Daniel will always be Daniel

On Monday I decided to start the 30 day all-paleo challenge. Let me be the first to tell you that the idea behind the "paleo diet" is retarded. Basically, if "cavemen" didn't eat it, we aren't supposed to either.

Think about that for a minute - really think about it - and then tell me how much sense it makes. Or you can skip the hard part (the thinking) and I'll tell you - NONE. I could rant for pages about how dumb this is but I'll spare you.

Regardless of how little sense it makes, I do know several people who have tried it and they have all reported amazing results. All of that could just be the placebo effect, but I kind of doubt it. I've seen the effects myself and they are impressive.

So anyway. I'm doing it. 16 Nov - 16 Dec I am not eating sugar of any kind (no honey, maple syrup, stevia, agave nectar, whatever), grains (including corn), dairy, legumes (peas, lentils, peanuts, soybeans, etc.), or any kind of processed food. Oh, and no caffeinated anything either, including coffee, which I really don't like black anyway.

I've been eating a LOT of almond butter. I finished a jar of it this week - that's 4,370 calories (3,450 from fat) just from one source. I've also eaten a lot of chicken, eggs, pecans and more vegetables than I can remember. In fact, I'm basically eating almost constantly. I am craving carbohydrates like crazy - I could probably eat a dozen Krispy Kremes right now. Supposedly the carb cravings go away after a while - they're not as bad now as they were Tuesday.

I still think it's BS but at least now I can say I tried it for myself.

It has been so long since I felt inspired to write anything like that last entry that I had almost forgotten - forgotten not only that I once wrote regularly, but that I even felt things worth writing at all. I have made several new friends recently and the light they have shone upon my heart has splashed it with color, like the sun rising over high desert mountains.

Last weekend was fantastic. I finally met Rose, who moved from Alaska to Sierra Vista with her husband, and with whom I spent a ridiculously enjoyable evening discovering that we were better friends than I thought we would be. Then on Saturday I invited everyone in my wing of the barracks to a party in our day room, food and drinks provided by me. Barracks life is generally separated out by floor, and while I knew that there were people living up- and downstairs from me, I didn't know much about them and had never met any of them. I really regret not having made friends with them earlier, because I discovered an amazing group of people living just a few stairs away from me. They'd been there just as long as I had - all it would have taken is for me to walk upstairs at any time and say hello. I am taking this as a lesson learned.

I graduated from the Shadow UAS maintainer/technician course yesterday - 10 Nov 2009. I was my class's honor graduate, for which I received two coins - one from a lieutenant colonel and one from a full bird. If you're not sure what that means, let me break it down for you: it means AWESOME.

I also received some very disturbing and upsetting news on Sunday. I don't want to write publicly about it right now, because I don't have a lot of details and... well, even if I did, I still wouldn't want to write about it. I don't even want to THINK about it right now. Eventually I'll get angry, and then apparently I will move on to bargaining, etc. This, incidentally, is another reason I am glad I met the people upstairs from me on Saturday. When the news arrived on Sunday, I... well, I don't know what I was. "Shocked" is too mild a word. I couldn't think. I felt numb, and afraid, and (strangely) guilty. But I knew exactly who I wanted to talk to, because when we'd spoken the night before she had demonstrated tremendous amounts of empathy, kindness, and exactly the sort of delicate, intelligent humor that I desperately needed. To say that the timing of our meeting was perfect is an understatement* of the highest degree. It's almost enough to make me rethink some of my basic beliefs in the existence (or lack thereof) of a higher power.

I am torn apart inside right now by wanting to be where I am not, and wanting things to be... not how they used to be, but how they never were. How I thought they were. I am going to post this and go upstairs and force myself to be here, and to live my life as it is. I am going to call my sister and tell her that I love her, that I'm thinking of her. Then I will go outside and rake the leaves.

*Understatement - This is a word that I do not know how to spell, but that my fingers do. If I try to think too hard about it, or look at the word, I can't get it right. On the other hand, if I just think it and let my fingers tap away, they get it right. Go fingers!

Standing alone for a moment on a quiet morning, sadness and joy intermingle as I watch the sun rise over the Huachuca mountains and paint the sky with the deep and fragile colors of the desert.

This is the poetry of life.

On the other side of a fence, men are adjusting landing gear - close enough for me to watch but too far away to hear. In the grey light of dawn they are almost shadows; ghosts of comrades I have known and loved, and friends I have yet to meet.

Later, I will leave my friends and return to an empty home. But now they congregate behind me, waiting to step into a hangar and participate in the ceremony that marks the end of our time in the high desert.

The mountains to the south blush pink. I turn to the company of friends. This is the poetry of life.

I'm graduating from the Shadow 200 mech/tech course on Tuesday, and I'll be flying back to Utah later that day. Fort Huachuca has been great, and I've really enjoyed Arizona. The sun here is still annoying, but it's not that bad any more.

The thought of going back to Utah is kind of depressing. I was there for seven months earlier this year and while I applied to a couple of jobs a week, I didn't get many interviews and never got any offers. I was able to find work, but "work" is not "employment" in any sense of the word. My social circle there has also diminished significantly in the time since I enlisted - and it wasn't exactly robust to begin with. No money + no friends = sad, sad times. It got to the point where I had to force myself to work out consistently (thank you CrossFit Utah Valley, by the way) just to keep depression at bay. It worked most of the time.

Well, now I'm going back, and for another (roughly) seven months. After that my unit is fielding (getting our aircraft, etc.) at Dugway and then we're deploying. At least, if the rumors are true, we're deploying. But that still leaves me with seven months of depressing nothing to fill up. Hopefully with something other than CrossFit this time.

A friend of mine wrote up a couple of hints about how to succeed at Cake Pirates, which I present for your erudition and joy. (I don't actually know what erudition means.)

"Here" being Ft. Huachuca. I like the post, my CO seems to be a good guy, class is relatively easy, and the running isn't nearly as bad as I thought it'd be. Can you guess what the one problem is? The one thing that is preventing me from fully enjoying my time here? If you guessed that it's related to my orders, you are correct.

I'm here on TDY orders (temporary duty) which means, among other things, that I should be getting lodging (not in the barracks - generally a hotel room or apartment), a rental car, BAH (Basic Allowance for Housing - to pay the rent on my apartment back home while I'm gone) and a per diem for food and other expenses. Unfortunately, things weren't set up this way in my orders, so I'm getting... well, nothing. Barely any base pay, even, because of some weirdness that appears to be leftover from Ft. Eustis.

Supposedly it's all going to be taken care of "eventually", but we all know what that means when it comes from someone in the military.

I'd like to write more about the post, about classes and my classmates, etc. but I'm in a public lab and they're closing soon.

I know I haven't updated in a while. Sorry. Been busy. Also this is more of a PSA than an actual update.

Apparently there's a company called Boxbe out there that purports to protect you from spam. I found out about them via an unsolicited advertisement they sent me. As if that's not bad enough, the person I got it from (who is a fairly sophisticated computer user) swears she has no idea how they got into her email account. So not only is Boxbe spamming people's contacts without their permission, they're also being sneaky about getting people to sign up for their service in the first place.

In short, spam spammers spamming spam!

It was delicious. Here's how to make it. You need:

Stew meat
Bacon
Dubliner cheese (or any kind but Dubliner goes great with this kind of thing)
Olive oil
Salt (duh)
Squished up fig insides, in a form that can be used as a spread. Usually found in the cheese section. I don't know what it's called. Probably just "fig spread".

Cut stew meat into bite-sized pieces. Brown in olive oil and salt. Wrap in bacon, then bake or cook in a skillet until the beef is done through and the bacon looks good. Put slices of cheese on top and wait until it melts. Serve with just a bit of the fig spread on top.

Note that these are just a bit dry, or were when I made them. Probably because I used cheap stew meat. Other cuts can be used that will give better results. I don't know what they are - ask your butcher.

I'm on a biology hobbyist mailing list. Someone brought up open source computational biology, and people started discussing starting our own projects. This of course turned into a discussion of what language to use. Someone asked "what dev platform should be used?" meaning what language. Soon after we got this email:

> What sort of dev platform would people recommend?

Have you checked out Eclipse? It is the now-very-widely-adopted (IBM,
open source groups, many others) standard open source "integrated
development environment" for several programming languages. It uses
Java and is built on plug-ins. As a programming environment, it has a
lot of "edit" and XML functionality already.

> What
> other cross-platform dev environments would people recommend?
> Something that can also target mobile devices would be nice too.

Eclipse is cross-platform, used extensively for Java on mobile phones
or other embedded devices. Since it uses toolchain hooks, you can
probably connect any kind of compiler (i.e. text to binary conversion)
to it.

Now, this is good advice - Eclipse is a fine IDE - but it completely misses the mark. The discussion is about what language to use - a choice which has huge ramifications for the project overall, including to some extent who can and will work on it. The email is about what program each individual programmer should use to write their programs - a choice which is entirely personal and affects no-one else.

In other words, the person who wrote it completely misunderstood the entire conversation.

Then I noticed the author's email domain: ieee.org. What??

Jim Haynes has been inviting the world to dinner for over 30 years. Every Sunday, the first 50 or 60 people - including total strangers - who make reservations may join him.

More, from NPR.

Today is the 2nd of February, a Cross-Quarter day, meaning that it is halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The weather here in Virginia is warm, sunny, and generally delightful. I find this fitting for a day which has classically been associated with the return of spring and warmth into the world.

Today is also the first day of my last week at Ft. Eustis. I am thrilled and delighted about this - it would have been enough to put me in a good mood even if the weather weren't gorgeous.

I've got a lot to do, still, before I can go. Travel arrangements must be made, I've got to whip up some code for a job interview I have the day after I get back, all my stuff needs to be packed and shipped home, and I've got a list of sundries that need to be cleaned up before I head out.

...on someone else's blog.

---

I used to write ridiculously easily. Words would pour effortlessly onto the page. Everything was potential, and graspable. It's been at least ten years since I wrote like that. Felt like that. Why did you die, little bird? Where have you flown? (I know the answer to that.)

"The miracles were drifting from him, and he seemed unable to hold on to them.
Surely dying was like this, he thought: losing things dear and unable to prevent their passing.
Yes; this was a kind of dying."

Even worse than asphyxiating on your own adulthood is forgetting that you ever were a child.

(The quote is from Weaveworld, by Clive Barker.)

A few days ago I got five and a half hours of sleep. I awoke feeling refreshed and invigorated, thrilled that I hadn't been awoken once in all that time. I've been averaging two to three hours of sleep a night. I am seriously considering inflicting physical violence upon anyone who wakes me up. I realize this as a sign that I am way, way too stressed out. I need to relax. Maybe get some more sleep. Man, I'd love to sleep. I would gladly murder someone, and return to bed with their blood still wet on my hands, if it meant eight hours of solid sleep. I question whether I'm even capable of sleeping that long any more.

Someone is in the hallway right now, vacuuming. It's 2:15 in the afternoon. Why are they vacuuming the night shift hallway at 2:15 in the afternoon? At midnight tonight I will be awake and leaving for school. The other, earlier night shift will just be getting back from school. Is it not possible to reschedule the cleaning until later?

We have brought these concerns to the command here. Nothing has been done. Haven't told them that I'm being driven to homicide via sleep deprivation. Not yet. I'm thinking of letting them find out the hard way.

Have tried sleeping pills. Ineffective vs. the 5 pm antics of my roommate. I question whether he's even trying to be quiet. Will probably kill him first.

My friend has also tried sleeping pills. They don't work for him either. Today he's trying sleeping pills plus vodka. I am thinking that this sounds like a fantastic idea. If he wakes up tomorrow I may try it.

The sad part is that none of this is a joke. The really sad part is that even if someone in leadership here read this, I still don't think they'd change anything.

Kristy would love this one. Too bad her heart is as cold and barren as the wastes of the Antarctic. (On the upside it does mean she has penguins in her heart. Who doesn't love penguins?)

The other night I started getting emails from eHarmony. I have never been to eHarmony, never gave them my email address, and I certainly never signed up there and told them my name was Dana. I forwarded them to a few variations on my email address - including the doctor from this fiasco. All of them (except the doctor) came back undeliverable. Oh well, whatever, if I ignore it it'll go away right? Just like customers, or that lump in my armpit.

Turns out this one is a lump, not a customer. Pretty soon the "Your eHarmony photo has been approved!" notifications started rolling in. Then match notifications and, finally, contact requests. This had gone too far.

I went to eHarmony and did the "email me my password" thing, then logged in (and changed the password, of course - it wouldn't let me leave it.) I originally considered just changing the email address to a@b.com, but then the poor girl would never be able to log on and her profile would sit there, lost and alone, for all eternity. So I dug around her profile and saw where she mentioned facebook. Went to Facebook and did a search for Dana (My last name), and presto - there she is, same picture and everything. I decided to do the Christlike thing. No, not smash her money-changing cart and cast her out of the temple - I sent her a message on Facebook and explained the situation, then offered to fix it if she'd give me her real email address.

I haven't heard back from her. I'm still getting annoying emails from eHarmony. (Any email from eHarmony is annoying.) I'm considering doing some in-depth searching to see if I can find her real email address on my own. Then I'd change her profile to say she has a 10,000-strong collection of Disney figurines and won't date anyone who doesn't call her "Princess Dana", respond to all the guys who've contacted her so far and requesting "no-strings fun", and then giving eHarmony her real email address and cackling myself to sleep.

I'm not that annoyed yet. But I may be soon.

Just in case I haven't made it clear, I firmly believe that anthropogenic (i.e. caused by humans) global warming is a myth. I just wanted to make that clear so that in a little while when everyone finally admits it I can point to this post and say "Ha ha, I knew all along."

I should've done the same thing with the whole Y2k frenzy way back when it all started but I lacked the foresight. Oh well.

Today I did my first "real" Crossfit workout. I've been following the main WOD's as well as I'm able for a while now. This is not always easy since I don't know how to do all the exercises, don't have a coach to teach me how, don't have the right equipment to do all of them with[1], and don't have anyone to do them with. Yes, I know - these are all poor excuses and I should do them anyway. I do try.

But this morning I went to Crossfit Utah Valley and did "Fran":
21, 15, 9 reps for time
Thrusters 65 lbs
Pull ups

Finished in 9:07. Yes, less than ten minutes for the entire workout. Afterward I collapsed on the floor and tried to control my breathing. It was great! =) I'll be back again on Friday.

1: I already damaged some "government property" (drywall) doing an exercise that involves bouncing a 20 lb medicine ball off of the wall repeatedly. This ended up being a good thing because it gave me the opportunity to immediately take responsibility for screwing up when I could have walked away. The reputation thus earned came in handy later when I was accused of something and it came down to my word against the other guy's.

I've been up for 25 hours straight. I'm about to sleep for about 3 hours then wake up, shower, shave, put on my uniform and wait in long lines to fill out paperwork. Then I'm going to pack, drive to the airport, and board a plane that will eventually bring me to Utah. I can never sleep on airplanes, I don't know why. I'm going to arrive in Utah at 11:30-ish Mountain time, which will make for roughly 3 hours of sleep in two days. When I arrive I'm going to sleep until probably 5 or 6 in the morning and then wake up and go work out.

This weekend was a very eventful one. Not for me in particular - I am boring and live a boring life which is just how I like it. I stay in my room, nobody bothers me, I bother nobody. It's very antisocial and I love it. But it was eventful for my company[1] - oh so very eventful. There were four really phenomenally stupid things that happened, let's see if I can recall all of them. All of these things happened to or were done by people in my company.

One, a soldier got arrested when attempting to return to post after a night out. Every time a group of people comes on post they give their drivers licenses or IDs to the guards at the gate who scan them with little beepers. Apparently the little beepers check them against a list of people with warrants. Apparently this guy - I actually know him, he went out with us but came back separately - had a civil (i.e. from civilian law enforcement) warrant out for his arrest. Oops!

Two, a new soldier... well, let's back up. I left post at about nine PM to go eat[2] with a few friends of mine. As we were leaving a few new soldiers were showing up. We said hello, introduced ourselves, and helped them carry their bags in to check in. At about midnight we returned to find two ambulances, an MP's squad car, and a fire truck in front of our barracks. In that time one of the new soldiers had checked in, unpacked, changed into civvies, bought hard liquor, discovered that hard liquor wasn't allowed in the barracks, drank the entire bottle in one sitting in the parking lot, passed out and lost control of her bodily functions, and got hauled off to the hospital. All of this in roughly three hours. I know I joke about how the Army Aviation's initials are AA for a reason, but this is really taking it above and beyond.

Three, another soldier - who is underage and who has been busted for drinking underage once before - was caught drinking again. Rank will be taken... again.

And fourth, another soldier sat down in the common room - in plain view of the general population, the security cameras, and the sergeants sitting at the front desk whose job it is to enforce rules such as "hard liquor is not allowed in the barracks" - and started doing, and handing out, shots of hard liquor. He will also lose rank, which is particularly painful since he's a corporal.

All four of these incidents mark the end of a long string of general non-stupidity around here. The past several months have been startlingly alcohol-incident free. The Company Commander even met with us on Friday and congratulated us for behaving for so long. There goes that I guess.

Finally, I've got some nasty blisters on the arches of my feet. Kind of a weird place to get them but I've got new running shoes and I'm not used to running in shoes that have arch support. I might have to just pull the insoles out - if these get any worse I'm going to have a rough time running my end of course PT test in January. I guess I could run with bloody feet but I'd really rather not.

[1]: A company is a military unit, typically consisting of 75-200 soldiers. Most companies are formed of three to five platoons although the exact number may vary by country, unit type, and structure. From Wikipedia, since I'm too lazy and too verbose to explain it concisely myself.

[2]: No, I didn't pay for myself. I have no money to speak of since I haven't been paid in a month. I don't know why; I submitted a pay inquiry and my check is in the mail, it will arrive this coming Friday. The only reason I mention this at all, aside from the fact that complaining about Ft. Eustis is practically my new hobby, is that I want my mother - who I have been complaining to about this, and who occasionally reads this blog - to know that I have not been spending money that I don't have. Because I know she worries about that kind of thing. It's okay, Mom, I'm not going to overdraw my account.

I was just recently looking over my Amazon wish list and was struck by how accurately it summarizes my interests:

• An REM album


• Apes or Angels?: Darwin, Dover, Human Nature and Race


• On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and Peace


• The Forest of Hands and Teeth - A zombie book


• Ye Olde SICP, of course. I still don't actually own a copy.


• Rootkits: Subverting the Windows Kernel - I wonder whether this title would even be comprehensible to someone unfamiliar with the terms "rootkit" and "kernel".


• Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition - I already own the first edition.


• The Iron Giant (Special Edition)


• A book on tax and contract law written for independent contractors.


• Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil - highly recommended both by me and by the host of a show on NPR whose name I don't remember.


• Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith - A book about the history of violence in the LDS religion.

As an aside re: the last item, I think it's amusing that Mormons get upset when you talk about violent incidents in their religion's history. The Old Testament details the Jews' wholesale slaughter of their neighboring tribes, and the Spanish Inquisition is just one of many brutally violent aspects of the Catholic church's history. Mormonism isn't the only religion with a history of violence, and yet they're the ones least willing to discuss or acknowledge it. Being unwilling to discuss one's own sordid past certainly isn't an attribute restricted to Mormons, but it does seem to be more prevalent among them.

Yes, I hate Twitter. (Read the bottom of this post if you don't know what Twitter is.) There are many, many reasons but they all boil down to how trivial and banal it is. It offends me on an almost aesthetic level that anyone feels the need to instantly receive trivial updates on other people's lives.

But the new Questionable Content (Mormon Warning: You will be offended. Artist Warning: You might be too but it gets better.) twitters are so amusing that I'm considering signing up and figuring out how to get them sent to my phone. I hear you can get the Interwebs on them thar cellular telephones these days.

What Twitter Is: Think about Facebook statuses. You know, the "Bob is (insert activity or emotion or some stupid pointless bullcrap)" thing that everyone has on there. Now, imagine that there is a web site that is nothing BUT those things, all day long. Now imagine that you can not only update your status with a text message from your cell phone but you can also get all of your friends' updates sent to your cell phone immediately, AND you can respond to their updates immediately. That is Twitter, and it is as horrifyingly banal as it sounds.