a gthing science project

Posted by sam at May 18th, 2005

    So the funnest thing I could think of doing today was to have my transmission blow out on my way to work.  It will have to be rebuilt/replaced.  I love it when the biggest most expesnive part of my car goes out.  I’ve only made one payment on the car.  Go me.

    In related news, my dad got a new car which broke down over the weekend.  I think his case will be a little bit less expensive (fuel pump or something).  I, however, will have to put off my being rich activited like getting out of debt until I can pay for a new transmission.

    This, my friends, is the history of cars in my family:

    One day, a long time ago, my brother Ben was going on a hot double date.  He walked out to his car, a plymouth reliant, and tried to start it.  No luck, it wouldn’t start.  In a pinch, he decided to take our full size van out on the date.

    While driving with his companions down a dark country road somewhere, sudenly the headlights illuminated a fully grown horse, which was grazing in the middle of the road for some reason. 

    Having about .2 seconds to react, Ben plowed right into the horse, sending it a few hundred yards down the street, sending the engine into the front of the car, and generally bumping everyone up a bit.  Fortunately they were all wearing their seatbelts, and were all okay (Except the horse, whose insides were now on it’s outsides).

    This is the part of the story that is fuzzy - After getting out of the car to assess the damage, and old Indian medicine man/ninja approached ben.  “This is my horse,” he said, “and you have killed him.”

    Ben immediately recognized the cunning art of the indian/ninja and reached for his bow staff.  But the Indian/Ninja only stood there doing nothing.  Ben swung at the Indian/Pirate/Ninja but he disappeared.  Like a whisper in his ear he heard the words “I curse you can your family to have unreliable automobiles forevermore.”

    And thus it was.

The end.

Posted by sam at May 17th, 2005

    Dan and I threw a BBQ on Friday night.  It was good times - all the regulars were there and some new people too.  It was fun to show everyone my new place.  Here are some pics that I took (click pic for larger):

This is me pretending to be the man with a bunch of girls on my bed. Yea, that shirt is pink and it’s awesome.

This is Meghan, who is new to the group and has been dubbed with the unfortunate nickname “minifart.” Long story. A little bit after this picture was taken, a few of the guys tried to teach her to longboard. She ended up with 9 stitches in her chin. Ouch!

Emma and Laura. Laura moved up to Salt Lake so we’ve been hanging out a bit.

This is my new room mate Ghent. He’s pretty cool because he’s a computer nerd like me. His box is sportin’ dual monitors just like mine!

Posted by sam at May 14th, 2005

My brother wrote and asked what I do at my new job.  i wrote him this letter back….

I’ve moved and haven’t gotten my photoframe all hooked up at my new place yet.  I’m planning on doing it tonight though.  I’ve made some great breakthroughs lately in the field of computer alphaspintronics lately and have some awesome server stuff I’m about to deploy by leveraging high end assets with breakthrough technology.

Ha - thats how they talk at my work.  Seriously - 90% fluf and 10% information.  They always say “leverage” and “synergize.”  It’s freakin’ awesome - like office space.

As far as describing my job, it would be best to reffer you to the following high end leverged synergetic visualization:
HP —> Joe Bob’s computer Solutions —> Frank’s fried chicken & tax service

So Frank decides he needs a computer solution for his chicken and tax service, so he gets in touch with Joe Bob’s computer solutions.  he will need both computers that can cook chicken and computers that can do taxes - possibly at the same time.  Joe Bob works with me, his contact at HP, to work out a solution for Frank and gets it deployed.  So even though I’m a sales rep, Joe Bob is doing all the difficult sales, and I am just facilitating his efforts by levergaing high end nest egg assests.
 
Joe Bob is a VAR (Value added reseller), and Frank is a TEU (Target End User), and I am and ISR (Inside Sales Rep) - but really a BAM (Business Account Manager).  Everyone at work talks in TLA’s (Three Letter Acronyms) which can get pretty confusing.  IN case you were wondering, YES, you can make an entire sentace with TLA’s.  I can’t do it yet, because I’m not quite done with my month long acronym training program.

Anyway, that’s what I do, in a nutshell.
-Sam

Posted by sam at May 10th, 2005

Got this in my inbox today…

Thank you for your interest in The Original Mattress Factory.  We wanted to let you know that we received and enjoyed reading your email.  Unfortunately do not have a position available for a “mattress tester” at this point in time.  While we do not have any specific name, you might try a sleep clinic - these exist at a small number of universities and/or medical centers and they conduct sleep studies.  You may have an opportunity to find your dream job at one of these centers.  

Good luck in your job search.  

Posted by sam at May 8th, 2005

    I noticed that my google shortcut stopped working around 4:30 today.  I figured my connection was just messed up until around 4:45 when a freind IM’d me and asked if I could reach google.  I confirmed it with yet another friend (the three of us in different parts of the country), and yes indeed, google was DOWN.

    This will be the first time google has been down within recent history and will be the first time EVER that google has been hacked.  That’s right, HACKED.  The DNS was forwarded to sogosearch.com and I have the screenshot to prove it kids.  This just goes to prove that NOBODY is safe from hackers. 

    Of course, sogosearch.com couldn’t handle the load of worldwide google users, so it went right down as well.  Trying to visit google.com just gave you a 404 error. 

    All google services (gmail, etc.) were down and they were down for over an hour.  I wish I could see the people at the googleplex right now all running around in circles.  Man, i bet its exciting over there!

Right click the image and hit view.  You can see www.google.com in the address bar, with sogo search up and running on it.

    Oli says he thinks that web accelerator just crashed googles server from all the extra load, and the sogo search thing was just a weird fluke.  I don’t get how that is possible though…

Posted by sam at May 7th, 2005

    Wow, today should be forever recorded as one of America’s greatest hollidays.  That’s right folks, it’s FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!  I thought to myself “sounds like some kinda scam - like it’s really “buy ten get one free comic book day,” but no, it’s really really free comic book day.

    So I checked www.freecomicbookday.com to find a store near me and headed down around noon.  I got like 30 free comics and some cool little figurines and stuff!  What could be more awesome?!

    The guy who worked at the comic store said it had been kinda slow, so he didn’t care what I took (there is a selection of free comics you can’t just have ANY comic book), so I pretty much took one of each. 

    This will work out good because I’m up in Salt Lake now and don’t have any friends.  Now I can read comics all day! 

Posted by sam at May 7th, 2005

“He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead”
Revelation 13:16-17

Well, it seems like it is finally happening.  The secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, is the anti-christ.  An emergency funding bill for giving troops more money in Iraq just passed the house.  Attached to the bill was a new “government issued ID card” bill which will require everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave to have a national ID card complete with whatever features homeland security comes up with (RFID tags!)

We will see this law come into effect in three years.  The fact of the matter is, none of these new measures will make anyone any safer.  Non of those guys who hijacked those planes on 9/11 had false identification.  And even if they did, bad guys can always find a way around it.  Bad guys will be making fake national ID cards before they even come out. 

The scary thing it that the data read form RFID tags on ntional ID cards can be read by anyone, remotely.  A guy walks by you on the street with a RFID reader, and just being close to him means he now has your data.  Whatever encryption is placed on these cards will be broken, again, before the cards even come out.

Let’s all take a moment to read from section 206 of the “patriot” act:
(1) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.

So Tom Ridge is now the most powerful person on the face of the planet.  Even the president at least has to follow due process in getting a law passed, but to Tom Ridge the laws simply don’t apply.  If he deems it necessary to put land mines all along the border, he can do it, and answers to nobody.  If he deems it necessary to nuke new yokr city, he can do it, an nobody can stop him.

Welcome to democrazy.  It’s time to head for the hills.

Posted by sam at May 4th, 2005

Dear Denver Mattress Company -

I am writing to offer my services as lead tester of your matresses.  I have 24 years experience in sleeping.  At 8 hours a night, that adds up to over 70,000 hours of experience with a mattress (give or take to account for sleeping in, camping, and a couple all nighters I have pulled recently).

As you can see by the time I am writing this (3:30am), I am the perfect person to test your mattresses.  You could basically give me your latest prototype (we can do this at my place or yours), and if I fall asleep on it, it would get the stamp of approval.  Of course, I would not actually stamp the mattress itself, but maybe some paperwork that came with it or something.  You would provide the stamp and ink pad.

I wouldn’t even mind if some scientists or something studied me while I slept.  They could hook me up to electrodes and take notes when I toss and turn, and find the pressure points and stuff.  I could provide valuable feedback to them in the morning, when you guys would always have some donuts and waffles to end my hard nights work.  I don’t drink coffee, but Orange Juice is okay.  Can we trade the coffee for orange juice?

I think this would be the ideal situation for me really.  I could work 8 hours a night, sleeping for you guys, and then have the rest of the day to work another job or go to school.  I would effectively double my salary.  In fact, if you let me work overtime (I can do sleeping-in tests too) and let me work every day, I will save on living expenses too.  I can just rent a storage locker or something to hold all my posessions.

I don’t know how extensively you test your mattresses there, but I am only available to do sleep tests.  I do not work well in partnerships or groups doing other sorts of tests on mattresses.  

By having a lead tester, like myself, you would be able to advertise that these mattresses have been tested and approved by someone with over 70,000 hours of experience in the field.  In the commercial, I could have on a lab coat and be holding a clip board.  Also, I think it would be good if I had some thick rimmed glasses, as those tend to make people look smarter.  I would not be able to wear the glasses while sleeping though, or I will wake up with a sore nose.

As part of my job, I think it would also be cool if doctors checked me out regularly.  They could do before and after x-rays of my bones and stuff and then show people how much better all my bones are because I slept on your mattresses.  I am looking at this as a career too, so we would need to work out some kind of long term testing.  But since you are continualy developing new and better mattresses, I’m sure this will not be a problem

I look forward to hearing from you soon in regards to this matter(ess).  Please let me know ASAP, and I can fax you a resume.

-Sam Garfield
samgarfield@gmail.com

Posted by sam at May 3rd, 2005

    I have narrowed down my living choices in Salt Lake to two places.  But I don’t know which one I want.  One if obviously better than the other, but quite a bit more expensive.

    So I pose the question to you, faithful readers - Where should I live?

Option A: Live with a married couple (the guy was from my mission but I was never great friends with him).  In the upstairs of their house.  They just remodeled their basement and built a big master bedroom down there, so I could live in the upstairs along with my current room mate, Dustin.  Price: $225/mo

Option B: Live with my friend Dan and a bunch (4) of other guys.  The house is nice, includes Big Screen TV, Pool Table, Fooz-Ball Table, Trampoline, Huge Yard, Good social life possibilities (since I don’t know many people in SLC yet).  Price: $350/mo

I really don’t want to pay $350 a month, and I really don’t want to live with boring married people.  I do not have to sign a contract at either place. 

What Say Ye?!

Posted by sam at May 3rd, 2005

    My car is out to get me.  Every time I stop and get out of the car, when I go to touch the door to close it, it shocks the crap out of me.

    Now, I’m not talking your little static spark here, I’m talking full on electric chair style surge of high power elecricity.  Sometimes it throws me back in a dramatic explosion, leaving my hair standing up, my face black, and the most of me smoking like an old fire.

    Basically, what I have been receiving is electro-shock therapy - teaching me not to close my door, or touch it, ever.  Or maybe I should start kicking the door closed?  Anyway, if you ever see me getting out of my car, you will see me pause and then slowly put my hand, get shocked,  and then curse.  It’s my routine.

P.S. for you firefox users, theres a new version of Deepest Sender out - go get it.