Reed Me : geek humor

The app that would get me to buy an iPhone...

reedme — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:51:34 GMT

I’m afraid to go look in the App Store, because it might be a real iPhone app and I might be kicked out of the ninja camp for talking like a pirate all the time. Doh!

Although, it probably wouldn’t be too hard to write one for Windows Mobile. I’ll add it to the long, long list of code that I’ll write Someday™.

This explains so many things... Scott Adams explains compensation modeling?

reedme — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:06:23 GMT

This metaphor can probably be extended to ‘splain corporate and governmental policies of all kinds!

Of course, it would actually be worse (at least for me) if compensation was tied to the performance of friends and family. Heh!

For the record, I used to work there... and I still ain’t laffing.

In other words, if I get promoted that means what...?

reedme — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:59:55 GMT

The way I read these alleged research results, a lottery is just as effective at picking people for promotions as what we’ve been doing for years?

But is there a better way of choosing individuals for promotion? It turns out that there is, say Pluchino and co. Their model shows that two other strategies outperform the conventional method of promotion.

The first is to alternately promote first the most competent and then the least competent individuals. And the second is to promote individuals at random. Both of these methods improve, or at least do not diminish, the efficiency of an organization.
Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Why Incompetence Spreads through Big Organizations

I think some researchers have been playing The Sims too much lately...

From personal experience, I know that it matters quite a bit to cow-orkers’ morale who gets promoted... and it’ll be hard to convince even an average CEO or HR generalist that promoting people at random results in an organization that’s just as efficient as one produced by experience, interview selection, seniority and/or the good ole boy network connections.

Pick me. Pick me! Heh.

If you need me, I’ll be in teh garage...

reedme — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:02:00 GMT

Tim and I don’t see eye2eye on some things, but quite often he nails the the whole “married geek” thing. It’ll definitely be funny to watch Tim’s comix grow and change when they have kids. A lot like my own father enjoys watching the slow-motion train wreck of my life. Heh.

You don’t even have to know the rest of the plot leading up to this point to understand it and know that nothing good can come of this...

Tomorrow (assuming that I have a tomorrow, of course), I’ll list all the things my wife said she doesn’t want to hear coming out of the man cave today.

If you finish reading the entire article...

reedme — Wed, 27 May 2009 03:56:49 GMT

If you actually manage to read all the way through the entire article (the first time):

The Benefits of Distraction and Overstimulation -- New York Magazine

My hypothesis is that:

You need more caffeine in your diet.
You need a [new] job.
A life.
All of the above.

I *think* I got to page 3 before another shiny object caught my attention. It might’ve been an IM or a txt or a tweet. Who knows?

All I know is that unless I close Outlook, Live Messenger, Office Communicator, Internet Explorer, turn off my cell and office phones and plug White Zombie (or its equivalent) into the Zune upwards of 11 on the volume slider, I can’t concentrate enough to get anything meaningful done...

Meh.

Yeah, I know I said I’d never run for office again...

reedme — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:07:43 GMT

But then I went and put my name in the hat once more... because it’s for a good cause!

No, it’s not April Fool’s. That’s tomorrow.

Personally, I’d like to thank L.D. Kirshenbaum (the author of the article below) for giving us a fair shake. I’m sure that there were some embarrassing quotes among all the hours that we chatted which she could’ve taken out of context, but she was very professional.

The Gun Club at Microsoft

March 31st, 2009 | Posted in American Bulletin

Right now, the Gun Club has 756 members.
At left, new President David Reed celebrated his wedding anniversary with his wife, Samia, at the shooting range.

Photos by Andrew McDonald.

We’re having a big get-together for Second Amendment Day on Saturday, if anybody wants to come out and celebrate with us.

Yeah, I’m a month overdue on a fitness duel update, a bike update and all that. I’ve been busy (and not necessarily in a fun way). Now that everyone @ Fort Reed is reasonably healthy again, I’ll have more time to goof off.

Nulls are always a problem.

reedme — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:33:11 GMT

Anybody who’s ever jousted with nullable database columns will find this humorous:

The Vermillion Screen of Death (Raw Materials Comic Strip)

Well, I did anyway.

I need a new dart board. Would the MOF circle work?

reedme — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 03:13:47 GMT

I’m spending some time this weekend dusting off skills that I haven’t used for a while. After staring @ this MOF circle for waaay too long, I suddenly got the urge to jump on the bike, ride home and play darts with the kids. Heh. I’m sure you’ll see the connection.

Although a MOF dartboard might not sound like as much fun as the RUP game board (allegedly Rational Unified Process™) that we played on @ the startup after we got acquired by the large, stone-like Fortune 100™ company, but throwing darts is definitely more satisfying than moving game pieces around a board.

I think I’ve read that one. By Haldeman, right?

reedme — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:09:31 GMT

Would somebody please turn on the Large Hadron Collider so we can just end the debate? One way or another? Srsly? It might solve some other problems, too. *snicker* In short, a new paper says that the reports of the probable demise of black holes created by the LHC are greatly exaggerated (off by a half a second or more). Heh. Sounds familiar...

Joe Haldeman staged his “Forever Peace” novel around the possibility that an übercollider being built in the orbit of Jupiter could destroy all life in our solar system. (Not the only subject of purest conjecture in the novel, but I’ve been nostalgic about Haldeman’s work since I read “Forever War” as a kid.)

The book suggested that “now that we know what to look for” we can see all the other solar systems that other so-called intelligences used to inhabit before they built their own übercolliders and destroyed themselves... and only a magical mind-melding device that will make pacifists of us all can save humanity! (It’s a good book, if you like escapist scifi with remote controlled robots fighting our wars in the near future and a good bit of close up violence despite the peacenik dogma.)

Anywho, back to Reality™ where bombastic headlines and journalistic license sell advertising @ Fox News:

Casadio, Fabi and Harms think the black hole would lose out, and pass through the Earth or out of the atmosphere before it got to be a problem.

[snip]

If the worst comes to pass, and there's now a slightly greater chance that it might, at least it might explain why we've never heard from extraterrestrial civilizations: Maybe they built Large Hadron Colliders of their own.

Scientists Not So Sure 'Doomsday Machine' Won't Destroy World

I think J.D. summed it up nicely in his Sunday comic: *wibble*

Even my 10 year-old daughter laffed out loud when it was suggested that we shouldn’t proceed with experiments until we know what will happen when we do them.

Where did I put that crowbar? (Just in case!)

We are sooo doomed as a species.

reedme — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:41:48 GMT

I bump into people now and then, even up here in the near orbit of Redmond, who either don’t have an email address or don’t check it regularly. Being a hyper-connected person (my man-portable gadgets radiate enough EM to keep me warm in the winter), these people always remind me that I don’t live on the same planet with most people. [Do you know how hard it is to buy a motorcycle via craigslist from somebody who only checks email once a week?!]

However, these lies, damn lies and statistics from a Harris Interactive survey (sponsored by Intel) boggle the mind:

People would forgo sex and television watching for two weeks rather than lose a week's worth of access to the Internet. Not Tonight Honey, I've Got the Internet (InternetNews.com)

Um. No.

If you’d rather give up sex for two weeks than a week without lolcats, wasted hours WoWing, playing Solitaire Online and watching stupid BlewTube videos... well, please get out of the gene pool. If you’ve already got kids, put them up for adoption before you corrupt them further. Really. Also, you’re doing it wrong.

If natural disasters, meteors, super-volcanoes, gamma ray bursts, space aliens, zombies, climate change or bloody unicorns don’t wipe us out, we’re still doomed as a species... because Algore invented the webbernetz.

I’ll be over here in the corner weeping for all the kids in the “third world” that we’re going to be giving free laptops and Internet access. It’s only a matter of time for them, too. *cry*

Voice Command: FORMAT C: [ENTER]

reedme — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:40:55 GMT

Well, that’s how the joke used to go about Vista voice command... Apparently somebody thought it would be fun to actually implement something similar in their mobile o/s. On purpose or not. Heh.

The bug can hardly be called a security problem, given it requires access to the handset, but the fact that until the fix was issued today any G1 user typing a text message containing the word "reboot" would see their phone resetting is truly stunning... Google fixes world's most stupid bug • The Register

It’s hard to imagine why one would use the same editor/parser for text messages that is used for phone commands, or have a text sink that hooks in at the system level and parses commands out of all input, but... it’s funny either way. I love the Law of Unintended Consequences™.

As often as I have to reboot my own mobile phone, a voice command for doing this would save me from having to pop the battery off so often. <envy />

Voting in R’lyeh?

reedme — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:22:40 GMT

I’m pretty sure that Lovecraft would know how to interpret these “mysterious massive waves”, especially since the last time that New England (home to Arkham and other scary places in ‘20s pulp fiction) saw this kind of big wave was in the ‘20s... Our pal H.P. would tell us that Cthulhu woke up long enough to vote.

Specialists have posed a variety of possible explanations, saying the waves could have been caused by a powerful storm squall or the slumping of mountains of sediment from a steep canyon in the ocean - a sort of mini tsunami. The last time such rogue waves appeared in Maine was at Bass Harbor in 1926. Massive waves a mystery at Maine harbor (boston.com)

Who that particular Great Old One voted for, in your opinion, probably depends on your political persuasion. I personally think that Cthulhu got more than one write-in vote today. Heh.

I do think it’s interesting that there seem to be no reports of seismic activity, which would seem to rule out a tectonic angle or large impact. Hrm.

Meet the Reedz on Xbox Live

reedme — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:36:33 GMT

It’s always interesting to see how other people see themselves. Or want to be seen. Maybe it’s the latent social scientist training from decades gone by in graduate school. Who knows?

Giving them no specific directions besides “make an avatar for yourself”, I turned the family loose on the Xbox Live avatar creator… with interesting results.

Those of you who’ve met my family know that a couple of those bear little to no resemblance to the creator. Heh. Foex, my oldest son has many years to go before he can even dream of growing a beard… or pointy ears. I didn’t realize that the majority of my family picked camo pants until I tossed all the avatars up together. Interesting.

I have to “coerce” my wife and daughter to “hurry up” after watching them spend way more time trying on hairstyles, clothing and accessories than I was willing to give up on the Xbox 360. When I found them “shopping” among the hairstyles and jewelry, I drew the line… The boys and I were done in five minutes or less each. We’re not sure why the youngest zoomed to dark leisure suit plus sneakers, but he was the one who took the least amount of time “fiddling”. We weren’t able to get him to explain his choices to us.

It’ll be interesting to see how the kids’ avatars evolve over time. Mine? I want Gears of War 2 armor for mine. I want my COG armor!!

In other news, I broke down and bought Dead Space last night on the way home from the Halo 3 charity tournament for the Microsoft Giving Campaign and played all the way through Chapter 1 on normal. I’m likin’ it a lot!! It might replace Bioshock in my list of genre favorites. I tried to hold out for Gears of War 2, but... all the good reviews got the better of me. Definitely have to finish Dead Space before Gears arrives with my ceremonial commemorative Lancer. <insert obligatory chainsaw bayonet sound/>

Mail Goggles? Really? Is it April Fools’ again already?

reedme — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:42:06 GMT

It’s funny enough that it pretty much speaks for itself…

"It will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email," Perlow wrote.

"And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?"

Google tool to keep emails sober (breitbart.com)

What will happen to all those Gmail users who can’ solve those “simple math problems” even while sober?

Searching for Mexican Food... on CodePlex?

reedme — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:11:44 GMT

Tagging is all fun and games until somebody gets hurt, right? Actually, like so-called Google-bombing, it can be pretty funny.

Have you ever been guilty of surfing while hungry? It appears that somebody was pretty hungry while they were wandering around CodePlex looking for something. No idea what. But two projects have been tagged on CodePlex as "Mexican Food," including the AJAX.NET toolkit and the AdventureWorks sample databases.

Searching CodePlex for Mexican Food

I only noticed because I own the AdventureWorks project... and apparently I needed a good laugh today. Thank you, Anonymous Tagger Person, for the laugh.