Alexander

1) Post on Facebook. 2)???? 3) Get expelled.

2008-03-06T00:18:32Z

As some of you know, my sister was enrolled in Mars Hill Academy, one of those snobbish private schools.

Recently, she posted the following on her facebook profile:

FIRST DRAFT-Left up until the second comment from the esteemed Benjamin Liebing.

I just feel like venting.
:O

First, I'm so excited for college. I'm ready for the new challenges that I'll face. I'm ready for the change of scenery. I'm ready for focusing on strengthening skills. I'm ready to learn. I'm just ready.I know that God's will is perfect and that all things work together for good for those called according to His purposes.
"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart."

Second, I cannot even begin to describe how excited I am to be done with high school. It has been an overwhelming year. For some reason the teachers think that it's cool for school to consume their student's lives. You know what though, it's okay. You just got to prioritize, and realize that school doesn't always come first. Also, we all know that MHA has serious issues. Yeah, for the most part the teachers and administration are condascending, arrogant, judgemental, plain rude, and inconsistent in their treatment of students. But, hey, we all have our flaws.

The answer isn't to rebel, because honestly, it doesn't really help. You can't make them change. You can't make them care about how hurtful they are. You can't make them see their hypocrisy. You can't make them see how they are drowning us in homework. No, instead we have to rise about it all. To love them despite it all. Which, clearly I am not the best at..well...yeah...anyways ... working on it. Stick to your guns on the stuff that really matters. In the end does it really matter that certain students * cough* admin and teachers kids *cough* never get in trouble, and are exempt from the rules? Nah, and anyways it doesn't hurt them if youre bitter and angry.

We just gotta get done, ya know? Get through and leave

SECOND DRAFT-Left up until my two comments were posted.

First of all, I'm sorry I offended all of you. The entire point was that for all the bad things about the school, we all have bad stuff about us too. Hence, the ' But, hey, we all have our flaws. ' I didnt just throw that in there for kicks, I really meant it. I was laying out how I felt the school was behaving and then just encouraging the people I love. I'm not sure I entirely understand why all of the MHA alumni feel attacked and offended..but this is what I meant. The fact is that is the way the school is treating SOME students, clearly not you. This is the way it is. Obviously if we are still at the school we appreciate it to some degree and still believe that it has something to offer. BUT, I will not deny the fact that the majority of teachers and administrators that I have day-to-day interaction with behave in the manner described. You guys were right to call me out on generalizing. I do apologize for that.

And now I'm done. Maybe our life isn't as hard as all of yours at college, but it's not really a matter of how hard things are, more about how you deal with it. Maybe you can't see it, but we are trying to deal with our small little high school drama the best we can.

The next day, she was called into the principal's office and told there would be an "enforced parting of ways" and she should finish the year somewhere else; this facebook post was printed out and used as the reason for this "parting of ways".

She's got a 3.2 GPA, attends school activities, and had 3 months left until graduation. She's been attending the school for 4 years.

Now, she has to attend summer school at Lakota to graduate, in August.

How are they able to get away with stuff like this?

I'm more angry than I can clearly express.

raistlinsb @ 2008-02-23T14:20:00

2008-02-23T19:21:00Z

Here's the house we're getting, if anyone cares.

http://www.realliving.com/Property/Details.aspx?PropID=8961603

raistlinsb @ 2007-12-19T00:24:00

2007-12-19T05:41:33Z

Ok, updates.

Happy Birthday to Jeremy, Randy, and myself. I know we're within a week or so of each other, but I can barely remember my birthday, much less keep track of yours. You'd think 13 years would be enough time to learn them...
(btw: remember that trip to COSI we took around 12? years ago.... that was like the coolest party ever!)

Jeremy: Yes, the company I work for is hiring; however, we're hiring a C#/.NET developer, a windows admin, and a MS-SQL DBA. We do have remote workers currently, but I believe they're phasing that out in favor of local talent. In the somewhat near-ish future, they may hire a (n embedded) linux developer.

On a side-note, I saw (for the first time ever) a link on reddit directly relating to something I was working on. That was pretty cool.

I was thinking of all the things I'm thankful for, and the things I should be thankful for...I can't really think of anything I'm not incredibly lucky for and/or happy about. I have both old friends and new friends; I have a job I love so much that I even go in early occasionally; I have a wonderful wife and son; and my life is at the very least meta-stable at the moment. I'm on my way to owning a house, which is honestly something I would have expected years and years in the future... my parents, who are pretty much my models for professional success, didn't buy a house until they were about 10 years older than I am now.

Sure, there are minor inconveniences, but when I look at the big picture, it's amazing that someone like me, who can't even complete basic household tasks, can manage to lead a somewhat normal and happy life.

I never thought I'd be the type of person that buy stuff off the itunes store rather than find a torrent for it.

uhhhh wow

2007-11-27T10:09:23Z

So some of you may have heard that my job satisfaction is way above normal (especially considering that I'm not doing anything spectacularly interesting), and I've probably explained it by saying that it's nice to work with (and for) people that I can actually respect for their intelligence.

Anyway, I was doing some idle googling, and apparently my boss's boss, the head of software development for this company, the guy who buys me (and the rest of the office) lunch every tuesday, Ira Goldstein, is somewhat famous.

I don't mean famous in the normal sense, but rather in the geek sense...Heard of the MIT AI lab? Sussman, Minsky, Stallman etc. all were there....as was he. Heard of LOGO? yeah, he helped design and develop that. Heard of Xerox PARC? He was there too. The coordinating committee for the WWW? He was on it. I'd have more references, but the ACM's site for pulling up citations is broken.

No wonder when I hear him talk, I'm thinking "wow, that's a great idea!" or "wow, that makes so much more sense now" instead of "wow, when will he shut up so I can get some real work done?"

It's amazingly rare for me to meet someone who I think is just absolutely more intelligent than I am, and even rarer for me to hold that opinion after working with them for any extended period of time; but I can honestly say, I really do feel like I'm actually working under a real architect, a master of the art, here.

raistlinsb @ 2007-11-19T20:00:00

2007-11-20T01:01:12Z

So this is the part of the project that I hate.

In the last probably 20-30 hours of work, I have written exactly 4 lines of code.
The rest of my time has been spent writing User Guides and API documentation.

I hate this.

raistlinsb @ 2007-11-19T00:48:00

2007-11-19T05:52:47Z

I need to buy a new tv, one that will temporarily serve as a monitor as well.

I'm thinking probably 36" or bigger, 1080p resolution (1920x1080). Any suggestions? My price range is ~1k.

Inputs are not a problem, as I will need to get an adapter for my laptop to connect to it anyway, and it's just a matter of getting an hdmi output instead of a dvi output.

Ideally, it would be wall mountable, but that's not an absolute requirement.

"Because a man stands up."

2007-11-13T12:08:04Z

I was looking up the new star trek movie on imdb, and somehow I got sidetracked to west wing.

Anyway, one of the quotes from west wing has always stayed with me...it's when Charlie (Dulé Hill) is being threatened because he's a black guy dating the president's daughter. His response (as summarized by his boss) was "No, I won't stop it, because a man stands up."

I find that pretty compelling. The fundamental instrument of social change is... wait for it... the individual. Someone decides that *this* is too much, and stands up in the face of adversity.

This is probably the root cause of at least some major wars... When someone, or a group of people, decide that some (perceived?) injustice is worth fighting against, simply because it would be an affront to their pride to do otherwise. Somehow, they link these things with their fundamental personhood... A man stands up; because if I didn't, I would no longer be a man, but rather just a man-shaped animal.

Whether it's something as intangible as taxes on stamps or something as concrete as forced labor, there comes a point when you simply cannot push someone down any farther. Everyone has that point when they say "Enough is enough, this is not right!"

I'm not sure where I was going with this... Maybe a parallel can be drawn between our increasing willingness to sacrifice liberty for security and the gradual oppression of a people. Maybe more people need to think about at what point they become merely man-shaped animals unable to act according to their moral compass.

Maybe not, too.

Anyway, I'm off to work.

leopard

2007-10-25T08:22:20Z

So I stayed up entirely too late playing with Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard).

The only thing I don't like is the removal of input managers from safari.

I like (in rough order)

1) Spaces. OMFG a virtual desktop system that isn't a usability nightmare! Seriously, I don't know how I lived without multiple desktops for so long.

2) Cover Flow View/Quicklook. This is pretty cool, especially since it's integrated into the mail client and is easily accessible in Finder. I have folders with hundreds of videos and pictures, and it's nice to be able to find that specific simpsons or friends episode. I kinda wish I had this at work, would make sorting through the millions of pages of documentation a little easier.

3) Safari 3. This isn't specific to leopard, but it's still pretty awesome. It feels a lot faster, and the in-page search is very nice.

4) Finder sidebar. Just like itunes. Makes my life simpler.
5) Dock stacks. Saves me a few seconds when launching an app or finding a file I downloaded a while ago.
6) Movies widget. Very nice for impulse movie watching.

I'm also looking forward to writing some dtrace scripts for monitoring, between that and the new dashcode interface, I could make a pretty sweet and comprehensive dashboard status widget.

Time machine is pretty cool too, I set it up on my external drive, and let it do its thing.

I'm trying the new mail app too, and it's pretty nice...integrates with rss feeds, picked up my gmail info pretty easily, has quicklook for attachments, spotlight search, etc, etc.

raistlinsb @ 2007-10-23T22:07:00

2007-10-24T02:07:47Z

http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/Slightly-More-Sociable.aspx

It's a story about a guy who didn't get a job because he was surprised that a girl got hired in a programming position before him.

I can empathize with his surprise.
Granted, I'm probably one of the more sexist people out there, but seriously, I've met a grand total of like, THREE girls that can program. On the other hand, I know approximately a million guys that can.

Upon consideration though, I have to say that all three of the girls I know who can program are pretty freaking good at it, whereas probably 90% of the guys I know that can program are terrible (or more kindly, adequate) at it.

I guess for a girl to decide she wants to learn to program, she has to have some pretty amazing natural aptitude for it; but for a guy it's just what non-athletic smart guys do. I guess it's like women and teaching 50 (or 100) years ago.

On a side note, that's probably two things I think everyone should have some experience in: programming and teaching. Both cause you to learn some fairly important things about how to think (at least in my opinion). If you can program a computer to do something, and you can teach someone else to do something, you can be pretty confident that you understand that thing.

On ANOTHER side note, I wasted like 2 hours of 3 people's time today because I'm retarded and don't know how to use source control. Despite this, I'm getting a raise. Go figure.

raistlinsb @ 2007-10-19T22:12:00

2007-10-20T02:12:12Z

So I accidentally opened 360 something property windows at once in finder accidentally on my mac today. I fully expected it to do what windows would do if I tried to create that many windows at once...choke and die. However, after about 5 seconds of beachball, there they were, all nicely cascaded on my desktop.

I was feeling a little amazed, so I decided to "Show Desktop" with expose, and they all slid smoothly out of the way. Even "Show All Windows" with expose worked smoothly and flawlessly.

Nice!

as seen on digg

2007-10-19T03:35:22Z

reading this list nearly made me choke on my ice cream.

FOR REALZ

http://www.the-iss.com/2007/10/superhero_douchebags.php?iref=mpstoryview

raistlinsb @ 2007-10-16T18:37:00

2007-10-16T22:37:19Z

So I just realized that the opening song for The Big Bang Theory includes the line: "The autotrophs began to drool".

Aren't autotrophs plants?

raistlinsb @ 2007-10-12T20:31:00

2007-10-13T00:31:37Z

3m 39s

Click here to try the quiz.

So, I can't spell "massachusetts" at ALL. I had to google for it, which I guess is technically cheating.

raistlinsb @ 2007-10-06T13:41:00

2007-10-06T17:41:39Z

I love that feeling I get when I learn something new...

I'm slowly working my way through learning the math and terminology for understanding string theory; it's like I'm addicted to trying to figure stuff out.

It's like if I think about this just long enough, in just the right manner, I'll have that flash of inspiration that makes everything clear, I imagine this must be what it's like to be on drugs.

this week's Big Bang Theory quotes

2007-10-02T22:50:06Z

"Do you have any ideas?"
"Yes, but they all involve a Green Lantern and a power ring!"

raistlinsb @ 2007-09-27T22:54:00

2007-09-28T02:54:17Z

Big Bang Theory has some nice math/science jokes.

I figure any show that starts out describing the double slit experiment can't be all bad.

Edit: Sheldon on that show is like my new hero.

Edit2: OMG I want a periodic table shower curtain!

*cough* Jeremy *cough*
http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/gear/8a2f/

When we buy a house, that can be your gift.

raistlinsb @ 2007-09-26T23:33:00

2007-09-27T03:33:16Z

btw, wtf is up with tvtorrents not working EVER?

raistlinsb @ 2007-09-26T23:15:00

2007-09-27T03:15:41Z

I finally finished my first major release at my job, so I get to decide what I want to do for my next project. I think I'm going to set up a test framework for our application, mostly because I haven't ever set up unit tests for something non-trivial (i.e. something I couldn't prove was bug free for all inputs in the domain anyway) but also because it gives me yet another reason to be reading reddit or arstechnica: "My tests are running!" (added to "My queries are running" and "My code is compiling!"...inspired by http://xkcd.com/303 )

my average week.

2007-09-27T03:10:59Z

I've fallen into sort of a routine recently. This is new for me.

I know all of you are literally dying to know it:

Monday

Go to work early (like 8am). Take my ipod, go to Barnes and Nobles, get a book/magazine and some coffee, and read for a few hours. Come home, check out the web, go to sleep.

Tuesday

Go to work extremely early (like 7:15am), leave early. Watch a NOVA episode or something equally educational. Write a small program; possibly try out a new language/library. Go to sleep.

Wednesday

Go to work On Time (8:30am-9am). Leave on time or late, depending on if I'm bored. Drive to a mall or something, kill an hour or so. Play poker with the guys. Depending on how late that goes, play around on the internet and/or watch something dumb (think family guy or friends). Sleep.

Thursday

Go to work barely on time (9am on the dot...or 9:15 on the dot...) Get my check. Go to the bank to deposit it. Eat fast food for dinner, because I'm worth it. Continue program from Tuesday, or if finished, watch more NOVA or other educational show.

Friday

Go to work on time, leave pretty early (like 4). Hopefully Amanda and Alex are waiting for me, so we can do something together.

Saturday

Depends on the capricious whims of my wife and son.

Sunday
Sleep, as much as possible. If I can't sleep, I perform administrative tasks (laundry, defrag, etc)

Is it any wonder I've gained 20 pounds in the last month?
(I'm totally not exaggerating...went from 128 to 148; my pants are snug even without a belt :/ )

Maybe I should work in some exercise...

raistlinsb @ 2007-09-19T00:22:00

2007-09-19T04:22:25Z

When did stupid start getting affirmative action?

sigh

2007-09-17T05:33:51Z

Another one of the authors I really like is dead.

James Oliver Rigney, Sr. aka Robert Jordan, died yesterday.

Zelazny, Heinlein, Asimov, Vonnegut...now Jordan. All in my lifetime.

I still remember when I first started reading these books...I was in the 8th grade, I used to take a bus to the freshman building to take honors geometry, and one of the other two people I took that bus with told me to read the Eye of the World. My only other experience with fantasy was with David Eddings and Tolkien; and WoT was like a cool drink on a hot day. He showed me that fantasy did not have to be trite or murky to be good. He showed that fantasy can have depth without being pretentious; that it can be grand without having caricatures of personalities; that it can be meaningful without being a shabby copy of something else.

In short, he showed me that it is possible to write fantasy and simulaneously be a great writer.

Good-bye, Robert Jordan.

Your writings were, as another great writer put it, "gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility".

You wove fact, myth and Truth together so well; your novels were like half-remembered dreams of a different Age, seen in daylight.

The world is lessened with your passing.

raistlinsb @ 2007-08-27T06:49:00

2007-08-27T10:49:24Z

You guys need to have kids...I totally don't know how I was able to manage even a semblence of emotional depth before I comprehended the dark mystery that is parental love.

It's amazing how the combination of intellectual responsibility and emotional attachment is amplified and reinforced by genetic predisposition. Honestly, the only thing even remotely similar is having sex for the first time...and that's dwarfed by the intensity of parenthood.

This post, had I read it even 2 years ago, would probably have made me puke. I'm sure you can recall the arrogant cynicism I maintained toward all non-self-aggrandizing emotion; but even my vast store of narcissism was powerless against the twin horses of genetics and emotion; of instinct and feeling.

raistlinsb @ 2007-08-22T03:36:00

2007-08-22T07:36:28Z

from family guy:

"Protect Jon Stewart! He's our most important Jew!"

raistlinsb @ 2007-08-17T11:25:00

2007-08-17T15:25:10Z

Intelligence is just the ability to swim in strange waters; it doesn't mean you're going anywhere.

as promised, emo kid post.

2007-08-17T04:02:36Z

This was originally a response to this post, but I figured it deserved its own post.

It's hard to express how much having a child has changed my outlook on life. For the vast majority of my life, I simply didn't care. I knew I was smart enough to survive, pretty much no matter what I did; and that was good enough for me. What good is having a nice car/house/etc. if you can't enjoy it? So I did whatever I wanted, which was mostly reading books, or nothing. There was no reason to otherwise...it didn't make sense to work hard for something when that "something" isn't going to mean as much as the time you could have had.

Now, however, my priorities are different. Why work a steady job? Why buy a house? Why care about politics or the environment? So your child can have things to play with, a yard to play in, a country and world that are worth living in. Having a child has given me a sense of purpose which I've never felt before.

Why have a child? Because otherwise, what is your lasting contribution to the world? What difference does anything you do make in 50 or 100 years? I suppose if I was more talented or lucky, I could say that I was going to change the world...but the reality is that I'm not especially intelligent or gifted, all I can contribute in the grand scheme of things is what I pass on to my child(ren). It's about legacy.

Sure, if I didn't have a child, who cares? I'd live my life to make myself happy, i.e. doing as little as possible. Maybe you find satisfaction in doing things for their own sake, but I (and I suspect a lot of other people) need a purpose.

Having a child is your chance to shape the future. I know how much my childhood experiences shaped me, and the thought that everything I do in the next 15 or 20 years is going to affect my child in the same way is a tremendous responsibility. It's the closest I'll come to making a difference in the world.

Of course, it's hard work...harder work than anything I've done before, for sure. Of course parents are underappreciated and overworked...it's a tough job, but it's the most important thing you can do. It's a real man's job to be a good father, and a real woman's job to be a good mother. It's not easy, and it's not meant to be. It's at times unrewarding and endlessly frustrating. In the end though, it's completely worth it.