Why so blue, panda bear?

Okay, I wasn't able to check the link at work since it was block. But here it is!

Skyprincess says, "you are a buffet of manliness"

Why so blue, panda bear?

EA = slave labor

I have always discourage anyone from seeking an entry level developer position with a gaming company. The gaming companies hire you as an exempt salaried employee and work you for hundreds of hours of overtime each year, with no compensation.

Being hired as an exempt salaried employee is actually a standard for most IT jobs. Management can require you to work hundreds of hours of overtime a year, with no compensation.

Seems the game developers have lost the fight to retain this practice. Does that mean I've changed my mind about recommending a gaming company? Right now, no.

This will hopefully have a good long term affect in this labor abusive industry. Perhaps EA will turn things around and become a premier choice for employment? Who knows. But it will take a complete change in corporate culture and labor practices before that happens.

-Mizike-

I really hope this weekend blows

Yesterday was a much better day than the one before. I actually had some tasks assigned to me, which means I could be productive.

I wasn't able to complete my assignments before leaving yesterday, which irked me. I hated leaving anything half finished. But upon arriving early this morning, I spotted my mistake and had it patched into production in 20 minutes. Now the boredom continues.

I'm not sure why the manager of this project is spoon feeding us assignments. I sent another polite email this morning asking for a 'large' list of issues to work on. My reasoning is that when I finish with a task, I can easily proceed to the next one. Less downtime for me. Right now, I've been sitting around waiting for 5 hours.

Seems the Denver interview went well. She's still interviewing a couple more people, but I'm suppose to be on the top of her list. Denver wouldn't be a bad place to live. It will be a very small SAP BW shop, so lots of opportunities to learn.

Skyprincess should be getting home to Memphis around 7pm tonight. I'm going to try to stick around here until 6:30 before driving back. It's 3 1/2 hours to Memphis with good traffic. Then I have a 8am to noon on-site interview in Memphis. Then a doctor's appointment at 1:30, which I've put off for almost a year. Time to get my eyes checked!

I might have an afternoon interview for the team lead position tomorrow afternoon, although I probably wouldn't take the job if it was offered to me. Although it is a data warehouse / report writing team, it's not SAP BW. And I really do not feel like playing a manager.

Last weekend Skyprincess and I went to the annual African festival, which turned out to be just a huge set of tents with vendors. I was hoping to see something more, like dance or music or anything but vendors hawking their stuff. We walked around for an hour and then spent the rest of the day at the Memphis Zoo. The Zoo's main attraction is a pair of Pandas. All day we kept asking each other "Why so blue Panda Bear?" The answer? The panda's were on vacation.

Grrr! No freaking pandas! I wanted to get a zoo handler to poke them with a stick and make them come out and play. Okay, we saw the red panda rejects. They look like red possums. I wanted to see the giant pandas!!!

Stupid, lazy chinese panda bears. Outsourcing their job to stupid red panda bears, which were really possums in disguise. Next thing you know, Jabba the Hutt (our liquor store clerk) will be substituting for the Hippos when they go on vacation. Grrrr!!!

Okay... that was the strangest phone call I've gotten. Some chick called who was driving in their car. They said, "hey", I said "hello". Next they said, "how are you?". I replied, "good!" Then they said "that's good" and then hung up. It sounded a bit like my sister, but I can't imagine her just hanging up. In case anyone wants to know, they called from 832-434-1229 which is based in Houston. They sounded very pleasant. Just hope they were using a hands-free device. Would hate for them to get into a car accident during their 7 second conversation with me. ****nothing but love****

This weekend Skyprincess and I are going to see a play called Intimate Apparel at the Playhouse. I've really been very happy with the quality of the plays there. This one seems like it will be a good one.

Also, Theatre Memphis will be performing Inherit the Wind. I've only been to see one play there, and it wasn't all that bad either. Perhaps I can talk Skyprincess into going the following weekend if we are in town.

Okay, I'm looking at the forecast for Saturday and it's listing an 80% chance for rain. Which sucks. But it does show it being windy, which is very very good! We've been wanting to fly kites for several weekend, but no wind!!! Maybe we'll get some this weekend =)

Wish us luck!

-Mizike-

Now my headache is back

Kavka's toxin puzzle


Kavka's toxin puzzle is a thought experiment presented by Gregory S. Kavka, a moral and political philosopher, in The Toxin Puzzle (1983). The puzzle challenges the possiblity of forming an intention to perform an act which, following from reason, it is extremely unlikely one will actually commit to.


The Puzzle
There is a toxin which upon consumption, will make you violently ill for a few hours. You will receive a sizeable lump of money if you are able to intend, at present, to drink this toxin a few days into the future. If the intention is truly and successfully formed, you will be awarded the money without ever having drunk the toxin, and whether you fulfill your original intention or not will not change your reward.


The Paradox
Now, we need to consider whether or not it is possible to form an intention to perform a future act, given the foreknowledge that after forming the intention you will have no incentive to fulfill your intention. In fact, a person X who attempts this will have very good reasons not to.

As soon as X intends to drink the toxin, they can collect the reward; X does not actually have to drink it. So, once the time has come to drink the toxin, the reward will already have been collected, and the only thing that will result from drinking the toxin will be extreme discomfort; having received the reward, no incentive remains to drink the toxin. Given this foreknowledge, it seems unreasonable for X to drink the toxin. But considering that X can come to these same logical conclusions, X cannot logically form the intention to begin with.


Non-cognitivism vs. Moral realism
The nature of this paradox is grounded in a non-cognitivist ethical theory, presupposing that there is no objective moral law. In an attempt to deny this paradox, we would need to presuppose a theory of moral realism, in which objective moral truths do exist, and we could cite various internal incentives toward the fulfillment of our intention. Examples of such incentives include the guilt that would result from failing yourself by not following through on your intention (to the extent that an intention is a promise made to oneself), or a categorically commanded duty not to lie, including to oneself. Whether or not such an approach would be successful is certainly open to debate, as are the conclusions of the paradox in general.

I'm a citizen, and you can't do anything about it!

Here's some interesting information to make up for my non-intesting posting today.

Trop v. Dulles

Albert Trop, a native-born U.S. citizen serving as a private in the United States Army, escaped from an Army stockade in Casablanca, Morocco in 1944. The next day, he willingly surrendered to an Army officer and was taken back to the base. For this desertion, Trop was court-martialed and sentenced to three years at hard labor, forfeiture of pay, and a dishonorable discharge.

In 1952, Trop applied for a passport, which was denied because the Nationality Act of 1940 provided that members of the military forces of the United States who deserted would lose their citizenship. (A 1944 amendment modified the Act such that a deserter would only lose his citizenship if on these grounds he had been dishonorably discharged or dismissed from the military.) Trop went to a federal court to seek a declaratory judgment that he was a citizen; the court sided with the government, as did the Second Circuit.

The Supreme Court noted in its holding, written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, that in the previous case Perez v. Brownell, the Court had held that citizenship could be divested in the exercise of the foreign affairs power. However, "denationalization as a punishment is barred by the Eighth Amendment," as this is "the total destruction of the individual's status in organized society".

It should also be noted that the Nationality Act of 1940 was, at the moment of those events (1958), in violation of article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In the dissent, Justice Felix Frankfurter noted that desertion from the military can be punished by the death penalty, leading him to ask, "Is constitutional dialectic so empty of reason that it can be seriously urged that loss of citizenship is a fate worse than death?"

Bored =(

I'm bored. Yes I am!

I have an assignment I cannot complete until the vendor contacts me. I've been waiting since yesterday afternoon. That doesn't mean I can't work on other assignments. I'm eager to. But I can't get the project manager to find any for me to work on.

So I'm bored. And I hate being bored.

I had yet another interview today. I think this one went rather keenly. It will be in Denver, which is okay. I'm still awaiting word on the Atlanta job. My Kentucky job's 2nd interview is Monday. That would be an interesting position to have. Too bad I don't drink. Plenty of liquor to choose from there.

My bruising is starting to go away. Skyprincess has a tendency to bite, which I don't mind at all. I prefer biting to fingernails down the back, but my family bruises rather easily. At least they are not visible. It's scary to wake up the next morning with black and blue marks and not recall where they came from.

I got back in contact with my two best friends from high school this week. We drifted apart close to 8 years ago. It's amazing Chris and David have been together this long. 20 years is a long time for any couple to stay together. To be a gay couple in a very small Mississippi town couldn't have been easy.

*sigh* I really wanted to post something today, but my brain feels like mushy corn flakes. I'm starting to get a headache. bleah!

Guess I'll chat later. Cyas!

-Mizike-

Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

I was shopping today at Target www.target.com , picking up a few items I needed at home. When I came across my favorite shampoo. Pert! Why? Because I love the idea of not having to condition my hair after I shampoo.

I tried doing the conditioning thing as a kid and it never worked out. For one, it doesn't really lather. How do you apply conditioner that doesn't really lather? I mean, shampoo + water and you got real lather. Just go about scrubbing and you know where you are. Conditioner just doesn't do that. So when I found Pert, it meant I can shampoo and not have to worry about conditioning after! And since I kept being yelled at for taking long showers, it cut my wash time down. Being 1 of 6 kids, you find every minute in the shower (or bathroom) is a luxery. Nothing sucks so bad as having a sibling start banging on the door just as you get a nice hot shower going.

I began to think of all the other combination products I love so much. Take sugar on corn flakes. I know, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes has been around for a while... but!!! My mom always bought plain corn flakes and we had to add sugar to them. To find a cereal where you didn't have to add sugar and stir, but it came perfect was awesome!

Then there is the person who decided to manufacture the draw string in garbage bags. I hated having to use those wire bag ties. You wasted so much storage space trying to get the back cinched up enough to use the ties. It was better to just tie the corners together, rather than use the wire ties. They would slip off when you carried the garbage bag anyways. Then you would often end up with dumped garbage to pick up again.

I had Pert in my hand thinking how much a modern consumer I am appreciating all the combination type products when I realized I was full of shit. Sure, there are some consumer products I love that are a combination of 2 older products. Like Clorox bleach and wipes. But to be the completely honest, I despise those types of products. Why? Because it's usually way more expensive to buy. Other times, it's because I hate the product.

I hate tissue paper with lotion. For one, I hate tissue. I am a forceful nose blower. I blow right threw 1 tissue. I have to fold 2 or 3 tissues together when I need a good blow. My main use for tissue is to clean my glasses. Nothing is worse than smearing lotion all over your lenses.

And I hate buying premarinated chicken in the grocery store. It's always double the price of just plain chicken. And I'm really picky with seasoned meats. Hamburgers are much better plain. I hate seasoned hamburgers. For chicken, all you need is a bit of Tony Chachere's. I'm not sure if you guys in Morocco can get it, but it's great for everything! There's almost nothing I won't put it on top of. It's the main seasoning I keep in the cabnet.

Then there's flavored popcorn. At first I thought this was a terrible keen idea. I bought a huge box of this popcorn and it was completely vile. Give me plain popcorn with salt and butter, and I'm happy.

oh! Another combination food product that tasted like shit. Hotdogs with cheese inside. Can I get an "ewwww!!!" Just something wrong about biting into a hotdog and it squirting back at you with this creamy gooey center.

Then there's peanut butter with jelly already mixed. There's sometimes you want lots and lots of peanut butter and little jelly. Sometimes lots of jelly and not so much peanut butter. Then what if you want strawberry instead of grape jelly? And isn't it better to have 1 piece of bread pure peanut butter and the other jelly? It is then perfectly matched when you put them together.

I'm not sure what is next. Loaves of bread with mustard already spread? A pint of milk where half the container is milk and the other Fruit Loops? Just pull a tab and mix, instant breakfast!

Ugh... it's late. Time for bed.

Before I go, let me add. I hate brewed sweet tea! I hate brewed bottle tea in any form. Let me buy the bags and I'll brew it myself. Yuck!

-Mizike-

100% Man Made Materials

It's amazing at the similarities Skyprincess and I have, yet we are polar opposites on many things. Besides she having an innie and I having an outie. Not talking about bellybuttons either =P

For one, I love reality TV. I tried to be a TV snob when they first started coming out, but I'm hooked. I don't watch survivor, but I'm an American Idol addict. Skyprincess loves Idol also, but she puts up with me when I get on a reality tv kick. For me, it's like the books she reads. Pure throw-away trash. It's mindless TV that doesn't require any real commitment to watching it every week. I don't need to know the storyline for the past 2 years to understand what's happening today (she loves Desperate Housewives and I'm completely lost when I watch it with her). For me, it's like a mental vacation. Turn on the TV and turn off your mind for a couple hours. I think the reason our population is aging is because we have the ability to rest our mind, thus turning off the aging process. Those hours and hours wasted in front of the TV translates into years and years added to your life that you can now spend watching TV in the nursing home. It's a win/win situation! Watching more TV now means the opportunity to watch more TV later!

I love WalMart. Always have. The whole concept of being able to find just about anything in the store and not having to pay an arm and a leg for it. During the 80s I supported KMart as much as I could, but they never had what I wanted in stock. And their locations were always bad. WalMart was always in good locations and very well stocked.

Skyprincess thinks WalMart is from the devil. It's her union persona coming out, identifying how they are destructive to the working place and to local stores. I don't disagree with her at all. They suck when it comes to employee rights. And they kill locally run small businesses. But I love convenience, and I'm short-sighted. I know my needs are met, so who cares about everyone else? I'm the prototypical American consumer!

Skyprincess likes quality items. For me, give me the cheap knockoff everytime. I've always bought cheap cooking sets from WalMart. Skyprincess enjoys cooking and she would prefer cooking with a very nice cooking set. For me, most of my stuff is disposable. If it lasts me 5 years, I'm happy. I've rarely thought about buying some household item that I will have forever. I need to get over my transitory thought of life and consider I'm now nesting, so buy something that will last for decades. And I have to admit, thinking this way feels great!

And I have the memory of a mayfly, and Skyprincess forgets nothing. This causes me problems all the time. Especially when traveling. When I leave the house I have my standard 3 point pat down. Pat the right pocket for the car keys. Pat the left back pocket for the wallet. Pat the left side belt for the cell phone. Okay, I'm set to walk out the door.

Packing is a whole other issue. I haven't broken down and made a checklist yet, but I should. I'm always forgetting something. I do my bathroom kit check. Razor, shaving gel, deodorant, palmade, toothbrush and paste, vitamins, and glaucoma medication. If that's all there, then I'm good to go. There is other stuff I pack in my kit, but that's the essentials.

Then comes the clothes. Which I have no problems with. I almost never forget something clothing wise. The problem is the shoes. Since I try to bring a small suitcase with me on short trips, there isn't room for the shoes. So they go seperately. The problem is that if I don't put everything I need in the suitcase, I'll forget it. Which I did this trip.

I left Memphis around 6:30pm heading to Jackson. This is a 3 hour trip. Around 8:15 I started to do a mental inventory of everything I brought. And I realized I didn't bring my dress shoes. Showing up in ratty tennis shoes would not set a good impression. So I started watching the interstate for the next town. 15 minutes later I was in some little nowhere town with a population of like 2000. I stopped at the gas station asking if they have a Target or a Payless. Nope, but they did have a WalMart. Lucky me!

So I got directions and got to WalMart 10 minutes before it closed and bought an $18 pair of dress black shoes. Similar to these Johnston & Murphy shoes (which is my personal style for dress shoes-I love J&M shoes!). It was funny reading the box. It said Leather, but inside it said "100% man made materials". Haha! I'm wearing plastic shoes. But to be honest, they are very comfortable. Who would have thought?

Time to get back to work.. Laters!

-Mizike-

Gak!

I just finished up my third breakfast pastry for the day. One bearclaw. Now I feel like crap.

I hate pastries, so I have no idea why I got it. Well.. actually I do. They were free. (stop laughing Skyprincess!)

Free continental breakfast at the hotel. In other words, breakfast pastries and juice.

I really should go buy some cereal and a pint of milk.

-Mizike-

Sweet tooth

I never had a super sweet tooth growing up as a kid. Sure, I was like most kids. I never turned down candy. I would have been a great target for those "strangers" they warned you about in school. Although, the "stranger" fear is one of the most mistargeted campaigns in history. The true "stranger" usually ends up being your next door neighbor or a family member.

Anyway... my family never really had much. So candy was an exception, rather than a rule. Not that you'd think that looking at us. We were a family of fat people. Genetics in all it's glory. How I wished I had asian genes mixed in here with the French genes instead of Anglo Saxon genes. Perhaps the asian genes would have allowed a skinner me growing up. Although the propensity for a small penis in asians would be a draw back. Small waist > small penis? hrmmmm....

When I started working, I never went out and bought lots of candy. I considered it a waste of money. To be honest, I hardly spent any money. I was a bit of a spend thrift (cheap bastard), and I hated spending money on anything. I always bought the no-name generic item, instead of the name brand. It's just the same, isn't it? So I bought wrangler jeans instead of levi's. Big deal!

For some strange reason, about a year ago my sweet tooth just went nuts. I have no clue why. I always have something sweet around. Whether it's cookies, or jelly beans, or ice cream, or caramel coated popcorn. I don't eat a lot at one time, since it will make me sick. But I do tend to graze throughout the day. Which is something I really need to stop.

But who can turn down jelly bellies? They are sooooo good!

So today I'm going to resolve 2 things. To begin limiting my consumption of candy and soft drinks. It's back to bottled water for me! Oh.. and less candy. Mustn't forget that one. Not totally cutting it out!!! I do love my candy. But I'm going to begin making it an exception, rather than a rule.

Some changes have come about since I last wrote. I am no longer with the consulting company that had the contract with The Big Pill. After sitting on the bench for 2 months, they couldn't find work for me. So they released me to seek other opportunities. Which is fine. I wasn't really happy with that company. Although I was mismanaged from day one, it was apparant I wasn't a fit for their organization.

No hard feelings from my end. I got a job the next week, which pays considerably more. I just hope they pay for the plane ticket they requested me to purchase.

The main thing I'm bummed about is that I missed the Rio trip with SkyPrincess. We had planned on flying down Monday for a hotel review. But we'll have to put that off until another day. This would have been my first trip outside the continental US. We'll have to save that for another day =(

As far as trips, we're heading back to L.A. May 19th for our wedding planning appointment. Austin on May 27th for the semi-annual Coterie weekend. The bridal shower is in Dallas on Jun 1st, but I'll probably not make it if I need to work. And finally, we're going to a wedding in Cobo San Lucas on June 23rd.

A few trips ahead of us, but not too many.

Well, time to go. I need to read some more documentation on tailoring workflows.

Mizike