October, 2007 · TangleBones
Randy Couture to Fans: I Can’t Have My Way, So I’m Taking My Toys and Going Home
The MMA news is reporting that because Randy “The Natural” Couture can’t have the fight he wants with Fedor Emelianenko in the UFC, he’s not going to fight anyone. Expect future reports indicating that he sucks his thumb, wears diapers, and would like some Wonder Pets DVDs for Christmas.
Explaining AAPL
Lately, the correlation between AAPL stock run-ups and actual news regarding Apple is zero. Whereas most of the time there is any actual news, even news that to me seems good for Apple, the stock goes down.
Which is something that I’ve been noticing for a while, and not just with Apple. It seems like the stock market responds to just about any news by punishing the company involved. Did you quarterly results meet analysts predictions? The stock goes down. Did it beat them by too much? The stock goes down. That’s just strange.
But what’s downright dumb is when nothing happens and the stock rises. How is that possible. So here’s my theory: good news does make stock prices go up. But not when most traders first hear about it. To them, anything in the press is bad, so anytime they read about a company, the stock goes down. But a week later when they talk to somebody smart enough to know what’s going on, the price starts creeping up.
The reason for the sudden dip is that there’s a small but significant number of day traders that are nothing but reactionary lemmings. On the other hand, there are lots of smart people out there who slowly begin to fill in the larger mass of traders in on the good news. The thing is that the lemmings all hear about the news at the same time, but the word of mouth filters out slowly over a few weeks.
What do you think?
An Open Letter to NBC, re: Bionic Woman
Dear NBC,
If you want to start patching things up after the recent unpleasantness, you could really do me a favor. All you have to do is make Isaiah Washington’s character in the Bionic Woman, Antonio Pope, as gay as possible. Please make sure that every episode features Pope lip-locked with a hot young stud every time he isn’t talking. Thanks,
Jemal
Vista Confirm and Cancel Dialogs
Jared has been running Windows Vista on his new computer for a while, and he keeps running into the same problem. When he wants to install a game from a CD, he double clicks on the icon to run the autoplay script, but because Windows is now scanning everything that passes through memory to make sure that you aren’t a pirate (see the Longest Suicide Note in History), this takes a few seconds. Jared gets bored and ends up either clicking on another window, or clicking on the CD icon again.
The reason this is a problem is that when the autoplay eventually runs, it kicks out the Vista “Are you sure you want to run the application that you just ran?” dialog box and blacks out the screen. Or it would, unless you happened to click on anything else, in which case the dialog disappears. You can’t alt-tab to it and you can’t see it on the screen. The only way to get back to it, as far as I can tell, is to Ctrl-Alt-Delete and choose the task manager at which point the dialog appears.
I don’t really want to teach Jared the three-finger salute because I don’t want him messing around killing processes, but I’m also tired of him coming to me screaming that he can’t install his game.
So is there a way to turn off these warnings, or an easy way to get back to them that I can teach Jared?
So very wrong
As mentioned over on Left Brain/Right Brain, in the introduction to Jenny McCarthy’s new book about raising her autistic son, Dr. Jerry Kartzinel says:
“Autism, as I see it, steals the soul from a child; then, if allowed, relentlessly sucks life’s marrow out of the family members, one by one..”
…which makes my mind boggle. Let’s be clear who we’re talking about. This is what Dr. Kartzinel thinks a soulless child looks like:
Has this guy ever met an autistic? Jared is the happiest, funniest, sweetest bundle of life and joy that you could ever meet. He’s made everyone around him happy for years. Every kid in his school seems to love him, and when they see him, they run to him shouting his name as though they were greeting a conquering hero. This kid isn’t sucking life’s marrow from anyone. This kid is too busy relentlessly making life better for everyone who knows him.
So the next time you hear people like Dr. Kartzinel or parents like Jenny McCarthy on television describing autistics and autism, think of these pictures. Think of that smile. And then give them the finger.
Morning Celebration
Jared has been playing the “Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius” game on his PC lately, and the level that has always stopped him is the power plant. You have to run through a power plant full of toxic waste and turn off a bunch of switches and navigate obstacles by tossing baseballs and swinging on a grappling hook. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get past a doorway that was blocked by an broken power line that kept shocking him.
This morning Jared let me help him, and I don’t know if it was dumb luck, or my clever strategy of hugging the wall and jumping spastically, but we got around it for the first time. Jared fought through the rest of the level and completed it in one attempt. As soon as he realized he has won, Jared started jumping up and down yelling, “I did it! I did it! All by myself!”
I asked him, “Didn’t I help with the electricity?”
Jared smiled at me, gave me a high five and said, “That’s what best friends are for.”
Best Saturday morning ever.
Third Night at Cub Scouts
The third night at Cub Scouts was relatively uneventful. Nobody said anything about Jesus, though one of the mothers did ask me to be the leader. Since this would be in strict violation of the religious policies, I dodged out of it. I will be leading a trip to either a fire or police station early next year, but the funny part is that cub scouts outings are called “Go Sees” just like interviews for fashion models.
The evening’s “classic Jared” moment happened when Jared noticed that the older scouts were playing tug of war. They seemed to be relatively evenly matched, with one team making some slow progress. Until Jared grabbed the other end of the rope with one hand and started booking for the door pulling all of the big kids with him. If I hadn’t stopped him, he would have pulled an entire den out of the school.
A Small Programming Note
Oh hey, I’ve got a tumblelog: Jemaleddin.com.
What’s a tumblelog? Tumblr says:
To make a simple analogy: If blogs are journals, tumblelogsare scrapbooks.
You can also look at tumblelogs as slightly more structured blogsthat make it easier, faster, and more fun to post and share stuff you find or create.
I was pretty impressed by their bookmarklet that intelligently figures out what you want to do with a page that you want to share on Tumblr: if you’re on a video site, it posts the video; if you have text selected, it makes a quote. Very cool.
I’m not sure if I’ll be using it, but I had the domain and didn’t know what else to do with it, so there you go.
What I Wish I Could Say
A woman where I work sent out a request on an internal mailing list asking if anyone could recommend “a good autistic specialist who practices using the DAN philosophy” in our area. Here’s what I wish I could write her:
Dear XXXXX,
I don’t want this to come across too harshly, but I certainly hope nobody will help you find what you’re looking for. DAN is nothing but quackery, and their use of chelation and Lupron is both ill-advised and unethical.
I would encourage you to call Kennedy Krieger and talk to them about seeing a neurologist and whatever other therapists your child might need - they have all sorts. My son Jared has done wonderfully working with them.
Best of luck,
Jemal
Get your free Ruby on Rails book while supplies last
Okay, it’s a PDF so there aren’t any supplies to run out, but in 60 days, the file will be pulled and if you want to read Patrick Lenz’s Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications you’ll have to pay for it. So if you have any interest in getting started with Rails, head over to SitePoint to download it for free now.
Still not convinced? Well, Jamis Buck, one of the Rails developers, gave it a positive review, and said that he learned something new. Pretty amazing, considering that he helps write the software!
Oh, and do yourself a favor and remember to turn off the newsletters when you’re dealing with the popup windows. No need to clog up your email with all that stuff.