Today I heard on the radio the term "Turbo / Ozone style" in relation to a school formal that one of the radio DJ's daughter is going to, and the really sad thing here is that I understood the reference.

"I don't want to see the power and prestige of the United States president put at risk by rushing into meetings with the likes of [Venezuelan president Hugo] Chavez and [Cuban president Fidel] Castro and [Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad," Clinton told CNN Thursday. "I think we have to be absolutely clear that we are going to engage with the world, that we are not afraid to have diplomacy."

'nuff said.

Yoinked from letloverule42 :

Step 1. Put your playlist on random.
Step 2. Post the first a line from the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarrasing.
Step 3. Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly. NO GOOGLING.

( Read more... )

Because I got tagged by pktaxwenchWhat does your username mean?

There is a long story behind it... I guess I have to go into it now...

OK, if we break it down, we have the first three letters "foo", which if you are a computer geek like me you will recognize very quickly as being one of those garbage variables that you use when you don't know what else to call it. "bar" is the other one, and of course together they produce the word "fubar", which any military person will be able to give you a proper definition of.  :)

So, that is where the foo part of my username comes from... now for the rest. Well, for a while I was using Foo as a nickname in some chat channels, but I found that this was entirely too popular and there were a lot of nick collisions. So I add a "z" to the end because other letters just didn't seem to work. Now we have "Fooz".

Now, from here, we go back even further into history.... anyone remember the movie "The Great Santini" with Robert Duvall? Yes? I knew you all would. Well, in once scene in this movie, Robert Duvall says quite grandly, "I... AM... THE GREAT SANTINI!"  This just naturally went over to providing me with an extended nick of Foozini, so that I could go around and say "I....AM.... THE GREAT FOOZINI!"

OK, kind of trite and silly. Whatever. It works, and that is why I have that as a username now.

Oh, and "Wells" was taken at the time. There is a whole other story concerning that username, which I won't go into here because that is NOT what the question asked.  :P

What is your default icon and why?

It's a penguin. Actually, it is a picture of a large statue of a penguin somewhere in New Zealand.

I have a bit of an affinity towards penguins, mainly because the penguin is the mascot of the linux operating system, from which I derive my work and life earnings these days.

The words "Penguin Lust" on the side were just something I came up with one day. It throws people off a bit, perhaps. I dunno. I gave up on coming up with new icons years ago and just stuck with this one. I do have to admit that I have a new icon on another BBS system which is a picture of a MIRV reentry through the clouds, but the only reason I have that is because it is pretty.  :)

Now.... who to tag.... who to tag...

alicia_kembrey, e_heidi_liz, kikipuddie, slingchrist

Actually, I know at least the origins of one of those, but I think it would be fun for others to hear regardless.

So, it looks like Rowling has given her blessing on a theme park concerning Harry Potter...

here is a sketch of it: http://mugglenet.com/viewer/?image_location=/officialpw_poster.jpg

Sad.... so sad.

With thanks to Alicia... ;)

You Belong in Australia

Ace! Sunny, upbeat, and cute You make the perfect surf bum Now stop hogging the vegemite!

'nuff said. :)

So today I got a bit silly with coding. See, right now there is a big push for learning recursion in object oriented programming in this class I am taking, to the point where the professor will not let us use traditional loops in any of our programs... we MUST use recursion. This despite the fact that a for loop comes very naturally to me in its implementation, and doesn't bother me a bit in how it handles things... Oh well...

Anyway, I got so bored with it that I rewrote the multiplication operator so that it uses recursion to multiply two numbers together...

( Multiplication recursion code )

And then, to get more rediculous, I also implemented some convergence code that the professor told us about a couple of weeks ago. This is something that apparently has not actually been proven by mathemeticians...

The idea is this: Take a positive integer... any positive integer.

If it is even, divide by two.

If it is odd, multiply by three, then add one.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Apparently this always converges on one, though mathemeticians have not yet been able to actually prove this.

So I wrote code that actually implements it:

( Convergence Code )

So, apparently ol' John C Dvorak is saying that Apple should stop all work on their iPhone product. I consider this to be a perfect endorsement for Apple to continue with the product, because it will probably sell like gangbusters.

In case you can't tell from the above statement, Dvorak is not considered by me to be the most accurate person in the world when it comes to technology.

Hrm... not really the grand post that I was hoping for. Oh well... I am still going to post it even though at this point I am really not all that pleased with it.

But... I have additions!

http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/P/PEOPLE_ALEC_BALDWIN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME

Apparently Alec Baldwin, a strong part of the Hollywood liberal crowd, is going to pay for the college tuition of a soldier once she gets back from Iraq in an attempt to show that he supports the troops without supporting the war.

While I think this is admirable, I have to wonder just how much of it is earnest supporting of the soldiers and how much of it is simply a way for him to get some press in order to make him seem a bit less like a complete wacko leftist. Sorry, the quesiton does still come up in mind, despite the goodness that the action achieves. Now, if he could get others from Hollywood to do the same thing, perhaps even set up an organization that does this, I would be even more impressed.

So, last night two people won the $370 Million dollar lottery in the 12-state lotto. One in New Jersey, the other in Georgia. As Neal Boortz says, "[i]Now is as good a time as any to remind people that not only is the lottery a tax on the stupid.[/i]"

That being said, I can't help reflect on someone in class yesterday saying that they were going with a buddy up to Georgia to buy lottery tickets.... we live a good hour away from the border.

People are this desperate to win the big one and retire on it... but do you ever hear of successful lottery winners?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/06/naomi_campbell_mops_floors/

Serves her right! I just wish we would see more of this sort of thing happening with celebrities that do stupid things when breaking the laws of this land.

It is good to see punishments that fit the crime.

I just received, quite possibly, one of the worst phishing emails I have seen in a long time...


Subject: i need your corporation

Message:
Good day,

I am looking for your cooperation in building a
Tourist Hotel, Real Estate or even to set up a
multinational company in your country based on your
best discretion.
I am sorry if this is not in line with your business.
I need an experienced person like you to assist me to
set up/develop this project.

So, does anyone see an issue with that subject line?  :)

So,a thread has been running on the campus computer coordinators list that has been somewhat annoying to me. Some of you probably even know what I am talking about. This is the matter of Alachua Freenet going away, and one person whining that it is going away.

This morning this person stated the following:

Hopefully, some elected officials will care about that and try to find a replacement.

Now, as a rule I do not post anything on the CCC list unless it has to do with my department wanting to get rid of equipment, but sometimes I would simply love to make an exception and respond to idiocy like this.

Sorry, it is NOT the role of government to make sure that everyone has free internet. You want free internet, you find a charity organization... don't look towards the government for free handouts.

So, yesterday I went through the horror of a TA interview with my programming group, in which he selected one of the members of my group for all of the questions concerning the program we had written. Correction: The program that I had written and that they should have been able to answer questions on simply by reading the godforsaken program specification that was given to us by the instructors at the beginning of this little assignment.

He failed.

Horribly.

We had a perfect score up until he did the interview, and then he blew it. We were the only ones out of 19 groups to have a perfect score up to that point. And he blew it.

This will not happen again.

And my instructors will pay for it with the assignment that they just gave us, because there are holes in the specification for this assignment that I could drive a truck through. I am hammering my instructor and TA with questions like there is no tomorrow, and this program WILL be fucking perfect dammit.

Of course, the rest of my programming group is going to be in pain once I am through with them as well. By god, if I have to quiz them all on what this godforsaken program does and how it works, I will. They will know this shit through and through so that I will not have to worry about it being a complete clusterfuck when the TA interview session occurs.

Me? Bitter? Hell yes.

Will they pay for messing with a SOTA? Oh, you had better fucking believe it.

An article by Thomas Sowell against unions.

For those liberals out there that will probably rant and rave how this is just a conservative's viewpoint, remember that Thomas Sowell is an economist first, and he approaches this subject from an economist's perspective.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/02/23/priceless_politics_part_iii

You know, I have been thinking about posting something for ages now, and for the last couple of days I have come up with all kinds of topics that I could rant and rave about. Of course, now that I am sitting here actually doing it, I can't for the life of me remember any of them.

I have been busy lately with both work and school. This week alone I had a test and two projects to turn in. The projects were easy enough, though my partners for the Java project suck balls... I think I have done pretty much everything so far for that project. If I have to present it to our TA tomorrow as well I am not going to be happy. Not because I had to do it, because the actual process of presenting it and answering questions about it is easy enough to do and I am proud of my work, but because the rest of my group are a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings.

The project that I had to do for my management course went fine, however. The rest of my group answered the questions, and I then proofread them and put them into a powerpoint presentation, which everyone else appeared to love. So I don't feel so bad in not answering the questions that the project had to cover. (hey... there were five members in the group, and only three questions... you have to divvy up the work SOMEHOW)

Warning... spoilers in the following article, so don't read if you don't want them...

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21158650-5001026,00.html

Here is a little conversation I just had with a good friend of mine... I just had to post it. :)

( Behind the cut )