Pete's Log

invisible pete

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:28:00 EST

So I'm working at the fourth desk in an office where three people normally work. The three usual inhabitants of this office are all currently elsewhere.

Some woman just stuck her head in the door, looked around and said "keiner da." ("Nobody here") and immediately walked off again.

I'm not sure how to feel about that.

faucet-o-rama

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:43:00 EST

The Mannheim/Ludwigshafen area (where I am spending the night yet again) tends to have pretty mediocre hotels. I'm in one tonight I haven't stayed in before. Here's the bathtub:

There are nine handles in this picture. But only one faucet and one showerhead.

This strikes me as slightly absurd.

a poem (not by me)

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:33:00 EST

The God Who Loves You by Carl Dennis. I like it.

Obama samma

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:04:00 EST

Dear President-Elect Obama: please turn out to be the pragmatist I hope you are and not the lefty populist I fear you are.

Dear Republican Party: please become the center-right party I think this country needs instead of the fundamentalist-right party you think your base wants. Demographics alone will ruin you if you don't reconsider your platform. The Libertarians aren't the answer, but you well could be.

Dear Democratic Party: please realize this country voted you in in large part as a rejection of Bush, and not because they suddenly have an appetite for Euro-Leftist politics.

Dear America: please keep your expectations of the Obama White House grounded. It's gonna be a tough four years regardless of who's President.

Dear Europe: we're still America, and our left is still to the right of your left.

Dear Sarah Palin: please stay in Alaska forever and forget national politics.

Dear Libertarians: Bob Barr? Seriously?

watch this!

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:04:00 EST

I'm not biased or anything, but this video is awesome:

Lakeshore Drive

Gore/Thogonalprojectionmatrix!

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:11:00 EST

A blast from the past....

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Possibly still the funniest thing the interwebs ever came up with.

facebook deficit disorder

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:46:00 EST

I was listening to an episode of This American Life (yay NPR podcasts!) and was quite digging the storytelling and thought to myself "I should see if there's a This American Life fanpage on facebook." So I got on facebook and searched for one and found one and joined it. Then I started poking around on that page and reading some of the things they had going on.

Then I realized I'd completely missed out on the past 10 minutes of the podcast. Stupid ADD.

So I rewound the show and sat back and forced myself to not get distracted. And it worked, mostly. The only distraction was the thought that I should write about this. And now I have. But I did make it through the rest of the show.

On a completely unrelated note: The Brokers With Hands on Their Faces Blog.

stupid England

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:41:00 EST

More from the "too much time in Europe" file:

I catch myself spelling words with s instead of z more and more often of late.

E.g. prioritisation instead of prioritization, organisation instead of organization, etc.

I have been exposed to more "British English" since moving here, but I don't think that's the primary cause. I think the reason is that equivalent German words are spelled with s, i.e. the German word for organization is Organisation.

Don't worry, though: I'm nowhere near spelling color with a u.

Expat life

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 07:55:00 EST

Another indicator of how long I've been outside the States: I now have trouble remembering my social security number.

Mein Hut

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:58:00 EST

This is my Tracht hat:

I've pimped it out a bit. It's got a ND "Play Like a Champion Today" pin (thanks, Branden!), a German/American flag pin, an Augustiner pin, and a Gamsbart (thanks, Randy!). I hope to add a Belgian or Flemish flag, but that's about the extent of my plans for the hat.

I had an odd dream last night, though. The hat was massively pimped out, including Texas, Illinois, and Indiana pins. Oh, and a CIA pin. I wonder if it was a tracking device.

a SQL*Plus hater no more

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:06:00 EST

For a long time I've hated Oracle's SQL*Plus tool. I thought it was a completely useless front end to the database and used it only to test if I could connect or if I had no other options. Mostly I preferred to work with PL/SQL Developer.

A few weeks ago, however, I observed somebody using SQL*Plus, and saw her use the "edit" command. I was astounded. I decided to google "SQL*Plus Tips" to see what else was out there.

It turns out there's quite a bit of tricks for making SQL*Plus usable. I think I still prefer PL/SQL Developer (mainly since I'm a sucker for auto-complete), but I no longer fear having to work in SQL*Plus. Sorry for hating, Oracle.

econoblogics

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:04:00 EST

So, some serious debauchery is behind me, and it's time to peek again at what the world has been up to. My summer in Ludwigshafen led me to have lots of free time in hotel rooms, so I've found a number of economics blogs that I enjoy. So, check them out if you're looking for some more in depth, less MSM coverage.

Also, Scott Adams conducted an interesting survey of economists.

And even though it's not economics, I have a major blog crush on these two ladies.

I'm such a poser

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:23:00 EST

You can tell because it's a video game.

mobile blog

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:10:00 EST

I have a new phone. it has the interweb. I'm writing this on my phone. fancy.

it's also got gps and other fanciness. it's windows mobile based, but hasn't crashed yet.

the best part, though, is that I can now have the notre dame victory march as my ring tone again, which I've missed on my old siemens phone I've had the past two years.

I wonder how many germans will recognize it...

random observations from America

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:29:00 EST

I've realized I think in Celsius now, not in Fahrenheit.

I got into a hotel elevator in Denver and looked for the ground floor button and didn't find it. Luckily, the 1 button had a star next to it, which reminded me that buildings in the US start at 1.

Not having sales tax included in the sticker price is confusing. Montana has the best solution to that problem: no sales tax at all.

Moon pies taste just as good as I remembered. Also Cream Soda is awesome.

Staying in a hotel where the only things I found in walking distance were an Outback Steakhouse, a Chinese restaurant, a McDonalds, and a few gas stations reminded me that if I do ever move back to the U.S., it will have to be to a walkable city.

75 miles an hour now seems like a rather slow speed to drive at. Especially on a near-empty highway.

The temptation to move to the Rockies and become a ski bum is stronger than it's been in a while.

hedgekore!

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:06:00 EST

Tim doesn't look terribly pleased.

I don't think I'm ever growing up.

complete this sentence

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:11:00 EST

My only hope of surviving in a post-apocalyptic world is

just on the off chance...

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:53:00 EST

Does anybody out there still have a .emacs based on mine at ND? It appears I never managed to archive that one, and I did rather like it...

Yes, I do realize that I'm asking this question nearly 6 years after leaving South Bend. I apologize in advance.

the last log entry of my 20s

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:25:00 EST

I wrote my first log entry 3522 days ago, about four months into my twenties. Now that decade is coming to an end.

It's ending on the sad news that Janis died yesterday. The news still hasn't really hit me yet. When Penny died, it hit me instantly, since I'd been expecting it. But I'm still unable to believe Janis is dead. :( She was an awesome doggy and a great little friend.

Life's generally been odd lately. I'm having a bit of a crisis about turning thirty. Not because it's thirty, but because I've made little to no progress on many of the goals I set myself in the past year. In part this is because my life has sort of been on hold lately. Since March, I've spent the majority of my time living in hotel rooms. I've definitely put on weight because of this, and I'm not keeping up with various aspects of my personal life as I'd like to.

Naturally, if I tried hard, I could stay in shape despite living in hotel rooms, as well as keep on top of all the other things I've neglected. It'd simply be easier if I was at home more.

Luckily, I think things are improving. And I am in the middle of a week that I get to spend in Munich. The weather's been mostly cold and rainy so far, but it's looking to improve by the weekend. And I've done a bit to increase my geekiness factor of recent, which has been very neglected.

All you need to know is that in the past couple days, I've gotten my Nintendo DS to do two very nifty things:

It now has an Apple II emulator on which I've been able to play some favorite childhood games
It now boots Linux

Also, it plays mp3s, which is nice, considering my iPod also seems to have died...

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:08:00 EST

Watch it!

But do it quick.

impulse buys

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:33:00 EST

Silly things should not allowed to be cheap. I can't resist sometimes...

happy birthday, America!

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:35:00 EST

So, um... yeah...

Much grilling happened yesterday, which was excellent. At the end of the night, we found ourselves at a large party at one of the universities here. I had my American flag wrapped around my shoulders and the words "America! Fuck yeah!" written on my forehead. (Thanks, Mandy!)

Needless to say, striking up conversations was not terribly difficult.

three things

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:23:00 EST

Ice cream pirate:
Mamie!
Sweet soy sauce is the bomb diggity

Pete's Word of the Month Club

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 13:34:00 EST

Here's how it works: every month there will be a word (or perhaps a phrase) and your goal will be to legitimately work this word into conversations as much as possible. Post any good occurrences here.

The word of the month for June: Malthusian.

4 things

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:56:00 EST

I've learned that soccer victories in the European Cup are celebrated by driving in a loop around town, honking your horn, and waving your national flag. Or at least that's how they're celebrated in Mannheim. At first I thought this was a Turkish thing, since I first witnessed it after their victory over Switzerland. But since then I've seen this after the German victory over Austria and after the Italian victory over France. Hupkonzert is how I've heard it described in German. I only wish they wouldn't keep it up until 1 or 2 am.
I was not happy that my hotel did not seem to have hot water on Tuesday morning. I reported this fact to the front desk. Tuesday evening I gave the hot water another try, letting the water run for several minutes. It did not warm up. I was about to go complain again, when I figured I should try pushing the handle to the right instead of the left for hot water. It nearly instantly got hot. I stayed in the same hotel last week and think I would remember the taps being backwards in the other room. Or maybe constant hotel living is starting to affect my sanity, and it's not really backwards. I'll be paying special attention to any and all taps I encounter in the next few days. But it never even occurred to me on Tuesday morning to try the tap backwards. And didn't Donald Norman write about this in The Design of Everyday Things?
On my newish work laptop, I have the issue that combinations of three or more keys only work once in a row. For example, to select an entire word, I'm in the habit of using the combo ctrl+shift+arrow. Usually, for multiple words, I only have to release the shift key and then press it again. On this laptop, however, I have to release all three keys and then press them all again, and even that sometimes doesn't work. Anybody have any clever ideas on how to test if this is a hardware or software issue, asides from reinstalling the OS?
I am really tired of living in hotels.