Author: Jason

Custom Signature

Site News

Sort of a neat little add-on I found for WordPress. Dynasignage. It takes the title of the latest post and builds a PNG signature so that you can use it to use on message boards and stuff to try to increase traffic on your site. The author’s version was a bit bland, just a while box, black border and two lines of centered text. So I modified it to fit three lines of text, use a template image with graphic, and allow for a variable to be passed so that the name on the signature can change on a per board basis. For example:

Its pretty cool.

The Station Agent

Reviews

I’m an avid Netflix user, and because of the over 1500 movies I’ve given ratings too, I get a pretty good list of recommendations. That’s when ‘The Station Agent’ popped on to my list.

“When his only friend dies, a young dwarf named Finbar McBride relocates to an abandoned train station in rural New Jersey, intent on living the life of a hermit. But his solitude is soon interrupted by his colorful neighbors, which include a struggling artist coping with the recent death of her young son and a talkative Cuban hot dog vendor.”

It just sounded… well.. weird. But interesting enough to drop it in my list. Curiosity got the better of me, and I bumped it to the top of my list.

The movie is slow. Its pacing is just… well… slow. Its not a bad thing. I never felt like I was looking at my watch, but it was just such a mellow pacing… it was borderline. But it was funny. Not howling in gut ripping laughter funny, but odd funny. In a strange way I felt myself identifying with Fin. He’s a good guy, has his hobbies, and doesn’t want to bother anybody or be bothered… but he gets bothered, and begins to enjoy the company.

In the end, it was a decent enough film, however, I’d be wary to recommend it to anyone I didn’t know really well. Its not for everyone, but I enjoyed it.

World’s Worst Fortune

Random Thoughts

So last night we ordered chinese, General Tso’s Chicken as usual from the place across the street. It was good, as usual. And after the meal, I opened my fortune cookie.

Promote literacy. Buy a box of fortune cookies today.

Wow… Not a fortune, but an advertizement. I fear for what this might be an omen of…

I’m a Switcher

Random Thoughts

No, I haven’t gone from PC to MAC. I’m not that crazy. But after having my car broken into three times in downtown Atlanta, I figured it was time to do something about it. So I’ve switched to public transportation.

Let me begin by saying that I’m not really happy with it. Mostly this is due to pricing and passes. From where I live I have to utilize two systems, I start out in Gwinnette, then transfer to Marta. Both systems sell monthly ‘Unlimited Use’ passes, however, neither accepts the other’s card. And while I get free transfers from one system to the other, it still means I have to carry cash, tickets or tokens on me every day. It also means I can’t take advantage of the monthly discounts.

On the other hand… Not having to actually drive myself to work is nice. I no longer care about all the idiots on the road, its the bus driver’s job, or in the case of Marta I’m on a rail not the street. I get to work more relaxed. And while it takes an hour to get to work, and anywhere from an hour to two hours to get home, that’s time I can spend reading, or writing, or just listening to music absorbed in my own thoughts. Looking over the whole thing, its a pretty sweet deal.

I’m looking to move again, and in my search I’m trying to put myself within reach of Marta, then I’ll be able to use just one system and get a monthly pass. That’ll be cool.

Approaching Perfection

Gaming

I play alot of Freecell at work. Basically, my job is interesting and hard when there is work to do, but there are days when there is no work to do. I take my time when playing Freecell. I try to think out my moves eight or ten moves out, making sure I’m not getting myself blocked up. As such, I have ridiculous winning streaks like forty or fifty wins before I take a loss. The game keeps track of your wins and losses, and tracks the percentage wins. Mathematically, it round up at the half. So when I had 72.5% wins, it displayed 73%.

So I got to thinking… given that I can’t clear my scores (actually, I could probably hack the registry and ‘fix’ it), how many wins will I need in order to achieve 99.5% … or visually, 100%.

This exercise quickly illustrates the ideas of diminishing returns, and approaching infinity. Each win carries less weight on the percentage than the last. So, when I was trying to claw myself over the 70% mark, a handful of wins could put me over the top, while one loss would drop me back a bit. As of Monday afternoon, I have 972 wins and 359 losses. Its just more than 73% true, which makes it a 73% rounded. If I never lose again, I have to win 70,469 more times in order to get 99.5% so that the screen will show me a 100% win ratio. If I manage a similar play rate to the last six months, I should be able to get that in… twenty-nine years.

Perfection is a work in progress.

Hey You!

Random Thoughts

Yeah you! Look, if you have to refer to yourself as a “Good Christian” frequently, there’s a pretty good chance you aren’t one. I’m not saying there aren’t good Christians out there, but they don’t go around telling everyone they are one. In fact, good Christians tend not to really think about it at all, they just are. You know, I realize its hard. The Bible doesn’t mention corporate politics at all. There are no ‘Thou Shalt Not’s for the business world. But just because there aren’t specific words for it written down, that doesn’t mean that lying, cheating and stealing in the name of upward mobility on the corporate ladder is excused. Its still lying, cheating and stealing, and by its nature, if you do it, you aren’t a “Good Christian”. So please, stop saying it.

Links

Site News

Not much going on today… but I did manage to move my links from the old site to this one, and they have a page all their own.

The Sound of Silence

Random Thoughts

The one thing that sucks most about having your car stereo stolen is driving without music for several days until you get it replaced. I’ve never been one much for keeping quiet when I drive… singing or talking, there’s usually something being said or at least thoughts rumbling around in my head waiting for the right moment to come out. But music always fills in the empty spaces. Driving now is creepy… when I stop talking to myself, I can hear the tires on the road with perfect clarity. I can hear the changing sounds of cars switching lanes. I hear the plink of little bits of road debris plinking in the wheel wells.

Silence has always kinda creeped me out. When people ask that question, “If you had to choose, would you rather be deaf or blind?” I agonize on it for a long time, but ultimately come down on the side of blind. I think I could handle not being able to see… but living it a world of silence, I think that would be too much for me.

Anyway, my replacement stereo arrived today by UPS, so I shouldn’t have to put up with a music-less drive for much longer.

Tremors

Random Thoughts

“Running’s not a plan! Running’s what you do, once a plan fails!”
-Earl Bassett, Tremors

Its funny… I often find myself quoting Tremors, but this one stands out. Mostly, this quote keeps popping up because of how I have come to apply it to life. Too many people rely on things that should be backup plans or fail safes as their primary plan. You can see it on the streets when you drive. There are people out there who have insurance, and they’ve covered themselves in the safest car on the road, and they drive like they don’t care about anyone else. They trust the car to save their lives and the insurance to cover the damages, and it never crosses their minds to, you know, pay attention to the road. They run yellow lights at high speed, they change lanes without signaling or even looking, and they are more intent on finishing phone conversations than they are on actually driving their car.

Lots of people deal with relationships, jobs, and other things the same way. They run out instead of trying to work on the problems, instead of trying to fix it.

That’s what this quote means to me. And he’s right… running isn’t a plan, its what you do when every opportunity to succeed has failed. Running is a last resort, and should be treated like one.

Fever Pitch

Reviews

Ever since I saw ‘Stuck On You’ I’ve been wary of anything with the Farrelly brothers names attached. But then I think of movies like ‘Outside Providence’ and I always give them another chance. From a source that is so hit-or-miss with very little middle ground, I was extremely surprised with ‘Fever Pitch’.

The basic story is… a guy, who is a math teacher, meets a girl, who is some sort of business accountant executive or something, and they hit it off. All winter long they have what is the beginning of a great romance, and then he reveals his deep dark secret… He’s a Boston Red Sox fan. And when I say fan, I mean he’s got season tickets and he hasn’t missed a game in 11 years, I mean he’s got Red Sox stuff all over his apartment… He’s not just a fan… he’s a fanatic. He goes to spring training instead of going to meet her parents, and so on…

The movie was good. It was funny, and romantic. It was great. And to top it off, they filmed the movie during the actual baseball season where the Red Sox locked in the wild card slot and took on the Yankees for the playoff, made it to the world series, and broke the Curse of the Bambino and won the whole thing. When they filmed the movie, they rewrote and reshot the movie as the season progressed, and they wrote two endings… one for a Red Sox World Series win, one for a Red Sox defeat, then went with the one that matched reality.