Weaver VS World

How Many Years?

2008.12.03

Has Bushy, Dick, Rummy, and Wolfowitz set us back in foreign policy? 10? 20? 30? Maybe more?

http://www.wimp.com/bushfails/

-John

"Dude, We Are Out of Asswipe..."

2008.12.03

No Problem.

Step 1 - Reappropriation & Fabrication

Step 2 - Implementation

Step 3 - Cleanup & Surplus Storage

-John "What do you mean they didn't have triple ply with aloe?" Urbanek

The American Heart Assocation Owes Me $200

2008.11.18

It is no secret that I enjoy eating. So much that at times I tend to get a little... excited and forget important nuances that many take for granted. Things like eating at or on a table. Chewing food. Things like preparing the food according to common sense instruction instead of "winging it." Or my personal favorite, changing out of dress clothing before consuming food that, based on historical fact, will be destroyed during the meal.

There comes to mind the time, many years ago now that a single stint with reheated spaghetti managed to stain every, that's every piece of clothing I decided to put on that morning. The affair can be broken into two phases; i. Outerwear and ii. Underwear.

After a few fork twirls of pasta it was time for a meatball. That's when it all came down. In my excitement, the meatball slipped off (let's be honest, it wasn't securely attached) the fork and made contact with the collar of my rugby shirt. Like the opening drop on a roller coaster the seasoned ball of animal carcass obeyed gravity and on the way down bounced off my belt buckle, rolled down my pants and as unnecessary as a kick in the [meat]balls skidded across the sock on my right foot. Staring at the meatball in bewilderment I gasped "Come on!?"

In my excitement to continue the meal I removed the rugby shirt, denim pants, and socks. Begin phase two. Like Steven Seagal in Marked for Death, I was as confused as hell to find out that Screwface the meatball had a twin brother. Following in his brother's footsteps he finished off my undershirt and boxer shorts on his journey from my fork to the floor.

"I hope there weren't triplets." -John Hatcher

Pomegranates and You

Which leads us to today... The lesson learned? Pay the extra and purchase the pomegranate arils pre-plucked by the underpaid grocery staff. If you've never prepared a pomegranate for consumption, prepare for the following.

• Staining and/or destroying most of what you are wearing.
• Staining any and all walls, countertops, cutting boards, floors, and garbage can lids.
• Enduring David Lopan like temporary blindness when a popped aril volleys juice into your peepers.
• Explaining what looks like a murder scene from C.S.I. to anyone unfortunate enough to witness the slaying of the pomegranate membrane and fleshy arils.

-John "I would give you spiced wine to drink from the juice of my pomegranates" Urbanek

Word.

2008.11.05

I chose Barrack Obama because he didn't bomb anything. If he somehow dies some stupid person will not get in ofice. Obama is not an oil tycoon yay.

Some other advantiges are he is young and not senile. Barrack Obama is against the war in Iraq. He is a good sport because he didn't sue the Daily show for that funny Obama thing.

Why I don't want Mccain is because he bombed Vietnom. He got dum as bricks Sara Palline as Vice Presindent. So if he somehow gets in ofice and dies boom dum as bricks Sara Paline get in and we are all DOOMED EVEN MORE.

Why I hate Sara Paline is because she hunts animals. Sara and Mccain are both oil monkeys or tycoons. Sara Paline belives in the bible but it says they're was no dinosaurs so. WHERE IS THE STUPID OIL COMING from?

I hope this helps you not chose Mccain. I'm done with this

-Pablo Volaric, Age 11, 9/19/08

"Same thing we do everynight Pinky..."

2008.10.30

Besides Angelina Jolie, techno music, and a 28.8 bps modem what is the most important aspect of a hacker's workstation? Displays, displays, displays. Not all of us come with the skills of Dade Murphy a.k.a. Crash Override a.k.a. Zero Cool a.k.a. Jonny Lee Miller a.k.a. Eli Stone. Yeah, surprised me too. One day you're crashing fifteen hundred seven computers while swimming naked with Angelina Jolie, the next it hits you that a law degree leaves you ill-equipped to handle an aneurysm that lets you talk to God. But who cares, Katie Holmes returned to network television.

How to take over the world if you are not one of Jonny Lee Miller's collective alter egos Dade Mur... Eli Sto... Elade Smurphy? Now there's an idea. A blackhat stealing wireless from his lamer neighbors with a Pringles Cantenna stumbles upon the HolyNet. After going 0:100 on de_dust to a mysterious player known only as 33_aND-CoUNTing he receives an email from teh_JC@whosyourdaddy.jobs listing Smurphy's first assignments. First, stake out this "Cain" guy's PC. Rumors are flying around that he has been into the Anarchist Cookbook and learning illegal Government ninja moves. Second, investigate the increase in spyware related support calls and porn traffic coming from the Soddom and Gomorrah netblocks. I sense an Emmy.

Back to world domination. A minimum of four displays are required. One for each major inhabited land mass. One for North America, South America, Africa and Eurasia. Antarctica and Australia you ask? Penguins, fur-seals, and Vegemite. Box 'em up, send 'em to Mexico if you're concerned. Introduce them to tequila and handguns, the rest will sort itself out.

-John "Federal Reserve Regulation T ate my homework" Urbanek

What are the odds? Seriously...

2008.10.21

What are the odds? Seriously. Nothing like lightning striking your winning PowerBALL ticket in hand while standing on an unmowed patch of four leaf clovers, but pretty cool nonetheless.

It's a regular Monday morning. I am happily hacking away at a demo of Orion NPM monitoring a fleet of Cisco Routers. Skype rings and flashes with an unkown number. I pickup and answer with my standard work greeting, "Hello, this is John." The caller responds, "This is Matt [surname removed] from OfficeDepot, can I speak with Sheila please." I inform the caller, "No Sheila here, think you have the wrong number." "Sorry about that. Well, if you see her please let her know her order has arrived for pickup and thank you for using OfficeDepot."

At this point I am confused. Sheila? Don't know her. OfficeDepot? Never set foot in one.

Not two seconds after the call ended did my eyes dart up and to the left as the visual recall systems were putting together a small puzzle triggered by the name and ineptitude of an OfficeDepot employee.

Ah-ha! I knew him. Worked with him at DataWave six years ago. He was the bumbling Sales Engin... idiot who had difficulties grasping IP addresses and their "use of dots instead of commas." Mind you this was a guy selling rebranded Internet T1's and DSL. I spent fifteen minutes helping him enter data into an Excel spreadsheet only to find out that rows and columns were the same thing "at his school." Hard to forget someone with that level of mastery.

So what are the chances of answering the phone to a legitimately dialed wrong number *and* knowing the person on the other end?

Well? I decided to find out. Make note that what follows cannot be considered accurate. Many assumptions are made. It is an order of magnitude estimate, and a poor one at that. Any correctness should be assumed coincidental and the mathematical equivalent of throwing rocks at a cliff face resulting in an exact replica of one of [King] Richard Petty's personalized belt buckles.

Physics 201 Taught Me Things

Like how many New York Sewer rats would be required to feed the rabid fans at Lambeau Field for four quarters of football. Or how much gas would have to be passed from the asses of those Packer fans and burned in the grilling equipment to prepare the rats for consumption. Needless to say, the system is not a perpetual motion machine in disguise.

How Many Names Can You Recognize?

Back to the task at hand. I'll define knowing the person on the other end to recognizing their name. According to "Contacts and influence." (Direct PDF) and other sources online this number is somewhere between 500 and 5,000 persons with the average around 3,000 depending on the individual.

Number of Calls Made Per Soul Per Time

The latest Federal Communications Commision Trends in Telephone Service from 2005 (latest), table 10.2 lists the combined number of both local and toll calls to be 505,834,870,000. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the population of the U.S. in 2005 to be 295,895,897 souls. (Say goodbye to sig figs right now) This divides to around 4.68 calls made per person per day, 32.8 calls per person per week. Bear in mind that this calculation includes all souls, of all ages. The eleven month old diaper wearing, eating, sleeping, shitting apple of somebody's eye to the eleven hundred month old diaper wearing, eating, sleeping, shitting, living holdup on a will. All chattin' away. Note: Since two parties are involved in a given call, the numbers also correspond to the average number of calls received per soul per time.

Number of Wrong Numbers Received Per Soul Per Time

Seeing as I could find absolutely no research in this field, I had to do it myself. I made calls to people I know and flat out asked them. My sample size is 32... ish. Funny enough, I even dialed a wrong number, which I later found out is in line with my results. Averaging out all of the responses I determined people to receive on average 2.1 wrong numbers per month, which divides (for the month of February anyway) to 0.53 wrong numbers per week, and 0.08 wrong numbers per day. This data sucks on the grounds of insufficient sample size, sample distribution, lack of formal questioning of samples, lack of statistical methods, and an altogether lack of effort.

Putting it all Together

Note: Percentages are used as results below, remember to shift the decimal point for non-percentage representation.

First it is necessary to calculate the chance that a given call will be a wrong number. 0.08 wrong numbers per day divided by 4.68 calls per day gives a 1.7% chance that a given call will be a wrong number.

Next, let us determine the chance that you will *recognize* the name of a person sampled at random from the United States of America. Assuming the average of 3,000 recognizable names and a population of 295,895,897 souls, this gives a 0.001% chance.

Now the chance that a given call will be a wrong number multiplied by the chance that you will recognize the name of a random person from the United States of America gives us a chance of 0.00002%.

Conclusion

• There is a 1.7% chance that your next received call will be a wrong number.
• There is a 0.001% chance that you will recognize the name of the person on the other end of your next received wrong number.
• There is a 0.00002% chance that your next received call will be a wrong number and you will recognize the person on the other end.
• There is a 0.0002% chance that you will be struck by lightning in a given year.
• One in 5,000,000 calls a person receives will result in a received wrong number where the receiving party recognizes the calling party's name.
• At a call rate of 4.68 received calls per day (and 4.68 dialed calls per day) it would take 3,000 years for this event to happen to a given person.
• However, in the grand scheme of daily call volume this happens in the United States of America around three hundred times per day. Around ten times per hour. Once every ten minutes. So it is more common across the populace than it would seem.

Final Thoughts

I am not that special. It is highly probably that I am terrible with probability. In the words of my former roommate, "I just did the math, I'm gonna fail Calc."

-John "What are the odds of Metallica's Death Magnetic rocking your socks off?" Urbanek

Just For You, Dave...

2007.09.11

Everyone else can move along, nothing to see here.

Seanny In His Boxers...

It's about time... IF, DT, CoB, and Sonata Arctica have all made appearances. Wanna duel?

-John "God Bless America" Urbanek

Two Men, Two Legs, Two DWI's

2007.08.28

Lifted from Postcrescent.com

*Two men arrested for driving same vehicle while intoxicated* *Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers*

ABBOTSFORD - Two Dorchester men were arrested for operating the same vehicle while intoxicated in the Abbotsford area.

Harvey J. Miller, 43, who has no legs, was steering the 1985 Chevrolet truck from the driver's seat while Edwin H. Marzinske, 55, operated the brake and gas pedals, according to the Colby/Abbotsford Police report.

They were headed northbound on Hiline Avenue in Abbotsford when police pulled them over at 2:40 a.m. Aug. 18.

Miller admitted he was too drunk to drive but argued he wasn't operating the vehicle because he couldn't push the pedals. Miller was issued a citation for a third drunk driving offense, while Marzinske was cited for a second. Both men were also cited for operating after revocation.

A third drunk man in the vehicle walked himself home after the incident.

What?

Little attention is given to this mysterious "third drunk man." In his infinite wisdom, he decides to climb in and ride shotgun in the cab of an '85 Chevy, no doubt littered with Sun Drop cans and beef jerky wrappers. He leaves operation of the steering wheel, turn signals, and hi-beams to the better half of Mr. Miller, while Eddie works the accelerator and brakes fumbling for 1390 AM hoping for some Skynyrd. Five-Oh comes around the corner and "third drunk man" suddenly develops a passion for good ideas. Falls out of the cab and walks himself home. What?

Meanwhile, Miller gets cited for his third drunk driving offense leaving Eddie not far behind with the only even prime.

See, I've been to Abbotsford. I've had to hitchhike in Abbotsford, at around bar close on a weekend after spending a few hours trying to fix the fuel pump on an '89 Civic hatchback in the parking lot of Mr. B's. Guess who stopped? A drunken man donning odors whose sources I have only identified in the years following the incident as a young man... namely "stale whiskey" and "unclean woman." It was a learning experience to say the least, and really sold me on Abbotsford, Wisconsin. What?

-John "some things are just beyond me" Urbanek

All the Way to the Right and Down

2007.08.13

'bout a month has gone by since driving the 2007 Honda Civic Si off the Honda City lot. Thirty-three hundred miles later and it is time for an update...

"VTEC works in reverse!"

It's true... I won't go into the details but VTEC is completely functional when in 'R'. It is a rather interesting experience to say the least. The distinct whine of a straight cut reverse gear coupled with the scream of the K20Z3 at 8200 RPM was enough to embarrass all parties in the vehicle. So much that a Honda fanboy in the parking lot made a comment as we entered the movie theater. He heard the secondary cam profile engage... while going backwards and could help but bring it up as we strolled by. The debate is still going on as to whether his comments were in admiration or he was making fun of the stupidity of the act...

My biggest problem with the whole VTEC reverse affair is that by design it is pretty tough to check top speed. Firmly planted in the macho male reverse position, left hand at 12, right hand stretched movie theater style on the passenger's seat, head cranked Top Gun style checkin' for bogeys, gasps and all. No sense looking forward at the instrument panel when racing backwards. Boyish curiosity took over this afternoon and I decided to make David Maculay proud, with nothing but a few published statistics and a little gray matter. Top speed can't be that hard to calculate? I digress.

The 2007 Civic Si Sedan comes stock with 215/45R17's front and back. Reverse gear ratio is published at 3.583 and final drive ratio published at 4.765. Going to guess and say I let off at about 8200 RPM. Secondary cams were engaged for quite a while, but I know I didn't bump the rev limiter (at 8500).

Given:
Reverse Ratio R_rev: 3.583
Final Drive Ratio R_fin: 4.765
Driving Tire Specs: 215/45R17
Engine RPM: 8200

First step is to calculate a few numbers from the given information. Ideally, we want the absolute drive ratio (R_abs) while in reverse. That is, the number of revolutions of the crankshaft rotates for a single rotation of the driving wheels.

R_abs = R_rev * R_fin = 3.583 * 4.765 = 16.75

From this we gather that it takes 16.75 rotations at the crankshaft to make the tires rotate once, in reverse gear. This number changes as gears change.
Next, we need the outer circumference of the tire. This could be measured easily with string and a tape measure or by marking the the sidewall directly above the pavement, rolling the car forward until the mark is back down, then measuring the linear distance from point to point. I didn't want to get up... Let's calculate.
With 215/45R17's the tire is 8.46 in wide (215mm). Sidewall height is 45% of the width. Wheel (rim) diameter is 17 in. Wheel diameter plus twice the sidewall height (one for for each side) gives us total outer rotational diameter of the tire.

Total Outer Rotational Diameter = Wheel Diameter + [2 * ( Tire Width * Aspect Percentage )] = 17 in + [2 * (8.46 in * 0.45)] = 24.61 in.
Total Outer Rotational Circumference = 24.61 * 3.141 = 77.30 in

We now know that for every 16.75 rotations of the crankshaft the car travels 77.30 inches in reverse. We are more interested in speed (well, velocity, but let's stick to the scalar part), so phrased another way...
At 8200 crankshaft revolutions per minute, the tire rotates 489.6 times in that same minute (8200 / 16.75).
A tire with outer rotational circumference of 77.30 inches rotating 489.6 times per minute displaces 37,846 inches per minute.
Inches per minute to miles per hour is a factor of (60 [min/hr] / 63,360 [in/mi] ) = 0.00095 [min*mi]/[hr*in] (Units! Units! Units!)
37,846 in/min * 0.00095 [min*mi]/[hr*in] = 35.95 mi/hr

The final big ass formula is as follows:

[(Engine RPM / R_abs) * Tot Rot Circumference in Inches ] * 0.00095 = Speed in miles per hour

The R_abs is calculated using Gear Ratio and Final Drive Ratio.
The Total Rotational Circumference is calculated using manufacturer provided wheel and tire specifications.

If you are still with me at this point I commend you. In truth I have no idea if anything above is correct... Makes sense to me. One of you physics boys or ME's are more than welcome to tear me apart... :)

Bottom line: 36 mi/hr in reverse! Best part was sailing into the parking spot at that speed. Doesn't get better than feeling ABS engage on blacktop... in reverse.

-John "VTEC in Reverse" Urbanek

"I think I've got another gear."

2007.07.17

Tuesday, 10th of July, 5:30pm rolls around and I fly out the door looking forward to a great workout at Krav. Little did I know I would start the Saturn for the last time. The only other place I've heard noises that engine and transmission made are porno movies and pneumatically driven impact tools. Reaching a top speed of six miles per hour with the pedal to the floorboard I decided against testing the car's resolve on Highway 45. Shortly after exiting the lot I returned, defeated... and pissed.

Much to my favor, I had been anticipating this day for the past few months and had planned accordingly. I'll spare you the details on the new car buying process, but I drove a spanking new 2007 Honda Civic Si off the lot not 18 hours later for thousands less than MSRP. While I am not an expert on buying cars, I like to think I am a few steps ahead of the game. The first time I saw the dealer's asking price on the sticker was on the way home when I looked at the window sticker, laying in the back seat as removed by the detailers. Didn't even know what they wanted until after I bought the car. Can't let their greed cloud the mind. The only number that matters is what you are willing to pay.

Close ratio six speed manual, sport tuned suspension, tuned exhaust... All qualities in the car that affected my ability to keep it under 4000 (redline is 8200 for this pig) for the first 600 miles during the "break-in" period. Even more of a deterrent is this little thing called VTEC, short for "Hold The F*ck On To Something." Kicking in at 5800 rpm it transforms the vehicle from sporty econobox to a hellspawn reincarnated. How long did it take me to break in the car...? 'Bout 5800 rpm. Drive it like you stole it...

Independence Day 2007

What happens on Clear Lake, stays on clear lake. For the most part...

• Independence Day 2007 Pics

-John "Home of the VTEC Grocery Store Run" Urbanek