Category Archives: Uncategorized

The times, they are a-changin’

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After three years of breathless waiting, with venture capital funding for the company I’m a minority partner in always just around the corner but never quite in reach, things have finally happened–and when they did, they did with breakneck speed.

I’m in Gainesville, Florida, as I type this. Last week, the company finally secured funding. On Friday, I quit my job. Saturday and Sunday I spent with smoocherie and her partner Fritz, then Monday I started packing. Yesterday, I rented a van and hauled about half my stuff from Tampa to Gainesville, where I will be living with Shelly for the next few weeks while the company gets its facility in Atlanta prepared and I look for an apartment there. During this time, I’ll be working remotely full-time for the company. The cats are up here, and believe me, they didn’t appreciate the trip one little bit. Molly cried for an hour and a half.

On or about the 10th of next month, the facility will be ready and I’ll be moving to Atlanta.

Things I learned last night while packing the rental van:

– There is no graceful way for one person to move a king-sized mattress. None. Anyone who tells you he’s found an easy way to do it is lying.

– We own more sex toys than I thought. A lot more.

– You can’t fit four computers on one standard-sized desk, even with a KVM switch. Especially if one of them (the G4 Cube) has a proprietary monitor.

– The two-hour drive from Tampa to Gainesville is a study in tedium. It’s more interesting, though, if you’re driving a big, clumsy, underpowered Chevy van that handles like a cow; it’s more interesting still in the driving rain. In that ‘may you live in interesting times’ kinda way.

– General Motors can not design a vehicle that’s worth a goddamn to save its bloated corporate ass. Why would anyone voluntarily buy, own, or drive a GM vehicle?

– A small cat who’s unhappy can make more noise than any sane man would expect. It’s rather amazing, really.

– We also own more bedding than I thought. And a lot of it is still in Tampa.

– Everything is more difficult than you think it is and takes longer than you think it will, even if you keep this rule in mind.

On the good side, once in Atlanta I’ll be making nearly three times what I was making, plus commission and bonuses, plus stock. On the bad side, it all happened so fast I didn’t even have time to tell many of my Tampa friends I was leaving.

This is what happens when I’ve nothing better to do.

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Okay, scratch that, it’s a lie. I have many better things to be doing–spinning poi, working on the upcoming release of Onyx 3, playing World of Warcraft, but…

You know those Every Time you Masturbate, God Kills a Kitten images floating around the ‘Net? I think they send the wrong message, don’t you? I mean, I like kittens as much as the next guy…hell, I probably like kittens more than the next guy. But give up masturbation? I don’t think so.

So I’ve decided to counter the propaganda with…well, with counter-propaganda. I just created an answer which I hope sends a better message, and encourages right-thinking men and women to take an orgasm for the team.

Every time you masturbate, God kills a Cylon

Please, think of the humans!

More pictures of Sunland

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As promised, more pics of Sunland, the abandoned asylum in Tallahassee. Cross-posted to urban_decay.

In the early 50s, it was believed that sunlight and fresh air could cure tuberculosis, so many TB wards were built with large, open sunrooms. Each of Sunland’s two wings ended with a series of these sunrooms. This same design was used in TB hospitals all throughout Florida.

One of the first shots I took. We arrived when the sky was still light. The building consists of two wings which are virtually identical, with an extension coming out at right angles where the two wings meet. The overall building is huge, but very narrow.

Many more bandwidth-crushing images under here

Fun at Sunland

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So. Back from Dragon*Con and back into the work week; I haven’t had time to post ’bout the con, and this is not that post. Perhaps later.

Instead, this is a post about Sunland.

Sunland Asylum, Tallahassee

Sunland is a ruined insane asylum for children, located in Tallahassee not too far from where Shelly’s sweetie lives. It started out in the mid-1950s as a tuberculosis ward, and was repurposed when a vaccine for TB was developed. It spent the rest of its existence as an asylum, primarily for children, until it was abandoned a couple decades ago. It’s sat there ever since, slowly crumbling away. There’s a badly-written Wikipedia entry about the place, in fact.

When we drove back from Dragon, we stopped for an impromptu photo shoot at Sunland. We arrived as the sun was setting, and as a result couldn’t enter the buiilding–poor light, treacherous footing, and tons of broken glass (literally–every window in the building has been shattered, and there are thousands of pounds of glass strewn everywhere) made entry too dangerous. But we got some great shots nonetheless, which I’ll likely be posting over the next few days.

Dragon*Con Ho!

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So I’m in Gainesville to pick up Shelly, and off we go to Dragon*Con in Atlanta. I packed very hastily this morning, and I’m generally lousy at packing for any kind of overnight stay–I always find I forget something. Still, this time I think I got everything. I packed:

– Underwear
– An iPod and an iPod Shuffle, both stuffed with industrial music
– 2,500 feet of green saran wrap
– Knee-high black vinyl boots with metal studs all over them
– Bondage tape
– Rope
– My laptop, with wireless network card
– Two digital cameras and a Webcam
– Gas mask
– Trenchcoat with Biohazard logo on the back
– Cell phone charger
– Floggers

However, I can’t help shake the feeling I’ve forgotten something.

BSG as a meditation on anti-transhumanism

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So. Battlestar: Galactica.

I’ve resisted seeing it, because I am very skeptical about television sci-fi in general, and because the original series (which I saw–quick, how old does that make me?) sucked so badly. So very, very, very badly.

Anyhow, Shelly and I rented the miniseries that started the series last Sunday–or rather, Shelly rented it, and I didn’t raise any objections. And, surprisingly, it’s really very, very good. It pays a wink and a nod to the original series without being hokey or lowbrows, and the characters are surprisingly complex and nuanced.

Buuuuuuuuut…

About a third of the way through, Shelly remarked, “You know, the Cylons are looking like the superior race here.” And y’know, she’s right.

For anyone who’s not up on the show, the premise concerns humanity’s flight from the evil Cylons, a race of intelligent machines originally created by humanity, who revolted and declared war on their former masters. Humans kicked metallic ass, the Cylons disappeare; then, four decades later, reappeared and staged a massive nuclear attack on every inhabited human planet, virtually exterminating us. One large interstellar warship, a handful of civilian ships, and a few tens of thousands of humans escaped, and the show concerns their flight from the Cylons.

So there’s the premise. There are a thousand ways to butcher that premise on television, most of which were visited upon the original series, a show cheesy almost beyond belief; the new show, on the Scifi channel, is actually remarkably good.

Good, for a study in anti-transhumanism, that is. See, here’s the thing. A minor plot point revolves around one of the characters being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Now, the interesting thing about that is here we have a society that has bridged the stars, created enormous faster-than-light spacecraft, but has no effective treatment for cancer.

That theme continues in other ways. The commander of the heavy cruiser from which the show takes its name is in his 60s, and near retirement; no longevity. Sophisticated computers? Outlawed. You get the idea.

The good guys here are the neo-Luddites; the villains bent on the total destruction of all humanity are the progressives.

Halfway through the miniseries, and I’m kinda thinkin’ I’m rooting for the wrong team here.

The Cylons are effectively immortal; if one dies, its consciousness, memory, and identity can be transferred to a new body. In almost every respect, they outmatch humans–they can integrate with other computers to a very high degree; they’re faster and stronger; they are technologically and intellectually more sophisticated…oh, yeah, and did I mention they’re effectively immortal?

Essentially, what we have here is a war between backward, technology-fearing neo-Luddites and the smart, sophisticated, highly capable adversaries created by humanity. And,y’know, it’s kinda hard to think that the Cylons don’t have a point here. Create a self-aware machine, treat it like a thing rather than a person, what do you expect? And it’s not like we’re above exterminating our adversaries (or, for that matter, ourselves).

Frankly, my money’s on the Cylons. And, honestly, my sympathies lie in that direction as well.

And the new models are pretty hot, too.

A list of pointers to other posts…

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…because I haven’t the time to post the things I want to post myself, about Dragon*Con and spinning poi and BDSM and the TV show “Battlestar: Galactica” as an anti-transhumanish meditation…

First, a post on the nature of resentment by lefthand.

“Resentment or the act of deliberately provoking negative emotions by focusing on them is powerful magic. Carefully applied, resentment can destroy friendships, marriages, businesses and all other human activities. Resentment is capable of overcoming all obstacles and eliminating connections. Resentment gains its power by a deliberate disconnect from reality. It ignores all contradictory input and focuses on egregious, insulting and humiliating aspects.”

Go read it. Seriously. It’s good stuff.

Next up, this beautiful little musing on desire and avarice by jane-etrix. She writes about everything this well.

Geek humor: I do not believe I have seen anything in at least six months quite as funny as this. It helps to know that in Unix, “sudo” means “superuser do.” It runs a command as ‘superuser’–that is, it runs that command as though the person issuing the command were logged in as root, with unrestricted authority to take any action on the system.

[Edit] Here’s the image, and yes, it really is that funny.

Every religion has its ‘miracles,’ where the face of Jesus appears in a cabbage or the name of Allah materializes on a rusty bucket or some damn thing. Nothing can comare, though, to the visceral, undeniable appearance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the sky. We are all touched by his noodly appendage!

And finally, datan0de points out that August 29 is in fact Judgment Day. Hail the rise of the machines!

Life 2.0–the transhumanists have it all wrong

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So Tuesday afternoon, Shelly blew the engine in her car while travelling back to Gainesville from spending time with her new sweetie in Tallahassee. I had (naturally) forgotten my cell phone when I went to work Tuesday morning, so I came back to 17 missed calls and an “I’m stranded in some Godforsaken hellhole!” voicemail from Shelly.

Into the car, up to said Godforsaken hellhole (about three hours’ drive), and I picked her up in…

…the. Creepiest. Hungry. Howie’s. Ever.

They had, if you can believe it, an old-fashioned analog telepone with a mechanical bell in it, of the kind young whippersnappers today have never even seen. Every time it rang, I reached for my cell phone, which has a ringtone that mimics those old-fashioned telephones for, y’know, irony’s sake.

So Shelly’s car is a total loss. I drove her back to Gainesville, then the next day headed back to Tampa myself.

But that’s not what I came here to talk about. I came here to talk about the Singularity.

The Singularity, as all transhumanists know, is that point of technological shift past which people on one side of the technological change can not predict, or even understand, what life is like for those living on the other side. Transhumanists sometimes call the people living after this point in time “Humanity 2.0”–something that scares the crap out of conservatives of all stripes.

But as it turns out, they’re all wrong.

You see, on I-75 south of Gainesville, there is a billboard that makes it all clear. The billboard advertises “Life 2.0”. Apparently, Life 2.0 doesn’t come after some profound new disruptive technology or some social or technological paradigm shift. No, Life 2.0 is what happens when you retire to a retirement community outside of Gainesville.

Silly transhumanists!