Monthly Archives: May 2008

Indexed

I stumbled across Jessica Hagy’s Indexed blog at http://indexed.blogspot.com/. It was featured in Time’s Top 25 blogs some time back and features a lot of deadpan humor in graphs and Venn diagrams. There’s a book too on Amazon, but I’m not sure how much new materials it contains.

For some of the former coworkers, you might enjoy these specifically:

Anyways, as imitation is the best form of flattery, here’s an attempt of mine to fit an old saying to the Indexed theme.

Vbhat Venn Diagram

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“What’s the blog about?”

“Nothing.”

“I think you may have something here.”

Thus, with a week in the books, some random musings …

– I did laundry last week and I realized that a good chunk of my clothes the past 2 years are now somewhat useless. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t buy too many new clothes recently. I’ll keep the iron, though, just in case.

– It’s going to be tough to motivate myself, but I will get around to it. Working with deadlines and meetings meant there was external pressure to get stuff done. Hopefully I can kick myself into gear this coming week. Of course, with tournaments approaching (I will take off in about 5 weeks) that will serve as an external push if I can’t get myself going.

– I’ll give myself a pat on the back for my parting gift. I ended up going with the Koss foldable headphones instead of the Sennheiser PX-100s because of the more supra-aural design and better sound leakage protection. The sound quality is slightly inferior in my view, but nothing easily noticeable and the protection it’ll give those around me from my music is quite useful. Throw in some quality music (Lupe Fiasco and The Roots) and a pair of good books, and I’m surprised how far $87 went.

– One of the books I got was Watchmen, a graphic novel by Alan Moore. I never was a big comic-book reader and haven’t read too many graphic novels (Tintin was good; The Dark Knight Returns is highly acclaimed, and while I thought it was good, but I wasn’t super-impressed), but Watchmen was really good. I had got the recommendation from an old Chronicle article (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/22/DD48V60PV.DTL) that I had bookmarked and stumbled back upon when thinking of what I might want to buy.

– Oh yes, and my first chess training purchase. It was quite odd to buy a few chess books and then realize that it’s all covered. I have a bad habit of collecting books and never reading them, but hopefully I read these even though they will essentially be free. Bingo!

Kasparov gets the shaft

You can’t make this stuff up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbnySBqioB0

For those interested, after the security guard swatted it to the ground, Kasparov says, “I think we have to be thankful for the opposition’s demonstration of the level of discourse we need to anticipate. Also, apparently most of their arguments are located beneath the belt.” Someone in the audience shouts, “Finally the political power shows its face!” Kasparov quickly replies, “Well, if that’s its face…” to laughter from the audience. (ht to Mig for the translation …)

I’d say they are getting more creative. Kasparov was attacked with a chessboard back in 2005: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2329

Officially unemployed

So now I’m unemployed. Sounds a bit weird, to be honest, especially since the first check comes in only 6 weeks from now.

But I’m celebrating in style, having had a few wisdom teeth (and one extra tooth) pulled this morning. Here’s to having to take Vicodin. And – it must be the Vicodin – for starting a blog.

” 9 to 5 is how you survive, I ain’t trying to survive
I’m trying live it to the limit and love it a lot”