Tuesday

On tuesday I woke up and found my cellphone charged in the bathroom. It was there because Bryan "Zriest" P. wanted Zriest to get some more XP and had sent me a text message "What are you doing now?". This was while I was cycling, and the battery went dead, so I had to charge it. After cycling I usually need to use the restroom (ok, I had to pee). As the message of Bryan "Zriest" P. still read "What are you doing now?" I sent back that I was... (ok, peeing). After that he insisted that I help him get XP, but sadly for him food was a more pressing priority. I took the cell phone and put it in its carry case and moved it to my pants, so it could travel with me that tuesday. I then went through the usual routine, except for printing the address of my sister on a big box, which contained a Mutsy Sitter and baby clothes. As her second son is growing rapidly, she needed the sitter soon. I also synced my GPS with the computer, to store the trip I made to Yosemite (though it was a valley, and sattelite reception was not very good). I then used plastic twine (which Miuty enjoyed greatly, and is still enjoying greatly) and tied the box to my bike, and cycled to the post office in Belmont. Halfway I discovered that I did not have my cell phone with me.

I did have my bank pass in the left pocket, together with money, as I went to an ATM, as I was expecting postage for the big box to be rather high (it turned out to be $42.60). I also had my bag in the bag of the bicycle, the big box, and clothes on. I became a tad scared that my cell phone might've dropped on the floor in the hallway while I was tying the box to the bicycle. On the other hand, it could have never made it on my belt, as I changed into a fresh pair of pants. So I decided to press on, and arrived at the post office. There I immediately started filling out the usual green customs form, and when I was almost done, the person behind the counter handed me another form: "Big form for big box" he said. So I filled out the big form as well. I mailed the box, continued to work, where all my coding went rather well. I also checked the Newegg website for the hard drive that was supposed to arrive. I wanted to reinstall Windows on a fresh drive, as my old drive had a wierd spyware virus on it, which I disabled, but which still tried to start Internet Explorer every second. Their site didn't work, but give me a number which looked suspiciously like a UPS tracking number, so I entered it on the UPS site, and they said it was out for delivery. My sister also confirmed that I had sent the box with her stuff to the right address, which was a relief, because I never know which number they live at.

In the evening I went back home, where I found a UPS truck in front of my apartment. I asked the driver if he had my hard drive, he asked me who I was, and it turned out he was holding the drive in his hands. I gave my ID, signed the electronic signing device, and took the hard drive. He said he left a note on my door, and that I could've called the number too, and he would've brought it to my work. This is why I like UPS over FedEx: FedEx refuses to go to your door, and instead leaves the note in an impossible place. FedEx also refuses to have the recipient change the address where the package goes to, and requires you to go to the sender to change this. FedEx also has an incomprehensible phone system that never gives the option you want, and when you get to speak someone, it still doesn't help. Fortunately, Newegg allows you to choose. Once I got upstairs with all the stuff, (although the box was a lot smaller than the one I left with), I even found my cell phone, which was near the pants that I decided not to wear.

Time

Now my clock is almost finished, I'm not entirely sure why I made a clock. It works reasonably well, though, especially now I fixed the bug that made it show derivatives of seven o'clock all the time. The only thing missing is the notorious "Teddy Bear" mode, but that should be done next week. I will also need to add birthdays. Fortunately there aren't many birthdays in May, that I know of.

Time is of course also relevant to this blog: one post a month is a tad abysmal. However, it also indicates that things are more interesting at work, with the development of the protocol and the signing off of the functional specification. I could've written lots of fun stories, had it not be for the fact that it all is supposed to be very secret.

Meanwhile Dawn's blog is progressing rapidly, with her moving to Turkey and investigating tanks, and also Johannes is doing well, moving to a nicer house with similar bathroom problems. Today my cousin will arrive... Jeroen. As usual he is flying to San Jose, so I rented a car. This is also useful in case we want to go places, which we might, or might not. Lots of options. It was rather cold for him this morning (San Diego is a lot warmer than San Francisco). It will be a long weekend: we have monday off as well. It's called Memorial Day. Probably also something to do with time.

This silly visual DNA

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Tasteless organic food

Opposite to my house is a so-called "Whole Foods". It is a scary place. Superficially it looks like a Wegmans, but in reality it is a different beast. Amazingly enough, people come from tens of miles away in their big SUVs and minivans to shop there. I've even heard jealous comments of people that realised I lived so close. However, I do not share their enthousiasm. Let me start with establishing a basic background on the concept of organic food.

There is a misconception that organic food is better for the environment. This is not the case. Most organic food is grown in third world countries, and because of its restrictions takes three times as much space as regularly grown food. This space is usually made by cutting down rainforest. Also, because insecticides and plant food are still needed, organic food uses "natural" alternatives, that are equally, if not more, deadly than their "chemical" counterparts. Note that in my book, everything that exists is natural, and everything is chemical, but it seems some people make a distinction between the two. Just to please people, and you can quote me on this "Tigers are natural". There are a few positive things about organic food as well: more use of animal manure, and more appropriate treatment of animals. Of course, if you eat vegetarian then there will be no animal manure, nor need for animals to be kept at all.

There are (or soon will be) 10 billion people on this planet. All these people need food. If all this food was produced organically, only a small portion of these people could be fed. With the current advances in crop diseases and animal diseases we'll soon require genetic engineered food in order to stay alive. Possibly we should have less people on this planet. This would solve the food problem. And global warming. And wars. And... Let me just say that eating organic is not going to reduce the population of the world anytime soon. Unless you're counting on those crop diseases and animal diseases to wipe out the food supply, causing massive starvation... In any way you view it, eating organic food (maybe not when you grow it yourself, though you still have to wonder: could the land I grow it on not be used more efficiently in another way?) is an elitist behaviour.

This leads me to the title of this entry: tastelessness. I'll address the idea that organic food is good for you only sideways, but the tastelessness is really obvious. Let me list the products that I can guarantee taste less than those you buy in a regular supermarket:

• Peanut butter. Apart from the fact that the oil separation looks disgusting, ruins knives, and quickly reduces the remaining peanut butter to a inedible hard mass, the stuff tastes like... Nothing. This means I have to use three times as much, which doesn't really strike me as healthy.
• Mushroom soup. It is brownish mass resembling something that I find in the restroom on bad days. I can't say it tastes the same, though, as that would imply it has taste. It's like eating flour in water.
• Bread. At least half of the slices will have some form of sand in them, which grinds between your teeth. Don't expect honey oat to have any honey taste. And make sure you eat it in two days, as by the third day the bread guaranteed has healthy green stuff growing on it.
• Turkey dogs. This is certainly the worst. They actually look the same, until you prepare them (they have no preparation instructions, just claims of things they do not contain). They explode quickly, which makes them look like the monsters from the Silent Hill video game. Now if they only tasted like those monsters... Then at least they would be meaty. But no... All you taste is bread and condiments.
• Yogurt. This needs a special mention. It is actually not that tasteless. In fact, it almost tastes the same as the other yogurt. However, when Miuty the Cat (with how many letters do you spell that?) eats it, he invariably vomits a few minutes later. How is that for healthy organic food?

This list goes on and on. I'm sure to come back to this some other time. Wish Wegmans was here.

Desert

This coming weekend my cousin insists that I see a desert, and he probably isn't referring to his front yard (which is the beach with an ocean view, though he calls it a lake). So for president's day I'm going to San Diego, which will be a fun change of scenery. At home I'm playing GuildWars, watching various movies (tonight the animatrix should arrive with Netflix, although I was actually hoping for 24 season 5), and slowly thinking up my next project. After getting the PIC_WEB to work, I could either expand it to allow external connections... Maybe make a small terminal. The problem with any PIC_WEB work is that I will have to install the C18 compiler, which has only 60 days of license, which I will have to use to finish the project. So that will probably happen after the desert.

Another option is to build a MIDI interface. That shouldn't be too hard. Writing good code for it might be harder. I'm actually looking for something that determines what I'm playing, and, after I play it enough times, will start repeating it at appropriate times. It would be funny to see if that could actually work. Not sure how you would tell it to stop, though.

Of course, my calculator is trying to get itself filled with more addresses too. I'm actually using it more as a clock, at the moment, because it is so nice at telling me the time after I take my watch off (which happens often in the evening as I take long baths... Which aren't listed above).

Opening sequence

After Schrödinger's cat and similar considerations of light as a particle or as a wave we come to this: the start of a new blog. After "Don't Read This" (http://horta.urmc.rochester.edu/~mhofman/novel/blogger.html), which might not exist for a long time, this will be the main source of obfuscation surrounding my life. Of course, the fact that you shouldn't read this hasn't changed, but this time, it will be translated into the world of video games. I hope you have fun.