inpromissum

Explicate

verb, transitive
1. To make clear the meaning of; explain. See synonyms at explain.

Not that it's not already apparent, but my posting volume is going to be sub-daily for a while while work + side projects basically beat me senseless.

(Isn't it strange when repeated words are actually legitimate?)

--Nick

Spiculate

adjective form of spicule
1. A small needlelike structure or part, such as one of the silicate or calcium carbonate processes supporting the soft tissue of certain invertebrates, especially sponges.

Having been called out, I suppose I need to respond.

Frankly put, if you have any question as to whether you need one or want one, then you probably shouldn't get one ... it's definitely something that needs to fit in your life before it makes sense.

The way you have to really think of a Segway is as a proper alternative to driving around ... not only does $5,000 put it beyond the range of a toy for most people, but it's likely to just be a waste unless you really utilize the thing. The right perspective here is as an alternative to buying a car, because you believe that it will do a good enough job with a lot of your travelling.

I have some disagreements with some of his specific points. If the Segway cause someone to ride it rather than take a short drive, that's worth it. Also, parking is pretty much a cinch ... I've never had a problem driving it into wherever I'm going and just parking it inside (I bought a lock for outside parking, but I've never even had to pull it out).

There are also some strong advantages that he didn't point out - in particular, not having to deal with traffic on your rides is a huge benefit, it's nice to be riding in open air on a nice day, and it's really just plain fun to ride around.

But overall, I don't think this is really a counterpoint to Erik's argument, because I don't disagree with him. If you look at your life patterns and don't think you'd use it, then you shouldn't get one.

--Nick

Nonperson

noun
1. A person whose existence is systematically ignored or concealed, especially one whose removal from the attention and memory of the public is sought for reasons of ideological or political deviation.

Hear that?

That is the sound of my heart bleeding in sympathy.

--Nick

Equipoise

noun
1. Equality in distribution, as of weight, relationship, or emotional forces; equilibrium.
2. A counterpoise; a counterbalance.

Sha Sha, Dave, and Erik B. all pointed out to me (some time ago now, in some cases ... I'm really getting lax at writing in this thing ...) that Bush had his first experience with a Segway.

Yeah ... speaking from experience, how the heck can you possibly fall off a Segway?

Ugh. And we elected this guy because ...?

--Nick

Verisimilitude

noun
1. The quality of appearing to be true or real.
2. Something that has the appearance of being true or real.

While I know that you should take anything on the web with a grain of salt as far as definitiveness goes (since anyone and their mother can post whatever they want), usually you can track down a reasonably accurate source. Or at least, can tell when something is likely bull.

When two sources directly contradict each other, though, neither with any greater claim to authoritativeness than the other, what the heck are you supposed to do?

--Nick

Huggermugger

noun
1. Disorderly confusion; muddle.
2. Secrecy; concealment.

verb, intransitive
1. To act in a secretive manner.

Wow, been a while since I've written anything ... I actually get myself stuck if I go too long without writing since I have so many things that are worth mentioning that the thought of having to write about them all is kind of paralyzing. I've got to learn to let go and just start from scratch to clear that logjam.

But, in an effort to get at least some of those thoughts out, here's some random thoughts in no particular order.

Get Real:
This is a great article (thanks, Jan!) about auditioning for a Reality TV show ... very funny and well written and worth a read even if you do think Reality TV is kind of dumb.

Welcome to Craptacular Friday Nights on KRAP:
I drove down to Portland last weekend to visit my family and was reminded yet again of the Friday night radio phenomenon. Why is it that every radio station feels the need to do something special on Friday nights? Friday Night Flashback! Friday Night Fever! Friday Night Dance Party! Disco Friday Night! Why are you all playing all of this crap! If I wanted dance music, I'd put on a dance station. If I wanted disco and 70's, I'd switch to one of those stations. If I wanted hip-hop and rap crap, I'd switch to a hits station. The reason I listen to your station is because of the music you play ... is that so hard to understand? Since when did weekend nights become an excuse to play such total garbage! So frustrating! Bad enough to be on a long drive on a Friday night, this is just insult to injury.

Triple Threat:
No, this isn't about Funny Cide (who didn't make it, anyway) ... this is about Fame (is it just me or is NBC finally diving head-first into the Reality TV craze?), another of the wannabe American Idol shows that espouses more than just singing (which usually is a recipe for disaster). I'm getting a little tired of them saying "Triple Threat" ... we get the point, just shut up already. And hell, they'd better have more than just singing, because most of these kids don't sing very well ... one of them tonight even went so far as to say how he wasn't just some American Idol ... well, for his sake, I hope so, as he sucked royal ass at singing (and they let him through to the finals ... what is that?). Also, this show is a testament to how important having good judges are. These judges are so sugary it's just sickening.

The ... never mind:
You know what? The Amazing Race deserves its own entry ... I've got to save up my vitriol before I can do it justice.

Pointed Question:
I'm thinking that I'm not eligible to answer this question.

Gollum:
If you're a fan of Lord of the Rings, you owe it to yourself to catch the MTV Movie Awards, about 2/3 of the way in. Absolutely brilliant bit involving Gollum. Don't worry if you missed it ... it's MTV. They'll replay it 30 times in the next month.

Resemblances:
I saw some high school friends this weekend, and we got to talking about resemblences. Two of them in particular were lamenting, since one had been compared to Ellen DeGeneres and the other was compared to Rosie O'Donnell. Now, the Ellen comparison isn't horrible, but in what world is being compared to Rosie O'Donnell good in any possible way? Apparently the guy who said this said that they only meant the comparison in the good way, but does such a thing exist? I mean, come on, did you watch her do the Survivor Reunion back for Survivor: Marquesas? . Hint: Don't ever do this to any girl you know. Ever. Another friend of mine there managed to shove his foot so far down his throat that it peeked out the other end, but I'll not go into details about that.

For Loser or Money:
Holy crap, Rob is such a loser. Are you kidding me?

Finding Nemo's Bits:
Nick sent me this. Heh. I hadn't thought of this ramification of the movie (which I haven't seen yet), but it makes sense.

Parts of Speech:
That's quite a definition on huggermugger ... thanks for the suggestion, Erin!

--Nick

Plagiary

noun
1. Plagiarism.
2. Archaic. One who plagiarizes.

Sha Sha sent me this wonderful, wonderful piece of news today. So, everyone's favorite high-school bitch student isn't so fantastically wonderfully awesome as she'd have us believe, eh?

Why am I not that surprised?

Why am I also not surprised that she's not that popular these days? I'm thinking that no matter how her lawsuit goes, she's definitely won a lifetime of disrespect and friendlessness ...

Man, she just needs to go away. She reminds me of Kyle's Mom, in the eyes of Cartman.

--Nick

Brevet

noun
1. A commission promoting a military officer in rank without an increase in pay.

Many of you probably have already seen this ... I remember seeing it a week ago and talking about it with Erik N., idly looking through to see if any schools that we recognized are on it. At that time I looked at the metric and thought that it was a strange metric for them to be using, but didn't put much more thought into it. It's been stewing for a while, though, and when somebody mentioned to me today that they'd heard that Bellevue High School was ranked really highly (13th, to be specific), those feelings of oddness kind of boiled over into the realization of how much crap this whole thing is.

The metric, called the Challenge Index, is simply the total number of AP tests taken divided by the number of students ... or put another way, the sheer quantity of tests taken, with no measure of the quality of the classes teaching the AP material, other curriculum, the number of people taking these tests, and how well they do at them. How much crap is that? You make it mandatory for students (which apparently is something Mike Riley, superintendent of Bellevue School District is big on and wants to try and do) and really push them to take the tests or even multiple tests and don't even care how well they do and you get scored high.

Now, let me be clear ... I don't think what Riley was doing before this ranking was wrong ... pushing your students to excel, giving them the chance to take challenging courses and push for AP tests is great ... there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Teaching more AP level classes and giving access to more students is great, so long as you're trying to do so to set them up to succeed, and help them to do well at learning the material and taking the tests. What scares me is what the existence of this metric might do. Once you make sheer volume of AP tests into a goal, in order to boost your rankings, you lose sight of why you do this in the first place ... just pushing the students through and not caring how much they learn or how they do becomes rewarded.

I'm sure this ranking business drums up readership and whatnot, but this is such a crap listing that I'm disappointed that Newsweek ever published it. And the sad truth is, many, many people are going to take it as an absolute list without context and never think twice about it, which I fear will lead to the wrong behavior on the part of schools.

Jay Mathews and the Newsweek staff behind this should be shot. If you're going to do a ranking, come up with one that doesn't suck.

--Nick

Edit: Fixed the category.

Ostentation

noun
1. Pretentious display meant to impress others; boastful showiness.
2. Archaic. The act or an instance of showing; an exhibition.

I must be giving Segway demos in the wrong places ... (scroll down a bit and look at who he's been demoing to ... unfortunately I can't find direct links to entries on his weblog).

Sheesh!

--Nick

Edit: Eric pointed out that I was being dumb and that Wesley does in fact have links for his entries.

Edit: Fixed links to match Wesley's updated domain.

Dint

verb, transitive
1. To put a dent in.
2. To impress or drive in forcibly.

So, one day later and I've already got some pretty strong opinions on this laptop. I can sum most of it up by saying that it's an decent Dell implementation of absolutely fantastic Intel technologies.

The Good:
- The screen is absolutely gorgeous and literally unparalleled - if anybody out there tells you that the resolution is too high, tell them to lay off of whatever drugs they're high on because really, when it comes to resolution, the higher the better. 1920x1200 is wonderful and while I still wish it were higher, it's still amazing. The screen quality, too, is top-notch ... great brightness and angular visibility. Nothing but good things to say about the screen.
- The thing is fast ... I got it with a Pentium M 1.6GHz and it's blazing fast ... runs circles around my desktop Pentium 4 1.8GHz and my old Pentium 4-M 1.6GHz.
- The battery life is astounding. Absolutely amazing. Completely mind-boggling. I've got a 72WHr primary battery and a 48 WHr secondary battery (not sure how this compares to other Pentium-M machines, but it sounds like it's pretty average) and I used it all afternoon working on some web, Photoshop, and InDesign work and the thing lasted 8 hours. Not the toughest workload, but still pretty incredible. Even more amazingly, many other Pentium M laptops are supposed to get substantially better battery life than this machine.
- The Calexico (now known as Intel PRO/Wireless 2100) wireless card is very impressive. It's got substantially better range and power than my last 802.11b card (Hmm ... starting to see a trend? Looks like there's something to this Centrino thing ...).
- I don't seem to have any of the various problems that some other owners reported with this laptop. The left wristrest doesn't really heat up much, no power supply whine, no flexing keyboard ... all is good.
- The metal chassis is much nicer than the old plastic ones were ... it feels much more durable to me.

The Bad:
- The sound isn't fantastic ... I don't know how to describe how. It's muffled, but not in a physical way ... not like the speakers are blocked. Sounds just are a little low and ... the opposite of hollow (hollow being when the bass is muted ... here it's more like the treble is muted). Hard to describe. Not horrible, but not good.
- The thing is a bit of a boat. It's not a yacht ... I reserve that term for the 17" PowerBook, which I saw for the first time last week and holy crap is that thing huge (incidentally, while I'm on the subject, why's everyone so excited about the keyboard illumination? It looks cool, but when do you ever actually look at your keyboard? I don't ...). I have to admit that every time I see and pick up Erik N.'s 12" PowerBook, I'm a little jealous as to how compact, light, and easy to carry it is. But then, I open it up and look at the screen and I remember why I'd never get anything that size, so I guess it's all about trade-offs.
- Alps touchpads just aren't as nice as Synaptics ones.
- Intel's wireless is still only 802.11b ... their 802.11a and 802.11g solutions are coming out later this year and early next year, and it's an easy upgrade, but it's still kind of a bummer (not that it affects me, since I don't have access to any 802.11a or 802.11g networks at the moment).
- It's only a two-spindle machine, which is kind of a bummer since it means I have to take out the DVD/CD-RW drive in order to put in the secondary battery. My last laptop, an Inspiron 8200, was a three-spindle machine, which let me put in both batteries and the DVD/CD-RW drive all at once. Kind of annoying.

The Ugly:
- Ugly, ugly, ugly ... there's no other way to describe the upper two mouse buttons (the ones that go with the pointing stick). They're horrible and I absolutely hate them. I presume that what Dell was going for here was to make them completely silent (perhaps in response to requests from business people who wanted a way to use their laptops silently in meetings ... the Inspiron 8500 is a consumer version of the same laptop and doesn't have this problem) and they succeeded. The buttons don't actually click. They just push in about a quarter of an inch before they hit bottom and somewhere along the way trigger a mouse click. There's no real tactile feedback, which makes it tough to tell when you've clicked the mouse and really made it very difficult to double click. Plus, I miss the click ... it's just satisfying to hear the mouse click when you push your mouse buttons. I don't know who was bugging you to change them to be this way, Dell, but they suck ... change them back!

As you can tell by the list of good things above, Centrino (and the Pentium M in particular) is for real and Intel's definitely playing for keeps in the Laptop market. With Dothan (the next Pentium M core, successor to the current Banias) coming out by the end of this year, they're pushing fast and furious and I'm now expecting great, great stuff in the PC laptop world over the course of the next year.

If you're considering a PC laptop, I'd say that there's no question that you should be looking at a Pentium M solution - everything else really pales in just about everything but price (yes, P4-Ms will do better on SSE2 optimized programs, but it's just not worth the tradeoffs).

--Nick

Edit: Forgot to mention the spindle thing - added under the bad section.

Edit: Forgot line break between ugly stuff and the conclusion.

Majuscule

noun
1. A large letter, either capital or uncial, used in writing or printing.

Finally got my new laptop this morning, which is obviously great, yet at the moment I'm not terribly excited. I'm sure that phase will come when I get settled in and get to use the thing in earnest, but at the moment I'm kind of just drained and tired of working on the thing.

Why is that? Man, you talk about a pain in the ass ... I just spent all day (well ... the last 14 hours, really ... the morning was spent working on the Google US Puzzle Championships, which kicked my ass) installing software and configuring the thing to get it into the shape that I'd like it to be in to be my primary machine. This basically means installing every last thing that I have (and the collection has grown large over the years) in case I someday need it.

It's kind of just the pain that you have to go through when you switch to a new machine, and I knew this, but over the last year and a half I'd forgotten just how painful it is to spend all day running installers and downloading stuff.

I'm already beginning to form some initial impressions on the thing, but since I haven't really been doing anything but clicking on OK buttons all day, I think I'll withhold them until I've had a little more time to exercise the system.

--Nick

Edit: Forgot a category.