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Eminem, word geek
As a geek who experienced being a social outcast, and eventually found a group of people I feel at home with, I can relate to Eminem's song "Legacy". Have a listen (4:56). To summarize the lyrics:
Verse 1:
I used to be the type of kid that would always think the sky is fallin'
Why am I so differently wired? Am I a martian?Eminem goes on to ( Read more... ) -
A common name
I didn't used to think my name was common. Data from the 1990 census indicates 0.041% of the U.S. population shares my surname (258th most common[1]). It looks to have slipped to #371 in the 2000 census [2 ( Read more... ) -
A few thoughts from this morning
A few things I thought of this morning, in the order they occurred to me.
On music:
First, I bought every Insomnium album that was on Amazon. They're a Finnish melodic death metal band. The past few weeks at work I've been listening to various melodic death metal playlists, starting with the band names I could remember like In Flames and Amon ( Read more... ) -
Grumpy old man
The older I get the more some little things seem to annoy me. For instance, when products made in 2014 don't obey user interface principles known for 20+ years. When I take an action (push a button, click, etc.) a well-designed UI presents instant feedback to let me know the action was received ( Read more... ) -
On knowing what you're measuring
So someone on reddit read this blog entry on why you shouldn't use linked lists for number crunching, and was very concerned with "locality of reference".
It smelled fishy to me, mostly based on what exactly the blog author was measuring, so I spent some time last night and tonight experimenting. I found that a large cost was the time spent in ( Read more... ) -
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The Wall Street Journal editorial page is always funny. In this case, they celebrate Texas's loose government, lack of regulations, tort reform, etc., as bringing in huge job growth.
And then casually mention a regulation:He cited a rule in place since 1998 in the backwash of the S&L debacle that limits mortgage borrowing to 80% of the appraised ( Read more... ) -
The itch, it is reduced.
I've had issues with dandruff for years. Head and Shoulders and Selsun Blue and others would help but I'd still itch. In the past few years I've kept my hair very short since it cuts down on the itching.
Now for some science:
Dandruff is caused by a yeast/fungus that feeds on the oily secretions of the scalp. The oils are secreted by the ( Read more... ) -
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I went over to the new house on Saturday and again this morning. The kitchen has been ripped out, and this morning the electrician is doing his work, and was asking about where we wanted lights. I asked him to run some cat5 to a few places too ( Read more... ) -
Screen time
William and Xander are sitting in front of the computer, which has a background image of two clownfish swimming in an anemone. They're playing with Lego ships they built, and W decided to mount a rescue mission for the fishes since they're being attacked by "the green things ( Read more... )