Monday: Quarantine Day 3

I am not productive at home.  Between all the notifications and things happening, it's just not easy to get things done.  Tomorrow is the start of our conference, so I'll at least be justifiably unproductive.  It also doesn't help that my code from last week didn't do the right thing.

I did get emergency cheesecake delivered.

Even though I'm not the biggest fan of cheesecake, it's super dense and fatty, and that was what I was looking for.  I also got four shallots instead of two big onions.  I will make do in this crisis.

In the game, I'm doing side quests.  Like this one where I escort a crocodile.

And where I stand on Ra's head.

• If the government keeps bailing out the airlines, then the government should own the fraction of the airlines that they're recapitalized.  This is how lending works.  In "socialism" it's called nationalization.  In "capitalism" it's bankruptcy.
• Penguins.
• I never had any doubt that the characters in Werewolf were terrorists.  Did other people?
• This is literally getting the answers to the exam before it happens.

Which leads to a point I've been thinking about recently:  math works because it's internally consistent.  Same with science; when things don't work consistently, that's a sign that something needs to be fixed, and more science done to solve the problem.  I've always kind of assumed my political ideas were largely the same: you need this government program in case of X, that for Y, another for Z.  Not only are those things the right things to do, but it solves the system of "making sure people are well cared for."  We currently seem to be in the middle of a bunch of right-wing fantasies falling apart, illustrating why 1) paid sick leave is good; 2) why income support is good; 3) why health care should be guaranteed.

Good.

Wednesday: Four boxes.

At this rate, I have about a week's worth of unpacking left to do.  Except I can't keep doing that, since I leave for Arizona this weekend.  And tomorrow I have to do computer stuff because I really want to decommission my big old computer as soon as possible, so I spent $700 on new computer stuff today.

Because no matter what, a brand new computer is always going to be "like $1000".  At least now I'm switching to a more distributed, cluster-like system.

Anyway, this is basically what four boxes of books looks like.

I think I need to shim one of my bookcases to keep it from tipping over before I load it up with more books.  It should also go faster now.  I think all of my books have been inserted into the catalog at this point, and although I still have some that are missing LOC numbers, the majority do.

• Squirrels.
• I'm going to need to do this at some point, so I need to get vinegar.
• Hopefully I'll be able to rip all my DVDs with this new system, so I can have always-available video without having to get off the couch.
• Instructions.

Sunday: I had a plan, and then spent an hour an a half wasting time before acting on it.

I finally got my car washed.  I thought "everybody will be doing something at the middle of the afternoon."  They were.  Getting car washes.

It was kind of a constant line the entire time I was there.

 But at least my car is slightly cleaner.  Then, late lunch.

I felt like getting something new, so French dip.

I also got m&c to have for dinner.  It was good, and tasted like they'd added garlic/the breadcrumb topping was made with garlicy bread.  Better than usual.

The gym had space as well.

So Gyarados.

Who's still there.

• I don't know enough about Spanish politics.  Reading up indicates they have an odd government structure.  It sounds like the problem is that Catalonia is basically a "California", and they don't like that they pay more in taxes than receive in benefits.  My understanding is that the Spanish government should have just ignored the process, and when it was over, declared it void, and avoided all the violence and bad publicity.
• I've been a bit less enthused about this season of R&M, but I did like this episode.  It felt more like a more grown up version of season 1.
• Angry water.

Thursday: TFW the day before you leave on vacation, you discover something is just all broken at work.

All broken.  I don't think I'm sorting that problem out before I leave.  Oh well.

And then someone was wrong on the internet, so I went to FRED to make a plot, then lost interest, because people are dumb.  The important point is that developed economies do not grow at huge rates, because they're developed.  The easy stuff is done, so you have to work extra hard to keep growing.  Countries that are rapidly modernizing, like China, have lots of room for growth, and therefore can support large growth rates.

• Cartoon Selina is still the best Selina.
• I didn't know this was a thing.

Wednesday: My phone did not die.

Party City is a weird place.  Most of the birthday party theme things have large vertical stripes of an aisle, with all the plates, cups, napkins, and decorations.  I saw this when I walked in, and figured that it would be easy to find Moana.  Right?  I walked down the aisle twice, the first time looking for the big dividing signs, the second looking at the faces on the plates (which are all on the same shelf).  Nothing.  I had to go and ask, and was told I was in the right place, but that it's at the very end of the aisle, on the left.

WTF.

Moana does not get a big display, it gets a shelf in the "stuff kids don't care about" section.  Tsum Tsums?  Emoji?  Whatever the fuck "PJ Masks" is?

So I got what I could, including the key lime green plasticware that they suggest on their webpage.

I didn't get the favor cup, but since I'm going to have to try and see if they get the plates restocked, I can always pick it up then.  They get deliveries on Tuesday and Friday.

Then I got dinner, and was concerned that my phone was going to die.

It didn't, and I also learned today that the Hamilton soundtrack is part of the free music that comes with Amazon Prime.  So I'll eventually hear it all.

• Remember when I went to the Women's March, and told you that Republican Minority Leader Beth Fukumoto was a good and decent person, and that all of my statements about Republicans being garbage excludes her, because she is a good and decent person?  They just removed her as minority leader, and she may switch to the Democrats.  Because Republicans are fucking garbage, and driving out good and decent people is kind of their thing.
• Eartha Kitt.
• Machete through.
• I have a long rant, but I can't make the words form correctly, so I'm just going to say nothing about this.
• Because fascists are by nature cowards.
• Mermaids.
• Henry Kissinger is a war criminal.
• This should be required reading/viewing/stage performance in school.
• The animation wage theft lawsuit was won.
• A chimpanzee found an abandoned Genet cat kitten and kept it as a pet.  In the wild.  It doesn't say if he was able to feed and sustain the kitten, but still.

Tuesday: I just don't know.

Today was supposed to be so good.  I mean, I got to sleep in.  Then, when I left, I had a tiny gecko friend on my car:

Tiny gecko friend, you should not be on my car! You could get hurt!

So I scooped him up with a piece of paper, but then he jumped onto my hand, and I panicked and flipped him off, but geckos are resilient, so he seemed ok.  Then I had to stomp around him while saying "boogie-boogie" to make him walk from behind my car to under the truck next to me, which is a safe place, because it's suspended and hasn't driven in years.

There may or may not have been a person who came into the parking garage while I was doing this.

And then I voted:

And I can post this because it's legal to do that in Hawaii.

I then had to go to the doctor, who told me "it's probably not a big deal," but not until after I had to go through the dual horrors of "eyedrops" and "having someone actually tap on your eyes with a thing made for tapping on eyes."  That is one of my biggest fears, and I hated every second of it.  Also: I probably should get new glasses, because they don't put gamma on eye charts.

Then I went to get lunch, and it was all fine:

Happy cute little frogs!

And yummy ramen!

And by the time I got home, everything fell apart and has been descending into chaos ever since.  I have no idea what's going to happen, because my default model of the world has "active racists" at like max 10%, and it now seems like the true number is something like 50%.  As far as I can tell, the end of civilization goes like this:

1. George Bush fails to win a second term in 1992 because he's not super popular, and a third party candidate eats up enough votes to knock him out.
2. This causes the Republican party to freak out, and decided they were cheated out of their rightful presidency, allowing lunatics to take over the party.
3. To the point where they attempt to impeach the usurper for having an affair, despite the fact that the Speaker of the House was actively having an affair, the Speaker who replaced him was having an affair, and the Speaker who replaced him molested students.  Children.  The guy being the morality police molested children.  Let that sink in for a moment.
4. Somehow this meant that Democrats had bad morals.
5. A bad president is then elected, largely due to the alleged "lack of difference" between the candidates.  He proceeds to ruin the economy, start a bunch of unpaid wars, and pass unneeded tax cuts for the wealthy.
6. Everyone loses a lot of money.
7. We elect Obama, and part of the country decides that despite common sense, he's going to try and destroy the country and kill them.  He instead makes it easier for people to get medical care.
8. That part of the country elects a useless Congress that opposes everything, on the principle that if nothing gets better, people will blame the President.
9. He gets elected again, and continues to not kill people or destroy the country.
10. People become increasingly terrified of an undistinguished "other," which eventually coalesces around "people who aren't white," who they feel are getting free things while they are being held back.
11. Gay people are allowed to exist, and after confirming that trans people do not spontaneously erupt into swarms of death bees, they are allowed to exist as well.
12. This sets the racists off even more, because they have to let people live without shame.  This cannot be allowed.
13. A terrible old man dies, but Congress refuses to let a perfectly qualified person replace him, because they can't stand the idea that gay people can exist.
14. Britain decides they'll try racism out as well, because why bother actually working on problems.
15. A sufficiently well distributed almost 50% of the country votes for a sexist moron who doesn't have any position other than "let the hate flow through you."
16. Because Hillary was cheated on?  Or was a lawyer?  Or had opinions?  I refuse to attempt to understand this level of sexism.

So now to speculate:

1. Nothing is done about climate change, and this is really the most major point, because at least we've doomed ourselves to die, so it's nice that there's punishment built in, even if the people who did this will probably die of natural causes first.
2. People decide it's perfectly ok to discriminate, and without a proper Supreme Court, there's nothing to stop this.
3. I am terrified of the number of people I follow on the internet that may not be alive because of this in the next 1/2/4/10 years.

And the worst part, is that nothing is going to get better for those racists anyway, because they reasons they're upset (gay people exist, black people are allowed to be president, women aren't property, jobs that once existed went away so the things those jobs once made can actually be affordable) aren't things that you can fix.

I'm torn about my trip to SFO later this month.  On the plus side, I get to see people I love, and be in a wonderfully diverse city.  On the negative side, I have to figure out some way to apologize for the hell world my generation and those before me are leaving to a wonderful little four year old.

There will be no more Pokemon links, because joy has fled, and only anguish awaits.

• So I got "Neutrois," which is fine, no problem, but I really had my heart set on "Taco".
• Fuck you, Glen Beck.  You were feeding those people lies to enrich yourself.
• I'm so sorry.
• This is why I've started trying to stand at a distance to people on elevators and things.  I know I might look scary, and I try to be as non-threatening as I can.  Do I sometimes make beep-boop sounds when I push elevator buttons?  Sometimes.  Usually only when I'm alone.
• I'm so sorry.
• So sorry.
• So very sorry.
• Fucking scum.
• Facts, but I guess that has never mattered anyway.
• Here are some dogs, because at least dogs are still wonderful.  I'm sorry, dogs.  We let you down, and you deserved better.  I mean, you've been with us since we started this civilization idea, and I know you'll stick with us to the end.

Friday: Time to spend the weekend doing a bunch of boring things.

I think I have all the plots done for my Monday talk.  I have them placed into slides, but all slides are untitled, and have a single other element: an item labeled "A".

First up, tldr Lovecraft:

• Title:  The Terrible Old Man
• Date:  1920
• Summary:  The Terrible Old Man is used to be a ship captain, and is also still totally a necromancer, and when three dummies try to rob him of all his pirate gold, he summons up ghost pirates to cutlass them in their stupid robbing faces.  Also the rest of them.  They get 100% murdered.
• Real Villain:  Assholes who try to rob you, and also call you the fucking 'Terrible Old Man.' Fuck them.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  4/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Next, Pokemon.

I caught a Golduck

And when I checked the local gym before leaving work, I discovered that CKxP is a cheater using multiple accounts.  How do I know?

Gee,

maybe this asshole,

should use unrelated names.

Finally, today was an exciting day for the election.  This thread is really good, and points out the obvious issues.  Plus wikileaks decided to dig themselves even further into irrelevance by pointing out that Hillary Clinton told business people that Japan doesn't have a military or nuclear weapons.  Which is obviously such a high level secret that Japan hid this information all the way in Article Nine of their own constitution.  

And of course, stupid people declared this treason.

• Pokemon.
• Fusions.
• Slowpoke.
• Not Pokemon.
• Have we talked about humpback whales beating up on killer whales?  They're like ocean police, helping other animals not get eaten.
• Friends.
• I don't know why I like these old house floor plan ads, but I do.
• Taco Bell.
• I flipped past this, and then realized that it's the Crystal Gems.
• Cards Against Humanity is just silly now.
• There's a squirrel in one picture.
• More political stuff, essentially stating that the reason the Democrats won't come up with Neo-Marx is that the party is comprised of so many individual interests that it's basically impossible.

Friday: This was the plan all week long.

After work, I was going to go get a burrito.

It is very hard to make the unicorn horn look normal.

There are three Pokestops near the burrito place, but only two of them can be hit all the time.  The third one depends on where the game places your trainer.

On the other hand, Target (the actual destination) only has one Pokestop, and it's only available by the entrance to the store.

The Target trip was mostly to get a few things that are easier to get at Target.  Also, I had to go back and get the check out lady to fix my total, because she scanned the $20 toilet paper cube twice.  I also decided to get a new shower curtain, because my current one is kind of old.  They didn't have the same "generic calm leaves" pattern, so I got a "stylized three-tone grey cityscape scene."  

"I should get new shower hooks to go with this new curtain."

Except no.

I have wonderful frog shaped hooks, and I was hoping to get either new frogs, or some similar "small animal" or "silly thing" theme.  But the kids shower curtain area (where I got the frogs) doesn't have hooks, and the hook section only has boring ass grown up ones.  Also: tacky ass hooks with giant fake gems.  Why do you hate fun, Target?

And the moon is full, and was out above the store, but I couldn't get my phone to set the exposure correct.

But this shot I took from home came out pretty decent.

I should level up tomorrow, I think.

I also spent fifteen minutes last night looking at book library apps again.  I found one that seems to work well, and has a good scanning and export capability.  I'm hoping to work through all my books this weekend, so I can finally have a proper catalog of what I have.  This was partially prompted by not knowing where one book is, and that led to a desire to organize things, and that to the idea of making the catalog and, pending shelf space I don't have magically appearing, organizing everything by Library of Congress call numbers.

The only problem with this is that the app doesn't do LoC numbers, and there doesn't seem to be a clean online mapper.  The actual LoC catalog returns the full call number for a given ISBN, but it doesn't seem to be complete (it didn't find my Yotsuba book).  This one seems to be more complete (it looks to be based on a survey of actual libraries), but doesn't supply a full call number, just the first component.  I think the solution is to use the app to make the catalog, and then write something that scrapes both of those pages when I convert the CSV export into an sqlite database.

The final benefit of this is that I'll be far better at not buying duplicates.  I know I have two or three clear duplicates, and I've stopped buying Adventure Time trades because I can't remember which ones I have.  Even more surprising was when I was looking for that book last night and discovered that I have a book of Kafka.  When did I buy that?  What else did I buy at the same time that I read instead of that?  I have no idea.

• Pokemon.
• Venonat buys some shoes.
• Ok, but they keep adding new things.
• Have I posted this one before?  Since I split my Pokemon RSS stuff from the rest of the saved RSS stuff, I tend to not hit the right "mark read" button.
• Not Pokemon.
• Bees.
• Batman.
• So one side has Tony, Cap, Thor, Spider-Man, Other Cap, Strange, Kamala, and Luke Cage, and there's still a fight?  I see Jen and Monica on the other side, and sure, everybody's on edge and emotional, but no one stops and thinks, "hey, this is stupid.  Let's not be stupid because the writer is bad at his job"?
• This is a good story, and part two is also pretty good.
• Ghost Detective.
• Julie made a new blog post, and it's good, and despite my audience having probably already read/written it, I still wanted to link it.

Dear Twitter, I think you need to tune your ad engine better.

I'm putting this below the cut, because it's a lot of images.  I also probably should have cropped them, but I didn't.

For the past two days, I've woken up earlier than expected and browsed Twitter when I couldn't immediately go back to sleep.  During that time, I started to notice that the ads I was getting were not really well targeted to me.  I'm not saying anything bad about the ads themselves, just that I do not think I'm the best person to be showing that ad to.  I also tried to get a fair sampling of ads, although this probably isn't all of them.

I've grouped the screenshots I took of these ads into various categories that made sense to me.

Friday: Solving problems.

Problem 1: It turns out I had poor data sampling in one thing, resulting in a bunch of low signal-to-noise points corrupting a lot of measurements.  Culling those down to a more reasonable number helps a lot.  It also allows me to see that for one population of points, the comparison paper is probably wrong.

Problem 2: The annoying problem that is supposed to be solved by an eight year old program (that doesn't work anymore because it hasn't been used in eight years) is probably not as hard as I initially thought.  Because the distortion solution I want probably has to be continuous (and differentiable), I can probably write something reasonably quick to do iterative solutions starting from the center of the frame and working outwards.

Also, there's a tropical storm coming this weekend, so it's probably going to be impossible to do any shopping until it's over, because everyone panic buys and then the storm turns out to not be a big deal.

This screenshot is relevant when you read the links.

• Pokemon
• People are installing Magikarps in gyms they take over.
• This would be my plan as well, but I never seem to get Magikarps.
• It is possible to hatch eggs using nothing by the power of inaccurate GPS.  I proved that this evening by sitting on my couch while my trainer ran all over the neighborhood.  I got a Spearow, though, not Onix.
• Gastly.
• This is definitely worth clicking on, given the horror of the second image.
• I don't like the game that much.
• Raticate.
• Not Pokemon, which today is apparently "Russia" and "how fucking stupid Wikileaks is."
• Donald Trump is working with people who have a strong interest in Russia.  Why this doesn't disqualify him in the eyes of his lunatic supports is less clear.
• This is a bit more speculative, so I don't fully buy it, but this quote sums up my thoughts, "The leaks really only hit Western countries. You mean to tell me that 1.7 million documents were obtained from an intelligence agency, and there was no dirt on the Russians or Chinese? Come on."  Yeah.  Wikileaks is clearly not doing what they claim.  They're selectively publishing things to further some nebulous goal of their delusional rapist leader.  Allegedly.
• And today they decided they're going to "expose" the DNC, and successfully dumped a bunch of credit card and social security numbers.  Great job, guys.  Way to "fight for freedom" and "transparency" on the same side as a fucking fascist and a murdering dictator.  Allegedly.

Thursday: The stupidest fucking thing I've seen in a long time.

I've been going with the standard assumption that no country is that stupid, and then the United Kingdom decided no one can tell them they're not idiots, and voted themselves out of the EU.  Let's go to the image shamelessly stolen from twitter:

I mean, if Bill Kristol says you're doing something right, stop and reassess.  Even if he says something like, "Cookies are yummy."  Put the cookie down and back away slowly.

This is a new brand of stupid that I didn't think could actually exist.  Especially given that if they actually go through with this stupid thing (they have to pass legislation to do so, and I would hope the immediate cratering of the currency would make someone be a grown up), that means that Scotland is breaking off.  That's not even really a question at this point.  The interesting thing that I didn't think about is Northern Ireland looking to be part of Ireland.  If that happens, then they become the United Kingdom of England and Wales.  Good job.

Here are the pictures I was going to use before this shit storm happened:

Did you know Izze comes in cans?

I ate one of the bananas I bought to eat at snacktime in the office, but I wasn't super happy about it.

 Then everything went stupid, so on the way home, I got a slice of cake.

It's triple layer princess cake, because red velvet cake is disgusting.

My princess cake was white/orange/pink, and the orange had some sort of orange flavor.  There was coconut on the outside, and it was delicious.

• Congratulations, David Cameron!  You're now the worst politician to ever fuck up a country!
• And I'm just now seeing that the fucker is resigning.  That's a start, fuck face.
• No link yet, because it's just twitter news flashes.
• The pound is only down 8.5% right now, up from the low of nearly 12%.  Why is this important?
• Here's the UK balance of trade.  It's negative, meaning they import more than they export.  With the pound down ~10%, that means it's immediately 10% more expensive to import things.
• It also drives up other currencies, as assuming currency holdings are constant, the pound dropping means you want to buy other currencies that hold their value better.  So dollars, most likely.  But also yen, which means the yen gets stronger.  That makes Japan's export based economy harder to recover.
• So not only do they fuck their own economy, they fuck the world economy.
• And although we still have a bunch of corrupt racists fucking over the legislative branch, we do have the best president ever.
• Best style.
• Animals.

Wednesday: It's kind of crappy, but at least it looks uniform and continuous.

Particularly in the effectively arbitrary old age cuts.  Why were they fine during the 80s, then slightly worse in the 90s, and then really bad in the 2000s?  No clue, but that's the data I have from the census, so that's what I'm using.  

This is kind of interesting too.  I initially started just plotting the population with age=0, with the intent to visualize generations.  The baby boom is really obvious in the purple curve.  I then added samples at different ages, lagged to use a consistent time base.  This thought this would give a probe of immigration, but that doesn't seem to be the case, as there aren't any major gaps in the first three samples in the 1850-1900 range.  I think the sag in the age=60 is just life expectancy issues.  That's also clearly apparent in the beyond 2000 area as well.  The projection yielding the 2014-2060 isn't predicting that to improve too much it seems.

• I'll have to check this out at some point.
• Squirrel bag.
• Zoom.
• Hippopotamus.
• Tl;dr: Republicans are the problem, and they're probably racist.
• Thor.
• That does seem like something you would check.

Tuesday: Overmorrow.

"What?"  They're doing one of those stupid "shut off the water at my apartment all morning" things on Thursday, and when I saw the sign while waiting for the elevator, I thought, "I think there's a word for 'the day after tomorrow' in German [übermorgen].  Do we have one in English?"  So I googled it, googled it again with "-movie", and discovered that yes, we do.

I don't know why this mango lemon bread was tastier in sample format.

Nor do I know who "Walter" is, and why his foes decided to randomly chalk things.

Election thought 1:  I wasn't a fan of Hillary Clinton during the 2008 election, although I don't have the energy to go through this massive page on wikipedia to attempt to figure out why.  I vaguely think it was "not as good on lgbt issues" and "kind of sketchy on 'protect children from scary video games'".  I was happy then when Obama won, making me the sole winner of "predict who will win the election far in advance while having Pizza Hut lunch buffet with a bunch of people in grad school."  See, I remember the important details.  This time, I'm very happy she's won things, as I think she's changed positions on the things that are important.

Election thought 2:  Which means I'm also happy that Sanders is not going to continue.  I was vaguely on board with him until he started putting out details, at which point it seemed like he was just making shit up.  Looking at the meltdown of people who can post comments, but probably shouldn't, they seem to fall into two main categories:  a) "it doesn't matter, because I was an independent before, and I'll go back to being an independent, SO THERE" and b) "it was all stolen, because it's inconceivable that my opinion isn't the most popular, SO THERE."  The fun thing that I saw today as well was "the AP shouldn't have written their story yesterday, because it's not like we even know who these secret superdelegates are!"  Um.  Yes.  Yes we do.  Wikipedia is literally the opposite of "where you put secrets."  This seems to indicate a fundamental unwillingness to look things up.

Election thought 3:  The last paragraph really is important here.  I suspect that Sunday's phone call was largely a "look at reality" thing.  This is kind of disappointing too, if the internal people have really known it was a lost cause for that long.  Then again, a lot of this may be political advisers trying to bail in such a way that they can get positions in the Clinton administration.

Election thought 4:  Which is also what I suspect is happening on the Republican side.  People who really have no interest in Trump getting elected know they have to at least cling to the campaign in the off chance that he can win and they can squeeze out a job.  They can't, because he won't, but that's really the best option for a lot of people.  This is also where I'd have a link if I could find it to the fun conspiracy theory on the entire Trump campaign, but I can't remember where I read it.  The main idea is that a) he is no where nearly as rich as he's claiming; b) so the campaign was just supposed to be a thing he could use to self-promote and then bow out nicely to probably a Bush or someone; c) that didn't happen, to everyone's surprise; d) now he's just coasting along without a real campaign staff because that requires a level of delegation and thinking his ego isn't capable of dealing with.

• Now if you want to talk about stolen elections, look at this fucking travesty.  Greninja?  Fucking ninja frog?  Really?
• Otomo.
• Giles.
• I am looking forward to Pokemon Go.
• Lottie Grote.

Monday: MLK Day

Apparently this is a day-off place to get lunch.  Not quite as good as I was hoping for today.  I think it's because the veggies cooled the burger down too much, and added a lot of soggy to it.

Kapolei's kind of intolerably busy now.  The main issue seems to be that Kalaeloa gets clogged up with people heading towards Waianae.  This backs up onto 95, which is where a lot of the people are coming from (since there's that giant shopping center there).  The obvious solution would be to add a west exit from the center, but that would require an additional bridge over H1 or to connect it through a residential area that despite having a sufficiently sized road that could easily reduce the traffic.

And Target didn't have everything I was looking for, so that kind of sucked.

• Huh.  Cute Overload is closing.
• I kind of hope they have a Wonder Woman crossover with the Supergirl TV show.
• Misprint.
• Marnie.
• Peridot. 

Wednesday: I have a telecon tomorrow, and I'm not looking forward to it.

I also had a bunch of new things added to my task list at work.  I am not happy about that either.

I didn't have any photos for today, but then I remembered I can create photos of things.

This is the one my camera decided was best.

I kind of liked this one a bit better, but I'm not sure why.

All the links are source pairs today.

• Marnie.
• Marnie.
• Kissing a shark.
• Bad decisions.
• Those snacks sound like shit, United.  This isn't what people are pissed about.
• No, this is dumb.  Do you remember Service Merchandise, Target?  You'd go there to buy things, and you'd fill out a form for everything you wanted to buy, and that'd be sent into the warehouse in back, and they'd collect all your purchases.  It was kind of weird and awkward, and it always seemed to take forever to get your stuff.  This "Wonderland" shit is the same thing with RFID tags.  Last time I was at Target, there were about infinity people shopping.  If each person is buying on average N items, at a rate of r items per minute, then everyone can shop in (N / r) minutes.  See how that infinity cancels out?  Now assume Target has 100 people in the back picking items that are being bought.  This makes the shopping time (infinity / 100) * (N/ r) minutes, and I'm pretty sure Target isn't even open 24 hours a day.

Wednesday: And that's why you don't ask me how I'm doing.

"How are you doing?"

"Meh."

"You could just say fine!"

"I wish I could ignite the atmosphere and incinerate the planet."

Also I looked at posters and found one from North Korea.

• Elephant.
• Bear.
• Train-station-cats.

Why is this so complicated?

My upstairs neighbor has again switched wifi channels to the same fucking one I use.  This, of course, completely fucks with my wifi throughput.  All of this, despite the fact that she has an N channel that I expect she actually uses for things, since that's faster.  This makes her use of the G channel that I use essentially just interference.

So I thought, "I should just get a wifi card that supports N, so I can switch to that, as that space is largely empty."  I look online, amazon has a decent card for a decent price.  I then think about looking to see if I can just pick one up tomorrow someplace locally.

Dear every store that has an actual physical store I could go to,

I don't care what you can ship me.  Amazon can ship me everything in existence.  If I want something shipped, I'm buying it from them.  They're going to beat you on price, and they're certainly going to beat you on hassle.  If I'm on your webpage, I want to know if you have a thing in a store, so I can plan to go to your store to buy it.  Don't bring up bullshit like, "ship it to the store!"  That's stupid.  You're stupid for even suggesting that.  Yes.  Let me give you more money, spend more time futzing with shit, and then have to drive to your store to pick up the thing.  That's far nicer than just having the thing show up in my mailbox.

I mean, is there anyone in retail management who isn't a fucking moron?  Don't try to copy amazon, because you're going to do it poorly.  You have actual stores.  Have your webpage be completely tied in to your inventory systems.  That is the thing you have on your side.  Inventory close to where I currently am.  Anything that doesn't leverage that actual shit, in an actual store, is missing your only fucking advantage.

Let's talk about the only companies that I can think of that seem to realize this.  Grocery stores.  What's at Safeway?  Food.  A bunch of fucking food.  If I want food, I can be confident I will find some there.  What do I see if I look at the Safeway webpage?  Some fucking ads about what they've got.  Here's a little play.

Me:  Hey Safeway, what's going on?
Safeway: We've got a bunch of fucking shrimp this week!  Want some fucking shrimp?  Like $10/pound.
Me:  Wow, I kind of want some shrimp now!
Safeway:  Damn right you do.  We've got peaches too.  Ready to be fooled into thinking you like peaches before being disappointed how fucking messy they are to actually eat?
Me: And how!
Safeway: How about chips?
Me: I have chips.
Safeway: Do you have cheddar and sour cream lays?
Me: Like ruffles?
Safeway: Nope, the regular thin ones.  Fuck.  Even I didn't know they made those.
Me: So I can get that gross "just ate cheddar/sour cream chips" mouth-feel without paying the ruffles premium?
Safeway:  $2.99 each when you buy four of a set that was apparently put together by a lunatic.
Me: Why am I not buying food right now?
Safeway: Fuck if I know.

See?  Safeway is telling me what they have at their store right now.  They're not telling me that they can deliver bananas on Tuesday, or if I'd like, I can get some plantains from their "marketplace resellers."

This isn't hard to understand, so why isn't it clear to everyone who doesn't have to throw their products into the trash if they don't sell them fast enough?

Tuesday: Ok, I guess that'll be the third link, then.

Eh.  Close enough.

• TWC should be nationalized, too.
• The important thing is that he's doing what he enjoys.
• I saw this story on twitter earlier, and ignored it since "heavy traffic" for me usually means it takes ten minutes to get home instead of 8.  This makes the rail plan make a lot more sense to me now though.  I assumed that the number of people who live in west Oahu and work in town was small, since having that long of a commute seems stupid.  The fact that having the zipper lane break, which I think only decreases the number of lanes by one, causes backups that persist so long shows that that's not true.  In addition, there seems to be only three ways to get from one side of the harbor to the other, with one of those being the long way around on H-2.  Therefore, adding a parallel rail connection seems like a reasonable solution.  In a similar future incident, even those people who drove to work could take the train home.

Thursday: Crunch.

Today was nearly super eventful.  I was driving home, and was behind a new SUV.  I could tell it was new as it still had a temporary license plate.  We got to The Worst Intersection Ever:

Manoa and East Manoa Roads.

We're travelling down East Manoa road towards the red dot in this story.  We stop at the intersection, and then the SUV starts going again, despite there being cars coming in the approaching Manoa road lane.  Those cars pretty much all slammed on their brakes, as did the SUV at the last moment.  I really thought I was going to have to call the cops to report a giant wreck.  The approaching cars had to swerve across the line to get past and onto Manoa road, and everyone eventually made it home safely.

But this is stupid.  This should be a damn roundabout.  There wouldn't even need to be that much construction.  Mohala way does cut all the way through to Manoa road.  It's dumb, but it's there.  If this was clearly signed as a roundabout, then traffic on Manoa road would all split onto the East Manoa road merge, people could turn onto Mohala or continue on East Manoa, or they could continue on the Mohala cut-through back to the continuation of Manoa road.  Simple, and it keeps traffic flowing, instead of forcing the traffic on East Manoa to wait for approaching Manoa road traffic.  I'm not sure there's another place in existence that would benefit from a roundabout more.

Except possibly the crap storm that is the Oahu/Manoa/Lowrey intersection.  It's a five way stop.  A five fucking way stop.  Roundabout.  There's enough road surface that it could again be added with minimal construction.

Then I got home, went all the way to my apartment, and found this note on my door.

"Please staff."  No.

It was super heavy.

This is a far larger book than I expected.

I'll have to read it when I finish the one I'm reading now.

• Team Rocket.
• Sure you can look at this stupid G.I. Joe gif, and think about dinosaurs, or you can note how absolute shit the animation was.  I saw this episode again in grad school, and it's just continuity and missing cell errors for 22 minutes.
• In case you forgot that Republicans are pretty much fascists who hate actual democracy.
• I would watch this movie.
• Of course, it's not available for android yet.  This is just another reason why I hate apple.