Daily Amusement:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/jokes-only-nerds-will-understand?s=mobile

Whoah...

So I just got out of my meeting. Another 4 pounds - 36 total. Officially, I'm 0.2 pounds off of my 10% goal... But 0.2 is well within the margin of error given body weight fluctuations. So I'm calling this one a win.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

This, if you're curious, is my kagum:

No, the hilt is not supposed to be in two pieces. No, I'm not happy about it. 

Anyone have any good leads for putting a new (wooden) handle on a half-tang Eastern-style sword?

Swords

It's fascinating to me what I find when swords come up in various contexts. I tend to consider myself as much more knowledgeable about swords than most people... But I constantly find out new little things I didn't know before. Like, apparently, the type of blade Beowulf used to slay the Grendel was a "Seax" or "Sex" - an old type of medieval knife/sword I hadn't heard of before. Fascinating stuff.

The thing that really struck me, though, was the movie "Reclaiming the Blade", which is a documentary about swords. I don't remember hearing about it before... Which astounds me because it's exactly the type of thing I'd have expected to have found somewhere back in my various researches into the topic. Not sure how that happened.

Not that it matters a huge amount, I suppose. But it is going onto my wish-list...

Take as directed...

So I think this amoxicillin is making me feel sick. Every time I take it now, it I get a bit nauseous, and that's no fun. It didn't do that when I first started taking it, but now it's every time. I'm not a fan. Though of course I didn't look at side effects or anything when I got it. Lets see... "May decrease the effectiveness of birth control pills" and "finish all of it."

...Not the most helpful warnings ever.

I looked it up online, and I did take it with food... But possibly not *enough* food. Not sure what to do with that.

I'll be glad when this course of medicine is done.

Bah!

Today's ThinkGeek e-mail is so boring! Normally they have good stuff, but this time, it's just limited to the Titanium Survival Spork and DC Superheroes Shot Glasses.

Bah humbug. Come on, guys, you're supposed to entertain me!

Hey, new stuff!

Spent my first day with new material in Gumdo, today. Did my battle drill, my new pattern (which I think I did remarkably well at!), and also some time with throwing and hitting ping-pong balls.

And yes, I know that last one sounds almost silly. Next time you think that, though, try putting a sword through your belt, throwing the ping-ping ball with one hand, drawing the sword, taking two steps, and hitting it with a horizontal strike. It's... Non-trivial.

Anyway. Good stuff.

Are Fridays supposed to feel like this?

I just don’t feel well; I still have a lingering cough from the last week (yup, it’s been a week now) of being sick. This whole "strep throat" thing is for the birds. Congestion, coughing, sneezing, and generally feeling like crap. I started seriously feeling like crap last Friday, and proceeded to do so all weekend and just control it as best I could. I took Monday as a work-from-home day so I would try to recover a bit more, and Nina dragged me out to Urgent Care, since she'd caught whatever I had. And what ended up happening... She got diagnosed with a cough and told to control it with Mucinex and vitamin C; I tested positive for strep and was given a prescription of amoxicillin for my troubles. The doctor framed it as "Well, I don't know if I believe it, and I wouldn't have even run the test if I were doing your work-up, and it could be a false positive, but I'm not going to ignore the result." So same symptoms, and it looks like she caught it from me, but I'm lucky enough to get the worse diagnosis. Yay.

Incidentally, I need to get more DayQuil. It's for some reason difficult to find outside of a DayQuil/NyQuil double-pack, but you use DayQuil twice as fast (or at least *I* do)... So I have much more NyQuil in the house but the DayQuil ran out.

Last night I actually finally got my blue belt test done for Gumdo. I passed, which I don't think is actually a surprise to anyone involved. Noone else was in class, this time, so it went very quickly. We did paper cutting first, and while the first two were iffy, the third was fine; all the basics and warmups; the stance focus drills (1, 2, and 3); then in a change from the norm, we did things by level instead of type. So it was my first-level pattern, then 10-count, then battle drill; then second-level pattern, 10-count battle drill; then third level pattern, 10-count, and battle drill. The only thing I had to repeat (other than the paper, which is pretty typical) was my third pattern, once. I managed to muck up the footwork on one section of it slightly - even noticed when I was doing it - and so did it a second time, and hit it fine.

Grand master Traina described it as "the fastest test he's ever done", which I take a little bit of credit for (even if it was mostly just because I was alone and he had noone else to deal with).

Oh, at the WW meeting today? I was up a little bit from last week. I'm fairly okay with it, though, because last week wasn't a typical weigh-in (wrong time, wrong place) and I've had two weddings the last two weekends; I'm still lower than my last meeting (two weeks ago) and I call that a win.

A minor thing...

One of the postcards on PostSecret today almost made me cry. It also made me angry. Too close to home, I guess.

I'm so tired today.

Pattern Recognition

I was trying to remember who had written a book I was familiar with called "Pattern Recognition" - I ended up remembering the one I was thinking of as I was searching (it's William Gibson), but it made me realize there are a few book titles that *a lot* of books share.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s?store=allproducts&keyword=pattern+recognition

I suppose it's justified - it's a concept that comes up in math, computers, algorithmics, economics, psychology, and other academic fields, as well as other places.

And yet William Gibson still comes up as the top result - shows what people care about. Not even that I don't understand or agree... But it still makes me slightly sad.

Some Job Stats...

...for my current position:

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151122.htm

Apparently, the average salary for my role in NY state is $112k. Which I'm not making. But that's okay - I could certainly be doing far, far worse than I am...

The Nicaragua Canal?

So this showed up on Slashdot (depressingly, my main source for news outside of InfoSec blogs, these days):

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/06/11/1238231/nicaragua-gives-chinese-firm-contract-to-build-alternative-to-panama-canal

I think the funniest part was the comment near the bottom "You realise if the pull this off technically Costa Rica will become an island." Would that improve their tourist trade? The newest tropical island in the world?

A little light reading...

http://sacreddisease.blogspot.com/2008/01/common-uncommon-knowledge.html

I read this and my first thought was "I don't know anyone with Epilepsy!" Which I think is an absurd thing to focus on. It's funny the loops my mind will twist itself into trying to rationalize the ridiculous guilt and stupidity I go through on a regular basis.

I found the blog, of all things through a podcast. The author of that blog wrote in to "Stuff to Blow Your Mind", a podcast I listen to; and the URL was read out in the comments section. As far as I can tell the blog is dead, in that there have been no posts this year, 1 in 2012, and the vast majority in 2008; but I'm still going to go back and read through it.

It was pointed out to me, after I'd started looking at it, that the author actually lives in Troy, not that far away. Interesting the way these coincidences happen.

Reading through the beginnings of it, though, I realized that it did remind me of something important - of how my father was handled after his car accident. I don't remember how much I went through it, but he blacked out, and it was never explained. They went through neurological studies and sleep studies and medical exams and scans and whatever else, and in the end just said "Okay, you can't drive for six months, and if nothing else happens we'll move on."

Kindof scary, really.

...

Apparently, I need to be more careful printing. For some godawful reason, the default settings on the colour printer nearest my desk - the one sitting next to a black-and-white printer, meaning its only real reason for existing is to print colour - is greyscale. Every time - every time - I print something I need in colour, I forget and end up having to print it twice.

You'd think I'd learn...

Oh, and if you're curious...

...I hit 30.6 pounds at my weigh-in today.

Consoles: Going downhill since 2000...

And I hate to jump on the "paranoid fucktard" wagon train, but this article:

http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/06/07/1229246/microsoft-confirms-xbox-ones-phone-home-requirement-game-resale-rules

Quite well summarizes why I'll never actually be comfortable in the same room with an XBox One. Always-on requirement + active listening + PRISM (the government program for pulling user records from most major technology companies + restrictions on publicizing it) = fuuuuuck that.

But there's a comment somewhere down in the feed that really summarizes this well: This console will have neither a used nor rental game market. Enabling it to "allow publishers" to enable people reselling their games means most won't. The rental and used game market for the XBox One won't exist.

That’s not even touching the bullshit Sony’s pulled with removing backwards compatibility, removing Linux enablement, hidden rootkits, and other utter crap.

Fuckit. If I hadn’t already jumped on the “back to computers as a gaming console” bandwagon, this’d convince me I had to by the next generation.

Gaaaaah.

The pool is 70. 

70.

The air is still near 90... But the pool, complete with trees on 3 sides, has not recovered from the 40-50-degree weather and massive rainstorm. 

Can't argue with its ability to cool me down.