House of the rising Moonglum

Branson has finally unveiled the mothership for his new space flight venture. That in and of itself isn’t so exciting, especially given the state of the economy and where I believe we are headed in the near future, however the technologies being improved for this venture are potentially extremely valuable. The lightweight banded composites, and more efficient lifting designs will certainly be useful as fuel becomes more and more expensive.

I will be much more excited when they have the Space Ship 2 ready to go.

There was a recent attempt to repeal the Cook County tax hike. It failed of course (same people same time, not sure how they expected it to go through), but we got a great Stroger quote out of the deal: “Until this place falls apart, then I’ll step up and say ‘I screwed that up.’ Until then, I’m doing a damn good job.” There is a world of difference between “good job” and “screwed up”. Couldn’t he at least say he is doing ok? A damn good job though. The man is completely deluded.

Edited to add: And the hits keep on coming.

The Atlantic has a great article on the background of the chevy Volt. It is a really great article and spends as much time talking about the politics and advertising behind it as it does the engineering. I really hope it does succeed and that GM is really able to back it and not wimp out like it did with the Saturn. GM and the US need this car to succeed.

Apparently the Society for Creative Rock Anachronism is a real band. !! Who knew?

Just…. wow.

(Spoilers for Iron Man and The Dark Knight.)

Comparing Iron Man to Batman, two of the most testosterone induced movies ever, which is more feminist? Ha, ok, neither. Comic books have a well known problem, women in refrigerators. For those who don’t know it basically means that it sucks to be a woman in a comic book. You don’t get agency (true in much of pop culture anyway) and you end up motivating the hero or villain with your death. This translates regularly into the movies as well. Given that we have two of the more … womanizing? … heros this summer I have amused myself doing a compare and contrast.

In my opinion Iron Man from the comics is historically the more of the womanizing testosterone fest. I mean they have always both been playboy millionaires, but Tony Stark always seemed to get around more than Bruce Wayne. In the movie rendition or Iron Man he certainly still gets around, however the women are (mostly) all self motivated, not just scenery. The one who sleeps with him does it for her own purposes and gets what she wants out of it (modulo a catty back and forth with Pepper). And Pepper not only manages to NOT end up in bed with her boss (I TOTALLY thought they were going twist her around to have her end up with Stark in the end) but she is excellent at her job and even saves the day. Mind you, she is still the side kick, but she is the one who gets the SHIELD good squad, and who operates the Deus Ex Machina. Also, stark is driven by his own past crimes, not a dead woman.

In The Dark Knight on the other hand, all the women do is motivate the men by being held captive or killed. (Or going out with another man and having their own plans thwarted by “well meaning” men.) In my (probably incorrect) memory Batman always had a bit more gender equality than Iron Man, but here the only thing they do is get dangled off of buildings or have knives held to their throats. Or lain out on a boat in almost no clothing to be ogled by dirty old men. No, really. But back to the main characters, a quote from Gyllenhaal herself sort of describes it[1], “Of course, if you’re the girl in Batman, you’re going to be a damsel in distress to some extent but she’s a really great character.” Sad thing is, in the comics, it was just the acid burns that drove Dent insane in the comics as IIRC Rachel didn’t even exist.

Having said all of that, Batman was the much better movie, while Iron Man was a rollicking good time. The acting was amazing, and the tropes didn’t get in the way for me, but these particular issues are not my issues, so YMMV. (Aaaaaand… they appear to have made the Watchmen into a movie!!!)

[1] Totally stolen from Wikipedia, I so do not read that website.

Let me start by saying that I love our new car. We were on this waiting list that was supposed to go until November, but apparently since we wanted the less expensive version, and were more open to all the different choices (color etc) we got pushed way up front in the line and ended up getting our car in July. Pretty awesome.

(… picture here forthcoming …)

Having gotten that out of the way, allow me to expound on the problem with car dealers[1]. The problem is that they spend so much time screwing with you, that when they actually do make a real mistake (as opposed to just messing with your head) you immediately look for the way in which they are trying to squeeze more money out of you. Like a lemon. A money lemon.

The thing about it is, it has to make their job more miserable as well. I mean I am a pretty even keeled person who is pretty easy to roll (personally, not professionally) but when I get a call from them claiming that I didn’t pay enough money FOR THE CAR I ALREADY BOUGHT, I immediately am yelling at the guy “DUDE NOT COOL!”. Idiots.

Turns out the slip they gave the service department had a different number than the actual receipt we had. I suppose this is better than them not installing the correct feature. I really do think it was a clerical error on their part. But still. Maybe look into it a little before calling the customer.

[1] This is a long, but extremely well written account of life as a car salesman. I really enjoyed reading it, and it actually made me feel a bit better towards car salesmen. (And yes it is men. If there was ever a more testosterone induced job, I don’t know what it is. Arms dealers maybe?) The article also armed me to deal a bit better with this most recent purchase experience. (Heh, hunting down the dealer while he was killing time to make us sweat was pretty fun. In retrospect.)

You can go back, but you can’t go back home. I don’t know how many Infolabbers still read this blog, but it looks like they are tearing down the old 1890 Maple, and putting up a Trader Joe’s. Not quite swapping paradise for a parking lot, but it still does kind of make me sad.

Honeybees are disappearing. Watch this video to learn about how bees communicate with each other through their special dances, and how they are disappearing.

Wil Shipley, programmer of awesomeness like Delicious Library had a recent post about a truly impressive crasher and data loss bug. The article is worth it in and of itself, however, the real beauty of this article is in his opinion of computer science PhD students.

These are, in my opinion, probably from computer science PhD students who believe in a perfect world of provable programming and the Easter Bunny. Here in the realm of actually making money, if running your program causes a user’s computer to crash, she doesn’t care if it’s Apple’s “fault” — she’s going to post all over the interwebs that your program sucks, and ask you for her money back. Now, since you’re not a PhD student, you like money, so this is bad.

This is SO TRUE. This is everything that was wrong with grad school wrapped up into one nice little nugget.

Also, the article has a pretty good analysis of how to diagnose and treat software bugs. Triage, backup, reproduce, before even looking at code. (Admittedly I normally reproduce in unit tests, but that is generally before looking at the suspect code.)

Recently saw The Omega Man “I Am Legend”. It was totally awesome. If you like zombie movies you should see it. Two items I need to mention however. First: my wife said the zombies did not eat nearly enough brains. They spent all their time leaping thirty feet in the air when they should have been lumbering about moaning on about brains. Second: I apparently have seen too many post apocalypse movies. At one point he is wandering around the ruins of NYC, and I said, “There has to be a lion that jumps out and scares us at some point here. I mean it is NYC after the apocalypse!” And no more than three seconds later, there was a lion! This movie has it all, zombies AND the apocalypse. What could be better? (Admittedly there were no monster men to rock out with, but plenty of Marley.)

(Also saw Iron Man, which also totally rocked, but in a completely different way. I Am Legend was a pretty serious movie which was actually quite depressing at points, while I Am Iron Man was just a rollicking, unabashedly testosterone heavy, roller coaster ride of a movie.)

The Colbert Report word of the day “honored” George Carlin for banning 7 words. Awesome.

The government takes money from us (taxes) to deliver services (mail). My mail sucks. They never deliver to the correct address, sometimes sticking it in the wrong box in the building, sometimes the wrong building on the street. It also appears, however, that the government also misplaces my taxes. I pay my quarterly taxes every quarter, since I am self-employed. However about half way through the next year I often (this is three times now) get a letter from the Dept. of Revenue fining me for not paying every quarter. I suppose there is some symmetry there. If they can’t keep track of the money I give them, why should they be able to keep track of the letters that others send me?

(FWIW, the checks always clear, they just aren’t credited to my account. Solution? More work for me. Come up with the front and back of the canceled check(s), and write them a letter pleading my case. UGH. First time wasn’t bad, second time was less fun, at this point it is becoming downright tiresome. If they aren’t even going to get it right, why do they make me do the quarterlies?!?! Grrr.)