardly know PHP I decided to model a trie in C++ first. Along the way I found out there's lots to C++ that I can still learn! (or at least get much more practice with...)

I've finally got the code to where I feel like I won't be too ashamed of myself if eyes other than my own view it, so I'm putting it out for any and all to see.

First let's talk about what you need if you want to build the source. You need boost^*. I only use boost for lexical_cast because it allows me to provide default policies that just work for most basic types. For example, with lexical_cast the code for implementing a trie based on ints is this simple:

typedef trie<int> int_trie;

And from my point of view the code to create a prefix of ints of a given length, something very important to the operation of prefix-tries, looks something like this:

return lexical_cast<int> (lexical_cast<std::string> (value).substr (0, length));

Compare that to a std::stringstream implementation:

std::stringstream ss;
ss << value;
std::string prefix = ss.str ().substr (0, length);
ss.str (string ());
ss << prefix;
int r;
ss >> r;
return r;

^{*:Well you don't need it if you just replace my code with std::stringstream equivalent code, which isn't hard. But you do need it if you want your life to be complete ;)}

Next you'll need a C++ compiler, but then, if you're reading this post, I assume you have that already. Onward and to the code.

The trie class has a few policies that let users tell it how to function. So we have the advantage of making the class extensible but without having to rely on the overhead of dealing with inheritance. This approach to C++ class design is called Modern C++ and Andrei Alexandrescu wrote the book on it, literally. Here's what it looks like:

template<typename T, class Compare, class CharT, class Length, class Prefix>
class trie { /* ... */ };

Defaults are provided for Compare, CharT, Length, and Prefix so in most cases the user simply has to provide the T type that the trie stores, ie: strings or integers or what have you.

My trie uses the policies to determine how it should handle various situations. Let's say you want to store strings in a trie, but in descending order instead of the default ascending order. All you have to do is override the default comparator policy like so:

typedef trie<std::string, std::greater<std::string> > descending_string_trie;

Neat eh? Length tells the trie how to calculate the lexicographical length of a given T value and Prefix tells the trie how to come up with a prefix of a given T value (as seen above in my lexical_cast code sample). If you download my code and take a look at my main.cpp you'll see near the top an implementation of a trie that stores string/data pairs so that you can insert some value into a trie and associate it with some sort of data.

In my first iteration of trie I had assumed that the user would always want some data associated with node values. This was because my intended use was creating a dictionary of search terms where each term had a list of associated webpages as its data. That way, someone could search my dictionary of words and get a list of hits for my photo webpage very quickly.

With my Modern-C++ style re-write, I can still support this paradigm and maintain a higher level of flexibility. Not to mention the code is much simpler!

Next I wanted my trie to work with all the STL algorithms so I needed to provide trie iterators. I had to ask myself, what kind of iterators does a trie require? Quickly I decided that reverse iterators don't make much sense for the things users would want to do with a trie. In fact, I decided that forward iterators were pretty much sufficient for a quality trie implementation.

The hardest part about writing an iterator is getting operator++() correct, all the other methods are trivial. Let me show the code first, then go step by step through it.

    template<typename T, class Compare, class Length, class Prefix>
    typename trie<T, Compare, CharT, Length, Prefix>::iterator&
    trie<T, Compare, CharT, Length, Prefix>::iterator::operator++()
    {
        // After we've fallen off the trie, we're always at the end.
        if (this->node == NULL)
        {
            return *this;
        }
    
        // Step through children in pre-order.
        if (!this->node->leaf ())
        {
            this->parents.push_back (this->node);
            // Get pointer to child trie object.
            this->node = *this->node->children.begin ();
            return *this;
        }
    
        // Peel off parents and step through their children in pre-order.
        typedef typename subtrie::iterator child;
        while (!this->parents.empty ())
        {
            child end = this->parents.back ()->children.end ();
            // Recursively step through parents' children.
            child next = ++(this->parents.back ()->children.find (this->node));
            if (next != end)
            {
                this->node = *next;
                return *this;
            }
            else
            {
                this->node = &(*this->parents.back ());
                this->parents.pop_back ();
            }
        }
    
        // End of trie has been reached.
        this->node = NULL;
        return *this;
    }

The first three lines are wordy, but simple. All they say is that this is a method template for iterator::operator++() that returns a trie::iterator&.

The first thing we check for is if the iterator points to NULL. This is my sentry for the end of iteration. Once an iterator is incremented past the end of the trie, it always points to NULL. Checking this first and returning immediately if the check fails ensures that once an iterator hits the end of the trie, it's always stuck there.

When I first implemented incrementing I did it by pre-order. It may be that case that in the future other kinds of ordering may be desired, for example in-order iteration. The next if statement determines if we are at the end of a trie branch, or in other words if we're at a leaf node. If not, we store a parent pointer in our iterator and continue on down the trie by going to our current node's first child. We continue the progress until we finally reach a leaf node. At this point things get interesting.

Using those stored parent pointers is how we continue our incrementation. We use the iterator's parents container like a stack by first accessing it's most recent addition. So we try and find the current node in the children of the most recent parent. Basically, we're asking our direct parent for an iterator over its children which points to ourself. Then we simply increment this iterator to get our parent's next child, one of our siblings.

If this child exists, then it becomes the next node. Otherwise, the next node becomes our parent and we begin the loop again. Immediately the next node then becomes one of our siblings and we return.

Eventually though this process we will exhaust all our parent pointers after having traveled along all the tire's branches. Finally we return an iterator to NULL, which is our sentry for end of trie. So there's iterator::operator++(). The const version of iterator operates exactly the same way.

The next hurdle in implementation was making trie exception safe. For a while I had this bug that caused my test program to crash after any trie created via the copy-assignment operator was destructed. Let's see why.

Here's my initial implementation, see if you can spot the bug that causes an error to occur in reduce_childs(). Irrelevant code has been removed to make it easier to see the problem.

class trie
{
        typedef trie* trie_node;

        struct trie_node_less { /* ... */ };
        typedef std::set<trie_node, trie_node_less> subtrie;

        struct trie_node_delete
        {
            void operator()(trie_node const &node) throw()
            {
                delete node;
            }
        };

    subtrie children;
};

trie::~trie() throw()
{
    for_each (this->children.begin (), this->children.end (), trie_node_delete ());
    reduce_childs (this);
}

trie::reduce_childs(trie_node node) throw()
{
	if (node == NULL)
	{
		return;
	}

	if (node->childs > 0)
	{
		--node->childs; // ERROR HERE
	}

	reduce_childs (node->parent);
}

trie& trie::operator=(const trie &copy)
{
	if (this == &copy)
	{
		return *this;
	}

	trie temp = copy;
	swap (temp);
	return *this;
}

void trie::swap(trie &from) throw()
{
	using std::swap;

	swap (from.children, this->children);
	swap (from.childs, this->childs);
	swap (from.value, this->value);
	swap (from.parent, this->parent);
}

PS: Don't cheat by downloading my source and reading the comments I put in there! I'll put some space between here and the answer.

Ok here's the answer. The problem is in operator=() and ~trie(). First notice that in the copy-assignment operator we create a temp and then insert values into it. The reason we do this is to provide exception safety. All the real work is done to the side on a temporary, and then that work is committed to our node with no-throw operations like swap().

Unfortunately this means that the direct children of temp have parent pointers that point to a temporary object. So now when reduce_childs() is called from the destructor, we traverse up the trie to the top where we attempt to dereference memory that's been destructed, which causes the program to crash.

So how can we solve this? Well, clearly we have to re-parent these wayward nodes! But can we do this and maintain no throw exception safety? The answer is yes. Since the STL provides basic exception safety for iterators over containers, and they don't throw any exceptions themselves, and children is a STL container, all we have to make sure of is that we don't do anything that could throw an exception while we iterate over the children and re-parent them. Fortunately assignment to a pointer won't throw an exception, so we're fine. Download my source to see the final working code.

There's other interesting points in trie.h, but rather than blab on about random stuff now, I'll just end this post here and respond to any questions instead.

Download: trie.tar.gz (12kb)

Scientologists, Supreme Scumbags

2008-02-06T22:54:05Z

If you are one, then congratulations on being worthless.

Crazy Conservatives Cum on Christ

2007-12-19T21:53:26Z

Ok I just got carried away with alliteration there, this post contains no descriptions of bukakke Christ, unfortunately. The original title, before the spirit of Alan Moore took me over, was simply "Crazy Conservatives."

Apparently Mike Huckabee, the guy Christian social conservatives are championing as the best candidate for Leader of the Free World^TM, is the only guy willing to put a stop to rampant "publicly endorsed and institutionalized ... pedophilia and necrophilia." How can we not vote for him — knowing what's at stake!

Ok, after reading that article I hope we've all learned a lesson here. No it's not that pedophilia, necrophilia, environmentalism, and homosexuality are synonyms — It's that All social conservatives and fundamental religious peoples of the word are completely, totally, undeniably, fucking insane.

Yup. Hate to be the bearer of bad news here folks. Ok, everyone who worships God get in line in front of the de-brainwash-atizer and wait your turns. Let's just try to make this process as quick as possible folks.

How I Got Arrested

2007-11-07T20:49:50Z

Now this is a story all about how, my life got flipped turned upside down. And I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there. I'll tell you how I become arrested in a town called Austin.

Earlier today I was called into a conference room by two special agents of the FBI for questioning. This is not cause for alarm. My boss has the same thing happen to him every 5 years. You see, the DoD likes to keep up to date on all of its information. So agents stop by and ask very importantTM questions every now and then, like: Have you been doing anything illegal since last time we talked? It's ok, you can tell me.

For me, this was finally my initial security interview for my Secret clearance. The only sticking point was the fact that, according to Texas police records, I was arrested for fleeing the scene of a traffic incident on the 6th of August, 2006.

Me: Whaa?

Now, if you remember, I was in a car accident on that day. And the person that hit me fled the scene and was later arrested that same day after being caught by the police. Apparently the officer that wrote the report on this incident must have had selective dyslexia because he wrote my name in the perpetrator field and the name of the person who hit me in the victim field. Oops

After explaining what happened, the agents just smiled and said, "Oh yeah, stuff like this happens all the time. We'll get it all worked out."

Me: Erm?

So yeah, I was arrested -- And I didn't even know about it!

SQL Hates You Back

2007-08-08T13:28:45Z

I was reading Something Awful today and came across this quote by a poster by the name of teapot:

I have approximately the same desire to specialize in writing SQL queries and to mine uranium, package it into containers made of asbestos, all the while fighting off poisonous snakes under the management of Steve Ballmer.

Just reading that sentence has made my day. I thought I'd share.

Fat People are Lazy

2007-05-18T01:23:42Z

Yes, it's true. If you're fat, you are a lazy slob. Don't try and deny it, it is the simple truth.

Today at Smoothie King I waited in line behind a fat couple getting extra large strawberry smoothies while I thought, "you know, you're fat because you drink extra large strawberry smoothies..." to myself. When they finally paid for their treats and left, I quietly waited while the Smoothie King employee (a 30 something red head from Ireland) whipped up my small high protein chocolate workout shake.

After a few minutes the fat man comes hobbling back in and asks me if I'm the owner of the Honda parked out front. "Yes," I reply with a quizzical look on my face.

"You need to move it now, it's too close to our car."

I gave my best Dr. Spock that's illogical raised eyebrow expression as I looked out the window at my car. It was parked between the white lines exactly in the middle. There was half a foot of space to both the left and the right of my car. I looked then at their car, it was the one with the 300 pound hippo next to it. It was also directly in between the white lines. Regardless, I responded in a cordial manner, "I'll be happy to move it just as soon as I get my drink, I'm leaving then anyway. It'll only be a second." As I spoke I gestured toward the Irish lady who was working ever so quickly to create my drink.

The fat man was halfway out the door as I finished my sentence and then he spun around and said sternly, "no! You'll move it now."

Cue ultra super Dr. Spock that's illogical raised eyebrows. "Fine," I say, and start toward the door.

"My girlfriend can't even get in the door you're too close!" the fat man explains as I walk by him.

I stop and look at him directly and say, "that's not my fault." Then I continue on my way out the door. As I get in my car the 300 pound hippo mutters a few words of apology, "don't worry about it," I say as I open my car door.

Then the fat man steps outside and exclaims to the 300 pound hippo, "it's not his fault!" His words dripping with sarcasm.

Fat people reading this post. You are fat by conscious choice. You went out of your way to be fat. You decided knowingly to eat too much and exercise too little. Whatever accommodation people give you for your choice, it is at their discretion and you are to be grateful if they offer any at all. If you don't agree with me on this, it is because you are stupid and wrong. That is all.

Slow Day at Work

2007-04-24T20:20:23Z

Noting very interesting to post but here's a simple update all the same.

Finally got a Wii and picked up the new Mario Paper game. It's pretty dang awesome but not like the other Paper Mario games. The new one is more action adventure rather than RPG.

Started taking Adoxa for acne and it makes me feel bleghflpt.

Oh yeah, got a dog, named her Samus (she's orange). I guess I should make an update about the dog well, it can wait, right now I'm at work.

Speaking of which, back to work.

Nerds Laugh

2007-02-23T21:17:00Z

The following made me laugh at work the other day.

I have a structure for storing data relating to dataType, product, streamIndex, etc... In the constructor I wrote out the parameters in shorthand b/c I'm lazy. So we have:

Structure::Structure(string adt, string ap, uint asi, ...)

Now my boss comes along and says he wants the structure to have a sort order independent of the key values, so he adds the data member string Structure::sortString.

When I pulled his changeset from the repository and looked over the code to see if he had done it correctly, I noticed he did a very good job of maintaining my code style in the changes he made, even in the constructor.

;)

Park Exploration

2007-02-07T22:16:08Z

Just yesterday I drove my car to a suspicious looking path leading directly into a forest by the side of Amherst (a road I take on the way into work everyday). There were no trespassing signs so I figured why not.

First it started off like a nice walking trail, then it emptied out into a large park area where people were walking their dogs and stuff. Only, it split into a little path leading directly into the forest or the larger walking path that circled around the park area. I took the little path into the forest. The path was really narrow and there were a number of times where the path seemed to fade away for a little while before picking back up again. Parts of the path were covered in rocks and fallen trees. I passed over creek beds and large hills and wound around in the heavily wooded area.

Eventually I came to a fork in the path, I took the fork in the direction I figured was deeper into the forest. After a while I came to another fork, and another, and another. I forgot how many forks I came to. At one point I noticed that one of the forks lead out of the forest and into someone's backyard. Pretty cool backyard, I thought, and then took the fork leading back into the forest.

Eventually I was dumped out into a large clearing surrounded on all sides by forest. There were some kids playing Frisbee with a dog. The dog ran up to me and tried to sniff my ass but whenever I made a move he jumped back and ran off afraid. I walked directly across the open area, about 100 yards in diameter, to the other side. There was a large rock formation there I wanted to see. Behind the rocks was another path back into the forest, I took it.

I crossed a large creek with running water and was dumped out onto a semi-paved path, although it was pretty run down and falling apart. It seemed to follow the creek as I walked along it. Every now and then, there'd be sewer manhole covers off to the side of the path. It's very strange to see a forest with it's own plumbing.

Eventually the path took me to a cliff overlooking the creek, I went down the cliff and crossed the creek to get to what I thought was a path on the other side. It didn't really seem like a path at first, but it eventually became one as I walked along it. This new path was much narrower and seemed to be made from mud and rock chunks. It also followed the creek, but on the other side now.

After a while, the path veered away from the creek and struck off into a less dense but much more green area of the forest. It then became a dirt path. As I walked along it, the sounds of cars slowly became louder and louder. I turned a corner and saw a large bridge crossing over the creek. The bridge wasn't really a bridge, but more of a dam or some sort of sewage thing, I'm not sure. It was kinda falling apart and there was a few inches of water rushing over it and moss all over it. I walked across it.

On the other side the trees receded and were replaced mostly by bushes and trash. I saw what looked like the remains of an old bonfire covered in junk. There were lots of barrels and clothes and rocks organized in campfire fashion. I think maybe some homeless dude lived there or something but I hadn't seen anyone since I saw those kids with their dog and Frisbee.

The path eventually ended and opened up onto the side of the road of what looked like a Mo-Pac overpass. I turned back. Before I went back over the bridge again, I struck off into the forest where there was no path because I saw a large green structure in the distance. It turned out to be some sort of water station or something. There was tons of campfire stones and trash here too. I looked around a bit then headed back to the bridge.

From there I backtracked to the creek path and this time I followed the larger creek that was at the top of the cliff rather than the smaller one at the bottom of the cliff. As I walked along I saw lots of places where little paths struck off from the larger path I was on, but I was getting tired and I wanted to see where this large path went.

There were lots of cliffs that I passed by on this path, and cave openings in the side of the cliffs, and little pools of water where the creek washed into. Parts of the path were beginning to melt away where the water was washing it away. Then finally the path ended in a fork of two smaller paths, the one on the left was blocked by a fallen down tree. I climbed over the tree and kept on going down the smaller path on the left.

Now the creek was a little bigger, maybe a foot deep. The little path didn't exactly follow the creek, but it kinda overlooked it at points. Eventually the path took me to the bottom of a overpass on Duval. There was lots of graffiti on the bridge, a large concrete structure with nothing but a dark tunnel underneath to qualify it as a "bridge."

The creek had turned into a large sewage lake that went through the tunnel in the bridge. There was a path up the side of the bridge that took me right out onto Duval, about a block away from the intersection with Amherst. From there it was about a 5 minute walk up Amherst back to where I had parked my car.

Here's a map of my trek, total walking time aprox. 1 hour:

Also, I forgot my stupid camera (thankfully I didn't see any spectacular wildlife or anything or I'd be pretty mad I couldn't photograph it), so I'll have to do it again and take pictures.

Cold Dishwashing

2007-01-18T00:44:54Z

No one ever told me that dishwashing soap isn't the same thing as dishwaser soap.

It's also very cold outside. Look at the layer of ice on bigreddot's car:

Photos, Comments, Dinner, and Cats

2007-01-08T19:43:22Z

Dinner at Bryan's place on Saturday.

Luis caught a Dash.

Aww, the Dash got away. Better luck next time Luis.

Ayon seems confused.

OMG AYON WATCH OUT!!

Hello you peoples.

Luis knows how to work technology.

Eric doesn't need no stinkin' glasses!

Ayon can't catch any cats today.

The cats seem disinterested.

The other cat is Dot. Dot and Dash.

Food. The soup has coffee and orange juice in it and it is fantastic.

omg cute!

Watch out Ayon the cat has lazer eyes!

This can only end badly.

Long cat.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

OH GOD! DUCK AND COVER!

Cars, Defensive Driving

2007-01-04T04:39:52Z

I'm taking a short break form doing online defensive driving right now because it's boring and stupid and I'm not going to change my driving habits because of it so I don't see what the point of it is in the first place other than take my money and... agh. Traffic laws! Who needs 'um? You hear that Burnet City Limits? I'm spiting you as hard as I can!

Anyway. Sometime ago when I visited Houston, the worst city on Earth, I locked my keys in my car and had to get a locksmith to open my car for me. But for about two hours previous to the locksmith getting there me and a few of my friends tried jokingly to open my car using a bent clothes hanger. One friend, Luis, tried to get into my car from the sun roof as a joke. Oh what a joke.

There's a 100% chance of rain in Austin tonight and while I was out driving I discovered that my sun roof is now much more of a gaping hole that allows gallons of water to pour over my head than a roof of any sort. Every time my car's acceleration changed, about a cup of water would gush in from underneath the panels fitted around the inside of my sun roof. It's supposed to rain tomorrow too. I believe it's time for duct tape. Lots and lots of duct tape. Pictures forthcoming.

Ok now back to defensive driving. Oh what's this? My car needs to have gas to run? My word, I had no idea! Thank you mister writer of online defensive driving class. What would I do without you?

See. Speeding isn't a problem at all!

There's a Queen CD in my car right now.

Random Holiday News

2006-12-28T20:31:53Z

So this holiday season I came out to my brother and my dad. They were both just fine with it. I spent time with James, Melissa, and Mark and got what they had as a result of that. Sore throat and snot, lots of snot. James had his 500 dollar leather jacket stolen from a movie theater on Christmas day, he works there. Max was terrorized with bows, as per tradition.

On my trip home (8 hour drive), my parents followed me to San Angelo on the way to Austin so I could see the new lake house they are building for their retierment.

Got home late yesterday, sick and tired. bigreddot took good care of me though, and I was feeling a little better when I went to sleep at 8pm. Then I slept until noon today. I'm still feeling a little down, but I think I'm slowly getting over the sickness.

Other than getting sick, this has been the best holiday season of my life. I feel like a nutcase for admitting this, but last night I cried for about a minute just before falling asleep due to being overwhelmed with happiness. If you ask me about that in person though, I'll deny it up and down.

Magic Santa Visits Midland

2006-12-25T07:55:44Z

It's Christmas day, 1:45am, and I'll sleep soon. I'm spending Commercial Gift Giving Season with my family in Midland. Earlier today we all played some card game called Blitz. Max must have seen us having fun and figured he would join in. I lost that hand.

2ちゃんねる Informational

2006-12-17T17:07:52Z

So the other day bigreddot shows me the Shii Song flash animation. Of course, I'd already seen it, and about 50 or so other flash animations from 2ch.net/2chan.net. To my surprise, he thought it was just an isolated little flash animation. But in actuality, it's just one of hundreds (or thousands?) of flash animations that has come out of what's widely regarded as the largest forum on the Internet.

So for him and indiefunk — who I believe I spoke with briefly on a cell phone about this topic — I'm now going to provide a little informational on this crazy Japanese phenomenon.

First off you might as well check out Wikipedia's documentation on these two sites. The big one, called 2channel is where it all started. Check out the bottom of the wiki page to get a link to an English translated portal for 2ch. You can try and navigate the flash board to get more of these little flash animations, but unless you read Japanese it might be a tad bit difficult.

The other site, which is a little easier to navigate, is Futaba Channel. Their flash board can be found at /!\ NWS /!\ — Just fair warning, 2chan encompasses all that is the insanity of the Japanese. Expect nothing less than 1 part disgustingly cute and 2 parts utterly demented.

Another thing that came up was the disease called hikikomori which Japanese doctors estimate afflicts nearly one million Japanese people today. Not directly related to 2ch, but I'm sure that much of what these hikikomori are doing all day is spending lots of time on the Internet and therefore 2ch/2chan.

So now I present you with a few of the flash animations that I have collected over the years since I first learned about these websites. Also, you might be interested to know that there's an English version of 2chan called 4chan which also has a flash board. But please, don't let the website turn you into a hikikomori.

Austin Foggy

2006-12-16T05:07:01Z

So there was lots of fog this morning. I tried to take some pictures of it while I was driving. That probably wasn't the smartest idea considering I was driving and it was, you know, foggy and all.

My apartment parking lot.

Notice the car in the distance.

There's a lake up on the right, you can't see it.

Closer to the lake there's more fog.

Monday Report Time

2006-12-11T18:53:11Z

Friday:
Working, then got off work. Cleaned up the apartment. Watched Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who with Bryan. Sleep.

Saturday:
Got up, went to Bryan's to help him clean up his place. Cleaned up said place. Got groceries for cooking. Made pizza dough from scratch. Took said pizza dough to Virginia's parent's place.

This place was pretty damn cool. There's a recording studio in one room, and a sewing room, and a home theater room, but the house itself is really tiny, everything is just sort of packed together. Probably the nicest house I've ever been in, yeah, way better than Luis's parents' house even. Fixed up the toppings for the pizzas there, then went out in the back to grill up the pizzas. Yeah, that's right, grilled pizza. It was pretty damn good.

As for the backyard, it was bigger than the house. Deck with washer and dryer and fridge. Two grills, a spa, a bamboo forest, a small creek in the back with a bridge over the creek. And no fence, just forest to set off the backyard from not-the-backyard. Behind the creek there was a small church having a theater night, they were projecting a movie onto the back of a building. They were watching Die Hard. Then after Die Hard they sang church songs real loud. All while we were trying to eat our pizza in peace. Those punks.

Sunday:
Got up. Went to Ernie's trailer. Ernie, uncle to Virginia, lives in a trailer park. Lots of people were there, I'd say about 40. Nice party, good food. He made this stuff called Wassel spiked with Brandy. Damn best apple cider I've ever had. Got full on Wassel and spaghetti and garlic bread. Had some nice conversations with Virginia's parents. Her mom used to own monkeys and her dad is just a cool dude -- It's his recording studio in their house.

Was gonna go on the Trail of Lights but too cold and not caring enough happened. Instead, me and Bryan rented Fear.com, Waiting for Guffman, and Captain Jack part 2. Watched Fear.com (stupidest movie ever) and Waiting for Guffman (pretty funny) and then went to sleep.

Today:
Working.

Google, Making House Calls

2006-12-07T02:07:47Z

Google Maps will now connect you to the businesses it finds automagically. I have a LiveJournal account. Fonts and colors suck in GTK. There is no such thing as an anti-gravity device. I have on one sock.

Ok, that's enough for now.