So far, so good.

Just thought I'd update the BLOG with respect to the Urban Challenge. Our team did very well at the site visit (that's where DARPA folks come out and see if your car really can drive itself), so we are expecting to go to the National Qualifying Event. We won't hear officially until mid-August, but since we passed every test they threw at us, I am pretty confident.

To see the 5-minute video we submitted to earn the right to a site visit, see the company website.

BAD Chinese food

So I was in Lansing, MI today, keeping my Mom company while my Dad had "minor" heart surgery. Mom and I went out of Sparrow medical center to try and find some Chinese food while we waited. We found a place called Linsing Chinese Express, and thought we'd give it a try. My recommendation in hindsight: Don't.

The portions were large, but I'd classify it as "all-you-can-eat," since I really couldn't eat more than a few fork-fulls.

The flavors were muted, nearly bland. The tea was, well, pekoe (read: Lipton).

The atmosphere was sort of cafe-like, but the tables were dirty. ENough. Just thought I'd vent because now I am 25 bucks poorer and still hungry.

Urban Challenge

I seem to be the software lead for a DARPA Urban Challenge team. Much work to do!

Wow!

Well, I fell off the wagon about two weeks ago. I have been playing WoW every day since then for at least a couple of hours. Like smoking, the exact old patterns of behavior have re-asserted themselves.

I think about the game all the time when I'm not playing it. It's strange, because over the past several months, I didn't.

Why restart then? A bunch of little reasons, really. My dear friend Claire told me she was playing. South Park's WoW episode. A guy at work said they needed a fifth for questing. The impending release of the expansion. The *sweet* looking druid talent tree.

In fact. I think I'll go play right now.

Nothing to say?

Sometimes, I just can't think of anything to say. That sort of explains why I didn't write much during September. Here are some things I thought about writing, but didn't:

I went to Orlando where I met Aidan and Yvonne, two lovely people from Dublin. We went down to the Lucky Leprechaun pseudo-Irish pub (it's really a karaoke bar) every night for the duration of my stay. Aidan is a pretty decent singer and a very good drinker. Yvonne is a wonderful conversationalist and a very good drinker. This photo was taken the day after they had spent too much time in the Florida sunshine.

Things I learned about from them were Magner's Cider and Sudocrem. According to Yvonne, Sudocrem will cure everything that is red or itches. According to Aidan, Magner's will cure everything else.

White and Nerdy

Weird Al Yankovic has just released "Straight Outta Lynnwood", featuring a parody of this song:




Here is Al's version


The sad thing is that I understand Al's lyrics, and I'm pretty sure that half of Chamillionaire's "lyrics" aren't even words.

Bonus Day

And while I'm at it, I've had something to say all week but been too busy to write it down:

First, you need to understand the concept of truthiness. Now that you've read about that, imagine that it doesn't just apply to our favorite ne'r-do-smart, but to hard science as well. I know a guy who uses truthy science. That is, he asserts things as true because they should be true. Never mind the facts, if something is conceptually easy, then the implementation must, per force, be easy as well. The exorcism power of the entire Catholic church has banished the Devil from all of the details in this guy's mind.

Here is an opinion poll question: Can an automobile navigate in suburban traffic patterns using only a 30-meter range scanning LADAR and a curb sensor?

Your opinions are welcome!

Is society disintegrating?

Welcome back, faithful reader. And yes, I acknowledge that there is only one of you. I've been thinking lately about evolution and meta-evolution; Evolution of societal meta-organisms versus the traditional evolution of people.

If one accepts that societies are organisms (at least they share some properties thereof), then do societies evolve (as in survival of the fittest) or do they learn (as in our 200-year old American democracy* is a spoiled rich kid who has nearly spent all of his trust fund). Societal organisms should be longer-lived than their constituent people, but then do they breed? Do they preproduce by sharing memes? Is Victorian society a dead organism, or did it learn to become industrial England?

And the reason I'm thinking about this is because I wonder if the kind of stupid stuff my boys do is the same level of stupid stuff that boys (who will, after all, be boys) did 100 years ago. Or 1000.







*There is a saying: "Democracy is the system of government where everybody gets what the majority deserve." It is one of my favorite quips, but I do not know to who to attribute it.