Embracing Chaos

My girlfriend has an auto-immune skin condition called psoriasis that gives her rashes. For some people the condition gets serious enough that patients and MD’s turn to drugs that suppress T-cells, the part of the immune system which causes the inflammation. Turning down the volume level on your immune system has all sorts of easily predictable side-effects, but for people whose immune systems are just a little too enthusiastic it can be the right choice. My girlfriend’s condition has gotten worse in recent months, to the point where immuno-suppresents seem reasonable. But instead, she’s opted to do something much more…

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I lost my temper today. It doesn’t happen often, but it always gives me pause to reflect on how I might have handled the situation better. In this case I think it’s pretty clear. I was biking home from work, riding up Pinke on my normal commute route. A bus was stopped in the right lane so I moved into the next lane to pass it. As I did this, a white SUV (IIRC license plate 974-PPF) pulls up close behind me, revving its engine and honking repeatedly. The driver yells out of the window “Get out of the road!”…

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I’m pretty annoyed with Ruby right now. At least I feel that way. Looking a little deeper I realize the source of the annoyance is, like usual, my own shortcomings. My friends and I embarked on a software project a while back. I helped talked the group into using Ruby on Rails as the framework over choices like Java or .net because I was excited about it. Many had reservations. Today I’m annoyed at myself for not listening to them more. The biggest problem with an uncompiled language is that there’s no compiler to tell you when you’ve screwed something…

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“Should we dodgeball?” my ex-girlfriend asked as we sat down for brunch. The question struck me because nobody had ever asked me that before, although the question should have come up a lot. She had figured out a key question about proper dodgeball etiquette which had been bugging me. I’ll explain, after some background. What is Dodgeball? If your friends have discovered dodgeball, I’d guess you’re probably in one of three states: Infatuated with this neato service that broadcasts SMS text messages to your friends when you go out Wondering what your friends are always doing with their phones under…

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Yesterday morning I woke up feeling like a zombie and was happy to figure out that with the end of daylight savings time, I had an extra hour to do homework. I started turning the clocks in my house back. They were all pretty easy except one. My inappropriately named “smart phone” just needed to reboot (not at all uncommon) to get its clock reset. But before too long I realized that not only was my smart phone was smart enough to move back its own clock, but that it also moved back every appointment in my calendar by an…

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I’ve climbed Mt. Rainier twice now. Once in 1996 and once in 2006. (I hope in 2016 I’m still up for it!) I get a lot of questions from friends who are interested in trying the climb themselves. So I thought I’d write some notes on how you could prepare. First off, if you don’t have a fair amount of rock climbing experience and mountaineering experience, or have a lot of experienced friends who are willing to babysit you, go with a guide service. This year I went without a guide service and I’m really glad I did it. But…

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I consider myself a transhumanist. I spend probably too much time thinking about very long-terrm trends of humanity. Some of the trends I see seem obvious to the point of being irrefutable, while others I’m sure are controversial. Nevertheless, I’ll lay out a few of the basic tenants of transhumanism, and begin to explain why they lead to the very deep and personal implications they have for me. Computers are getting faster and more powerful. As they do so, they’re helping humans be smarter. Maybe not invidual humans, as some studies have shown that things like e-mail and powerpoint can…

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They got me. It’s 6 AM and I only had half a can. Rat bastards.

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This afternoon in my office’s cafeteria I found a new refridgerator stocked with tasty beverages. Starbucks Iced Coffee in a can. And guess what: it’s free. For now, at least. Want some candy little boy? C’mon, try it. I remember a couple of years ago seeing them giving away cans of their then-new double-shot canned caffeine high downtown on the sidewalk. They’ll get you hooked and then you come back begging for more, $5 in hand. Sound like any other industry we know? Many years ago I remember a friend of mine saying she was investing in Starbucks because she…

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Hoefstede identified several axes on which cultures differ. One of them relates to whether people in a culture tend to think more about rights or responsibilities. In the US we talk a lot about people’s rights, and relatively little about people’s responsibilities. Civil rights. Bill of rights. Right to life. etc. Europeans tend to swing towards the other side of that spectrum. For example, a sense of responsibility for impact on future generations tends to leads to valuing environmental issues more greatly. The communist party line in China is also very concerned with responsibilities, but in a somewhat different way….

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