| Professor Wichman E-mail Forwarding - My response |
[Jun. 29th, 2008|11:01 pm] |
A friend of mine recently forwarded this e-mail to me with his own comment of "I Think this guy has a point, a very strong point. Arabs can't have it both ways.", which I personally found a bit short-sighted on his behalf and felt that I should respond. Afterwards, I decided to share it and make my own statement to the rest of the world. You can agree with me or condemn me, but you can't shut me up. Something to keep in mind. This was a private e-mail that he sent, and is actually rather embarrassed about. To condemn people for exercising their freedom of speech because we’re at war with a country that they don’t live in is rather hypocritical. To say that someone can’t say what they feel in the USA is a complete affront to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which guarantee the right of every person in the country to say what they feel. If you don’t like what’s said, then you can complain as well. A group of Muslim students were offended that their deity of choice was portrayed in a manner that was unacceptable to them. Take for account the reaction of many Christians to the movie Dogma. I thought it was hilarious, but a lot of Catholics didn’t exactly agree, going so far as to send Kevin Smith death threats for what he felt was funny. And the I agree that the university did the right thing by not dismissing the professor, because after all, this was a private e-mail, and one of the other rights that we’re (supposedly) guaranteed by living on U.S. soil is the right to privacy. If this had been a public statement, then I wouldn’t agree at all, and would say that Michigan State should have dismissed him. Just my $0.02.
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| Thank you for your hate! |
[Jun. 29th, 2007|08:46 pm] |
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Thanks guys. There were some good ones in there that I didn't really think of, and some that were just so strange that they needed to be in the list. Most likely, the director is going to want me to make some revisions, so who knows if this'll actually end up in the final cut, but I'll be gunning for it.
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| What do you hate? |
[Jun. 29th, 2007|02:51 pm] |
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I'm doing an animation involving all of the things that people hate. I need some inspiration.
Tell me what you hate in under 10 words, and I'll add it to the list, and you'll be able to see it in the final sequence of Liszt for President.
I'll be collecting for only a couple of hours, so get to the hatin'! |
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| Singles Awareness Day |
[Feb. 14th, 2007|03:09 am] |
As I pop my head out of my cave, looking for my shadow, I just want to share something really quick.
First: a bit of inspiration in the form of a dung-loving fungus called pilobolus
and second, a bit of a reminder from a divorced husband |
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| 101 Things you don't want your sysadmin to say |
[Nov. 27th, 2006|04:00 am] |
http://packetstormsecurity.nl/unix-humor/100.things.sysadmin.says.html
I've bolded the ones that I've actually said in front of a client.
1. Uh-oh.....
2. Shit!!
3. What the hell!?
4. Go get your backup tape. (You do have a backup tape?)
5. That's SOOOOO bizarre.
6. Wow!! Look at this.....
7. Hey!! The suns don't do this.
8. Terminated??!
9. What software license?
10. Well, it's doing something.....
11. Wow....that seemed fast.....
12. I got a better job at Lockheed...
13. Management says...
14. Sorry, the new equipment didn't get budgetted.
15. What do you mean that wasn't a copy?
16. It didn't do that a minute ago...
17. Where's the GUI on this thing?
18. Damn, and I just bought that pop...
19. Where's the DIR command?
20. The drive ate the tape but that's OK, I brought my screwdriver.
21. I cleaned up the root partition and now there's lots of free space.
22. What's this "any" key I'm supposed to press?
23. Do you smell something?
24. What's that grinding sound?
25. I have never seen it do *that* before...
26. I think it should not be doing that...
27. I remember the last time I saw it do that...
28. You might as well all go home early today ...
29. My leave starts tomorrow.
30. Ooops.
31. Hmm, maybe if I do this...
32. "Why is my "rm *.o" taking so long?"
33. Hmmm, curious...
34. Well, my files were backed up.
35. What do you mean you needed that directory?
36. What do you mean /home was on that disk? I umounted it!
37. Do you really need your home directory to do any work?
38. Oracle will be down until 8pm, but you can come back in and finish your work when it comes up tonight.
39. I didn't think anybody would be doing any work at 2am, so I killed your job.
40. Yes, I chowned all the files to belong to pvcs. Is that a problem to you?
41. We're standardizing on AIX.
42. Wonder what this command does?
43. What did you say your (l)user name was...? ;-)
44. You did what to the floppy???
45. Sorry, we deleted that package last week...
46. NO! Not that button!
47. Uh huh......"nu -k $USER".. no problem....sure thing...
48. Sorry, we deleted that package last week...
49. [looks at workstation] "Say, what version of DOS is this running?"
50. Oops! (said in a quiet, almost surprised voice)
51. YEEEHA!!! What a CRASH!!!
52. What do you mean that could take down the whole network?
53. What's this switch for anyways...?
54. Tell me again what that '-r' option to rm does
55. Say, What does "Superblock Error" mean, anyhow?
56. If I knew it wasn't going to work, I would have tested it sooner.
57. Was that your directory?
58. System coming down in 0 min....
59. The backup procedure works fine, but the restore is tricky!
60. Hey Fred, did you save that posting about restoring filesystems with vi and a toothpick? More importantly, did you print it out?
61. OH, SH*T! (as they scrabble at the keyboard for ^c).
62. The sprinkler system isn't supposed to leak is it?
63. It is only a minor upgrade, the system should be back up in a few hours. (This is said on a monday afternoon.)
64. I think we can plug just one more thing in to this outlet strip with out triping the breaker.
65. What is all this I here about static charges destroying computers?
66. I found this rabbit program that is supposed to test system performance and I have it running now.
67. Ummm... Didn't you say you turned it off?
68. The network's down, but we're working on it. Come back after diner. (Usually said at 2200 the night before thesis deadline...)
69. Ooops. Save your work, everyone. FAST!
70. Boy, it's a lot easier when you know what you're doing.
71. I hate it when that happens.
72. And what does it mean 'rm: .o: No such file or directory'?
73. Why did it say '/bin/rm: not found'?
74. Nobody was using that file /vmunix, were they?
75. You can do this patch with the system up...
76. What happens to a Hard Disk when you drop it?
77. The only copy of Norton Utilities was on THAT disk???
78. Well, I've got a backup, but the only copy of the restore program was on THAT disk....
79. What do mean by "fired"?
80. hey, what does mkfs do?
81. where did you say those backup tapes were kept?
82. ...and if we just swap these two disc controllers like this...
83. don't do that, it'll crash the sys........ SHIT
84. what's this hash prompt on my terminal mean?
85. dd if=/dev/null of=/vmunix
86. find /usr2 -name nethack -exec rm -f {};
87. now it's funny you should ask that, because I don't know either
88. Any more trouble from you and your account gets moved to the 750
89. Ooohh, lovely, it runs SVR4
90. SMIT makes it all so much easier......
91. Can you get VMS for this Sparc thingy?
92. I don't care what he says, I'm not having it on my network (I won that argument, btw)
93. We don't support that. We won't support that. (made someone else support it)
94. ...and after I patched the microcode...
95. You've got TECO. What more do you want?
96. We prefer not to change the root password, it's an nice easy one
97. Just add yourself to the password file and make a directory... |
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| Last Ska Show at CBGB's |
[Oct. 4th, 2006|06:05 pm] |
Thursday, October 5th, 2006
"Last Ska Show at CBGB!"
CBGB
315 Bowery
New York, NY 10003
7PM
w/THE PIETASTERS, Big D and the Kids Table, and The Specs
$12adv/$15dos
16+ w/ID |
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| Free Wired Nextfest tickets |
[Sep. 27th, 2006|12:36 pm] |
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goto the bottom of this page, and click the link for free tickets. Toss in 10 bullshit e-mail addresses (I'd recommend using ones that you have control of), and walk into nextfest for free :) |
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| minor update |
[Aug. 31st, 2006|08:51 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  disappointed | ] |
Got work. Not in IT, but it's something, and it's work that I'll have for as long as I want it. Still don't know what I'm being paid, but I'm so sick of sitting at home, waiting for the walls to come crumbling down on my head, that I need to get out of here. And this will involve a bit of travel, so I'll be getting out of NY for a change, which I also really need.
Nothing against any of you (not like you've seen me in the last couple of months, if not longer), but I'm ready to leave. Life sucks, and my best two options are to walk across the queensboro bridge sideways, or leave. I've always been of the mindset that it's when you give up that everything comes together in such a way that you've just thrown all of your work away and can't get it back. And I hate losing.
Akino and I will never work out. She's treated me like some kind of toy for her to play with, and I'm not going to accept someone that refuses to accept me for who and what I am. So here's a few basic guidelines for anyone foolish enough to get involved with me.
- I'm lazy. It's not that I don't appreciate hard work, but if it's not necessary, it's not going to happen.
- I'm also a hard worker (aren't contradictory people fun?). I don't like to receive things that I haven't earned. I'm the first person to shout from the rooftops "Get a job, you hippy!" I don't
- I have some ... health issues. I don't need anyone's help to realize this, and I don't appreciate being told what I need to do to resolve them. I'm fully aware of my physical problems, and what needs to be done. However, some things have to happen first, and I have my own life plan. This is a part of that, but that plan needs to be executed by myself. which brings me to my next point.
- I'm a very independent person and appreciate the same. Don't expect me to teach you anything from scratch. If you want to learn something, do it on your own. You'll find that I'm much more receptive to someone making an effort for themselves than expecting me to do it for them. Asking for help is fine, but when I take over completely, you have to acknowledge that, and leave me be.
- I'm a very trusting person ... at first. But when that trust is betrayed, it's next to impossible to get it back. Oh and not telling me something is the same thing as lying about it.
- I will do with my life what I feel is appropriate. Don't like it? Too bad. Feel free to voice concerns, but the instant that someone says to me "If you do X, Y, or Z, I'm leaving you", I'll make it a point to do X, Y, AND Z.
So now that we've established that I'm a rather unforgiving prick with his own way of doing things, feel free to bug me all you like.
Now then ... I'm going to go away again for ... awhile. |
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| You know you're lazy when |
[Aug. 1st, 2006|08:51 pm] |
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You want to take a long walk off a short pier, but the whole process of putting on your shoes and finding rocks to fill your pockets with is too much of a hassle. |
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| humanitarians on the fringes of the new frontier |
[Jul. 19th, 2006|07:33 am] |
So I snagged a 14 day trial of EVE Online, and have been playing for the last couple of days. It's quick to get up to speed, which was my problem with anarchy online, and I've never been a D&D person, so Everquest and D&D weren't really for me. But space combat? Hell yeah!
So I finished off all of the tutorial, introductory missions and went and bought myself a new ship and wasn't sure what to do next. So I loooked around for a bit, and ran into a pirate in a .8 security zone, who I promptly shot down and received a bounty on. Cool!
I read a quick primer on pirate hunting and shot off to a .3 security zone. (the security zones work like this: 1.0 is where wally and the beav live. 0.0 is the south bronx on a bad day, and they go down from there) I setup my ship with a couple of rail guns and some tungsten shells (shoulda gotten the uranium shells and the gauss rifles), a shield booster, and an afterburner. After hitting a couple of asteroid fields, I ran into 3 pirates from the same clan that I shot the first one down with lesser equipment.
Wellllll here's the thing. It's a hell of a lot easier to shoot down 3 individual ships than it is to take on 3 at once. So yeah ... I got shot down, and my brand new ship went bye bye. Good thing I bought insurance. So I hightailed it to the nearest spacestation to get a new one up and running.
Along the way, someone by the name of deathtron messaged me, asking me who shot me down and if I wanted to join his corporation. I politely declined, saying that I wanted to get a feel for the game before I joined any groups or factions, which he adknowledged, and then gave me 300,000 ISK. What the fuck!? That's twice what I paid for my ship that I had insurance on!
Sometimes people really surprise me. |
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| YAAARGH!!! |
[Jul. 11th, 2006|10:00 am] |
Ganked from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) lucidia:
July, 11 2006 - 7:00P
Hamstravaganza at The Frying Pan
Pier 63 North River
New York , NY 10011
Cost: FREE
The promoters are describing this event thusly: "HAMSTRAVAGANZA A celebration of the time honored affiliation between high seas piracy and delicious ham," but all you need to know is that ths show is on a big ol' boat docked at a pier off of W. 23rd St., one pier north of Chelsea Piers. It's also a party to celebrate the release of THE PIRATES! In and Adventure with Scientists & In An Adventure with Ahab by Gideon Defoe and it will feature performances from The Hazzards, Future Folk, John Foti, The Scurvy Pirates and Rob P.
Not sure if I'll make it to this, but it sounds amusing. Might have to break out me pirate shirt! |
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| Finally ... something positive |
[Jul. 7th, 2006|07:26 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  apathetic | ] |
Ok ... looks like I got the job that I was gunning for. It pays a bit less (haven't gotten the actual offer letter yet, but we'll see how much of a pay cut I'm taking), but actually after dropping back down a tax bracket, it should come out to about the same for the take home. Plus, the buy in for benefits is only $1.
However, just to be safe, I have two more interviews today. One's looking for a bilingual engineer. They were insistent upon me coming in to meet them, even though I explained to them that my japanese isn't useful in a business environment. And the other's at a consulting firm that obviously didn't read my cover letter that very plainly said that I was looking for a salary around $100k.
Here's a hint for all of you hiring managers out there: If you're not going to read it, don't ask for a cover letter. If you're not going to read it, don't ask for salary requirements. If you're not going to read it, don't ask for a resume.
Still not in the best emotional state, but I guess if I just pour myself into work, I might be able to get through it long enough to put some money aside for my next little breakdown. |
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| Pandora Hack Update |
[Jul. 6th, 2006|03:31 am] |
In Hak.5 episode 8, they did a somewhat nicer version of the pandora hack that I posted earlier. However, some forum posts seem to point at it not working anymore. Still, credit where credit's due.
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| oh fuck now I'm doing it ... |
[Jul. 1st, 2006|09:24 am] |
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ok ... until something positive happens, this journal is now officially closed for business. Everything will stay the same, I just won't be making any new posts. |
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| ... |
[Jul. 1st, 2006|09:18 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | depressed | ] |
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| grrrrrrrrrrr |
[Jul. 1st, 2006|01:16 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  angry | ] |
And now I find out that someone that I thought I could trust has been sniffing my traffic. |
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| Meme ... it's all about Me! Mee! MEEEEEEEE! |
[Jun. 30th, 2006|02:42 pm] |
1. Who was your best friend? Hung out with the potheads, was worshipped by a few kids that had seen "Hackers" (I never said anything, I was just a computer geek), I was surprised at how genuinely friendly the people at my last school were, compared to the other 9.
2. What sports did you play? Tried taking up track. decided I was more cut out for the smoking team than the sprinting team.
3. What kind of car did you drive? none. I didn't have my license yet, and it wasn't really a priority for me. I was comfortable walking a lot. No, really.
4. It's Friday night, where were you at? Generally at either a house party, a movie, Mont Parnasse, or TGI Fridays.
5. Were you a party animal? animal? No ... was more semi-erectus.
6. Were you considered a flirt? No. I was shy. Very shy.
7. Ever skip school? Constantly ... although my teachers loved my work, I had no real drive anymore. I knew I wasn't going to make it through school.
9. Were you a nerd? A bit. I was definitely the token computer geek. Someone once walked into the senior lounge, and I heard someone come in and say "hey does anyone know what tcp/ip stand for?" to which, myself and Ted Wong both shouted out "Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol".
10. Did you get suspended/expelled? At that school? A couple of times for smoking on school grounds.
11. Can you sing the Alma Mater? Nope. I don't think they had one.
12. Who was your favorite teacher? I don't remember her name, but I remember that she was on Flight 800 to Paris. I had two english classes with her that year, and she would give a thorough critique of my writing, as opposed to "keep up the good work".
13. Favorite class? I was done with science, hated geometry (why the fuck do I need to memorize the names of theorems?), but I'd say Social Anthropology was definitely up there.
14. What was your school's full name? Edgemont Junior/Senior High School. That was the 4th High School that I went to.
15. School mascot? No clue... Probably a Mercedes-Benz.
16. Did you go to Prom? Nope.
17. If you could go back and do it over, would you? Probably not. It was extremely self-disappointing to end up dropping out, and realizing that it was my best choice after all.
18. What do you remember most about graduation? Didn't go.
19. Favorite memory of your Senior Year? No clue.
20. Were you ever posted up on the senior wall? Yeah ... I'd lean against a wall alot... I don't think it had anything to do with seniors ... just that there was only one couch in the lounge, and there was always a line for the pool table.
21. Did you have a job your senior year? My first job in IT. I worked at Prodigy.
22. Who did you date? No one.
23. Where did you go most often for lunch? There was a burger king by the school, and I would cut across the football field to get there.
24. Have you gained weight since then? Not really. In general, I've looked about the same from the neck down since I was 15.
25. What did you do after graduation? Same shit.
26. When did you graduate? I didn't. But it was supposed to be class of '96. |
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| bunch of ingrates ... all of you. |
[Jun. 27th, 2006|03:41 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | angry | ] |
Y'know .. I went through and I wrote some two articles in the last 36 hours. One was to show how to get mp3s from a certain website, and the other was purely satirical poke at scientology with a healthy dose of fact to go with it. And do you have any idea how many positive comments I recieved on 4 different sites? 3... One of which from someone I've never met who wants to include one of those articles on his site.
Care to take a wild guess at the number of negative comments I recieved? At least 15.
I recieved at least 15 different comments and e-mails from no less than 4 of you out there in IP Land that attacked the credibility of a satirical joke and whined about a lack information you could've figured out for yourself.
Let's get something straight here. I'm not a tech writer. I'm an engineer. I'm not a linguist. I'm a geek. I don't get paid to write. I don't get paid to share. I don't get paid to take your shit. If I say something about you in a negative light, then feel free to jump on the Bill bashing bandwagon that seems so fucking popular today. But if you just want to poke logic holes in a fucking joke, then just go away and don't talk to me.
You people amaze and disgust me. I'm serious debating deleting my journal after all of that. Now if you'll excuse me. I've got to go through and screen all of your comments. |
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| oooh looks like I done pissed someone off... |
[Jun. 26th, 2006|09:11 pm] |
I posted the satirical article that I wrote on the etymology of the word Scientology on Digg.com 20 minutes ago, and 10 minutes ago, everything on the site that it was on, save for the front page and forums disappeared for about a half hour.
I didn't think they worked that fast! Curses! And I would have gotten away with it too if hadn't been for your darn Scientologists.
"AND ROOBY ROO TOO!!"
It's fine though ... it was just something with the permalinking ... timing was just weird is all.
I also submitted it to digg.com. Let's see how much trouble I can get in this week.
http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Easter_Egg_on_Scientology_Website_Reveals_Truth_2
It's at 8 diggs right now. |
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