Month: August 2008

– somewhere cheap shots are being imbibed for free.

Amazing retrospective of what NYC once was.

Kinda puts my bitching in its place.

I’m supposed to be going to NIN tonight. Right now, it looks like I have about 6 hours of recovery before I can verify any of my rollbacks.

Motherfuck.

Soooo… yeah.

Here is the email I sent out to my entire userbase FOUR TIMES:

This is to remind everyone that PledgeMaker will be unavailable from Monday, August 25 – Wednesday, August 27 for an upgrade. This impacts P&D, LCCF and the Campaign databases.

Thank you for your cooperation.

I did the extra thing, and took out the path to my app in the login script.

I didn’t count on four things:

1. People are stupid.
2. People are stupid, and some people don’t turn off their computers, so the login script doesn’t get re-executed, which means they keep their drive mapping.
3. People are stupid, and have manual drive mappings, which stand even of the login script runs. This means they keep access to the system.
4. People are stupid, and SO FAR I HAVE CONFIRMED THAT TEN OF THEM LOGGED IN WHILE I WAS UPGRADING!

I can’t do a cursed thing until I unfuck these people’s security, rollback the DB updates they did, and try to figure out how in the hell to keep my audit timestamps clean.

I want to kill them all/and/or die.

Though it is an part of essay unto itself, a large proportion of my belief in what makes humans fundamentally “different” from the majority of the other species on the planet is our sense of self-awareness, particularly as that self-awareness relates to the observer within quantum phenomena. If observers are integral to the process of determining state, then a self-aware observer has a greater stake in observations than a passive one, particularly when the outcomes of said processes affect the observer. “Luck”, “Fate”, and other abstract characteristics we have used to describe the effect of quantum decision trees as they relate to a personal interpretation of the passage of time are all structured methods to help buttress the mind from the incomprehensible number of possibilities which surround us at any given moment of choice.

Recently I was chatting with , who mentioned that MLB was playing with instant replay. This bothers me on many levels. I like football. I hate instant replay. I feel like it has slowed the game, and created an entire sub-strategy around how to manage challenges and time-outs. Adding a similar system to baseball, a game with a lot more pauses in it already, which could be made even slower by having the ability for umps to “double check” a call, or worse, be challenged by a coach.

In any game which requires a referee, that referee should be the final voice, in accordance with the rules. If there is more than one referee, there is an established pecking order, which determines that you can’t have shenanigans like those depicted in The Naked Gun. Adding an electronic eye to this formula, so nobody can ever be “wrong”, to me, undermines that authority. Even in the case of a replay/review/challenge, the umpire retains the right to stand by their initial call, but only after someone has had a chance to undermine it.

This gripe is connected to a larger explanation, in my mind, of why humans like games. Every culture, on every continent, has games. Many of the most rudimentary games are connected on atomic levels across cultural or physical boundaries- games of chance, games of physical prowess, games of mental prowess – games which incorporate all three. Regardless of what kind of game you are talking about, you have endless microcosms of quantum decision trees in any given set of a game’s possible results or outcomes. Some games don’t have referees, some do. Some games have very strict rules, others have very lax ones. Winning is usually the goal, but, in some games, “winning” is simply a condition set which re-sets the game to its starting point, so another session can be played. From tic-tac-toe to go, shuffleboard to golf, kill-the-carrier to American football, you have one or more turning point moment where the game goes from being a statistical compilation challenge, to a chance of something amazing happening.

Some games require only participants, but a great number of games often involve an audience. This audience derives entertainment, or pleasure, in the act of _watching_ these sets of possibility break down. The US has several major industries built on this model. Hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, worldwide, depend on this model. Ultimately, though, what is at stake for the audience member?

In the US, we pay athletes grossly disproportionate salaries to their constructive addition to our species’ overall success in the race against extinction (which, on a fundamental level, is the motivating force behind procreative and diversifying efforts of life). Professional athletes participate in games at a level of performance which “the average person” would be hard press to come close to. In an ideologically-matched game set, the audience is watching something pretty boring. Keeping baseball as the example – imagine two equally matched teams offensively and defensively. It is a long, drawn out pitcher’s duel. Chance, or the sudden moment where a pitcher falters, would be the only chance for the offense to capitalize on an opportunity, and even that is not a guarantee for scoring, which is how you win the game. You know, the kind of game where they start running out of beer in the concession stands.

Some fans, admittedly, live for their teams, regardless of wins, losses, or overall performance. The remainder of fans live for these moments of chance. Audiences don’t pay to watch the ordinary – we pay to watch the moments where the ordinary is turned on its head by “professional” game players. By having an individual who plays the game devote as much time and energy as “professionals” do, the odds of seeing such an overturn on a regular basis increases. The audience, in my opinion, increases the possibility of these “odd” or “impossible” things from occurring. It is what the audience gives back to the players of a game. We pay high prices to watch players try and do the impossible. That is their profession. They are overseen by the umpires or referees, who make sure that the rules are followed, and make the tough calls, in moments of unclear outcome. The human error potential here adds to the possibility of the impossible occurring, usually (much to the referees’ chagrin) in the form of a “bad call” – where the referee arbitrates things in a manner which the instant replay, or the eyes of the audience, sees as “incorrect”.

When you mitigate the possibility of a “bad call”, you lessen the possibility of the impossible occurring. Countless rallies have been started, or crushed, by a controversial call at the right, or wrong time for an audience, or team’s morale. When you create an electronic factor that is, as the audience sees it, an infallible mediator, the chance of these rallies, or situations well outside the normal statistical curve of a team’s probable physical performance outcomes cease to be. What potential the audience may add is diminished, and, with it, goes many of the chances which can swing a boring eight innings into a ninth inning rout. You are introducing artificial scarcity into a system where it is already scarce enough!

Somewhere along the evolution of games into industries, marketing and advertising firms found new hosts to draw blood from. Captive crowds are now bombarded with visual marketing, but even less so than those watching an event electronically. A disproportionate amount of the instant replay decision, I fear, will be based on televised profits – regardless of what umbrella the sports-reporting media sells it under. This is about extra opportunities for networks to sell ad time, and extra opportunities for marketing departments to seek captive eyes.

As bad as all that is, the “replay experiment” is something that, in all probability, will never be reversed. There are entire coaching strategies in football now about time out/challenge use. It has fundamentally changed the way the game is run. Such a change is very difficult to step back from, short from a significant technological shortage. The “secondary” judges (aka referees) will still be there to make the calls, in such an unlikely situation, but, after a generation of isntant replay, how good will they be? If a referee’s preference, in a “tough call” situation is to review a reel, and no reels are there to be reviewed, how good will they be at making the hard calls, the impossible calls, and the calls which can change the face of a pivotal game or series?

Football is already pretty far gone, don’t take baseball too. Please?

Had some minor bumps getting the upgrade running. We have forward motion, but not much altitude yet. If I manage to pull this off by Wednesday, I am going to take Friday off.

So, one thing I’m short on in the new spot is storage space. Part of the reason for the inordinate amount of time spent at Ikea is/was to secure said storage. A. and I got three of these fuckers.

Now, I’m not an engineer, and those Swedes are downright crafty at balancing pegs and predrilled holes. That being said, the whole deal weighs about 130lbs. I’d guess it is about 50 lbs per side, with the top and bottom each weighing about 10 lbs. All of this is held together by two wooden pegs and three predrilled screws per corner. We are talking about a 40″ wide 96″ tall cabinet here. For those who dislike long division, that is 8 feet tall.

They give you two assembly directions. One to assemble upright (which requires a ladder) the other to assemble on the ground, then lift. I went for the ground. Things went really well, until it was time to stand the fucker up.

I made it 95% of the way, and then it crunched. All the wood on one side gave way, and the whole thing folded like, well, particle board under pressure.

This resulted in a somewhat comical dance on my part, as I tried to dodge a collapsing 8 foot tower. I got most of the way out of the way, but the top gave me a good crack in the skull.

Now I have to dance through customer service hell to try and get the fucking thing replaced.

I am beginning to hate Ikea.

! may you see many more.

I ache all over.
Saturday I hung out with my brother and some friends, did a bunch of errands, and got stuck in traffic for in interminable amount of time. Bloomberg has this program now where he closes Broadway most of the day on a Saturday? Yeah. Leave a cross-street open somewhere between fucking 96th and canal asswipe. I actually would mind it less if the 4300 traffic cops they have running the scene actually let you make the left turns on a non-arbitrary basis. I almost ran one over out of road rage.

After traffic/visits, i went to the great white north to hang with . good times, sushi, memory lane, new games. It was good to catch up in person.

I ended up crashing at his place, then driving back to the city ass crack Sunday morning for round 2 of IKEA (which Dante definitely missed in his great cosmological tour guide-of-hell-cum-play). Early start was great, as was the first three hours or so – then drama llama. A. and I have _very_ different tastes, so it has been a tango to find stuff we both like, which we actually did, only to discover in the vast belly of the “self service digester” that they were out of stock on.

All the other stores in driving radius were closed.

By the time we got everything loaded in, the cart was so overloaded, I could barely move it. I realized I was going to break my ass (or-re-break my arm) moving all this crap. Same-day delivery? 80$. Amazing. Best part was that the guy setting up delivery ffed up on the times. It was so late by the time we got done with the checkout lines and delivery lines that they said they wouldn’t be able to deliver until 6-10pm, which was no good, since my building’s service elevator closes at 8.

So, they were supposed to deliver today, between 2-6. However, the lady who put it into the system put it in w/ yesterday’s date, so the shit got there almost as fast as we did, which was amazing.

I then worked until ~1 deboxing, assembling, moving furniture, negotiating layouts. Insanity. There is now a fairly operational living room, which doesn’t actually require a new TV to function (which is great). Bedroom is next on the hit parade.

So yeah, it is Monday, and I am more tired than I was on Friday. Not the best way to start a week, but not the worst either.

Went there yesterday to scout. The water taxi is totally the way to go. Piece of cake. They have preferred parking for Zipcars, in addition, they are a Uhaul rental spot, so you can pick up the 20$ van right there!

Must investigate this further.

I’ve been sick (on top of everything else) since Thursday. Just what I ffing needed.

There is a lot going on this weekend. I need to be better for it.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was laid to rest today, if you believe getting planted is restful. I read A Day in the Life… in 7th grade. It was powerful then, lined up against books like The Bell Jar and Man’s Search for Meaning as literary examples of duress and faith, at least as i was reaching out trying to figure out how religion (or my problems with it) played against the experience of the writings. I remember, distinctly, my father commenting on the book, which I had left out somewhere around the house, concerned that I was getting into “pinko propaganda”.

When I read about the re-translation in the early 90’s just before Y2K (I had read the Bantam edition, a hand-me down from the local book fair), I found myself amazed at what a few years and a new set of eyes on the text can do to change a book. Shukhov changed, as I had changed, but the plight, and the unfairness was no different.

I read Solzhenitsyn before I read Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. It is his voice I hear when I think of Russian. Well, to be fair, it is his voice I do my translating in – most actual “voices” seem to be some version of Vysotsky – but Solzhenitsyn’s tone – his ability to break the emotional into the atomic parts of language and experience which came from such a different pragmatism than anyone in this country knows. That is what got me into things Russian. Lukyanenko was a close run for a while, but I’ve found the longer I have gone without reading any of his stuff, the less his voice overrides my head.

Rasputin has always enthralled me, as has the entire Romanov saga. It was the reason I was so enthralled by HBO’s Carnivale years ago, and the reason I ultimately hated it as it evolved. My love of Russian folk songs is how I came to know Tom Waits (though it would be an ill-fated trip to a Super-K in Ohio that would really seal my love for the music he makes).

I feel like a little bit of me got lost today, and the world is a little more dim for it.

all i need to do is get out of the house and not listen to depressing music while drinking.
god, i can be a whiner.