You might think that I dislike Daylight Saving Time.  You would be mistaken.

You might think that I liked Daylight Saving Time.  You would be wrong.

You might think that I hated Daylight Saving Time like a plague on society.  Now we're getting somewhere. 

The truth is, I find DST to be a blight on the intellectual accomplishments of modern man. 

To plan and execute something so incredibly ignorant and disruptive and then blame it on an innocent profession that probably couldn't care less about it, is an embarrassment to my intelligence.  It is right up there with prohibition. 

Time is probably the fundamental abstract measure of the universe.  Only size may be argued to be more so.  But even distance is a measure of "how long does it take...".  And as an abstract, does it matter if its 12:00, 3:00, 27:00 when the sun does something irrelavant?  Of course not.  So we take our fundamental unit of time and screw with it twice a year because why?  Maybe the American public is too damn ignorant to make their own decisions!  Maybe we can force the sun to stay out longer!  Maybe the day will be longer by an hour!  Ha!  Take that nature!

It's so depressing....

http://www.standardtime.com/

Go.  Now!

When working in a network environment, and who isn't anymore, it is essential that all systems be syncronized.  The easiest way to do it, if NTP is disabled, is to use Active Directory or simple Domain functions.  On any Windows machine schedule the command below at least once per day:

net time /Set /y

I finished the entire series by audiobook the day I left my last job.  It is taking a while to get this review written.  Just gathering all of the publishing data is proving to be a daunting task.  But I will get it all posted.  Note better reviewers than I have delivered more than I; see Wikipedia for better info.  This posting is my impressions of the series, nothing more.

The core of the Foundation Series is 7 books written over the span of 50 years.  The original Foundation Trilogy is widely considered among the greatest science fiction written and Asimov's greatest claim to fame.  Only the Robot stories have earned him higher fame, but the books themselves have not.  The Trilogy is considered required reading by and for any hard-core science fiction fan.  Asimov claimed to not have intended to write anything more of the series past the trilogy, but bowed to fan pressure to add more to the story.  The near thirty year hiatus certainly bears this out, though he never really "ended" the story with the establishment of the 2nd Galactic Empire.  He left us all guessing.

Update:  I don't think I am going to post the epic review I had planned.  It's just too big and would contain too many images if I used my normal review style.

The series is composed of the following books, telling the story of the great Galactic Empire, some 20k years hence:

Foundation Trilogy:  (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation)  These were the original stories written in the 1950s and are basically a collection of short stories that narrate the first half of the millenium long project to ease the transition between Galactic Empires and eliminate the 10,000 years of anarchy caused by the fall of the first Empire.  It was the first great expression of Science Fiction and has become part of the geek lexicon and pop culture forever.

Foundation's Edge:  This book was the first of the series to deal with only one main plotline revolving around a central character.  Golan Trevise, a member of the Foundation Council, is sent off into exile to covertly find the Second Foundation by overtly searching for Earth.  He does the first, nearly, but fails the second.  We learn of the true nature of the Second Foundation and the role it has in the series-wide plot.  This book was written nearly 30 years after the original trilogy, and it shows.  It is much more refined, but almost tedious in its occasional preaching subplots.

Foundation and Earth:  The conclusion of the Search for Earth storyline and a sequel to Foundation's Edge.  The long search for Earth reveals many incites into human nature, that truthfully may not have needed exploring.  The twist at the end ties together many loose ends of the original stories and converges Asimov's other major series, the Robots.  The book itself was great, if long.  I personally feel an aggressive edit would turn it into a excellent read.

Prelude to Foundation:  It is rumored that Asimov couldn't figure out how to continue the original storyline so decided to write a prequel.  Prelude is the telling of Seldon's arrival on Trantor and establishment of psychohistory.  Unfortunately, not one of the more exciting novels written, but you know what was going to happen to the main character ultimately anyway.  Still, some good plot twists and further melding of the primary Asimov franchises.

Forward the Foundation:  The last book ever written for the series as Isaac Asimov died soon after.  It was the continuation of the Seldon storyline including the period of his political office, establishment of the two Foundations and concluding where the very first book started.  A good read, but slightly disappointing in the same way that Prelude was.

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The Foundation series is one of the greatest epics in Science Fiction, in my opinion.  How far you read through it could be considered a measure of your geekness.  But of course, I have read it twice and all of the Robot series too, so I might be a touch prejudiced.  The Foundation Trilogy itself did really define modern Science Fiction and therefore should be read by everyone.

When I restarted this blog using DasBlog, I wanted a configuration that I could install on my USB key and run from anywhere with IIS.  I was able to leverage DasBlog to do that with some custom scripting to automatically install the VirtDir.  Everything was great.  Then I moved to another company and got a new workstation.  The script still works great, but since my machine defaults to ASP.NET 1.1, I have to manually modify the IIS Config after running the script to allow the 2.0 runtime I have DasBlog configured for.  It's a minor annoyance and one I will solve by finding a solution to the script, or getting everyone defaulted to 2.0 (which is happening!).  The script is below:

I love the lottery!  Most people think I don't, but I really do.  Good Lord, I would never actually play the lottery of course.  No, the lottery is simply my favorite tax.

What so many people don't seem to realize is that the lottery is a voluntary usage tax on ignorance.  If you understand number theory and basic statistics at all, you must necessary eschew the lottery as a complete waste of time and money.  Therefore, you are exempt from the tax and need not participate.  If you feel that $1 is a small price to pay in order to fantasize about how you would spend 50 bajillion dollars, then you have a small tax burden indeed.  If fear rules your life, and you feel compelled to participate in the office pool, because wouldn't it be horrible to be the only one not to win, then your tax bill might become a bit weighty.  But if you play religiously every week knowing that your time must come up eventually, then you get to pay the bulk of the ignorance tax, and rightly so. 

Now if only there were a way of advertising your participation in the lottery.  Then I would know which people I needed to avoid and to what magnitude.  And those who win, don't count, they already advertise well enough, and I will avoid them like the plague.

And by the way, if the office pool were to win and everybody took off, thank god that the group was culled so efficiently; I bet you can get a lot more work done now.  You won after all!

Over the last several million years, nature has raised man to a frightening level of ability.  We have conquered our environment, bested every predator, harnessed a few of the energies of the universe to do our bidding, and given back to nature true beauty in music and art.  But things have gone wrong.  The most dangerous accomplishment that man has created is himself.

Std Disclaimer:  I am not an environmentalist, nor do I play one on TV.  In fact, I am not taking the track of the tree-hugging, berry-gathering, short-sighted, inexperienced children of Greenpeace and PETA.  They're a bunch of twits. 

I am referring to a far more catastrophic disaster than the death of a few pitiful species.  I am talking about the reversal of evolution itself.  The death of our own species.

If man were the least bit intelligent, we would be taking great advantage of evolution and speed it up, much like we have done with our foodstocks and canine companions.  Before you get offended, realize I refer to the collective idiocy, not those few of us that can still bang the rocks together.  But no, we have decided to honor the stupid among us and so lower the quality of the gene pool ever further.  Think about it:  What incentive do we give Americans to be productive?  Or rather, what disincentive do we meet out to those who are not and drag down our economy?  Hint:  think welfare, Medicaid, unemployment, lottery, frivolous lawsuits.  Seems to me that it is becoming easier to not be productive and live off the middle class. 

Another thing, census data has shown that the higher levels of society produce fewer children than the lower classes.  I'm not going to drag the math out, you can do it.

So here's my solution:  testing and enormous tax deductions.  Testing is simple enough, if you can't spell your kids name, you shouldn't have any.  Also basic math, science and statistics.  Yep, statistics.  That will eliminate anyone who plays the lottery!  And notice I said tax deduction, not credit.  Yep, make the tax burden smaller for people who make money, not make money for people to breed children.  And people who adopt should get bigger ones, until there are no more to adopt because the idiots will not be allowed to breed.

Evolution weeded the weak and incompetent out for a very long time.  Now we protect them, encourage them, give them tax credits to breed.  Meanwhile, the top percentile is not doing their part to strengthen the gene pool by producing superior intellects.  We are in a downward spiral.  Fortunately, nature is smarter than us and will wipe out all but a few and set evolutionary process back on track.

Oh, don't even get me started on athletes and celebrities.

Well, last week was the last week at my old job.  The ironies lined up, the Traffic Gods spoke and "I believe"; that I made the right choice, that is.

Tuesday, on my way to work, a semi I was following kicked up a large piece of plywood which slammed into the nose of my Thunderbird.  $600+ in damages, and an insurance claim.  Additionally, I was nearly 3 hours late.

Wednesday, traffic on the way home was so bad, it took well over an hour to get home.  I was late getting home so Ang could go to work.  No reasons I could see, just normal VB stupid people.

Friday, my last day, on my way in, there was an accident in the Downtown Tunnel.  I sat in traffic for a half hour not moving at all.  I was almost late getting to my exit interview, which I found extremely amusing.

I will be very glad to not have to deal with rush hour traffic at the downtown tunnel again.  This afternoon I also realized that before I drove East in the morning and West in the evening, enjoying Sol each time, and the blindness that goes with it.  Now I am driving West/East.  Ahhh.

Finally, I finished the audiobook series of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.  All 7 books.  I will be posting the review shortly.  Just seems fitting to end an era with the conclusion of an epic.

Don't want to leave him out, so here's a direct and personal note just for him.  Now you've been mentioned by name on 2 blogs!

Happy?