brianbot

Weekend was great. Just about all of my close friends (myself included) went either with me or other groups to Minnesota Pride (GLBT festival), which was alot more... normal? than I expected.

I was talking with Tyler about the idea and details of the Pride festival. We covered alot of different topics, but the spirit of the conversation was the realization that while most people learn about and associate with people which are similar to them, and reject differences, (racism, sexism, religious bigotry) we share the liberal point of view in that we are much more interested in the differences between different kinds of people, and this is reflected in the wide range of diversity and depth of character of the circle of people we are friends with.

It is disappointing so many people take comfort in being the same. I see this the worst with high school cheerleader style girls, or girls that try to mimic them. There are 3 girls I personally end up running into at least once a week lately which remind me of guests at my cousins grad party (cousins a cheerleader/competitive dancer). These girls may as well be just 1 single personality of 'blond simple girl who flirts with everyone and wears short pants.' As each individual person, they just aren't that... interesting. They can only function as a group and... yeah all of you know this sort of person. There is no use in beating a dead horse.

Anyway, this all is an explanation for why I find Pride so interesting. You see, I am straight. 100% straight, no attraction to men period, no question about it. Which is what makes the whole GLBT community so interesting. Its alien. Its unknown. The majority of my exposure to the GLBT world has been through a limited window of GLBT entertainment when Tyler is playing QAF, a trip to the gay 90's, some irritating guys at parties, and knowing the 5 or so gay friends I know, which rarely assert or discuss their gay side, with the exception of murd0c.

So, the assumption I had was that the entire event was going to be rigged to assault my senses and make me feel uncomfortable around rampaging homosexuality. And while there was defiantly people acting out, the majority of the event was oriented twoards the GLBT lifestyle rather than the sexual aspect.

Take, for example, I never realized the event would be so pet friendly. I was told to bring Nickel, and she had a blast. Of course, the realization is that a Gay couple has alot more difficulty bringing children into the family, so naturally pets are a substitute for kids. As a result, there was probably at least 20 vendors strictly just for dog related products. Random vendors like banks had dog bones to hand out. There was water bowls for pets everywhere. Other booths were touting various political parties, church organizations (and lack of church, with atheism), college campuses, and ect. But don't you dissapointed people fret! There was still a light minority of people in shocking gay attire to tell a few stories, and I did get a decent collection of free stuff like chapstick and glow in the dark condoms (even though they will collect dust for a bit as I am single :P).

In general, life moves on, day by day. It gets kind of repetitive and bland after awhile of not much new happening. I make up for that by meddling in peoples lives all day long with the help of my good buddy facebook while I work. I mentioned this monotonousness to Catherine the other day, which paid me one of the best compliments on my character I have heard in awhile:

my life involves people i interact with Brian Hanson @ 12:54
its pretty meaningless without that 12:54
i go to work and cant stand the bills, the end 12:54

that is not true! You have a fascinating life, without having to talk about other people. You are one of the absolute smartest people I have ever met. You are extremely loyal, and helpful. You have a permanent sparkle in your eye and life life by the seat of your pants as much as you can. You landed a job at the coolest place ever, know lots of random facts and can start a conversation with the hardest person to talk with. You make people feel better about themselves, you are honest, you believe in good things and stand up for good things. You dont take anything at face value. clchenoweth08 @ 12:57
That is just the beginning of all the amazing things about YOU that you can share with people 12:57

Yeah, so Catherine's the shit. Chewy (itwithrun) defiantly has something special, being married to her.

The rest of the weekend which was not Pride was overall just pretty average. Upon attempting to return some clothes and crap that belong to Katy that have been forgotten and pushed into the corner for a few months, I found out she moved to Wisconsin Dells. Now, what do I do with all this stuff sitting around? I apparently can't bring it to her parents house, because she "Hasn't told her parents" she eloped (chewy requested clarification: The run away with a guy definition of elope, not the getting married without anyone knowing definition). Whatever. Not my problem anymore :)

My parents are babysitting a really young Siberian Husky Puppy, which is extra cute, at the moment. Which is great, because, well girls love cute things and I like showing them off, which I did to Carrie after we went to pride. I've known Carrie for a little while now through Clay, and well shes a really cool person to hang out with. The problem is her work schedule is pretty erratic, so hanging out with her almost has to be calculated and planned, rather than just spontaneous, which I specialize in. :P

Ok, theres more tiny details to write about concerning my Uncle moving to Florida, some drama, me patiently awaiting the restoration of natural gas and cellphone service, a birthday party with perfect weather, an oldschool xbox/halo party, news of life from Joe Blo land, upcoming July 4th party as well as the Defcon/Vegas trip at the end of July, and a new extremely gay way of getting intoxicated, but this is already long enough and its time for bed. Next time :D

Life has been going pretty good. For the last 2 weeks I have been hanging out with a few new girls, and life has been quite a bit more enjoyable.

This last Saturday, kissmyapocalyps's mom was married, and after the reception, she held a party at a hotel with a Jaccuzi Suite. It was freaking awesome. As a single guy, I will shamelessly say I enjoy the company of drunk girls in a jacuzzi. Josh and I also set out to make Banana Dacheris, mostly due to our recent binging of Doctor Who.

Being single is the shit.

Speaking of relationships, people will at the very least be interested to know, that Katy and I could not salvage a friendship. Living with her for as long as I have, I know how she makes decisions and how she spends her days, and I am exceptionally good at spotting lying, which she has been doing way too much to me lately, which sabotaged the friendship.

Which brings me to the topic of liars. Rant mode on!

I figure that all a man has is his word, and because of that I always am thinking about honesty and truth, and have told myself that I will never lie to anyone about anything except figures of authority. I figure being a good person is only ever doing things you won't have to lie about.

This bothers me because I know way too many people who tout lies. I'm not retarded, I know when people are doing it. Josh's brother for stealing the drinks at a party a few weeks ago, Johnny for lying about stealing a camera last year, Jackie for alot of really strange bs this last month, Ryan for lying to someones face about something which can easily be contradicted, David, for telling every person a different rendition of the same events which puts doubt into my head as to his honesty and motivation for events, and Katy, for alot of reasons, but mostly for delivering really horribly constructed excuses for ditching plans when she doesn't need too. Hate lying for the sake of lying.

All of these people and everyone like them, you suck at lying. Just should let you know. People aren't stupid. You especially won't get away at it with me, because I have made a hobby of deep understanding of the technicalities of how people lie (social engineering is a element of computer hacking). I am also someone alot of people talk about and confide things in, so I usually get multiple viewpoints of the same story. You can tell who out there is a liar, if two of my friends said that a third person gave two different accounts of the same event, that third person's integrity is called into question.

Furthermore, I just know alot of things about people. And I'm really, really good at using computers. No matter how much you mask yourselves through 'facebook' security, I still am very clever. Maybe I've made another profile you don't realize can still browse you. Maybe I am someone on craigslist. If you can't see the other person, how do you know who you're talking too? The saving grace is I am usually too lazy to be a creepy internet stalker hacker. Plus, intruding into someones privacy is pretty immoral, and also just isn't that fun. Just saying I have the skills, and if I have the motivation, I can find out all kinds of stuff. So god help future girlfriends that cheat on me.

In general, I trust my inner friends. I push out friends I don't trust. They aren't going to know about my life anymore. I don't understand people's tendancy to lie in general. Seriously, you can get by just fine in life only doing things you wouldn't have to lie about. Rant mode off.

I'm at the trailing end of a horrible infection that made me miss a solid week of work. It sucked really bad. I ended up going to the ER at midnight Wednesday because I wasn't sure if I was getting better and I was having problems breathing and regulating body heat. I hope that bill doesn't murder me (I have insurance).

Sometime a few weeks ago Tyler, Josh, and myself went on a random drive to Chicago. In about 30 hours we managed to walk all over downtown, explore the marina and Navy Peir there, hit up a few well overdue fast food joints I wanted to show them, and took a stop at the Hackerspace, Pumping Station 1 (with our host, faceless_wonder). Was a very refreshing day.

In general, I am enjoying my life alot more. I've had a bit of a personality transformation which has given me the confidence to say whats on my mind. I don't know where it came from, but I blame my cold and hanging out with David for a bit. I guess I'm just tired of living for the future when the future is so volatile and there is so much to do in the now.

My roommate is an Engineer at Fox Television Studios. With the digital switchover on Friday, he has been having one hell of a painful few days playing tech support to stupid people that didn't pay attention to the commercials concerning the impending lack of analog TV.

I don't have too much else to talk about. Its getting warmer out, I've been enjoying tubing, I'm taking advantage of me being single and being a lazy bum with not a worry in the world, overall its an ok world (as long as I don't pay too much attention to just how in debt I am).

Aim:

you are unlike anyone I have ever met
you dont really ever lie, do you?

Last Sunday, I played through a round of Civilization IV. The game is pretty nifty and fun, and will easily drain away 6 hours of your day. As your little empire progresses throughout history, when a technology is discovered, a famous quote related to the technology is presented and dictated by Leonard Nemoy.

Now, you all know that I am a fan of amateur philosophy. I've never really spent any time reading quotes by famous people... and I am not sure why. I know all kinds of good movie and TV show quotes, but not famous people. Which is stupid, because people have explored much more about the human condition than most blockbuster fiction writers ever have.

In any case, famous people throughout history have some very interesting things to say. Here are a few.



"The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it." - Alan Saporta

"Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window." - Steve Wozniak

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei

"The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." - Confucius

"You can't direct the wind, but you can adjust your sails." - Unknown

"You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word." - Al Capone

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." - Oscar Wilde

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke



I was having a drunken philosophical argument with Tyler the other day. Basically, I said, we are going to be some of the people to influence Amber and Annah's sons when they get older in about 8 years or so. I wonder what we will teach them? Tyler made the statement that the world of the future would change significantly and it would be impossible to know what things will be like now.

When Cole came back last Christmas from the Navy, I asked him what it was like seeing things in sudden jumps of change of 8 months at a time in Minnesota. Cole states that things don't really change that much, its just like going away for a few days on a vacation, only its about a year, but things for the most part stay the way they are.

So, I went on to state that with the exception of the saturation of access to cheap and portable ways to access information and communication (desktop computers with internet access in every home, cell phones) that the world hasn't really changed that much since at least the 50's.

Tylers retort was, well what about music? Or personal freedoms or crime? 30 years ago you could walk in (he stated some area) and now you can't because of the prevelance of crime and the heightened aptitude of skepticism by everyone which in part has been in fault by the "War on Terror" and fox news fearmongering. Ok, this may be true, but the rebuttal was there were still ghettos back in the 50's, and there were other actions you couldn't do in public, especially acting gay.

So think about this, the flavor of everything has changed, newer technologies are available, but we are far from living in a utopia of betterment from any point in the past. The overall way to live life, the sort of activities you can do, and the vices people cary are pretty constant through history.

Nerds in the 50's had radios instead of computers, but there were still nerds. Music was different, but there still was music. Racial intolerance was against different groups and much worse back then, but there is still racial intolerance. There was corrupt cops back then, there is now. We use computers to access information, back then we used libraries. Kids still went to school and had a style of living which was contrary to their parents beliefs, kids still screwed around, and smoked pot. Cars were still there and you could use a car to get everywhere. There was still wars.

Hell, there are girls out there call rape on guys when the reality of circumstance was not rape in any way, and the accusation is to cover up some kind of fault of the accuser. This happened back in the day too, only it was witch hunting, and people burned at the stake.

Life keeps moving.

Katy and I broke up. This time, its permanent.

Josh moved in as our new roommate. He fits in well here. We've had some pretty fresh nights over the last few weeks biking, hanging out on the roof, or general parties. Lizz likes to stalk Josh and its a little creepy, but shes more or less harmless except on Josh's mental state.

Work bounced back to fun again after I reverse engineered a file format produced by EDrawings (a free CAD file reader we are integrating into a site we are developing). The manager that's been causing me all this stress has been out'sed for impeding the progress of the project I'm on, and has been forced to work more directly with us rather than stealing our work and calling it his own.

My car and house bills are 100% caught up. The side effect is Tyler and I are 100% broke. I'm eating stuff I don't usually eat for food because I can't afford anything else (stuff that doesn't jive with my diet).

Speaking of diet, thats doing really well. I've lost 10 pounds so far.

This has been the first weekend in a long time I have absolutely no obligations and nothing to do. I don't know if I want to take up a project right now. I'm really enjoying the clean house and perfect weather. I'm kinda dissapointed everyone's at work.

Planning a trip to the Safehouse in Milwauke on Saturday, June 6th. This is all faceless_wonder's fault.

Eh nothing to do today, more video games I guess. Maybe i'll take a walk to a park.

Work has been stressing me right the f* off. Managers who pull political BS rather than just getting the project done piss me off. The company isn't paying you $30/hr to impede progress and bitch about other peoples work.

I have probably spent the last 10 hours of freetime over the last 2 days cleaning up my room and emptying the constantly re purposed "office" so that Josh may move in. After completely emptying my room, I had the opportunity to redesign it into something new, and what I came up with is pretty neat. All thats missing is a 40+ inch TV to hook up to the computer. Now that my room is all spick and span, I have a huge pile of crap in the living room I need to figure out what to do with.

The thing is, my room is pretty simple right now, and I like it. I don't think I need a good majority of the crap thats sitting in the living room to take up my living space. I think I am going to go through my wardrobe and belongings and store or throw away a good chunk of crap that I just don't need anymore.

The problem is I am spending way too much time working and cleaning. I don't have nearly enough time to relax and enjoy my freedoms, or to start entrepreneurial projects. I blame this all in part on the massive amount of crap that I have collected, both physical and responsbilitywise. It all needs to go.

Once I am done with upstairs, there is still the basement, back yard (lawnmowing), downstairs, a broken theater PC all to fix. This streak of cleaning is going to take me well into Friday.

I have all kinds of dreams for this summer. Here's a new summer resolutions, most of which I will not make, but I can dream, right? :

- Get all bills current
- Get at least 2 months money buffered up in case of job loss
- Get a motorcycle license
- Rent a few jetskis and have friends out on a lake with them
- Acomplish Vegas trip, and stop by San Fransisco
- Maintain the diet I am currently maintaining and loose at least 40 pounds from the high point I had before
- Maintain exercise, to increase physical stamina and upper body strength
- Fix bike, and have quite a few good bikerides during the night before summer is up
- Fix my car's air conditioner, so using my car in hot weather is fun again
- Repair damaged reputation at work

Have you guys seen the Mighty Boosh? It is downright crazy.

My personal life is pretty topsy turvy right now. I'll write something about it when I feel comfortable with discussing it. However, I would like to thank Amber, Tyler, My Aunt Kim, and Josh for being behind me and discussing with me some of the most important questions I have ever had in my life. Thanks guys.

Spoken language is amazingly complex. For each idea you wish to convey, there is a ton of different ways you can convey it based on tone of voice to also convey some kind of emotional effect. This is considered common knowledge (Duh). However, beyond tone of voice there is hundreds of variations on what synonyms and sentence structures you can use to convey the same idea each with their own more subtle subconscious effect on the listener on what they are saying. The fact that you can convey intention, emotion, insult, or praise simply on your choice of words and the amount of words you say is simply astonishing. Furthermore, if you don't realize other people do this to you, its very easy to get brainwashed by the subconsious effect of words rather than being able to catch the hidden meaning of them and giving the underlying meaning the same criticism as other words. I believe that political figures giving speeches (Obama) and Preachers employ these facts to cause their audience to have a greater tendency to unjustifiably agree with the speakers ideas based on emotional reaction.

For my whole life, I've had a special place for Scifi stories and general nerdness in my heart. The side effect of this is scifi written dialog is intentionally polished with a hefty dose of intelligent sounding words. As a side effect, without thinking about it, most of the language I use to communicate to people sounds much more analytical and intelligent than is appropriate at the time. This is great for workplaces because I sound like I have an above average understanding at the discussion at hand, when in reality I am daydreaming about what I am going to do later that night.

But, in the real world, this is taken as a sign of elitism, smugness, and pretentiousness. In order to communicate to your peers (unless they speak the same nerd jive that I can spew) it means I have to think about what words I say to not seem condescending.

For example, take the following sentence:

Initially, your ideas were intimidating, however I now understand what you were trying to convey.

Lets fix that up to lamens terms:

At first, that was hard to understand, but now I get it.

I told Byron (Kim's Husband) yesterday about some managerial issues we are having at my job with a client that we are doing work for. He said that one interesting way to convey anger or disappointment was with long pauses of speech, because this shows deep thought, and subconsciously others understand that deep thought is usually the result of some sort of problem that needs solving, the problem being what the other person just said, so in shorter conclusion a long pause shows a calculated disapproving comeback being formed to an adverse statement. It really got me thinking about how some of the best ideas you can convey can be done silently, and your choice of when to speak and your exercised control on when to not speak means worlds to your ability to communicate a lack of bias when one very defiantly exists.

Also, smiling. Everyone loves a person that smiles.

God, I love spell check.

Star Trek was awesome. Nothing at all to complain about. Its even girlfriend friendly and wife friendly. I wonder if this movie is going to end up playing as an important role in movie history as Terminator 2 or Dark Knight, as a measure of how to make an awesome movie.

Like it or not, most star trek plots involved technological wizardry for providing tension and creating plot resolution. "Oh snap (fictional race) are gaining on us and our shields are down to int(rand(1)*100)%! We won't last much longer! Activate the blinky trapezoid!" I blame this security bubble on insecurities of the crappy earlier scriptwriters. You don't get that security or simplicity in this movie. The director makes clear very quickly that the tension in this plot is not superficial. The bad guy freaking blows up one of the major landmarks in the star trek universe at one point after all. Very ballsy. But, in reality, that landmark was boring as hell anyway.

I'm glad there was none of the old lame technobabble based plot in this movie, honestly. Especially in the new TV series, it would seem that in order to provide action, ships would end up pointlessly shooting at eachother with no apparent effect either social or environmental other than providing fancy effects. Pew! Laser hits the shield, the other ship takes it like a champ and appears to be un affected. In this movie, there was never a shield effect. Weapons are made to f*king tear s*it up. The engine room looks like an engine room with actual equipment, like the lower level of a cruise ship. All the guns shoot projectiles rather than beam weapons. People have more volatile and real personalities. It just felt more... fun.

There was a few parts where I seriously expected spock to start cutting peoples heads open.

Anyway, its Friday. I have to get alot of tech work done this weekend to appease some freelance customers I have. Honestly, they haven't paid me, and they have no contract with me, so I could walk away and get on with my day.

Crap is stressing me out up the ass and its affecting my work (Company in Wisconsin accused me of being distracted for the last few weeks, which I explained and refuted to my project manager at work). I'm getting better though.

I'm looking forward to lunch (or dinner?) with Kim tommorow, followed by a lan party with clay at 8 at my friend Dean's place, some exercising, some biking, cleaning house to get josh to move in, good stuff. Speaking of exersising, I've been maintaining a low cal diet, lifting weights, and treadmilling at 140 BPM for 40 min a day for about a week now. I'm tired of being fat and out of shape. Oh god, my arms hurt.

I now know Kyle from Step again via facebook through Kyla (they met on OkCupid). Lets see what his LJ user is... bleedingforlife. Yup.

I'm about $600 less on money than I thought I had. I hope this doesn't screw everything up. Must budget.

One day at a time...

So here is how it goes down.

Asim found me on Monster way before I was ready to have a career and money. I didn't realize this. By him hiring me when he did, I skipped about 10 years of my life and faked the maturity that went with that.

The reality of it was I don't want to be mature and correct. I just thought Katy wanted that. Katy was mature and correct looking because she thought I wanted that. We're both just kids.

We had an argument where we were both extremely pissed off at how our lives were going and we should do something about it.

Its about time we started acting our age. You only are 21 once.

On a side note, this group of friends is NOT normal, we are all trying to handle our relationships like we are much older than our age. The only normal ones among us here is Adam and Amber. It may not be a strong relationship, but it is defiantly normal.

Humans have this odd tendency to always want something better. I see it all the time with cars and computers. To make things easy, people define 'better' as having 'more impressive numbers'. If you can make the numbers go up then that is ideal.

But what if what we think we want isn't really what we want? I don't need a fast car. I want a dependable car. I don't care about performance, but I do watch the MPG number when I make a purchase on a car. I don't care about processor cycles on a computer if the computer because every computer is going to accomplish what I want on it nowadays, which is the ability to use the web.

What if I look at the world all wrong? Maybe I don't need a car at all. I could bike. I don't need a computer. I have a pen and paper.

Why can't people just be ok with what they have? Is it competition? You will never be the best off. Someone always has it better than you and someone always has it worse. I buy a house, I know other people have better houses. I get a good job, my coworkers are more skilled than I am. I get furniture, I want better furniture. But why?

If it wasn't for looking for something better we would never teach ourselves to do anything beyond basic survival.

I could look at this from a technical standpoint. Investments like cars and computers improve the quality of life in the way that it takes less time and less effort to do a particular task, which frees that time up for doing something else. It takes me much less time to drive to anoka then to bike. Biking to bloomington is unfeasable in my current schedule of responsibilities.

Maybe I don't need special transportation. Maybe I don't need the ability to annotate and communicate thoughts. All of these things I think I need because the way I was raised told me I should find these things, and fulfilling these things will make you happy. These are all tools to an end. But what end?

I believe there is no point to accomplishing anything in the world except to share it with other people. People are the answer to the pointlessness of the world. I do things so I can help other people enjoy their lives. But maybe just doing things for other people doesn't matter either. The only reason you do anything is so you can enjoy life with people. The future isn't here yet, the past is history, all we have is now.

Think about how little the things you have accomplished matter. We spend so much time sitting in front of inantimate machines, typing away, hoping to get a sense of satisfaction and belonging. The machines are stupid and uncaring, they have no souls. TV has no soul. Entertainment derived from these things are a fabricated lie where you trade money for a fake generated sense of peace. When you stop consuming the artifical scripted soulless entertainment, you are left to your own miserable life again. In this sense, its an addiction.

All of these skills you are learning, once you are dead you probably won't have made any significant impact on the world. In 10,000 years nobody will remember a single thing from your entire generation. In a few million years, the sun explodes and eats the earth and all of civilization is destroyed. America could be conquered in 5 years. Everyone you know is going to die. The grim reality of the world is you don't matter, period, and the only reason to be alive is not to accomplish anything, but enjoy this gift that is life.

You only live once. The only people that even realize you are alive are the people you know. TV couldn't give a shit if you're alive. Neither does your computer. Your job can be replaced. Your car is just an extension of limbs, and we know that we can survive and get by without limbs. Nothing we interact with at all matters except for people.

So why do we spend so little time with people, and so much time on pointless endeavors interacting with intimate objects?

I hope I am not just a tool in a machine. I'm better than that.



I'm on a trip right now, escaping anything that resembles my current life. I wanted to leave everything electronic at home, but I think the best way for me to dump my thoughts is via computer. I don't have internet connectivity (except right now, I'm doing my friday time at work). I don't know how long I will be back or what I will find. I don't know if anyone wants me back. I know that if I didn't have a mortgage, I may quite possibly elope and just not come back.

Thanks for reading.

I'm 23 now. My, how the time has flown. I should start working on things like retirement planning and making a list of things to do before I die and all those sort of things old people do.

For my birthday, I got:
Really badass new Cannon Powershot with Image Stabalization and a 16 GB SD card from Katy
Ice Cream cake by Katy
Rice cooker from parents
Tupperware, salt and pepper shaker and grinder, and assorted razor cutting tools from sister
A few gift cards from relatives

Easter also came and went, and so did the Hanson Easter picnic, and Easter at Katy's with her parents. I successfully did not touch Taco Bell during that entire 40 day duration, and with the exception of the trip to Chicago we went on with clay, did not eat any meat on Fridays. However, taco bell discontinued their spicy chicken burrito (which was one of my favorite fast food items period) during lent. I found out that the primary ingredient which made a SPCK taste like it did was Jalapeno Sauce (which is actually, upon further investigation, flavored mayonnaise). I've been adding this to various items on the taco bell menu to see what they taste like, and so far a fresco beef softshell taco and chicken fiesta burritos have been the 2 best things to add it to in order to simulate the taste of a SPCK.

It finally became warm out again. Katy and I plan on planting a garden this year. I think I will take this next weekend to do outside work, like digging up soil, fertilizing, cleaning up the yard, and stuff. I also have the goal to finish the fence on the yard this year. I think a underground sprinkler system is still unattainable and I will have to wait till next year.

Its hard to find time to do these things because of other responsibilities I take on. As it is, I only have about 5 hours of freetime a night. I work from 9 - 7 PM most days and Katy works 6 am till 9 am and then 1 pm to 9 pm most days. This means Katy and I only get an hour or two each night to hang out, and I only get about an hour to do some activity of my choice (outside of procrastinating time at work). We usually don't do much with each night but aulcopocos on monday, and tgi fridays on tuesday. I think we should start planning wednesdays to be movie night (where I make some kind of sweet dish) and thursdays, well idk what we do on thursdays yet.

I am working with a guy named dave to do some work to local business web pages, because I need a designer to help with some sites I make, and I know php. However, I think I am going to terminate my business relationship with him after I am done with the 2 projects left I am doing with him. He uses table based layouts for his pages and develops his HTML in Suckweaver, and has no since of rounded corners, CSS, web 2.0 layouts, or anything. He can't mark up a PHP application. The projects I'm on are taking more than a few hours of work and the compensation is low. In short, he's not a very valuable resource to me, and I can think of better things I could do with my time.

On deck is finishing the Mortgage site, and possibly a site with a local guy who runs a twitter application which posts funny jokes randomly. The Mortgage site I am way behind on, and I fear my relationship with the guy is souring, so I am trying to find local PHP talent to help develop the site for me (I would share a portion of the profit paid to me for the site developed with the guy who assists me). Asim recommended I do this. I still have to make the craigslist ad.

I am developing a PHP framework with the best features I like in the Zend framework which I develop most of my applications in, but with a focus on making pages more dynamic and interesting (like how facebook behaves). I even have a site for it: http://katy.labythan.com. It still has a few weeks before its ready. My hopes are the framework will floor people at my job so much when I present it that they will contribute to it and also use it, giving me job security and prestige.

At work, I am on a project for a local plastic injection molding company. The project seems never ending and stagnant, which I think is due to questionable management skills by both my company and the company that we are developing the site for. Regardless, I am pushing ahead hard on getting the work done. If I had one critisism for the company I work at, I wish I had a more of a sense of "the sky is falling, work harder" that I had at other jobs. Sometimes, I feel that if I did or did not do work it wouldn't make any difference in the progression of any project, which leads to procrastination and overall a less successful company. Being a habitual procrastinator, I need to analyze these kinds of things to death to the point that I think everyone is out to get me and my job is in danger to sometimes jump start my productivity and creativity again, which I had to do this last friday.

Compared to more service related jobs I've held in the past, its amazing to me how important things like sleep, time of day, caffiene intake, health, and peer input affect things at intellectual jobs like I have now.

I have a cat now. Her name is Yuilya. Shes adorable and noisy.

Defcon is in just over 3 months!!! I need to get hotel riviera tickets still :( damn you money priorities.

I've managed to get my hands on quite a few video games to play. I end up playing them when I have got alot of chores done and katy is hanging out with her friends, at work, or sleeping (we don't hang out every hour of every day, lol. I am about 10 hours into Bioshock, 2 hours into Fallout 3, and I just got GTA IV working (which looks pretty cool). These games seem less like games and more like reading a book, well worth the experience, yes, but I would rather do other things with my time (like sleep). I mostly are playing them because they are cool experiences to complete and a valuable part of culture. The 2 games I currently have no problem sinking hours into are Dota and World of Warcraft (I don't have a subscription to WoW at the moment though). Neither one of those games tell a story, they aren't a work of fiction.

With the abundance of entertainment options and limited time, I defiantly prefer instant gratification. I shouldn't be playing bioshock on anything else than easy difficulty as a result. Stupid me.

Watchmen, I thought, was brilliant. I would defiantly show it to people again. Transformers, Star Trek, and Harry Potter all put out incredible trailers lately and I am looking forward to seeing them.

Nerd time

( Read more... )

End nerd

I am getting closer to caught up on bills. I am only $1000 away from having the Mortgage current, the electricity is close to caught up, tyler is taking over the gas bill, I have a speeding ticket to pay, im one month behind on car, and have about 2 grand in credit card debt left. But this is about 4 or 5 grand closer to being caught up on bills than i was even a few months ago! At this rate by the middle of june everything should be current. I then plan on saving up some extra money in case I suddenly need to survive a layoff. And to save up for some things I really want, like refinancing the house, or some other more private plans I have.

Another day, another dollar.

Thats all for now...

Random tidbits I need to record somewhere:

( Read more... )

Planet of the Dead was stupid. Davies needs to stop directing.

I Read something interesting:


Sure, one may dismiss the Daleks of Doctor Who and the Borg of Star Trek as fiction, but isn't it obvious that they are really symbols of racism and other forms of intolerance, including religious bigotry? Christian fundamentalists natually favor a world in which there are only Christians like themselves, so they seek to "convert" others to their point of view, and when they fail to do so, they lable anyone who disagrees with them as enemies. The Muslims of terrorist groups like Al-Quida are much the same.

If we see the Daleks and Borg as evil, why not the spiritual Daleks and Borg in the real world?

<nerd on>

More on back to Windows XP from using a mac for a few years:

God, Windows blows. I had to basically wipe out Windows XP on the media center computer TY put together because the whole thing was infected with one giant Virtumond virus. Its a good thing Microsoft is very clever with its marketing, because if the public had half a clue about any alternatives, nobody would be using something that is this clunky and archaic and stealthy bank card stealing virus prone.

I put Windows XP on Katy's brother's computer, and loaded it up with games and cool effects. It works pretty good. I later brought over a few more games to install (downloaded with ISO's and cracks and stuff). Although he is eager to learn, he's never been allowed to screw with the innards of a computer before.

How do you explain something like a crack to run a program to him? How do you explain copy protection? How do you explain ISO's and why you need to use Daemon Tools to mount it? How do you explain ZIP files? How do you explain why each game has a different method of how to copy it to a computer? How do you explain that of the 300 files in a program files directory, one of them is an executable and its importance?

In the Mac world, all of that is moot. There is no copy protection. There is no huge list of worthless tray applications that launch on startup. ISO's, Zip files, and applications you all just double click on and they magically work. There is no start menu filled with narcissistic company names. All applications are one self contained file, you put them in the Applications directory, and you never see the supporting technical crap like dll's or anything. In fact, DLL's, redistributables, registry entries, and all that crap are also unnecessary.

SO, lets make attempting to install software in Windows into an analogy:

Imagine if you had a small shopping list. New Jeans, Shoes, Potato chips, Corn on the cob, and socket wrench. If you were smart, you would go to something like Target, and just get everything. It would be a simple matter of going into the store, picking out what you want, and going out with your stuff. But all your stuff is free, and of high quality. And someone puts it away for you when it gets home and replaces it with better versions of each product automatically. Each product also comes with blueprints and fabrication instructions, just in case you are curious. This is analogous to the Linux experience, with package management software.

In the Windows world, you would have to go to the yellow pages, find 5 or 10 different places to get each product from that sells just that product, and half of them will give you herpes and 45% of the rest of the stores will cost 5 times as much as the product is worth (you just have to know what stores you are supposed to go for by word of mouth). So, you drive all over town, getting opinions on products and being skeptical of everyone because anyone may be out to rip you off, and the only opinions you can trust are in shady bars where there can't possibly be any motivation to tell you something incorrect. Once you have your opinions, you go to each store to buy your products, but in addition to having to travel all over town to find each product, each item has different instructions for how to build it (some assembly required) and if you don't follow the instructions exactly, each product's default way to build it will install a secret spycamera in your house so the corporation can watch what you are doing. But wait, there is more! Any product you buy may disconfigure your house in strange ways that you aren't aware of and you can't opt out of. You have no idea what is inside each pandoras box, and you just have to trust each item you got is in fact benign (you wouldn't know otherwise, and even if you did find out, you already bought said product, so the dammage is done). And every six months or so, you've got too much crap sitting around, so you have to throw it all away, burn your hosue down, and start all over again.

This is researching for, downloading, installing, and using windows software, and dealing with crap like SecuROM.

Of course, in the OS X world, your Mac already has all the software you really need, so its not like you have to deal with any of this anyway.

I seriously can't understand how anyone tolerates (Windows) computers when this is the process people use to install crap on their computer. And it is crap, and all of it costs money. Nero CAN NOT compete with how awesome Toast is. DOS Shell is worthless compared to the UNIX Terminal. The Windows NT Kernel is garbage compared to its competition (I sold my powerbook with 3 months of uptime, I've had to hard reboot my XP machine 7 times in the last 2 weeks). There should be no need for Winrar, Daemon tools, or third party ISO ripping/burning software (all of this is native to the operating systems on competitors). Internet explorer is stupid. The fact that the only file systems Windows can mount is NFS, SMB, NTFS, and FAT is a testimate to how closed windows really is (despite their 'computers without walls' advertising). The Add-Remove programs window is stupid and slow. Online driver search has never, not once, worked. Software update only updates Windows XP and requires 5 restarts of the software to work. The OS calls home to ask for activation, updates, and who knows what other commands Microsoft has the power to fire off through its 'calling home'. I could go on and on for some time, but the point here is there is not one thing Windows does that the other OS's don't both do better and do easier. Except for minesweeper. And crashing.

I do like my games though. I think we are inching closer and closer to games made to work on any OS, now that stuff like steam and cider is catching on.

</nerd off>

My work had us write profiles to put on the company website somewhere. They asked 25 questions and had us answer whichever ones we wanted. Here are the answers:

HERE ARE THE QUESTIONS:

1. What's the best part of working here?

There is quite a few perks (I especially love the kitchen), but first and foremost I like the flexibility to use any operating system and any software package whichever way I feel is most appropriate for solving a problem. Not a single person in the office uses the same software package and operating system configuration during their day to day activities, and the lack of standardization releases alot of hinderance on creativity that most other organizations I have worked for have been encumbered with in the name of 'corporate standards'.

2. What are you a complete nerd about?

Unix socket based systems and connectivity. I love how everything in Unix is set up with remote communication in mind. I can mount a hard drive over a serial link which at some point traverses a audio link where the sound of bongos beating is how data is sent and received between two systems if I so chose to, and I can implement it all with minimal effort. Very few people I know realize how cool the ability to express everything as a stream that can be encoded and transmitted by practically any piece of compatible hardware of software that can perform two way communication in a computer system is.
This is what frustrates me about digital measures to restrict freedom with how you transmit or consume your purchased media. The industry term for this is DRM, and while it is helping companies in the short run, it is stifling interoperability and innovation using some of the oldest and most powerful concepts in computer science in the name of economic progress.

3. What's the best piece of advice you've ever gotten?

In the novel "Sphere", the main character is trapped in a room with a slowly rising water level. He recalls some advice given to him by one of his College Professors. The professor says something like this:

"Whatever you are doing right now isn't working. If you keep doing it, it will keep not working. Therefore, what you should do is anything different, anything at all, because no matter how crazy it is, it has a better chance of success than what you are currently doing."

I think this applies to many, many of facets of life.

4. Who's your favorite fictional nerd?

This question leads me to the realization that there are very few nerds in fiction that have unique qualities and character depth that the rest of the 'fictional nerds' don't share.
I'd have to say 'The Doctor' from Doctor Who is probably the most interesting 'nerd' character I've seen, however. The Doctor, who is a time traveler (just like Doc Brown from Back to the Future) is constantly seen using arbitrary parts from various time periods to make futuristic tools for the situation. For example, when stranded in the 60's, the character makes a rudimentary time traveler detector (and, as an unintended side effect, a chicken egg detonator) out of a magnetic tape audio recorder and various other parts time period specific parts.
Yes, its fiction, but I think that the very essence of being a nerd is the ability to take whatever mundane tools you have, pushing them to their limit, and making something extraordinary, rather than simply throwing money at a problem and purchasing a prebuilt tool or service for your needs.

7. What profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt?

A career as an EMT. I figure, if I have prevented the death of at least one person in the world, then I have fulfilled my purpose in life. However, there is only 24 hours in a day, and I have an exceptional proficiency at programming, so I compromise by events like the (censored for LJ) where we produce websites for local non profit groups. It is quite the challenge to figure out how computer programming can be a benevolent contribution to the community, and the (censored for LJ) provides an excellent venue to do that.

8. What turns you on creatively, spiritually, or emotionally?

I figure that Computer Software Engineers have a knack for understanding extremely complex systems on all levels of detail, from the large picture to the implications of extremely minute details. I like taking this aptitude for understanding complex systems and trying to figure out why people behave the way they do and why society is structured they way it is.
Its no secret that the average Software Engineer (or nerd) doesn't have a natural affinity for understanding why people think or behave the way they do. While most people pick up social interaction skills very naturally, the behaviors of a nerd naturally are more based on black and white rules and risk analysis, as well as a hefty upbringing on comic book idealism and science fiction utopia.
At some point it hit me that people are not robots, and the majority of people don't have a natural inclination to think the same way as our 'nerdy' portion of society does. Having a hefty dose of scientific analysis skills and a bit of a detachment for understanding the normal 'human' behavior or people I believe has lead me on a fascination for discovering the motivations of all types of people, and how motivations for peoples actions based on upbringing and environment lead to large scale tendencies for hard to explain phenomenon, such as traffic congestion or the tendency of the average person to watch Reality Television.
As a result, I love philosophy. I believe that early philosophers were one of the earliest true 'Nerds' in our history, capable of creatively understanding all aspects of how a society operates and the human condition. Human behavior is the ultimate puzzle, more complex than any computer system you will ever encounter, and you will never completely solve.


13. How many computers do you have in your home?

Quite a few.
For the sake of simplicity, a computer is anything that 1) is in working condition and 2) I can write custom software for (which counts my family's cellphones, as well as my internet gateway). There is 3 desktops, 4 laptops, 5 cellphones, 2 file servers, 1 media center computer, 1 internet gateway, 2 embedded computers (which will be placed in cars soon), and 2 first gen xbox's, which I believe is a grand total of 20 computers all with their own unique use, independent storage, and the ability to be reprogrammed. I only lack the knowledge for how to write custom software for 2 Palm Smartphones, but one day I hope to overcome that deficiency as well.

20. Screw\Marry\Kill? (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Linus Torvalds OR Deanna Troi, Dr. Crusher, and Tasha Yar)

Isn't Tasha Yar already dead? She doesn't need to be killed a second time in a even less meaningful way then her anticlimactic demise in front of a talking pool of mud. Heck, people have been erased from the time space continuum in later star trek lore only to have their life restored on a technicality.

22. If you could be a superhero, what would your superpowers to be?

The power to turn cat poop into money. I could use less of the first one, and could always use more of the second one.

25. If you were a website which one would you be?

watching-grass-grow.com

I still have rants left. I just haven't typed up more than a couple notes for each of them. There are like 6 or so left.

Nerd time

I've been using a Mac for the last 2 years or so. After moving back from Mac to PC when I built my "Gaming" computer, I have to say Windows XP is pretty customizable. The default mac interface adds SO much to the experience that Windows XP doesn't come close to providing, such as reorderable items in the dock, window transitions, transparency, spotlight for launching apps, a console that doesn't suck, being able to click on an app in the ALT-Tab menu rather than continuing to hit tab over and over, the ability to mount filesystems and disk images, all that good stuff. Also, Vista has some nice compromises and improvements on the UI, like a Aero preview on taskbar items, and sleek window hide/show transitions.

The cool thing that Windows has over Mac is the UI is very customizable with third party apps. (Not that Mac needs to be changed) So, between a vista looking shell pack, WindowFX, UberIcon, Taskbar Shuffle, and Cleartype tuner, I have a pretty pimp looking and functioning copy of Windows XP.

Also, I have a 1920x1080 monitor now. Alot of old games (specifically, Warcraft III and Unreal Tournament 2004) don't have an option to go to this resolution. Based on a tip on the internet, I found these two games hold their resolution in integer values in the registry. A quick fire up of regedit, and both the games run at full resolution. Pretty cool!

Also, XMing + SSH is pretty nifty. I can run Linux programs on a remote server at the X Server level rather than a crappy bitmap based remote control like VNC or RDP. XMing lets the programs which run on the remote computer interact with the windows environment on my desktop *just* as cleanly as if they were being executed on the local desktop. Its really cool and really low bandwidth. Now, programs which can only be properly executed from linux are just a click away for me. It also makes managing the file system on my torrent server really easy.

Screenshot:
http://www.byron.kimtuck.com/uploads/54033109ming2.JPG

I don't understand...

Concrete Jungles / Cheapness / Lack of upkeep

Concrete Jungle: An urban or other populated area containing a high density of buildings constructed of concrete or similar materials, especially one which lacks greenery and which seems unattractive, harsh, or unsafe

This is my current desktop background:



It is BEAUTIFUL. I like how the road is in the picture and other than that, everything else is natural. I took this picture in Colorado in 2007.

Cities are not beautiful. Maybe at night, they are, when select portions of them are lit up and you can see only the good parts, and the irregularities and imperfections are invisible.

A few weeks ago I was going to buy a MSI Wind laptop (which I am typing this on, in fact). I found one on Amazon.com for $350. Someone offered to sell me this laptop for $325, which I thought was a good deal, so I went out to meet the person and look at the laptop.

I drove into Minneapolis, and parked near her office. I stepped into a gross pile of melting snow and added some quarters to the parking meter. Then I set off in the direction of where she worked. When I met up with her, I tried to find somewhere closeby that we could stop and I could look at the laptop without standing out like idiots to all people walking past on the sidewalk.

I suggested a recession up ahead where there was a 4 foot recession off of the sidewalk which was used as a loading door for some business. I pointed to it and realized that on the door I pointed at was something brown and disgusting frozen onto the door seeping down off of it. It probably was a can of beans... or something... but it defiantly looked like shit. Shit frozen onto a door that everybody walks past every day on their way to and from their jobs. We ended up stepping in the target center, which looks one hundred times better inside than it does on the outside.

I visit New York in 2006. I drive to murd0c's place on Long Island. Day 1, I take a train into Manhattan Island, going past everything on long island. Long island is an old place, and it has electrical lines up everywhere rather than the more modern buried electrical lines. Its never ending piles of wood, tar, concrete, and electrical wires.



THAT is the pride of America. It looks like a shiathole!

Minneapolis is one of the better cities to look at while driving. Living here, I don't realize it, but when I am away for awhile and driving out of state, I can't help but realize how clean everything looks compared to other cities. We have trees everywhere, and St Paul has some very professional work done on retaining walls and other modifications of landscape and terrain to support roads and city services.

But, just a few miles away, is some road work. There is always roadwork. The sad fact of the matter is something is always going to look ghetto as hell on the road because of series of ugly traffic cones next to the road indicating that construction is occurring. For 4 months of the year, a good chunk of our pretty city looks like garbage on all of the major commute routes. Thats because it hasn't snowed yet.

And even when construction is done, there is ugly concrete barriers left over defining intersections. The road is littered with nice cars, rusting cars, ugly cars, and every kind of variation of human expression possible where someone tries to show their individuality and their identity through what kind of vehicle they drive.

So yeah, I am frustrated with how as society gets denser, things get uglyier. Roadways are a huge eyesore between the shoddy cheap construction of the asphalt and barriers in most metro areas, as are the cars that travel them, bumper to bumper, during rush hour.

I am also frustrated with how when someone develops an area, there is no inventions or considerations for keeping the area clean. Down town roads are filled with trash, garbage, dirt, and none of it is designed to be there. Nature doesn't maintain unnatural landscape for us, it doesn't have vegetation, anthills, and critters to clean up biodegradable messes like the environment is supposed to.

Then there is cigarette butts. Cmon, if you're going to smoke, at least pull your own wight and figure out how to throw the butts away. They don't clean up themselves.

Finally, I am frustrated with the lack of upkeep done from a technological standpoint in cities. Our countries mass transit systems are shit speed wise and coveragewise, our internet bandwidth is on average over 10 times slower than other countries like Germany or Japan, our cellphone and TV technology is in the darkages compared to modern progress, and due to lack of implementing new construction techniques or money allocated to building restoration, the center of alot of metro areas look like they are rotting from the inside out with ghetto undesirable housing which lowers property values and attracts crime.

And most of this is the fault of both patents (stifling innovation) and taxes, being complacent with the technology we already have and fearing change, and beyond technology, general indifference of Americans concerning everything about their environment.

Oh, I know some countries have it worse, but once again, when did we become ok with being second or third best? Why don't we want to spend some tax money on social upkeep?

Oh, because we would much rather spend that money on beer and flatscreen TV's to watch Football. That makes sense to me.

I can only hope that technology in the future will allow people to spread out farther so a desirable place to live is one with low population density and more nature*. People weren't meant to live like this, in huge cities.

*This only works until overpopulation takes over, then the entire world is a shiathole.*

Klaatu should have let society burn.

I don't understand...

Lack of focus on education / lack of emphasis on the betterment of society

Fark (Assinine): Nearly 40% of people admit to caring less about the environment now that the price of gasoline has fallen by half. You know, because $4 gas is worse for the environment than $2 gas

I've been reading a few news stories on the origin of intelligence and why intelligence isn't a valued trait in society. For example, take the last election. Most of the discussion was NOT on someone's cognitive ability to realize and solve current problems. The discussion was concerning personality traits or moral points of views, and a good many people made their decisions for who to lead the country appropriately.

Articles I have read try to answer the question of where did intelligence come from and why is above average intelligence seen as a negative trait in American society. Long story short, the authors conclusions were intelligence is an aftereffect of play, which is a mammalian trait where young mammals learn survival skills, such as communication, cooperation, hunting, and the limits of their abilities. However, gaining intelligence for the majority of the population is not a desirable activity past childhood.

I saw in an article the question "Should learning be its own reward" where kids were being positively rewarded with treats for learning things in school. You don't have to reward someone for having sex, or eating a taco, or getting drunk - these things are their own reward. So why do you have to reward skills like intelligence? The end conclusion was that while most people have basic physical exertions, such as walking to the car, walking a flight of stairs, or a stroll around the park, most people don't do strenuous physical activity on a consistent basis. Similarly, people may have a spurt of intelligence, but for the most part don't find thinking to be very rewarding, but rather a chore. This analogy makes it possible for a person who prides intelligence as a hobby to understand why some people don't find intelligence to be a positive trait.

So without each person thinking hard at how the cogs of society work, the population leave it to a handful of smarter people to figure out how things work and to do the right thing. The problem is voters resent these people because they have all the power, even though they were granted the power to run society.

Clearly the quality of public education is tied to the quality of the majority of the workforce in America, both in work ethic and creative intelligence / entrepreneurial drive. Lack of funding for education and rewarding rather than punishing kids with no child left behind laws hinders the quality of human labor produced by public education.

Public education is paid for by the government. The amount of money available to the government to pay for education is determined by Taxes, which are voted on by people who are over 18 (out of public education). It doesn't seem fair to me that the budget for education is being determined mostly by people with no personal investment in it. People are inherently selfish, and with the exception of a few people who are truely selfless (or are parents) could care less if it died. In fact, if the next generation is dumber, then they will be less likely to steal average Joe's job due to superior qualifications.

So people vote to cut education budgets, and education suffers. Therefore the quality of graduates suffers. And more people end up on wellfare and elements of America end up beind that of the rest of the world in technological and general progress in society.

Once again, this is because people are selfish. We have a complete lack of respect for the land we live on or the history of our forefathers. Hell, do you even know what the history is of the city you were born and raised in? Do you care?

So, we leave it all up to the smart people, right? Wrong, even the smart people only know how to engineer society so people can tolerate it enough to pay them money. If "good people" (that is, selfless people) were in charge of laws, we wouldn't have software patients holding people back from developing new technologies to compete in the marketplace with existing technologies, we wouldn't have constant litigation from entertainment companies suing people for exercising new technologies, we wouldn't have bailouts to extend the lack of progress of old and antiquated business models such as licensing and physical media distribution of popular music.

Nobody cares. To most people, none of this is a problem, because the average person doesn't care how society, money and wealth work. And everybody (even the above average) are only concerned with their own self (and potentially their family - but public education won't factor into that if the individual can afford private school). Backed with welfare, society is completely ready to support someone who does not feel like completing a full education. The person with a limited education thinks that their knowledge is adequate to be a contributing member to society and to do the right thing, but so do 8 year olds - 8 year olds are convinced they can be independent if given the opportunity, and even do it right.

This is a very very very slippery slope. If the next generation is stupider and is also not educated to see that a lack of education is decremental to all of society, the next generation will be even stupider.

This ignorance on the consequences of indifference towards education and the idea that society accepts, embraces, and supports the overly ignorant is disgusting to me. You don't see this in some more ruthless countries, like Japan, and I'm guessing their society works better than ours. But like everyone else in the USA I don't actually know that, because compared to the rest of the world im very ignorant of the strengths, weaknesses, and current state of other countries.

And I have no idea how to fix it. My best idea is privatized public schooling that competes to win contracts with counties and populate the ranks of teachers within school districts. But I'm not even sure that would work and I don't know enough to see how all the pieces really fit together.

If you haven't already seen Idiocracy, watch the intro to it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-mJbMm8854&feature=related seriously, worth the watch.

Remember when America was the heart of innovation?