Cutting down on the snark

On Friday, I made it through the entire day snark-free. That presented a lot of challenges, since I normally engage in a lot of good-natured ribbing with guys at work. Sometimes I feel like I over-escalate through the day, to the point where I feel like I become disrespectful and unkind. I wanted to make significant efforts to treat other people the way I teach my children to do.

Current events make this highly challenging. So many people have gotten misleading information on the Fukushima nuclear disaster and overreacting inappropriately, largely fueled by the media’s self-serving actions that work against anything resembling the public interest. And then we see the start of a new war in Libya, which will undoubtedly lead in the next few weeks to the sort of jingoism that sets my hair on fire.

Humanity frequently uses humor as a defense mechanism in the face of incredible tragedy or traumatic stress. But that shouldn’t mean taking it out on other people. Now to see how well I can handle matters this week…

New toys!

A little over a week ago, I finally got my first tablet. And rather than follow through (for now) on my desires for a Honeycomb tablet, like the Motorola Xoom, I bought a refurbished low-end iPad 1. It came with 16GB storage and a Wifi-only network connection, but for me that does the job quite well since I can just set my Droid Incredible as a wifi hotspot. The Twitter app for iPad really rocks, unlike their Android app. And reading news (New York Times, The Economist, Flipboard, etc.) has become the pleasurable experience it ought to be. My primary complaints, so to speak, have to do with apps with minor issues (e.g. feedly) or the lack of a coherent way to manage settings (e.g. the browser).

Just as importantly – actually, more so – my new desktop finally came to life. Built from scratch, godel runs Ubuntu 10.10 on a 6-core AMD Phenom II and 16GB of RAM, with a pair of linked Radeon HD 5770 graphics card each holding 1GB of on-board memory, all wrapped in a black monolith Antec Three Hundred case. Yeah, it runs like lightning, although today I need to get audio working properly and perhaps find a way to cut the fan noise. (Plus this monster deserves a new monitor.)

Of course this machine can and will run games (think EVE Online), I didn’t build it like this principally for that purpose. Rather, I want to spend significant time delving back into development, perhaps including Android development or data science projects.

Playing chess again

I’ll write more about this later (probably elsewhere), but I’ve decided to dive back into playing chess. Not that I ever had much skill, but I’d like to become a better player. You can find me on Chess.com as technoskald. I’ve started playing a bunch of games, plus spending time with their adaptive learning system and tactics trainer to see what might help.

If you play, throw me a challenge or such. Given my current ranking, you will likely win, but we’ll have fun and I might learn something.

Spring Break 2011

Spring Break means something significantly different now than it once did. Not that I ever indulged in the bacchanalia of Florida, Mexico, etc., but now it means taking a few days off of work while the kids don’t have school. Apparently that means doctor visits due to ear infections, playing with Thomas the Train at Barnes & Noble, and enduring the sheer torture of Chuck E. Cheese’s.

Fortunately for me, my dad volunteered to take them for a few days. He focused on museums and March Madness. I focused on catching up on work.

Memory apartment

I’ve started trying to use the concept of memory palaces. However, I’ve never done anything like this before – bit of a newb, really. While I have a pretty good head for numbers and useless trivia, generally I resort to mnemonics of one sort or another the memorize lists and whatnot.

So I decided I wanted to remember things that I need to do first, as that tends to cause me problems. An apartment where we lived several years ago had an entry way where you immediately turned left, saw an open kitchen, then cut back to the right to see a den and a living room. I liked that apartment, so it made a perfect test “palace”.

To remember the tasks I needed to carry out, I visualized the entry way completely covered in flowers (send a sympathy bouquet). Turning left, President Bill Clinton greets me (payments due) and I see a cow in the kitchen (need milk for office). Turning back to the right, I see a large black monolith with a two-headed alien phase shifted in it (testing dual graphics cards in a new workstation). An old dot matrix printer sits in the living room (finish a report for the CSO) and He-Man stands nearby with a blue torso like a Pict (call Master Paint & Body).

You get the picture, literally.

Have any of my friends out there used this sort of technique before?

Priorities

Let’s see… revolutions against dictators all across the Near and Middle East. The Wisconsin capitol is full of protestors. The Space Shuttle program is winding down. No doubt your locality, like mine, has lots of important things happening that you need to know about.

And some of the biggest stories in the news (including on NPR) revolve around a drunken actor and a fashion designer doing dumb things in public.

Well, I’m glad the public knows how to focus on what’s important.