Nov 6

Hello All,

If you are reading this you probably know me personally in some way, otherwise you wouldn’t have found your way here.  I’ve had this blog for a little while and I voice my opinions on it with no filter.  Up until, well just now I guess, I have been concerned with who reads my blog to a certain extent.  I haven’t told anyone in my family about it, and really haven’t told any of my friends other than the few that I know usually agree with me, or are open to differing views, or are on the internets all day long.

I haven’t necessarily tried to keep it a secret, but in a few cases I have gone out of my way to conceal it.  For example, Janet was just in the hospital and I made her a blog so people could track her status.  I purposely didn’t put it anywhere linking to/from this site because I knew the people who read it would have different opinions (you can read all about that in a post I made earlier, here).

So why I decided to do this, and why I spammed the link to everyone I know, was to take a step forward and say “this is what I think about stuff, and I like you people so I don’t care if you know it”.  I just read a news report about an atheist in the army who feels he is harrassed by others because of his non-beliefs.  He stood up for his rights and is fighting his superiors on that issue.  I don’t think my situation is similar to his at all, and I actually don’t even know how true his circumstances are.  No one harrasses me, I’m not trying to stand up and fight the power, etc.,  but just reading that type of story convinced me that I shouldn’t be scared to voice my opinions.  I don’t think any of you are oppressive, and I’m not doing this to try and rub my opinions in your face.  If you don’t want to read them, click here.  So please don’t take this as me being aggressive.

A few notices first:

  • if you are easily offended, you probably don’t want to read any of my posts, most aren’t intentionally offensive, but my sense of humor leans on the offensive side and some are intentionally offensive because I find it entertaining to get a rise out of people.
  • if you are already bored with this post, maybe try another, they aren’t all this annoying, or go to youtube
  • i won’t be offended if you never come back or didn’t even read this far
  • i won’t be offended if you put comments that disagree with me, but i would appreciate intelligent, fact based arguments.  or comedy.
  • hopefully this doesn’t make you hate me
So let’s end this post with the real reason I made it in the first place.  Things about me that I’m not ashamed of:
I am an atheist.
I am vulgar and a bit of a potty mouth.  I usually tone it down in public, but not here.
I make jokes about religion.
I talk about programming quite a bit because I’m a computer nerd.
I am open to discussion/re-convincing on any of my opinions.  
I don’t get angry if I’m proven wrong.
Oct 6

Lets be honest, age isn’t the best barometer to determine if a person should be trusted with alcohol.  I know 10 year olds who would be more responsible with drinking than a lot of 40 year olds.  So why in the US is 21 the magic number where we decide people can drink?  We do a lot of stuff by age here, so I guess we are just used to it.

A better way, would be to allow people access to alcohol until they prove they can’t handle it.  If they can’t handle it, they don’t get it anymore, no matter what age.  Obviously there would be a starting age, and I think it should be younger than 21.  How many people can honestly raise their hand to say “I had my first drink of alcohol on or after my 21st birthday?”  Put your hands down highschoolers, you are lying because your parents are in the room.

Here is how it works, when you go in to a store/bar/etc. to purchase alcohol, they swipe your driver’s license.  It tells them if you are allowed to buy alcohol.  If you have a DUI/DWI you can’t.  Maybe not forever, but at least for a time, you can’t.  If you ever committed a felony, like raped a child, you can’t, because you should be in jail and I hate you.  If you are under a certain age, lets say 18, you can’t.

But what about XYZ way of getting around it?  You can get around being under 21 and drinking in all the same ways, so it isn’t perfect, but it is better than our current system.  Instead of waiting until a drunk driver has gotten 5 DWIs, installed a breathalyzer in his car, endangered countless people, etc., he just isn’t allowed to buy alcohol for 1 year after his first DWI.  Instead of looking at some 16 year old with an expired driver’s license from their older brother, you swipe it and it shows you that it’s expired and they can’t buy alcohol.

In order to be allowed by TABC to serve alcohol, you have to install a machine that swipes DLs and connects to a network with this information.  If you get caught serving people who fail the check, or not checking at all, you get a fine, just like before with underaged drinkers.  Yes this means law enforcement has to be a little more cooperative in sharing data from local to national level, but that needs to happen anyway.

Like I said, it isn’t perfect, but I think it is better than the current system.

Oct 6

So when I last left this topic, I had 3 variations of congratulating people on sucking.  Today I would like to add 2 more.  They are only minor variations, but they have been pretty prevalent lately so I felt they deserved their own designation.

First: Congratulation you used to suck REALLY BADLY, now you just suck a little less.  Your name is Sarah Palin.  Sarah Palin decided to do only a couple of interviews prior to the VP debate.  Apparently this was a good strategy on her part.  First off, she sucked hard core in these interviews.  If you haven’t seen them, I recommend not watching them ever.  They will make you hurt inside.  But the reason this was a good strategy is because they set her bar for intelligent conversation very low.  Then when it came time for the debate, everyone thought “wow she has no chance”.  During the debate she continued sucking by avoiding questions, at one point the moderator actually re-asked a question and said “do you want to respond to my actual question at all? here is your chance.”  I think she only answered one question asked to her, and I mention it below.  Awesome.  When they call it a “debate” Palin thought they really mean “i ask you a question, you spout your pre-drafted propaganda, we all get a little dumber.”  She continued sucking by lying, a lot.  One example: “Palin, will any McCain/Palin promises have to be turned back on due to recent economic developments?”  Here was her chance to say “Yes, we will not veto all pork barrel spending like we originally promised, because we just broke that promise when McCain voted for the bailout, which contained tons of earmarks and pork barrel spending.  Thanks for giving me that opportunity to come clean to the nation and not be a douchebag.”  Instead, first she responded with something not relevant to the question, then she lied and said “Nope, we will keep all of our promises including getting the country back on its feet by getting this bailout passed.”  If you are going to lie to me about not lying, don’t mention something you lied about in your promise to not lie.  So when the debate was all over, what were all the media discussing (at least Middle Eastern, French, British, and American ones that I saw)?  How Palin came off looking good because she sucked less than when interviewed by Katie Couric.  One French reporter hit it dead on when he said “Palin sucked so bad before the debate that anything short of saying ‘I poop on America’ would be a win”.  That is paraphrased.  Another reporter from BBC said “she came out looking attractive with a nice dress and a big smile, she kept smiling the whole time and looked at the camera.  She also held a baby at the end, I’ve never seen that in a debate.”  If the only way you can make it sound like she didn’t perform horribly is by pointing out things unrelated to the actual debate, you just proved she was horrible.  Finally a reporter from Darfur said “I wish these people would stop murdering my entire population so that I could watch the VP debates.  I think Palin relates to me because of her accent and folksy jargon.”  I made that last one up, but I’m sure that’s what they would have said.  So by sucking so badly prior to the debates, and then sucking only marginally less during the debate because she could read from notecards, Sarah Palin tricked several members of the media, and probably half the U.S. population into thinking she didn’t lose.

Second: Self-congratulations we used to suck REALLY BADLY, now we just suck a little less.  Your name is Senate.  Notice the subtle difference.  In this scenario, no one congratulates you on sucking, so you have to do it yourself.  Congress (which includes the Senate, for those who didn’t take government in high school) recently dropped to the lowest approval rating in Gallup poll history (18%) so I think there is no question about the ‘you used to suck REALLY BADLY’ part.  However, they just passed the bailout, err excuse me ‘financial rescue package’ bill.  So are congratulations in order?  According to the senators, they are.  They made a huge deal about how “this is the senate at its best” and “this issue was so important that we rose above party politics for a solution” and “senate rules, house drools”  and “i’m a rich old guy that just gave out a bunch of your money to other rich old guys, yay me!”.  The main problem I have with this is the fact that they are patting themselves on the back for getting one small part of their job accomplished.  That part is ‘passing a bill’.  It’s not even saying they passed the right bill, they just passed a bill.  If this is the senate at its best, then its worst must be on par with the guys from Jackass.  They also seem to think it is a good thing that for once they were able to ‘reach across the aisle’ (could we constantly repeat a gayer analogy for ‘work together with both parties’, no, no we couldn’t) and get both parties to agree on something.  So senate, you are saying that usually you don’t give a shit about the country or the issue, as long as you vote opposite the other party?  Awesome, please represent me.

So here is a thought, maybe instead of getting all excited over sucking, we could do things a little bit differently.  First, McCain could have put his country first (which is a good trait in the job he is running for) and chosen a running mate that isn’t a slap in the face to america, instead of just trying to play politics to win the election.  I don’t know if it is more disconcerting to me that he chose Palin, or that almost half the country doesn’t mind that he chose Palin.  Second, our elected representatives could come down one notch on the douchebag scale and actually try to get results instead of just passing blame when nothing is accomplished or even worse, giving themselves false congratulations to pretend something is accomplished.

Sep 27
Jesus cures the sick
icon1 meezy | icon2 religion | icon4 09 27th, 2008| icon33 Comments »

My wife Janet has been sick/in the hospital with a pretty serious, and as yet unknown, illness since 2 Wednesday’s ago. In order to streamline the update process, I wanted to throw up a quick blog where I could post her status. At first I just added a page on my current blog called Janet’s Status. I did this because I already have wordpress installed, and it was just config changes. Then I got to thinking about it and decided because most of the people wanting her status were religious, I should create a new blog so that they wouldn’t wander on to my blog and see my posts that were derisive toward religion.

Let me repeat that. Because I was afraid to make a page showing Janet’s recovery status anywhere near my religious opinions, I spent an extra effort setting up a new domain name, new wordpress installation and new database. Now granted, that stuff took maybe 20 minutes so it’s not like I moved a mountain, but still I am a little disappointed in myself for giving deference once again to religion. If I had posted anti-nascar or anti-baseball (check) then I wouldn’t have had any problem if someone stumbled on my opinions.

That being said, most of the comments (greater than 90%) referenced god/jesus/religion in one form or another. It still surprises me how much religion comes to the forefront during times of crisis. I knew most of our friends/familly considered themselves christian, but I was still amazed how the focus of most comments was praying, etc.

Apparently Jesus hated Janet for a week and a half and, only after enough praying, was convinced to finally stop punishing her. Everyone prays for Jesus to heal, but no one acknowledges the fact that if Jesus exists and controls illness, then he is just a flat out asshole for making her so incredibly sick for over a week.

Don’t get me wrong, Janet and I both very much appreciated everyone’s comments and nice, encouraging words. We have a large and supporting network of friends, family, family friends, and friend’s families. So many people offered to help any way they could/we needed. Fortunately things went smoothly enough that I didn’t have to take too many people up on that offer. It was just a snap back to reality in seeing so many references to religion.

I don’t think I really have a point here, just wanted to voice my surprise at the pervasiveness of religion. I guess I had been living in my own atheistic world, and having religion affront me so blatantly was unexpected and almost offensive. I guess I just found the point I thought I didn’t have - now that I have rambled on so much - so here it is:

I went out of my way to hide my atheistic religious views so as not to accidentally offend people, and those exact people were very quick to voice their christian religious opinions without a second thought. Why the double standard? I guess that it usually the way it is with majority/minority opinions. It’s ok to voice your opinion as long as it is in the majority.

Feel free to comment and let me know if you would have handled it any differently.

Sep 20
The Worst Ever
icon1 meezy | icon2 facts, profane, random | icon4 09 20th, 2008| icon31 Comment »
  1. PT Cruiser:

    The only things worse than the guy who designed this car are the people who signed off on its production and the 9 people who bought one.
  2. Baseball:

    This is by far the most boring sport (golf has Tiger Woods so they’re ok) and to top that off, they stretch the game length out by having short bursts of activity (10 seconds) surrounded by guys standing around for 5 minutes. The shortest baseball game on record was 7 hours and 10 minutes, look it up. In order to play you can be overweight, and only succeed at your job of getting a hit 20% of the time. If you fail a little less than 2/3rds of the time (even after taking performance enhancing drugs) you are considered a god.
  3. Dick Cheney:

    This one probably could have just been ‘The Bush Administration’, but this guy is a bit of a stand out. Somehow while he was heading up the committee to find a VP for GWB, he failed to think it would be a conflict of interest if the guy they chose for VP was a CEO for a company that would get $10 billion in government contracts thanks to the war he helped start by spreading false information. Oh, by the way, his committee decided to choose himself. While his Halliburton illegal-ness (I’ll quit as CEO for $20 million and then give you $10 billion in no-bid contracts where you can fail and get even more contracts) is somewhat (like barely) hearsay, his refusal to obey the law isn’t. He refused to release documents required by congress while fighting to extend the power of the executive branch by challenging laws put in place by congress to oversee the president (bye bye checks and balances, hello dictatorship). He also supports forms of torture considered illegal in U.S. laws and international treaties. Even though he likes to start wars so much, he doesn’t like to fight in them, just make money off of them. He dodged the Vietnam draft 5 times saying “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service.” I bet this guy did too. I’ve also heard he likes to eat babies while shooting his friends in the face.
  4. Spandex:

    Not a whole lot needs to be said here. Maybe I’m being too harsh on the fabric, maybe its more an issue with people’s decision making skills. Either way, its like locking up your guns to protect you child from shooting himself. If that guy didn’t have access to spandex, he would have chosen sweat pants. Now I’m not trying to be rude to fat people, I am also too fat to wear spandex. So I don’t wear it. I wear t-shirts.

  5. Standard Units:

    6. This is the division of countries for/against Metric before and after World War II.


    This is now:

    At least we are still measuring things against sizes of a human body part. Can someone please tell me what the length of 1 Rod is? One time the US wanted to be a leader in the scientific world, so we shot the Mars Orbiter 4x too fast into the atmosphere of Mars because we use ‘US Customary Units’. Awesome.

  6. Catholicism:

    Catholicism has a long and sordid history of supporting the Nazi’s, molesting young children, covering up the molesting young children, moving to another parish and molesting more young children, making up ‘edicts from god’ that are politically and personally motivated, oppressing people, brainwashing children and adults, resisting critical thinking, resisting scientific progress, swindling people out of their money, and controlling people through fear. Now those attributes aren’t all unique to Catholicism, but I just chose it among other religions/denominations because it stands out for its achievements in these areas.

So these things are in no particular order, and I actually had about 2-3 more that I wanted to include, but this post is long enough already.  Not long like too much reading, long like it took me longer than 5 minutes to make.  Also, I just previewed it in my current theme and it looks like a blind 2 year old cut things from a magazine and pasted them on my webpage, so this thing might be unreadable until I get a new theme.

Sep 16

In case you don’t know, antlr (ANother Tool for Language Recognition) is a parser generator framework.  It lets you specify a language using a grammar and then it can output the source code for actually compiling and executing that language.  I won’t go in to too much detail about how ANTLR works or how languages and grammars work, one because I’m not an expert (CS classes were a long time ago) and two because google can easily tell you the answer.  The main point of this is that ANTLR can then output that source code in a number of different target languages.

It has support for several (Java, C, C++, ruby, javascript, etc.), but is lacking support for Objective-C in the most recent version.

Well I have started trying to update the Objective-C target stuff.  This has and will be a learning experience, but here are the things to note so far:

  1. I don’t know Objective-C
  2. Objective-C is used mostly by Apple devices (Mac, IPhone) and I have no Apple devices
  3. Adding a target language implementation to ANTLR3 is pretty straight forward except for items 1 and 2
The good news is I have just made a simple calculator language (recognizes numbers, whitespace, and the 4 basic math operations) which is the language version of hello world, and antlr spit out the source code in what I believe to be valid Objective-C.
The bad news is I have no way of compiling that Objective-C to see if it is in fact valid source code.  I’m currently getting some windows ports of several things needed to run it (gcc, GNUStep, magic). I also don’t know Objective-C syntax very well so I don’t have it actually outputing any semantic meaning into the source.  This means my source parses 4 + 4 and knows it needs to call a method (send a message, wtf ever objC) with 2 numbers that adds, but doesn’t output the actual code for that method.  
So this should be interesting, I’ll keep you guys (imaginary people who read my blog) posted on my progess, and if I ever actually get the Objective-C target working for ANTLR, I’ll release it back to folks.
Side note: I know its dumb that I’m trying to do this on windows, “at least use linux” you say, but I have my reasons, none of which are technical.  I’m also aware that Objective-C is just an extension of C and can be compiled by gcc, but the main reason you use it is because of the libraries and those are mostly (other than ghetto ports mentioned above) available on Apple stuff.  So if anyone wants to donate a Mac and/or IPhone that would be great.
Sep 16

Ever seen this error:
com.google.gwt.user.client.rpc.SerializationException: Type ‘your.class.Type’ was not included in the set of types which can be serialized by this SerializationPolicy or its Class object could not be loaded. For security purposes, this type will not be serialized.

Or this error:
Error: Type ‘your.class.Type’ was not serializable and has no concrete serializable subtypes

It can be caused by multiple reasons, but if you feel like you have done everything correctly (included source in GWT’s classpath during compilation, implement Serializable, google searched, prayed to the god of your choice) then you probably have the problem I had.  your.class.Type doesn’t have a default constructor.

So if your class has no default constructor (one that takes no arguments), add it and try again.  If that doesn’t fix it, and you find out what else is wrong, please post it as a comment here.

Also as an added bonus tip, when google searching for errors, your error usually is of the pattern: “something common to all errors of this type” “something specific to my project” “some more common stuff”.  Like in this error you have common stuff:
com.google.gwt.user.client.rpc.SerializationException: Type

Then specific stuff: 
‘your.class.Type’

Then more common stuff:
was not included in the set of types which can be serialized by this SerializationPolicy or its Class object could not be loaded. For security purposes, this type will not be serialized.

The way to search for that is take your stuff and replace it with an asterisk (*) and put the whole thing in quotes and google will wildcard your specific stuff and you will get better results.  So a good way to search for this error would be (trimming because google only lets you search 32 words):
“com.google.gwt.user.client.rpc.SerializationException: Type * was not included in the set of types which can be serialized by this SerializationPolicy”

Hope either of those things help someone.

Aug 18

Completely ignoring my last post, which said I will make more technical posts, here is an opinionated post about the world.

There are several instances of our society putting pressure on schools/parents/<insert authority figure> to coddle people.  Give everyone a participation award.  No one gets first place because that singles out the losers.  Don’t make Fatty McFat Fat take responsibility for eating McDonalds everyday, it’s McD’s fault.  I sneezed, I better take 15 prescription drugs that are advertised to me.  My kid doesn’t like homework, better give him some medication.

These are all instances of fail on a national level.  But this isn’t even the worst of it.  It is one thing to ignore the fact that some people are losers, but even worse, now we award it.

First example, congratulating people who fuck up really badly but it could have been a little worse.  A SWAT team raids the wrong house and the home owner, rightfully so, thinks his family is being robbed.  He freaks out (probably shits his pj’s) and shoots at them, giving minor injuries to 3 officers (shrapnel hit their protective gear).  Then the SWAT team gets honored for performing bravely under fire.  Let’s break this down.  SWAT team makes huge effin mistake and raids an innocent person’s home.  This is breaking the law last time I checked.  Otherwise we should just let the police raid any home they want, and then if they don’t find anything “oh my bad, I meant to raid a drug dealer’s house.  As you were little 9 y.o. girl who will have nightmares for the rest of her life”.  Next, super luckily, no one was killed on either side.  At this point the right thing to do is to say “We owe this family some sort of restitution, the people involved with the mixup need to be punished, and we need to change certain protocols to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”  Instead they said “sorry we F’d your house and life, but our guys did a great job of not killing you, so we will give them awards”.  This is like congratulating someone who has already shit their pants for not shitting them the second time.

Next example, congratulating people on a miraculous acheivement when they totally fuck up, but then make a turn around.  This one is slightly different from the previous one because these people are celebrated more than someone who doesn’t fuck up and is just a badass from the beginning.  These stories usually have jesus, a warm cup of cocoa and crying.  Josh Hamilton was a good baseball player.  Then he F’d over his life by doing drugs.  Then through the graciousness of jesus (who apparently hated Josh for a while when he made him do drugs and ruin his life) he was able to come back and be an above average baseball player.  Therefore JOSH HAMILTON ROCKS!!!!!!  I gotta be honest, I didn’t completely read this story because it has my 3 least favorite things in the world: baseball, rewarding shittiness, and attributing only good things to religion.  But let’s break down what I skimmed over.  Everyone thought J.H. would be the shit so he was drafted high.  He did ok, but didn’t amount to much because he did drugs all the time (OMG he has 26 tattoos).  Bottom line, as much shit as this guy got in to, he should be in jail.  Illegal drugs, drunk driving, drug suspensions from MLB.  Instead, he is now back to playing decent baseball for a decent (tettering on 500) team.  He did hit 28 homeruns in one round of the home run derby, only to lose (but he got congrationlations on losing, see last example).  If we compare his life and achievements to say (to stay in the baseball realm) Cal Ripken Jr., then we shouldn’t be singing J.H.’s praises, we should be calling him a douchebag that makes more money than he is worth.  Giving extra rewards to someone for fucking up their life but eeking out a turn around is like paying your worst employee a bonus the one time he shows up to work not late.

Last example, rewarding someone for not winning.  Funny enough J.H. falls in this category too with his home run derby P.E.  But a better example is our current president.  He was rewarded for almost winning the election by becoming president so that he could build up arguably the worst administration in the history of the United States and dump tax money to large affiliated corporations like it was going out of style.  I only say arguably because some people would argue, but its true.  Then he almost won the war in Iraq and he was rewarded with a Mission Accomplished party, and yet we seem to have accomplished nothing besides dumping a lot of money, life, and international credibility down the drain.  Then he almost won at working 40 hours a week, and was rewarded by taking more vacation than any other president ever.  So congratulation GWB, you are awesome at not winning.

I don’t really have a closing to this.  Only a minor call to action.  The next time you see/read/hear someone being rewarded for overall shittiness, stand up, look them in the eye and say “I’ve got your reward right here!” and then punch them in the face and/or genitalia.

Aug 18
Bait and Switch
icon1 meezy | icon2 random | icon4 08 18th, 2008| icon32 Comments »

I use bait and switch in the loosest possible terms.  What I really mean is ‘domain name change/theme change/lost my old posts — I changed my blog’.  I think I only baited 1 or 2 people in to reading my blog.  And I’m switching it to a new domain because I like this one better and the other one I’m not going to pay for anymore.

I’m a pretty infrequent poster, but this time I’m going to try and focus more on technical posts.  Or at least try to post them more frequently.  We will see how that goes.

Sep 14

It has only been 3 short days since the Twin Towers attacks and I can already predict a lot of naysayers, especially people at the JREF will try and convince people that psychics are fake because no one predicted the events of 9/11.  I’m seeing a name, it is something like Steve or Stephen.  I also see a computer, it looks like a PackardBell.  I’m thinking Steve Bell or Stephen Packard.  What, no one named Steve Bell blogs on the JREF site? OK, yep it is definitely Stephen Packard.

Well here is what I have to say to you Stephen Packard — You shut your mouth, you have no idea how hard it is to be a psychic.  First I had to pay for my certification.  And then wait 5 whole business days.  Plus the “specialties” selection was just a radio button, so it took me at least 20 minutes deciding which was my most powerful specialty.  Was it voodoo, or psychic detective work, or spell-casting?  I’m so good at all of them.  Luckily I foresaw that problem with the application and I spent my 20 minutes deciding well before I even reached the page.

Then, I had to enhance my abilities so that I could accurately predict things.  Maybe not everyone is as dedicated as I am.  Maybe they didn’t remember to “start and end [their] sessions with a small prayer”.  Maybe that is why they didn’t predict the 9/11 attacks.

Or maybe they were just afraid of being made fun of.  Like always.  It is almost impossible to make a prediction without letting a few ‘pew pew pew‘ noises slip out.  Do you know how embarrassing it would have been to say “Na nananananana - A terrorist attack is coming on 9/11 pew pew pew pew” on national TV?  No one would have believed us anyway.

So in summation.  FU JREF and FU Stephen Packard for claiming my powers don’t exist.  I bet you will feel really foolish writing this article 8 years from now and then seeing that I predicted it all the way back here in 2001.

*No tricks were used in the making of this blog post.  I promise, and you can trust me, I’m a psychic.

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