Unreal. Totally Unreal.

As many of you know, I don't really get upset about things that don't affect me directly. Heck, I don't even get upset about quite a few things that do affect me directly. But every now and then I'll see or read something that really sets me off. Which leads me to tonight.

The first part of our story begins with a rare, but beautiful event. Every now and then, Nicole will mention in passing something about going to Krispy Kreme. She will then immediately deny that she was serious and tell me to turn around and go home. But I know better. So we moseyed on over to Krispy Kreme for some warm, light, fluffy, heavenly goodness. Which is where our story turns south.

We were standing in line and I was admiring the finely-tuned machinery that brings this delicious marvel to life, when I noticed the middle-aged guy in front of us asking his 4 kids if they wanted samples. The kids dutifully filed forward from watching the doughnuts being made to receive their sample from the girl who was helping customers as the dad ate his sample. He then mentioned that there was one more in the car. The girl handing out samples promptly handed him another doughnut and then went back to filling orders. The guy then walked past us and walked out the door. At first I didn't think anything of it, figuring that he was just taking the sample doughnut to whatever little nubbin, or perhaps his wife, waiting in the car after which he would come back and place his order. No big deal, since there were like 3 or 4 people waiting in line before him. Then I heard him say to his kids, who were again watching the doughnuts cooking, to hurry up and come on. Nicole and I turned to each other in disbelief. Did this guy actually come to Krispy Kreme, knowing that they give you a free sample while you wait in line, to get a free doughnut for himself and the kids, and just leave without buying anything? Or even saying thank you to the employee who handed him and his 4 kids their free sample?

"No way," I thought. But sure enough, I looked out the window and watched him herding his kids into the minivan. This guy had actually come to mooch a free doughnut without buying anything. I couldn't believe it.

Now, I know what it's all about to be a little short-funded, and I don't know what the guy's circumstances are. But seriously. A half-dozen doughnuts is like $5. That's one combo meal at a fast food restaurant. A gallon and a half of gas. So for a guy who's packing a blackberry on his belt, $5 is not a heck of a lot. So what the heck does this guy think he's doing walking into Krispy Kreme, getting his free sample (which is given as a courtesy to their customers who are waiting to buy doughnuts) and walking out as soon as their backs are turned?

This bugs the crap out of me. Seriously. If you want a doughnut, buy a freaking doughnut. Don't go freeloading on a company offering a courtesy for their paying customers. What the heck? If I want a Krispy Kreme bad enough to actually go to their store I want one bad enough to pay for it. Don't get me wrong, a free sample is enough of a pull that I only go to Krispy Kreme when the hot light is on, but I'm going to buy some doughnuts, not get a free one and boogie on out of there.

This is a serious economic problem in the guise of a cheap, middle-aged blackberry toter and his kids. This is why public services are almost never effective or long-lived. How long is Krispy Kreme going to offer free doughnuts to customers waiting in line if they see those customers leaving without buying anything after receiving their sample? It's the same with any public service meant as a courtesy to potential paying customers. If those customers get what they want (even if it's only a small portion) without paying, there is very little incentive for them to stick around and pay for the real deal.

So, Mr. grab-samples-and-run, knock it off. At the cost of your integrity and $5 for a half-dozen doughnuts, your hosing the rest of us who are willing to pay for a few doughnuts after enjoying a free one. So hunker down and shell out 1% of the cost of that blackberry on your belt and be a responsible member of society.

Some clarification.

For those of you who may not know, Nicole and I are doing in vitro. In order to avoid misunderstanding, here are some frequently asked questions (to us) and their answers:

Question: Why?
Answer: Because we want to have kids. If you already know more details than that, then you know why. If you don't already know more details than that, you probably don't need to know.

Question: How are we doing with all this?
Answer: Honestly we'd much rather be able to just have kids normally. Nicole is _very_ tired of having shots and if possible I'm even more tired of giving her shots.

Question: What are our chances?
Answer: Every cycle, they have between 50% and 60% success rate. If we transfer embryos on day 3 (Saturday) that is the ballpark. If there are lots of healthy-looking embryos on day 3 and the doc says it looks okay to wait for day 5 (Monday) our chances go up to 70%, but there is a small risk (about 10% according to Dr. H.) that between day 3 and 5 all of the remaining embryos will die. So we're putting our trust in the embryolgist and the docs and we'll see what happens.

Question: What if we have twins?
Answer: Great. At this point, we'll take anything we can get.

Question: What's the plan?
Answer: There is no plan. When they call us Saturday morning and tell us what they think, we'll know what's going on. It would be nice to have twins, given that this is not going to happen very many times in our lifetime, but there's not a thing Nicole or I can do to make that happen. So the official plan is that we'll do what they tell us to do and hope for the best.

Question: What happens next?
Answer: We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

There, now you all know as much as we do.

Wordless Wednesday: So. Very. Weary.

Famous one-liners (or at least one of them)

Me (to the office in general): "You know, I think NSString might just be my favorite string abstraction of all programming languages."

Dr. Asplund (who for a chemist is pretty darn computer-savvy and spends a few minutes every now and then talking shop with us): "I don't know what's sadder, that you said that or that I know what you were talking about."

To boldly go where no Dell repairman has gone before...

Last Friday, one of our friends brought her old Dell laptop in and asked if we could fix it, because it wouldn't close. So we looked at it, and the tab holding the screen to the hinge had popped free of the little pop-rivets holding it, and the hinge wasn't turning when the screen moved. And the hinge was _very_ stiff.

So I drilled out the pop-rivets, stuck the tab in place with a whole mess of epoxy and let it dry overnight. Then I re-drilled the holes where the pop-rivets and screws were. A little spray of food-grade silicone loosened the seized hinge a little bit, and 4 machine screws with nuts re-attached the newly re-tabbed screen to the hinge. I cut off the excess length of the screws, but the cover wouldn't go over them, so we lopped off the corner of the cover. She said she only wants the computer to last through her first semester of grad school. So no worries. But I kinda like the whole "industrial" look...

stock hinge:

alex-justin-and-michael-ized hinge:

The invisible hand. Seriously.

The straw has finally broken the camel's back. I have seen the one forwarded email about gas prices that is just one too many. (Really Mom, I'm not picking on you, just whoever started that silly forward you sent me, and the gazillions of others I've seen in the last year).

It's called supply and demand, people. The reason gas costs $3.50 per gallon is not because of a government conspiracy. It's not because the Middle-Eastern oil countries are gouging us to pay for expensive, man-made, middle-of-the-desert indoor ski resorts. It's not because the oil companies are price gouging. It's plain and simple, supply and demand. Gas is $3.50 per gallon because you, me and every other one of the ever-increasing car-driving, foreign-made-good-buying population of this world will pay it. That is all.

Yeah, I know people freaked out when gas first went above $.40. I was a little upset when gas first went above a dollar. But guess what? The number of oil-consuming people in the world has more than tripled since then. Oil is not an unlimited resource folks. Economics is the science concerning the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. Economics deals with the idea of scarcity and resources. That's all. It's not magic, and it's not a conspiracy.

Lets talk about this for a minute. If I have a good or resource and I want to get rid of it, I have a few options. I can give it away for free, in which case I now have nothing. I can keep it forever, in which case I still have it. Or I can trade it for something else, in which case I now have something else that I wanted more than what I originally had. Very simple still. Giving it away and keeping it are uninteresting problems, so lets talk about trading it. First, we'll talk about opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is the cost of the next best alternative. Only. If I buy a pink sugar cookie instead of a Krispy Kreme doughnut, or a Milky-Way bar, or an apple, the cost associated with the pink sugar cookie is not giving up all three alternatives, only the alternative that I would have chosen otherwise. Anything other than the best alternative is nothing. So, going back to my problem, in which I have a resource and I think I want to trade it for something else, the main question involved is not, "How much can I get for this?" but, given that the opportunity cost is now either keeping it or trading it, "For what am I willing to part with this?".

Very subtle difference, but key to our issue of complaining about gas prices. If there is one person in the world that has something I'm willing to trade for my resource, my asking price is limited by him asking himself the same question. If I want what he has enough to no longer have my resource, and he feels the same, we can trade. If not, one or the other of us will have to sweeten the deal a little. However, if there are 2 billion people who all want what I have, now the idea of opportunity cost is very important. If I have a pink sugar cookie (something I obviously place more than $.75 value on) and someone comes to me with a Snickers bar that cost them $.75, they will have to keep looking, since I value a Snickers bar at about $.10. If I have that same cookie, and someone comes to me with a dozen hot, fresh Krispy Kremes, I will be the glad, (temporary) owner of a very happy, very satisfied full stomach, and I will hope they enjoy their new cookie. The opportunity cost of trading with the guy with the KKs is the cost of keeping my cookie, which up to this point was the "best" alternative. It was NOT the cost of a Snickers bar, since I don't want the Snickers bar. However, if the next guy in line is willing (for whatever reason) to trade me a Ducati for my pink sugar cookie, the opportunity cost of owning those KKs becomes _much_ higher.

So lets talk about gas. Just like my single pink sugar cookie, gas is a scarce resource. Once the oil field is dry, that's it. So now, I have a limited amount of gas, and 500 million people are willing to pay me $1 per gallon for it. If I charge more, I will sell less and my opportunity cost is obvious. I have surplus gas, and less money. Now, 15 years later, I still have gas (perhaps not as much as before) and 2 billion people are willing to pay me $3 per gallon for it. My opportunity cost for selling at more or less than where my willingness to supply meets their willingness to buy is high on both sides. If I sell for less, I run out because more people will buy more gas. If I sell for more, I don't sell as much and my profits go down. Yet again, plain and simple. On the other side of the transaction I, as one of those 2 billion people who want gas, have to make an opportunity cost-based choice. The cost of buying that gas is very simple: $3 per gallon. The cost of not buying the gas is also fairly simple: I have to walk to school (for reasons other than exercise) or the grocery store. Or I don't get to go to Newport this fall. A trip to Disneyland and beautiful Newport and Laguna beach is a high opportunity cost indeed compared to $3 per gallon for gas. But that's what it boils down to: I want the trip and the memories, or the convenience of taking a car to the grocery store, more than I want the money. So I pay $3 per gallon for gas.

Economics is no mystery. If I am willing to pay for an item, then I get what I paid for. If I am not willing to pay, I keep my money and go without that item. Sure, the money we pay for gas buys man-made ski resorts in the middle of the Arabian desert. But that's only because we want the gas more than we want our money, and they want our money more than they want their gas. Even with the inefficiencies inherent in the concept of the internal combustion engine it would be possible to build vehicles that are much more efficient than the ones you generally see on the road today. But they would be much more expensive than what we currently drive (tolerances would need to be tighter, etc) and we want our money more than we want a car that costs 5x as much, but gets double the mileage and the auto manufacturers want to sell 50 cars at $25000 more than they want to sell 2 cars at $100000.

So please people, stop the madness. The reason gas is $3.50 per gallon is not because somebody is taking advantage of us, or because the auto industry lobbies to prevent research on alternative fuels/technologies, or because the President was unable to "lower fuel costs" (how he would do that himself is a mystery indeed). It is because that TV that came from Japan or Korea cost a lot of money to ship, and we want the TV more than we want our money. It is because we want to travel and see the world more than we want our money. It is because many millions more people would also like to travel, or spend money on goods that we produce. In short, gas is $3.50 per gallon because we are willing to pay $3.50 per gallon for it. So next time you think about forwarding an email blaming the Arabs, or the oil companies, or the president, or the little purple men from Mars for high gas prices, do the world a favor and just delete it.

And now I will step down from the pulpit and get back to my multi-threaded webserver...

Couldn't wait for Wednesday...

I have only one word. NICE.

These guys are geniuses. I think we'd be friends.

Picasso was a wise, wise man.

Isaac Newton once said, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

My dad once sat my brother and I down and said, "Boys, you want to know the secret to being successful in life? Win if you can; lose if you must; but no matter what happens, always cheat."

Pablo Picasso once said, "Bad artists copy, great artists steal."

Now before you all go crazy, let me explain what my dad meant. (If you want to question Picasso's quote, you can take it up with him someday) Dad was not talking about dishonest cheating. He simply meant to do what it takes, and don't be afraid to use "unorthodox" methods, and I think that unbenknownst to him, my dad really hit on the secret mentioned by Newton and Picasso.

Let me elaborate. Who, in the entire history of the world, has created something useful without some idea that there was something useful to be created? Newton's work in physics and math was the result of a lifetime of studying Pythagorus, Archimedes, and hosts of others who had gone before him. Picasso undoubtedly had his fair share of favorite pieces of others before him. Tolkien and Lewis had centuries of myths, legends and old wives tales that they had studied and read. Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and the rest of the good folks at AT&T had previous operating systems before them when they wrote Unix. Even "the Steves" (Jobs and Wozniak) had predecessors when the Apple and Apple II were born.


So where is the line between the good artist and the bad one? What is the difference between copying and stealing? I think that line is drawn by our own individual effort. Recently I posted about some idiot in Argentina who copied my friend's blog. There was no effort involved there, a few wget commands, some bad English-to-Spanish translation, and poof!! "check out my cool website everybody". I'll use Nicole as an opposite example. Nicole loves art. And photography. A lot. Nicole is an excellent photographer. She didn't become so by following some pro around and pointing her camera at the same things he did. She became an excellent photographer by, "learning how things will look as a picture, before I take the picture."

I'm currently taking a network programming class. Many of the concepts are pretty much foreign to me, and I've been spending _a lot_ of time on Wikipedia, Google, and in various reference documentation websites. I've "borrowed" lots of code snippets from various locations. I've long since learned the difference between copying and stealing when it comes to code. If you copy code and your program ever breaks, it will be in one of two places: on the border between your code and the code you copied, or in the code you copied. Both of these bugs result in copying code that you don't understand into your program. So I spend lots of time tinkering, modifying the code that I'm "stealing" in various ways to find out how it works, why it does what it does under certain conditions, and therefore figuring out how it _should_ be used in _my_ code rather than dropping it in as-is and praying that it will work.

So, in response to a recent blog entry by Nicole, what is inspiration? A lot of effort involved in turning someone else's previous work into your own original work. The magnitude of originality may in some cases be limited by scope: there's only so many ways in one programming language to implement the ages old, "Hello, World!" program.

So, if I follow Nicole around a little while we're up the canyon taking pictures, she'd notice that instead of taking just one picture of what I think she's taking, I was taking 10 or 15 with various shutter-speeds (I'm keeping things to one variable right now) to see what happened. When Newton figured out the notion that the slope of a curve at a given point is the derivative, he was using his own knowledge of previous mathematicians and physicists. Because everything, in its own little way, is art.