Back in Boston

I am now back in Boston after taking a red eye flight from SFO to BOS. The flight was nice, mostly because I don’t remember most of it. It took a little bit to get off the ground, as the plane we supposed to take was delayed. Then a computer glitch on the taxiway forced us to wait for a reset from maintenance. I’m not quite sure why there was a glitch in the first place, or why maintenance was required to fix it, but the there seemed to no impact on the flight, and we landed safely.

Now I am getting ready to move up to Maine. Soon I will go visit my sister at Friendly’s, where is she is working. I brought her back a CSI cap I found a surplus store near Synaptics, so she will have a hat to wear for vacation in Maine.

I might have sporadic Internet access the next two weeks, so if you need to reach me, try calling, as it will be probably more reliable and faster. I will try to get my email at least once a day though.

Laser Cutter Fun

Today I used the laser for my first time to cut stuff for a prototype I’m making. I can’t post many details on the Internet yet, but I was able to cut a 1/16 inch wide ring about 2 inches diameter out of 1.5 mm thick acrylic. Impressive given my previous machining abilities. I hope to learn how to use the laser cutter more effectively and be able to make some stuff for my Ditch Day stack with it.

Also today I got Kipling and I some baking supplies and used them to make my first baked goods in San Jose. Kipling had a “Baker’s Edge” brownie pan, which he probably saw on Thinkgeek. There were indeed many edges, with some bars coming out with edges on three sides. I will bring the rest into work tomorrow to share in anticipation of my first cake baking in San Jose, which my coworkers are looking forward to with eager stomachs.

I finished watching Babylon 5 Season 3, and am waiting to get seasons 4 and 5 so I can continue watching. After I’m through with some JMS stuff, I’ll probably watch some BSG, read some HALO, and get back to writing my movie, which will be most likely be completely different, after seeing the lead up to the Shadow War in B5.

“What we should do Commander, is understanding, clearly, that this is Humanity’s final stand…” — Fleet Admiral Sir Terrance Hood, UNSC

A Nontrival Extension to the Mac and Cheese Theorem

I first proposed this at dinner one night a few month ago, but thought I’d post about it. Something new to try: pour grated cheese over hot and freshly cooked rice. If you get the rice hot enough to melt the cheese, the result is delicious. When I brought this to the table, my friend Nathan deemed it “a nontrival extension to the Mac and Cheese Theorem.” And now you know.

Sacrifices

When I think about where we are a species, and a society, I now also think about what we’ve done to get here, especially what we’ve given up to get here. I look to television and other fiction for some examples. In House, my most recent most-watched tv show, the doctors will sometimes sacrifice one patient to save another, or a patient’s arm to save the rest of him, saving his life but at great cost. In Farscape, John sacrafices his only chance of returning to Earth in order to save it from militant alien races. In Battlestar Galactica, the humans, on several occasions, abandoned countless other human survivors to protect themselves the rest of the human race. Without those sacrifices, the human race would have ended.

The most extreme example is HALO. The members of the top secret levels of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), Section 3 sacrificed much throughout the SPARTAN programs, and multiple battles and engagements. They killed other humans to steal nukes from them to fight the Covenant. They used fully staffed civilian space stations as expendable shields to protect more tactically relevant ships. The SPARTAN-II program was the worst, though. They kidnapped 67 six-year-old children from their parents, replacing them with dying flash clones. Of those 67, only 35 survived healthily. Many were killed by the enhancements that were required of the program. Others went brain dead or blind or got ALS, and some were so horribly misshapen that they had to live the rest of their so-called “lives” in a neutrally buoyant tank.

Master Chief Petty Officer John 117 of the UNMC understood sacrafice the most. As leader of the SPARTANS, he had to live with half of his squad dying from the mutations. He was taught early in his carreer that there is a difference between wasting lives and spending lives. We as Americans today barely understand that. But perhaps it is for the best. The distinction is harder to make the lower the odds, and national security is a much lower priority than perservation of our entire species. I hope we never have to make the sacrafices described in fiction, but that we have the courage to do so, should the need arise.

Commander Lee ‘Apollo’ Adama: Remember what Roslin said. Our FIRST responsibility is the survival of humanity. We can’t lose sight of that. Over the last year, we’ve lost sight of almost everything… we got soft. But if we go back to New Caprica now… and we lose, it’s over. Humanity just stops. Admiral’s stars don’t give you the right to make that gamble.

Semi-scheduled Outage

Apparently, in order to repair the damage done by the flood (not the Flood, fortunately), power will shut down to my room sometime between 1600 and 1800 (Pacific time) on Friday, so if my blog is down then, that’s why. I’m beginning to think I should get a UPS.

Ditch Day 2008

It was Ditch Day yesterday. I was on Lauren and Lee’s stack: Jedi of Tomorrow. There are bunch of pictures and a few videos that I’ll post in the coming days. We had a great time, learned to be Jedi, went on a secret mission, and defeated the dark Sith lord and stopped his evil plans. Highlights include getting jedi robes and lightsabers, shopping cart turned X-wing, and using a zip line to cross the Bechtel Mall 30 feet in the air.

The cannon fired today at 1700, which means my class is Seniors now. So go to bed early frosh, because DITCH DAY IS TOMORROW!

Unscheduled Outage

You may have noticed that my blog was down for the better part of yesterday. The reason for this is that Ditch Day was yesterday. One stack involved flooding an area of the tunnels, which tripped a breaker, which in turn, killed power to the North and South Houses, the Ath, and several other buildings this corner of campus. I am happy to report that the power for my room in the South Houses has been restored, and this shouldn’t happen again until next year.

WordPress Upgraded

I just upgraded WordPress and thanks to a few extensions, it was really easy. Thanks to the developers.

However, I might be moving to a different blog software that support PostgreSQL. This will allow me to move my hosting to UGCS, at least temporarily. I plan to switch to using Drupal, and I hear that importing WordPress posts into Drupal is possible, so it could go smoothly. More updates as I get them.

Unsustainable “Sustainability”

Our rush to switch to “sustainable” ethanol based fuels is finally hitting home. Because the price of food is rising so must faster than the price of money, several people are now advocating “investing” in food by stockpiling. This also means that the poor are not able to buy food as the price increases and will begin to starve. All this for a fuel that has questionable environmental sustainability and is certainly economically unsustainable. Do we really want to continue down the path of token sustainability?

Passover Brownies

Last night, I made chocolate brownies that were Kosher for Passover for my Jewish friends. I found this recipe, which I modified slightly. I cooked them at 325F instead of 350F for 40 minutes. I recommend checking that they are not overcooked. My toothpick came out with some solid stuff stuck to it. If it’s liquidy, then put them back in for a few more minutes. Another modification I made was adding cinamon sugar to the top. This adds a good extra taste to counter the overwhelmly bland taste of matzah.

According to my Jewish friends, this was one the best Passover confections they have had. From a non-Kosher perspective, it was good. I would describe it as a cross between a brownie and a cake, and it was delicious and moist.

Now back to Interhouse baking…