Skimming

I just skimmed this crap.
Let's see if my spider senses were right.
This is Jon Reid. Presumably that's the blogger's name and he isn't just naming is blog.

Yo Mac users!

My co-worker Sean Christman has put up his very first app on the Mac App Store: Space Gremlin, an app that helps visualize the files on your hard drive.

Wow an app that lets me visualized my hard drive! ONLY ON A MAC!
No just kidding I don't even need to visualize it. It's a mix of video games, naked Asian women, "hilarious" pictures and a bunch of junk I can't be bothered to delete.
Why do I need to download an app to tell me this? It's my hard drive. I know what's on it.

It's way cool, and there's even a free demo available. If you get it and have feedback or questions, Sean sits like ten feet away from me. Well, when he's not in Ireland, that is, which he is about 30% of the time. Yes, he's that cool.

In other news, Sean and I will be working together on a project in a couple of weeks. He'll be working on an iPhone demo app, while I'll be retooling the client's current mobile web app using jQuery Mobile. Exciting stuff.

I'll just have to take your word for it.
Here's a post entitled "Because I don't know a loosing battle when I see it" and I know a losing battle is explaining to people the difference between lose and loose.
These must be the same people who call my FFXIV character Eddie Hart when clearly Edie and Eddie would be pronounced differently by the virtue of there being more letters involved.
AKA I think I've only heard one person pronounce it right.
Although at least three of them say it wrong on purpose because they know it'll push my buttons.

Looks like I was wrong in my previous post. I said that there wasn't enough science to back up worries that the radiation exposure from the new full-body airport scanners is harmful. And I tried to put things into perspective by talking about relative radiation doses. Where I was wrong is that there is evidence and study about the harm that these scanners can cause.

I liked it when they started shouting for everyone to stop moving like serious shit was going down then thanked us for our time and it was a successful test.
The entire purpose of an airport is just to fuck with people and I, for one, won't stand for it.
 Which is why the biggest thing I fear about becoming president of anime isn't moving 2000 miles away to a foreign land but instead the 18 hour plane flight beforehand.

Apropos other conversations I'm having online and IRL, here's a little information about skepticism.

Apropos is a word you should be scourged for using seriously.

In a nutshell, skepticism is a methodology, a way of searching for knowlege. It involves suspending judgement on the topic at hand and applying reason and logic to examine the claims and evidence. Only after examining the evidence will a skeptic make a provisional conclusion. 

Great so--
end of post.

Now, there's a lot of meaning encompassed in these two sentences, so let's deconstruct.

No really we don't--
Okay.

Suspension of Judgement

Skeptics use constructive doubt. They do not use doubt to refute, they use it to take a provisional stance that is as neutral as possible while they are evaluating the claims at hand. The goal is to avoid accepting or rejecting claims and evidence prematurely.

Yeah.
Cool.
Cool.
COOL.

This suspension of judgement is, needless to say, difficult. But it is a key step in the skeptical process. If you do not follow this step, everything you learn and reason will be tainted. This is the difference between skepticism and justification.

I'm just skipping this post. I couldn't suspend judgment long enough.

Here’s the thing. When you learn how to handle firearms, one of the things you’re supposed to learn is that they are tremendously powerful tools which are quite dangerous and should be handled with great care and respect. They have a couple of very specific purposes (self-defense and sport) and THAT’S IT. Any other use constitutes misuse.

Only a woman would need a ranged weapon at all times on her person to successfully defend herself.
Real men should be either unarmed (preferably) or armed with a suitably manly weapon like a sword or warhammer.

Open-carrying for the sole purpose of making a political point is misuse of your firearm. These people should have their weapons taken away from them by their grandfathers, be swatted with a hickory switch on the behind, and be sent to bed without supper. Once they grow back up and promise to treat their firearms with respect, they could have them back. In other words, if you’re going to behave like a petulant three-year-old, you should be treated like one.

Can you imagine King Leonidas having this conversation about weapon control?
Whenever it comes to the topic of weaponry and what should be done I just stop and think "can I imagine the King of the Spartans saying this?" And if the answer is no then I kindly shut up about it.

Seriously, folks. Open-carrying to make a point is disrespectful to your firearms and it’s disrespectful to your fellow citizens.

But only the citizens are allowed to carry weapons and--
nope not getting into this. On the other hand, the Usability Prime Directive does not mean the users are automatically relevant.

True, the users should determine how you will design, build, and offer your service, but only as long as that input is productive. Users are greedy, and just because they say (for a wild example) they want a telepathic interface doesn't mean you should invest all of your resources into research and development of online telepathy. In other words, it's important to separate usability issues from entitlement issues.

That's a buzzword in the video game community lately. Apparently Bioware (or EA, or someone) said that gamers had entitlement issues because they expected a product they paid for to be good.
Which is a great point. It really is your own fault for buying Mass Effect 3 and expecting it to be anything more than complete and utter shit. In fact, you're lucky the entire game wasn't one long gay porno with a giant middle finger watermark in the middle of the screen.

4-year aged Gouda cheese (rather like a very friendly and mellow aged cheddar; if it were a person it would be the sort who would come over and help you pack your bookshelves. You know how really good aged cheeses will have that very faint crunchy texture due to crystallized proteins? Yeah.)

Wow, dude.

My new 2 Gb USB thumb drive ($65 at Costco, thanks to a cupon)

65 bucks for a 2 GB USB drive?
How fucking old is this?
And that's after a coupon.
Or, no, my mistake: a "cupon"
and this entry is from 2006.
Fucking Livejournal.

Go here, and keep hitting “refresh” until you’ve found a total of five quotations that are meaningful to you, or mean something about you, or you agree with them, or whatever criteria you choose, I guess. Then post those five. 

What a great time wasting exercise in bullshit this'll be.

LET'S COMPARE QUOTES.

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
Aesop (620 BC - 560 BC), The Lion and the Mouse

Yeah that's pretty gay but I got:

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

    -William Ellery Channing (1780 - 1842)

I like it, actually. Maybe this won't be such bullshit after all.

Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

I was never a fan of The Three Stooges but perhaps I was mistaken:

Only fools are positive.

    -Moe Howard (1897 - 1975)

Does he mean think positively or only fools are ever sure of what they're doing?
It works both ways.

 If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918 - ), The Gulag Archipelago

Notice how my quotes are like one sentence and his are entire paragraphs?

Further proof of a discerning reader in my opinion.

The best way to get approval is not to need it.

   -Hugh Macleod

This nicca.

Hugh Macleod, Highlander.

Reminds me a lot of a (better) Machiavelli quote: "it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission."

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

SO RANDUM xP

Observe your enemies, for they first find out your faults.

    -Antisthenes (445 BC - 365 BC) 

Man how can I be getting such awesome quotes and you're stuck with garbage, friend?

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?
Carl Sagan

Then you whip out Carl Sagan at me.

Still I'm not really feeling that one.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

    -Albert Camus (1913 - 1960)

I had no idea Albert Camus was that hardcore.

In fact from what I've read I always assumed he was a pussy.

The farm is an organic fruit farm in Pallisade, which is over on the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains here in Colorado.

Oh, speaking of. Things I'm not allowed to call the stuff at my job:

non-organic apples "poison apples"

the water I drain from the tables "plague water"

this job is no fun at all, man.

"might give the customers the wrong idea" the manager told me.
Yeah and if someone is fucking stupid enough to take "plague water" seriously maybe they should starve out.

It's not like I announced it to customers, either. I was joking in the back with one of the other guys working there.

He really doesn't want to hear the nickname I devised for the seven layer bean dip then, no sir.

Cholesterol-laden health department nightmare shit log.

Aaaaaaaand here's where the guy claims to be a huge scifi fan but hasn't read Neuromancer of Starship Troopers.

What a loser.

Or, excuse me, "looser". To tie this back into a previous comment.

Anyway outside of the brief minute where I had fun comparing quotes this shit is fucking boring and I'm going to go do something else now.