Category Archives: Insanity

Horror

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I’m not a big movie watcher. I probably watch half a dozen movies a year. That might be a high estimate. And probably not more than 10% of the movies I watch are horror movies. But I still like them.

You have to watch scary movies alone in the dark. There’s just no other acceptable way of doing it. So I just watched Disturbia. My parents described it as a modern version of Rear Window. So my expectations were pretty low.

I am now terrified. I’m lying in my bed with the covers almost pulled over my head. My closet door is partially open. I can’t really see in. Someone could very easily be lurking in there with a knife. I kind of want to shine my flashlight in, but that would almost certainly trigger them to come out. I also don’t know if anyone is under my bed. Little kids worry about monster under the bed. I’m worried that Mr. Turner might be under my bed, waiting to plunge a knife through the mattress and into my back as I lie here in utter terror.

I have my cell phone by my bed. I always keep it there since it’s my alarm clock. But tonight it’s so I can call 911 when Mr. Turner tries to kill me. Trust me, I’ll be sleeping with one eye open.

I keep a pocket knife around, as a handy tool. I kind of think I should get out of bed and get that for when he comes to kill me, but I don’t want to leave the safety of my bed.

How absurd is that? I legitimately feel much safer lying in bed, and am exponentially safer if I pull the sheets way up. My body’s natural reaction to someone (potentially) lurking in the shadows of my closet waiting to kill me isn’t to get up and get the knife just out of reach, but to pull some thin covers of me, to the extent that I can’t even see the threat coming. It’s probably the least safe thing you could do, second only to putting on a blindfold and then trying to on an offensive using styrofoam.

I tried rationalizing it. Mr. Turner isn’t real. But… I bet there are people like him in the real world. Maybe even worse. And surely, you couldn’t stick a knife through my bed and kill me, because it’s too thick. (And while a sword would do the trick, you couldn’t maneuver it underneath a bed.) But when was the last time you inspected the underside of your bed? He could easily have cut out a hole so he only an inch of mattress or so remains in one area. And, once I’ve dozed off comfortable that no one is trying to kill me, he’ll plunge the knife through my back.

It was nice knowing you all.

Besides his pasttime as a serial killer, BTW, Mr. Turner just radiated a really, really unlikable personality. He’s played by David Morse. You might recognize him. From House. He’s Detective Tritter. No wonder I disliked him.

Copper Prices

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Am I the only one amused by the ongoing stories about people breaking into buildings to steal the pipes, because scrap metal prices have skyrocketed? The whole thing is just bizarre: I’d expect thieves to be stealing TVs or cash, not copper pipes. Like this guy in Chester.

Will someone let me know if the scrap value of pennies exceeds their face value? I have a lot.

A Cure for AIDS

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I just killed a mosquito, which got me thinking about how I need to book an appointment at a travel clinic on Monday to get my malaria vaccine in Africa.

Malaria, like AIDS, is very common in Africa.

But wait! If malaria is spread by mosquitoes, how about AIDS?

This page explains why mosquitoes don’t (can’t) spread HIV. The short answer is the third bold sentence, which kind of amuses me: “Mosquitoes are not flying hypodermic needles.” (I get a crazy mental image.)

But I’m intrigued by the first one: mosquitoes digest the virus that causes AIDS.

Why not, then, isolate what causes that digestion, and deliver it in pill/injection form to people at risk for AIDS? (Besides the apparent side-effect of the vaccine also ‘digesting’ all of a person’s ‘blood meal,’ which I suppose is not desirable.)

A Day in the Life of a Geek

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I got my hair cut today. And I found myself thinking the same thing I usually think: why on Earth do they have ten appointment books, one for each stylist? And why is there a separate one to track sales?

I think you could write a pretty simple software solution. They just need a few database tables, really: one for the clients, one for the stylists, and one for appointments, which can just be a time, client ID and stylist ID. Then it’s all just stuff like code to find an open appointment within certain constraints (“Hi, I wondered if I could book an appointment with Joyce, ideally on a Monday, Friday, or Saturday, and ideally after 1 p.m.”), and to make sure that scheduling conflicts didn’t come up.

Surprisingly, I’m having a hard time finding a simple package to do this. Most of what I’ve seen is either ridiculously crappy, or it only supports scheduling, but doesn’t integrate with a client database. There are some medical practice software suites out there, some of them even free, but they’re way too complex. I don’t think my hairdresser keeps my ‘haircut history’ (although that would be a novel idea!). I’m really not concerned with HIPAA: if someone finds out that I was calling the hairstylist and the reason for my visit was that my hair was kind of long, I don’t think anyone will think of me differently.

By computerizing it, you can also pull out information easily. For example, they could pull up a ‘report’ of everyone they need to call on a given day to confirm appointments, and keep track of whether they reached someone, etc. The code could also work on trying to see to it that people get a roughly equal number of clients for those who don’t request anyone in particular.

It’d also be easy to track sales of hair products. I bought a new thing of hair gel today, for example. One of the other stylists was selling it. It seems like they have one money bag. (Why not a cash drawer?!) They could just record that it was sold, and the system would take care of crediting the income to the appropriate stylist. At the end of the night, they could just pull up a report on how much money went to each stylist.

If you had an Internet connection, it’d be a great idea to put this all on the Web. Clients could then book appointments themselves, and get reminder e-mails, rather than having to call. You could even have a client-side application at the hairdresser’s office (do they call it an office?) that would sync up every few minutes (basic replication) every few minutes, so if they lost their connection, they wouldn’t be dead in the water. And then you can play with AJAX for some auto-complete magic. (For example, when I call to book and they ask my name, they might start to type my name in and have it come up as the only match before they’re even done typing.)

The problem is that I have a very strong urge to roll up my sleeves and start working on a nice package to do this. Except that it seems pretty ridiculous, given that I don’t work for a hairdresser? I suppose I could sell the code? But it sounds like an Access 101 project, really. I’d probably end up giving it away.

This, my friends, is what it’s like to be a geek.

Matches

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We keep a box of matches at work, not so much for smokers (although they ask for them sometimes), but more for birthday parties who forget them and can’t otherwise light the candles on their cake.  (This is surprisingly common.)  The other night we ran out, so I got a new box from the closet.

And that got me thinking… Matches are basically ignited by friction, no?

If you took a box of matches and threw it at the ground, really really hard,  would it ignite? And would a box full of matchbooks burn as much as I’m thinking? (I think it all depends on one thing: will two matchheads, rubbed together with sufficient force, ignite each other?)

As much as I’d like to find out, I’d also rather not burn down any buildings, so I’ll leave this one for the experts. But experts, will it burn?

Horror Scopes

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I believe that horoscopes are pure baloney. But I like to read mine from time to time, sort of like how I play the lottery and pick up heads-up pennies: better safe than sorry? But really, the reason is more that it ‘feels good.’ Even though I know that it’s a work of fiction, it’s reassuring to read something suggesting that I’m going to have a good week or whatnot.

So I was playing around with the ‘widgets’ on iGoogle, and added a horoscope one. The past three days, it’s basically suggested that I’ll be lost in introspection, not my usual self, and that my life will be very confusing right now. As I start to think about what I’m going to do after college, this is alarmingly bleak.

I think horoscopes should be like fortune cookies: optimistic little sayings that brighten your day and make you feel good, even if no one thinks it’s worth a hoot. But when I turn to fiction to brighten my day, and it instead suggests I’m going to be miserable for a while, it’s not quite what I wanted.

I tried removing that horoscope and adding a different horoscope widget that drew its data from a different source. That one tells me that major events are going on behind the scenes in my life, and that, when they come to the surface, I should count on those I trust most to help me deal with them. Which is perhaps even more bleak than suggesting that I’ll be depressed the next few days.

Really, who writes these things? Do they stand to profit from the sale of antidepressants?

Hilarious Video Roundup

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Here’s a collection of some of the most hilarious videos on YouTube and the like:

Network Problems

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PuTTY tells me “No route to host” when I try to ssh into this machine, and ping gives a similar complaint. And yet I’m viewing the site, refreshing, and now posting just fine.

What could possibly be going on to cause that? It’s not “Connection refused” as if sshd died, it’s “No route to host,” and yet I’m here at the exact same host just fine.