Foozini

foozini @ 2007-09-19T08:47:00

2007-09-19T12:51:52Z

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.

foozini @ 2007-07-27T09:31:00

2007-07-27T13:32:50Z

"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.

Music meme

2007-07-04T00:52:01Z

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.

1. I’m the blood on your guitar, I’m that wave you caught back in 1975
2. Tiny touch of jealousy, these bonds are shackle free.
3. Into the hands of Four sworn to ride
4. For years shunned by society, Outcasts, condemned for our beliefs
5. I ain't no psychiatrist I ain't no doctor with degrees
6. I see you walkin', but all I can think about is Dianetics, your butt cheeks is warm.
7. And I ran out of space, so I ran out of here
8. ...Calling all americans of above-average intelligence...College graduates, apply today...
9. ~~Second wave.... DIE!~~cardinalximinezQueen - Vultan's Theme - Flash Gordon
10. ~~I know I need to step up and be strong, Don't patronize me~~letloverule42Avril Lavigne - Forgotten
11. My dad would whoop us every night till a quarter after twelve
12. Faithfully holding fast, Steaming ahead unknowing
13. lay direction, read the face, understand our crooked ways
14. A thousand years, Into eternity we shed our tears
15. And I followed a lot of vital crazy thoughts
16. Does it all simply end, in a blanket of darkness? (does it all)
17. When the ash and oak, and the birch and yew
18. Proud Jaguar, king of the Mayan Gods
19. with the finest regards that i lost in the cracks of this street
20. Dressed in black and ordinary suits - Dreamer
21. when you pant at me, sophia, i know what you're thinking.
22. Angels in the abbotoire, junking up a good guitar
23. Ancient people succumbed to it, can it happen here?
24. Surge of energy, spark of inspiration
25. The four letter word got stuck in my head

Note 1. Instrumentals were skipped
Note 2. Duplicate artists were skipped
Note 3. Covers were skipped
Note 4. For #20, Dreamer is NOT the band name... that is a part of the lyrics.

P.S. Good luck!

foozini @ 2007-06-21T11:34:00

2007-06-21T16:11:06Z

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.

foozini @ 2007-06-01T11:18:00

2007-06-01T15:20:02Z

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.

foozini @ 2007-05-21T10:24:00

2007-05-21T14:24:33Z

With thanks to Alicia... ;)

You Belong in Australia

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

What English Speaking Country Are You?

foozini @ 2007-05-11T16:43:00

2007-05-11T20:44:14Z

"Spamtrap" - watch the video

foozini @ 2007-05-10T12:28:00

2007-05-10T16:31:45Z

'nuff said. :)

foozini @ 2007-04-11T08:49:00

2007-04-11T12:50:31Z

Stupid coding

2007-04-03T17:29:30Z

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...

private static int mult(int a, int b) {
    int result;
    if (b<=1) {
      result = a;
    } else {
      result = a + mult(a,b-1);
    }
    return result;
  }

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:

import java.util.Scanner;

public class Converge {
  public static void main (String[] args) {
    System.out.println("Enter a positive integer:");
    Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);
    int num = sc.nextInt();
    converge(num);
  }

  private static int converge(int input) {
    System.out.printf("Input: %d\n", input);
    int output;
    if (input<=1) {
      output = input;
    } else {
      if (even(input)) {
        output = converge(input/2);
      } else {
        output = converge((mult(input, 3)) + 1);
      }
    }
    return output;
  }

  private static boolean even(int x) {
    return (x % 2 == 0);
  }

  private static int mult(int a, int b) {
    int result;
    if (b<=1) {
      result = a;
    } else {
      result = a + mult(a,b-1);
    }
    return result;
  }
}

foozini @ 2007-03-30T08:46:00

2007-03-30T12:48:44Z

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.

foozini @ 2007-03-07T09:24:00

2007-03-07T14:27:53Z

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?

foozini @ 2007-03-06T11:42:00

2007-03-06T16:43:54Z

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.

foozini @ 2007-03-05T10:11:00

2007-03-05T15:13:31Z

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? :)

foozini @ 2007-02-28T09:14:00

2007-02-28T14:17:59Z

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.

foozini @ 2007-02-24T05:39:00

2007-02-24T10:39:33Z

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.

foozini @ 2007-02-23T08:49:00

2007-02-23T13:51:03Z

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

foozini @ 2007-02-22T10:53:00

2007-02-22T16:15:38Z

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)

Helpline for Harry Potter fans

2007-02-02T15:19:37Z

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

foozini @ 2007-01-30T09:20:00

2007-01-30T14:22:01Z

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

Wells1632: You know, I really don't enjoy writing my own performance appraisals... :(
KikiPuddie: Just put: I am awesome.
Wells1632: What do you think I have been doing? But now I am stuck on the request for goals for the next appraisal year...
KikiPuddie: To be more awesomer.
KikiPuddie: That's my new years resolution.
Wells1632: Ummm... that isn't even a word. :P
KikiPuddie: Sure it it.
KikiPuddie: I made it into exsistance, thus it's now a word.
KikiPuddie: Poetic Justice.
Wells1632: Tell that to Merriam and Webster. :P
KikiPuddie: What do THEY know?
KikiPuddie: They are dead.
Wells1632: A lot of words, it seems
KikiPuddie: Bah.

foozini @ 2007-01-11T12:20:00

2007-01-11T17:16:53Z

From the Independent Florida Alligator:

The only reveler who was hospitalized, said Gainesville Police spokesman Keith Kameg, was Longwood resident Matthew Schlagheck. Schlagheck, 23, was sprinting naked across University Avenue when he collided with a car. He hit his head on the car's windshield, and he is now in critical condition at Shands at UF. Witnesses said Schlagheck appeared to be celebrating the Gators' win when he was hit.

There were other smaller injuries like a couple of dislocations and stuff, but other than this, no other major injuries. Now I am wondering what the carnage was like over at Ohio State....

foozini @ 2007-01-03T10:45:00

2007-01-03T15:42:19Z

"Yet many people who claim to be concerned about poverty show remarkably little interest in how wealth is generated or which policies make it harder or easier to create more."

- From Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

foozini @ 2007-01-01T16:13:00

2007-01-01T21:13:04Z

Heh... that was way too much fun. Some Christian youth group came by asking for donations and rang my doorbell just as I got into the shower. So I got out of the shower, dried off a little bit and threw on some swim trunks, then answered the door pretty much dripping wet. They didn't know what to say.

Harry Potter

2006-12-21T16:32:35Z

The title of the new book has been announced. I will put it under the cut to be nice and stuff...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

foozini @ 2006-12-14T16:14:00

2006-12-14T21:14:28Z

So, I was reading a book, and this one passage just really stood out to me...

Parker Williamson closed the front door, blotting out the sight of the Posleen lander that had crushed the Hawkes's house at the end of Bourne Street. He had already closed the curtains on the unpleasant view out the back. He turned to face his wife, down whose face tears cascaded.

"Well," he sighed, "I guess we drew the short straw."

She nodded, unable to speak, as their oldest daughter entered the room.

"Is it gonna boom anymore, Mommy?" the four-year-old asked, dabbing at the passing tears.

"No, sweetie." Jan Williamson gathered her composure, picking up the two-year-old as he toddled into the room, still crying from the painful sonic booms. "Not that we'll notice."

Parker locked the door and turned to a red panel by the standard home security system. The door swung open to reveal a key pad. A yellow light flashed above the pad and a beeping tone started.

"Federally Authorized Home Destruction System Mod One is activated. Posleen emanations detected, predestruct sequencing authorized. Enter code for command authorization."

Parker punched in a code and hit set.

"State your name."

"Parker Williamson."

"Parker Williamson, are you at this moment in your right mind?" the box asked, beginning the federally mandated litany.

"Emergency bypass authorization."

"Please key in second authorization as required by federal law."

Jan walked over and keyed in a second sequence.

"What is your name?"

"Jan Williamson."

"Jan Williamson, do you concur in setting the Federally Authorized Home Destruction System Mod One into function? Be aware that the system is monitoring Posleen emanations in the near area."

"I do."

The panel chuckled for a moment, checking that their voice prints were correct and then the light went red. At the same time the home security system turned on.

"Intruder detection system activated, autodestruct sequence activated." In the basement of the house, two chemicals, harmless when separated, began to mix. "Destruct sequence will auto-activate upon unauthorized entry . . . may God protect and keep you."

"Come on, honey," said Jan Williamson, picking up their daughter in a big hug, "let's go read Peter Rabbit . . ."

-- Gust Front by John Ringo