2005 was supposed to be the year that Decepticon's attack Autobot City on earth (as chronicled in The Movie. I took this as a sign that it was time to quit my job at The Company and go back to school and study computer graphics and distributed computing and maybe one day get a job at Pixar. I still think even being a "lowly" system administrator at Pixar would be a fun job. Being a software developer for the rendering farm would be awesome.

Appropriately enough, last Thursday, the last Thursday of the year, I went to the MoMA with e and they had a special exhibit on the art of Pixar. Most of what they showed was models and sketches that were made before anything gets done on the computer. Seeing the artists' names and countries of origin clearly labeled by each piece, one is reminded that computer animation is not just a form of entertainment, but also an art form. It's fascinating to me, because I have always been passionately interested in the interaction of expression and technology.

Highlight had to be seeing the early sketches of the Edna "E" Mode character from The Incredibles, who has been my favorite Pixar character since I saw the movie because of her energy and humor. I had one of her quotations engraved on the back of my iPod to remind me that "I never look back; it distracts from the now." In the gallery e told me she was her favorite character, to which I responded, "really? Me too."

Anyway, 2005 is coming to and end, and Unicron never attacked Cybertron and as a result, the Decepticons were not driven off as was for told in The Movie, and I'm not going back to school, just yet, but I am on my way back to Australia. (many more words and things...)

This story about voting and the official language of the United States came up in a conversation recently (I think it was at Action Tuesday). I've heard this "fact" repeated a number of times. For example, it appeared in one of the little bits of propaganda they gave me when I was naturalized as an American. It was a "did you know that" list of reasons why everyone should vote. One of the "reasons" to vote is that a proposed law, which would have made German the official language in the United States, was defeated by a single vote. Actually:

In 1794 a group of German speakers in Virginia petitioned Congress to publish federal laws in German as well as English. The intention was not to supplant English but simply to supplement it. A House committee recommended publishing German translations of the laws, but on January 13, 1795, "a vote to adjourn and sit again on the recommendation" (apparently an attempt to keep the measure alive rather than killing it immediately) failed by a vote of 42-41. Frederick Muhlenberg (1750-1801) was in fact Speaker of the House at the time, but how he voted is unknown. Tradition has it that he stepped down to cast a negative vote, apparently being the German-speaking equivalent of an Oreo. Not that it mattered. The vote was merely procedural; its success would have not guaranteed passage of the measure, and in any case German translations of federal statutes are a far cry from making German the official language of the U.S. A similar measure came up a month later and was also voted down, as were subsequent attempts in later years.

Cecil Adams

In addition to being factually incorrect the above "reason to vote" is misleading because it is usually worded to imply that the one vote that made a difference was made in a referendum, rather than in a vote among representatives. I actually think that everyone should vote, and if you don't (and assuming you have the legal right to do so) you've no cause to complain about the train wreck which is our government. Therefore voting is really about guaranteeing my right to complain, not to actually make a difference.

They must have uploaded a virus into our download stream to counteract the hexadecimal code rectifiers.

I really shouldn't have had that one glass of wine at Joe and Cicely's tonight at Action Tuesday (now scheduled weekly on Mondays). I really should have had two or three. Now it's making me tired and I have to submit some jobs to prove that Parallel Abstraction actually runs faster than Serial Abstraction. One would hope. I should really work on getting DoubleThink II up and running as well, but my mind isn't clear enough to focus on that right now.

They must have uploaded a trojan into our download stream to counteract the hexadecimal code rectifiers.

I was watching that trashy show 24 over at Joe and Cicely's and the bad guys were using massive amounts of bandwidth to hack into the nuclear power plants across the country. All these years I thought it took talent and knowledge to be a hacker, and here I found out all I need is a faster computer! I need to upgrade to a Pentium 4 so that I can hack into the CIA and download Adobe Acrobat and Micro$oft Word. At least they weren't abusing the term virus tonight. No, they instead decided to use trojan incorrectly instead. It really irks me when ever they start using computer techno babble on TV. Now I know how physicists feel when they have to listen to Data or Geordi drone on as they are oft to do.

They must have uploaded a worm into our download stream to counteract the hexadecimal code rectifiers.

I checked in a whole heap of code today. It's the first time in months. I am now hoping that I don't break the build. Lint is useless. It flagged a whole heap of non errors when I checked in my code. This for example is not a syntax error in ANSI C :

...
for(int i=0; i<max; i  )
  ::printf("%d\n", i);
for(int i=0; i<max; i  )
  ::printf("%d\n", i*2);
...

because unlike earlier versions of C , each i is scoped for just its loop, not the entire code block.

Dude, my bastard child of Bill Gates and Debian burned this trojan virus to this cheesy media; have you checked it out yet?

Update: Sure enough, I broke the build.

That's what I get when I try to type "work item" without looking at the keyboard.

If I had any cash I would get a PS2 just to play Tyler's game (the one that he helped to create). If I had totally flushed my hang ups about Micro$oft down the toilet, then I'd get an Xbox instead. I'm getting better though. I own a Mac, and it doesn't bother me.

I want to go dancing this weekend. Anyone want to go for a whirl? I have to warn you that I don't know how, but if you hum a few bars I will fake it. Hyper. I am full of energy.

I totally solved the memory errors that have been killing me at work. I don't want to go in to fix the rest of the bugs. I have to do what I got to do, man. Instead I would rather sit here in my spare bedroom and let the sunlight tingle my mood. I hate the florescent lights of my Morlock's cave.

I am cooking for Action Tuesday tonight. Maybe. Hope I can find the recipe. If not, I will throw everything I have into the pot and boil it nice and right. Thought I would make my "authentic" Australian Beef Goulash. It's good stuff baby.