thoughts to blog

but I have been pretty busy...

and good luck ya ma boy Paul... we had his bachelor party on Saturday night...

I know nothing :)

What is everyone doing on February 19th?

Why do I ask?

I think it's about damn time we threw a Greg and Jake party up here... like the one'swe used to throw back in Cedar Falls... Plus we want to celebrate my 24th birthday,Keya's birthday, and Adam's birthday (if they show up)...

Here's the deal:

Where: Our apartment (730 West Village Road #107 , Chanhassen, MN 55317)
When: February 19th... (Saturday) <- REQUEST IT OFF NOW! :)

a keg will be provided... plus sleeping arrangements (if you RSVP)...

How will this work? OK.. so I NEED you guys to RSVP (click me) and let me know that you'recoming...  if you don't RSVP, you are on your own for an overnight stay... and Ican't guarantee that you'll get anything to eat or drink from me :) 

[on Friday] If you want to come up a day early, we'll probably be going out barhopping on Friday as well...

I know it's a long drive for a lot of you, but rest assured that once you're up here,you're in for a good time...

so I was reading Eugene's blog post today... and I decided to post the same question here...

An interesting refactoring scenerio...

How do you get rid of the IF statement? (Requires square toimplement multiple “isColor“ methods for each derived robot object...)

--- *EDIT* ---
this is an example of an extreme refactoring exercise... taking pieces of code andensuring there are NO repeated lines and one line method calls... it's supposed toget you thinking about patterns and other ways of refactoring... cause we allknow you should do it 

public class RedFollowingRobot{public void move(){if (nextSquare().isRed())super.move();}}public class Square{public boolean isRed(){...}}

Johnny Carson died today... at the age of 79. Sad. He inspired me to be in my firsthome made video, which is in VHS format and is purchasable for $3000 payable to JakeGood... that's if my sister ever brings it out of hiding. Thankfully most of you haven'tseen it. It includes a Carson skit, NKOTB skit, and random goofiness from when I was like8 or something... at any rate

A moment of silence for Mr. Carson

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=2&u=/ap/20050123/ap_on_en_tv/obit_carson

Yeah I know you questioned me posting information about our personal life... but thisis a journal... and I can't help but talk about what makes me happy ;)

So Jackie came up on Saturday... went to my company party with me - which btwwas a blast... held up the black jack table like I was a pro, stackin those chipslike no other... congrats to the Innovator of the Year - Johhny boy...

Of course she looked stunning... I caught all of you staring :: grins :: Good times, gooddrinks, food, afterparty at Hoppers... w00t!

and then just like that... she left, back to Iowa... with the blanket I won atthe auction (oops) Thanks for being the best date a guy could ask for!

”Save tonight
And fight the break of dawn
Come tomorrow
Tomorrow I'll be gone”

What are you going to do today Jake? Whatever I feel like doing, gosh!

Happy Birthday goes out to a few people, let me know if I missed anyone...

John... 34 Gettin to be quite old there buddy

Mike H. ... 31? I can't remember.. good times in the Halo 2 scene...

Tom Johnson... 23 Good times back in CF last weekend

Jessica (the sis) ... 22 Finally over the 21 stage eh? :)

an interesting read...

http://atheism.about.com/b/a/140399.htm

From Austin Cline, Your Guide to Agnosticism / Atheism.

January 20, 2005

Is Bigotry Against Atheists OK?
In many quarters of society, bigotry and discrimination against atheists is consideredacceptable. People who wouldn't dream of treating Jews or blacks worse than whiteChristians will think nothing of treating atheists as if they didn't merit the same basicsocial or civil rights. Such attitudes reach right up to the presidency.

Like this guy... I too am aZelda fan boi

I still own most of the Zelda's that have come out (sans GBA + 64, which I used toown)... including the recent Wind Waker for the GC...

Simplystunning... I can't WAIT for the new Zelda to come out on the GameCube (untilthen I have RE4 to contend with)

This is Jake from Mission Control... I have a very important announcement tomake...

Due to the high level of spam comments coming through my blog (10+ per day), I havetaken the necessary evasive menuevers...

1) From now own, posts more than 30 days old will no longer be allowed to be commentedon - ThanksRobb Allen

2) Each time one wants to post a comment, there is a small CAPTCHA image that you haveto type in - Thanks MiguelJimenez

I didn't come to this decision without weeks of thought and laziness and I hope thisdoesn't discourage posting of comments. What this will do is allow me to live a spam freelife and post more comment intising posts to make it worth the extra 2 seconds that ittakes to type in what you see. If you don't like this, I don't want to hear yourwhining... it's my blog :) + I will delete your comments... BOYAH! Bye Bye Spam!

so The Roomie and I went down to Cedar Falls, IA for a little weekend fun... here aresome highlights... (spoken in a Napoleon Dynamite voice ;))

• took off from work an hour early to start the trip on Thursday!
• hit up Joker's on Thursday night... Amy wanted to dance with me (?) and asked if Iwere mad at her (?) strange
• 4 for 1s at Joker's...
• bought a beer for a bar whore, who had a total act going on... needless to say shewas going from guy to guy...
• did some major video game shopping on friday... purchase list: Nintendo DS, SuperMario DS, The Legend of Zelda : The Minish Cap, Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil :Pure Evil Pack (includes Resident Evil and Resident Evil Zero). w00t!
• Hit up Texas Roadhouse... ate a cowboy cut New York strip steak with loadedbaked potatoe and ceasar salad! w00t! The best part was, was the wait for non-smoking was2 hours, the wait for smoking was 90 minutes, and what was our wait? 8 minutes... yeahsucka...
• Went out to start the night off at Mulligans... saw Adam and Nick... i LOVE Iowa barprices! (first round for all of us (6 draws) + 2 shots for Tom and I: $20)
• Then hit up the Voodoo Lounge... drank Jameson + Cokes all night.. played somepool... good times with good friends!

That pretty much sums it up! We left Saturday morning at 9:30am... then I slept...listen to this... from 3pm till 11pm (forgot to set alarm).. then from 1am till 9am thismorning... that's 16 hours from 3pm on Saturday till 9am on Sunday... holy crap.. ::shrugs :: now it's time to whoop up on Resident Evil 4.

If you all are lucky enough to hold daily conversations with me, every once in a whilea perverse (read: deviation from right) or very “out there” (read:from stupid to crazy to brilliant) idea/thought comes into my mind and I am notaffraid to talk about it... here's where they will go...

First up? [DISCLAIMER: I'm not a Optomitrist, Biologist, or claim to know what I'mtalking about and second, I know I'm not the first to think of this.]

So there I was reading “TheBlind Watchmaker” by Richard Dawkins (who btw is one of my new heroes); he wastalking about the complexity of the eye. While not getting into the conversations onevolution vs creationism (which will show up here eventually), I started thinking aboutthe diagram of the eye that was shown to me.

Seen here, is the basic structure of the eye. The part that I was interested in, isthe back of the eye where the cones (light receptors) take in the light that is filteredthrough the lens and transmits signals through the optic nerve to the brain through therods that connect them. Like this.

My idea, being a computer scientist is... so if you have one point A (cones + rods)sending signals to point B (optic nerve)... then there could be a point ofinterception.

< stop >This story is going to take a turn to show you that I don't know whatI'm talking about in Biology. The assumption is, is that a signal is deterministic fromthe rods to the optic nerve (read: the signal travels down through the optic nerve to thebrain in a static fashion and doesn't mutate at all.)< / stop >

So... where's the odd idea? Why not intercept and cutoff those lines between the conesand rods and inject our own signals. Perhaps one could capture signals by just listeningto those lines... record them... and play them back in those same lines once they are cutoff. Imagine, being able to record a few images and have them play back in exactly thesame clarity and likeliness to the original perception. Imagine if someone evil got aholdof this type of idea? Imagine taking this technique and applying it to someone who is“blind.”

It has been recorded that the parts of the brain used for imagry (what you percieve asbeing the image in front of you) are still active and functional in blind people.Sometimes the missing link is where that information get's to your conscious (notconscience)... so in reality, your eye functions, the signal gets processed correctly,but once the information is there... you don't get the signal that puts it into your“vision”.... This technique wouldn't help with that... but in the other casewhere the eye isn't functioning properly internally... then something like this couldhelp...

Camera (records signals into what the brain can use) .. injects them into the opticnerve.. which sends it to the brain to get processed.

:: shrugs ::

Arranged Game: None on Unknown

finally... after many months, they have put some of Hova's songs from his many albums back on Rhapsody...

get... that... dirt off ya shoulder...

am I so involved in my own little world of video games, porn, blogs, instantmessaging,Richard Dawkins, and software development that I didn't hear anything aboutflying the flags at half staff today?

on my way to work I notice all the flags were flying low... I'm positive it's for theTsnuami victims...

I'm a consumer, yet I get consumed by those things mentioned above...

... in deep thought ...

43% scored higher,
1% scored the same, and
55% scored lower.

What does this mean? Your nerdiness is:

Somewhat nerdy. I mean face it, you are nerdier than about half the testtakers.

looks like CES fever has caughton...

I'll post some links to some cool technology gadets I find throughout the show...rumor has it we'll see Xbox2... :: shrugs ::

Small Drive - BigSpace
Photos from first 24hours
Wireless DigitalCamera!

So I know I'm late on this... but here are some sport highlights.. and of course, thepictures to celebrate with...

Green Bay over Chicago 31 - 14
Pheonix over Minnesota (NBA) 122 - 115 (I was there, my first professional sports gamew00t!)
USC over Oklahoma 55 - 19
Iowa over LSU 30 - 25

To Celebrate Sports: Here are some hot celebrity nipple slips (ALLNSFW)

If not... this guy posted a way to get it up to 250mb if it hasn't been updated...

http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/bharath/archive/2005/01/05/41579.aspx

I wish I knew this months ago, just recently mine was updated! grrr!

thanks to JustAGirl for yet anotherfun little music list thingy-ma-bopper...

 Instructions
1. Open up the music player on your computer.
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the "shuffle" command.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matterhow embarrassing. That's right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totallydestroy your hip credibility. It's time for total musical honesty.

1. Fugees - Fu-Ge-La
2. 213 - Absolutely
3. Black Eyed Peas - Hey Mama
4. Grandmaster Flash - Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel
5. Howard Shore - The Steward of Gondor (featuring Billy Boyd)
6. Lloyd - Southside (featuring Ashanti)
7. Destiny's Child - Soldier
8. 504 Boys - I can tell
9. Sasha - Rabbitweed
10. The Executioners - The Truth (featuring Fat Joe)

and I didn't cheat either! and yes Tom, I know it's mostly hip-hop and R&B...fucker ;-)

This is kinda strange... but good at the same time.

“Leading British computer games maker Peter Molyneux hasbeen made an OBE in the New Year Honours list. “

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4135453.stm

this guy has worked on games such as (for 15 years): Populous, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper and Black and White.