Today I figured out a way to avoid getting shocked all the time at work.  I actually applied knowledge from PY 208 too!  All I have to do is hold a straightened paper clip in my hand (touching as much skin as possible) and touch the other end to metal.

For background information- one of my cubicle walls is mostly metal.  Everytime I get up to go do something and then come back and sit in my chair, I’ve accumulated a static charge.  This means that the number of free electrons in my body is either higher or lower than the number of free electrons in the metal wall of the cubicle.  When contact is made with this metal, the body with excess electrons tries to reach equilibrium with the other body by giving it more electrons.  This results in a flow of electrons (a.k.a. electricity).

So the Physics 2 knowledge that I applied was this: charges collect around sharp points.  This is why lightning rods are most effective when they have very sharp points at the top.  Okay so the article on lightning rods says that my statement about them is false.  Regardless, there is some mathematically provable reason that charges collect around sharp objects, and my application of this rule was effective.  So when I touch the paper clip and the wall, electricity arcs between them, but since the paper clip is in contact with my whole hand, the shock is distributed evenly across all of the skin it is in contact with.  Since this constitutes the opposite of a sharp point, the charge is very small (so small, in fact, that I don’t feel it).  If I were to hold the paper clip between two fingers, I would still feel the charge, as it would be distributed across much less skin.

Take that, Zeus!

I just got in from the The Turnstiles show.. I work with two members of the band!  I had been given a warning about the venue.  Let’s just say it’s not the kind of place you’d want to wear a New York Yankees hat to.  I mean the place is called “Puckett’s Farm Equipment.”  But it wasn’t quite what I had pictured.  I expected a mechanical bull, people getting into brawls over who the best NASCAR driver was, and a cage in front of the band so that people could throw beer bottles at them.  As it turned out, it contained none of those things, and was actually kinda cozy except for all the cigarette smoke.  This was my first time hearing the band, and they were pretty good, especially since they were missing two of six members, and Jon was playing bass for the first time in like ten years.  I wonder how many other bands there are out there made up of computer programmers and MBA’s?  I’m not sure what genre the music would be classified in--Michael once described it as “Americana”.  Not country, and not quite southern rock, but it seemed to fit in at a place with “farm equipment” in the name of it.  I never quite know how to end my blog posts when I’ve run out of things to say..

This past weekend was pretty busy.  I completed a lap of the North Carolina 350 - a round trip from Charlotte to Durham to Raleigh to Laurinburg and back to Charlotte, totaling approximately 350 miles.  I was in Durham/Raleigh for my pre-wedding get-together-with-male-friends (that Stephanie has agreed to not be upset about as long as it is not called by its traditional name).  There are pictures on Garrison’s site, I’ll let you find them yourself if you know where they are.  I’m the one in the red shirt that’s not drinking.

The night before that I went to see Constantine with Garrison and Tim.  From the previews I expected it to be pretty crappy.  I was pleasantly surprised.. I’d say it’s about a five out of ten.  Not really that great, but not as bad as I was expecting.  It’s based on a comic book apparently.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the original Constantine, he was the first Christian emperor of Rome, and he officially converted Rome to Christianity.  John Constantine (the movie’s main character) fights demons, so I guess that makes sense.  The movie just kinda dragged on in some parts, and didn’t really keep me fully entertained.  It also reminded me of some parts of Dogma, and makes me wonder if Kevin Smith (who is a big comic book fan) might have been influenced by the comic book.  In particular the line from an angel about how all humans can get into heaven simply by asking forgiveness, whereas fallen angels (aka demons) must suffer eternally for rebelling against God.. that’s in both movies and could be a coincidence perhaps, but it seemed like an odd coincidence to me.

I could ramble on about yet another wedding shower that I attended over the weekend, but I think I’ll spare you of that because it’s probably a pretty boring read.  Suffice it to say, we got lots of nice gifts most of which will be used and appreciated far more by Stephanie than by me.

Ya know the devil was an angel too

It’s time for a post that doesn’t read like a diary entry.  Today’s post will discuss technology trends that Kip double-plus uncalled.

First up, cell phones with cameras.  When I was working for a cell phone company in 2002, they were just starting to put cameras on their phones.  They even told me that in Japan, Korea, and western Europe (whose cell phone markets are about 3, 3, and 2 years ahead of America, respectively) cameras on cell phones were a big deal.  I still thought “why would anyone want a camera on their phone??”  Apparently I didn’t anticipate the number of people in the toddler-to-preteen age bracket that would get cell phones.  Now those people can appreciate something as useless as a camera on a phone.  Don’t get me started on the Weekly Jamster Plan and their stupid commercials.

Next, we have MP3 players.  Back before the turn of the century (by which I mean--incorrectly--the turn from 1999-2000), MP3’s were still difficult to come by.  I didn’t anticipate how easily attainable they’d become.  I thought “a portable MP3 player might be useful to a few geeks but most people won’t bother to figure them out.”  Wrong again.  I also thought they were too expensive and that something like a Discman that played MP3 cd’s would be a much cheaper alternative.  That also didn’t really catch on (except in car stereos).

Another big one is the Java programming language.  I just didn’t think people would put up with the lagging performance, and I thought Swing GUI’s were teh suck.  Well Swing got a little prettier (if you know what you’re doing anyway) and computers got a lot more RAM.  With a ton of RAM, Java works great.  If you’re into OOP, it’s also much easier to program in than.. say.. C++.  At least, I like it more (even though I claimed otherwise for years).

Now lets talk about Zip Drives.  I thought that these things were gonna be huge.  I thought almost every computer purchased after like 2001 or so would come standard with one.  I know I got one for my PC I got in 2000.  Unfortunately, CD-R drives proved a lot cheaper, and now thumb drives are faster and cheaper than zip drives and require no special hardware (assuming USB is available of course).  I can’t honestly think of a situation where a zip drive would be the appropriate solution for a storage problem.  The one in my computer is now a vestigial organ: it remains in place but is not connected to anything, having been sacrificed to allow room for a DVD-ROM, a CD-R, and two hard drives.

Okay that’s all.  The moral of the story is don’t conduct stock market trades based upon Kip’s assessment of a company or product’s future level of success.  That having been said, I will leave you with a prediction: ordering perishable food off the internet will not catch on.  We’ll find out in a few years I suppose.

The wedding is close now.  So close I can represent the number of days remaining with one base-ten digit (9).  And that’s pretty close.  We had our last wedding shower this past weekend, and now it’s all just last-minute rushing to get things done.  I’ve noticed that people who have gotten married tend to say things like “don’t stress out, at the end of the day you’ll be married and the things that go wrong are just the funny stories you can tell for the rest of your life”, while people who haven’t say things like “you should have done ____ instead of ____.”  We also got our new bed delivered yesterday.  It’s very big.  The matress is fifteen inches thick because it has a pillow top thing on it.  That makes it so that when you lay down you feel like you’re being eaten by a cloud (that’s a good thing).  It seems like there was something else I was going to talk about in my post besides wedding stuff, but I don’t quite remember.

Oh yes, a movie review.  Stephanie and I went to see Hitch on Sunday.  Hitch is a romantic comedy, and follows the formula very closely.  Let’s just say you’re not gonna walk out of the theater saying “Holy crap!  I didn’t see that coming!”  Within the confines of the genre it was quite average.  I still think Adam Sandler does the best romantic comedies I’ve seen.  Keeping in mind that it was what it claimed to be but nothing more, I’d give it about a five.

So this was an uneventful post.  Bummer dude.  You’ve just wasted five minutes of your life.  Better luck next time.