IT professionals

There is an IT-related conference going on in the building where I work right now, and it is chock full of IT stereotypes. I don’t mean what follows to be in any way rude. These are simply some observations I’ve made. The building right now is swarming with:

• Dweeby guys: thick glasses and pants hiked way above their waists and ankles (“Where’s the flood, buddy,” I’m tempted to ask), revealing white socks worn with loafers;
• Fat guys: big meaty fingers (how do they type with those?) and enormous asses from sitting all day. They waddle when they walk, as if unused to the act of walking;
• Asians.

It’s hard to not laugh when I see a combination of these types. Today on my way into the building, for example, I saw a fat Asian with thick glasses heading towards the conference. Now, I am not saying that all Asians are IT professionals, or that fat is only a characteristic of people working at computers all day. I am only saying that these are common stereotypes of the IT profession, and this conference is doing much to strengthen these stereotypes. Oh, and I’ve seen about about one woman at the conference.

Dogfighting is wrong

There have been a lot of press articles about the allegations of Michael Vick’s association with a dogfighting ring. Some people believe that Vick is being unduly punished for a crime because of his high profile. Some of these same people, including the head of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP (see article here) also feel that dogfighting is not a crime worthy of strict punishment (“strict” to them must be the roughly one year of jail time Vick will serve plus whatever suspension/ban he receives from the NFL).

I cannot understand this argument. I was sickened by the details of the torture perpetrated against the animals in Bad Newz Kennels. It is wrong to treat any animals as these ones were treated. At the same time, I believe that the crime is worse because the animals involved were dogs. Dogfighting is not similar to other animal-related sport, such as hunting, as the gentleman in the referenced article suggest. I am not a hunter and would never hunt myself, but I do not campaign against hunting and I do not feel that there is a comparison between dogfighting and hunting. Before I really begin to rant, I should note that all that follows is my subjective opinion and clearly influenced by my very strong affection for my own dog.

Anyone who owns a dog or who has ever owned a dog will understand that there is a special relationship between man and dog. Not only is it special and close, but it is unique and not shared between any other animal and mankind. The reason for this is found in the nature of dogs. Dogs, even abused ones, are bound to their masters by trust and companionship. Domestic dogs and most wild dogs are not solitary animals; they crave companionship. Dogs are also by nature trusting companions. My dog believes that whatever I do to him or with him is safe. Granted, he may not like all the things I do to him (bath time and grooming are still not his favorite), but I believe that he understands that I would never deliberately put him in harm’s way. These are part of a dog’s nature. Even if a dog has a cruel master, this overpowering sense of trust and desire for companionship force the dog to remain.

I had a friend in Moscow that was neighbors with a family with a dog. This family got another, larger dog and found that it did not have room for the first. So, they kicked it out of there apartment in the middle of winter. What did the dog do? It stayed. It slept outside the door to family’s apartment even though they did not feed it or pay it the least attention. There are countless other stories like this about dogs that illustrate my point: dogs are bound by a tremendously strong bond to their master and cannot overcome this even faced with their own death.

This is why dogfighting is to my mind a particularly evil form of animal cruelty. All cruelty to animals is wrong, but taking advantage of an animal that cannot remove itself from a harmful situation because of its nature and violating this unique bond of trust goes beyond regular cruelty. The dogs at Bad Newz Kennels could not extract themselves from this dogfighting ring, as large and ferocious as they were. Their masters wanted them to fight and to kill, and so they did. When their bodies could not take it anymore, they were destroyed by the same people they were trying so desperately to please. All this for sport and money. Vick and his cohorts displayed more than poor judgment, which many people feel is Vick’s only mistake. The acts of these men against animals bound to them are a clear demonstration of man’s practically unlimited capacity for evil. Faced with this, the question of whether or not Michael Vick will ever play football again seems to me insignificant.

I am exhausted

I was up until 3 o’clock in the morning on Saturday playing World of Warcraft (it was a Arathi Basin battleground weekend and I had to grind enough Thick Clefthoof Leather to make my Strength of the Clefthoof set, which I finally did yesterday). Though I slept until 11 o’clock the following Sunday, staying awake that late often requires more than one night’s worth of recovery. Last night, I was kept awake by Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a wonderful book by Susanna Clarke. I have written about this in the past (though I am not certain that what I wrote managed the transition here), but I hate the writers of good books. There are many forms of media that can obtain a powerful hold over me; my addiction to World of Warcraft is evidence of this, though there are plenty of preceding examples equally suitable (Diablo 2, Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance… the list goes on). None of them rival books in this regard. I have had many late nights and missed many meals due to attachment to a book. Though I don’t like to admit it, this is probably why I don’t read as much as I should. It is far easier to turn off a video game than to “turn off” a book. A book has to be finished for me to turn it off, and even then my fascination with the story often remains for days, distracting me and sometimes continuing to prevent my sleep.

As to the novel itself, it is one of the best I have read in a long while. It is a beautiful combination of high fantasy, depth of story, and literary prose to rival the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. People who know me know that this is not a comparison I throw around lightly. I hold the writing of Professor Tolkien in the highest of regards and Ms. Clarke is quite his equal in many regards. Her prose is captivating. It is at times witty and at others practically impenetrable, which suits the theme of the book (two 19th century British magicians) perfectly. It reads partly like a history and partly like a fairy story. Her characters are both serious and utterly foolish. This is why her prose is so fitting and entertaining. The story is deep and believable, which I believe is the most essential characteristic of fantasy. She sets down historical precedent for all of the magic worked by the two main characters. This history is both scholarly (there are footnotes strewn throughout the novel detailing various explanations of bits of magic) and mysterious (a full explanation of the workings of magic is never given, though the reader does not miss it). Ms. Clarke created a believable and magical England. Though I resent Ms. Clarke for making me so damn tired today (and for making her book so large; I could have read more during the daylight hours at work or on my commute were the book lighter), I highly recommend Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell to everyone.

The Sugar Packet Dilemma

I love coffee, but only after significant doctoring. That is, I add quite a bit of sugar and cream. For me, the draw of the taste of coffee is the combination of bitter and sweet. I’m not a big fan of plain old bitter foods, and I can’t understand why anyone would be. However, I prefer darker, more bitter brews over light brews because I also don’t drink coffee just to enjoy something sweet. The bitter flavor has to be there to accent the sweet. Choosing a dark roast ensures that this flavor endures no matter what is added. Thus, my favorite coffee beverage is nice dark French roast with lots of sugar and cream, which leads to a sweet beverage with a bitter finish.

When I make coffee for myself at home, adding sugar is easy; I have a big spoon and a big sugar bowl. When I order coffee at a store, I run into what I have dubbed the “Sugar Packet Dilemma”. The Dilemma is caused by my desire to add a lot of sugar to my coffee but being forced to do so from inconveniently small packets. To solve the Dilemma, I have been researching the best number of sugar packets to open at once. If too few are chosen, then I can spend several minutes adding sugar to my coffee, which is inefficient. As I increase the number of packets being opened at once, the chances increase of a poor opening rip, that being a rip which opens some packets too close to where the sugar lies while opening some too close to the top. This is also inefficient: sugar is wasted and multiple attempts must be made to open partially or poorly opened packets. The hypothesis I tested over the last few weeks is that there exists an ideal number of packets, such that all packets open easily yet as few additions of sugar to my coffee are made as possible.

After extensive research on the subject, I discovered that the number is five. I can easily open five packets of sugar and dump the sugar into my coffee without spilling much sugar and without errant tears in the packets. Opening five packets at once also allows me to add ten packets of sugar to a large coffee in only two moves. While fewer packets may suffice for a smaller cup or a lighter brew, ten is the minimum for a dark roast.

Just in case you wanted to know.

Russian train bombing

I can’t decide if the train bombing in Russia is something I should worry about. It seems like a very amateur attempt, but it was on a major transportation line. My wife may be headed to Moscow for a friend’s wedding in a month, and these sorts of things naturally make me nervous about travel there. Attacks like this in themselves are quite frightening, but what makes them worse in my mind is the lackadaisical response of Russian officials. I know that Americans, myself included, post-9/11 are very concerned with transportation security, perhaps overly so, and this skews my opinion. Regardless, the noticeable lack of security on trains, subways, and airports in Russia even in the wake of attacks like this one is worrying. Russians often like to ignore bad things, especially things that reflect poorly on the situation of their country. Like many people, they are proud of their country, but in my opinion are unusually sensitive about negativity towards Russia and Russians. There are a number of reasons for this, and I won’t go into them as they really deserve a separate discussion. When it comes to security, pride should not be an issue. There should be accurate reporting of the incident (this is rare in Russia generally and practically non-existent as regards negative events) and appropriate new security measures implemented to prevent similar attacks. I did not witness either of these two responses when the Moscow subway was bombed in 2003 and I do not expect it to happen here. As Russian strength grows and the country increases its political role in the region, it is going to attract more enemies and incidents such as this will become more frequent. It will make me nervous about traveling there if there isn’t a strong reaction to this train bombing, even if there were no casualties; there were casualties in previous attacks and there will be more in the future. This most recent attack should serve as a warning that better security is needed in Russia generally, and on its transportation specifically.

Strikers Charged is fun

My predictions about Super Mario Strikers: Charged (SMS:C) were spot on. I had a friend come over this past Saturday and we played for about 5 hours straight, to his great frustration as he only won a single game. Yesterday I played online against my brother and his friend for a couple of hours. Playing competitively on the ladder would take a lot of time (the leader as of yesterday had 100 wins; I have yet to play 20 ladder games in total) and would require dealing with stupid, cheaty moves. I had some great series against my brother. In fact, the last series we had going was quite the nailbiter. I won the first game 7-6 amidst a frenzy of megastrikes by both sides, then my brother came back to win the second game 1-0, with the game’s only goal being scored in the last 15 seconds. Then we got disconnected before we could play the deciding game. It was quite sad, but I wasn’t all that torn up about it (I probably would have lost). The stability of the Nintendo Wi-fi connection has not been that great during these first few weeks of SMS:C, but once Nintendo gets a few more weeks’ experience under their belt and the server load drops in September when school starts stability will probably be less of an issue.

Grammar

At my job now and in several past jobs, I have edited a lot of documents written by foreigners (mostly Russians) in English. There are many mistakes common to these documents. Some frustrate me. For example, I cannot believe how often capitalization is misused. Others are quite understandable; English grammar is subject to many rules and even more exceptions to these rules. These rules, as far as I can tell, share little with the grammatical rules of other languages. I know this to be true of Russian. One error I often note is in the usage of nouns as adjectives. This is really a common practice in English: to use a vulgar example, “that is a bitch thing to do” is something I often say when slighted. Here, “bitch”, which is a noun, is used as an adjective to modify “thing”. In nearly all of the non-native English writing I have edited, using nouns as adjectives is rarely done. I believe that this is because this usage is not clearly defined and that it is unique to English grammar.

I find the correct usage of this grammatical structure difficult to define and extremely difficult to teach. In Russian, this grammatical structure does not exist. There are nouns, and some nouns have adjectival form, but they are different words (in Russian ’sobaka’ = dog, ’sobachii’ = dog as an adjective; in English, ‘dog’ can be used an adjective such as in ‘dog hair’). What makes this more confusing is that there are often adjectival forms of nouns in English. To add another layer of perplexity, nouns as adjectives are easily confused with possessive nouns. What is the difference between ‘dogs’ hair’ and ‘dog hair’? Not much, yet the former is rarely used; I never say, “There is dogs’ hair all over the house.” In fact, I only rarely say, “The dog’s hair is all over the house”, in preference to the more general ‘dog hair’ despite the fact I own only one dog.

I’m not a linguist, so am making all of this up as I go along based solely on how I use the English language and the patterns I witness while editing non-native English speakers’ writing (see, why can’t that last clause read, “non-native English speaker writing”? It could, or at least I would have no problem with it.). English grammar is interesting to me, especially since I have seen and continue to see such poor usage. This is not the fault of the writers and I am not saying that I write flawless English. It is just an observation and an expression of my interest in grammar, both English and Russian.

It’s fucking hot

I can’t take it anymore. It is sweltering in and around our nation’s capital and it has been for days. The last few days in particular have been awful. It has been humid beyond belief. Every day I wake up and the sun is hardly shining, it’s foggy, and it looks like it’s going to pour. It rarely pours. Instead, the air just stagnates. As the day progresses, the sun burns off some cloud cover and the morning fog, making it a) hotter and b) even more humid.

Here are some Wikipedia articles on humidity. Read the heat index one and the section on “Effects on human body”. At the end of that section should be another sentence, “Can lead to extreme crankiness.”

• Humidity
• Heat index
• Relative humidity

Running, Strikers, and WoW… oh my!

I just had a wonderful weekend with my family. For the last four years, at least two members of my family have run the Beach-to-Beacon, a 10k road race in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. This year we had three: my mom, my sister, and myself. It’s a really fun race on a fast course with loads of spectators. This is the second time I’ve run it, and while my time was lousy, I didn’t care because it was fun. I am an avid runner (avid /=/ good), and occasionally try to be a good runner. Lately, however, I’ve found that keeping track of my time made running stressful, which defeats my main purpose for running, that being relaxing and having time to zone out away from the modern world’s many distractions. Not focusing on speed has naturally led to an increase in my times, but it has also made running fun again.

In gaming news, I bought Super Mario Strikers Charged the other day, but have had only a couple of hours with it because of my trip this weekend. My initial verdict is that it is very similar to the previous Gamecube iteration of the game, which is far from a bad thing. It’s fast-paced, arcade-style soccer. The computer difficulty scales very quickly, requiring skill to win even at the penultimate difficult setting. The strategy for goal scoring is only slightly altered by two new game mechanics (passing charges the ball, making it easier to score and captains’ megastrikes can be blocked by adept goalkeeping), but not by much. The main difference is the option to play online. I’ve played a couple of ladder games, and while fun, the real attraction of the online component of the game will be playing against people you know (for me, that’s my brother). Ladder games will be fun time-wasters once you’ve really mastered the computer AI, but actually competing in the ladder won’t attract all but the most competitive and hardcore gamers. It is already easy to tell that there will be certain strategies developed by those who play a lot of ladder games that will be difficult, if not impossible, to defeat (similar to ’snaking’ in Mario Kart DS). I’ve already encountered several people who exclusively use the Hammer Bros. sidekick’s deke to clear everyone away and then score with a skill shot.

The pull to reactivate my World of Warcraft account is growing, and is made even stronger by the announcement about the upcoming expansion. I played rather heavily for about a year, but got bored with it awhile back once my main hit 70. End-game content is very time-consuming and requires help from several people. To clarify, all games are time-consuming, but end-game WoW dungeons involve 2-3 hours of straight play, which is a lot for me. The game itself, however, is really a perfect fit for me: Diablo 2 style gameplay, open-ended (or rather just open, since there really is no end), and with various levels of competitive play (raiders, casuals, PvPers, etc.). I think that my problem with the game started when I lost patience with finding groups of people with whom to play. I have only one real life friend who plays and was not personally very helpful or friendly in-game. Thus, I didn’t have people I could turn to for help. My new plan is to play more with my one friend and to play less selfishly generally. If (who am I kidding, when) I come back to the game, I will focus less on completing my own stupid quests and more on helping others, like my friend and his in-game friends. If you need the help of a friendly druid, PST Derevo on the server Garithos in the next few weeks. I may even spec resto to be even more helpful.

First post! Sort of.

First post!

Welcome to my WordPress blog! It’s not much now, but I’ve got quite a bit of content to move over here: two previous blogs worth of stuff and one glog (or gaming log, where I recorded what video games I played and how much I sucked at them) need to be meticulously cut and paste here. Since my previous online journals were pathetic, I’m not going to link to them. I did all the XHTML and CSS myself, which I am not proud of (you’d understand if you saw the site), but which is my excuse for why it will take me so long to move them here. I searched the WordPress.com FAQ for an import tool for poorly hand-coded sites and found nothing. So cut and paste it is! Thankfully, my job is not that busy right now (my “job” is an unpaid internship with the U.S. government; I’m a full-time graduate student) so I should have time for such grunt work there. At any rate, my previously “published” (no one ever read it, trust me) web content is going to make it’s way here, but you’ll have to be patient.

In the meantime, check out the About page and bask in what new content I manage to squeeze in between cutting and pasting.

So I’ve pasted some of the old stuff in. Everything below this post is from my old site and is categorized ‘SNT’. Some of it references parts of that site (like the glog) that haven’t been imported yet. Some of it references the old site generally, but all of it should at least sort of make sense. There may also be broken links; I haven’t had time to test them all. I plan to get the rest in soon, and also to edit out the stuff that really doesn’t make sense. But at least there’s something for my non-existent audience to read.