Hack, cough, etc.

I don't like laziness at work. Laziness, like whiskey or bubble baths, is great in its own right -- so long as they happen on your own time. I take my work time seriously and expect the same from others. I think that's fair, after all, when engineers slack off, things break. You wouldn't want your things to break, would you? (Doesn't that sound like a mafia threat?)

Television writers, though, don't live by the same credo. At least not all the time. Dr. Sighted and I have gotten into a few shows that like to take the lazy way out. I have mentioned the USA shows before, and White Collar is one of them. Leverage, however, is the biggest offender of the phenomenon I am keeping you in suspense over.

Does everyone remember when the second Matrix came out? Nerds do, because it was a time of huge let down even though they refused to admit that their precious Wachowskis could err; then the third one came out and then there were no followers left. A false prophet can only fail so many times. The second one, though, had a scene that got nerds all excited because it proved an accurate representation of a computer hack in a movie for the first time. Leverage has a character whose sole purpose is basically to use a computer to do magic and call it "hacking". It's like the Green Lantern's ring of power for plot points, except it is defeated by out of date technology instead of the color yellow.

The USA shows do this too: Burn Notice infrequently and typically it's electronic manipulation that is a little more credible; White Collar does it periodically, which is unfortunate because the whole premise is the glorification of the con and forgery as art, which this totally defies; and Suits, in the most recent episode, which used a hack as a plot point that didn't really make sense.

It is unfortunate, because the shows entertain me, and I don't want to be entertained by lazy things. ("Here kid, is a balloon animal." "But it's a circle." "Lots of animals are circles.") You should already know how I feel about lazy comics, (and good comics, too). So, I'm troubled; I'd hate for you to think I'm inconsistent.

I am such a nerd

Hey everyone, I am typing this from my brand new desktop computer. I built it myself! As if writing this blog didn't make me nerdy enough. I am still trying to fill in all the gaps and what not of doing all the software loads from scratch and copying my writing and music collection over, and I am also trying to think of a way not to make this sound like a 13 year old girl's livejournal.

Oh, I have it. My parents had no faith that I could accomplish this task. While the only hiccups so far tthat I have run into are that I bought a fan I didn't need and I haven't sorted out my S/PDIF to HDMI issues so I am silently blogging right now, neither my mom nor my dad really expected that I would end up with a working computer at the end of my little purchase. Surely I am not the only one of you who gets this treatment.

Engineering has had a strange effect on the way they handle me. This task of building computers, routinely handled ably by 15 year olds, is one of those things that their skepticism will not permit them to think I am capale of, even though I do in fact have a master's degree in a technical field. It's not like I'm trying to pick out a tie for a suit, am I right?

Graphs Aplenty: DOES NOT COMPUTE

This one is easily my favorite Graphs Aplenty so far. Venn Diagrams are almost inherently funny, but when paired with a dystopian future joke, that is a recipe for success every time. Come for the math, stay for the dystopian futures, guys! I miss the days I used to write about going to the bathroom.



This one is pretty self-explanatory, my favorite part is that our future oppressors will not only speak to us in a hybrid of the two most widely spoken languages in the United States now, but also a 30 year old programming language. So when the robots take over, programming technology will not have changed since you computer science 101 as a freshman in college. Although, to be fair, my roommate studied biology, which I'm not even sure uses computers.

Interesting side note: as a mechanical engineer, I would only be able to satisfy A and B of the diagram above. I never learned to program in C++. I know you are probably thinking, "How embarrassing!" Well, I speak Spanish and a little Irish and you're reading my blog, so I don't need your sass.

Interesting side note 2: my roommate is all grown up. He started his own blog! Go read it, the three of you who are still out there. And post comments! Comments are how we measure our self-esteem, like the way women do with their weight. Except more is better for us.