Archive for July, 2003

It amazes me how much effort people put into grass.

My dad (at the moment) works for a lawn care company selling services to maintain this man made natural “carpet.” Of course we treat our lawns like bad children, it always needs lots of attention to make sure it is doing the “right” thing.

Suburbia is about the control of nature. (Assuming you can call the bastardized version of plants and animals that exists in suburbia nature.) Whereas urban areas for the most part just displace natural things and confine nature to specific areas, but urban areas make no attempt to look natural. There is no pseudo nature, controlled and contrived into a pretty picture to suite personal or communal tastes, as exists in suburbia.

It is my contention that grass was initially fundamentally like a Timex watch, or a SUV (or even a 17″ Apple Powerbook, despite its inherent beauty.) — It was something that was bought or maintained to show off the fact that you had money. Lawns (especially if you insist on very green lawns) are rather expensive to maintain with fertilizer, mowing, aerating, weeding, etc, etc…

The important thing to consider is whats the alternative? You could let wild grasses and flowers overtake your lawn and enjoy the true nature in stark contrast to the controlled primness of a “proper” suburban lawn. This is of course assuming that your neighbors and/or the city don’t take it upon themselves to mow your lawn and bill you for the trespassing and destruction of property. (Of course in their defense this is in the name of “property value.” Is it amazing how obsessed w are with money?)

Another alternative is to completely landscape your yard leaving no grass, albeit this only replaces on constructed nature scene with another.

You could finally put gravel in. (I’ve seen this in retirement areas in Florida.) Or, just pave the whole damn thing. (Although I can see the city complaining in this case as well.)

I’m also quite convinced that grass is a chosen weed, but I’ll have to research further to support this claim.

I bitched out my friend A earlier today.

He’s got a position at work that gets more pay, but he has less work to do; well no work to do. (Its not his fault, just the Ohio Relay Contract is screwy.) This is his second job, his first being a pretty well paying job.

I’m not sure why exactly I exploded at him.

I’m quite sure part of it is that when he’s here its play time and lets entertain A time. While I don’t mind a good conversation it seems like a requirement and plus he ends up bothering other people who are working and he seems to have no courtesy for others who are working, calling busy supervisors for no reason at all, being loud behind other working employees, etc, etc…

Another possible reason for my bitchiness is that I see him having this job just so he can buy a house, which at the moment I see as an unnecessary luxury. He has a moderate sized four bedroom house for one person and two cats. This really just seems like showing off to me. Of course I’m not enthusiastic about home ownership. I see most houses as a waste of money.

First of all the mortgage payment is usually more than rent, but you get less. Rent includes repairs, property tax, often extra amenities, appliances, among other things. I know people often tout the equity in homes, but if you look at it you have to pay a lot of bank interest and other additional costs that you don’t have with an apartment, as a result your free cash flow should be higher allowing you to invest the extra funds.

I still don’t know why I went off on A. I guess its some of this stuff and just the plain fact that I’m tired.

Dang, do I look like an ass now?

The Quantum Physics book as caused me to being to doubt scientific truth.

Here is the problem: Science is a pursuit performed by people making a hypothesis and then creating an experiment to test it. (or vice versa, starting with an experiment then coming up with an explanatory hypothesis.) The problem arises in that we can never prove a hypothesis true, only falsify a hypothesis. So since people are constructing the theory and the experiments the hypothesis and/or theory are rooted in the history of that science and the experience of people performing the experimenting and hypothesizing. A danger in this is the possibility that there is a false case floating around waiting to be recognized as such.

While of course a false case is a danger to the theory being falsified, it is also potentially detrimental to theories that have been structured as a result of knowledge gained or theory developed on the falsified theory.

This of course calls into question the whole nature of science. Is there some case that can destroy the fundamental nature of science? Perhaps one of the core precepts that all science is based on is false? What then?

The possible flaw in my reasoning of course is eventually after an unfalsified theory is used and explored so many times does it become truth? When does it cross this line?

If Dante was still alive, and he was a Relay Communications Assistant, he would consider an additional circle of hell, being relaying calls to AOL tech support for the rest of your days. Like I had to do the other day in excess of an hour, in addition I hit the emergency button which caused the fricking computer to beep for the next 20 minutes till the end of the call. (What? It was a CA emergency!)

So I took my aggression out. I got one of those #@(!$@*#% AOL disks in the mail today.. so I took a hammer and pounded the fricking case in.

It was therapeutic.

I was just composing my last entry in Userspace, and I went to spell check it… Apparently the folks at Apple have a sense of humor. Give the image a click for the close up..

I tried writing with my left hand today. It was a result of trying to eat and program at the same time.

It looks like its written by a first grader, although I don’t know very many first graders with the logical skills to be able to program ANSI C, maybe Basic or Logo, but defiantly not ANSI C.

I’m in a huge muddle with SpamFolderManger. I’ve honestly never dealt with a project of this breadth and modularity. Honestly I’m really a Applesoft BASIC programmer who has just transplanted himself to ANSI C. This is the first time I’ve actually tried programming like a C programmer and I’m well lost.

I’ve got a bunch of functions lying around and well eventually they should be able to be properly stitched together to create a functional program.

I’m reminded of sessions with my mother when she’d have all the pieces for her quilt covering the floor and she’d be attempting to figure out what was wrong in her cutting so she could piece the whole mess of fabric together properly to come out with a quilt. She always used to be so methodical and graph the whole quilt out and figure out what she had to do.

I know I need to create a “map” of this program for myself, so I know which way is up and how I need to proceed. I feel like I’ve been given a hot skillet on a stove without a handle, and I’m having to figure out how to build a handle onto this. Its probably something like molecular chemistry. (Wait, thats redundant isn’t redundant?) I remember reading about buckeyminsterfullerene in Popular Science and how they had to graph a handle on it to take a picture.

Whatever the case I’m stuck feeling really stupid and really lost. Maybe I can learn to write with my left hand and program at the same time. My brain needs a good work out.

Of course I could be boring and take my second class on programming and just stick to my right hand for writing, but that just wouldn’t be interesting.