| Robotics project extension? |
[Sep. 23rd, 2009|12:15 am] |
Well, they asked me tonight to continue working on the robotic vision project for 3 more months. (We apparently still have money in the account, so they decided they might as well use it to extend my contract.) Don't get me wrong, I like having more money, but I was looking forward to getting back to a "normal" work-week after next week. Although I'm excited that this gives me more time to work on the stereo camera algorithms.
Also, this gives me more money to put on taxes (ok, it makes me pay more taxes too). That's what bites about doing contract work, having to pay your own taxes.
Hopefully we have enough data/results to start writing a paper now.
|
|
|
| I've read this story before.... |
[May. 6th, 2009|10:11 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | humor | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  anxious | ] |
It's funny, security at Argonne has stopped touching our badges, a security measure that was implemented after 9/11. Due to the Swine Flue (H1N1) they now don't touch the badge, but ask you to turn it over for them. At the time, I thought that was a bit of overreaction, but now I'm not so sure.
I read a report tonight that a man was gunned down at a gas station after a robbery spree
If I hear about a fuel depot blowing up, I'm going to seriously start freaking out. I've read this story It doesn't turn out well for the fat nerd with the unrequited love... |
|
|
| Discover Card is evil... |
[Feb. 11th, 2009|02:25 pm] |
So, Discover sends out a message about change of services effective in May.
* If you pay late or otherwise fail to comply with any other terms of the “Default Rate” section of your Cardmember Agreement, the rate that will apply will now be a variable rate. We are also making other changes to the “Default Rate” section.
* We are changing the day of the month your payment is due. Your Payment Due Date will be earlier, but it will still continue to be at least 25 days from the Closing Date shown on your statement.
So, basically, "We're changing everyone's interest rate if they make one late payment... and oh yeah, we're making everyone's due date earlier at the same time so that we can catch everyone who pays automatically at a certain date and slam them with new larger rates."
"Oh, and by the way, we're now calculating interest daily, so no more 'free' transactions." |
|
|
| Thoughts on Black Friday |
[Nov. 30th, 2008|02:40 pm] |
In general I don't like shopping. Oh, it's fun to get stuff you want and all, but it's so much easier to do it online, where you get the fun without the hassle.
So, with that in mind, I've never been big on the whole Black Friday thing. Sure, I'll go out because I happen to have the day off and all (which is how the whole mess started in the first place), but I never went because there were sales. Until this year. This year I went out to try to pick up a Lego set that was on sale at Target. (Side note: I went to 3 stores in the area and none of them had the set, so it was a wasted attempt.)
When you sit back and just watch the people around you, you notice that all sense of common civility is out the door during the "doorbuster" sales. I started to wonder, "Does the word 'sale' bring out the moron in people or the jerk?" Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Is the person who parks their SUV diagonally so that no one can use the neighboring parking spot a parking moron, or are they being a jerk? Is the person who stops their cart beside another cart, when there's clearly only room for two carts wide in an aisle, being rude or ignorant? So, I posed this question to some of my US friends. The general concensus seems to be "jerk" over "moron". I now pose the question to the rest of you. I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt that they're not doing it with intent (i.e. "moron gene" being expressed), but the whole notion of the day seems to be about greed, which would argue for the "jerk gene".
So who's fault is it? Granted, there is responsibility with the customers for (not) controlling their own actions, but it seems that the stores want this type of behavior. They intentionally make "doorbuster" sales to try to drag everyone to their store instead of the others. If you want a certain deal, you are forced to go to their store during certain hours to get it. They don't even allow you an entire day anymore! This leads to more stress on the consumer, increasing the fight or flight reflexes. If they had this deal, say, for the whole weekend or the whole shopping season, I'll still go to their store, but they force this mad rush to try to force people to buy everything in their store rather than shopping around.
So, they intentionally use mass psychology to rouse this frenzy just to line their bank accounts.
Is it any wonder then when people die as a result? I agree that the specific mob should be accountable, but that just doesn't go far enough IMO. I'm all for capitalism, but greed corrupts. The only way to prevent something like this is to make it economically unviable for the stores. Sure, people can look down their noses at the WalMart shoppers of the world and say it wouldn't happen with people from their circles, blablabla, but the fact still remains that the executives intentionally caused this frenzy. Every one of those other stores would have been thrilled to have the WalMart crowds busting their doors. So how do we make the 'frenzy' unviable? I say hold every store that used the "doorbuster sale" paradigm accountable for this death and fine them all! Maybe we can use the money to pay back some of the economic bailout.
(Maybe then I can get up after 10AM and still get my discount ;) )
But we're doomed anyways. |
|
|
| Back-story |
[Nov. 19th, 2008|11:17 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | humor | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  silly | ] |
A friend is creating a recipe blog and was asking for names. This is the back-story for one of the names I suggested. Everyone else can ignore it.
Jane Austen has fallen on hard times ever since her books went public domain. (Alas, she no longer receives royalties.) She tried to write a sequel to Sense and Sensibility called Ostentatious, but, regretfully, the publishers have all rejected it, saying they do not believe it will sell due to the economic downturn. So, Austen now works as the official food tester for Obama, and since a good name shouldn't go to waste, she now brings us the food blog: AustenTasteThis!. In it she reviews the dishes she tests, all in her Austenesque style, of course. Over the years, we find out the, um, politics of the White House kitchen.
The White House's Head Chef is an aging man, whose four daughters assume most of the actual chefly duties these days while he regales the staff with stories of past dignitaries he's served. He's mostly harmless and can safely be ignored for the rest of the blog except when he occasionally offers advice to one of the daughters to follow her heart or some-such.
The eldest daughter usually only serves bland vegan dishes. Once in a while the dish will surprise you with the marvelous taste, but only if you close your eyes first.
The youngest daughter is a bit impetuous and refuses to make anything but desserts.
The third daughter once received an award for a dish she made, and ever since only makes that one dish. When people hazard to ask her for something new, she haughtily points at her award and stomps off, complaining that everyone is out to get poor little her. It is quite a pity, really, since she was indeed a marvelous chef at one time.
The final daughter, let's call her E, is the only one that makes the dishes that the President actually requests. However, being a dutiful middle child, she lets the entire family take the credit. Her one quirk is that she only ever creates American dishes. (It is, after all, the American White House.) All is going smoothly for her in the daily routine of the kitchens ...
... until one day a French Chef arrives on the staff. At first E despises him, but his supreme manliness and his admittedly delicious meals eventually win her over in year 4 of the blog.
|
|
|
| On Academic 'Freedom' |
[Oct. 22nd, 2008|01:34 pm] |
 I just watched the "documentary" Expelled: No intelligence Allowed now that it's out on DVD, etc. We'll ignore the ad hominem attacks and the blatant emotional rather than logical arguments used. We'll also ignore the plain ignorant logic used*. I just want to discuss the notion of Academic Freedom.
The movie seems to make the claim that Academic Freedom should mean that you can say anything you want to say in a classroom and the university should just smile and move on. This is an absurd notion. One doesn't have the 'freedom' to say "Class, Jeremy on the front row is made out of cheddar cheese. Let's all go get some crackers and wine and eat Jeremy for lunch!"
If you were the dean of an Oil Painting department (not to be confused with the Water Color department, which has a fine program!), you would hire people to teach oil painting classes. If a person applied for a temporary job to teach "Painting Chiaroscuro in Oils" and they spent much of the time telling students not to paint in oils, but to paint in water colors instead, you would be well within your rights to not hire them again! Similarly, if you hire someone to teach an evolution class, and they teach about Intelligent Design, you are well within your rights to let them go. Academic freedom has its limits. One can't teach about frog dissection in a comparative religion class either. (Or maybe one can, religions are a little vague that way. One could possibly get away with making a sheep bleed to death on an altar or killing everyone in the next university down the road when discussing the Judeo-Christian tradition, but many Christians tend to stick their fingers in their ears and go 'lalala' when reading parts of the Old Testament.)
Anyways, this is a mini-Rant, so I'll cut it short there. I just had to get that off my chest.
*"Darwinism wasn't a sufficient cause, but was a necessary cause for the Holocaust"? How do they explain the Inquisition? Slavery? The Crusades? All before Darwin even lived. Basically any time in human history where there has been an "Us" and a "Them", people have latched onto any argument that made "Them" inferior to "Us". "Darwinism" was not necessary at all! Perhaps convenient, but by no means necessary.
|
|
|
| Elections Redux |
[Sep. 26th, 2008|10:35 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | politics | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Home | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | enthralled | ] |
OK, let me correct some misconceptions about my previous post re. McCain. I should have used the word 'shrewd' instead of 'smart' in the title. Smart does seem to imply that I agree with him, which is not the message I was trying to get across. I was trying to say that the two things he did that day were incredibly smart for his campaign.
I still stand by that assessment. Think about it for a moment. Obama's acceptance speech could have been one of the most memorable convention speeches in history, but 24 hours later, no one was talking about it. In mentioning one name, McCain brought all of the national attention onto himself. (Coupled with the relative weakness of Obama's speech compared to earlier ones -- if you wanted something for posterity, switching to go on the attack against McCain in the convention speech was poor timing IMO.) Saying that, I don't think McCain's choice was a wise choice for the nation, but again, it gave him a fighting chance in the public opinion polls. Weeks later, we're still talking about Palin/McCain and not 'whoever-it-was-that-Obama-picked' or about 'whatever-it-was-that-Obama-mentioned-in-his-speech'.
In the responses since the announcement, many women have complained about McCain's audacity in thinking they would vote a certain way because a candidate had similar plumbing. (This critique has been brought against my previous post as well.) The question I have for them is, is there anything McCain could have done to make them vote for him? In most cases, I bet, the answer is 'no', ergo, the move wasn't targeted at them, but at the women who would vote with their chromosomes. I'm not denigrating women here. I'm saying that a large percentage of the population, regardless of sex, votes emotionally rather than intellectually. (I'm not saying here that women are more emotional than men either, so don't go there.)
This is something that Democrats haven't seemed to grasp, but which the Republicans have used to win the past two elections. Most academics are Democrats, so, conversely, a large percentage of the (vocal) Democrats are academics. I bring this up because we (academics) seem to have forgotten that the largest parts of this country are not academics. Emotional thinking plays a larger part in most people than critical thinking. I posit that this is evolution's handiwork. The person who thinks with their loins is spreading more offspring than the one who spends time weighing the relative values of Potential Mate X vs Potential Mate Y. In the terms of candidates, the Guy You Can Have a Beer With gets more votes than the Elitist Intellectual Who Drinks Tea Instead of Coffee... (Yes, I know it should be 'with whom', etc.) ... and the democrats sit back and are dumbfounded about why they lost the election. I'm not saying that the Democratic intelligentsia should start looking for their own Beer Guzzlers instead of Tea Drinkers, I'm just saying that they should stop assuming that others think the same way they do. Insulting (or ignoring) someone for voting with their emotions is not going to win the election for you.
A couple of people have read into my post that I was voting for Obama because he was black and some thought I was going to vote for McCain just because Palin was a woman. Wow. I'm not sure where those came from, but no. The issues of privacy, torture, and foreign relations are big ones for me. If the Bush administration hadn't taken us so far from what I think is 'sane', I might be more inclined to give the Republican candidate a chance. The religion aspect, yes, that does affect me emotionally as an atheist, but I can overlook that as I would hope a Christian could overlook it in an atheist candidate, namely, Church and State are (supposed to be) separate in the US. (However, that said, Palin is on the record as wanting to take a sledge-hammer to the wall of separation on many issues. She's a little scary IMO. Obama's pro-evolution stance is much more heartening to me.) The whole race/gender thing was largely mentioned because no matter who wins, there will be someone in office who isn't a White Male for once, which will be something students of the future will have to memorize in their history classes. It will be cool to say "I was there!")
Speaking of elections and history, people often look back at Nixon with a degree of loathing today, but it's interesting to note that he arguably won with the largest landslide in history. (If you look at it by fraction of votes needed to switch the outcome, he was in 3rd after Roosevelt and Harding.) One can argue that the Watergate shenanigans were responsible for a portion of that. However, I think it's interesting that he probably would have still won quite handsomely without the whole Watergate thing. It's a pity that his insecurities led him to ruining his reputation and career, and put such a black mark on American politics.
|
|
|
| McCain Does Two Incredibly [Shrewd] Things |
[Aug. 29th, 2008|05:08 pm] |
I've been avoiding talking about politics here for this election just because.. well, everything is already been said.
I'm leaning towards Obama of course, but not because of the war, or necessarily because of the religious usurpation of the Republican Party, but because of the audacious inroads the Bush administration has made against personal civil liberties. Torture is torture, and court orders for wiretapping, etc are there for a reason.
Also, on a slightly illogical side, it would be historic to vote a non-white-guy presidential ticket into office. (Yes, I do remember Mondale-Ferraro ticket, but I couldn't vote back then -- aside from the fact that they didn't win :P )
Due to Bush's low popularity right now along with dissatisfaction with the war, etc, for a while it looked like an election the democrats couldn't lose. However, the Obama vs. Clinton in-fighting has taken a lot of the shine off of the democratic party in the last months.
So, that said, McCain has done two things in the last 24 hours that have shown hints of brilliance.
1) Congratulating Obama on 'his' night rather than attacking him was pure genius. It shows he's not out of touch with the historical import of Obama's nomination especially with the anniversary of the 'I Have a Dream' speech. There was nothing McCain could do to fight that, so saying 'good job' suddenly makes people take a second look at him without looking like a complete ass. This is especially true since Obama suddenly went on the attack in his acceptance speech. Suddenly playing nice goes against tit for tat, but in this case, it makes Obama look like the bad guy and McCain the good guy. Genius!
2) Nominating a female VP. A female VP for McCain completely rewrites the election for him I think... it shows that he's also on the 'change' bandwagon as well as drawing out the female voters and minimizes Obama's 'minority card'... I have always said that a woman was more 'electable' than a minority, since half of the population are female. This also draws the Clinton voters who have said they would never vote for Obama. Her speech using Clinton's own words further enhances that draw.
I still think he's going to have a hard time overcoming the low opinion of Bush right now, but this probably gave him the best fighting chance he could get.
I'm still more in the Obama camp because of the 'logical' reasons regarding the loss of personal liberties, but this election just got a lot more interesting. I don't like the democrats' fiscal plans, but things like the Patriot Act and waterboarding are really hard to forget.
No matter who gets elected though, this presidency will be one for the history books. My hat is off to you Mr. McCain for making a week that looked to be all about the Democrats into a brilliant tactical move for your side. |
|
|
| About time! |
[May. 19th, 2008|05:50 am] |
 The meeting to present the R&D 100 Award plaques to the 2007 award recipients for the development of "Passive Millimeter-Wave Spectrometer for Remote Chemical Detection" has been set for Wednesday, June 4th at 10:30 a.m.
So... We'll finally be getting our personalized plaques less than a month before the next year's awards start being announced.... Talk about your bureaucratic delays! (I can't even show visitors the group plaque since it's not even being kept in our building! It's in a building to which I don't even have after-hours access.) |
|
|
| Tom's computer has hot flashes |
[Apr. 30th, 2008|02:35 pm] |
My motherboard keeps complaining about having hot flashes. A few times the CPU has fainted from the heat. I can only conclude that it's going through menopause and is well beyond its 'productive' lifetime. So, being a manly man, I must do what other manly men do and trade her in for a younger model. Trust me, it's not me, it's you.
(Seriously though, the fan on my power supply has gone out and my case gets really hot to the touch. This is not a Good Thing. I've had hardware failures four times in the last two days, so it's time to upgrade. While I have replaced power supplies in the past, this time it's just not worth the trouble. I've already replaced the CPU fan twice and replaced the memory a couple of times, so it's just time to bite the bullet and get a new one. She's a nine year old computer. She's had a good life. Now I just want to be able to play games again.) |
|
|
| This is your roving reporter, Olaf Prilos |
[Apr. 4th, 2008|06:05 pm] |
OK, a couple of people took me seriously the other day and didn't realize that Olaf Prilos was an anagram for April Fools. Sorry if I worried anyone. I'm too much of an information addict to leave the 'net forever. "Hello, my name is Olaf Prilos, and I'm an infoholic"
Here were a few of my favorite science--related pranks of the day: Project Virgle, XEP-0239: Binary XMPP, Bush to Science: "Let's be friends", Google Talk goes Green, Stein is right: Darwinism causes antisemitism, Trillian for Dogs!, Laughter makes clowns of us all, and finally, the MATLAB Language Translator. (Although they ran the one joke - x of y - into the ground by the end.) There was also, the Gimp manual in Esperanto, and lots more, but those were my favorites. |
|
|
| That's it, I give up |
[Apr. 1st, 2008|11:58 pm] |
Well, after a decade and a half of online presence, I've decided to pack it in folks. Things are just too busy lately and with the cost of broadband so expensive, I thought I'd go offline to try to save up a little money for travel expenses to meet people in the real world.
As my cel phone has internet on it as well, I'll be giving that up too. This should give me a few hours uninterrupted to myself every night finally.
If you want to get ahold of me, my e-mail is... um... er.. you can leave a comment at... uh... my Google Talk ID is... damn. I guess you'll just have to use a pigeon. My pigeon mailstop is: Roost 4, Nest 1, Westmont, IL.
Also, I'd like to announce that I'm hereby changing my name to Olaf Prilos. |
|
|
| 3D stuff: Hebes Chasma |
[Mar. 31st, 2008|01:48 am] |
|
Hey, for all the 3D / Mars fans reading this, if you have a pair of anaglyph (red-blue) glasses, check out the anaglyph of Hebes Chasma linked in this post. Pretty cool stuff. |
|
|
| IEEE Prints Tom's Picture |
[Mar. 29th, 2008|02:59 am] |
![[IEEE Trans.]](http://docs.google.com/File?id=dg2sgq7k_425dtphdvfs) OK, so it's not just the picture, but our entire article finally came out in the March issue of IEEE Transactions: Microwave Theory & Techniques, so it's no longer just a preprint. Those with an IEEE membership can find the final article here. (This is a very tough peer-reviewed journal to get published in, so I suppose I should be feeling proud.)
What were they thinking?? Publishing my picture could be hazardous to their presses!
(For those who just wanted to see my picture, I posted the bio we submitted here on Google Docs.) |
|
|
| Don't Cheat the Heat! |
[Mar. 23rd, 2008|07:09 pm] |
I like hot chiles. This is not a new fact to people who know me. What most people don't understand is that this doesn't necessarily mean I like "hot" food. I do, but for certain values of "hot". Let me explain.
What I don't like is foods that "cheat the heat". For instance, I don't like most hot sauces. That doesn't make sense, I hear you say. Ah, but it does. Go grab a bottle of hot sauce. Go ahead, I'll still be here. I'll just sit over here at the side of the screen talking with that cute icon you have on your desktop. You know the one I'm talking about.
Got your bottle of hot sauce? Good, now read the list of ingredients. I can almost guarantee that, if it calls itself "hot sauce", one of the first few ingredients is vinegar. What vinegar does is it increases the sensation of heat from the chiles. This is what I mean by "cheating the heat".
Unfortunately, what this does is it also kills the flavor of the chiles. Sure, you get a great heat sensation, and most people can't taste anything once the "heat" is applied, but all you can really taste is the vinegar.
However, that means you're missing out on some of the best tasting chiles out there. In my humble opinion, the flesh of the ripe habanero is one of the best tasting chiles nature has given us. It's got a fruity, citrus-like flavor and dumping vinegar all over that just completely ruins it.
 I hear you asking, what brought this up? This post originally started out as a review of a restaurant in my area, but I got sidetracked trying to explain why I was disappointed by it, when my friends know I like hot chiles. A few days ago I went to this little place called Taco Grill & Salsa Bar. The food was really good. (See the picture of my enchiladas suizas.) However, the Salsa Bar was a disappointment. They have a lot of "hot" salsas, but all of them were heat cheaters. I couldn't taste anything BUT the vinegar in most of them. (Even the ones that weren't "hot" still had too much vinegar.) I'll probably go back for the food, but I won't hold high expectations for the salsa, which is a pity, because I was really looking forward to having a salsa bar to visit. |
|
|
| Futurama legos! |
[Mar. 23rd, 2008|01:27 am] |
Futurama in Lego form!
I love love love these custom minifigs... Who wants to go up to Northbrook mall with me some time this month to see the set? |
|
|
| Zombie Teller |
[Mar. 21st, 2008|03:17 am] |
If you like the occasional Zombie flick, or you just like magicians, or maybe you like both, check out Teller's entry in the Diary of the Dead Contest, "& Teller". If you don't like Zombies or magicians, then you should probably look elsewhere for a few minutes of entertainment. Go ahead, I'm not stopping you! |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
tometheus's journal
optimistic
annoyed