How my evenings disappear: tweet at someone, they tweet back, I tweet back again. Check Google Reader while waiting for a response. Get response. Read webcomics. Five minutes later, it's an hour later.
~Michael
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Memorial Day Weekend, 2009
EDIT: Added links to the last paragraph.
I've been trying to fix my parents' desktop this last week. While playing games that stress the graphics card, the screen will occasionally fill with artifacts (it looks like a woven pattern), which makes it rather unusable. VRAM tests show nothing, GPU stress tests don't cause it, and underclocking and ramping up the cooling fan doesn't prevent it.
Still, I'm pretty sure it's the video card. I got a new card for my PC for Christmas last year and swapped my old graphics card into my parents' computer. The PCI-E power adapter that came with the new card didn't fit very well, apparently, because the OS told me the card didn't have sufficient power. Also, crackling may have been involved.
My dad likes to play Flight Simulator X, so I plan on replacing the card, since I broke it. At least they're cheap nowadays.
It was a busy weekend in more social ways, too. Alex, Matt, Scott and I went to the NC Zoo on Saturday, had a Memorial Day cookout on Sunday, and went to the Raleigh Museum of Natural Sciences with Erin and Evan today. In brief: way too crowded, fun but shorter than usual, and nice, respectively.
Expanded thoughts on the zoo: there were TONS of young families there, by which I mean both in the sense that the kids were young and that the parents were young. It was a little alarming, honestly, for so many people of roughly my age to be running about with children or pregnancies. No one gets used to getting older.
I saw a friend from college at the zoo (Diana), which was nice, because Alex always meets people she knows and I never meet people I know. The odds were pretty good that one of us would see someone we knew. The crowds were awful.
We got to see the swim dogs and miniature swim dog, though, so it was a successful zoo visit.
By my hand,
~Michael Akerman
I've been trying to fix my parents' desktop this last week. While playing games that stress the graphics card, the screen will occasionally fill with artifacts (it looks like a woven pattern), which makes it rather unusable. VRAM tests show nothing, GPU stress tests don't cause it, and underclocking and ramping up the cooling fan doesn't prevent it.
Still, I'm pretty sure it's the video card. I got a new card for my PC for Christmas last year and swapped my old graphics card into my parents' computer. The PCI-E power adapter that came with the new card didn't fit very well, apparently, because the OS told me the card didn't have sufficient power. Also, crackling may have been involved.
My dad likes to play Flight Simulator X, so I plan on replacing the card, since I broke it. At least they're cheap nowadays.
It was a busy weekend in more social ways, too. Alex, Matt, Scott and I went to the NC Zoo on Saturday, had a Memorial Day cookout on Sunday, and went to the Raleigh Museum of Natural Sciences with Erin and Evan today. In brief: way too crowded, fun but shorter than usual, and nice, respectively.
Expanded thoughts on the zoo: there were TONS of young families there, by which I mean both in the sense that the kids were young and that the parents were young. It was a little alarming, honestly, for so many people of roughly my age to be running about with children or pregnancies. No one gets used to getting older.
I saw a friend from college at the zoo (Diana), which was nice, because Alex always meets people she knows and I never meet people I know. The odds were pretty good that one of us would see someone we knew. The crowds were awful.
We got to see the swim dogs and miniature swim dog, though, so it was a successful zoo visit.
By my hand,
~Michael Akerman
Monday, May 11, 2009
Electro-Piano
One last thing for today: I bought a keyboard (the piano type)(this one). Now, in addition to knowing sax and pretending to learn guitar, I can learn piano! I really really like the idea of piano, far more so than guitar. The ability to play harmony and melody is appealing.
I think I really just want to play Simple Sim from The Sims 2, though.
By my hand,
~Michael Akerman (you know, I type that signature each time. You'd think I'd build it into the template, but it feels more genuine this way)
I think I really just want to play Simple Sim from The Sims 2, though.
By my hand,
~Michael Akerman (you know, I type that signature each time. You'd think I'd build it into the template, but it feels more genuine this way)
No More Kings
Scott discovered a band through Pandora that's pretty great. No More Kings sounds like Jason Mraz with an awesome band backing him. It's sort of an upbeat melodic rock that I really enjoy.
At first I was hooked on "Sweep the Leg", which is a track that should be at least interesting to any child of the 80s, then "Zombie Me" eclipsed it, then "Mr. B" eclipsed that! I've gained a new theme song from NMK with "Michael (Jump In)", which puts it up there in the list.
I've settled on my favorite song from NMK, though. "About Schroeder" is, as near as I can tell, about Lucy and Schroeder from Peanuts (the song says "Sally Brown sits down," which is the wrong character, but whatever).
There's a couplet in the song that runs:
It got me thinking about Lucy and Schroeder, and about Schulz in general. His characters were very simple, drawings with little detail of children with little souls, each character essentially a set of caricatures. Yet, there's something profound about them: they act, through their simplicity, as a remarkable mirror for ourselves. I'm not the first to say this, of course: Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame said that "in asking us to identify only with children, Schulz reminds us that our fears and insecurities are not much different when we grow up." (source) Charlie Brown's persistence and Linus' security blanket are apparent in ourselves, certainly. All of the characters have as their primary characteristic some melancholy aspect of the human psyche we all share, save Snoopy.
The most interesting character to me, though, is Lucy van Pelt. She's crabby and she's bossy, but it is revealed time and again that she's tremendously weak. She asks Charlie Brown and Schroeder to tell her she's pretty often enough, and she falls to temptation with surprising regularity when Charlie Brown and a football are concerned. Topping it all off, she has an unrequited love for Schroeder of a purity that can only be found in the idealized world of the comic strip.
Here we have a person in love with another for what he does and what he is. She sits by the piano, learning to appreciate Beethoven for him, complaining, certainly, but returning, always, to listen. There is no infatuation here: she sits facing away from Schroeder, her only connection to him the piano music. In contrast, Sally Brown has a nearly neurotic attraction to Linus for no apparent reason, following him like a spaniel and always staring at him. Charlie Brown does not even talk to the red haired girl: he can only be infatuated with her.
Out of all the tragic characters of Peanuts, Lucy is the most eminently human. She is crabby and bossy and foolish and deceitful and cruel. But, above that, she is loving and wounded, scared and small.
It is no accident that she is the psychiatrist.
By my hand,
~Michael Akerman
At first I was hooked on "Sweep the Leg", which is a track that should be at least interesting to any child of the 80s, then "Zombie Me" eclipsed it, then "Mr. B" eclipsed that! I've gained a new theme song from NMK with "Michael (Jump In)", which puts it up there in the list.
I've settled on my favorite song from NMK, though. "About Schroeder" is, as near as I can tell, about Lucy and Schroeder from Peanuts (the song says "Sally Brown sits down," which is the wrong character, but whatever).
There's a couplet in the song that runs:
This is love at its finest.
This is love how it needs to be.
It got me thinking about Lucy and Schroeder, and about Schulz in general. His characters were very simple, drawings with little detail of children with little souls, each character essentially a set of caricatures. Yet, there's something profound about them: they act, through their simplicity, as a remarkable mirror for ourselves. I'm not the first to say this, of course: Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame said that "in asking us to identify only with children, Schulz reminds us that our fears and insecurities are not much different when we grow up." (source) Charlie Brown's persistence and Linus' security blanket are apparent in ourselves, certainly. All of the characters have as their primary characteristic some melancholy aspect of the human psyche we all share, save Snoopy.
The most interesting character to me, though, is Lucy van Pelt. She's crabby and she's bossy, but it is revealed time and again that she's tremendously weak. She asks Charlie Brown and Schroeder to tell her she's pretty often enough, and she falls to temptation with surprising regularity when Charlie Brown and a football are concerned. Topping it all off, she has an unrequited love for Schroeder of a purity that can only be found in the idealized world of the comic strip.
Here we have a person in love with another for what he does and what he is. She sits by the piano, learning to appreciate Beethoven for him, complaining, certainly, but returning, always, to listen. There is no infatuation here: she sits facing away from Schroeder, her only connection to him the piano music. In contrast, Sally Brown has a nearly neurotic attraction to Linus for no apparent reason, following him like a spaniel and always staring at him. Charlie Brown does not even talk to the red haired girl: he can only be infatuated with her.
Out of all the tragic characters of Peanuts, Lucy is the most eminently human. She is crabby and bossy and foolish and deceitful and cruel. But, above that, she is loving and wounded, scared and small.
It is no accident that she is the psychiatrist.
By my hand,
~Michael Akerman
First Day
Oh MAN I'm tired.
Today was my first day of work at Novozymes North America, in Franklinton, NC. For those unacquainted, Novo. is the world leader in bioinnovations (I got that from their website, of course). One should probably read "bioinnovations" as "enzyme innovation and production". The company develops and produces enzymes for detergents, animal feed (it reduces phosphates in waste, apparently), fuel production, etc. I'll be working in fuel production, and I can't say terribly much because I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to talk about.
I'm going through orientation, which is basically an information flood. The take-home points: my benefits are better than I thought they were, my 401k is better than I thought it was, everyone is cool at Novo, and everyone goes by crazy non-initial abbreviations. It's the weirdest system, but I guess it's because of the size of the company and its international nature (it's based in Denmark). Everyone ends up with 4 or fewer letters based on their name, but it's seldom just standard initials. Since I'm Michael John Akerman, I might end up as MJAk or MiAk or, my favorite, MAke.
The drive is a little long, but it's cathartic. There is no traffic heading out of Raleigh in the morning.
By my hand,
~Michael Akerman
Today was my first day of work at Novozymes North America, in Franklinton, NC. For those unacquainted, Novo. is the world leader in bioinnovations (I got that from their website, of course). One should probably read "bioinnovations" as "enzyme innovation and production". The company develops and produces enzymes for detergents, animal feed (it reduces phosphates in waste, apparently), fuel production, etc. I'll be working in fuel production, and I can't say terribly much because I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to talk about.
I'm going through orientation, which is basically an information flood. The take-home points: my benefits are better than I thought they were, my 401k is better than I thought it was, everyone is cool at Novo, and everyone goes by crazy non-initial abbreviations. It's the weirdest system, but I guess it's because of the size of the company and its international nature (it's based in Denmark). Everyone ends up with 4 or fewer letters based on their name, but it's seldom just standard initials. Since I'm Michael John Akerman, I might end up as MJAk or MiAk or, my favorite, MAke.
The drive is a little long, but it's cathartic. There is no traffic heading out of Raleigh in the morning.
By my hand,
~Michael Akerman
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