My Blog
Hormones on TV
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 at 2:54 am
Just saw a commercial about Prempro. It's a treatment for menopause that uses a couple hormones. One of the potential side effects is dementia.... Yeah, that makes sense.
DeadJournal
Saturday, January 15, 2005 at 1:35 am
Our data center (Internap) lost all its power, including redundant backup power. We're currently dealing with bringing our 100 servers back online. Not fun. We're not happy about this. Sorry... :-/ More details later.
Ha. Just as I tried to do something on their site, this happened. Coincidence?
'White Noise' and Night Joys
Friday, January 14, 2005 at 2:28 am
Having had such a long day, I felt like unwinding after work. I got home and got a few things done and then I remembered that the movie White Noise was out. Well, that sounded good. I found out that it started at 7:45 in Quincy. I estimated that to be an hour drive and it was already 6:30. I had 15 minutes to finish finding out ticket prices, figuring out directions, and getting into my car. My timing was great. I got there just in time and without too much wait.
Now, a word about the movie White Noise. Several months ago I randomly ended up on the AA-EVP's web site (That's American Association - Electronic Voice Phenomena). It was an ugly web site (design circa-1997), but talked about tape recordings and recordings of what seemed to be spirits communicating at low volumes through manipulation of white noise. To me, that fit right in with my theory of quantum randomness that I'll get into in the next paragraph. This tiny site happened to be listed in the movie trailer for White Noise. That stunned me. It's a small world. And it seems that I live in a smaller world than most because of things like that. Anyway, the site was filled with recordings that you could barely make out some muffled mumbling over static...maybe...or it could just be meaningless fluctuations. There was nothing terribly clear on that site.
My Theory
Quantum Physics has a curious little field within it regarding quantum randomness. This is a simple phenomena that we experience every day. Let's say you're looking out the window and you see your reflection. We know that someone outside can see you through the window as well. So that means light is bouncing off of you and then either reflecting back off the glass or going through the glass. So far, quantum physics has decided that whether a specific photon reflects back or goes through the class is truly random! However, the combination of millions of photons evens out the odds and we end up with an average, which makes up our everyday experience. My theory comes in on the source of quantum randomness. I start with the idea that every particle in the universe is affected by some degree of quantum randomness. Overall, the randomness averages out to reality. I say that it could easily be the nonphysical world that is capable of determining the state of a random entity. So let's put it into an example. What is a miracle? People often define it as something impossible happening. What if instead, we'd say it's highly unlikely but could still happen naturally? Now, if quantum randomness were actually determined from the outside, a miracle can be both divine and totally natural! Now let's take it back to every day life. If we have a soul, how does it interface with our mind? Current knowledge about the workings of the brain shows that there is no central location of processing in the brain. It somehow functions as a whole unit. I see it as merely something that processes. I don't see it capable of emotion. That's not its job. No, I see it as an interface between mind and body - the missing link between the two that philosophy is always looking for. Pretty cool, huh? So any places that are inherently random (like white noise) are like gateways for all kinds of influence. That's kind of the premise of the movie.
The movie, however, doesn't quite do a good job with selling on EVP. It makes it sound far more common, far more advanced, and far more clearly audible than any real EVP material. While it's great for a simple-minded thriller, it already dabbled too much into philosphy to back out. It has a lot of a New Age twist to it too, which makes it hard to fit the ideas in it to other theories.
My day started after the movie. I went to Steak & Shake afterward and had some good food and called up Christina. I'm going to be using my phone a lot now that I have no friends near me! Then I started driving back to Carthage. I missed my first turn, but decided to keep on going. Girls: If a guy is driving and he decides to take the "scenic route," you've got problems. It likely means he has no idea how to get from point A to point B, but thinks it might be fun to try. Don't get me wrong, I think guys have an excellent sense of direction - even compared to the women. I am not from anywhere near Quincy or Carthage, nor have I been from one to the other more than once or twice. This was NOT the time to guess. I took a few wrong turns. Any time I take a wrong turn, I'm automatically almost out of gas. I spent about 45 minutes on the road while my car said empty just hoping to find gas. I pulled in at a Fuel 24 station. I wonder what the 24 means? They're closed. I kept on driving, ended up on a 3/4 lane gravel road (too narrow to call it a 1-lane) with more drops than a thunderstorm, and (to steal a line from the movie Wrongfully Accused) "more twists and turns than Chubby Checker in a blender." I finally ended up in a town that I knew - a town that I knew to be an hour from where I meant to be. My gas tank had about had it. I drove around looking for an open gas station. I could find one, so I knew I had to pull into a gas station and wait until it opened. So I did. As I get within 20 feet of the pumps, my car shut off on its own, out of gas (which I expected to happen about 30 mins. ago).
That's not so bad. I can handle this. It's already midnight and I am beat. I flip down the seat and lean back. I get back up. I wait for the inevitable. Somehow I knew that a cop would stop by, and when he got there, he informed me that there was a 24-hour gas station on the other side of town but he didn't offer to help. After he drove off, I knew that I wasn't walking outside in that weather. It was COLD. I went to sleep. Ok, I had passing moments of sleep as I was laying uncomfortable and cold. I woke up at about 2 and I was too cold to sleep. I didnt' have many options, so I got out and looked in my trunk. I had a black unused garbage sack. I took it into the car and ripped a couple seams until I had a plastic sheet. A narrow, thin plastic sheet. This worked. I slept a couple more hours.
I woke up again. It cold enough outside to freeze time (30° with a "feels like" of 17°). What a great day to decide I don't need a coat. I adjusted myself and tucked the best that I could and tried to sleep. I woke up again at 5:15 even colder. At 5:30 the placed opened. I got my gas, got the strongest energy drink I coudl find and I drove home. It was a strong energy drink. I think people got a buzz from sniffing my breath. It probably had all kinds of animal hormones and "natural herbal supplements." I made it to work on time, but tired. So check this out:
Annotated Microsoft Streets and Trips Document of my journey.
If you've got a brain, and you enjoy reading, you might like some of Douglas Adams. I am going to start reading his book "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. The Philadelphia Enquirer has this to say: "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams is the skateboard on which the thinking person plays hooky from the Universe." Sounds good, anyway.
Voice over IP so you can't hear my UrIN
Wednesday, January 12, 2005 at 3:53 am
I just got my new phone number from Lingo - a VoIP phone service. My new phone number is: (816) 256-4876. If you look it up, it's a Kansas City, MO phone number. I had to pick a major city, and I happen to have a friend moving there soon - so I'll be local! Call me at that number any time of day (I may be at work during the day - duh), and I don't have to worry about nights and weekends because it's all unlimited!! I still have my cell phone, so don't worry - that number works too. I can do 3-way calls, caller ID, call forwarding, and some nifty thing called Simultaneous Ring. With that, if I set it up, any time you call my Lingo phone number my home phone AND my cell phone would ring. I can answer either phone and get the call. Yay! It's technology so you know I love it.
I tried it out with my mom first - cause she was home. I had some static problems. Well, she did. She kept having times where she heard static and an old woman talking - part of the time the old woman was talking about having had some eggs and toast. No other calls have had any trouble so I'm happy so far.
If you live in any of these countries, I can call you at no extra charge to me above the $20/mo. fee for the service:
U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Luxembourg, Vatican City, Norway, Portugal, and Spain!
I'm excited. This is cool. I might as well call you - cause it won't cost me anything. Even if I call you in the morning and you live in France and I forget to hang up....for 12 hours...it's FREE!!
Ok, so I don't know anyone in France....yet.
Wash it, Wax it, Buffet
Monday, January 10, 2005 at 3:42 am
So I went to another buffet. Yes, twice in one weekend period. This time, it was a Chinese Buffet. There was no macaroni and cheese there either, but they're excused. Why am I posting about it? Because it was so good... If you don't like food you can stop reading here. They had the most interesting Crab Rangoon. Oh, yeah. It is sooo good. But not my favorite variety. They had a lot of seafood too. Some kind of awesome baked salmon. Yeah, it was seasoned just awesomely. Oh and they had oysters with cheese on them. They had some just tastefully yummily delicious crab stuff. It was like noodles, oil, crab meat, and cheese! Oh, it was enough to make me cry. But I didn't. Now that I'm back in my apartment, none of this sounds all that exciting, but oh was it good.
In other news, I found out that I could add a Live Bookmark (RSS Feed) to Fishy's Blog. Now, in Firefox, I can click one button and without going to any web pages at all, I can see what her last few posts were called. It automatically updates all the time. My little Blogdor is supposed to be able to do that. I need to figure out how!!! Oh, and I just added Eric Folsom, too. If any of you out there want me to subscribe to your life, I might just be bored enough to do it. Bored enough, yes, but I don't think I have enough free time for it.
