19 January, 2007
Some of us are just prime numbers.
We don't fit. We're not divisible. And, like all the other undivisables out there, I've left. So have a zillion others, and I don't pretend to be the first guy who's left and never come back, but I will certainly not be back at wikipedia any time soon. They can have it. Fuck em. ~~~~
The Idea Police
I'm not going to invoke Godwin, so don't even try to attribute that to me.
I've more or less avoided wikipedia for the last three weeks. In that time, I've gotten a few dozen pages written on Foreigners. I've also read a few books (Gibson, Sterling, Pratchett, Stross, Golding, Seymour Lachman, Lovecraft, ...). I've also spent a lot of time sketching out the RB26 project for the Z. I've also done some work for CSC/NOAA. I've also written some code. I've gone to look at twenty-some houses. I've attended a dcawd meet. I've damn near beaten NFS:Carbon. And, last, and perhaps least, I've spent a lot of time on 4chan, 2chan, and 7chan. In that time, I've also made, oh, thirty additions to wikipedia, most of which were entirely useless. Votes for delete, votes for keep, user talk, and a couple of typo/spelling issues. Nothing of substance.
In that time, I am much happier with my contributions away from wikipedia than those for the project. Note also that wikipedia has received over a million dollars in the last couple months, and continues to be tax-free. I went back today to have a look at the article for ASAT, because I have contributed substantially to this (in regards to 1 2 3 4 5 6). Upon so going, I was reminded of the recent Futanari AFD discussion. Naturally, we see these gems:
Of course, I knew about this, and I knew that it wasn't likely to go anywhere. However, the justification sickens me. Now, upon going back and noticing the things I'd commented on, I happen upon this gem:
Let's disregard for a moment that I can't even link to or document what the article originally said. Instead, let's point at the wiktionary entry for fogger which has 25,000 google hits, itself meeting the credibility standards. Nitrous Express, of course, has over a quarter of a million hits.
And so we have the asininentsia of wikipedia mandating on one hand that an article must have sources, on the other that it can't possibly because it's so.. odious, and yet on another (the "dick scenario") that even if it did have sources, and it wasn't so odious, well, it was obviously biased and not fit for inclusion anyways.
It's enough to make me thoroughly fucking sick (er! sicker!) of the project. Having spent three weeks away, what's to stop me from RTD'ing and never contributing again? Certainly not because a few junior members of the down's syndrome orangutan brigade
are quite this stupid? Or, maybe, this is just the last straw. Maybe they're the excuse I need to stop singing the praises of this fucking project, to stop encouraging people to contribute, to stop contributing myself, and to just admit it: the internet is just fucking dumb, and not worth my time.
I've more or less avoided wikipedia for the last three weeks. In that time, I've gotten a few dozen pages written on Foreigners. I've also read a few books (Gibson, Sterling, Pratchett, Stross, Golding, Seymour Lachman, Lovecraft, ...). I've also spent a lot of time sketching out the RB26 project for the Z. I've also done some work for CSC/NOAA. I've also written some code. I've gone to look at twenty-some houses. I've attended a dcawd meet. I've damn near beaten NFS:Carbon. And, last, and perhaps least, I've spent a lot of time on 4chan, 2chan, and 7chan. In that time, I've also made, oh, thirty additions to wikipedia, most of which were entirely useless. Votes for delete, votes for keep, user talk, and a couple of typo/spelling issues. Nothing of substance.
In that time, I am much happier with my contributions away from wikipedia than those for the project. Note also that wikipedia has received over a million dollars in the last couple months, and continues to be tax-free. I went back today to have a look at the article for ASAT, because I have contributed substantially to this (in regards to 1 2 3 4 5 6). Upon so going, I was reminded of the recent Futanari AFD discussion. Naturally, we see these gems:
I have not been able to find reliable references (following an admittedly cursory look, as I wasn't enjoying going through the material), and seems to be comprised almost exclusively of original research.
...
What? Article was unsourced, article is now sourced. Threatening to delete it was, unfortunately, the only way to get this to happen, as the standard request had been ignored for over six months. Proto::► 14:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Of course, I knew about this, and I knew that it wasn't likely to go anywhere. However, the justification sickens me. Now, upon going back and noticing the things I'd commented on, I happen upon this gem:
- 14:16, December 22, 2006 Pilotguy (Talk | contribs) deleted "Nitrous Express" (Deleting page - reason was: "Blatant advertising, WP:CSD#G11" using NPWatcher)
Let's disregard for a moment that I can't even link to or document what the article originally said. Instead, let's point at the wiktionary entry for fogger which has 25,000 google hits, itself meeting the credibility standards. Nitrous Express, of course, has over a quarter of a million hits.
And so we have the asininentsia of wikipedia mandating on one hand that an article must have sources, on the other that it can't possibly because it's so.. odious, and yet on another (the "dick scenario") that even if it did have sources, and it wasn't so odious, well, it was obviously biased and not fit for inclusion anyways.
It's enough to make me thoroughly fucking sick (er! sicker!) of the project. Having spent three weeks away, what's to stop me from RTD'ing and never contributing again? Certainly not because a few junior members of the down's syndrome orangutan brigade
are quite this stupid? Or, maybe, this is just the last straw. Maybe they're the excuse I need to stop singing the praises of this fucking project, to stop encouraging people to contribute, to stop contributing myself, and to just admit it: the internet is just fucking dumb, and not worth my time.
15 January, 2007
At what price liberation?
Ahem:
Misandry, I suppose. A link would really only fan the flames of somebody who is predisposed to, uh, be uncomfortable and overreact. Been there, done that.
In short, there is a pattern of the "pink collar ghetto" in literary genres as in other professions. (I just looked online for something to link to, to explain pink collar ghetto and did not find an adequate explanation. Yes, it refers to jobs with a high concentration of women. But it further refers to a process: as women enter a high status profession, the pay for that job goes down, and there is a tipping point where the profession itself becomes devalued because women have entered it and succeeded. I remember going in around 1991 as a fledgling tech writer to a meeting of the Society for Technical Communication, and hearing a lot of incredibly depressing but realistic talk about the pink collar ghettoization of tech writing.
Misandry, I suppose. A link would really only fan the flames of somebody who is predisposed to, uh, be uncomfortable and overreact. Been there, done that.
Thinking too hard?
Are you thinking too hard if you describe something as a Stephensonian near-term societal collapse into capitoanarchy? I have a hard time believing I'm not missing the point by distilling an idea that is clearly just somebody's idea of a fun landscape into something that's a Proper Noun and, uh, referenced. For example, I'd feel completely stupid if I referred to something as a Hamiltonian death-leakage scenario. It makes sense, but I couldn't read it aloud without laughing.
Oh look, it has a rainbow.
Greenpeace has a sense of humor.
Captain Watson has put together Sea Shepherd's most ambitious campaign to attempt to halt the six-ship fleet.
"At the risk of sounding dramatic, my crew and I are prepared to die for these whales if need be," he said.
Wow. Who gave these people ships to begin with?
More house hunting.
We've been out house hunting again (note: it's winter. in Virginia. it just looks like that. it's much prettier in spring.) We have now seen, uh, I think eleven houses (and another ten or so in 2004). We've seen probably four that were just garbage, five that were interesting, but maybe more attractive at a lower price, and two that we were really very pleased with. We've been looking in Manassas, Front Royal, Winchester, Woodbridge, Reston (which is really nowhere near as nice as the wikipedia article makes it out to be), and Herndon. We considered looking in Stafford and places south, but going north on I-95 in the morning (note location of Manassas and Stafford on linked map) is just not an option. Coming in on 66 sucks, but it's nowhere near as bad. Plus, that corridor is a lot more likely to get light rail and metro than 95 is. Who wants to go to Newington from DC?
Here's the rundown, so far. Reston, Herndon, while being convenient, and close, give us homes that are not very big, have very little land, and are too close to our neighbors. Additionally, they're in a pretty bad state of repair. So we could probably move out there, from Arlington, but we'd be unhappy with what we've got, and when you spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars, you just can't walk into it unhappy. At least, I can't. This all changes when you get closer to a million dollars (and this is a first house for us, so not a chance here). The neighborhood of 700-900k is pretty okay in terms of quality and location. You can probably get away with slightly less than that in a townhouse, which we're pretty sure we don't want. There was a place off Frying Pan (yeah, they're weird like that in Northern Virginia) that was an end-unit, new, two car garage, and had a yard, but that was in 2004, and it was $420,000 back then. Today it's over $600k. Oh, and occupied.
We looked at Manassas, which is kind of a change for us. I'd never spent much time out there. There's this corridor between 95 and 66, rt. 234, which is reasonably largeish for traffic. There's also an incredible variance in home quality there. There are some nice places in terrible neighborhoods (the first one we looked at yesterday was actually pretty nice in and out, but it was in approximately the worst neighborhood this side of, say, Tijuana). The inverse is true, as well. We found a place we liked pretty well. It was a bit much (just about 10% outside of what we wanted to spend), but it was in a nice neighborhood. The problem was there was all the PO's furniture in it, so it was really hard to get an idea of what the place looked like. Add to that there was a huge Salvadoran family that was talking to their agent about underbidding and getting in the bid, like, today, and I just don't want to get into another biddingwar quagmire.
The view west from Front Royal across the 66 corridor
Then there's Haymarket. For those of you in the area, Haymarket is approximately the place between DC and Tennessee where you realize civilization has started again. It's right after the exit to 29 from 66 (out by Gainesville), and it's about twenty miles further in than Front Royal. The houses are, correspondingly, about 10% more expensive. The houses we've been looking at in FR are generally up in the mountains, and have enormous yards (3 acres, give or take), and great views (usually from about 3000' up, and out across the western Virginia (not WV) valley). However, being built on a mountain means your lot is probably a hill, and not especially serviceable. This factor increases the higher you go up, because we don't have mesas in Virginia.
So Haymarket, for contrast, has homes on flatter lots, generally a little smaller (say, 1-2 acres), a little more expensive, and somewhat older (1980 vs 1990). But there's also a different sort of person living in them.
Let me digress for a moment here. There is a huge variance in the kind of people out past Dulles. You get people that are buying out there because they don't want to be in the DC area, you get people that can't afford to be closer, and I think the rest of them are people that didn't want to be closer when they were originally kicked out of the garden of eden. That latter type tend to live in very weird houses, ranging from really gross to, uh, grosser. Generally. The first type can be very eccentric, so you're not sure what you're going to get when you look at one of those (house built into a four-story octagon? check. sacrificial chamber in basement? check.). Some of them are nice, some of them are creepy. They're generally on large, nice lots, though. And inside work is stuff that Can Be Done. Type two are a strange bunch. Some of them bought nice houses out there that would have been twice as much in the Fairfax or Arlington (thrice as much) areas. Some of them just bought modest houses out there. Generally, though, they've done a pretty good job of keeping the place up, they're modestly updated, and serviceable. Since you're going to wind up ripping things out and redecorating, these are good places to look at. You want four walls and a roof that isn't going to collapse, not high fashion.
This puts us somewhere in the convergence of groups 1 and 2. The obvious problem is there's pretty much uniform distribution, so the 1 and 2 houses are going to be scattered amongst the 3 houses, which kind of frighten us. There are a few places the first two tend to clump together. One of these places is Haymarket. The other is the High Knob area of Front Royal.
So yesterday, we find ourself way out in the sticks, but in a neighborhood I wouldn't have any problem associating with, say, the 7100 corridor, except the houses are on 1-2 acre plots. The houses are not quite new (10-20 years old), but because the bias favors 1 more than 2, all of them are in pretty good shape. The roads are in good shape, the yards are in good shape, and there even seems to be a pretty even demographic (40-50, multiple cars — meaning toys, not el-caminos-on-bricks — 2-3 kids, say bottom of the upper middle class category). It gets a little weird, though. One place we looked at had a deer stand (this is a seat, attached to a tree, 8-12 feet up, from which you can shoot deer from an altitude they don't expect bullets to come from), and when we were looking at it, the neighbor to the west of us was entertaining his daughter by driving around the backyard on a 500cc 4-wheeler, which was outfitted with a deer-carcass pallet, and done up in camouflage. So, there's a bit of an eccentric stripe in them (of course, they think anyone who wears corduroy pants and sits in front of a computer sixteen hours a day is weird...).
The house that we most liked had a huge deck, lots of space (eh, 3200-3500 ft2), which was intelligently partitioned, a big yard (deer stand, steel flapper targets for .22 LR, shed, new driveway — big enough for a full sized trailer — and relatively new appliances. Oh yeah, and a garage more than big enough for my evil plans with regards to the Z (that is, full engine swap, stripping the chassis down, possibly painting, and chassis work), and enough to certainly park both indoors, and five more in the driveway. Yeah, seven cars worth of parking. Yeesh. Anyways, the garage is finished, so I won't have any concerns about spilling brake fluid/paint/motor oil/gasoline on it. Neat.
It suits us pretty well. It's a little more than we want to spend, but then it's been on the market for 200+ days, and they're offering a pretty good amount towards closing. So I think we break even there. The commute is 50mi instead of 75mi. Interestingly, the commute from 75mi starts to get ugly right there (just past 29), so that 25mi ∆ is actually just another gallon of gas and twenty minutes you spend, each way, every day.
The yard don't suck.
the master bedroom is about as big as a shoebox ...
and... egad.
Contrast this to the House On The Mountain, and you have a less-nice yard (but no HOA, meaning firearms are A-OK — I'd really like to be able to sight in a rifle in the back yard — as are open-exhaust vehicles, etc), but a nicer house, and a shorter commute. Note that we absolutely love the lot on HOTM, and we "like" the Haymarket house.
Here's the rundown, so far. Reston, Herndon, while being convenient, and close, give us homes that are not very big, have very little land, and are too close to our neighbors. Additionally, they're in a pretty bad state of repair. So we could probably move out there, from Arlington, but we'd be unhappy with what we've got, and when you spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars, you just can't walk into it unhappy. At least, I can't. This all changes when you get closer to a million dollars (and this is a first house for us, so not a chance here). The neighborhood of 700-900k is pretty okay in terms of quality and location. You can probably get away with slightly less than that in a townhouse, which we're pretty sure we don't want. There was a place off Frying Pan (yeah, they're weird like that in Northern Virginia) that was an end-unit, new, two car garage, and had a yard, but that was in 2004, and it was $420,000 back then. Today it's over $600k. Oh, and occupied.
We looked at Manassas, which is kind of a change for us. I'd never spent much time out there. There's this corridor between 95 and 66, rt. 234, which is reasonably largeish for traffic. There's also an incredible variance in home quality there. There are some nice places in terrible neighborhoods (the first one we looked at yesterday was actually pretty nice in and out, but it was in approximately the worst neighborhood this side of, say, Tijuana). The inverse is true, as well. We found a place we liked pretty well. It was a bit much (just about 10% outside of what we wanted to spend), but it was in a nice neighborhood. The problem was there was all the PO's furniture in it, so it was really hard to get an idea of what the place looked like. Add to that there was a huge Salvadoran family that was talking to their agent about underbidding and getting in the bid, like, today, and I just don't want to get into another bidding
The view west from Front Royal across the 66 corridor
Then there's Haymarket. For those of you in the area, Haymarket is approximately the place between DC and Tennessee where you realize civilization has started again. It's right after the exit to 29 from 66 (out by Gainesville), and it's about twenty miles further in than Front Royal. The houses are, correspondingly, about 10% more expensive. The houses we've been looking at in FR are generally up in the mountains, and have enormous yards (3 acres, give or take), and great views (usually from about 3000' up, and out across the western Virginia (not WV) valley). However, being built on a mountain means your lot is probably a hill, and not especially serviceable. This factor increases the higher you go up, because we don't have mesas in Virginia.
So Haymarket, for contrast, has homes on flatter lots, generally a little smaller (say, 1-2 acres), a little more expensive, and somewhat older (1980 vs 1990). But there's also a different sort of person living in them.
Let me digress for a moment here. There is a huge variance in the kind of people out past Dulles. You get people that are buying out there because they don't want to be in the DC area, you get people that can't afford to be closer, and I think the rest of them are people that didn't want to be closer when they were originally kicked out of the garden of eden. That latter type tend to live in very weird houses, ranging from really gross to, uh, grosser. Generally. The first type can be very eccentric, so you're not sure what you're going to get when you look at one of those (house built into a four-story octagon? check. sacrificial chamber in basement? check.). Some of them are nice, some of them are creepy. They're generally on large, nice lots, though. And inside work is stuff that Can Be Done. Type two are a strange bunch. Some of them bought nice houses out there that would have been twice as much in the Fairfax or Arlington (thrice as much) areas. Some of them just bought modest houses out there. Generally, though, they've done a pretty good job of keeping the place up, they're modestly updated, and serviceable. Since you're going to wind up ripping things out and redecorating, these are good places to look at. You want four walls and a roof that isn't going to collapse, not high fashion.
This puts us somewhere in the convergence of groups 1 and 2. The obvious problem is there's pretty much uniform distribution, so the 1 and 2 houses are going to be scattered amongst the 3 houses, which kind of frighten us. There are a few places the first two tend to clump together. One of these places is Haymarket. The other is the High Knob area of Front Royal.
So yesterday, we find ourself way out in the sticks, but in a neighborhood I wouldn't have any problem associating with, say, the 7100 corridor, except the houses are on 1-2 acre plots. The houses are not quite new (10-20 years old), but because the bias favors 1 more than 2, all of them are in pretty good shape. The roads are in good shape, the yards are in good shape, and there even seems to be a pretty even demographic (40-50, multiple cars — meaning toys, not el-caminos-on-bricks — 2-3 kids, say bottom of the upper middle class category). It gets a little weird, though. One place we looked at had a deer stand (this is a seat, attached to a tree, 8-12 feet up, from which you can shoot deer from an altitude they don't expect bullets to come from), and when we were looking at it, the neighbor to the west of us was entertaining his daughter by driving around the backyard on a 500cc 4-wheeler, which was outfitted with a deer-carcass pallet, and done up in camouflage. So, there's a bit of an eccentric stripe in them (of course, they think anyone who wears corduroy pants and sits in front of a computer sixteen hours a day is weird...).
The house that we most liked had a huge deck, lots of space (eh, 3200-3500 ft2), which was intelligently partitioned, a big yard (deer stand, steel flapper targets for .22 LR, shed, new driveway — big enough for a full sized trailer — and relatively new appliances. Oh yeah, and a garage more than big enough for my evil plans with regards to the Z (that is, full engine swap, stripping the chassis down, possibly painting, and chassis work), and enough to certainly park both indoors, and five more in the driveway. Yeah, seven cars worth of parking. Yeesh. Anyways, the garage is finished, so I won't have any concerns about spilling brake fluid/paint/motor oil/gasoline on it. Neat.
It suits us pretty well. It's a little more than we want to spend, but then it's been on the market for 200+ days, and they're offering a pretty good amount towards closing. So I think we break even there. The commute is 50mi instead of 75mi. Interestingly, the commute from 75mi starts to get ugly right there (just past 29), so that 25mi ∆ is actually just another gallon of gas and twenty minutes you spend, each way, every day.
The yard don't suck.The outside ain't bad.
... but one car garage ...
the master bedroom is about as big as a shoebox ...and... egad.Contrast this to the House On The Mountain, and you have a less-nice yard (but no HOA, meaning firearms are A-OK — I'd really like to be able to sight in a rifle in the back yard — as are open-exhaust vehicles, etc), but a nicer house, and a shorter commute. Note that we absolutely love the lot on HOTM, and we "like" the Haymarket house.
Squeeeee!!
Sandy wants it for the soundtrack. Alex wants it because he doesn't get to eat enough brains at work. Sounds like a good enough reason to buy. And besides, since I beat Gears of War, I haven't had enough chainsaw-and-gore mayhem. It's important that I get a new game.
14 January, 2007
Sports Journalism 110
Soccer is like bidets. Do you know what a bidet is? Some strange hygienic device usually parked next to the toilet in European bathrooms. Very big over there. But nothing over here. Don't need 'em, don't want 'em, never going to have 'em. Ditto for Beckham, even at a million dollars a week. Especially at a million dollars a week.
Give that man a raise.