Thursday, February 11, 2010

Snow Day

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Posted by eclipse on 02/11/2010 at 11:05 PM
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Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Endeavour, Always

Birds don’t fly as high.
Airplanes don’t go as fast.
The Statue of Liberty weighs less.
No species other than human can even comprehend what is going on, nor could any human just a millennium ago.
The launch of a rocket bound for space is an event that inspires awe and challenges description.

From NASA’s Astronomy Pic of the day.
RSS Feed.

Posted by eclipse on 02/09/2010 at 08:54 PM
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Thursday, February 04, 2010

Escape to Cancun

Back in the end of January when it was actually cold in Dallas for over a week straight, I decided I had had enough.  Alison and I both had 3 days off coming up, so we decided to do something about it, and set our sights on Cancun, Mexico.  A day later, we were taking off first class in an American 757 and landed in warm weather just two and a half hours later.  Cancun boasts 350 sunny days a year, so I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that we got so see such a rare event as a rain storm over the beach.  Spent some time exploring the hotel, having lunch, and hanging out in lobby when the rain finally stopped so we could head outside.


We walked along the beach and waded out into the ocean, but there were pretty strong waves so we called it quits pretty quickly.  Went back up to the hotel to change and ended up falling asleep after having to wake up so early for our flight.  Later in the evening when we woke up, we went out walking along the street and came upon the hard rock cafe for dinner.  The burgers were big and good, but the band wasn’t too great so we left for the hotel again.
The next day the weather was sunny again, with temperatures in the upper 70’s.  Glad to be out of cold Dallas and especially glad to be out of the snowy northeast, we set off for the beach again.  The waves were still pretty strong so we didn’t last long in the water.  We found an umbrella to sit under, but were chased away promptly by some mexican guy demanding money.  The Hyatt’s beach was still under construction, so we didn’t have any nice beachfront to enjoy ourselves and we ended up coming back to the hotel to lay by the pool.  Of course the pool wasn’t heated and was freezing cold so almost no one was swimming, and everyone was crowded along the outside of the pool laying on chairs under umbrellas.  We found an unused umbrella by the top pool, which the wind picked up out of its stand, threw it 10 feet in the air, and then back at us.  So much for the upstairs umbrellas.  Finally we were able to secure a nice spot by the downstairs pool and spent the afternoon down there. 



For dinner we went out to an authentic mexican restaurant across from the Hyatt.  It was a large restaurant but was completely empty except for one other couple.  It was a pretty strange place.  It seemed like they didn’t even know why we had come when we opened the doors, asking us what we wanted.  Yeah…we’d like some food please…  So I figured they were all in the mexican mafia and the restaurant was a cover-up.  But the food was okay and it ended up all good.  Early the next morning we headed back to Dallas first class again, awesome! 
Fun trip all in all.  This was different than our usual touristy trips where we explore cities.  We mostly stayed in and around the hotel.  I forgot how easily I sunburn, so I’ll take an extra moment to think about it before signing up for the next beach vacation.  The mexican folks were nice people, but they are so in-your-face about selling you stuff.  They spot you from a mile away and rush you.  I felt like sometimes I couldn’t get a whole sentence out without being interrupted by someone trying to sell me tickets to a comedy club.  The more they asked, the less I wanted to go.  It got to the point where I didn’t want to go out anymore.  Also, every time I looked at something’s price I freaked out because the symbol for the peso is the same as the dollar but it’s worth 12 times less.  So a dinner entry costs $650.  Couldn’t get used to that in the short time we were there.  Other than that and sunburns, I did enjoy getting away for a few days and not freezing anymore.  Might try Key West next though instead of Mexico.
Posted by eclipse on 02/04/2010 at 04:57 PM
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Sunday, January 31, 2010

The iPad Discussion



It’s been a few days since the announcement.  The reality distortion field has worn off a little.  We’ve laughed with Hitler and cried that the Macbook Pros are still touting Core 2 Duos.  The iPad is released to the world and everyone has something different to say.  Let’s take a look:

The iPad is supposed to revolutionize the computing industry.  It’s a giant iPod touch, we know that.  But the fact that it’s a giant iPod touch means every app goes through the App Store, and every App should therefore be safe to run.  It shouldn’t be prone to viruses and crashing like normal computers.  Despite the fact that Apple is now the oppressive totalitarian regime it once threw a hammer at, it will just work.  You give up your access and freedom to do it.  Apple people love it because it’s apple, Windows people love it because they love their iPhone and are afraid to get a mac.
People who don’t care if their computers work can fix problems by themselves, enjoy hacking/tinkering with their tech, or stopped caring about computers because they bought an xbox.  They couldn’t care less about the tablet because they already have a nintendo DS and a cheap computer running Windows or maybe some sort of Linux.

In the middle are the Apple users and the Windows users.  Apple users want their computer to work so they love the stability of unix, but are drawn to the shininess of the OS and computers themselves. 

Windows Users want their computers to just work also, but not enough to get a mac.  They shy away from the shiny but pretend Windows Vista looks just as good.
If you don’t want your computer to work, but you’re still a fanboy (eccentric), you are running linux.  You passionately rebel against anything M$ and you hate all other fanboys, especially Apple’s.  After you’ve recompiled your OS for the 4th time today, you’ll start a flamewar at a mac site about how Apple controls everything and that everyone who buys one is a sheep.  Then your computer will kernel panic and you’ll have to…no….you GET to recompile it again
  In the middle are the total geeks who own all three types of the major OS’s.  They already have a netbook and might trade it for an iPad depending if they have an iPhone, or not if they have an Android.
On the bottom are the fanboys.  They don’t care if it works.  They don’t care if it doesn’t work.  They will defend it to the grave.  They will attack anything else. 
They cannot be reasoned with.  They cannot be ignored.  Be afraid, be very afraid.
Posted by eclipse on 01/31/2010 at 11:06 PM
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Monday, January 25, 2010

Something going on

krhainos: this has to be the worst code i've ever written
krhainos: its pascal syntax, except missing most of the pascal language
krhainos: its for a touchscreen remote interface for a conference room
Eclipse: ugh pascal
krhainos: i dont think i've done something where about 1/3 of the stuff i type is comments
krhainos: so i dont accidentally screw myself over
Eclipse: if you comment stuff too much, you make yourself replaceable
krhainos: this is probably my best comment of all time
krhainos: //something going on
Eclipse: heh
krhainos: //shit, son
krhainos: i know what that means, will anyone else?
Eclipse: thats what programming is
krhainos: no wonder i switched majors
Eclipse: you make a nice code and then bobomega screws everything up, and you have to make little edits all over the place to accommodate him and then its all a fucking mess the next time you look at it
Posted by eclipse on 01/25/2010 at 04:37 PM
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