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The below video is the result of a ludicrous amount of time.  Had I the chance to go back in time and change my response to Bill’s question “can you make a promo slide show for camp?” I would have said “no, I need to catch up on flossing” or something equally dumb as an evasive move such that I could run when he blinked.

The source material wasn’t exactly designed for promotional means.  The photos had a “family photo album” quality to them, which is nice for slide shows and adds a homey touch, but not too good for promotions.  Every good picture of the Water Carnival had someone mooning the photographer.

Some photos simply made no sense, such as this gem:

Joe, doing something....

Joe, doing something....

From the cropped picture it may appear that Joe just discover that his boxers were a bad place to store his loaded mousetrap collection, but it can’t be.  In the uncropped version, one can clearly make out Joe’s shorts and the only place that pain that’d induce this phase could come.  More importantly, this is one of two successive photos where Gary’s to Joe’s right (our left) holding a snake and he’s staring into the distance like someone sent a curling stone into another man’s scrotum.

Trying to find a picture of the water carnival was tough for 3 reasons:

1) The photo was underexposed or noisy
2) Dan Rowley or another member of the Aquatics staff looked like he was about to rip off a kid’s head and sharpen his ogre teeth upon their bones.
3) Some kid is mooning the camera.

Normally the last isn’t a problem as I’m rather good at removing undesirables from photographs as proven by my “no pimple left behind” treatment I’ve been called on to perform for people looking to gussy up a photo.  But, somehow the very gestalt of the picture screamed “ass crack!” such that if it weren’t present, the visceral equipment of perception would be aghast to not find a vertical smile as it condensed meaning from a cloud of data.

I don’t want to lash out at the photo takers as they’re all nice people who been given technology with little training like expecting a boa constrictor to operate a x-ray machine or an 18-year old a voting booth.  Every camera has a review function built into the LCD so while reviewing the photos I entered a near paroxysmal rage when I saw a photo that was both underexposed and noisy, followed by 22 other underexposed and noisy shots.

Finally, there was the actual content.  I excluded several COPE pictures of the mountain board operators seemingly ignoring the kids going down the hill (there’s always the photographer).  Although there were several amazingly framed shots of kids succumbing to sudden gusts of gravity from their carbon fibre death traps as the Health Lodge sign came into view.  One COPE picture actually made me smile in joy for literally minutes.

Richard Ebright - Transcription Expert

Richard Ebright - Transcription Expert

As I thought an later confirmed, Dr. Richard Ebright is an expert in DNA transcription at Rutgers, and he had the courtesy to sally forth and risk death at our COPE course after years of unfolding the mechanisms that create human life.

Gun pictures were tought to get as it was either a child who would probably be blown back as the bullet stayed stationary or a grizzled, slightly crazy adult, getting his last Charlie.  Every picture of the archery staff involved them wearing some sort of non-hat on their heads even in the Norman Rockwellesque “Son, lemme show you how to shoot” ones.  There were about 20 pictures of people cycling, but each was either a kid, thinking he was about to fall, a kid about to fall, or a kid falling. “Oh Shit!” shouldn’t be the face when one tries to inspire confidence.  I could have used a cannondale promo image, but most were out of place.

Considering we started with 13,000 photos I think we pulled out a solid 60.  Tempus fugit!

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Google Adsense has served up some odd things through Gmail before including bed-wetting clothing and feminine care products.  Today I was served up an ad for Topamax, an anti-convulsant.  Is there something in my mailing pattern or search trends to indicate I’m epileptic?

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In an attempt to save material cost, a coworker was tasked with determining the actual surface area used of a material on one of our products.  Watching him measure a curved surface with a ruler was almost painful so I proposed he cut the film of interest away from the product, mass it, and compare it to the mass of a reference sample.  I was told this was “too inexact” compared to trying to measure a curved, inflated, stretchy surface with a ruler.

He then moved to using CAD to view the device in 3D and started using the ruler functions to again measure the surface and tried cutting the space into smaller geometric figures as the surface of consideration wasn’t quite spherical.  I proposed he use the equation for the surface curve and that he calculate the volume as an a surface of revolution.  Once again, I was rebuffed for it not being exact enough.

Calculus, not exact enough.  The only method for perfectly determining the area under a curve after literally millenia of estimates using stupid rectangular prisms and trapezoids is not exact enough.  A mathematic accurate enough to shoot the Voyager 2 probe within 70 km of Neptune at a distance of nearly 4.5 billion km.  Your right, calculus, not exact enough.  You got me.

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For one of the few times in my professional career I received a thank you gift in the form of 16 oz handled, non-microwavable, recessed lid, slider cup.    I was thrilled that I got recognition for my years of dodging work and long hours of fabricating data.

NOTE: For the purposes of complying with 49 CPR 1028 the above statement is false and is meant for humorous effect to preserve a comic idiom.  All data was properly and rigorously generated and recorded in compliance with ISO and FDA documentation standards as well as to the moral standards of the Engineer Code of Ethics.

But the lid’s steel.  Steel.  Who makes a cup with a steel lid.  “I want some coffee.  Mmmm… That’s good steel-flavored coffee.  I’m glad I’ll be tasting that metallic tinge with all food I eat for the rest of the day.”  Every other part of the cup is rubberized except for the one part that comes in contact with you tongue.  GHA….

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A large clump of cubes have recently been populated with marketing folk and they simply haven’t learned the proper rules of scavenging and post-meeting food theft etiquette.  Once you’ve finished a meeting, it is not proper form to come back with a f#$%ing shopping bag to take extra sodas and bags of chips, it is not ok to have someone wait in the room between trips to ward off people from other departments from taking anything and finally it is unacceptable, no childishing, to take forks and plates.  I can see hording sodas, but plates?  They are literally available at all times in the cafeteria along with condiment packets and ice.  Also, perishables should only be taken up to what one can consume in a day.  Excess should be put in a common area.  Extra ranch turkey bacon wraps in the garbage indicate carelessness, and these aren’t the kind of people that can be entrusted with maximizing shareholder value.  A kind of comity exists between departments on rules for raiding and counter-raiding the spoils of meetings and these vagabonds risk initiating a war they may not be ready to win.

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During my newly discovered free time, I started baking again.  I needed to work my way back in slowly so I started with a chocolate chip cake mix and entered a paroxysmal rage upon seeing the stupidly specific ingredients recommended.

Organic Eggs:  Normal eggs will cause you to become pregnant if you consume them when mixed with whole wheat flour and sugar sprinkles.
Hershey’s Chocolate: If you don’t make these cookies with our chocolate the cookies will die a horrible death and the Hershey people will mug your sister.

I’d much prefer they did the exact opposite and replaced “3 medium sized eggs” with “375 grams of unfertilized avian ovum” and 1 cup refined sugar with “400 grams of various disaccharides”.

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While I’m somewhat certain of whom I back in national elections I’m much less certain for local ones.  Candidates blow at giving information about both their platform and government epistomology so have been searching for a voting algorithm for a few years, I think I’ve found one.

In a two candidate race, vote for the guy whose opponent sends the dumbest attack literature.  For instance, a candidate for state rep sent the following:

Chris King, is in favor of nationalizing healthcare (which he can’t do as a state rep), liberal supreme court justices (which are direct elections in PA and appointed at the national level) and wants to raise the crippling sales tax (crippling, really?  If you can’t pay six percent, I’d reconsider the purchase).

Mind you, there’s one exception.   Our local tax officer gets paid $60,000 a year and their office is open 12 hours a week.  If actuarial science doesn’t work out I’m going to run for that position on the “I’ll be open when you can actually get to my office” platform.

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I just bought Adobe Lightroom 2 as I really like it for simple post processing and with my now waning student discount I can get it for just shy of a benjamin.  I buy from a student software site that just changed their UI and it has the intuitive qualities of the Quantum Holographic Principle.  Each page in checkout has the “continue” button in a different place and where the “Buy” button would normally be in the lower right hand corner of the center frame there’s a rotating sequence of “subscribe”, “verify student identity” (which is even displayed on the screen that tells you that your student ID has been verified” and my favorite: recommend.  Yes, I’d like to write a review on a student software site frequented by kids who have to buy this stuff for a product I’m in the process of buying.  If only supermarkets asked about the quality of their fruit as you were packing it into your car.

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I hate needy technology.  My microwave beeps every 60 seconds until you take its contents out. I checked to see how long this would go by setting the microwave for a few seconds and then going to bed and checking it in the morning.  Still going.

Some WordPress plugins are equally insistent being updated every few days.  When an app goes from ver. 1.00.1.00.98 to 1.00.1.00.99 there really shouldn’t be a giant red marquee on the top of the page telling me to get the vital update or my Flickr feed could be viewed by communists.  Unless failing to update will cause nothing less than the distruction of Western Civilization, I don’t care until it at least hits 1.00.1.01.

Something more appropriate would be my car’s parking brake light.  I’ve driven for hundreds of feet with the parking brake on after someone drove it without telling me they activated/engaged it, turfing grass, destroying stone walkways and abbrating woodland creatures without treating me like an idiot.  It lets me look like an idiot, but at least it gives me the option.