Checksum Arcanius

Browsing the newspaper today (Seattle Times), I came across the following: “Oklahoma routs Colorado 35-0 in Big 12 Championship.”

Which isn’t true.

Ok, they got the winner right, but I watched that game. The score was 42-3.

In many circumstances when I know better, I have noticed errors like this in newspapers, both large and small. For things of this nature, where there is no reason for them to report it wrong, I’m sure that its just inattention to detail, tight deadlines, or not really caring about the subject in this case. Nevertheless, it does lead me to wonder how badly things could get messed up – especially when there is a bias because the reporter cares about the topic one way or another.

Every time this happens, I use it to remind myself that just because I’ve only heard one version of a story, that doesn’t mean I know the truth. I have seen wrong dates by ten years, outright false information about an organization, quotes that were never uttered, statistics twisted to suit a purpose (even I have done this), and all of these in newspapers who claim their job is to provide accurate, unbiased information (as I read on the Seattle P-I opinion page just before the election, they think the rest of the pages have no particulat bias).

So just remember, even if you heard it somewhere, it doesn’t make it true, or even close in many cases.

Sure, I listen to conservative talk radio sometimes (and get pissed off when Michael Medved talks about how government becoming involved in the definition of marriage is somehow justified when government becoming involved in finances is not), but I also listen to liberal talk radio (not Air America, mind you, but Kiro’s Erin Hart and Mike Webb (who is, by the way, the only talk show host I’m talked to on the air (how do you like these triple parentheses!))).

I encourage you to do the same. You liberals out there who make a habit out of Mother Jones or The Atlantic, take the chance to read National Review sometime. If you saw and loved Fareinheit 9/11, go watch Fareinhype 9/11, go read 59 deciets in Farenheit 9/11. And you conservatives who have seen and read these things without ever seeing the orginal, now is the time. Now is the time to pick up a liberal magazine and read the other side. It won’t hurt you, I promise.

I learned from tim about a program called FileBunker that backs up your files to a Gmail account. Since, like Tim, I have a Gmail that I mostly don’t use, I thought it’d be a good idea to back up my My Documents folder. But that was too big, so I excluded my pictures, and it is now chugging away at backing up my files. Or so I assume. For all I know, it could be deleting all my files after sending them to the NSA. But I doubt it. Such is my trust of random programs downloaded from the internet.

Today was a archtype of my life. I awoke, snoozed a few too many times, showered, had a pear for breakfast, threw some chili and chips in my bag and headed out. First stop was BCC, where I dropped off my homework (due Wednesday but extened though Friday at noon), then I headed to my mom’s office, where I fixed a shortcut on her desktop and was confused by a problem the fax software was having of truncating incoming faxes. I then headed North on 405 though traffic that was, as usual, never quite clogged but never moving continuously either, until the extra lane shows up after 520 and it becomes pretty clear sailing. Its amazing how much just an extra lane can do. You hear that state legislature? Less empty busses, more empty lanes. Yeah, so I got to work and then worked for a while, doing my thing, which I can only really talk about in vague, abstract terms due to NDA’s. Then I cooked the chili and ate the chips (only a pear for breakfast, remember!) Then I had a training session, but my boss and a coworker came by, so I ended up missing the first 30 minutes and decided I’d catch the next installment of the training, if there is any. Then it was noon. After doing my thing for another while, I ended up in another meeting. Meetings are strange things. You don’t get anything done in a meeting, but things don’t get done without them either, it seems. One of those mysteries I guess. Well the meeting went longer than expected, so Dave and I had to duck out to get to the TRC meeting. We arrived slighly late, had only a few technical difficulties with a video, then got down to business: driver training. We created a mock field and challenge, then gave driver teams a minute to complete it. It was an excellent way toreally drive the point home that there is not enough time to do anything fancy out on the field. Everything has to work right, reliably, the first time, or there are major problems. On the other hand, not giving up, you can get something done in 20 seconds. Then we cleaned up, got the lego league stuff into my truck, and I headed back to my mom’s office where I met my mom and dad to go to my sister’s for dinner. Traffic on 520 was terrible, but we were HOV so we managed to survive (Gregriore best not be winning this election). My sister cooks eclectic dished, but this one was quite fabulous – chicken and pasta with squash. Dessert, a cranberry cake, was also excellent. Next we started a little shopping trip – my mom has been promising me a coat since my birthday. After a short jaunt at Univeristy Village, we ended up at Eddie Bauer in Bellevue Square, where my last coast (purchased Waaaaay back in 1999) came from. They have upgraded since then, but still have a good price on a good coat, with some good additions and a few things missing from the one I have now. So we got it in yellow, which had to be ordered in, but its the only way Scott will be able to see me when I’m around him (I turn “invisible” without my current yellow coat on). Anyway, my mom paid for it; she’s great, isn’t she. Big round of applause. Yeah, then we headed out, got some jeans, and I headed to Jon’s for Dodgeball. It made me laugh a few times, and the girl was hot, but I’m glad I didn’t pay anything for it. Then I returned to my home, after midnight, and checked my email, blogged, and (maybe) did a little somehting else too, but I don’t know what that would be, since I’m not there yet.

The last two nights, I played Dan in some one-on-one HL2: Deathmatch games. I’m not a fan of the deathmatch style of play, vastly prefering the counterstike style round based team setup… but nevertheless, gravity gun duels are incredibly fun. I can’t wait for a gravity gun only map.

I stopped by target today on my (extended) way home from work to pick up a battery for a stopwatch that had stopped working. While there, I noticed some good deals on some DVDs, so I picked a few up. While in the media section, I also noticed that Linkin Park has a new release.

I’ve been waiting for just such a thing. Reanimation, Linkin Park’s follow-up to the hugely successful Hybrid Theory, was the album that, up to this point, I was most skeptical of, because it wasn’t just Linkin Park, but included various guess artists, most of whom I had never heard of. But I was happy after getting it, because it turns out that the remixed songs made some interesting music still (With You, Forgotten), and a few songs even got monumentally better (such as Pushing Me Away), or at least stayed as good while being refreshingly different (Crawling, My December). Of course, it also had its sub-par material (In The End, High Voltage). It is interesting to note that the songs in Reanimation which improved the most were redone by Linkin Park themselves (actually, just Mike Shinoda, whose work on Pushing Me Away and Crawling is fantastic). The songs that Linkin Park had the least influence on generally degraded the most.

When Meteora, Linkin Park’s second real album came out, I quickly snatched it up, and was quite happy with the evolving sound. Live in Texas proved to be a fun but mostly useless followup, as only one song changed at all (Crawling was a mix of the Hybrid Theory and Reanimation versions). To appease us, I guess they decided to do some more joint work, this time with a better known artist. Let me be gentle and just say, there is a reason I don’t buy Jay-Z albums. After hearing one demo (easily obtainable online, but I won’t link it because I don’t endorse it), I decided that this album wasn’t for me – and this is big news because its the first time I’ve made that decision with anything involving Linkin Park.

Sure, the track is somewhat catchy, but thats just because it uses a tried and true tune (Numb). Add in the Jay-Z and it still holds some sway, but then try to put the Numb Lyrics back over that, and it just doesn’t work. At all. It’s not unique, it’s not interesting, and it’s not good. I suspect the entire album is that way. In addition, its got a parental advisory label, which means, along with its tradition of generally good music, Linkin Park also decided to ditch its tradition of genreally clean music as well. Two regrettable decisions, all in one album. Lets hope it does poorly in stores. I don’t have much hope for that, though. Too many dumbtards or something.

Thursday Morning, I awoke around 8:30, dressed for a morning football game in the rain, picked up Scott, and headed to Newport High School’s football field. These days, Scott and I are “old” people (better than 19) so we joined forces with that crowd against the younger crowd. And it was a crowd – it was the largest turkey bowl in my memory. But the numbers only seemed to help the old people; we slammed the younger guys pretty well. So bad, that we had to switch up teams to make it resemble a competitive game again. I wasn’t too productive on the offensive side of things, with only a couple of catches and one interception-shortened series as QB (after the teams got switched), but I also had two interceptions and a very good time.

Unfortunately, I also jammed the index finger on my left hand pretty badly at the beginning of the game. It swelled up pretty well and made me less agressive throughout the rest of the day. And its still hurting, so I may have to see if there was any additional damage. While I’m at it, I might as well have my right pinky looked at too, which has never been up to par after a flag football game way back in my early high school days.

After the turkey bowl, I dropped off Scott, returned home, and made myself presentable for company. And there was lots of company. My aunt and uncle (Dad’s brother Mike and Marie) came from Florida, my sister Robin and her family (husband Dave, daughters Zoe and Thea) came from Seattle proper along with a family friend and her daughter (as an aside, the friend, whom I had never met, showed up first. I looked quizically at her as she drove up, which prompted her to ask, “Is this the right place?” Having no idea, really, I responded, “Maybe…”). Also, my cousin (Christine, daughter of Mike) and her Husband Luca and daughter Isabella were there, along with my brother and his girlfriend (soon to be fiancee) Kaylee. It was quite a crowd, with a good contingent of youngsters mixed in.

Then came the food. We are not always a traditional thanksgiving-feast family, so instead of turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes, we had roast beef and wild duck, mashed sweet potatoes and baked potatoes (which I mashed myself, because I’m not too much of a fan of sweet potatoes), and various other misundry fruits and vegetables and other items. It was really quite good, but I sure do miss downing those perectly mashed potatoes smothered in turkey gravy. Hand-mashed potatoes in beef juice is still pretty good, though.

After dessert, we sang some songs, which the kids seems to especially enjoy, told some thanksgiving stories (Marie, as a kindegarten schoolteacher, was most excellent at this). Then we mostly hung out and talked and got tired early. Seems to happen when its pitch black by 5:00. I still managed to stay up late, though, because Theo was comign over. We managed to lock the door on him, so when he arrived about 1:00, he had to get my attention by lightly rocking my window. It finally worked, and we stayed up until 300 playing around (albeit unsuccessfully, moslty) with Linux f the Gentoo variety.

The next morning, I awoke late, enjoyed breakfast, and then people started to arrive for the party. With Scott, Dan, Colin, Theo, Ben, Kaylee, Jim, and Julie ready to go, we began to figure out how to enter GPS coordinates into our three units (it wasn’t too hard) and then we began our journey. The first Geocahce we stopped at was called Forest Drive Pipeline, and it was, predictably, by Forest Drive. We took the hard way, through woods the entire time, and then we spent a good fifteen minutes with all of us wandering around in the area until Dan found the cache itself, an ammo box hidden beneath some branches and leaves in the nook of a maple tree. I filled out the log book, and then we took a pink carribeaner and left an alligator clip (as is the custom, you take an object and leave another object).

It had been a while since I’d been out tromping through the woods, and it was good to do it again. I had a lot of fun, and even though I made my shoes and pants pretty dirty, it was well worth it. We stopped at McDonalds for lunch, then we drove to the Red Town trailhead where we started the hike for Geocache #2. This one, which I was attracted to because of its less-than-trivial difficulty numbers and pretty photo, was called Sandstone Falls. The hike only needed to be 1.5 miles each way, but we took the long way on the way there and ended up taking more like a 4 mile hike, which I also enjoyed, but along with soreness from the Turkey bowl, I was moving pretty slowly by the end of the day. Since it was getting past 4 by this point, we abandoned further attempts at geocaching and returned home for fooding.

Joining us at this point were Beth and Maneesh. Clams, french dip (thanks to my wodnerful mom), and caesar salad were the main menu items, and the all were good (I am told, as I cannot speak for the clams, which I did not partake of). We also played Pass the Pigs quite competitively, followed by a few rounds of Setbefore we generally became just a bunch of talkers. Beth and I were unable to rally the troops for a game of Mafia, so I suppose that it will have to wait until next time. If I’m not too old the next time around…

Everyone was leaving around 9:00, so I got Beth and Scott to take home. After droppin Beth off, Scott and I drove all over creation (from Bellevue to North Seattle to Des Moines and back) talking up a storm. I finally returned him at 2:00 am. It’ll be good to have him back for the month of December, even though he’s taking a week and a half off for a swimming camp. Crazy man, but what else should I expect?

Saturday was another busy day, in which I made a brief appearance at a lego league session, went shopping, attended Tim‘s Eagle Scout Court of Honor, got miscommunicated with more lego league stuff, then went to Max’s birthday party at Mary and Jason’s place in Redmond. It was good to see them all again, even if Jen and I aren’t as good at Cranium as we wanted to be. I guess it makes sense that the newly expecting couple should have more of a mental connection than the rest of us. That ended with me taking home some hard drives to try figuring out what was wrong with Jason’s desktop. The drives appear to be not-so-good (aka bad). Speaking of which, my computer is giving me issues as well, but thats not for this post.

Sunday, I went to church, where Max spoke, and where I realized that my old ward (Cougar Mountain) is a lot nicer to attend than the one I was going to most recently (Singles). More people I know, more people I like talking too, better lessons, talks, environment… I think I know where I’ll be next Sunday. After all that, I worked on a linear algebra project, making a program to calculate the determinant of a matrix recursively. Its pretty fast until you get to about 8×8 matrices, and then it slows to a crawl, because recursive cofactor expansion is just about the worst way to calculate a determinant that there is.

Which brings me to today, in which I worked, spilled hot chocolate on myself, got a replacement shirt from Dave (thanks, by the way!), went to class (couldn’t concentrate – too hot, a little sick, and had the computer there to work on the project), and then came home and ate. My Miles One Platinum Visa credit card also arrived. Time to start saving up miles and traveling the world on my consumerist habits! w00t.

I’ve been tossing around the idea of a pseudo birthday party for a while now, and today the idea finally gelled. So here’s the scoop.

If you think you might be invited, you probably are, and I just haven’t figured out how to contact you yet. Instead, I encourage you to contact me and get details. That is, if you want to come and party hardy. Or something like that. But onto the details:

There are two parts: first, a geocaching expedition that starts at noon. We’ll pack lunches, then head out in search of a geocache somewhere nearby. Since I’ve never done this before, I’ve budgeted a good amount of time (about four hours) to finding a fairly difficult geocache – I figure I should start with something decently challenging. If it goes much quicker than expected, maybe we can go find a few more, or make one ourselves. If it doesn’t go so well, oh well. Good exercise and a god mental exercise as well.

The second part is a pretty normal food – dessert – party thing. At around 5, the brave geocachers will return from the expedition and prepare for food. Others may join them at this point, for dinner and probably something like cake or ice cream and maybe a movie or something. You can probably tell how well planned this is. Anyway, it’ll be fun.