whimsically practical, abundantly repetitive, listening to the abscence of listening

hi, how are you?
i'm good,
Life is delightful,
things are finally moving, being, becoming,
job is wonderful,
my car and residence are soon the same,
simple things, practical things,
after being so fanciful for so long i feel the need for practicality,
i am bothered by the absence of it,

i don't mean to bemoan,
that was one of the many reasons i've been quiet,
as well as being 'putered out,
insufficient time,
interest,
desire,
disgust with the state of blogs,
specifically the lack of personal insight and abundance of repetition,
and antipathy for the current state of listening around me.

Here is an email we got today from a client, an extreme example, but an example nonetheless~
................................................................................................................................
Question:Hi this question is for my Client Dorner Inc.

She has used all of her elements and assigned the accounts to them now they need to add the need to be able to add for lack of better word a new element so that when they need to post the expense of an insurance deductible or other expense that they need to charge the job due to damage to on the job they want to be able to Split the insurance expense to the GL account for insurance and the out of pocket expenses To another account currently in Whensoft you only get to assign 1 GL account How can we do this so that we can track the expense on the job as well as to the correct GL accounts?
...............................................................................................................

I loved the opening, i'm glad she made sure we knew this was a question, since we only get questions. The lack of punctuation is a bold choice, the random capitalization, "they need to add the need to be able to add for lack of better word"= brilliant. The crystal clear explanation of her problem, and the fact that this came from a CPA(ccountant).

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Another recent love, Karl Pilkington











He is on the Ricky Gervais Podcast, they are downloadable from iTunes, or free if you aren't a moron. They are basically 30 min radio shows with Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington. There are also free ones on iTunes. Ricky and Steve are funny, quick, and witty~ but Karl is unknowingly hilarious~ the way he views things is very simplistic, annoyed, and curious. Here are some quotes:
;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:;:

• Don't chuck stuff about because you'll break it.
  • Karl's interpretation of the 'People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones' proverb.

• People who live in glass houses have to answer the door.
• Karl updates the famous proverb from above
  

• Were those presents the three kings brought Jesus for Christmas or his birthday?

• Don't be chucking that out you might need it later.
  • Karl's interpretation of Benjamin Franklin's "Waste not, want not."

• You don't have to do it straight away, but just do it before it gets really bad.
  • Another interpretation of a proverb, based on Franklin's "A stitch in time saves nine."

• I scored once, and that's only because I was being chased by a bee." Karl's most vivid memory of playing football at school.

• A little story told quickly.
  • Karl's definition of an analogy

• They go from building to building, just building.
• On builders

• You never see a black ghost, do you?

• Why didn't evolution give them genes to make them good at carpentry then, so they could build a ladder instead of growing long necks?
  • On the the evolution of the giraffe.

• Who's it for, at the end of the day?
  • Karl on marriage.

• Knowledge is almost annoying.

• Karl: "Even the bit that was important, right, when they were getting married, right, there wasn't enough chairs cos it was, y'know, all the family gets the chairs, don't they (Ricky: 'selfish...') so I was sort of stood at the back and that, watching, and er, I couldn't hear what was going on, cos a woman was breastfeeding her baby."
  
• Steve: 'But- what- How loud was this baby guzzling away that you couldn't hear what was going on?'
• Karl: 'It was slurping, and all that....'
• -On a friend's wedding.

Check it out please! )
I'll be disappointed if you don't~(

As i mentioned earlier i have been put off by the many blogs simply repeating things from other blogs. Whether it be photo blogs, news blogs, gossip blogs, even psychology blogs they are all doing less creating more copying. Annoying yet easier. Here are some things copied from psychology blogs;
-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;

Voters’ personality traits in presidential elections

Abstract

Personality measures of more than 6000 US electors on the Big Five Factors have been collected on the Web through a Web site designed to assess their personality. By means of structural equation modeling the impact of personality factors as well as of demographic variables, such as age and sex, on voting intentions on the forthcoming US presidential elections was investigated. Personality variables accounted for 16% of variance of voting intentions, while gender and age accounted for no more than 3%. High Agreeableness and Openness were predictive of intention to vote for Kerry, while all high Energy, Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability were predictive of intention to vote for Bush. Results are consistent with previous research conducted in a different country, using a different language.

^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^

Action-Video-Game Experience Alters the Spatial Resolution of Vision

ABSTRACT—Playing action video games enhances several different aspects of visual processing; however, the mechanisms underlying this improvement remain unclear. Here we show that playing action video games can alter fundamental characteristics of the visual system, such as the spatial resolution of visual processing across the visual field. To determine the spatial resolution of visual processing, we measured the smallest distance a distractor could be from a target without compromising target identification. This approach exploits the fact that visual processing is hindered as distractors are brought close to the target, a phenomenon known as crowding. Compared with nonplayers, action-video-game players could tolerate smaller target-distractor distances. Thus, the spatial resolution of visual processing is enhanced in this population. Critically, similar effects were observed in non-video-game players who were trained on an action video game; this result verifies a causative relationship between video-game play and augmented spatial resolution.

'''''''''''''Mark - think this helps our photography?

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26 Reasons What You Think is Right is Wrong

A cognitive bias is something that our minds commonly do to distort our own view of reality. Here are the 26 most studied and widely accepted cognitive biases.

1. Bandwagon effect - the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink, herd behaviour, and manias. Carl Jung pioneered the idea of the collective unconscious which is considered by Jungian psychologists to be responsible for this cognitive bias.
2. Bias blind spot - the tendency not to compensate for one’s own cognitive biases.
3. Choice-supportive bias - the tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were.
4. Confirmation bias - the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.
5. Congruence bias - the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing.
6. Contrast effect - the enhancement or diminishment of a weight or other measurement when compared with recently observed contrasting object.
7. Déformation professionnelle - the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one’s own profession, forgetting any broader point of view.
8. Disconfirmation bias - the tendency for people to extend critical scrutiny to information which contradicts their prior beliefs and uncritically accept information that is congruent with their prior beliefs.
9. Endowment effect - the tendency for people to value something more as soon as they own it.
10. Focusing effect - prediction bias occurring when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.
11. Hyperbolic discounting - the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, the closer to the present both payoffs are.
12. Illusion of control - the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes which they clearly cannot.
13. Impact bias - the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.
14. Information bias - the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.
15. Loss aversion - the tendency for people to strongly prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains (see also sunk cost effects)
16. Neglect of probability - the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.
17. Mere exposure effect - the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.
18. Omission bias - The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).
19. Outcome bias - the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
20. Planning fallacy - the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.
21. Post-purchase rationalization - the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.
22. Pseudocertainty effect - the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.
23. Selective perception - the tendency for expectations to affect perception.
24. Status quo bias - the tendency for people to like things to stay relatively the same.
25. Von Restorff effect - the tendency for an item that “stands out like a sore thumb” to be more likely to be remembered than other items.
26. Zero-risk bias - preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

Complete list of cognitive biases - Wikipedia

2 reasons to celebreate the impending holiday

i've not been busy blogging. sorry, truthfully, kinda. Work has been good, it's fun and interesting, i enjoy all the people i work with, and it seems to be working out well. Today i got my first set of business cards, and they interviewed me for a video they will show at our companies user conference next week here in Milwaukee. There will be 160 clients from 12 countries, the oddest place will be Qatar, and the farthest would be from Australia. i volunteered to be the company photographer, so i get to be down at the conference at the Pfister for most of next week taking pictures. Speaking of photography i have 4 photos in a show this weekend for the spring gallery night. i am pretty excited to finally be showing some work, but i know why i didn't do anything sooner ~ cause it is a surprising amount of work to get everything ready. i am actually surprisingly busy lately, my nights are filled with shit i need to do, and i'm actually having to start planning my time and scheduling things for various nights, which as you may know is quite foreign to me and goes against my nature and beliefs. All while maintaining my viewership for all the shitty shows i watch, Allah bless DVR. Oh yeah, back to the show my mind wanders so severely while writing these post you have no idea, my mind just races with things i think to write, then i contemplate whether i should write it down, then i do, then i fiddle with the grammar and syntax a bit, then i delete it because it is out of place, or usually because it seems arrogant and uninteresting, for example several times in this post i have written about then deleted some comments my boss made, she said i was extremely courteous, i say thank you after everything, in my emails and conversations with customers and coworkers i am are very formal and well-written and well-spoken. Previously it was just out-of-place and self-congratulatory but in this context of explaining my process i think it fits better. And i just realized this is very similar to my internal process when i am in a group and waiting to speak, i hem and haw whether i should say it, then i think about how to say it, then i wait for a good opportunity to say it, but those good opportunities rarely come, and i am left quiet. i feel rejuvenated writing, it is 2:45 now, and i desperately need to go to bed, but it feels better than i thought it would to write again, i was actually kinda procrastinating cause there is so much to write and so little time to write it. But next time, hopefully shortly, i can tell you about my recent night partying with two 40 year old married women.

Anyway, the exhibit runs during the Third Ward’s Gallery Night and Day, April 20-21, and is located in the Third Ward at the P&H Dye House, 320 E. Buffalo Street (2nd Floor, above VP Gallery). Opening reception: 5-9pm.

a gun

Hello again. Sorry i have been away. i have been busy, or at least busier than i was previously. My new job is still delightful, it is fun and interesting, in a nerdy sort of way. Some funny things have happened so far, but they all involve either computer nerd humor, accountant humor, or both. Such things as this woman who adamantly thought she could add a salesperson id to a purchase order entry, i know pretty ridiculous, how can people be that dumb, err maybe you had to be there. But anyway i am still getting into a rhythm, and not surprisingly after sitting in front of a computer monitor for 8 hours i have some difficulty sitting in front of a computer once i get home. i am also starting to formalize plans to move within the next 2 months, i've been a tanguy(a French term for a twentysomething child that still lives at home, it comes from a hilarious French film about a 28 year old son who still lives at home with his parents and his parents want him to move out so they begin messing with him miserable and force him to move out) for long enough, and Wauwatosa is a wee bit boring, i'm looking for places in Bayview. i also turned a quarter century recently, surprisingly, or actually not surprisingly, all of my female friends remembered, and none of my male friends did, but that has been a tradition for years. i also recently saw zach galifianakis for the seconds time in a few months, he was hilarious again, and has easily become my favorite comedian. This time i went to see him at the Barrymore in Madison, here are some jokes i wrote down from the opening comedian, i didn't catch his name, and i only saw the last 5 minutes of his set~
~a condom is really just a stain protector~
~i'm so skinny i receive 30 cents a day from a family in Africa
here are some from zach~
~i want to jihad your vagina~
~Rahmaddah makes me horny~
~a maternity store called, "We're Fucked"~
~a deaf person signing, "talk to the hand"~
in hindsight i realize these jokes aren't as funny written out, i think you had to be there.
The ride home though wasn't as funny cause it was extremely foggy and wet, kinda dangerous yet beautiful. While driving i frequently wanted to stop and take some pictures because of the dense fog and sporadic lights from the few other cars out on the road, but i was more eager to get home safely. Once i got back to tosa and got off the freeway i decided to drive around a bit and maybe take some pictures of the night,the lights, and the fog. i headed down north 109th st past the new Mo's Irish Pub, i got to the intersection 2 blocks north of Mo's on Bluemound rd., i parked and got out and took a few pictures. Suddenly, the door to this nearby building flew open, the buildings bottom half was commercial and the top half residential, this guy ran out, and ran up to me yelling
Him ~ "What the Fuck are you doing? What the Fuck are you taking pictures of?"
me ~ nothing.
Him ~ "I'll say it again, what the Fuck are you taking pictures of?"
me ~ Dude, nothing i'm just taking pictures of the fog and lights at night.
Him ~ He pulls a gun from the back of his pants and points it at me. "Fuck you. Who the Fuck are you? And what are you taking pictures of?
me ~ my head goes down immediately as i try not to look at him and be as submissive as possible, i try to again explain that i am not taking pictures of his building or him or anything, i am just taking pictures of the suburbs at night when it's very foggy
Him ~ He is still surprisingly angry, still dropping numerous f-bombs, and still doesn't believe me. He seems convinced that i am with some enemy of his and i am taking photos of his property for either this enemy or for the police, whatever it is the guy is pretty spooked by me standing in the street taking pictures.
me ~ i show him some of the pictures i took, and try to calm him down, and explain that i don't know who he is or what he does or what he is into. (in hindsight i wish i would have taken a picture or asked to take a picture of him pointing the gun or just holding it, it probably wouldn't have been a smart idea, but it would have been a good picture)
Him ~ He slowly begins to believe me, he tells me to get the Fuck out of here, and don't ever come back.
me ~ i briskly walk to my car and leave. i am done taking pictures for the night.

The Job, and Vista

Well it's been 3 days, so far so good, lots of new things to learn, i am continually told that it will take me about one year to learn and become comfortable with the software i am to provide support for. i am starting to believe that, but at least it's interesting, interesting in the way that school was frustrating, you see i was interested in the subject matter but the information and examples i was taught felt academic and not like real world business, now it is all real world business. My coworkers are all older than me, the next youngest is at least 5 years older than me, possibly 10, the average age of my coworkers is late 30's to 40's, but i don't mind i am actually glad, being an only child it is weird how much better you get along with older(i simply mean older, not elderly, don't be so sensitive older people) people rather than my 20-something peers. Anyway, another nice thing is that the dress code is casual, meaning jeans and a t-shirt causal, and shorts in the summer. For my PC they gave me a brand new notebook with Vista installed on it, i had previously used Vista a bit to just check it out, i wasn't impressed, but working with it for 3 days i have become slightly more impressed. As with anything it takes some time getting comfortable with the new format and design, but i must admit it is significantly prettier, but only if your have a fast new PC with lots of memory. However, the one annoying problem is the new security in Vista, you know the Mac commercial with the security guy behind the windows guy asking if he would like to allow or deny everything? That is surprisingly accurate. Literally just about every program or action you click on then asks if you would like to deny or allow the program you just manually opened, even when clicking on the date and time in the lower corner it asks if you would like to deny or allow, or if you try to create a new folder if asks if you would like to deny or allow the action you just initiated. Furthermore, today we had a woman fly in to interview for a position who currently works for Microsoft, we were talking with her about Vista and surprisingly they all still use Windows XP and have not started using Vista at Microsoft Corporate of all places. Nonetheless, i still hate the mac commercials and read a fantastic article about those new mac commercials, here is a good summary, "when you see the ads, you think, 'PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers.' In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign." You can find the article here, or just read it here~~~

I Hate Macs
by Charlie Brooker
Unless you have been walking around with your eyes closed, and your head encased in a block of concrete, with a blindfold tied round it, in the dark - unless you have been doing that, you surely can't have failed to notice the current Apple Macintosh campaign starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, which has taken over magazines, newspapers and the internet in a series of brutal coordinated attacks aimed at causing massive loss of resistance. While I don't have anything against shameless promotion per se (after all, within these very brackets I'm promoting my own BBC4 show, which starts tonight at 10pm), there is something infuriating about this particular blitz. In the ads, Webb plays a Mac while Mitchell adopts the mantle of a PC. We know this because they say so right at the start of the ad.

"Hello, I'm a Mac," says Webb.

"And I'm a PC," adds Mitchell.

They then perform a small comic vignette aimed at highlighting the differences between the two computers. So in one, the PC has a "nasty virus" that makes him sneeze like a plague victim; in another, he keeps freezing up and having to reboot. This is a subtle way of saying PCs are unreliable. Mitchell, incidentally, is wearing a nerdy, conservative suit throughout, while Webb is dressed in laid-back contemporary casual wear. This is a subtle way of saying Macs are cool.

The ads are adapted from a near-identical American campaign - the only difference is the use of Mitchell and Webb. They are a logical choice in one sense (everyone likes them), but a curious choice in another, since they are best known for the television series Peep Show - probably the best sitcom of the past five years - in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, "PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers." In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign.

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, "I hate Macs", and then I think, "Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?" Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because "they are just better". Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul - that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn't really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.

Aside from crowing about sartorial differences, the adverts also make a big deal about PCs being associated with "work stuff" (Boo! Offices! Boo!), as opposed to Macs, which are apparently better at "fun stuff". How insecure is that? And how inaccurate? Better at "fun stuff", my arse. The only way to have fun with a Mac is to poke its insufferable owner in the eye. For proof, stroll into any decent games shop and cast your eye over the exhaustive range of cutting-edge computer games available exclusively for the PC, then compare that with the sort of rubbish you get on the Mac. Myst, the most pompous and boring videogame of all time, a plodding, dismal "adventure" in which you wandered around solving tedious puzzles in a rubbish magic kingdom apparently modelled on pretentious album covers, originated on the Mac in 1993. That same year, the first shoot-'em-up game, Doom, was released on the PC. This tells you all you will ever need to know about the Mac's relationship with "fun".

Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. Of course, that hasn't stopped me slagging off Mac owners, with a series of sweeping generalisations, for the past 900 words, but that is what the ads do to PCs. Besides, that's what we PC owners are like - unreliable, idiosyncratic and gleefully unfair. And if you'll excuse me now, I feel an unexpected crash coming.

Finally

Tomorrow, or rather today, i guess i need to get to bed, i start my new job as a software support associate. As you can imagine i am excited, very excited, as well as nervous, but not very nervous. i haven't had a post recently because i finally started adding all my photos to flickr, i have meant to for eons but alas i frequently feel under pressure to edit photos and post them on here since i am so far behind, and subsequently don't add photos to flickr. i also needed a place to put my photos so people other than you can see them, this blog just isn't efficient for people who just want to see photos and not read my desultory cerebrations (in 3 days i have had 270 people look at my photos on Flickr, a few more hits than my blog gets), and for people who i haven't told about this blog because of my personal cerebrations and possibly questionable subject matter at times, namely family. One of my biggest problems i have with my photography is determining what photos are good, and how my photos should be sorted or grouped, and flickr helps with that. i have also recently joined COPA, Coalition of Photographic Arts, a Milwaukee photography group, as well as the name of Casey's cat. i'm going to bed now but i will (make a hollow promise &) try to update more often since hopefully i will have more to discuss at least more than what's new on TV. So in short, things are happening, things are changing, things are moving forward, finally.