This is just fucking awesome!

http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2006/rubens-tube-p1.php

Not my own words, but something I never thought of.

Money does exist in Star Trek. Starship crews get paid. Some writers confuse not needing money with not having it. 40 + years and 700+ scripts and you're bound to have inconsistencies.

The Federation has near-unlimited power generation, replicators that can rearrange matter however they want, trasnporters that can move resources anywhere they want in an instant. Drudge work is taken care of by advanced machines. Plus dozens of other fantasically advanced technologies.

The result is that the cost in resources in taking care of a human being has zeroed out. It costs the Federation less than a few pennies a day to feed, clothe, educate and provide medical care for the average citizen. So the government provides all that for its citizens because its cheap and relatively effortless for them to do so.

Hence, you don't need money in the Federation, because all of your essentials will be taken care of. Apparently people can live their whole lives with never seeing money. BUt if you do want to work, something the Federation society strongly encourages, you get paid money ("credits") to pay for luxuries and other sundries. Hence Picard's brother maintaining a vinyard, Sisko's dad running a restaurant, Harry Mud always trying to get rich quick, etc.

Its not communist as profit and personal gain is still strongly encouraged and sought after; its just that the lowest rung on society's ladder has been raised quite a bit higher than what we have today. Its kind of what the western democracies might be like today if they had an all-pervasive but cheap societal sfaety net for its citizens.
-- Dhusk on Slashdot

Watch this a couple times, it's really quite amazing.

So I'm sitting here catching up on my Smallville episodes, and the phone rings. Kat's calling me because she's bored and wants me to entertain her. After a few minutes it comes out that she's been gradually doing things that she knows will bother me with the intention of trying to see what my limit is, to see which buttons she can push to set me off.

I've heard of this before, it's the same principle that the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days was based on, and is one of those little things that women do to drive men crazy. This fits into the same category as the ever popular Trap Question, where the only correct answer is one that compliments the asker. Kat and I addressed this early in our relationship, that I wont be caught up in those kinds of questions. Whenever she asks one, I just point out that it's a trick question and it puts us on even ground for an honest answer (huge relationship saver, I highly recommend it).

Anyway, the conversation continued on for a while until this happened.

Kat: Would you break up with me if I built a shrine to you in my bedroom?
Me: No, but I would definately question your mental stability.

Kat: What if I made it out of cheese?

At this point I started laughing so hard that by the time I was done we had moved on.

I finally ended the conversation by fighting fire with fire. I went into the bathroom and started taking a dump, and then informed her that I was in the bathroom taking a dump.

She scowled at me for playing dirty and then decided to go find something else to do, hanging up after saying good bye.

I love this woman.

"Where do you see yourself in five years?"

Today I had an interview with Abtech, an enterprise hardware company. They have an option position in their tech-lab for an IT related job, and we were discussing if I would be right for it. The above question kept coming up, over and over again. For the life of me, I could not come up with a decent answer, which was a serious problem throughout the course of the interview. I couldn't seem to come up with an answer that they liked. After I left and was able to clear my mind more, I started to realize why.

I have, for most intents and purposes, gone through two career changes so far. Straight out of High School I was shooting for software programming. I was sure that was the career that was right for me, and I pursued it actively. In 2000 I landed a great job as a javascript developer, and I was sure I was on the express route to a great career. Then the dot.com crash happened, and I found myself sitting on a trade that nobody wanted. "JavaScript Programmer? What's that?" It would be another five years before anyone considered JavaScript anything other then a subset of web-design. I grabbed the only job I could, working retail for Borders, and I floated for two years before deciding to get back into Cinema.
I found myself again as a film projectionist. I was doing so well at Pacific, that I was sure I wanted to be a career projectionist. But when I went looking around, I couldn't find anything that pays a living wage. The only film PJ jobs worth anything were engineering jobs, a field fully staffed with guys who have been doing it for decades. By 2010, there will be fewer then 1000 PJ Engineers in the United States. My second career ended before it had even begun.

My experiences have taught me that career minded goals are like farts in the wind. You can't truly predict where you'll go, no one can.

• Eight years ago I was doing entry level IT servicing for a small company.
  
• Seven years ago I was working at a movie theater.
  
• Six years ago I was writing software in a development field so advanced that nobody even had a name for it. It took the rest of computing 5 years to catch up with what we were doing.
  
• Five years ago I was working retail at a book store.
  
• Now, afer three years, I'm leaving the cinema trade again.

What will I be doing in five years? Fuck if I know! I might not even be in California in five years! The only thing I can guarantee in five years is that I will be 32 years old, married, and probably have a kid.

Everything else is just a job.

Just a follow-up to my previous post. Submarina did actually respond to my email. They said they are redesigning the website and will take my suggestions into consideration.

i didn't expect any response at all, so this is kinda cool.

Submarina.com

Dear Submarina

I came to the website in order to find out the operating hours for the Carmel Mountain location. After sitting here for five minutes waiting for your all-flash webdesign to load and then having to turn off my pop-up blocker just to get the location listing to even display, I find out the location I wanted closed within the time that I spent trying to find out if it was still open.

Five web design faux-pas committed by your site in the time I was on there:
1) No non-flash viewing provision. You just lost anybody not on broadband internet, anybody using an older computer and anyone using a PDA or cellphone.

2) The website resized my browser window the instant it loaded. If I wanted a fullscreen browser window, I would have done it myself. Please don't presume to tell me how to use my computer.

3) Why does a sandwich store need a flash site so complex that it requires a loading screen? You sell sandwiches!

4) Website coverpage. I went to submarina.com, I already know it's the site for submarina, I don't need a whole page telling me just that I'm at submarina.com.

5) From initial loading to finally finding the hours of the store, I clicked a total of seven times, not counting the clicks I made to allow the flash to load and to disable popup blocking. It should never take a user more then three clicks to find the information they need, and it should NEVER take an entire 10 minutes just to find out if a store location is still open. I probably could have gotten the information faster from Google.

Your flashy webdesign may look pretty, but it's costing you money.

On Monday I get a call from my Mom. A friend of her's just bought a new MacBook and needed all her files transfered off her old iBook. She was gonna pay some guy $75 to do it for her, so my mom called to see if I'd be willing to do it. It's an easy enough process, so I said sure. She brought the two laptops by Monday and left them for me to do it. I asked Mom to ask her what she was planning to do with the old iBook, since I'd be willing to buy it if the price was right.

First off let me say how much I love the MacBook. Yes, the shiney screen is annoying (especially since it picks up finger smudges like mad), but it looks simply lovely. The keyboard was a little weird, but very usable. It booted up insanely fast, and everything ran nice a quickly. iPhoto and iTunes both launched almost instantly, I was very impressed.

So I slaved the iBook in Target Disk Mode and moved all her documents, music and pictures over. Whole process took about half an hour since I had to do imports into iTunes/iPhoto (she already had some stuff on the new MacBook, so i couldn't just overwrite the libraries).

Tuesday afternoon Mom comes by to pick them back up and drops a nice bomb on me. "Nicole says you can keep the iBook."

!!!!!!!!!!!
!!! \o/ !!!
!!!!!!!!!!!

I have been needing a new laptop for so long. The old iBook G3 that I usurped from Mom years ago has been gradually slipping into convalescence. The battery is completely dead, the display has issues, the CD-ROM wont read anymore, and it's horribly low on RAM. I can't run more then 4-5 programs at a time, and MP3 playback stutters under basic load. Forget playing video on it.

This new iBook is a G4 1.4Ghz with a 14" screen, the last of the iBook line. Fitting that I would go from the first iBook to the last. I'm now using it at work, I've retired the old G3 to my closet until the day I need some kind of backup. I'm thinking I might wipe it and load OS9 onto it.

/cheer

So this morning I decided to time myself while I threaded a few of the projectors this morning. I know I'm pretty fast, I can thread all 12 in twenty minutes, but I've never done a single timing to check.

Timed myself three times. Best time: 69 seconds. SIXTY NINE SECONDS!!
Most of our staff take 3 minutes at least. Rebb's best time is a minute, 45.

/flex
/roar

Six months ago Pacific Theatres put all of its San Diego locations up for sale.

Two weeks ago a group of business types toured each location. Both they and the staff were told not to ask any questions of each other, so as to preserve the anonymity of the group. They don't want the staff to know what company is interested, so that they don't get any biased treatment. This plan failed.
Gary, our projection's engineer, recognized one of the men, Craig somethingorother. They both used to work together at Mann Theaters. Last he heard, he was working for Signature Theaters, a now wholly owned subsidiary of Regal Entertainment.

Today, John Siddik (Executive in charge of Light and Sound for Pacific Theatres) and another VP whose name I can't remember went around the theater and took an inventory of all the equipment on the site.

This is bad. If Regal has decided to go ahead and purchase all the San Diego locations, in all likelihood they will only keep two or three of them open (most likely Gaslamp and Town Square, maybe Grossmont). The between UltraStar's Poway location, and the Regal owned Edwards 18 in Mira Mesa, Carmel Mountain is a sinkhole when it comes to mainstream movies. Our only chance of survival is as an indy house (see: Landmark Cinemas), or as a sub-run location (Two Dollar Theater).

Fat chance of that happening, dispite it being a prime spot for it.

I am so screwed.