Happy new year and all that

I'm a bit underwhelmed by everything this year.

Best Dentist Ever

That would be the good folks at AtlantaDentalArts.com - not cheap but there were able to work me in and do a lot of emergency work nearly painlessly. Highly recommended and quite worth it. Nice, non-judgmental folks too

Wrapping up a miserable week, and onto another

Work has sucked, my dog has somethign wrong with him, and I've got a massive toothache. But paying in art instead of money makes me smile.

Brushes with greatness

I went to college with this guy. Ward Anderson was a comic then too, but in much worse shape.

Tornado parties and the kindness of strangers

So, last night I venture out into one of the more interesting parts of downtown to go to a party at the offices of my good friends at Lucky Fish. I carefully check the weather beforehand so as I can be home before any thunderstorms so my dog won't have his usual psychotic break that happens when a storm comes and I'm not there. The storms were supposed to come around midnight and I planned to leave around 11:00 PM. All was good.

It was a great party, with casino games and cool people. I'm near the door around 9:30 when I notice the wrath of God happening outside. Someone checks news on a ubiquitous I-Phone and says that CNN Center and the Georgia Dome have just been hit by a tornado. The first tornado to hit downtown in living memory. The history is made more notable by the fact that the party is a quarter mile away. Crap I think. I'm not worried about my personal safety as we were in a converted 100 year old well built factory . Nonetheless leaving is out of the question. I've driven through one tornado and I'm not driving through another one.

We all head down to the basement, and the party continues. The power goes out too, which makes for a very fun party by candlelight. The second tornado warning passed around midnight and I made my way back home through downtown Atlanta.

Not surprisingly the city looked like a tornado had just passed through (photos from the AJC here and here. My house is about four miles from the first link and two miles from the second.). I resign myself to the thought that the dog had destroyed the remaining blinds in my office (his favorite target) and hope for the best in terms of structural damage.

I return home to find the house untouched, the blinds shredded, the back door open, and the dog gone. Fresh teethmarks on the knob tell me that he had opened the door to come look for me when the thunder hit. I also make the unpleasant discovery that the back door no longer latches (hence his ability to open it).

I first look in the jungle/backyard area beyond the fence where has sometimes jumped, to no avail. I sneak through all my neighbors backyards and can't find him. I drive around the neighborhood looking for him, and he's nowhere in sight. It was quite dark and foggy and the odds of finding him were close to zero, so after several hours I decide to wake up at dawn and look then.

I get a call at 3:50 AM from someone asking me if I was missing a dog! I thank them profusely and congratulate myself on the custom tag I'd gotten him with my name and phone number. I then rushed over to where they were.

Somehow he'd make it all the way to the East Atlanta village, a distance of two miles. All the power was out in that neighborhood, even emergency power. I find the very nice people on the sidewalk standing over an exhausted but unharmed pooch. Apparently he had stopped to rest and they came over to him thinking he was hurt, and found my number. Why and how he made it all the way over there I have no idea. I thanked the good Samaritans profusely and went home. Drex was almost asleep by the time we got back and he's been sleeping for most of the day.

And that was my Friday adventure.

Quote of the moment

From Megan McArdle on Adderol

But if you don't like the self you got, surely you're entitled to murder it and replace it with something better. Whether or not your true self is the sick one or the better one, you only have one life and limited scope for action; why should you fritter away your opportunities just because nature destined you to be scattered or sad?

On the turning of 35

I turn 35 and Castro resigns! Who knows what else will happen this year...

Somehow I thought it would be different. Apparently it hasn't made me any more prompt with blogging since my birthday was actually Sunday.

In any case, Schelling Point now has it's own Wikipedia entry.

Just in time for Valentines day!

From this article from The Atlantic

Now, though, I realize that if I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life, I’m at the age where I’ll likely need to settle for someone who is settling for me.

When irony meets the homeless

One of the more annoying things about my fun new area is the increased encounters with the urban outdoorsmen of our community. I was making a late night caffeine run for one my increasingly frequent all-nighters and I came across some guy bumming for money outside the grocery store. He did the usual story, then closed with "I need money for food."

Naturally he was eating a bag of Cheeto's at the time, which actually dovetails nicely with my more famous moment involving orange snacks and grocery stores, which you can hear if you see me play at any music venue...

Gadzooks I've been busy

Sorry for the light blogging, it's been crazy lately.

This is an insightful post

From an Econolog post about raising children

Laugh if you like, but I want to give me kids a better life than I had. I don't want them to be bullied or mocked by teachers or other kids. Since adult life is far more civilized than childhood, sheltering your kids is not "delaying the inevitable"; it's skipping pointless suffering.

That strikes a chord with me. People have been much nicer in adulthood than in school. Civilization begins with voluntary association I suppose. If I were feeling hyperbolic, I would say that the only thing forced association in the form of mandatory schooling prepares you for is prison, but that's not accurate. It's certainly not the only thing anyway.

Me and MasterChief

My visit to MicroSoft was interesting.

Sorry for the light blogging

Work has been quite hectic lately.

By means of contrition, check out The Bar Fight Primary.

Quote of the day

From a phone call with a friend of mine

It's just not a Steve story without additional commentary...

What a crappy few days

First I find out that the "We buy ugly houses" people want a 30% discount over the market rate (I declined), a project extends by 24 straight hours, Delta won't do anything about changing my flight, and now I'm getting sick. Humbug.

Day 4 of my slightly less caffeinated life...

I reach day four of my caffeine cutback week, and I do have to say it's helped my mood and attention span. Surprisingly I don't get headaches when I do without it totally, as do most people.

An interesting article in the New Yorker

Check out Parallel Play by Tim Page, about a life with Aspberger syndrome. I've got most of these personality traits (and other characteristics) but several orders of magnitude less severe.

Random links from the laptop

• Christianity and China - history is going to be interesting for a long time to come.
• Confessions of a BBC Liberal - The politics of it aren't terribly interesting, but the illustration of groupthink is. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of party affiliation by profession.
• Nerds One and Two: The Hyperwhite - It seems that someone did research on nerdiness. Some choice excerpts -

  Nerdiness, she has concluded, is largely a matter of racially tinged behavior. People who are considered nerds tend to act in ways that are, as she puts it, “hyperwhite.”

  ...

  In a 2001 paper, “The Whiteness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness,” and other works, including a book in progress, Bucholtz notes that the “hegemonic” “cool white” kids use a limited amount of African-American vernacular English; they may say “blood” in lieu of “friend,” or drop the “g” in “playing.” But the nerds she has interviewed, mostly white kids, punctiliously adhere to Standard English.

  The author seems not to realize that the appeal of hyper-proper English is that the rules are memorable and never change, which reduces the aren't tied to a peer group to stay current. That's my theory anyway.
  

A milestone

I just found out today that someone wants to pay for some of my art photos! I've been a "professional" (been paid for it) photographer for awhile, now I'll be a real artist! I think I'll shop for a beret and a narcissistic attitude on Amazon.

Days of rage

Not only have I worked for free for 30 hours in the past two days on a Classic ASP (obsolete in 2003 if any one is curious) project mind you (a long story I won't share here) but now I find that my car won't start.

Predictably, I've noticed that I'm fighting the urge to grind my teeth and have a sudden urge to clean the house. It's odd those are always my responses to anger and stress.

Eight random facts

Subadei tagged me with the eight random facts meme a couple of days ago. With no further ado, here are the eight.

1. All dogs, no matter what temperament or breed, like me, at least a little. I can't recall a single dog that has been at all hostile to me.
2. I am immune to fleas and mosquitoes. They simply don't bite me.
3. When I was 20 I fought in a toughman contest and got knocked out in the first round by a tough redneck about 25 pounds heavier than me. For the record, I was up by eight but the ref declined to let me continue. It taught me two important things, namely that while I can take a punch, I can't take eight punches, and to be very careful about making promises in front of women you're trying to impress (namely that I would fight in a toughman contest.)
4. I earned the permanent enmity of a boss of mine with an artful quip. He once remarked "I'm pushing forty" to which I replied "yeah, from the North." I found out later he was 54.
5. While my speaking voice is abnormally low and quiet, my singing voice is abnormally loud. I present a challenge to the sound guy. Luckily for them my guitar style is loud too.
6. I think Thomas Sowell's theory of the constrained vs. the unconstrained view of human nature does more to explain Western intellectual history than anything else.
7. I think "Bonaparte's Retreat" is pound for pound the best song ever written. While the original Irish version is seldom played, the melody is simply more suited to acoustic instruments than anything else in the traditional catalog. The version on the first Doc Watson family album shines in it's harsh minimalism, while his later more fleshed out renditions work almost as well. Norman Blake and John Hartford have good versions too. Doc's version of "Lone Pilgrim" still has the most primal impact on me though, I'm not sure why.
   
8. The life and writings of Eric Hoffer are a source of endless fascination to me. Albert Jay Nock and H.L. Mencken are close seconds. All three of them managed to unload their thoughts onto paper with a minimum of distortion. All three were also solitary and dispassionate observers of human nature.

I now tag Dan Tdaxp, CodePoet, Purple Slog, and Dave Henson.

Affirmation

Yesterday I went to the lovely and prestigious offices of Green Media Works and got a lovely jolt of purpose and enthusiasm.

Working at home there's no good way to tell if you're a heroic entrepreneur writing your name upon history or some loser typing frantically in a messy office. To go out and mingle like minded people in a tremendous psychic push for the former.

Wellput from Julian Sanchez

In this post about full brains

Efficient brains need to know what they can afford to forget—probably quite a bit, now that it's so easy to outsource our recollections to rapidly-searched digital media. The interesting question for me is: When almost anything you might need to recall can be offloaded in this way, what's worth keeping in wetware memory? My first instinct is that you need to remember exactly enough to (1) make interesting connections, and (2) actually find the full information from the signpost you've remembered.

Scientific recognition of my personality

Psychology Today has a Field Guide to the Loner, though not me specifically.

RIP Milton Friedman

Instapundit has a good collection of links on his life and legacy. He was the first to think of many, many things in economics that seem blindingly obvious now but were heretical at the time. One of the larger intellectual giants of the past 100 years, on a purely technical level, outside of the politics (which I agree with).

The decaffeinated Steve

So, after more than two weeks of a low-caffeine lifestyle I conclude that the net results are positive.

The good:

• I'm not as moody or edgy
• Apparently I've stopped fidgeting in the evenings
  
• I'm not sleeping any more or less

The bad

• I'm a much heavier sleeper than I used to be (which elevates it to near coma)
  
• My sleep schedule is more erratic than it used to be
• I'm back to having periodic insomnia, though it's not that bad.
  

Circle of friends

I often read the surveys filled out by the happy wanderers of MySpace. One of the recurring questions is "Are your friends mostly male or female?".

Were one to put a timer on the amount of time I spend talking/hanging out with people, I imagine I would spend a slight majority of my time with my male friends, but in absolute numbers, I would imagine that two thirds of my friends are female.

Interestingly, while my conversations with my male friends tend to be general purpose, conversations with the female friends tend to be more specialized. Some I talk to just talk to about work, some about art, some about music, some about family, and one I talk to almost exclusively about health and emotions. It's odd when you think about it.

Anniversaries of no consequence

• I recently went three and a half weeks without rebooting my workstation, which is possibly an all time record for me. (I usually average two weeks).
• It has been 12 years since I've seen a doctor. Three more years and I'm a common-law Christian Scientist!
  

Day two of my low caffeine life

The goal is to cut the caffeine intake by two thirds, which I'm doing. So far, the results have been interesting.

I'm not quite as moody as I have been, rather I still have the same moods, just not as extreme. I went to sleep a bit earlier than usual last night and woke up a little earlier as well. There seems to be marginal improvement on my attention span too.

Yet another good one from Jane Galt

It's about conflict between working and stay at home moms. It goes into it in ways I've never thought of before.

Odd statements

The consensus response after I tell people that sparks flew out of my new vacuum is "What? You were vacuuming? Really?"

Of moderate interest

I took the Myers-Briggs test last year and got

INTJ Introverted	Intuitive	Thinking	Judging
Strength of the preferences %
78	50	88	78

I just took it again and got
INTJ

Introverted	Intuitive	Thinking	Judging
Strength of the preferences %
67	62	88	56

Of truly minor concern

As I sit here and watch the database do it's magic, I have time to actually see what's on my desk. Lo and behold there are two boxes of dental floss, one waxed, the other unwaxed. Naturally I decide to compare the two.

Waxed beats unwaxed in taste, feel and durability, it wasn't even close in fact.

I'll keep you appraised of any other important matters as they arise.

Quick round up

1. It's now six nights of rioting in Paris.
2. Secret CIA detention camps around the world. I'm reminded of Wretchard's line one time that when Truman ordered Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombed, he had "the sand" to do it under his own name.
3. I finally got the proper wireless adapter for my Tivo, which I got to work without incident. Sadly it uses Wep, but with 3-4 totally unprotected networks around me I would imagine I'm not worth pursuing.
4. It's amazing how much lists and visual sign of progress can affect one's mood.
   

Interesting post from Wretchard

In this post about violence against Coptic Christians in Egypt, for some reason I was reminded of the old Conan the Barbarian comics (from the 70s, when it was good).

For some reason the notion of diverse groups of civilizations and barbarians has always had great allure to me. I'm not sure why.

Cold and overworked

When was the last time it was in the mid 30s in October in Georgia? Weird.

And I've already worked eight hours today, and it's not even 9:00 yet. Blech.

Interesting

Status and the voice

Finally feeling better

It would seem that I caught the rare 24 hour bug. I went from feeling miserable all day today to somewhat tolerable today to hopefully better tomorrow.

Reactions to Katrina

A person's reaction to Katrina seems to vary in direct proportion to their average daily time spent with people. The more time with people, the more likely one will see it as a human problem, either with Bush or the N.O. Residents. The less time one spends with people, the more likely to see it as an engineering (both physical and social) problem.

Oddly, I've been hearing the idea that we should not rebuild New Orleans (at least nowhere near as it was) from some surprising quarters, including me. For a good summation of the main argument, see Josh Trevino's article.

For more literal reactions, see the Agitator's post on what WalMart has done so far. It's quite staggering. The business community has done a great deal already.

I'm a Mastermind

I'm an INTJ, or "Mastermind" on Myers-Briggs Tests, specifically

Introverted	Intuitive	Thinking	Judging
Strength of the preferences %
78	50	88	78

Short Description:

INTJs are perfectionists, with a seemingly endless capacity for improving upon anything that takes their interest. What prevents them from becoming chronically bogged down in this pursuit of perfection is the pragmatism so characteristic of the type: INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion "Does it work?" to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake.

INTJs are known as the "Systems Builders" of the types, perhaps in part because they possess the unusual trait combination of imagination and reliability. Whatever system an INTJ happens to be working on is for them the equivalent of a moral cause to an INFJ; both perfectionism and disregard for authority may come into play, as INTJs can be unsparing of both themselves and the others on the project. Anyone considered to be "slacking," including superiors, will lose their respect -- and will generally be made aware of this; INTJs have also been known to take it upon themselves to implement critical decisions without consulting their supervisors or co-workers. On the other hand, they do tend to be scrupulous and even-handed about recognizing the individual contributions that have gone into a project, and have a gift for seizing opportunities which others might not even notice.

Other masterminds include William F Buckley, Michael Dukakis, Donald Rumsfeld, CS Lewis, Colin Powell and Ayn Rand. Where they got that info I don't know.

How about the rest of my many readers?