Mark Atwood
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Mark Atwood" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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03:49 pm
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My car, it gleams!
So I've been meaning for some time to get my car in for it's regular maintenance, and also to have it cleaned. It's been years since it had a solid cleaning, and currently I park it under a tree.
Plants were starting to grow out of the dirt that had accumulated around the windows and on the floor. No kidding.
A friend of mine is currently between jobs, so today I paid her to drive it to the dealer, for the oil change and detail work. And, as it turns out, brake pad replacement.
Now my car is shiny again, it gleams.
I'm getting more convinced about the concept of "outsource your life".
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10:59 am
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Project 365, Day 134: Doing Knuth, Section 2.2.3 Alg A
Every week, we get together, and study from Knuth. Large sheets of paper and colored markers help a lot.
Tags: flickr, project365
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09:18 pm
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Project 365, Day 133: Bowling Shoes
The counter at the AMF Imperial Lanes was covered with this pile of rental bowling shoes as we were checking out for the evening.
Tags: flickr, project365
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07:39 pm
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Project 365, Day 132: Invisible Light
The illuminator LEDs on this security camera were not visible to my eyes, but they show up clearly to my camera.
Tags: flickr, project365
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10:54 am
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Linked from Fake Steve Jobs?
According to my Flickr stats, this picture just got a huge surge of views, most of them from "fakesteve.blogspot.com".
But when I go to that blog, I can't find the link.
Can anyone find it for me?
Tags: flickr, mysql
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10:38 am
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I just learned a new term today...
"Essex Man"
This is apparently a nasty slur in the UK, and it means "a person of a working class background, with aspirations to own property and shares. Usually used as an insult".
That such an intersection of class and aspiration is the basis of an insult says a hell of a lot about the UK.
None of it good.
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09:14 pm
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...
He's not exactly the brightest bowling ball in the deck.
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05:03 pm
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As Always, Always Follow the Incentives...
Remember the story of the Yugoslavian socialist worker-managed firm? If you add another worker to the firm, that worker gets a pro-rata share of the firm's value added. The firm's value added has a component attributable to the firm's capital stock, a component attributable to the ideas embedded in the firm, a component attributable to the firm's market position, and a component attributable to the workers. Hire another worker, and only the last of these goes up: the first three do not, and so average compensation falls. This means that a worker-managed firm is likely to shrink whenever it gets good news that makes it more productive--the larger is the value added due to ideas, capital, or market position, the more expensive does it become for the existing workers to replace workers who leave, let alone hire enough workers to expand. While a competitive market capitalist firm responds to good news about its productivity and value to society by increasing employment, a Yugoslavian-model market socialist firm responds to good news about its productivity and value to society by shrinking.
But remember, folks, worker owned co-ops are Good, and free market capital funded corporations are Bad.
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04:50 pm
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Life, the past weekend so far.
Today, it was cold again. Where is my spring? Did a bunch of yoga, with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hvc teaching. Went to the first weekly Farmers Market of Capitol Hill. Fresh cheap food, omm nomm nomm...
Yesterday, went climbing at Vertical World. Pulled too hard, strained my elbows, had to stop before my muscles got tired. Went to Emerald City Comic Con, but didn't see anything I wanted to buy. I did get some presents for some friends.
Went to Colin & Kirsten's bachelor & bachelorette party. This was actually my first "bachelor party", but I think it was pretty non-standard, since I have such non-standard friends. Sadly, I got there too late to enjoy the Naked Sushi, but still, the candy was good, the company was fun, and I got a slot with the henna artist that was there. Kirsten, of course, got a lovely complex work on her arms and chest. I got a pattern on my left palm.
Friday, I finally got caught up on my work paperwork. Let's try to not let it get behind again.
That evening, I went to elfs surprise birthday party. Actually, I picked him up here in Cap Hill, and took him home, while his wife and daughters got the party ready.
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04:41 pm
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Mother's Day
I have friends who's mothers have called them up drunk at odd times. Mothers who institutionalized for the mentally ill. Mothers who blinded themselves to abuse. Mothers who abused. Mothers who are absent, or hated, or hateful. Mothers who treated their kids as nothing more than exchange tokens in Family Court. Mothers who's greatest positive contribution was bundle of chromosomes and 9 months in a womb, and not much of anything else. Mothers who loved boozing, 420, screwing around, and "protesting against The Man" more then their own kids.
In fact, most of my friends have, by my standards, mothers who mind-screamingly screwed up.
Not my mother.
My mother certainly wasn't perfect. She made mistakes, and a lot of times, the stresses of obligations toward house, church, and five intelligent, strong-willed, and slighly insane kids, took their toll on her.
But still, she did a better job and tried harder to do a better job, than most all of my friends' mothers.
Happy Mother's Day, wurtmann.
Enjoy your new roses.
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05:33 pm
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Project 365, Day 126: Known for their Hair
Tags: flickr, project365
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05:28 pm
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Project 365, Day 125: The Winner!
This kid was the winner of the day's Cardboard Tube Fighting League tournament
Tags: flickr, project365
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03:23 pm
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call from 623-492-6031
I just got a call on my cellphone from this number. It was an immediate hangup. Googling the number says its a shady fly by night place that claims to be AmEx collections.
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12:02 pm
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Great Advice...
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-orourke4-2008may04,0,3597821,full.story
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11:42 am
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A polite way to say "MYOB"...
The folly of those who persist, as is supposed, without reason, in not taking advice, has been much expatiated upon. But the folly of those who persist, without reason, in forcing their advice upon others, has been but little dwelt upon, though it is, perhaps, the more frequent, and the more flagrant of the two.
Indeed and Amen
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04:24 pm
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I'm famous again...
This photo is the May 5th "Seattle Stranger Flickr Photo of the Day".
This was part of the Cardboard Tube Fighting League tourney at Gasworks Park this past weekend.
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03:36 pm
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Cameras at Cal Anderson Park
There are now public security cameras at my local public park.
There is much hubbing and bubbing about privacy, erasure, recording, when the feed can be used in court, etc.
The cameras are "live" and can be pointed and zoomed by their controllers.
The current doctrine is that the video gets deleted after 2 weeks, and requires a court order or warrent to be used.
I think that's bull.
All of these "public" cameras should be read accessed by "the public" in real time, all the time. I should be able to go to a seattle.gov URL and look thru them all.
Since these cameras can be pointed and zoomed by the controlling cops, that would be a great check on said cops "professionalism" (cough). I.E, if they are always pointing and zooming in on passing pretty girls, we would all like to know about the cops doing that sooner, not later.
Whenever you walk into a store or bank or office building, you're being recorded by privately owned cameras. The publicly owned cameras should be just that, public.
It's only a few years away that most anyone can record video full time from their phone, car, and lapel pin. And a few years after that, most everyone not only can, but will.
Get used to it now.
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09:43 am
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Taking a Beating
After the main Cardboard Tube Fight tourney, there was a freestyle. Helen and I went after each other with two half-tubes each.
I nailed her. :)
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02:45 pm
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I've just checked in a small update to the s3-tools
I've just checked in a small update to the s3-tools
I've removed the dependency on the Perl package XML::Simple, and replaced it with calls to XML::LibXML, which will have already been loaded because Net::Amazon::S3 depends on it.
I really dislike doing what should be a minor update via CPAN, and having a cascading set of added dependencies cause CPAN to pull in the whole world. So I shall swim upstream, and remove unneeded dependencies.
Anyway,
The tarball can be had at http://fallenpegasus.com/code/s3-tools
The Mercurial repo is at http://hg.fallenpegasus.com/s3-tools
Tags: aws, code, geek, perl
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12:59 pm
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Atheists' Churches...
I've often said that if I ever have a large amount of money, one of the things I would do would be to found and endow an Atheist Parocial School. And it would have a chapel. With manditory services. Why? Well, mainly because I think it would be funny...
Anyway. It looks like other people have had the same idea:
... Then Who Gets His House?
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