This site will look better in a browser that supports Web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.

Archive of May, 2006

1993
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
January
February
March
April
May
Su	M	Tu	W	Th	F	Sa
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012

Who Needs a Bike?

May 30, 2006:

Since I had a coupon for a free tire rotation I took my car up to the Goodyear store in Herdon, and got the state safety inspection done while I was there. (Needed to replace the eye-level brake light, but parts and labor combined was only $13.)

They said they wouldn't be able to get to it until later; it wouldn't be done until 3:00. This was at 10. I decided that since it was a nice day and I could use some exercise, I'd walk to the IHOP on Route 50 for breakfast.

Also, that was the only place that sells breakfast that I know of.

No big deal, right? At a guess it's 3 miles or so to the IHOP, an hour to eat and dawdle a bit, an hour back and plenty of time to kill waiting for the car.

Exceeeeeept that it's actually a two-hour walk, making it about six miles each way. Two hours down, inhale some food, two hours back, and it's 2:30 by the time I walk back in the door. They tell me about the brake light and I sit down while they do the replacement. (Felt good to get off my feet again.)

So yeah, did a lot of walking today. Assuming I walk at 3 mph, about normal speed for a human, and factoring in that I had to lug 225 lbs. of myself around, the calculator I found online says I burned 1,782 Calories. I also made my feet and ankles really sore. Time for a new pair of sneakers, I think.

Bankers' Hours

May 29, 2006:

In observance of Memorial Day, this blog will be closed on May 29, 2006.

Caution: Bored Programmer Ahead

May 26, 2006:

Hmm, that fall at the game Friday seems to have dislodged a couple entries. Guess the "Brain Farts" title may be accurate after all. Or maybe I just talk out of my ass too much. Anyway...

A couple weeks ago I caught up with the new goings-on over at Bad Astronomy and saw a lot about the two Mars rovers. In order to make the most of the daylight they receive, the rovers operate on "sols" -- the Martian day of about 24 hours and 40 minutes.

It got me to thinking about the rest of the Martian calendar, since as far as I know there's no official one. I set out to change that :)

Once I figured out a leap-year schedule (three every five years, skipping years divisible by 50) I decided to backtrack and find a good starting point for the calendar. I wanted to go a pretty good ways, so anything we're ever written down about the planet would happen in positive years. A not-so-quick back-of-the-envelope calculation places the Martian north winter solstice on the same day as January 1 way back in 1754 BCE, assuming my guess about when the Martian solstices happen is at all accurate.

That became the first day of the first month of Martian Year 0. Yes, on Mars we'll start counting from 0 like sensible people. Moving forward, assuming I did everything right, puts us in the second half of Martian Year 2018. The Viking landings happened sometime in the 1999-2001 range, which seems to fit nicely.

Then I realized that units were going to be a bitch. Human explorers to Mars would probably bring the concept of hours, minutes and seconds with them, but none of these things fit a Martian day particularly well. Since NASA has already started using the term "sol" for a Martian day, I went ahead and made up new names for everything.

Second(s): The second is an actual unit of measurement, and is too important to screw with.
Minorum/minora: The Martian equivalent of a minute, it lasts about 61.5 seconds. This is the one case of square-peg-round-hole I allowed myself. Larger units are even from here on out.
Horum/hora: Martian hours. They last 60 minora, or about 61.5 minutes.
Sol(s): Martian days. To keep using Earth ratios, there are 24 hora in a sol, which is about 24 hours and 40 minutes here.
Lune(s): The concept of a month is totally useless in terms of Mars's satellites -- they orbit in a matter of days, and one is close enough to rise in the west and set in the east. Bringing over the concept of 30-ish days from Earth, I was able to make 18 lunes of 37 and 38 sols each. The 1st, 4th, 7th, etc., lunes are the long ones.
Anno(s): A Martian year of 18 lunes, or 669 sols. Leap-annos are 670 sols long, with the extra sol added to the last lune. I just realized that I don't account for that at all in my marsDate() function. Annos that are evenly divisible by 5, or leave a remainder of 2 or 4 are leap-annos. Annos divisible by 50 are not. If I remember right that gives us a day of error every 20,000 annos or so, or a little less than 40,000 years. I may have shifted a decimal on that one though, so don't quote me on it.

With units figured out it was time to start doing conversions.

Martian datestamps are necessarily 64-bit integers; 32-bit ints only last about 70 (Earth) years. I created marsDate() to convey most of the functionality of PHP's date() function. The only real exception is the removal of twelve-horum time and the AM/PM that goes with it. Twenty-four-horum (military) time only, thanks. If we're going to recreate the clock we might as well do it right. I also created earthTsToMarsTs() to automatically take an Earth datestamp and add the appropriate amount to make it Martian.

As far as naming goes, some was easy and some wasn't. I opted for a seven-sol week and chose names for the sols based on the celestial bodies that are visible in the Martian sky. The week begins on Heliosol. (Helios being Greek for the Sun; at least five of the names are based on the Greek names. Two I'm not sure of.) The work week begins with Deimosol and Phobosol, after Mars's ~~captured asteroids~~ moons. Then on to the planets: Terrasol (Terra -- Earth), Aphrodisol (Aphrodite -- Venus) and Zeusol (Zeus -- Jupiter) even out the work week, and Cronosol (Cronos -- Saturn) begins the weekend. 1/1/0000 was a Heliosol.

Lunes I had a harder time with. The year begins with three people who were important in the study of Mars -- Percival (Lowell, who thought he saw canals), Asaph (Hall, discoverer of the moons) and Giovanni (Schiaparelli, who saw the canali that Lowell mistranslated as "canals".

Then I ran out of steam with only 15 to go. The fourth and fifth lunes are currently named (H.G.) Wells and (Edgar Rice) Burroughs who wrote The War of the Worlds and the Barsoom Series, respectively. I only half-seriously considered naming the thirteenth lune "Smarch" but a scholarly work such as this is no place for Simpsons references :)

Of course, my code is probably full of bugs like off-by-one errors: It's not like I have an actual calendar to check against. But it was a fun exercise. I probably ought to put it up on the site so people can play with it.

Episode 4.5: The Reaming

May 25, 2006:

Bwahaha... Thanks to Melman for finding this Star Wars parody from Robot Chicken.

You'll Thank Me For Not Posting a Picture

May 23, 2006:

I went to a Nationals game Friday night with one of my friends in Arlington. The Orioles fans made their way down from Bawl'mer to cheer for their lousy team over our lousy team, so we wound up in the nosebleed section -- the 500 level, about a dozen rows from the back of the stadium.

Roundabout the fifth inning I decided it was time to un-beer myself, and I did what the unofficial code of the ballgame requires -- wait until the end of the half-inning, or at least the at-bat, before climbing over a row's worth of people to get to the aisle.

Then the pitcher decided to start throwing pick-off throws to first base. And the batter figured now would be a good time to start fouling off pitches. Meantime my eyes were starting to turn yellow.

The at-bat finally ended, and I made my way down to the concourse, forgetting in my haste that the steps in RFK's upper deck are about 1.5 times as tall as a normal step. My right foot continued past where the stair should have been, and glanced off the edge of the step that was there. I took a seat, hard, on the edge of the step above it. After assuring the ushers that I was fine, I continued about my business.

When I got home I discovered the 5-inch-long, inch-wide bruise running horizontally across my right cheek. Sitting down recently has been, shall we say, less than pleasant. And lest you think that this was a result of anything other than clumsiness and being in a hurry, I can assure you that a pair of Bud Lights are nowhere near enough to get me even remotely buzzed, let alone staggering drunk.

But that doens't mean my rear end doesn't hurt.

And My Subconcious Is Like, "W-T-F, Mate?"

May 19, 2006:

Sometimes dreams help you solve problems or make sense of things that are bothering you. Sometimes they're just flights of fancy as your brain drops a few concepts into the mix and sees what comes out. And sometimes they just make you sit up in bed and say, "whaaa?"

Sunday night was one of the last kind.

Basically, it involved a former friend of mine. Haven't spoken to each other at all in about 5 months now. I'm wandering around a hospital (can't really recall if I was a patient or if I was just there for the hell of it) and happened to see this person's name on a ... well, it was more of an index card than a medical chart.

My subconcious cares not for your "reality".

Now, the hospital thing actually makes sense to me, since the last part of the falling out happened over Son of Roast Beef. To be more specific, it was the fact that this was the only person I knew who lived within a half-hour of me, and that person's response to a friend in need of assistance was to whine about how difficult I make things. So yeah, not friends any more.

I'll admit I had a tough time wrapping my brain around that -- if you're going to call someone your friend that implies that when they come to you needing help you provide it. I've never been tasked with picking someone up from the hospital at 2 in the morning, but I'd like to think my principles apply even when I'm half-asleep.

But in the dream I went into the room for a chat. Well, it started as a chat. Former-friend basically repeated the "you're making things difficult" spiel and I commenced with the yelling. At least, I kinda did; I got out one sentence than woke up.

What I want to know is, what did I hope to accomplish? Former-friend wasn't going to say anything that would have made sense to me, since it was just my representation of that person. If I could figure it out, I probably wouldn't have had the dream in the first place.

Was the yelling supposed to be cathartic? Why stop and wake up instead of going whole-hog on the ass-reaming? It's not like Former-friend had anywhere to go being a figment of my imagination and all.

When I woke up in the middle of the night Sunday my thoughts were basically: "what the hell was that?" Now that I've played the parts I remember through a couple times, I'm starting to get more into "why did I bother?" I don't really get the idea that anything regarding this has changed inside my head.

Maybe it just means my subconcious ain't all that bright either.

College Degree != Smart

May 15, 2006:

Since I have a coupon for a free tire rotation and a couple bucks off a state inspection, I headed up to the Goodyear store on Saturday. When I told the guy at the desk what I wanted, he told me the inspector was only there on teh first and last Saturdays of the month.

Somehow I'd managed to convince myself that it was the 20th instead of the 13th. I told the guy I'd be back in a week. I didn't see a calendar until after I left, so I didn't get to correct myself, but at least I know better than to drive up next weekend.

Not the Brightest Plan

May 08, 2006:

After grabbing a few books at about half a dozen library book sales the last two weekends, I realized that I needed a new bookshelf. Off to the Ikea in College Park I went. (Woodbridge is probably closer, but College Park is easier to find.)

I managed to track down an exact duplicate (at least, it damn well better be) of my current bookshelf, and rather clumsily loaded it into the car. After I bungeed the trunk lid shut I drove back, wondering how the hell I was going to get it up the stairs to my apartment.

Upon my arrival at the apartment I unloaded the trunk (easier this time) and caught a quick glimpse of the bookshelf's vital stats. Most notably, the one that said it weighed about 80 pounds.

You know how, in some horror/thriller movies, the victim will look at his/her destination and it'll seem to recede into the distance? My apartment did that.

After "walking" the box to the steps (annoying), dragging it up the first flight of stairs (moderately successful) and lifting it step-by-step up the next flight (far less successful) I managed to wrestle the thing into my apartment.

I have no idea whether the thing is still in good condition or not; I'm leaving it until I grab some dinner.

Edit: The shelf came through just fine, one corner of one shelf is a little dinged up. It's not the right size, though it does seem to have a similar height-width ratio. It's about 6'7" tall, instead of about 5'11" for the old one, and a little bit wider. I shoulda measured. But I ain't lugging that thing back down the stairs and a new one up them. I can live with mismatched shelves.