CharmingGeek.net Funness

Sorry I’m so sporadic with posting here. I suppose my weeks are mainly filled with going to work and coming home to lie around. So I’ll tell you about my weekend.
Friday night I went out salsa dancing at Habana Village. Now I have to tell you, this is DC’s premier club for Salsa. I know because I’ve been to that one. There are three floors of great dancing music, two with live bands. It is also the most diverse club I’ve ever been to. It’s in a narrow Adams Morgan building, so the dance floors are pretty crowded. But I only got one elbow to my face. I feel bad about interrupting that girl’s spin.
Well, anyway, this was my first time trying my hips at salsa dancing. I have to say it was a pretty intimidating thing. Especially after I saw all the guys there that really could dance. I had a great time anyway, though. Still, I’m not adverse to taking some lessons before I go back.
When I woke up Saturday morning, which was not during the hours one would typically consider “morning,” I started some work on MemBap.org, the website for Memorial Baptist Church in Williamston, NC. All that seemed very much like what I’ve been doing at work for the past two weeks. The difference is that php is much more fun than Java and Struts.
I then rounded out the night with some Will Rock. Now, Will Rock probably isn’t the best FPS out there, it’s just the one I have. There is an awful lot of shooting, though. It came with my video card, which I have to say is pretty hot. I’m afraid I’m not getting my full use of it if I’m not playing video games though. Of course, when I do play video games on it, I can’t make use of the dual-monitor support. I need to find a hot dual monitor FPS. Well, in case you care I played the game a bit when I first got it, but I got much farther last night than I ever have before. In bed at 2.
Then last night I had this dream where I was applying Ctrl-Z to the universe. That was a pretty cool feature. Not only did it reverse people’s actions, but I could also see the changes in the snippets of object code above their heads. I love dreams like that.

Monster truck rally pictures.

You probably don’t care, but I just uploaded some of my really old pictures from North Carolina Governor’s School.

If you’re looking for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra light show there it is.
My common poor spelling seems to have made this site very popular for other people who would write “Transiberian Orchestra.”

You need to know this about Chuck Norris.

Now, assuming that my shoutcast up and running, you can view my most recently played songs in your favorite RSS feed reader.
RSS feed here
I’ll even let you have the source.

I’m not going in to why you should be interested in this, because it’s late and I want to go to bed, but this is a very thorough, informative paper on ECHELON.
Disclaimer: I always encourage questioning and verifying any information you receive, and that’s most of the reason for supplying this link. In this case, you have to be particularly aware that much of the information provided is classified, top-secret, and as such, is completely unverifiable for the vast majority of us.

The gender gap in computer science is growing.
The proportion of women among bachelor’s degree recipients in computer science peaked at 37 percent in 1985 but has fallen to about 28 percent in the last few years. That number is only 17 percent within research universities. (From the Globe article)
Overall, the number of new computer science majors in 2004 was 40 percent lower than in 2000.
I’ve always been convinced that as a whole, women just have different interests than men, so I’m rarely surprised to see a gender gap in any field. The main thing I’m concerned about here is the decline in the major. Are my skills about to be in more demand, or as outsourcing increases, are more perceptive women fleeing a doomed profession like rats from a sinking ship?
Then again, maybe women just don’t have what it takes to make it in challenging technical fields.

Utah State Fair Commercial: Napoleon Dynamite and Pedro talk up the Utah state fair.

In days of yore, the Utah State Fair didn’t have sweet rides.

Find some more sweet ads at the official Utah State Fair website. (TV 1&3 are linked above.)

I recently found out that Harris Teeter may be the only grocery store inside the beltline (or is it beltway?) where you can buy instant cheese grits.
Some of you need to read this Wikipedia article on grits. Even I learned something.
Picture of a good southern grocery store’s grits section.
Edit: It’s not a perfectly clear picture, but can anybody identify the store by the shelf labels?
(flamdingle)