6.30.2004

Women are a painful group of creatures. Maybe it's because they're too much like men and we men have double standards and fragile egos AND we don't really realize the crap we put women through. I guess rejection is always painful but maybe even more so when the variables are so simple that there is no room for conjecture.

My problem is this. I think I assume what will happen before it happens which totally screws any chance I may have had in the first place. I guess it's a buffer. There is no sense getting your hopes up for the lottery. Maybe there is, I just need to get better at dealing with the quazi-inevitable outcome of the night.

Take a chance and you might win. What happens when you take too many chances?
Got another speeding ticket today. I was doing somewhere near 100mph and a Motorcycle cop pulled up next to me and smiled. So I pull over and he asks how fast I think I was going. I said "5000 RPM in 5th gear so I was probably going pretty fast." He smiled again and said I was doing well over 90MPH which I've heard is enough to get a wreckless driving charge.

Then something strange happened. He said I must have had good parents because I was the first person not to lie and say I wasn't going that fast in a long time. I told him I race my car and we started talking about suspension and gear ratios. So he goes back to his bike for a while, comes back and says "I knocked it down to 80 and by the way, see if you can get that registration taken care of when you get a chance."

Best cop ever. Moral of the story is that there is a fine line between ass kissing and arguing that people seem to appreciate.

6.29.2004

I'm beginning to get a good idea of how time, taxes and productivity work together. Socialism and inefficiency don't mix. I mean that in the sense that without much higher productivity than we now have, it's impossible to fund massive social programs. That doesn't mean that those programs are a bad idea, they're just ahead of their time.

I'm no expert but it seems like people focus on median income much more than per capita GDP. I'm pretty sure that as GDP goes up (I'd argue exponentially Technological Singularity) we'll be better able to afford to pay for nationalized health care. Especially if there IS a wealth divide because of progressive taxation. Wow, someone else must have considered this idea before. A wealth divide, combined with sufficient productivity and progressive taxation can lead to a stable, healthy society. That's my wacky theory anyway.

Another note, I read something about the reasons for Europe's high unemployment. It boils down to vacation time more than the social welfare system.

What if... efficiency grew so high due to robots and smart software systems that the cost of goods was reduced to the point that everybody could have free healthcare and people would only have to work if they chose to. That'd be great. Everybody with a job would love their job or they would just quit.

I think the problem is relativism A theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them. The "impovershed" in America are really a lot more wealthy than most of the population of the rest of the world. We have crime and riots and rampant materialism (I'm guilty of it) not because people don't have material posessions but because those posessions aren't as good as their neighbor's.

6.25.2004

Kerry's broadband plans and Robot Competition.
Robot Article
Kerry Broadband


Comments to follow when I find a second...

6.23.2004

Eharmony update... I signed up for the free trial to see if my suspicions were correct. Sure enough, as soon as they had my credit card number the searches magically started finding results. The nice thing was that my 8 "perfect matches" included two lawyers, and a doctor. Maybe I'll marry someone rich career woman some day and raise the kids and work on software or write at my leisure. That'd be kind of nice if not emasculating but that's just a crusty old stereotype anyway.

I've been thinking a lot about the meaning of life, happiness, bla bla bla. I've got a self help book which is sort of unintentionally humorous and one chapter sticks out in my mind. It starts with a question. What if I've had a crappy life? Isn't happiness just a clever way of lying to one's self? Then I tell myself: "Look at all the poor suffering souls in 3rd world countries. That could be you." Hmm, I don't think it's very logical to look at things in relative terms. If there were only 10 people left on earth including myself and they had all lost an arm should I every morning rejoice in the fact that I have two arms. Here's my litmus test. If I wasn't aware of the condition of all of the other people on earth would I still have the same reaction? In other words, if I'd never met the one armed people would I wake up and thank god that I had two arms? Probably not.

Maybe happiness is boring. Maybe it's overrated. Maybe it's been blown way out of proportion by people tired of religion so they substitute happiness for heaven. I'm not depressed, but perky just isn't me.

6.21.2004

I'm having absolutely no luck getting a date through traditional channels so this guy I was talking to on Friday told me he's using E-harmony and has all kinds of dates. So I took the huge personality profile and told it to find matches within twenty miles. Sadly, it found no matches. So I dug around in the settings and changed my search to scour the entire state.... No dice. OK well surely there has got to be someone on the planet that matches my personality right?

" At this time, we are not able to identify a match for you.
We require that any match we provide be highly compatible with your values, beliefs and attitudes. This standard means that thousands of eHarmony users are often not matched right away.
"

Crap. My only solace is in the fact that the service guarantees a match for a small fee of about $100 and they GUARANTEE 3 matches in 3 months. How the hell can they promise that when I haven't found a match when searching the entire planet?

So there is obviously a very shrewd business person pulling the strings behind the scenes. They lead you to believe you that you are a worthless person because even their advanced search technology was unable to find someone compatible. THEN, almost miraculously they guarantee that they can find someone compatible, clearly this would be done by lowering match standards until someone matched. I designed a search engine so I know how easy it would be to do that.

So today I found happiness in the fact that there are probably a ton of compatible women out there, only I'd never date one that fell for the sham that is E-harmony.

6.10.2004

Today I'm going to put a link to my blog on Friendster. I don't have anything in this blog I wouldn't tell my friends anyway and maybe if someone really wants to know what the hell I'm all about they can dig deeper now. Hopefully I don't subconsciously tone down my posts.




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6.07.2004

I bought a girl a beer at a bar on Friday. She returned the favor by buying me a gin and tonic. I'd made friends with the bar tender by then so she brought me the gin... In a pint glass! Needless to say I don't remember much after that but I'm going to try to drink less when I go out. My tolerance is so high that it's getting too expensive.

6.03.2004

Here's a quote by Einstein which explains why I'm not going to vote for Bush.
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

These quotes are like a bible for me. It's a way to take the foggy ideas in my head and use somebody else's brain to condense them into useable principles. Here's another good one.
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
- Umberto Eco

I guess my version of religion is hope through witty, slightly anti-cynical quotes.
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
So the meaning of life isn't "ignorance is bliss" For me it's more about which things to look at instead of how to look at a predetermined set of things.

Here's a nice 2500 year old quote about women that still rings true...
"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher."
- Socrates (470-399 B.C.)

I never really asked my dad for much advice, thanks Socrates.

OK I found my own personal version of hell. Explained with a quote...
"To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me."
- Charles William Stubbs

Now I need to find a new definition of heaven... I think it's going to need to relate to mortality and justice.

6.01.2004

I found a great quote. Women baffle me...

Love - A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by the removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.