Overwhelming Power

Tomorrow morning (December 5) at 10AM EST, DARPA, the central research and development organization for the United States Department of Defense, is launching an experiment that I think is fascinating. If I understand this correctly, the idea is that there are going to be ten large red balloons stationed at ten locations in the continental United States and that the first person to submit the coordinates of all ten balloons will win the $40,000 prize.

Obviously, it's not the type of job one person can do by themselves, which is the motivation behind the experiment. DARPA has launched this project in accordance with the 40th anniversary of the Internet and according to their site, it is "a competition that will explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems."

I'm really interested in watching this contest take place tomorrow. The Internet is going to be full of people playing along and seeing how different social networking tools are used will be exciting. The team behind the Geocaching website have launched an effort to win the prize money, which they plan to donate to charity. And hey, there's a chance that you'll see one of these balloons tomorrow. So if you see one while you're out, grab the address (or coordinates, if possible) of its location and send it in an e-mail to darpa@groundspeak.com. I'll throw a few links down here in case you're interested at all:

The official DARPA site
Groundspeak's (Geocaching people) "war room" site
A Scientific American article with a ton of information

Major CS project due tonight. No time to type, but:

I just got an e-mail from the apartment people about the fact that apparently our laundry room machines are malfunctioning. There are two washers and two dryers down there. The e-mail informs us that "all washing machines and dryers are working properly except for the one washing machine that is marked." Also, we're told that the newly damaged dryers "will be repaired after the proper parts arrive." That's dryers. Plural. At least two dryers are broken.

So to recap: Out of the four machines in the laundry room, all of them are working except for the three that aren't? Really?

I'm back in Blacksburg for the last three weeks of the semester. I stopped at a McDonald's on the way down for a bathroom break and a snack. (Because using McDonald's' bathroom without buying something is stealing. Also: How do you make the word "McDonald's" possessive? Did I do it correctly back there?)

McDonald's drive-thru windows are idiot-proof and yet they still confuse me. I ordered a hamburger, but I didn't pay attention to what the woman said after "$1.04" and so I drove up to window #1. And I sat there for a few minutes. Then I started to panic. What if she said window #2 and I just didn't hear her? No one listens to what window they want you to go to.

But it makes sense, you know? Sometimes they just have the one window open and there's no one working at the first one. Maybe I should go check out window #2. But then what if I was supposed to be at window #1 and then I have to get everybody in line to back up so I can go pay $1.04 for a hamburger? But they wouldn't have me wait at this window for this long, would they? Isn't there one guy whose only job is to take people's money? She must have said window #2. Just as I started to drive, the window opened.

McDonald's Guy: "How can I help you?"
Me: "Yeah, I don't remember if the woman said to drive to window 1 or window 2."
McDonald's Guy (speaking to me as if I am "special"): "You pay here at this window, see? Then you drive a little and they'll get you your food at that other window up there."
Me: "Thanks."

His tone made me feel stupid, but why is he talking to me as if I'm doing something unusual? "Oh, dude. Sorry for the wait. I was waiting for you to bring the car around front. No one ever uses this window." He's the one that let me go crazy for two minutes. Why does anyone ever go to McDonald's?

It's Black Friday. It's 5:30AM. I've been awake for two hours now.

We had a plan for today: Kara wanted to hit Kohl's when they opened at 4AM for some reason. I'm pretty sure we didn't actually buy anything that was on sale. I spent a lot of time in the Snuggie section. I'm happy to report that I didn't see one buyer.

Enjoy some pictures of Snuggie-related things:


Me and the Snuggie Display


Snuggie For Dogs: Keeps your pet warm, its paws free, and your friends from talking to you!


This was the return bin at the checkout counter. I'm proud of somebody!


Far more interesting was Wal Mart, where we immediately encountered what was probably a Wal Mart corporate mandate after last year's trampling death: an insanely long trail of iron gates that were strangely completely lacking in people. Here's how that went:


Kara got yelled at for running through these things.

I guess Wal Mart was trying to avoid another trampling, but their logic sort of confuses me. Their thinking was that if they opened at midnight, they could avoid people rushing the doors, which was true. We're good so far. But then they put the major deal items in the aisles and told people they couldn't go near them until 5AM. So people formed lines in the designated roped off areas, but some jerks (i.e., me and Kara) hid in the areas along the aisles five minutes before the rush, completely cutting off the people who had been camped out since 8PM last night in the process.

When 5AM happened, somebody yelled "GO FOR IT!" and there was a stampede. Kara and I both were almost knocked over. Our plan was to try for the $60 Tom Tom GPS, so Kara ran over to that display, but couldn't get close to it at all. She shouted "I'M OPEN!" and threw her hands up in the air and although I'm sure she was joking, a few seconds later someone threw her a GPS. It was a perfect catch. It's a shame there were no news cameras to capture that catch.

I had the choice of trying to photograph the mob or trying to stop people from fondling me. Here are your pictures:



The calm before the storm. I tried to get a picture that portrayed how people were hiding in the aisles, but it really just looks like I took a picture of a normal day in Wal Mart.


Somebody yelled "GO." I'm pretty sure they weren't even associated with the store.


I call this one: "Apocalypse"

I could put some kind of commentary here about how Wal Mart should do a better job to make sure no one gets killed again, but everyone knows Wal Mart sucks so why do I need to say anything?

Do you know what? Next year on Black Friday, I'm going to decide that I want whatever the hardest-to-get item is at Wal Mart and I'm going to get three of it. Fighting the mob is kind of a rush.

So I promised this a little later this week, but I got really excited about it and drew it up within a few minutes of the last post. Here's Maryland, my favorite state:

(The stars are explained below the image)


Star #1: Baltimore: Home of the 1983 World Series Champions! Woohoo! Remember that!? In more recent memory, Baltimore has been consistently named one of the Top Five Destinations To Get Shot by Frommers in the past five years! (Frommers is the publication that gives out the title, not the person that's shooting you in Baltimore. The sentence was ambiguously worded.)

Star #2: Towson: Home of Seinfeld's Elaine Benes! When you start looking into it, you'll find that a lot of Maryland's most famous residents are, in fact, fictional.

Star #3: Rockville: This is where F. Scott Fitzgerald is buried. If you keep looking into it, you'll find that the majority of Maryland's OTHER famous residents are, indeed, dead.

Star #4: D.C. Liberals live here and cause traffic. Traffic is the fault of D.C. Liberals.

Star #5: Annapolis: Our beautiful capital also served as the capital of the United States of America for almost a whole year!

Star #6: The Chesapeake Bay: This is where crabs come from!

Star #7: Sykesville: They filmed a scene for a Chris Rock movie here!

Star #8: Burkittsville: The Blair Witch lives here. Go ahead, ask the locals. I bet they say they don't want to talk about it.

Star #9: Ocean City: Once a year, high school seniors come here to get really drunk and play mini golf. For the rest of the year, it's host to a whole different kind of Senior Week.

Star #10: Western Maryland: There's not really anything out here, but if it snows, you can go skiing.

Star #11: Perryville: George Washington came here once. They've got signs everywhere.

I hope I've made my home state proud. Maryland has everything you could possibly want: amazing scenery, fascinating history, and an awful lot of crabs! MARYLAND!

(I hereby authorize National Geographic to publish any/all of this as a part of their Geographic Awareness Week)

I was just in the Verizon store in the mall because I wanted to see the new phones and saw that a few of the phones have a new feature that scares me. A lot of the lower-end phones had a 911 button, which I assume dials 911 for you. Because it's not already easy enough to push three buttons. My phone's camera has a whole album of pictures where I've somehow activated the camera and photographed the inside of my pocket, so I'm curious how often I'd be followed by ambulances if I had one of these phones.

When I was younger, they had these machines and if you payed a quarter, you could ride a horse or a rocket or something. They don't have those anymore. Now they've got acne cream vending machines and some machine that simulates hurricane-force winds right there in the food court. What a strange idea, taking a disaster that creates human tragedy, bankrupting millions of families a year, and sticking a hurricane simulator right in the middle of it.

And finally... Via Wait Wait Don't Tell Me's blog: National Geographic, in celebration of Geography Awareness Week, has asked all 100 U.S. Senators to draw their state from memory and to label three important locations on their map. You can find all the drawings by clicking this link right here.

A disappointingly small number of Senators actually took them up on it (Where are Virginia and Maryland!? Come on, Senator Mikulski!), but the ones who did are interesting. Accepting the challenge were, of course, state-drawing uber-champion Al Franken, Georgia's Saxby Chambliss (whose rendition of the Peach State looks like the first circuit diagram you ever learn), and my personal favorite, Wyoming's Michael Enzi, who, as far as I can tell, just drew a box in Microsoft Paint.

Since apparently Senators Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski are both boring and hate National Geographic, maybe I'll take up the challenge for my state and post the results sometime this week. Feel free to do the same in the comments. I think that would be a lot of fun.

I'm back home for Thanksgiving break and I've already been kicked out of the living room for making the Ravens lose, so here's another entry.

Last week, I met Steve at his grandmother's house in Richmond for a geocaching blitz. We had a bunch of caches on our to-do list, but unfortunately we were unaware that our marathon was not the only one going on in the city that day.

We hit the first two caches (my first (and potentially last) webcam caches) without any problems, but we found out on the way to the third cache that Richmond was having a marathon that day and driving anywhere in Richmond required you to wait for two hours as the runners ran through the intersections, because vehicular manslaughter is a crime.

We ended up parked right outside of a McDonald's for two hours that would make an excellent basis for some sort of psychology thesis about humans under stress. People in the cars around us kept getting out and grabbing hamburgers from McDonald's and one woman even did what looked like her weekly shopping at the CVS on the corner. But our favorite source of entertainment was this other guy...

He was trying to pull out of the McDonald's parking lot, but that jerk 80-year-old couple in the Buick was blocking his way, so he honked his horn and yelled curses at them to fruitlessly will them to move. He kept up the screaming, making a few phone calls and yelling at somebody, then he got out and yelled at the soccer mom in the SUV behind him. Whatever they said must have really made him mad because when he got back to his car, he took two sips of an energy drink and then LAUNCHED that can down the street, getting energy drink all over his clothes, hair, and car. It was the funniest thing I've seen this year.

The rest of the day went well. We got 8 caches and cleared off 3 more of the Difficulty/Terrain combinations I needed to be eligible for the Well-Rounded Cacher caches, so it was a pretty productive weekend. I wouldn't mind doing more caching, but it's Thanksgiving break now and I have to finish a programming project before I get back to school. School. Eh.

I'll post new stuff soon (Thanksgiving break starts in about 10 hours), but for now...

I've always wanted to post cool stuff I found on the internet on this blog, but every time I find something cool, I feel cheap linking to it. But this is pretty interesting and I think it's worth the 2-3 minutes it takes to watch it. So if you've got a minute, check out the video on this site. It's probably the coolest thing I've seen in a while. It's singer Bobby McFerrin creating a keyboard out of people.

Click here for an awesome video.

The new issue of the Engineers' Forum is here! Every two months or so, Virginia Tech's Engineering department puts out a magazine with informative articles, such as "The Engineering Expo and You!" and "Did You Know Engineers Sometimes Do Theater?" This month's best article is called "Where Engineers Nest," a three page journey through the various engineering majors and where their students are most likely to be located. Let's check out what they have to say about MY major!

"Computer Science: Alright, so CS majors are not technically engineering majors. But I believe they are like brethren to us and their study lounge is really sweet."

Wait. What? How can we technically not be engineering majors when our department is located within the Engineering college? Just because we have the word "science" in our name instead of "engineering" means that we're some kind of College of Science traitors? (Not that there's anything wrong with the College of Science. I love the COS.)

While it's obvious that everyone's just jealous of our ultra-cool brand-new lounge on the first floor of the most conveniently-located academic building on campus, it's not cool to go around belittling our major to "one of those fringe engineering disciplines."

I was going to try to rally the Computer Science majors to declare war on the Engineers' Forum for their careless article, but I spent a few hours in the CS lounge today and after listening to the things that people in my major spend the day talking about, I'm convinced that we're collectively too schizophrenically bipolar and overall socially oblivious to do anything but program and debate all things Pokemon, and to do that unquestioningly for the next sixty years.

I just got back from a geocaching weekend in Richmond. I think I'll post more about that later, but I just heard a really fascinating piece of trivia on the radio.

I was driving back home and listening to a bunch of podcasts when I hit one by NPR Science about the 40th birthday of the internet. They were interviewing one of the scientists that was present at the actual birth of the internet and they had a call-in portion where people could ask him anything they wanted. Instead of using this for useful technical questions, some guy asked about Al Gore inventing the internet and someone else asked something I hadn't heard before:

Caller: "Is it true that the first three letters sent over the internet were LOL?"

It turns out that's absolutely true. 40 years ago, the scientists were just trying to log into a computer that was 400 miles away and the "keyword" to do that was "log." They sent the letter "L" without a problem. The "O" worked fine also. But when they tried to send the "G," the computers crashed. They spent a few hours working out bugs and tried it again, making the third letter sent over the internet another "L."

So there's your awesome trivia for the day: The first three letters sent over the internet were LOL. Go impress your friends.

There's a kid on the Jeopardy Teen Tournament right now who had a funny anecdote:

Alex: "So you took the SATs when you were how old?"
Kid: "12."
Alex: "And what did you get when you took it at the age of 12?"
Kid: "2090."
Alex: "I don't want to talk to you anymore."

It's funny because that's the exact reaction I'd have if any kid ever said that to my face.

It's important to point out that I'm not making fun of this kid. I would never make fun of a Jeopardy contestant. I'm just jealous that he was acing the SATs at 12, an age where I was still learning to read.

I just saw a commercial for a commercial!

It was a Geico ad and the gecko was talking to some frog thing and none of it made any sense. Until... The very next commercial was for the frog thing's brand new Disney DVD release! WHAT!?

30 Rock does product placement in their show (Snapple, and then last week's Cisco ad), but they're a show so it's kind of funny. Geico commercials are... You know... commercials! You can't have product placement in commercials! The point of product placement is to act as a commercial in lieu of commercials!

This is the most disappointingly redundant slice of American culture since Baconaise.

I'm sick. I think I've got a cold. I guess it could be a flu, but I haven't had more than two symptoms at any point in time. It's like the flu parade. "Now passing the grandstand, it's muscle aches! And right behind them is the sore throat!" There's a ton of variety in this illness. It's like getting the sample appetizer platter at Denny's: you get to try a little bit of everything and you feel like you're on the verge of vomiting throughout the entire experience.

At the suggestion of some other people who live in this apartment, I bought some Day Quil under the impression that it would make me feel better without knocking me out. While it did make a difference, I spent the next eight hours passed out in my bed. If that was "non-drowsy," I'd hate to see what effect "drowsy" would have on me...

In other news... There are only three full weeks left of classes before final exams. I seem to be doing better in classes that I hate, especially GUI. We got our midterms back last week and I got a 90% and was surprised to learn that this wasn't a "CS 90," where you actually get 40% of the questions correct before a 50 point curve, but a legitimate 90%. I was shocked.

So now there's a good chance that I am headed for an A in a class that I absolutely hate and haven't learned anything from all semester. CS is such an arbitrary major.

Wait. What?

I just saw a commercial for Mac that says that now that Windows 7 is out, PC users should take advantage of this opportunity to switch to a Mac. Is that a legitimate sales technique? Why would you wait until the company you're dissatisfied with released a vastly improved version of their disappointing product to switch to their competitor?

Hey, Apple: Why don't you go ahead and release your own worthwhile operating system, then air commercials that people should switch from Windows to THAT.

That being said... I got my rejection letter from Microsoft earlier today, so I'll be going shopping tomorrow morning for my brand new Macbook Pro! I'm gonna be artsy!

While I won't find out anything about the Jeopardy decision for at least another month, I'm going to go ahead and be optimistic and start studying now. My strategy will be to attend any event that will increase my knowledge in any way. I started tonight by attending a lecture by a man named Barry Drake, who has the incredible job of traveling around the country and lecturing about the history of rock and roll.

The topic of this lecture was the music of the 1960s, which should absolutely be a million dollar category for me should it show up on the game show. Although I already knew 95% of the information, a few things were interesting that I had forgotten about. Here are a few of my favorite facts:

1. Simon and Garfunkel began their career as a rock and roll band under the name "Tom and Jerry." They had a hit single, but broke up after their subsequent releases flopped. Here's a picture!



2. Otis Redding wrote Aretha Franklin's hit, "Respect." Redding's biggest hit as an artist was "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," which was recorded three days before the artist's tragic plane crash. It went to #1 on the charts, making it the first posthumously-released single to do so.

3. And speaking of the Queen of Soul... "Piece of My Heart" was made a hit by Janis Joplin, but it was originally released a year earlier by Erma Franklin, Aretha Franklin's sister.

4. Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" is influenced by the works of Bach. Both "Suite #3 in D Major" and "Sleepers, Awake" are referenced in the song.

5. The Band became famous as Bob Dylan's band, which explains their visits to "Big Pink," a house near Woodstock, New York, where the group wrote and rehearsed the songs from their first album, which was titled Music from Big Pink.

6. The Steppenwolf song, "Born to Be Wild," features the line "I like smoke and lightning, heavy metal thunder," the first use of the term "heavy metal" in recorded music.

I'm setting that Simon and Garfunkel picture as my desktop background.

Everyone knows that if you go to the store on November 1, all of the Halloween candy is half off. One of the tests that you're starting to get old is when you realize that your Halloween candy acquisition strategy switches from actually having to dress up and work for the stuff to just driving to the store to buy a thousand bags of Snickers for $3.

As of right now, about 30% of the original candy stockpile still exists. I'm usually not this fat, but I was up until 5AM last night putting some finishing touches on my Artificial Intelligence project ( or perhaps I started it at noon yesterday and kept going until it was done, depending on how responsible you think I am ) and I needed caffeine to keep me awake. And as individual candy bars contain virtually no caffeine on their own, I ate sixty Snickers over the course of six hours.

All of this comes together pretty nicely to explain the massive stomach ache I've had all day.

There's this secret Computer Science study area in the basement of McBryde that basically no one knows about. The benefits of discovering it include free, unlimited printing of any document imaginable, chairs that are almost comfortable, and enormous whiteboards to write out complex algorithms. While I've since lost the ability to revisit this place, I've remained fascinated with the idea of having a whiteboard hanging in my own programming sanctuary. And when I told this to the guy at Lowe's today, he wasn't interested in ANY of it.

To get rid of me, he pointed me in the direction of some panel board and I bought an 8x4' sheet of the stuff. I had them cut it in half to make two awesome 4x4' panels that became 4x3' panels when I realized they were too big to fit through my car doors or trunk.

I've spent the last several hours showing off my new whiteboard to as much of the internet as possible. And now I'll show it off to you. Here is a picture of a comic strip that Jon and I drew, alternating panel-drawing duty.


PANEL ONE:
Guy: Here
Girl: What's that?

PANEL TWO:
Guy: Antimatter!

PANEL THREE:
Caption: Pffft

Please let me know if this is hilarious to anyone else (making Jon and I right), or if it's indeed as lame as we think it probably is to anyone but us.

A while ago, our apartment was foreclosed upon and the new owners took over a little less than a month ago. Ever since then, it's gotten a lot more Communist-y around here.

The first sign of trouble was the note explaining that we'd been bought out by CMG Leasing, which is, as far as I'm concerned, the most evil business in Blacksburg (unless you count the mysterious Moog Corporation, whose signs advertise nothing more than that they "make components."). My personal history with CMG goes back to last semester when we applied to live at one of their apartment complexes, turned in a decent-sized deposit that we were told guaranteed us housing there, then were turned down from living there and told the deposit was nonrefundable. CMG is complete scum and we weren't thrilled at all to hear they'd be taking over our apartments.

A few days later we got another note that laid down some new rules. A lot of our neighbors were upset about the "no kegs" rule (the note explains that they tend to "attract large crowds and result in destruction of property"), but we got angrier at the "don't use the storage room for storage" clause. We've got a room with the water heater in it that we've been using to store the bikes for the past year and a half without a problem, but CMG's letter says that if they find anything in that room, they can legally remove it and charge us to get it back. Isn't that what pirates do?

It's not really a "development," but today we got an e-mail newsletter. The official newspaper of our apartment complex advises us to put our laundry in the dryer for 15 minutes less each week to reduce our energy bill, which is funny considering A) We don't have a dryer and B) We don't pay an energy bill.

The official newsletter for our apartment complex has a large amount of newsletter real estate taken up by this image which, judging by the lack of trailer parks in the background, was taken nowhere near where I actually live...



CMG is just awful.

As I'm typing this, my sister is following Jake and Amir on the JMU campus to a free dinner. And that's awesome, except for the fact that she has no idea who they are and is admitting that fact loudly and to their faces.

She's carrying a picture of them that she said she wanted to get signed for me for Christmas, so she should be able to use that to identify them, except for she says Jake's face is obscured and she can't tell which of this crowd of 18 people that she's following is actually him.

Something just happened and she had to hang up the phone quickly. I told her Amir speaks Hebrew. I really hope she isn't trying to speak Hebrew to him.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

She followed them until they all sat down and then called me back after she left.

Kara says they went into the dining hall and bought dinner for the huge group of people following them. She didn't eat, but she begged them to sign her picture. She said her brother was a fan, but explained how I was stuck down here and they called her a good sister. Then she said she already knew that. Then they said she was full of herself. Then she admitted that none of that had actually happened. I don't know. It was a confusing phone conversation.

All I could get out of the phone conversation for sure was that she had got the picture signed and was going to give it to me for Christmas and that she was really excited to have met these people she had never heard of two hours before. I'm a little bit jealous.

Duc just decided that he's going to cut his own hair. The deal goes like this: If it looks good, he's happy with it and it ends there. If it looks bad, he's just going to shave it all off. I'm aware that it's inevitable that he'll be coming in here in a few minutes and asking me my opinion. My moral dilemma is that I want to say it looks terrible regardless of whether or not it actually does. Does this make me a bad person?