Zhanga: July 2008
Entries have their own pages now. Click the date to see the entry by itself with its comments.
Monday, July 28, 2008 (3 comments)
I was driving home from work today and noticed some unusual Jesus fish on cars ahead of me. I think the lady driving this SUV was going home from Capital One but I'm not sure:
That Darwin fish shouldn't be new to anybody reading this site, though. What really got me (and made me pull my camera out) is this guy, who definitely was leaving from where I work:
Linux is a shark and eats other operating systems. I think the pirate sticker is a good touch here as well.
11:06PM
Friday, July 25, 2008 (11 comments)
Sorry parents, I just got another speeding ticket. Except this one was the most ridiculous ticket ever.
I was driving somewhere in rural New York when the speed limit dropped from 55 because we encountered some houses. There were a couple of traffic lights where the speed limit was 30, so I slowed down a lot. I noticed an SUV following me around this time. After passing the traffic lights, I looked to my right and saw a 35 MPH speed limit sign. I looked at the speedometer, and it was 35mph. Great, I thought.
Less than one minute later (probably like 20 seconds), I looked up to see a big vehicle following me very closely with flashing white and red lights. I figured it was an ambulance so I pulled over and stopped immediately. The vehicle followed me and stopped, and when I realized that nobody in my van was in the middle of a medical emergency, I figured out that it was a cop. But what did I do wrong?
The lady told me I was doing 44 in a 30 zone. I told her I thought I was doing 35 in 35, and she told me it was 35 back a while ago but there were 2-3 signs telling me it was 30 just behind where she pulled me over. I told her OK, because I just assumed I misread a sign or missed some signs (but missing 2-3 signs is a bit odd...).
She gave me a ticket for disobeying a traffic control device. Apparently in New York, it's 4 points for going 14 over and 2 points for disobeying the device (she made it sound like she was doing me a favor... oh thanks). In Georgia, it's 0 for going 14 over and 3 for disobeying a traffic control device. I'm not a lawyer, but Georgia assigns points based on the violation, not by the other state's DMV. I just got raped.
Did I mention that I pulled over about 300 feet after I saw the lights, and when I left the shoulder after done getting my ticket, there was a 35 mph sign about 150 feet in front of where I had pulled over? That puts less than 0.1 mile between where she pulled me over and where the next 35 mph sign was. It was midnight in thick fog so nobody in the car saw that sign, or else her entire reason for stopping me would have been bunk. There was another 35 mph sign half a mile down the road.
Most ridiculous ticket ever. In case you can't tell, I'm pretty angry. The Canadian border patrol guy was a douchebag too. Luckily he can't easily write me meaningless tickets that I can't fight. The thing in NY happened 25 miles south of Buffalo and it's a 10 hour drive from Duke. I can't possibly fight that ticket.
3:32AM
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 (1 comment)
I changed my Facebook interests today to get more interesting targeted ads. These days, all I ever get are things like "meet 5 girls in 5 minutes" or "Over 21 and still single?" I mean come on, I know I'm single, do you really have to nail it in repeatedly like that? That's what she said.
Anyways, I haven't gotten any new targeted ads as a result of listing Hanif as my first interest, but I did get the BBW one again, and this time I saved a screenshot:
(Definition of BBW at urbandictionary.com.)
This is baffling. Nowhere in my profile does it suggest I like big beautiful women, and the only thing that might suggest my own obesity (probabilistically speaking) is my computer science major and my interest in Linux.
11:25PM
Monday, July 21, 2008 (1 comment)
Today I had a mandatory, 9-4:30 intern training class on increasing my communication effectiveness. During the "effective listening" part, right after the instructor talked about selective interpretation and how not to do it, we were supposed to talk to a partner about some given topics. I began talking to the Russian (or something...) girl sitting near me about the project I'm working on. I began by trying to figure out if she knew the basic idea, since she works on the same floor as I do:
Me: Do you know what our mail model is?
Girl: What?
Me: The mail model?
Girl: Uhhhh....
It was at this moment that I looked into her eyes and saw the "why are you talking about male models?" look. Talk about selective interpretation. (In case you're curious, the mail model determines which segments of the population we mail offers to based on certain profitability-predicting metrics.)
Of course, what post would be complete without including my roommate? Today I had this conversation with him:
Me: Hey make sure you clean the lint filter whenever
you use the dryer.
Tim: Yeah, I do. I clean it every time before I use the
dryer.
Oh gee that's so considerate! Especially considering that this means you basically never have to clean the filter, because I always clean it after I use it. Not to mention the 1/3 inch thick layer of lint I found after you dried multiple loads, which made me question my initial assumption that you were actually aware of the existence of the lint filter.
Then you asked me to take out the trash with you, which you've never done before so I was pleasantly surprised. But it was two little bags and one big bag, easily carried by either one of us. So I asked you to take the trash out yourself, and you looked unhappy until I quickly followed with, "I'll just take it out next time."
Unimpressive, considering I've taken out the trash by myself 3 or 4 times, including twice when there was so much I had to drive it all down to the dumpster/recycling thing. But still, I guess I'm impressed that you actually took out the trash for the first time ever, even if not entirely on your own initiative.
Ok, currently he's breaking his own retardedness records. He is sitting on the balcony, partially in the doorway. I asked him to close the door because it's wasting the air conditioning and letting bugs in. He refused to close the door... because he was "getting kinda hot" and wanted to have some air conditioning. Then move indoors you moron, that's why air conditioning was invented... not so tards like you could sit outside and waste my electricity.
9:53PM
Sunday, July 20, 2008 (5 comments)
Dark Knight was a great movie. When I went to see it, Tiffany and I got the very, very back corner seats because there weren't two empty seats next to each other anywhere else in the theater. I didn't even know seats that bad existed. They were behind the railing that keeps people from falling down the steps (to get to the top/back of the theater) and the entrance passage below, so that even sitting upright I couldn't see the entire screen. Slouching in the seat meant I could see about half the screen.
Luckily we somehow found two seats just before the film started. It was quite comfortable, except the woman next to me text messaged the entire time. I don't know if she even watched the movie.
I don't think anything interesting happened in the past week or so, unless you consider being charged a $1.50 fee to be able to pay my >$100 speeding ticket to be interesting.
By the way, I have www.zhanga.net.
1:13AM
Wednesday, July 9, 2008 (5 comments)
Take a look at these Excel cells:
If you click and drag the bottom right corner, Excel is supposed to continue whatever pattern it detects into the direction you drag it. This usually works pretty well, and is very useful when trying to fill a row or column with a formula.
10 points to anyone who figures the pattern out:
I'm stumped.
10:21PM
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 (0 comments)
Today was one of the most entertaining days in at least the past calendar year.
That sentence was probably not enough, because when I come back to read this post in 2030 I'm going to have no idea what happened. So note to self: today is Isaac's hilarious post-Independence-Day flamewar.
10:37PM
Tuesday, July 1, 2008 (36 comments)
I don't even know what to say about this. My roommate is paying me $32.50 for gas for June 1-30. Let's see... $4/gallon, minivan, 10.4 miles from apartment to work. You do the math.
I drove 45 miles to pick his ass up from the airport. What's that, $8 already on June 1? And that $8 shouldn't even be split since picking him up from the airport isn't carpooling and is otherwise a waste of my time.
I'm just sick of arguing with him. I really dislike asking people for money when the amount is at all subjective (e.g. if I spot you $10 for your meal, I'm going to ask you for my $10 back, but driving is different -- since I'm not a taxi driver, the opportunity cost of driving isn't obvious). Usually it's not a problem because if I "split the gas" on a long trip, whoever isn't driving offers to pay well over half the gas price, then you do the whole "no no, it's ok" dance. I'd say most of my friends are pretty nice people. Hm, it is even conceivable that I actually choose people who aren't total tools to be my friends.Seriously now, $32.50 for 30 days. What's that, $1.08 or something per day? Do we really only drive uh... 5 miles a day?
I'm metering him from now on. Every time he steps into the vehicle, I will reset the trip odometer, and when he gets out I will log it. If he is only going to pay for gas (and not stuff like wear on the vehicle, my time driving him around, etc), I am at least going to make sure he doesn't pay a retardedly low amount for it.
Metering wouldn't even factor in all the gas, for example the trips I made to buy furniture which he enjoys every day. Speaking of the furniture, he hasn't paid a penny for any of it (nor has he offered or brought it up). In fact, other than helping me carry the futon up the flight of stairs to our second-story apartment, he hasn't helped me move any of the furniture and hasn't come with me to buy any of it.
One of these days I'm just going to move all the furniture into my bedroom and tell him to drive his (nonexistant) van to get his own tables and chairs.
(For the record, I think $80-100 a month would be fair for driving. I also think it would be fair for him to pay 15-25% for use of the furniture. The total cost of futon, 4 metal padded chairs, 2 tables, 1 coffee table was about $110, so I think if he paid $15 or $30 to me as furniture rent that'd be fine. Right now he's just freeloading. Not to mention I had to find the deals, contact sellers, pick them up, carry them into the apartment, ...)
12:26AM
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