Joel sez: users don’t read anything. That’s true. But sometimes they’ll still get some use of the instructions in one way or another.
I wonder what the code under the letters “WET” refers to….. Oooh, I know! It’s one of those “markers and signs [that] are part of a civil disturbance control plan that will implement Emergency Executive Orders #11002 and #11004 to process, control and relocate “dissenters” to detention camps, and prisons during a National Emergency. “
Meaning of “Meaning”
When I first learned about SATs I thought it was a very stupid test. I was very pissed off, of course, about the verbal section. I felt that I was penalized for not being a native speaker of English. Besides, the whole concept seemed silly to me — I encountered very few Russian words that I didn’t know the meaning of in my daily reading. I thought that I could not acieve the perfect score only because I did not know English well enough.
Now I realize how little I knew about meaning of words back then, and how little I know now. I used many words just because they sounded cool, without thinking about meaning. Sometimes I made up my own meaning for words based on auditory associations.
For instance, let’s take words “tactic” and “strategy”. I thought that they were synonyms. I encountered the word “tactical” in descriptions of many items. I always thought that it was just a military buzzword. Tactical nuclear weapon and strategic bomber. Tactical holster. Even a bag can be tactical.
Well, today I learned that there is a difference. “Tactics” are short term plans, and “strategies” are long term. When you bomb enemy on the battlefield – that’s tactical bombing (the tanks and soldiers are there now). When you bomb factories, airfields and general population of the enemy – that’s strategic bombing (they are not involved in fighting now, but they will get involved in the future).
Timeframe involved doesn’t really matter. Strategy and tactics are defined relative to each other. For instance, take look at this cartoon :
Topato Potato is giving Wigu strategic advice, and Wigu is making tactical decisions. When he strays from the strategy outlined by Topato, he gets into trouble.
Tactical bag? That’s just a buzzword, methinks.
And meaning of “mean�ing”? It’s right here.
Talking Heads
I work in the Newscorp building. Fox News studios are located on the first floor and have windows. It’s kind of eerie seeing “talking heads” live on the way home.
That’s Shepard Smith, I think. I tried taking pictures from two different windows. The windows are tinted.
Gotta catch them all
Bodega Kiddie Ride
A kiddy ride near a bodega on Ave U. Colours were not altered or anything.
Hellhole
This is an entrance to a building on Ave U. The neighborhood is very good there; it’s definitely not a slum. If I were evil overlord the super of that building would be sent to Siberia.
Freud would have a field day with this
About debugging
A wrong assumption that most people make when debugging: a bug has a higher probability of hiding in complex and esoteric places. This may be true about roaches — they are more likely to be found in hard to reach places, but not about code. Code bugs are not afraid of light — they are just as likely to be in plain view.
The General Theory of Tso’s Chicken
Ok, here I am ranting again about food not allowed by my low carb diet.
General Tso’s chicken. Mmmmm. Deep fried chicken cubes in sweet and spicy sauce. Droool.
Ok, if I can’t have it, I can at least finally find out who is this general and why the dish is named after him. Luckily I am not the first one to ask myself that question. Well, trusty google gave me some answers, but very few things are completely clear.
Is it an ancient Szechuan dish called “ancestor meeting place chicken” or was it “It was invented in the mid-1970s, in NYC, by one Chef Peng”? Probably the second.
General Tso seems to have been a real military general. My theory was that it’s genral in the sense of “concerned with, applicable to, or affecting the whole or every member of a class or category”, as opposed to “special”. Anyways, his specialty (huh, huh I made a pun) was Chinese and Muslim rebellion crushing. But were his “.. operations were carried out while he suffered from recurring bouts of malaria and dysentery”? Has he “… flunked the official court exams three times, a terrible disgrace …” or did he have a ” ..successful career as a scholar-administrator”? Was the chicken named so because “…General Tso […] had the top leaders of the Nian Rebellion executed with the proverbial “death of 10,000 cuts”[…] ” or just in admiration?
And how many puns can be made by people writing articles about the good general and his dish? Try to count in the following articles (which I qoted in my post):
Tso What?
Who Was General Tso And Why Are We Eating His Chicken?
Empire State Building Checkmark
Get to the top of the Empire State Building? Check.
The triangle in this picture is formed by my favorite skyscraper of all times — the Flatiron Building.
My fascination with the Flatiron started when I read O.Henry’s “Little Speck in Garnered Fruit” (in Russian translation, of course).
Here is the quote that interested me:
The druggist made an examination. “It isn’t broken,” was his diagnosis, “but you have a bruise there that looks like you’d fallen off the Flatiron twice.”
The translation went something like “your face looked like it was flattened by the Flatiron Building”, but that doesn’t matter.
I’ve never seen a picture of the Flatiron, but reading that story, I tried to imagine what it looked like. Upon seeing the building in Manhattan 5 years later, I instantly realized what it was.
But wait, there is more.
In the first couple of years of the Internet boom I learned about Flatiron Partners, a venture capitalist partnership. At the time I did not even know who venture capitalists were. These guys had a really crappy site though. I wrote them an email, offering to code a better looking website for free, because I liked the Flatiron Building so much. I even got a response, thanking me for my offer, and saying that they were working with some professionals on the new version.
Soon, when I was working at iXL, I actually did some very light coding on their site anyway. iXL was the company that got their account. Talk about destiny, huh? :)