Geek on Two Wheels

I do not like online social networking.

When it comes to interpersonal interaction, I have always preferred mine to be in meat-space, conducted over a few cold beers, some hearty food, and generally with more vocalization and eye contact than TCP and text rendering.

That said, in this day and age, especially for one with my occupational slant, having a positive online presence is generally recommended, if not expected.  And, whether I like it or not, these new-fangled social networks are a good way to keep in touch with old friends and new acquaintances alike, not to mention being fairly effective for organizing relatively larger scale gatherings.

So, for my own sake, I’ve gotta put some effort into  this whole shebang. That means blogging on this here blog, photoing on flickr, linking-in on LinkedIn, denting on identi.ca, and at least being aware of what “Facebooking” even means for the month.  That’s a lot of nouns to verb, and I’m a very lazy man.

Luckily, integration tools exist. After some futzing, my Facebook status is now updated via identi.ca (without the annoying “dented: ” prefix) via XMPP via Pidgin and the blog is being aggregated to both LinkedIn and Facebook.  With the latest redesign of the latter, I would rather have my blog entries show up in News Feeds as links instead of Notes posts, but that’s something I will have to investigate for later.  As for Flickr, Facebook does a decent job scraping thumbnails when posting Flickr links, so doing it manually will have to do for now; in fact, I think I prefer the extra control over having it happen automagically.

And, finally, updating my main page to contain all the appropriate links.  The only things left to do is to create a good profile photo of myself, and put up a resume.

Now if only they would all become OpenID consumers, I wouldn’t have to log in to them separately…

Subject: “Mongoloid” is a no-no term?

It’s recently come to my attention that “Mongoloid” is on the list of off-limit words on the official volunteer training manual.

As a Mongoloid, I am frankly offended that you think people may be offended by the term.

(Yes, I am now aware of the secondary, archaic meaning of the term after having to look it up.)

What if you happen to encounter an athlete studying archaeology who is specializing in tracing the lineage of East-Asian people, and wants to strike up a conversation about said topic because you, by sheer coincidence, is also an archaeologist?

Think of the archaeologists. Oh, why won’t anyone think of the archaeologists?!

I want to have this man’s falsetto babies.

• When things go bang, pull over before it bangs even louder.
• The wrench in your car’s spare tire set may not give you enough leverage to actually remove your tire. Alternatively, train yourself to be able to bench press more than your own weight, with one hand.
• Getting a tow truck to drive out to the middle of two small BC towns is expensive.
• … but was probably worth being reminded that, in small towns, things are closed on Sundays.
• Coldwater Rd is a fantastic drive.

Now that I’m back to working, it has once again hit me how much I hate SOAP and the horrendous mess that is modern XML which it fairly accurately reflects. Instead of ranting about it myself, however, I’m going direct to you to an excellent post by Jeff Atwood: “XML: The Angle Bracket Tax“.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, that SOAP call translates to:

GetLastTradePrice("DIS")

I just totally bought an Xbox 360 Pro and Rock Band.

Spring is here. Here is a Hot Girl Jumping on a Trampoline:

For those more inclined to admire the male form, here is a Hot Guy Jumping on Trampoline:

(In the interest of full disclosure, EQO is a previous employer of yours-truly.)

Rubik’s Cubes, to be exact.

My package of 2x2x2, 4x4x4, and 5x5x5 Rubik’s Cubes (and some extra Cube-accessories) finally arrived in the mail today. These East Sheen cubes don’t feel as hefty as the Rubik’s brand cubes, but they are super smooth to spin, and seems to have already been lightly lubricated. No wonder people recommend these for speed cubing.

The 2x2x2 was pretty trivial to solve, considering it’s just the corners of a standard cube. The 4x4x4 took me a while, but I did manage to do it eventually.

I’ve yet to attempt the 5x5x5 cube, but I’m sure it won’t be easy.

And I even climbed a mountain or two. I didn’t have to destroy any ancient artifact of power, though.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

HAAAAAAAAHAHAHA. Hahahahahaha, hahaha… Ha…

Hahaha…

Ah…

You can’t make this stuff up folks. Well, OK, you can.