I has a car!

It goes vroom vroom vroom!

Also: it is night-time here, so bbcam doesn't work so well.

Still: VROOM VROOM VROOM!
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First day of work

I mean seriously, who uses .csh scripts?
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I love L.A.

"I see you have 'I love L.A.' merchandise."

"Yes, of course, in many styles."

"Do you have any 'Los Angeles is the ass-end of hyper-pretentious douchebaggery' merchandise?"

"Pardon?"

"I mean, you must, right? It has to be the more prevalent attitude, right?"

"Why would you say that?"

"Well, the traffic is bad, even ignoring the dumb design attitude of 'just add another freeway.' There's also the airport, which scientifically designed to frustrate and annoy. But, I think the most obvious reason is the hyper-pretentious douchebaggery that is evident in 70% of the people and 90% of their actions. So again, do you have any-"

"No we don't, now get the fuck out."

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My last night here with you

Maybe yes, maybe no.

Despite movers arriving in four hours, I can't get to sleep. I'm no where near packed as much as I wanted to be. My apartment is a mess of boxes and unpacked crap. Hopefully the movers will be ok with this fact.

It seems weird thinking that this is the last time I'll be in this apartment. I moved in eight years ago, and I've gotten used to it, even if I've spent too much of that time hiding things in dark corners. I'm going to miss East Lansing. I've lived here 12 years, longer than anywhere else before. I think it'll be where I retire, if I have the option.

Time to try this sleeping thing again. Wake up in two hours, get clean, pack some, watch the movers do their thing, cancel accounts, return keys, drive six hours to my parents' house. I hereby curse the 22nd of May as the Worst Day to Ever Occur.

Moving day

:(
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Hawaii

Hawaii is much more humid than I thought it would be, based on my periodic scanning of the weather over the past couple of weeks. It's been like 50%, and suddenly jumps up to 90% when I show up. Screw you, moisture!

I've looked around, and I think I know where I'm going tomorrow, and it's not too far off. That makes sense, as they probably wouldn't put me on the other side of the island or something.

Ok, it's time to think about going to bed, because it feels like it's almost 3, and I have to get up early for the meeting tomorrow.

OMG WTF BBQ, LAX?

The upper right shows the broken ceiling tile that is dripping water onto the floor (lower left). I don't know where the water is coming from, since this is Los Angeles, the land that rain forgot. Maybe it's coming from the A/C system?

In any case, it probably should be fixed, or have sign or something.
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Lunch :(

4^* To Go






* Bars

Tritter

I hate Tritter. He's the dumbest character ever to appear on House. That includes Administrator Black Tritter, who I don't even like enough to look up his real name. It also includes the guy who pretended he wanted to have sex with a cow, but really killed Tara, prompting Willow to freak out and turn all evil.

Wait, that might have been a different show.

In any case, the whole concept of an arbitrarily powerful foil for House is dumb. It would be as if periodically Sherlock Holmes has to fight the entire Prussian army to solve a murder. And not just once, either. I'm talking that the entire Prussian army has moved in next door, and Mrs. Hudson brings them tea when they try to stop Holmes. Would you read that story? Of course not, because you just want to see Holmes solve the crime in a witty and unexpected way.

Same thing with House. You don't tune in each episode to watch House do his taxes or buy new shoes. You want to see him be an ass to people while he solves murders medical issues. Watching him fight The Man is none of that.

On a side note, a House-like show about a chartered accountant fighting The Man might be good, but only if it involved sailing on the wide accountant-sea.

A suggestion I mentioned on twitter was that someone should recut and reshoot all the episodes to remove Tritter from the show. To explain House's problems getting his vicodin, replace the drug charges with a worldwide shortage of the pills. Sure, that's stupidly unrealistic, but it's not like House is always medically accurate.

In any case, I'd never have to see Tritter's dumb face showing up, looking smug, and trying to stop people from getting better. If they wanted to do that, they could have made a new show: Tritter. It could be about an asshole cop who solves problems using logic and deduction.

Oh wait, that'd just be Sherlock Holmes again.

A good antagonist is equally smart and capable as the protagonist. However, you can't have a Moriarty for House. It just won't work. There's a guy going around inventing diseases and giving them to people? That's more of a crime issue than a medical. It's been pretty well established that no one else on the show is as smart as House. Therefore, the only way to get an antagonist for House is to turn him against himself.

This is why I like the hallucinations from this season. They know all the things that House knows, but seem intent to crush him. Also: kill Chase. I'm looking forward to next season.

Look at this bunny

You are now dead from teh cute.

My conversation with a squirrel

As I tweeted, his accent was a bit hard to understand. I tried to find what he was talking about, but I couldn't see anything wrong in the area. I left him a few peanuts, and hoped he would calm down enough to go eat them.




(Sorry about the quality, but my Blackberry isn't exactly a broadcast quality video camera. The wiggly squirrel looking guy in the middle is the squirrel, and the bark sounds are coming from him. The train? Not the squirrel, just for the record.)

Countdown

I've finally nailed down the movers, so I now have a very good idea about when I'm moving: pack up on the 22nd of May, and arrive in Honolulu on the 24th, start work on the 25th.

Except I can't, because the 25th is Memorial Day. Stupid inconvenient holidays not being when I want them.

In addition to that, I'm now super likely to be visiting Honolulu for a PANSTARRS meeting on the 18th. Which means I fly out, meet, fly back, pack a bit, move, fly back to Hawaii. Certainly not the most efficient thing I could do, but better than a lot of the alternatives. This extra visit should give me a chance to look at a few apartments, and hopefully sort out where I'll be living for the next few years.

One interesting thing I discovered is that the movers really want to pack everything, as it's going to go on a boat. They seem to think that their packing is better for that. Whatever, I don't think you can mess up boxing up books. In any case, this frees up some of my time, as I don't need to bother doing all the packing. I'm going to get some cleaning and sorting done, but that shouldn't take too long.

This leaves just one thing I need to decide: which restaurants are good enough and important enough for me to put them on my farewell tour to East Lansing. Zingerman's is already there, because it's delicious. Peanut Barrel wins on the same points. I'm not sure what else to put on, since I've been going to Omi and Pizza House fairly regularly recently.

Sakura!

Finally here in Michigan!

I took this picture while driving, so it's no where near as good as it would be if I wasn't trying not to crash. I'll see what things look like on Monday.

Differential!

Made with the legos I brought with me grad school! It's the little gear box doodle between the big rear wheels. It all makes sense now: when it moves straight, the wheels turn the same direction, the gears lock up, and the whole box rotates with the wheels. When you turn the corner however, the wheels are free to turn at different speeds by letting the gears unlock a bit. So now my fancy little 4-cylinder fixed gear racer can go around corners without shredding the tires!

Well, assuming we ignore the fact that there's never going to be any compression with the pistons exposed. Also, that fixed gear system is going work like crap, since the camshaft and wheels are fixed at the same speed.

Whatever. It's legos, and I had fun playing with them again, even if I have to take it apart soon so I can get it packed away and moved to Hawaii.

Ooops

Somehow, when I was having words with a certain squirrel, I made up a name surprisingly similar to the name of the Luanne's British penguin puppet, "Sir Reginald Featherbottom III". I have no idea how that happened, as I don't remember ever seeing them before until tonight.

Weird.

Nigerian scammers need to be beat to death

Thanks for being a fucking Nigerian fucking scam, douchebag. I'm trying to honestly find a fucking apartment, and you're trying to steal money. Why don't you get a real job, or move to country that has a stable enough government to support real jobs?

Seriously, does this ever work? Can you send me a list of names and addresses for people you've scammed, so I can beat them up for being so god damn fucking stupid? Also: I have a fucking Ph.D., in a hard science. I don't believe anything unless I can prove it. And you come along with "Oh! I'm REV GARY AND MY WIFE MARY and we TOTALLY OWN THE HOUSE THAT WE TOLD YOU WAS AN APARTMENT! WE ARE (not) TRYING TO STEALYOUR MONEY AND SHIT LIKE THAT!" Did you think I wouldn't notice? Do your friends tell you that Americans are so damn stupid that we always fall for this shit?

Why don't you just change your postings to "Hi! I want your money, and don't really own any property in Hawaii, I'm just trying to steal your information to attempt to steal money from you! I'm hoping your too fucking dumb to notice this, and would like you to send me all sorts of stuff to make it easy to steal your identity. Look! I'm a Reverend, therefore I must be religious and honest, because selling the service of an invisible space wizard is totally the most honest job ever. Let me (not) steal all your money and make you sorry you ever tried to find a fucking apartment!"

Yours in Christ ("Please do understand us why the keys are with us.")

Fuck you

(Seriously? You want me to believe you moved to a different fucking country, took the keys, and tried to rent it out? WTF, asshole?)

On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 04:59:13AM -0400, gun pet wrote:
> Hello,

> Thanks for the email. I am Rev Gary and my wife Mary own the house
> and also want you to know that it was due to my transfer that makes
> me and my wife to leave the house and also want to give it out for
> rent and looking for a responsible person that can take very good
> care of it as we are not after the money for the rent but want it to
> be clean at the time and the person that will rent it to take it as
> if it were its own. So for now, We are here in Nigeria,
>
> our new house and also with the keys of the house, we try to look
> for an agent that we can give this documents before we left but
> could not see and we are as well as don't want our house to be u sed
> any how in our present that is why we took it along with us. I and
> my wife came over to Nigeria for a missionary work, so i hope you
> will promise us to take very good care of the house. So get back to
> me on how you could take care of our house or perhaps experience you
> have in renting home.
>
>
> Please do understand us why the keys are with us.
>
>
> FILL THE APPLICATION FORM
> RENT APPLICATION FORM
> 1)Your Full Name :
> 2)Your Full Address & Phone Number :
> 3)How old are you?
> 4)Are you married?
> 5)How many people will be living in the house?
> 6)Do you have a pet?
> 7)Do you have a car?
> 8)Occupation?
> 9)What is your religion?
> 10)What is your monthly income?
> 11.WHEN ARE YOU PLANNING TO MOVE IN?
> 12)How long are you willing to rent?
> CALL ME NOW +2348055088045 or 0112348055088045 IMMEDIATLY LET DISCUS
>

My flowers came up!

Although it's only the red ones right now. The purple ones are always about a week or two behind schedule. There's usually a reasonable crossover period, though.

:)

(And yes, I know that the Blackberry camera isn't the greatest, and it's even worse when it's dark out. I'll update again tomorrow when the Daystar is out.)

Seriously?

Seriously?

You thought this was a valid solution to the problem?

WTF?

Nonparametric Statistics

I keep forgetting about this thing, which I'd feel worse about if other people weren't forgetting as well.

Today I fought with nonparametric statistics. If you've never worked with them, they represent a class of statistical measurements that make no assumptions about the underlying distribution. The standard forms tell you if the mean or median or something like that is consistent between two samples. There are weak ways to check for different variances as well. However, I've been trying to use them to calculate if two variables are correlated, as well as trying to see if two samples are drawn from the same distribution, whatever that may be.

The complication is that I have 150 and 1500 data points in my two samples. Almost all of these nonparametric methods are designed for small N cases, although no one ever claims that they're not good for large N. The problem lies when you attempt to calculate the significance of the statistic. Just about all of these things assume the p-value comes from normal distribution with z ~ sqrt(N) * R. Since p(z=2.33) = 99%, a significant statistic value is something like R = 2.33 / sqrt(N). Therefore, with the large N samples I'm working with, it's hard to get not significant values. This may sound great, but if everything shows a significant relation, then the statistic has lost its value, because everything gives the same answer.

The end result of all this, is that nonparametric statistics are a worse class of lies than regular parametric statistics, and you should be wary of anyone who says "Mann-Wilcoxon-Whitney" or "Kendall Tau." These rank up there with the KS test as "a test you can cling to when you really have nothing valid to claim."

Monday. Work. Teen Titans.

My boss was back in town today. Which meant I had to go to work. Still, it was good to get his opinion on things, and sort out the papers.

I also discovered that Teen Titans is back on Cartoon Network. This morning's episode was one of my favorites. Seeing TT again prompted me to look into the video game, which I played long ago when it first came out. Gamestop had it for only $10, so I picked it up on the way home. It fits perfectly into the level of "beat up bad guys" and "don't worry too much, because it's designed for kids, so it's not too tough." I miss games like that.


I do have Easter food pictures, but I haven't bothered to get them from my phone yet. They'll probably show up later this week.

Late Night Edit: Looking at the Cartoon Network schedule seems to indicate that this was a one time Teen Titans showing. Damn damnity damn damn. I'm going to need to buy the DVDs when I get to the Tropics.