Cogito, Ergo Sumana for 2008 March

# (4) 03 Mar 2008, 03:35AM: Rhythm: My employer's name, "Behavior," has the same syllabic stress pattern as "America." Thus: anthems?

Behavior The Beautiful
God Bless Behavior
(I Want To Work At) Behavior [WebSideStory]
Comin' To Behavior

# 06 Mar 2008, 01:08PM: The Things You Find: I realize now that Weird Al Yankovic triggered my interest in klezmer, and that he and Dave Barry primed me to appreciate the humor of the over-specific. Also, Yankovic appeared on Square One TV, the show that got me into math and sketch comedy, but that's for another post.

Anyway, a Google search for ["Weird Al" klezmer] led me to this gem:

When you're an accordion player you make mistakes and people who don't really know what they're doing will stop or apologize or make a wincing face. But you should really just keep going and act like you meant to do it. And Stalin is an example of a guy who made a lot of mistakes but he never let them get him down.

# 06 Mar 2008, 04:56PM: Crime Reporting: According to the Every Block folks, the New York Police Department won't release its incident-level, block-level crime data. That would be a mighty fine dataset to mashup! And the city must already have it, thanks to CompStat. I bet it wouldn't be too hard to release a .csv of 311 calls as well. Sounds like I should write a letter to the city.

# (6) 07 Mar 2008, 08:05AM: San Antonio?: I've never been to San Antonio, even though much of the Walch clan lives there. I guess the time was never right with school and all. Then today I saw Gordon Atkinson invite me to a Franciscan retreat at his church in San Antonio. Given that I look on with yearning at Rivka's SUUSI reports, this retreat could be a good way to ease myself into the spiritual retreat scene. And it would be an excuse to visit Kristen, Aaron, Lily, Gunnar, Anne, and who knows who else?!

Now I just need for my company to send me to conferences in Salt Lake City, Tallahassee, Seattle, Portland, Portland, Chicago, Bryn Mawr, Boston, Atlanta, London, Cambridge, Charlottesville, Mysore, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham, Radovljica, Baltimore, and I suppose Los Angeles, so I can piggyback all my friends-and-family visits. (Tell me if I missed you.)

Filed under: Religion

# (3) 09 Mar 2008, 03:14PM: Wahoo!: Today Leonard and I beat Super Mario Galaxy. And I beat him at a game of Wii Tennis. And I'm chomping some great yummy dark chocolate. I approve.

# (2) 11 Mar 2008, 10:28AM: Olfactory Equity: Today I splashed a little of Leonard's aftershave on my wrist so I can sniff it and think of him. He warned me that I might seem mannish! I replied, "So what? I'll get a raise?"

Filed under: Comedy

# 15 Mar 2008, 06:56AM: Marching Down To Washingtown: I'm off for a short weekend in Washington, D.C. to see my sister. She has an MBA so she can help me understand the microeconomics in my cost-benefit analysis class. (Formal economics has the flavor to me of a religion, one of the Pythagorean sects.) And we'll make a jaunt to Silver Spring to see John Stange in The Cripple of Inishmaan.

My sister convinced me to treat myself to Amtrak rather than succumb to the cheap temptations of the bus. By the time I bought the train ticket, the Acela wasn't that much costlier than a regular "coach" seat. Power outlets at every seat! Entry to the special Acela waiting area at Penn Station! Costumed dancers to fan me and bring me drinks! I can't wait.

# 17 Mar 2008, 12:26AM: Should I Be On Twitter For This?: My cab ride home from Penn Station included an intelligent discussion with the cabbie as to whether Microsoft's bids for dominance in online apps and advertising would truly challenge Google, and Microsoft's often overlooked (by me) Outlook base.

Why should I move back to San Francisco if I can get this here? Oh yeah: friends, fresh local produce year-round, and bookstore/cafe culture. And (way more) people actually doing innovative tech, not just talking about it.

# 19 Mar 2008, 09:35AM: Getting Rid of Gimmicks and Hand Markers in Dance Dance Revolution: Here's a tip on making DDR for the Wii much more fun.

By default, the game adds all these "gimmicks" (exploding arrows, bouncing and swiveling arrows, etc.) and makes you shake the nunchuck or Wii remote (Wiimote?) to hit certain markers. But the gimmicks just clutter up the dancing, and the Wii doesn't register those nunchuk and Wiimote shakes or button hits consistently. I got really frustrated.

So: at the song selection step, go to Options and turn off Gimmicks and Hand Markers. You'd think this would be in the general Options in the main menu, but it's not. And you have to do it anew for each DDR-playing session (every time you turn on the game, basically). But it makes the game feel much more like the arcade experience.

# (1) 19 Mar 2008, 12:51PM: Said At Work: "So it turns out I coulda bought Bear Stearns."

Filed under: Comedy

# 23 Mar 2008, 08:30PM: Who's Afraid of Castle Wolfenstein?: Zack and Pam stayed with us for a few days just now. I was mentioning something that Leonard's not great at -- boring repetitive tasks, or something.

Leonard (entering): Wait, what's my alleged flaw?
Sumana: You're incapable of love!
Leonard: Don't talk about our son, Martha!

Filed under: Comedy

# (4) 27 Mar 2008, 11:11PM: A Random Walk: My sister is visiting me this weekend and we're going to try to walk the length of Manhattan this Saturday.

We are tantalizingly close to the end of our trek and elated to find ourselves in front of 2 Broadway. We rush toward the dimly glowing storefront that we think must be One. What could be at One Broadway? What treasures could it hold? Apparently: tortilla chips and guacamole. It's a Chipotle. One Broadway is a Chipotle.

It should take ten to twelve hours. It should also be pretty awesome, and about the length of a half-marathon, and thus good practice for any future charity walks we do.