Calanctus's blog

The Last Question by Asimov

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:23:56 -0700

I found this short story off of Digg and it's the best I've read in quite some time. Written by Asimov himself.

http://infohost.nmt.edu/~mlindsey/asimov/question.htm

Cheers!

Cal

French Guiana Part Deux

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 09:53:47 -0700

Well, here I am a week into my trip to French Guiana. Work is going well and launch is on schedule for Dec 8. Here's a LINK to ariane's website. They're going to be launching our satellite and will have a live feed.

FG is like a 3rd world country (i.e poor, dirty, and slow) except that everything is expensive (They use Euros here). Being a french territory, most people speak french(duh) or Portugese. The natives aren't too arrogant and even occassionally friendly. There's a regiment of the Foreign Legion here, as well as a detachment of the Gendarmerie Nationale (French National military police), so its fairly safe. And before you ask, no they haven't offered to surrender to me...yet.

French Guiana

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 17:08:45 -0700

On the off chance anyone here has ever been to French Guiana, I would be most appreciative of any advice or insight.

It appears that I am headed off to Kourou, FG to help support a launch of one of my company's satellites. On the surface it would appear to be a pretty cool assignment, but it will extend over and past the Thanksgiving weekend and I'll be returning just short of the actual launch. I'm low on the totem pole so I get stuck with the shift no one wants. Still, I think it will be a pretty cool experience. And I suppose a corona on the beach with some exotic south american hotties to oggle (and perhaps befriend) will relieve some of the homesickness...

Vacation Day 17 Hanoi VN

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 05:59:11 -0700

Well, I made it to Hanoi VN okay. By comparison to Bangkok, it is smaller, poorer and less developed. The cabbies, street venders and beggers are more pushy and more needy. Everything screams tourist trap so I've been pretty careful about buying things. If I see something interesting, I try to walk the entire block before coming back just to see how unique it is and to get an idea of the right price.

I met my friend that is going to be teaching english over here the other day. We had a nice daytrip wandering around town. Company was good so no complaints about that. Was pretty hot (38C) and humid. I must have lost a liter in sweat.

Vacation Day 6 BKK

Sat, 22 Jul 2006 21:08:43 -0700

Well, it has been several days since I have arrived in Bangkok for my vacation. As vacations go, this has got to be my best so far. It took a day or two to become acclimated to the hustle and bustle of this city. I am generally very tolerant of warm environments, but it has been a constant effort to cope with the heat and humidity.

Among many things, I've noticed that the Thais have a heartfelt respect for their king. Since his taking the throne, he has been key in raising the quality of life of everyone, especially the poor, by creating and involving himself with many public works. I see many thais wearing yellow T-shirts which marks the king's 60th year since ascending the throne. The people I've me so far have been very nice, but I've been cautioned that thais will not tolerate disrespect to the king, to the point of being violent. Quite a contrast to the US.

Vacation Day 1 BKK

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 03:55:39 -0700

Whew!

After a two hour delay on my last leg from Tokyo, I finally arrived in Bangkok around 3 AM. Even at that late hour, there was still a fair amount of traffic.

Getting through customs was pretty easy and there were automatic money exchange machines right at the airport. (1USD=40Baht btw) There were cabbie hustlers trying to sell me fares from the airport to my lodgings for like 700 bht ($18.00). I passed and went outside to get in line at the normal taxi curb cue. Fare came out to 220 bht (with toll). Yay! Gut check proved right.

Vacation T minus 5 Hours

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 00:29:39 -0700

Well,

In five hours, I'm going to be heading off to Vietnam and Thailand for a month long vacation. Can't wait to go off exploring, see the sights, try out exotic cuisines, and do things that would probably be best left unspoken about in polite company.

This trip has had both good and bad moments in it's build up. I originally had a good friend that was going to go with me, but he backed out just before we were to buy tickets. So faced with the decision to go it alone, or not go at all, I thought what the heck and decided to go solo anyway.

Glad I did too. I later met a girl thats headed over there to teach english for a year. We agreed to meet up in Hanoi in a week or so and do some sight seeing together. She's out-of-my-league attractive, but we get along pretty well and have a lot of shared experiences. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

More to come...

Questions and Answers

Mon, 22 May 2006 23:25:39 -0700

Someone asked this on Yahoo Answers today:

Do fairies exist?

To which I answered:

Absolutely... Many of them inhabit a land called "San Francisco", but they may live in other areas too.

http://gaydemographics.org/usa/usa.htm...

Cheers!

Ha ha ha... I slay me!

Questions and Answers

Thu, 11 May 2006 19:05:47 -0700

Question I answered from Yahoo Answers:
Do you believe that when you've lost everything you're free to do anything?
And also...a bonus question:
Do you believe that the things you own, end up owning you?

My Answer:

It doesn't free you, but it does take away leverage that can be used to inhibit you otherwise.

If you believe you have lost everything, then the assumption is you now have nothing to lose. It further implies that your actions would not be inhibited. I don't think you would be free exactly... Just that consequences which involve denial of something you no longer have would not impede you.

Suppose you no longer own a car and you bike to work. Denying you car insurance or revoking your license doesn't really affect you significantly, at least in terms of getting to work.

Job Offer Accepted

Thu, 04 May 2006 16:40:00 -0700

Today, I formally accepted a job offer from my recent internship. The company I work for is into commercial space systems (i.e. communications satellites). I'll be working in spacecraft engineering after graduation in June and a *long* vacation. I can't believe I landed this job! I guess I really did impress my boss with my "5-Point-Exploding-Macro" Excel technique.

This marks a turning point for me. I left work several years ago to go back to school to pursue an engineering degree. It's taken a lot longer and cost much more than I initially expected, but at last I'm finally getting some return on all the effort and sacrifice. Things planned out years ago are finally falling into place. Whether it was worth it or not, I still don't know, but thank goodness it's almost over...

Questions and Answers...

Thu, 04 May 2006 00:09:19 -0700

Sometimes beginnings are the hardest of things. You think about how you should start, how things should flow. You wonder where everything will lead and end. Who is your audience? How should things end? *Should* things end? The questions keep coming until you reach a point where the message gets lost over concerns of how the message should be formatted.

So to sidestep that potential speed bump, I'll break conventions and start right in the middle...

Recently, I've become addicted to Yahoo Answers. I visit mostly to open my eyes to the issues that concern other people. It exposes me to different ideas and gives me a chance to weigh in on them. In the process I learn more about myself.