The past couple of days no one has been able to comment on Reality Me. Two of Spam Karma’s tables had consumed 78MB of database storage. Clearing both tables solved the problem. Commenting should be working again.
Year: 2008
Beach Update
Big sisters!
Beach Update
I think almost everyone had a great time on the beach today.
Beach Update
This morning dolphins jumped out of the water playfully. We have pelicans all over the place. The kids appear to be having a blast. And a couple of wetsuit wearing brainiacs think this is the Pacific Coast and are sitting on surf boards in the warm Gulf Stream looking around like, "dude! Where’s the waves?"
Who’s the crab?
One of the challenging things about marriage is relationship management. In the corporate world, we go to training classes, seminars, mentoring, internal training, and read books on how to get along. In marriage, we wing it. In work, you leave the people you "relate" to at the door at 5pm. In marriage, you are glued to each other non-stop. People are creatures of habit and routine. We come to expect a person to be a particular way with a particular attitude. Vacations wreck havoc on routines, bring a new set of stresses and the unknown. Our attitudes and moods change with a vacation.
This morning I felt rested and relaxed. Evan rose at 6:30am and asked that I rise with him. I thought I’d be nice and let everyone else sleep in. Evan and I enjoyed some time together watching cartoons, playing with toys, and eating breakfast. I was happy. So I thought. When Cathy rose, I noted to myself that she was grouchy but I said nothing figuring that her morning caffeine was not working yet. Then came a moment where she complained about how I was relaxed then became terse and crabby when Evan got up. So who is right? Which one of us is the morning grouch? Doesn’t matter. Once someone declares me grouchy or crabby I turn into an ugly person. My mind decides, "Why try to be nice if when you are trying its not working?" Karma gets me back though. In my exasperation, I went to the porch to get some air and the door sprung back in my face spilling coffee on my most comfortable shorts.
Were either of us crabby? Probably not. We were probably working two different agendas and our moods are different than the usual. Subconsciously we probably assessed the other as off and because the other wasn’t working the same unspoken plan, labeled them crabby.
It’s a beautiful day today. I think I’ll spend it on the computer.
Knoxville is on the map!
Google has updated Streetviews to include Knoxville and 36 other new places. Pictures were taken around October. Expect to see Chattanooga added soon. Read more at KnoxBlab.
I’m a little disappointed at the zoomed in views. They seem intentionally blurred. I guess Google is trying to avoid those incidental upskirts (okay, that’s a thong showing not an upskirt), revealing marijuana plants, and preemptively avoiding privacy complaints of people claiming the car looked in their windows.
Things that will no longer be seen in Street View are:
Hi-resolution imagery
People’s faces
Previous Street Views of hi-resolution Street View.Those things were giving Google lots of trouble, so all imagery is now lower resolution.
That’s a shame. I hope the complainers are happy now. I really liked the high resolution zooms and Google had a process for fixing any "embarrassing" captures. I feel like the end-product is a little devalued now.
Update: John McNair says the servers are pretty loaded right now.
Waking Exhausted
What’s tickling my arm? Oh, the cat is on the bed sniffing me to wakefulness. Look at the time! This house is hot. Why am I so tired after such deep sleep? My dreams. Tossing and turning. Programming in my head. All night I saw code and solutions to the programming challenges I have during the day. Do I really need to get up? I feel like I worked all night long.
I must work harder at calming my mind before laying down for sleep at night. I am not a practitioner of meditation. I have always wanted to be. Jason Jarrett helped me understand the Nichiren Daishonin Buddhist chant of NAM-MYO-HO-REN-GE-KYO and that’s brought me closer to a meditative calm than anything else I have tried. Chapter 9 of the book You Are Psychic!: The Free Soul Method
I’m voting Republican
This video sums it up.
See also:http://www.imvotingrepublican.com/
Club house construction
How do you make one temperature safe?
Like the dolphins…only different.
Some people say there is a giant, mechanical spider in this video. All I saw was a topless red head.
For those that are wondering about the dolphins, read this.
New direction
If you look closely at this picture, you can see the old Waffle House behind the new one. The angle of the picture gives the impression that they might be a single L shaped building but in actuality they are two identical buildings built perpendicular to one another. I assume the old one will be torn down. Seems like an awful lot of work just to have more of your building, an already distinctive building, face the road.
No traffic signals necessary
Here’s a busy intersection in Hanoi with no traffic lights. I like the person at 0:58 seconds into the video who so casually walks into traffic.
Hanoi crazy night traffic from v!Nc3sl4s on Vimeo.
This further supports Hans Monderman’s concepts. Here is another video of an intersection without traffic lights. As a side note and reminder, letting people merge improves traffic flow (even if they cheated instead of waiting their turn).
Who would the world vote for?
A friend of mine in another country once remarked, "The world should be able to vote for the United States president [since the president’s impact is worldwide]." So, who would the world vote in as president? (http://iftheworldcouldvote.com/)
At this time, the results show 432 people have voted with 91.7% voting for Barack Obama and 8.3% voting for John McCain.
Update:
With 1424 voters Barack is 88.2% and McCain is 11.8%.
With 1785 Barack Obama is 87.5% (1562 votes) and John McCain is 12.5% (223 votes).
With 3482 Barack Obama is 86.7% (3019 votes) and John McCain is 13.3% (463 votes).
Stress is exhausting
I woke at 4am having tossed and turned in bed for a length of time trying to cope with the demons in my dreams. However, my body still carried the weight of Monday’s burdens and I could not stay conscious. At 8:15am, I felt much better.
I have written before that the stress reaction used to make sense. You are on the savanna, a lion pops out of the tall grass and begins chasing you, stress kicks in causing an adrenaline rush, and you bolt into the forest to escape becoming a picnic dinner. The stress is short lived. But ongoing stress (days, weeks, years) beats the dickens out of you! [Source, Reality Me, Oversleeping]
