01/22/2005

The FBI, showing once again how gracious, caring, and humanitarian they can be, decided to release Mei Xia Dong, a Chinese woman who’s been in custody for over two months as a terror suspect. Under Patriot Act provisions, of course, she was not entitled to a lawyer, a hearing, or even a description of the charges. I guess she just sat in the slammer wondering what the heck was wrong, and when (if ever) she’d be released.

Apparently the original tip that put the FBI on her trail described a 21-year-old Chinese man named Dong. How they could flub that up is beyond me, but I can’t say it gives me any confidence in our crack terrorist-tracking teams…

01/21/2005

FedEx just came by with my new Mac Mini.

This thing is sweet. It’s very small– about the size of a thick CD carrying case– and packs a lot of whallop. Now I’ve got to plug everything together and see if OS X lives up to its hype…

01/20/2005

In his inaugural speech today, Bush commented:

“America will not impose our own system of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.”

What a crock. I wonder if he even proofs what his speechwriters throw at him, because it’s so patently absurd in the face of what he’s orchestrating in Iraq. The mission over there seems to always have been about setting up an American-style democracy… despite the fact that the people there have no experience with it.

In the end, I’m not sure they even want a democracy. No, they don’t want a religious dictatorship either, but to say that America won’t tromp around forcing others to be like us while doing precisely that is insulting.

01/20/2005

In classic form, Lily and I are trading e-mail at midnight as we finalize the name for the fabled Fourth Company. Naming a company seems to be almost, but not quite, as difficult as naming a child.

In any case, after weeks of agonizing thought and a lot of back-and-forth on what we liked, we finally decided on (drumroll, please) Zing Studios. It’s easy, it’s fun, and it’s got spunk– pretty much like the two of us.

Thus begins the journey. And tomorrow I’ll be filling out reams of paperwork for the IRS and everyone else. Whee!

01/18/2005

Steve sent me a link to an article that discusses the possibility of the existence of aliens, and posits that they must have visited earth at some time, because if we assume they exist, it’s almost certain they would have stumbled across us by now. Although I have a ton of work to do this morning, I couldn’t resist commenting. Here’s my reply:

The existence, or lack thereof, of aliens basically comes down to a matter of belief. We can’t prove one way or another, and there are only two ways to truly answer the question:

1) Meet an alien race.

2) Scour the entire stinkin’ universe and find nothing.

Since #2 is unlikely or impossible, that leaves #1. We either find the aliens, or spend eternity looking for them. We can’t prove they don’t exist, just as we can’t prove God doesn’t exist.

Anyway, Fermi’s Paradox as described in the article doesn’t hold water with me. Just because there are aliens (which I firmly believe) doesn’t mean they must have encountered us by now. The galaxy is bloody huge, and is only one of maybe trillions. Even with “dispersion models” one cannot assume that an alien civilization would have expanded to our little corner.

The dispersion model assumes, for one, that aliens would expand. I think this is a false assumption: they might– but they might not. Perhaps at a certain level of technology, all civilizations end up constructing Dyson spheres and sort of keeping to themselves. Perhaps they reach some higher transcendant state and end up encasing themselves in vast computer networks, lost in their own thoughts. Whatever. There are many scenarios where a civilization would *not* expand, even though they might be continuing to advance.

Moreover, I think theories that aliens have visited (or are visiting) earth are completely bunk. Again, I see two possibilities, both based on the assumption that an alien race capable of interstellar flight is far, far more advanced than we are:

1) They’re malevolent, in which case they’d turn our planet into rubble before we even knew what hit us.

2) They’re benevolent, in which case they’d introduce themselves and share technology or at least ideas.

There’s no way, in my mind, that an advanced civilization would do goofy things like draw crop circles or kidnap hillbillies for medical experiments. It’s just ludicrous.

So all in all, I’m convinced there are aliens out there, and I’m also convinced we simply haven’t found them yet (or they us). We need to keep looking, though, because the discovery of another civilization would radically alter our world-view… for the better, I hope. It would have profound impacts on everything from politics to religion to science.

On a related topic, I imagine that finding life (however you define it) on Mars or Titan or Europa would also be profound, though not quite as earth-shattering since it would likely not be “intelligent”.

Anyway, that’s my treatise. Back to the grind.

01/16/2005

I’m back from my jaunt to California, where Lily and I had a great time planning everything for The Fourth Company (name yet to be determined). Some highlights:

On my flight out of Denver, I sat next to a woman who had a big Vitamin Cottage bag, paisley pants, a hookah filled with dry herbs, and a book titled “Analyze Your Dreams”. After takeoff, she sat in the lotus position for the bulk of the flight. Yep, definitely from Boulder!

Friday night we spent a couple of hours hashing out ideas for names, and came up with some pretty hilarious ones. No, we weren’t drunk, but a casual observer at the bar and grill we were at might have thought so. Several times, as we thought of a goofy name (and its associated tag line), I was laughing so hard I was crying.

On Saturday we decided to hang out at the public library, since we basically needed a place to sit for eight hours and lay out plans for the business. We scored big, because that was the day the library was having its annual book sale. Making the executive decision to abandon work temporarily, we loaded up on books (two bucks for a grocery bag full). Now I’ve got about forty new books for a total of four bucks. Sweet.

We were told by our friend Christine that we must be hanging out together too much, because both of us use the word “awesome” a lot. Apparently it went out of vogue in 1984 or so, although I didn’t get that memo and will continue to use it liberally. Also, Lily observed that she finds herself saying “no worries” quite a bit, which she most definitely picked up from me.

All in all, it was a good time (though tiring!) and we made a lot of progress. Soon we’ll launch The Fourth Company and get on the road to fame and riches.

01/13/2005

I just finished a fun lunch with one of my newest clients, Izze Beverages. Before I left to come back to the office, they loaded me up with a few cases of their drink and a bunch of schwag. Whee, t-shirts for the whole family!

So here’s Zack, sporting his new shirt (which he loves) and about to pop open a bottle of sparkling Izze juice.

01/12/2005

Digital image editing is so cool.

I like to change my computer’s desktop background quite often, just to keep things in flux, and it’s important that whatever I use is either fairly dark, or has large regions of solid color. As the screenshot below shows, when I’m doing programming work (which is much of the time) my text “floats” on the desktop. It’s terribly hard to read against a background that’s bright or noisy.

So I had a nice mountain picture– lots of trees, snow, and blue sky– but there were a lot of clouds that made it hard to read text against it. I just pulled it into the GIMP, selected everything above the mountains, and worked out a nice blue gradient that makes it look like a gorgeous cloudless day. Voila!

01/11/2005

When, oh when, will the madness end?

Yesterday was quite a day, and on a whim I counted the number of projects I worked on for clients. Ten. That doesn’t count going to lunch with my pal Steve, nor the emergency server replacement for a client whose hard drive went belly-up.

Today, by comparison, is relatively easy– it’s three in the afternoon, and I’ve only done work for half a dozen clients so far. We’ll see what the rest of the day brings…

01/10/2005

I’m on hold with a company out in Arizona, and after I navigated the menu system I found what I needed. Then I had one final option:

“If you would like to hold without music, please press one.”

Sweet! I figured I’d listen to the music anyway, hoping for some Kenny G or whatever. Sadly, in addition to a bit of goofy jazz, I had to endure advertising blurbs. Whee. Next time I’m going for the no-music option.