9 out of 10 monkeys believe they are not behind glass

• Another gold in l4d survival last night. Went 13 mins and fell to a three tank rush with smokers and hunters running about. #
• L4d makes you think you are doing a good job and then shits all over you with tanks. #
• No tf2 for a few weeks now. The last update left a nasty taste in my mouth. Should play tonight though, cpts night coming up. #
• Front teeth hurt. Must have spent all night dreaming I was a beaver. #
• Old ladies gabbing on the bus make me chuckle. Talking about walking and the Rockies. #
• A little spring baseball for the blue hairs. #
• Need water. Need lots water. Water mixed with hops, wheat, and malt. And some yeast. #

I don’t know why I let it bother me. But a couple things about email and how people use it really annoy me. Deeply and profoundly. I don’t know why it eats me so, but I really wish I could just let the damn pet peeve go.

First, stationary. Seriously? Stationary? Has our world devolved to the point that you need to make your email pretty? Seriously?!? Your stationary just makes your email harder to read and larger in size to boot. Stationary sucks. Don’t use it. It is ugly and I do not like having everything indented to the right by 6 tabs when I am trying to read a thread. We do not live in a world of Victorian values. Stationary should be reserved to the world of paper and snail mail. Use your fancy paper with your fancy calligraphy pens and your stamps. Email is email. Digital. That shit is just plain superfluous.

Second, email signatures. The company I work for is insisting that we have a consistent email signature. This I don’t necessarily have a problem with (besides bugging a ton of users, and just saddling IT with the duty to explain why). The problem I have is that the brand manager designed the sig. So it is huge, contains images, and has dead space. My sig on a standard resolution screen takes about a half an inch of vertical space in a thread. The header of an email (the date, to, from and subject) generally takes about 3/4″ on a reply or forward. This “standardized” email sig is 3.5 inches in height and 4.5 inches in width. And its JUST A SIGNATURE! Gah! Instead of signed, blah, blah, blah. It’s signed, image, space, blah, space, blah, space, space, blah, space blah, and a legal notice. Which segues into my next point…

Lastly, legal notices on email. Come on world, everyone is so gun shy about possible legal offense. Email is a nonspecific, nonguaranteed delivery method. The SMTP RFC (which is what email is), does not guarantee delivery, nor does it guarantee correct routing. It is a “best effort” protocol. It tries to deliver the message. If it can’t or it happens to go to the wrong place, that is something you cannot hold someone who received the message liable for. The only legal ground you could have against an accidental receiver is if they misuse that information in obvious nonlegal ways. Which, um, are already against the law. So don’t add 6 sentences telling me how to handle my email. Any party that receives an email unwittingly cannot be bound by confidentiality or any conditions that they did not accept. I can do whatever I want with the info I received, however I want to. If I want to print it out and wipe my butt with it, I can. You cannot, by the nature of the technology, regulate the explicit distribution. All you need is a link in an email to a corporate policy page on the net that covers any information misuse in any form. That’s it, that’s all. Misuse through any and all methods should be covered in your information policy, just not email. So stop the email legal disclaimers which are obviously a sign your company is brain dead. Please. Until email is completely redesigned or has some 3rd party delivery method that guarantees routing and delivery, with both parties agreeing to terms, legalese on your email threads is just plain dumb.

Come on.

There are two things that could be defined as Psychohistory.

1. The real study of the psychological aspects of historical events.
2. The fictional study of mass human behavior to statistically predict future events.

I am making my way through the Foundation series by Asimov, and I am sure that I am not the first nor the last to think that the basis and potential for the latter could be quite real. But then again, Asimov’s axioms for the fictional psychohistory are way beyond the scope and nature of our current state as human beings. We are far too constrained.

But are we?

What we call government and economy are nothing but human systems. Systems that are made up of irrational human actions that lead to the inevitable logical results. In hindsight, it is immaculately clear, isn’t it? That is really the holy grail of sociology and economics… understanding human behavior to the point that you can accurately forecast the future developments of groups of individuals. Thousands of ideas circulate around this idea of observation and prediction. Media pundits and personalities are always pointing out the obvious and then postulating as to the why. My guess is they are erring on the side of caution and sticking with what everyone knows is true.

Because if someone were to figure it out. If someone were to be able to predict the forces of mass human behavior and the outcomes that would result, we all know we would ignore them. They would be labeled as nutcases, and shuffled off to some dark corner to warn and be duly ignored.

Psychohistory may be possible in the fictional sense, but if it were to approach any sort of scientific level in our real world, it would be ignored. Psychohistory scientists would be pushed into the realm of whackos and psuedoscience, along with the cryptozoologists and alien abductees. Because who would believe that an equation could account for mass human behavior?

It makes you wonder just how possible it could actually be. Of course we may never know. Because another of Asimov’s axioms is that the mass of individuals could not know of the study of psychohistory, because that would change the outcome. Observation changes the results (ie the observer effect).

• Wishing I had worn a mask when I mowed. Damn it. #
• Need to go buy some sudafed and feel like a criminal. #
• Srsly, if it is important enough to call, it is important enough to leave a DAMN message. Calling twice doesn’t work, dillhole. #
• Benadryl makes me feel drunk. Loopy head syndrome. #
• Seriously. Feel drunk. Tired, fuddled thinking, but somehow still confident that I could totally take that guy. #

• Another day, another set of seperate but totally wasted moments. I wish I could be 100% productive 100% of the time. #
• But what prevents 100% productivity? Laziness, lack of focus, constant interruptions, multiple parties competing for my time, the internet. #
• It seems I can address some of those items some of the time, but not all of those items all of the time. but I think I do ok. #
• My level of output is consistently high, but I notice the little things that slip on by. That is the real sacrifice. Little stuff ignored. #
• What I really wish is that I had the ability to stretch the time around my productive moments. Get twice the stuff done within the same time #
• Of course that means that I may be working at 200% efficiency, and that would tear a whole in space/time. Seriously. #
• No l4d or tf2 so far for me this week. One of the rugrats has entered the terrible twos and is fighting nite nite. So missing out on update. #
• Twitter allows for stream of consciousness blogging, as I am sure many have pointed out, but my stream sure can be muddy. #
• Stating the obvious can be an artform. Truly. Like sarcasm or irony. Ironically stating the obvious is both. #
• I wish I could play tf2 or l4d in those moments I am not productive at work, but that would not good. Unethical one might say. #
• Of course I haved played my DS in the office waiting for something to finish, but I don’t think that is the same thing. #
• Plus our bandwidth at works sucks balls anyhoo. Not like I could anyway. Stupid bandwidth. US telecoms seem behind on provisioning. #
• END OF LINE. #
• My boss is flying by the seat of his pants, the dns queries are failing to pass, I am getting tired of doing the jerry rigging dance. #
• Crunching the numbers we fail to see, the interest returned to the investee, so we panic and feel the stun, and all the banks have a run! #
• #AT&T still choking on 3G. I am pretty sure it is not just my phone. #deathstarfail #
• Never leave a good fedora behind. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Don’t go between the boats! Go between them? Are you crazy? #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Don’t betray shiva. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Always make friends with the spunky kid that knows how to gamble. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Don’t step in the light. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Addendum: don’t throw the whip. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Only dig your secret hole when everyone else is digging too. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Snakes are never a good thing. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Sunlight based lasers are easy to make if you have the right size staff. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Speaking of indy… Everyone had a problem with a lead fridge, but you don’t hear any complaints about an inflatable raft. #
• Punch the shit out of them then ask the questions. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• the cup of a carpenter will look like shit. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Always bring a gun to a sword fight. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Never make friends with a monkey. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Pick your friends wisely. Helps if you speak their native tongue. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Sweetheart is the appropriate name for any female companion. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Check for drafts. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Have gun. Have whip. Will travel. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Motorcycles are handy for evading germans and russians. #indytaughtmeeverything #
• Shankara stones are great for burning stuff. #indytaughtmeeverything #