sudo life

A few days ago I was experiencing some trouble with my installation of Firefox, so I went through the process of completely uninstalling it so I could then reinstall it.  This easily morphed into a cleanup of my entire work system (of course this was on my work computer running vista and not on my mac).  In any case there were several programs installed that I just wasn’t using any more and files that needed to be deleted, et cetera, so I got with it.  I noticed that MSN Messenger was automatically loading during startup, and I didn’t want this, so I looked for a way to remove this behavior.  This involved signing into the system.  Immediately upon signing in, I received a text message from someone who I thought was an old friend.  The following is a transcript of the conversation:

oldfriend says:  Sup!
Josh says:  hey man!  what’s up?
oldfriend says: Sang your song last week.

At this point, I’m thinking “What in the world?…”

oldfriend says: Still hits home when I sing it.
Josh says: which song is that?
oldfriend says: “Our God is powerfull, our God is wonderful…”
oldfriend says: That one.

Okay, now I remember.  See, when I was still a christian, I used to write worship songs.  I’m a musician, so what else would I do?  This particular song happened to be the only one that other people actually liked.  This was because I took the best music I had written on my own at that time and adapted it into a worship song.  How embarrassing is that?  It’s too bad because this music could have been used for something much greater.  At least there is no danger of making that particular mistake again.

Music christianity, composing

Well, even though I kind of forgot to carry on the last meme I was tagged with (sorry, Shalini!), I will go ahead and make my way through here.  The same disclaimer Epicanis supplied when he tagged me applies here.

Five Things I was doing 10 years ago

1. Attending my sophomore year in high school
2. This time of the year was district band season, so I was making the district honor band and actually practicing my euphonium.
3. Joining the Cross Country team.
4. Preparing for my drivers license examination
5. Working on Driftwood (my one time pad encryption program written in QBasic – How embarrassing!)

5 Things on my “To do” list today

1. Setup a meeting to get some data automatically fed into my system (done)
2. Have dinner with my friend Tara
3. Purchase sandwich bags at the store
4. Check my ongoing Chlorophyll experiment to see where I’m at there.
5. Check out an episode or two of this seasons’ Big Bang Theory.

5 Snacks I love

1. Cheese and Crackers
2. Popsicles (the sugar free ones taste better)
3. No-bake cookies
4. Sunflower seeds
5. PB & J

5 Things I would do if I was a millionare

1. Build a house with crazy home automation (and all those other goodies like a home lab, recording studio, two stories library, hidden rooms / passageways, observatory etc.)
2. Get my souped up Mac Pro
3. Visit New Zealand
4. Quit work and get my doctorate.
5. Purchase a Dodge Viper

5 Places I’ve Lived

1. Osage City, KS
2. Bennett Springs, MO
3. Lebanon, MO
4. Kansas City, MO
5. Butler, MO

Hmm, that one makes me sad…

5 Jobs I’ve had

1. Insulation Installer – I put the fiberglass insulation into private homes.
2. Sheetrock Grunt – Yeah, carrying sheetrock from the lumberyard to the job site.  While it was on the truck, all was good.  Other than that… not so much.
3. Work Study at the SOE – From my first day on campus here at UMKC, I’ve working in the same department.
4. Web Developer – This was a shitty job and turned me off to ever developing for other people ever again.  I still do it anyway.
5. Audio / Visual Tech – My Current position.   My actual job isn’t any like the title.

People I’ll tag.  This means you have to do this same thing:

• Tara Craven
• Evolved Rational
• My Life as Fanfiction Writer
• Peaceful Atheist

Personal Meme

I was excited to see that the H.M.S. Beagle people have launched an online version of their store.  This is the local science store where I bought my chemistry lab, microscope, and a few books.  While it appears that they could use some help in the design portion of their operation, they’re awesome for everything science related.

Science biology, chemistry, lab, resources

The H.M.S. Beagle Blog has published an e-mail they sent to a local science teacher:

Your students are reporting to us that you are offering a non-scientific alternative to how plant and animal species evolved on earth. Many of them are quite disconcerted with what seems to be a blatant attempt to subvert scientific fact and theory with unfounded speculation, mythology and beliefs. Since we have not personally heard your presentations we cannot accurately judge what you are, in fact, presenting or what your approach to teaching science is. If there is even a whiff of creationism or intelligent design being offered as a legitimate alternative to science in your classes then that would go against the basis of the recent Dover decision in Pennsylvania (Kitzmiller v. Dover, 2005, Judge John E. Jones presiding).

You can read the rest over at their blog.  I realize this is an issue that goes under-reported so I feel it’s important to bring as much attention to it as possible.

The word delusion is defined as “an erroneous belief that is held in the face of evidence to the contrary.”  Given the mountains of evidence that exist in support of the theory of evolution, is it a stretch of language to call rejection of the theory a delusion?

Science biology, education, evolution

Ran across this today over at Christian Pwnage.  Despite the name of the site, this is actually a video about Peter Schiff’s forecast for the current credit crunch.

For a special treat, check it out at the 5:55 mark to see Ben Stein stick his foot in his mouth back in August 2007.  Actually, you can watch the whole thing to see both the brilliance of Schiff and the idiocy of Stein.

Video Commentary economics

I have nearly completed the my website migration to my new hosting provider.  I wanted to put this notice out there in case you need to change your rss subscriptions.  If you subscribed through feedburner, then the feed has already been transferred to the new website, and you don’t need to do anything.  Otherwise, you’ll need to use:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/sudolife

Okay, that’s all for now!  I have more book reviews in the process, and a couple really cool EdTech papers to talk about in the near future, I hope.

Personal meta-blogging

Back in August, my MBP developed some hardware issues that required a visit to the Apple store.  The Kansas City Apple Store happens to be on the famous Plaza, and very near to a Barnes and Noble.  So during this time, I ended up spending a large amount of time browsing books at said store.  As I went through the store, I happened to wander over to the science & technology section where my eyes fell upon a book with a very strange title:  “Everything Bad Is Good For You.”  If that wasn’t enough to pique one’s interest, the subtitle would be: “How today’s popular culture is actually makeing us smarter.”

Needless to say (but I’ll type it anyway), I was extremely skeptical.  Never-the-less, it was a provokative enough title for me to pick it up and turn to the first few pages.  The author, Steven Johnson,  begins with a discussion about a precursor to the modern fantasy sports games.  The story was engrossing enough that I went ahead and purchased the book, and once I was home I devoured it.  I just couldn’t put it down.

Johnson describes what he calls “the sleeper curve.”  His basic argument is that popular culture requires an increasingly complex involvement by the consumer to fully enjoy.  He supports his arguments with several specific examples taken from tv shows like “The Bachelor” and “The Sopranoes” and video games like “Zelda.”  I’m not much of a popular culture participant, and was unfamiliar with all three of these, but this did not hinder my understanding of his argument.  While I had started reading the book quite skeptically, by the end, I felt like he had made a good case using the examples that he did.  However, I do think his argument benefited from a selection bias to begin with.

One of my main criticisms is how citations and the bibliography were handled.  There were no in text citations.  The bibliography contained a snippet of the text where the information was used and then the source itself.  It’s a painful way handle sources.  One nice consideration was a section on suggested further reading, however.

Overall, this is a very worth-while book, and while I’m not completely convinced by his argument, I have to agree that Johnson is certainly on to something.  Published in 2005, it is available from Amazon.com, and other retailers.

Other Book Reviews Coming Down the Pipeline:

1) The Tipping Point and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

2) The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

3)  Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner

I realize I’m a bit behind the times, especially with gladwell’s books, but I don’t personally know anyone else who has read them.

Book Reviews Book Reviews, education, technology