Thursday, February 26, 2009

Irk At Work.

Irk is an odd word. Roll it around in your mouth a little. Nice and succinct, but being so compact and quickly drawn, it seems to somewhat lack the punch I feel it deserves. Merriam-Webster says:
irk (ˈərk):to make weary, irritated, or bored.
I do not generally think 'wearied' or 'bored' when I think of 'irked'. Irritated, yes, but in a way that makes the bottom of your heart quiver a smidgen in your chest. Your lips may purse, but you are not moved to action. And its this lack of response that makes irking such a potent phenomenon. The thought rattles around in your head, landing in a pile and attaching to exact copies of itself from each past occurrence of the irk. There they jumble, with no outlet or exhaust. Perhaps one day they will grow into an annoyance to be acted upon, dealt with and resolved, but for now they are too trivial. They reside, waiting only for the next worthless addition. Dictionary.com says:
irk: to irritate, annoy, or exasperate.
Now we're on the right track. I like exasperate's tone. But just a small exasperation, one that does not quite qualify. I also envision an exasperation as somewhat of a surprise or shock. This was an unexpected occurrence, almost an unbelievable annoyance; whereas an irk is an almost frequent event, verging on routine. It has happened before, and in all likelihood, it will happen again. Soon. "Aggravate" is listed under the thesaurus.com definition which may be a better fit as far as future perfect concepts are concerned.

But there is a violence to that word that has no business in irk. Whether in transgression or response, 'aggravate' bears not just the threat of action, but the promise of aggression. Likewise with 'irritate', though less threatening, it seems to convey a distinctly physical meaning. Toes may be irritated by shoes, but never irked. Perhaps because irritations heal, whereas irks are never tended to. Irks remain abstract, locked in the psyche. Poked, prodded and irritated by a non-existent finger.

Maybe that's the problem, my adjectives are centered around touch or sound. Maybe irks are smells and tastes. 'Distaste' is good but too obvious, and too easily equated to 'dislike' which does not properly express depth. The overall sensation of an unpleasant lingering flavor may be close, but tastes are too easily avoided. An irk is perceived and produced in the same instant, there are no secondary symptoms to predict its arrival. 'Repugnance' seems like an olfactory irk, but again, it is too strong. Something repugnant would be avoided, even of one could not see it. I'm not very good at thinking with my nose or tongue, so this route may be personally limited.

I try to think ethereally and arrive with 'haunt'. That's nice. There is a good amount of futility in resistance, it is repetitive and incorporeal. But like the others I find problems with this synonym. A haunting thought may be the same one drifting around again and again, as opposed to instances of the same irksome object. A pile of deciduous leaves, mental disregard allows them to and clutter and rustle.

I know this may be a futile exercise, since the word for what I'm describing already exists and is, in fact, 'irk'. At least that's what it means to me, so hopefully now, if not before, you realize how much thought and contemplation have gone into the term. So when I tell you that something irks me, I want you to understand my full meaning.


It irks me when people are told to disregard an alarm for a blanket period of time. Case in point, my building routinely places signs on all entrances instructing occupants to disregard the fire alarm today as they are being tested, worked on, etc. In fact they have laminated the signage since this happens so frequently. Excuse me? Aren't the alarms there for a reason? What if there's a fire in the building? Oh, you'll just run around telling everyone there's a fire, good, great. Why isn't that the default system every day? It should be illegal to instruct people en mass to ignore public safety alarms for anything but a concise period. This happened at my conference last week as well. We initially evacuated the building after the lights flashed and a very loud and scary alarm sounded. Later after everyone was readmitted, we were instructed via Public Address to ignore any further alarms that day. I understand the likelyhood of an incident after a false alarm may be fairly low, but these devices are meant to stimulate a response. Much like car alarms, these false fire alarms (and non-evacuations) dilute emergency procedures and make people's first response to question the alarm's validity.

The System Is Down.

Now this is nice. I like more of an explanation than "the service was out; now its not" and the incident report gives a bit more detail. Although its a little vague about exactly what happened, you get the jist that they had a bug in their server load sharing algorithm, so when one was taken off-line for maintenance, too many people were redirected to another. The "multiple downstream overload conditions" sounds like a neat cascading system of propagating errors. But maybe I'm a big dork.

P.S. The System Is Down is a nice beat for all your lightswitch rave needs.

P.S.S. I totally didn't notice this outtage and I'm on the gmails like all effing day.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Spirited Away.

Wow, this reminds me of old-timey villians who kidnap orphans and make them work changing bobbins in textile factories.  Or maybe the camp counselors who have campers produce sweatshop knock-off handbags and sell them near urine strewn underpasses. 

Two PA judges are being charged with taking kick-backs for sending children to juvenile detention centers since 2003.  It seems these judges had a tendency to skip right over probation or leniency for first time offenders, and now their victims know why.  This kind of corruption makes me want to whack a big old fat-white-dude-in-a-suit piñata.  Wait; would that be an effigy, or does it have to be burned to constitute and effigy?



Thursday, February 19, 2009

Ummm...

That doesn't look good at all...

Immoral?

There's nothing quite like surveling people when you're drunk. I mean not caring if they see you watching them. This dude is trying to "hit" something tonight, and it looks like he's got a pretty good prosptect. Although there's a close second off to the left, and honsetly, she wants it more. btw... We just finished a conversation about how he can't sleep through sirens, and will be awake anyway...

Here's johnny...

I know this is all out of order unless you subscribe to the dp rss feed, so scroll down a bit to figure out what the hell i'm talking about.

Also, does anyone subscribe to the dp rss feed? I know i discourage it with my harsh demeanor, but i won't really come to your house and teabag you if you do. Its good for the environment?

Anyway this is the faucet that is in-freaking-sane. I mean he watches you no matter where you are! Maybe it makes people feel more self conscious, but seriously when you design a fixture like this you know its happening, right?  Its not an accident.

Someone wants me to think a little smiley face is watching me wash my hands, which I'm fine with.  But I can't help but wonder about the kinds of faces he makes at people who flush the urinal and return straight to the party.   Do not anger the sink fixtures,  they can cause unimaginable misery.   Seriously, just wash your damn hands. Apparently conferences make me think of restroom etiquette.

http://www.dailyplacebo.com/2006/08/sojourn.html
http://www.dailyplacebo.com/2007/01/reverse-anthropomorphism.html

I'm not obsessed with john.

Seroiusly, I haven't spent the entire time in the pisser, but this is a little bit freaky. You know that old tale about the portrait that tracks your gaze across a room? Well feast your eyes on this bad boy; whoever designed this faucet must have known what he was doing. Close up to follow...

The watering hole.

Okay, so this is really amusing. I'm away from the socializing to make a phone call (and cause I hate socializing) and I'm observing an interesting trend. Guys are walking around this corner for the restroom and they invariably see the big-ass men's room sign. However the newbies all turn left once in the alcove, although the true entrance lies to the right. So its a pretty easy categorization. Newly drunk men walk past, turn left and then walk past again to get to the John. Guys who've had more to drink round the corner and head straight to their destination; they've been there before. And guys who are eight drinks in are standing across the hall taking pictures and blogging the whole event...

Too much info


You don't want to know this... But the dude in the stall next to me just tore the place apart.  I'm a little jealous of how quickly he completed the transaction, but at the same time I feel a little bad for snickering when it went down.  Oh well.  And now you know.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Sweet Raptor-Riding-Jesus.

Just take a hott second to soak this in. [[hott second]] Now consider how many of your neighbors don't believe in evolution. And look back up at that diagram and tell me it doesn't scare you a little.

Of course that's crazy, the real whack-jobs we have to worry about will deny the existence of dinosaurs altogether. If they're willing to concede thunder lizards, they're open to conversations about facts and are reasonable people.

Just to be clear, I've got no issues with thoughts of a groovy old dude with a beard throwing down gracious love from a cloud. But if you're of the disposition to find creationism mutually exclusive with the refinement of genetics by natural selection as evidenced by fossil record and a variety of thriving organisms on our planet, then you might should head right on back to grade school for a do-over.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Residential Freeway.

This is a lot like the articles I was all up ons a while ago from Europe. There were various studies and traffic control designers that found car drivers would slow down if the environment felt like slower speeds were required. And the best way to convey that is not with a speed limit sign, but with other visual cues. In one study, they found removing all lane lines and signals worked best. Hang on, let me see if I can find that mess...

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. September 2006. If you didn't read it, go ahead and take a minute; I'll wait. Yeah? Good stuff right? Well it really hit home when I read this article in GGW about Conn ave. I commuted up and down that road for a year, so I can personally attest that its a six lane highway out of the city that happens to run through a certain moneyed neighborhood. Now, I understand that Chevy Chase doesn't want high velocity traffic running right through the middle of it, but maybe they should design a road that feels like the speed limit is 30, instead of slapping a lower limit on a faster road and sending tickets to every car that drives down it.

Traffic slows just south of Chevy Chase Circle (in DC) because there are cross streets, shopping centers and pedestrians. That seems like a much more effective control measure than white signs and speed cameras disguised as trashcans. Unless your real goal is benjamins, not safely.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Machines Making Art.

If you hadn't heard, the writers guild is stepping up to become the next artistic representative to be despised by the populous is exists because of. Of course its got a long way to go to be an RIAA or an MPAA, but you gotta start somewhere. And objecting to the kindle II's ability to interpret written text into an audible format is a good start. Apparently they thing the rights to read a book and the rights to read a book out loud should be sold separately.

Actually no, that's not fair, they're willing to admit you're allowed to read a book to whoever you want in a private and non-commercial setting. But they are taking issue with an automated reader that they percieve as an infringement into their audio book market. Which is of course ridiculous.

I had two thoughts about this today.

First, what are the standards in music? Buying sheet music of a song is not the same as buying a CD of a musician playing the song. But you certainly have the right to play the sheet music at home on a piano. Do you also have the right to have a synthesizer play back the song? I think so. Is that really viable competition to (and infringement of) the professionally produced and artist performed version? I wouldn't think so.

Second, what if there was an automatic writing machine that could create works of text with virtually no human input? Would it put human authors out of business or would the Writer's Guild assert that human authors brought something more to the table than machines could?

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that the audio books are performances of written material. They're also selling the source material which is essentially instructions for creating private performances, whether human or not. If they're upset about losing some income, the Writers Guild should be focusing on value they could add rather than trying to limit the options of its customers.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

When GM Veggies Dream.


If anything says happy valentine's day better than asparagus wrapped in bacon, I don't want to hear about it.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Throw It On The Pile.

So I haven't really been able to tell that Helio was bought up by Virgin Mobile, aside from the various tech articles telling me it had happened. My phone still uses Sprint and Verizon towers, I still go to helio.com to check my account and my auto-pay schema is intact. So here's the first change that Helio customers have seen since the takeover.
We want to continue to keep you up-to-date on important changes like these now that Helio is Virgin Mobile. Your nights will automatically start two hours earlier, at 7PM. That's right, you'll get to enjoy unlimited talk time from 7PM - 7AM, Monday through Friday, and all weekend long. To get this extra talk time, all you need to do is keep using your Virgin Mobile service.
Huh... okay. I mean, I don't really come close to using the 400 minutes I get every month anyway (54 so far this month, which is pretty high), but if you want to throw in a bunch more free hours I guess that's cool. What would really get me hot and buttered would be a 100 minute plan for 30 bucks or something. Then I might care about the free night and weekends you're spreading around like tax breaks at a GOP rally.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Touch Me Twice.

I could see Apple being the type of company that restricts users and intellectual "property" to keep them tethered to its own devices. Which is what most lends credence to this rumor of Apple asking Google to remove multi-touch from its Android OS. And that's what it looks like happened, the feature was implemented and then commented out of the release. Although its not that big a deal if you really care about it. Android is open source, just uncomment the feature and run your own build. The real question is whether Android developers will anticipate an audience of "hacked" multi-touch users and include functions to take advantage.

Some people raise flags that Apple could seemingly command partner Google, and rather than risk the fickle reprisals in which Apple is known to engage. Yeah, that's kinda silly, but I'd rather keep my Google brand iPod apps and the G1 not be tied up in litigation, so I'm fine with Google's decision. I think the real problem is that Apple thinks it owns multi-touch to begin with. Folks have been working on multi-touch since 1982, and sure, Apple brought a device to maket with the technology after buying up a company that made then since 1999. But come on, using more than one finger to interact with a device? How in the hell is that not obvious? Hmmm... I've made a touch screen that responds when I touch it with my finger... I have ten fingers... I guess I'm all done here.

And even if you are an Apple fanboy, this shouldn't seem cool because now instead of dreaming up that next great feature, Apple can sit around on the multi-touch hill, making sure no one else tries to climb it.



Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Pocket Clouds.

So google powered up a microsoft exchange server so big it would eat your car and now people with exchange enabled devices can sync their contacts and calendars as if they were big-wig fancy-pants business-types. That means iPhones, blackberry, etcetera folks. Now, this was one of the good reasons that I was so partial to an Android powered phone, so you might say that this is google shooting a hole in its own foot. But on the other hand google isn't the kind of company that restricts users to drive them towards a more lucrative business model that they don't really need. (*Ahem* Verizon...)

Anyway, if you've bought into gmail real hard, like most semi-savy folks have, there's a good chance you could be convinced to manage your contacts there if the changes would propagate to all your other devices.  So its in google's interest to have you using their web apps no matter your handset of choice.

Extra bonus nugget:  I've been managing my contacts in gmail for quite a while and the thing that irked me most was when people would get added under multiple email addresses.  There was no way to merge them and it was a pain to fix.  Well that's not a problem any more.  So go spruce up your list and get on the train.  I've got my contacts and calendar rocking on my ipod and its awesome.

Also, turn on your google latitude account.  No one cares that much about where you are, so stop freaking out.  Although I think there's a mode lacking in the privacy settings, the old I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

That's it.  Tech guru out.