i wanna be sedated
By anders pearson 16 Apr 2001
joey ramone died the other day. i am sad.
ouch
By anders pearson 06 Apr 2001
i’m pretty sure there are better ways to fight acne than setting your face on fire.
tesla
By anders pearson 06 Apr 2001
i went to a lecture on Nikola Tesla given by John M. Cohn from IBM today. i’ve been mildly obsessed with Tesla since early highschool when i read Man Out of Time so i didn’t really learn anything new about him but i enjoyed it anyway. at the end of the talk we got to play with a big tesla coil though. enormous high voltage arcs. wirelessly powering flourescent lights from a few meters away. vaporizing the aluminum in CDs leaving the plastic around it intact. too cool.
death and taxes
By anders pearson 01 Apr 2001
i just wasted the last two hours trying to do my taxes online. i gave up eventually because the site was so frigging slow and poorly done. i’m on a fast connection but i had to wait a good 2 minutes for each page to download. and it just went on and on. i don’t have any stocks or bonds or other weird crap going on; i have one job; i’m single; no dependents; no weird deductions. it ought to take no time at all to do my taxes. but i had to go through answering one question at a time (almost always answering ‘no’ because i didn’t fit into some bizarre category (no, i’m not a nun, i don’t generate my own electricity using an alternative power source, and no, i’m not an independant llama farmer)) waiting 2 minutes each time for the next stupid question to come up so i could say no to it too.
what i’d like to see is ‘taxes for average people.’ it would have a form where you enter your name, check if you’re single or married, and enter your credit card. then the next page is a form that mirrors a standard W-2 that you just fill in the boxes with the info from your regular W-2. at this point, you can either let it calculate stuff and be done with it, or go on and answer other questions if you do happen to have a more complicated situation.
and just when i was getting really despondant and fed up with the whole thing i learned that even suicide wouldn’t get me out of doing my taxes. damn. there goes that idea.
eyewitness record reviews
By anders pearson 29 Mar 2001
this is great. steve albini offers his insider reviews and commentary on records that he produced. vicious.
tiger: 1, zookeeper: 0
By anders pearson 22 Mar 2001
i went to a couple zoos when i was in china.
i don’t recommend that anyone who shares any degree of western society’s views on cruelty to animals do the same. animals kept in unsanitary concrete and iron pens barely big enough to hold them. miniature stallions made to fight each other for onlookers’ amusement. a black bear being led around by a ring in its cheek, being beaten with a stick and made to do tricks for the crowd; its entire nose shredded from where the ring used to be but obviously tore through the flesh too many times. not for the weak-stomached.
hence, this makes me happy.
invertebrate jonestown
By anders pearson 22 Mar 2001
has anyone ever figured out why worms commit mass suicide whenever it rains?
my pants are vibrating
By anders pearson 20 Mar 2001
i occasionally like to indulge in rants on user interfaces and the future of technology. my thoughts basically boil down to the observation that 99% of interfaces to modern technology (especially computers) suck. technology should be transparent. it should work for us and not the other way around. if a device or program doesn’t save me time or work in the long run, i don’t want to use it.
as a demonstration of my thoughts on how technology should behave, i’ve posted a description of how i set up email forwarding to my cellphone. i’m pretty happy with the system i’ve got set up as it does what i want it to automatically, without any intervention or effort on my part.
clusterfuck
By anders pearson 20 Mar 2001
just turned in a team research project today for my computational genomics class on “Hierarchical Clustering of Yeast Genes by Regulatory Regions”. cool, if somewhat obtuse, stuff.
the ol hometown
By anders pearson 18 Mar 2001
stompyblog doesn’t provide links to individual posts (most annoying) forcing me to quote the march 12th entry rather than just linking directly to it:
MAINE ? A Parkman man will be sentenced today for trying to murder his son, an admitted zoophile, or person who has a sexual attraction to animals.
Frank Buble, 71, pleaded guilty last December in Piscataquis County Superior Court to attempted murder and elevated aggravated assault. He is accused of trying to kill his 44-year-old son, Phillip Buble, by striking him several times with a crowbar on Sept. 13, 1999.
The elder Buble reportedly attacked his son, intending to kill him, because of the son?s attraction to a dog, among other reasons.
In the September assault, the younger Buble received a broken arm and several lacerations and required medical treatment at Mayo Regional Hospital in Dover-Foxcroft.
In anticipation of today?s sentencing, Phillip Buble submitted a written request to the court asking that his ?significant other,? a short-legged, mixed-breed dog named Lady, be allowed in the courtroom for the sentencing.
The request was denied.
In his written request addressed to Justice Andrew Mead, presiding this week in Piscataquis County Superior Court, Buble stated that he would be exercising his right to speak at the sentencing.
?I?d like my significant other to attend by my side if possible as she was present in the house during the attack, though not an eyewitness to it, thank goodness,? Buble wrote.
?I?ve been informed your personal permission is needed given that my wife is not human, being a dog of about 36 pounds weight and very well behaved,? he added.
The letter carried Buble?s signature and a hand-drawn paw print. Typed below Buble?s written signature were the words ?Phillip and Lady Buble.?
Justice Mead denied the request Tuesday, noting that no animals are permitted in the courthouse unless it is a guide dog in the company of a visually impaired person.
Frank Buble, 71, pleaded guilty last December in Piscataquis County Superior Court to attempted murder and elevated aggravated assault. He is accused of trying to kill his 44-year-old son, Phillip Buble, by striking him several times with a crowbar on Sept. 13, 1999.
The elder Buble reportedly attacked his son, intending to kill him, because of the son?s attraction to a dog, among other reasons.
In the September assault, the younger Buble received a broken arm and several lacerations and required medical treatment at Mayo Regional Hospital in Dover-Foxcroft.
In anticipation of today?s sentencing, Phillip Buble submitted a written request to the court asking that his ?significant other,? a short-legged, mixed-breed dog named Lady, be allowed in the courtroom for the sentencing.
The request was denied.
In his written request addressed to Justice Andrew Mead, presiding this week in Piscataquis County Superior Court, Buble stated that he would be exercising his right to speak at the sentencing.
?I?d like my significant other to attend by my side if possible as she was present in the house during the attack, though not an eyewitness to it, thank goodness,? Buble wrote.
?I?ve been informed your personal permission is needed given that my wife is not human, being a dog of about 36 pounds weight and very well behaved,? he added.
The letter carried Buble?s signature and a hand-drawn paw print. Typed below Buble?s written signature were the words ?Phillip and Lady Buble.?
Justice Mead denied the request Tuesday, noting that no animals are permitted in the courthouse unless it is a guide dog in the company of a visually impaired person.
source: Bangor Daily News
this is quite amusing. i used to live in parkman. that’s about all i have to say about that. and people ask me why i left maine to move to manhattan….