CharmingGeek.net Funness

So here I am in corporate America, prescribing to the confines of what we call “Washington Professional Dress” (WPD). I get excited because church is practically the only place I can wear jeans.

“As of last year, Iraq owed France an estimated $4 billion for arms and infrastructure projects, according to French government estimates. U.S. officials thought this massive debt was one reason France opposed a military operation to oust Saddam.”
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I took this picture in my apartment’s deck. Click the picture for a larger image and see if you can figure out why.

After I spent four hours putting together my new desk, I noticed a sticker on it that said “Made in China.” That is a lie. I know where that desk was made, because I saw me do it.

Some central Florida residents were outraged to find local stores selling bags of candy including a toy depicting a airliner crashing into one of two skyscrapers. The toys, each stamped with the number 9011 were purchased site-unseen by a distributer, however the import company that sold to the distributer claims to see nothing wrong with the toy at all. That’s really just moronic. I hope these guys see their business fall off very quickly.
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Oh my. These bags of candy were packaged under a name like “plastic swing toy” and it was said that the retailers didn’t see the toy because they were packed underneath similar packages containing a toy with a man swinging between the two buildings. A bearded and turbaned man. In context, is there any doubt that this toy was designed to honor Osama Bin Laden?
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I’m shocked! Shocked!

Wow! You guys are so awesome for still dropping by and leaving me little notes, even when I hadn’t posted for something like two weeks.
I’m in my new place now, and the cable/internet guy just left, so I’m online. I’ve got to get back to work (it’s so great to be able to walk home for lunch), but now that I’m all wired, I’ll write a bit later.

Yeah, I’ve been busy.
Here’s kinda what’s going on. I’ve been at work for a week now, and I’m a little overwhelmed. Anything going on around here that isn’t classified, I just don’t understand. That gets better, right?
Anyway, I’ll be cutting out early today so I can scoot back to Martin County and pick up my belongings. Tomorrow night I’ll be in my new home. Crazy. I’m pretty excited. I’ve never had a real, full-time job before, or my own place to live. I’m even going to have furniture and all here. Well, furniture anyway. There’s going to be a poster-sized shopping list on my refrigerator. Anyhow, things are coming along well.
Wow! A permanent address!
My office is also moving today. So Monday I can put in a request for some business cards. And you know what that means….
That’s right! I will soon be eligable to win free lunches!
-Brad Parker, Potential Lunch Winner

I got a really great job offer this week. It’s just not here. So that means I’ll be moving to the outskirts of DC within the next two weeks. Everything is feeling a little surreal. And I’m thinking to myself, how am I going to get a place small enough to make it look like I have furniture?
IKEA here I come!
That and I don’t think I’ll clean my room until I move out. This is a record for me. My the time I get out, I will have only been living in this room for a maximum of three weeks.
I think it’s going to rain.
So yeah, (I do have ADD.) I sent in a resume last Thursday and got the job offer on Tuesday. For some time, I’d been completely expecting the job offer to come that suddenly when I was not expecting it. But how do you plan for something to happen when you don’t expect it?
Verse of my life: Proverbs 16:9 “In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.”
And just in case you forgot: Romans 8:28 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

This has been on my mind for a while. I just decided to look into it for myself.
Just in case you were wondering, this bunk about “i before e except after c” is useless. Even admitting the “except when sounding like ‘a'” rule (beige), there are plenty of exceptions. “Height” for example. So lets add this one, “except when followed by ‘gh’.” That’s pretty solid, there are no words in my dictionary file with the series of letters iegh. (Many of these ‘eigh’ words also fall under the ‘a sound’ exception, ie weight, eight.) Actually, this leaves a lot of exceptions that can be better dealt with.

• conterfeit
• feisty
• forfeit
• heifer
• their
• veil
• weird

This can all be covered if we accept that this rule only applies when words have the ‘ee’ or long e sound. (Which really limits its usefulness. But hey, let’s get somewhere.)
Of course, we also have to excuse foreign words. We also have to excuse any word where there’s a syllable break between the two letters. You’ll have to figure those out yourself. (deity, science)
Now let’s see where we are: “When having the long e sound, i before e except after c, before gh, part of a foreign word, or when spanning syllables.” Ouch. Okay, I can only get the core of that into a grep expression, so I have to sort out the pronunciation and origin exceptions myself.
grep [^c]ei[^{gh}] words.txt | more
Here’s a sampling of what’s left

• caffeine
• protein
• seize

Then on the other side, the rule still doesn’t say anything about the words included in the list above or those with a c, such as these.

• ancient
• conscience
• deceit
• efficient
• glacier
• species

And I’m not seeing a pattern there at all.