Pool Time

Off to refine my billiard skills.
God help me.

It's a good thing I lost my retirement chance with BSU. Retirement would probably kill me before cancer or my wife.

Humping Hanna's

Humping Hanna's was the same as I remember from 1996. It even has the same house band.

An oriental man in business clothes studied my billiard skills for a while, then we struck up a game. He kicked my sorry ass 5-1. I was holding my own until he shattered my confidence in Game 3 by running six balls on the break.

Our only words were "nice shot" or "good game".

I spent the rest of Halloween at The Balcony. I'm too old for the crowd but I got some strange vibes. The Captain Morgan Rum girl eyed me, perhaps more in curiosity than lust. A repressed wife sent mixed messages for an hour, her boring husband was oblivious. I spoke briefly with Vanessa, a future knockout.

And for some reason, a gang of bi/lesbian women hung around me all night, laughing, hugging, making out, catching my eye every so often with a touch or comment.

I had no idea what to make of it.

Boise State College of Engineering

I visited the BSU College of Engineering yesterday, walking through the newer buildings, seeing the future that could have been. Staff turnover is surprisingly low after nine years (less than 50%?) and I saw many familiar faces.

No one recognized me.

One professor did a double-take but registered me as "a former student", I think.

My wife may be right; a university career could have been mundane, boring. I may have gotten bored after the ASPEN project. For years, I thought ASPEN was successful because of my work ethic and determination but now I wonder if it was because of my affiliation with the shadowy Mormon cabal within Idaho and Boise State. My wife didn't want that much in life, really. BSU is mostly to blame for her loss but I am, too. I trusted the wrong people to "do the right thing" and the success of ASPEN made me ambitious. Too ambitious.

My Mormon friends don't show up in my site logs yet.
They remain serenely unaware of my return to Boise, Idaho.

Book Meme

Meme Analysis for Modern Amazons: Warrior Women On-Screen...

I used the term "amazons" exclusively for all graphs. "Amazon", the company, (without an 's') produces a huge skew and is responsible for about 90% of all entries, regardless of secondary keywords.

Conclusion - Two data sources show a keyword peak in summer of 2006. I predict that sales will ramp up into Christmas and then fall off to new lows in summer 2007, barring some type of marketing gimmick or campaign. (Special disclosure - I occasionally check the Amazon book ranking and its latest behavior prompted this analysis.)

The Scene Of The Crime

I was here nine years ago... Boise State University. BSU gave me a college degree, three Federal grants in a successful project, adult-onset asthma and Bill Carlson, my sociopath.

In exchange, BSU tested my religious tolerance of Mormons and foiled my wife's dream of maple cabinets with black Pfaltzgraff dishes. The good news? Now I shoot pool instead of guns and I like poking coeds with my cue stick, yow yow! The bad news? My wife is a good shot, armed to the teeth and madder at BSU than me!

The coeds are cuter in a Starbucks! I was planning to play pool but first I might impersonate a visiting professor and cop some instructional feels, hey? Miss Baby Face sits across from me, dark, streaked kinky hair, knee-high leather boots and soft cotton black gaucho riding pants. Frowning face, though. Pouty lips.

Jury still out on this perp.

Disruptive Thoughts

I'm not a good schemer. I'm too direct. My actions appear to have more forethought than they do. I think I'm just good at exploiting consequences, which is not the same as planning them. My mistakes can be aggravating because people assume forethought in my actions.

The ALT community has communication issues. When does "no" mean "yes" and when does it really mean "no"? I guess I'm dense. I'm sure that a mind game started but I'm not sure that it ended. Maybe I missed a signal. Is the game deeper than I thought?

Or did the game end for everyone but me? I don't know. Perhaps I interpreted a coincidence as another mind game. Maybe I was meant to do that but I can't be sure.

Have you ever ranked yourself in the seven deadly sins?
I think I know where I stand.

My #1 sin, by a high margin, is lust.
My #2 sin is anger.
My #3 sin is pride, but only in the past few years.

I'm low on the remaining sins.

Why are there so many schemes now?
Why is there so much resentment and jealousy?
Was it always there and I wasn't aware?
Did something change?

It's not confined to the ALT community. It's in the workplace, in schools, government, even in churches. My ex-wife used to call it "workplace warfare". I've tried to measure it, to confirm my impressions with quantified graphs, to be sure it's a real phenomenon. There are changes occurring in the Ideosphere, but I can't connect them into a predictive pattern. For instance, "sex" has increased in the past six months and "money" has a discrete rise that coincides with the home builder stock crash.

I have no conclusions, just observations.

New Hit Count High

Another hit-count record, 24K hits in the past two days.
It looks like Sun's roller failed to reset yesterday's count.

Dawkins Versus Me

(I might try to finish this outlandish entry today (10-29-2006) with some concordance analysis of Dawkin's book versus my blog, to see if I can get a clear skew of noun usage (from Dawkins) versus verb usage (from me). Not a proof but the results may be interesting).

Why Memetics Theory Died Off

Many real-world structures are vectors; a two-part combination of value and direction. In linguistic terms, "noun" is equivalent to "value" and "verb" is equivalent to "direction". Examples of vectors -

Richard Dawkins coined the word "meme" in 1976. Over the next two decades, memetics (meme theory) was expanded on theoretical basis. Memes represent the vector value and their ideospheric propagation is the vector direction.

Original Noun-based Theoretical interpretation

I believe that Dawkins theory is primarily noun-based - static definitions or data structures. He had no empirical data or workable flow model to develop his theories against. I can't see that evolutionary theory is applicable. I've found historical examples of purely theoretical predictions about meme flow which, in retrospect, were quite wrong.

My Verb-based Empirical interpretation

My interpretation of memetics is based on my own background - electronics theory, network theory and empirical measurements across Internet data sources. My graphs and ideas are heavily skewed towards flow-based theories and empirical measurements.

Linux Meme

S-curve Methodology
Three-source Sampling Theory

I avoid memegraphs on open source products because their strange behavior is hard to interpret. However, I got curious about Red Hat Linux today so I ran graphs on Windows Vista versus Linux.

Caution: these graphs imply ominous outcomes for Linux.

My interpretation? In the United States, Linux is being marginalized as a specialty niche server. I didn't include the worldwide graphs, but Linux appears to have only a slightly better future. Predictably, Vista is ramping up and gaining mindshare and buzz.

The Linux curves seem clear.
These types of curves are indicative of a product which has topped out.
All three data sources show the same general results, although they sample from different Internet sources.

Kit Kat Klub

I've developed an interest for billiards, but arrived in Idaho too late so I ended up at the Kit Kat Klub as a last resort. The KKK is a cheesy, low-grade strip club but hey, it's Idaho so what can you expect? At least it was open until 2:00 AM.

The tables sucked.
The balls were pitted and small.
And the pool balls sucked, too.
Every stick in the house was crooked, including the billiard cues.

Even the strippers sucked, but not on the sticks. They were too young, too scrawny, drab and boring.

Egad.

I've reached a new point in my life. Not only do these clubs not turn me on, now they actively turn me off. I hope I'm not turning gay.

--

I'm so dense when it comes to women.
I've made so many mistakes.

Faster, Faster WussyCat, WussyCat!

"I never try anything, I just do it!" - Tura Satana, in Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill

I played a couple of Iranian students at pool at last night. I was buzzed but I kicked their ass, yeah! One old American and three shots of jaegermeister still beats two Iranian college students, five to zero, yeah!

But I didn't get the girl. A bit too much to ask out of a weird Canadian multicultural experience... plus they were way too young. Legal? yes. Appealing? Yes! Beddable? No, I think not.

Off to Idaho for awhile.
But I'll sit here at the Rialto and push a few more pool games before I go!

Leaving Kirkland

I found three Kirklands. Biker Kirkland with distributed pockets of older, rougher, motorcyclists; their moustaches and sideburns conceal attitudes but reveal smiles. They lack the pompous judgements of the Mormons or Religious Right but I like the honesty of this Kirkland.

Yuppy Kirkland is a pretentious layer of real estate agents, lawyers, bleached blonds in plastic surgery; all calculating that next dollar towards fancy cars or images, but they provide businesses and stability.

Spoiled college kids are Kirkland Three. They lack the quiet roughness of the bikers, and the calculating vapor of the lawyers but have honest energy, noise, show a synchronicity and synthesis.

I see Kirkland differently after three months here. It's sedate, integrated community. Placid and dull at times, but if you submerge into the undercurrent of community, a lot goes on, quietly, under the waves.

I met Jaimee last night while I was typing. We wandering from restaurant to restaurant, kissing and caresssing until we reached the Wilde Rover, where a double-order of clams unbuttoned Jaimee's blouse and she manuvered my hands to her engorged hot spots. The staff politely ignored our offenses while customers covered smiles, sneaking an occasional glance and comment.

I lost my wallet, she lost her work portfolio, but our detective work recovered the missing items, but not our interrupted libido. I had my brother's house filled with kids, she had a similar problem and a hotel never entered my mind.

Will Billy Beck save the world? Almost certainly not. Methodologies that assume perfection fail. Methodologies that assume failure, that account for failure, are the systems that succeeded.

This is why Billy has no successes, except for a dwindling cadre of true believers.

So.
Ho Ho.
Off to Portland I go.

J2EE, SOA and P2P Cost Curves

Many organizations start with an ad-hoc methodology for their IT infrastucture, and over time it acts as a point-to-point system. If we define transaction costs as the sum of all costs over time for development, maintenance and operation, then a P2P infrastructure resembles an exponential (n-squared) curve against organization size (as a proxy for total complexity).

J2EE introduces a centralized hierarchy and standardized APIs, which impose higher startup costs, but which increase at a flatter rate for larger organizations.

Service Oriented Architecture introduces a formal message backplane which functions as a mediator, and it's probable that SOA's cost curve is flatter than J2EE. This graph shows how framework cost might be associated to organization size:

For small organizations, the cost-effective choice might be LAMP or simple programming tools.

The choice for mid-sized companies is probably J2EE.

Although SOA and J2EE aren't direct competitors, SOA has no dependencies on a J2EE infrastructure. For larger companies, it's certainly possible that alternate implementations of SOA might replace marginal J2EE installations.

The Way To Eden

Stardate 5832.3. The Enterprise has pursued several stolen housing units on an unauthorized heading into the Option ARM zone and engaged tractor beams to prevent further movement. Our initial radio contact was with Dr. Casey Severin, leader of the flipper gang, who demonstrated disrespect for reality and demanded be to taken to Eden.

Medical scans reveal many flippers to be in good health except for Dr. Severin, who is shown to have the Synthecoccus Novae virus, an accident of Federal Reserve policy. Dr. Severin's infection has spread to several of his high school friends, manifested by their shared delusion of a "Rich Dad" savior idol.

Dr. Severin is now isolated in detention block C, but several of his followers are unaccounted for and are considered security threats.

Yellow alert is in effect. We await orders from High Admiral Bernanke on Dr. Severin's disposition.

Kirk out.

Poker Meme Fizzling Out

Methodology

One year ago, I published this poker memegraph -

How things can change in a year. My three latest sources (Google Trends, BlogPulse.com and Meme Miner) agree... the poker craze peaked in popularity sometime within the past year. It's interesting that the poker meme exhaustion seems to be in tandem with the housing bubble exhaustion.

Note: The Blogpulse graph seems shakey, there's probably not enough long-term data to account for erratic peaks and valleys in the "poker" meme.

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Tell me what to do, D.