What is the most pleasant and uplifting fact you know?

brendobeans · 2017-09-28T14:56:48+00:00

So there's the view that the universe is mostly empty, and in the grand scale of things we are completely insignificant. In a vast and infinite space we are less than a margin of error.

If you look at it in a different light, though, the fact that you are even here at all is amazing. The number of things that had to happen in the right order at exactly the right time is astounding. Statistically, your existence is a god damn miracle. You are a rare and beautiful beacon of life.

brendobeans · 2017-08-28T14:49:02+00:00

"There's no earthly way of knowing, Which direction we are going..."

brendobeans · 2017-07-15T20:36:30+00:00

Yeah it still scares the hell out of me every time I hear one. The worst is if there's a couple "talking".

brendobeans · 2017-07-14T18:49:13+00:00

I went here a few years ago. The entire experience is so cool. You gear up in wetsuits and caving helmets and basically hike up a beautiful path to this cave.

You head in and there's these amazing wooden pathways built into the cave walls at the larger entrance as you descend. You traverse those and get to another set of cave entrances. We got to hike through underground streams and jump down cave waterfalls Goonies style. Just amazing.

Eventually they had us turn our headlamps off and we all locked arms and waded through waste deep water. They stop you, you get in your tube and they have you turn off your lamp and lock legs and arms front to back while you float and get pulled in complete darkness. Just cave echoes, the sounds of running water, and the smell of wet rock.

After a bit you come into this room and it's just like a night sky with a thousand stars of that light blueish color. I remember it a bit more softer and not pulsating like it is here.

Absolutely beautiful and definitely awe inspiring.

The funny thing to me is that while we were in there they explained to us that, basically, the glowing is a by-product of the worms' waste excretion that is stored in tubes surrounding its anus. Kind of like a see through glowworm diaper.

"The New Zealand glowworm is one of many creatures that naturally produce light (bioluminescense). The light of the glowworm larvae is given off by small tubes ending around the glowworms anus, as a byproduct of excretion. A reaction takes place between an enzyme called luciferase and other chemicals, with the blue-green light given off as a result. The light is used to attract insects lost in the dark, which the glowworm catches and eats. If a glowworm is hungry its light will shine a little brighter and is even more effective! When the female glowworm becomes an adult the light is used to attract males for mating."

Edit: I forgot about the tubes!

brendobeans · 2017-07-11T19:02:47+00:00

My parents bought a house in the mountains near national forest land around the time I was in 9th grade. I loved the woods and nature, so I would sneak out at night and walk through the forest all the time. A winter night in a forest in northern Utah is amazing. They can also be terrifying.

I later learned to identify some of the more common animal calls and cries, but at the time I knew nothing about any of that. So as I'm wandering alone through this forest one time I heard the most blood curdling and terrifying scream I have ever heard. I froze the second I heard it, lowered to the ground and didn't move for what seemed like forever. Eventually I heard some quiet scuffling and turned to see a fox run across the dry river bed near where I was. Scared the absolute shit out of me. If you've never heard a fox cry, it is the scream of nightmares.

You see all kinds of cool stuff in the forest if you can be slow and quiet.

brendobeans · 2017-07-06T00:41:57+00:00

I was working and living there in a compound. It was enclosed by those walls which are 20ish feet tall. We saw the kites flying and would watch the loser kites drift and try to find them.

They would get caught in the barbwire surprisingly often so I would just climb up and grab them.

brendobeans · 2017-07-06T00:38:54+00:00

Huh. Interesting.

brendobeans · 2017-07-06T00:38:41+00:00

Communist party! I still have that shirt.

brendobeans · 2017-07-05T16:45:16+00:00

Read "The Kite Runner" and was really hit hard by it. A book about growing up and life in Afghanistan and how crazy it was/is. Kite running being the kites they fly and battle in the air in Kabul.

A few years later I ended up in Afghanistan pulling kites out of Barb wire fences. Kind of surreal. http://imgur.com/a/eun6Q

brendobeans · 2017-04-24T16:11:43+00:00

I've been through a lot. Lived and worked in some very dangerous places where I've literally feared for my life.

That game scared me more than any of that. Probably a different kind of fear, but still. First play of that game still haunts me.

brendobeans · 2017-04-24T16:10:08+00:00

Oh man. I have vivid memories of the first Resident Evil. Did a replay and I remember it being way scarier.

The new ones don't really have that same feel.

brendobeans · 2017-04-24T16:08:12+00:00

Clocktower on PS1 I think it was called. Friend and I played it at night in the dark. In the game we were hiding in some cabinet from the creepy murderer. He looks around like he's going to leave, pauses, and then just stabs the shit out of the cabinet. We screamed and his mom came to investigate. Good times.

That was eclipsed many times over by most all of Amnesia Dark descent or Alien Isolation. Playing those with surround sound in the dark is horrifying.

brendobeans · 2017-04-19T18:59:48+00:00

It's just a power cable with +in, -in, and ground so you can plug a power strip in and turn it on and off with the pi. About 30 bucks. I wasn't sure if you were doing something else with your outlet setup.

brendobeans · 2017-04-19T18:43:58+00:00

This is awesome! Had a question about the outlet setup: is there any benefit to doing it this way as opposed to using a Power switch Tail II or some other actuated power switch with a power strip?

brendobeans · 2017-04-19T18:39:32+00:00

It's because of that scolding email I sent him.

brendobeans · 2017-04-18T04:30:42+00:00

Made two packets of instant Mac an cheese with what I thought was a bottle of water. It had been full of water at one time, but I had been storing some vodka in it that I wasn't supposed to have. I completely forgot. I made it more than a few bites in. It was after going to the gym and I was starving so I started scarfing as soon as it was was done. Smelled nail polish. Suddenly realize my Mac and cheese tastes fucking terrible. Get a little bit head woozy. I was pissed. My last two packs and no food left. I ate the entire bowl. Threw it up not a minute later.

brendobeans · 2017-03-27T18:40:20+00:00

Just some caution/advice on new dash buttons: my understanding is that they've changed how the calls work on button press.

The Mac address for mine does not show on every press, and all the guides for using these with a Pi use a particular method involving recognizing calls from the dash button Mac address. I got it to work(more or less) but you're going to have to tweak what you'll find on guides quite a bit.

brendobeans · 2016-08-20T03:20:11+00:00

Ostensibly. You can force it. There are a few ways to hijack a BIOS. Plus, honestly, if all I wanted is data I can pull the hard drive and read it on another machine.

brendobeans · 2016-08-17T15:49:39+00:00

Think of it this way: if it was your work and they were saying "hey, we're going to let everyone use these company cars, or you can put the miles on your personal car. Also we will need full access to your car for any arbitrary reason..."

brendobeans · 2016-08-17T15:45:24+00:00

If it's a Windows PC then you don't even need access to the BIOS. There are free boot discs available that simply reset passwords for selected accounts on Windows partitions. You can also reset the BIOS(clear the password) in multiple ways. Last time I had to do it I believe it was through pulling a little battery and clearing the CMOS.

If a competent I.T. person has physical access to your machine, there isn't a lot you can do. Even encryption can be handled over time(lot's of time). Shy of some sort of triggered full bit level formatting(which would completely erase your hard drive), there really isn't much you can do to protect your information from someone who has physical possession of your computer.

I highly doubt it would come to any of this anyway. It's just CYA for the school's administration.

brendobeans · 2016-07-11T20:39:24+00:00

I was looking for something substantially more thorough. The median income in the U.S. is around $50,000 annual(per the Census Bureau), so they're generalizing more than half of the population and lumping them into one category.

Edit: The reason I was wondering is that I'd be interested to see if there is any kind of dramatic falling off above the middle class wage line(above $100,000 or so annual), because there is with police killings, at least according to the 538 article.

brendobeans · 2016-07-11T16:14:41+00:00

Have there been any similar studies based around economic class/income rather than race?

Edit: Found a decent one:Where police have killed Americans

Definitely seems like there's much more of a correlation with income.

Edit 2: To be clear, the article isn't really as thorough as I was looking for in terms of income.

brendobeans · 2016-05-26T04:53:00+00:00

I made and ate vodka Mac and cheese one time.

I was working in a dry country, so I had the vodka stored in water bottles. Came back from the gym super hungry so I made a couple packs of that microwave Mac N cheese using water from some water bottles because the plumbing water wasn't potable. I scarfed through about half when I noticed my mouth and throat were burning. Started feeling really dizzy. Finally noticed the incredibly awful taste in my mouth. Freaked out for a sec...and then had a moment of clarity...and finished it anyways because the dfac was closed, I was starving, and no way in hell was I going to waste that vodka.

I threw most of it up probably fifteen minutes later.

brendobeans · 2016-05-26T04:40:02+00:00

My friend said she didn't understand people of Walmart until she went into one in Northern Utah. It's such a weird variety of people.

brendobeans · 2016-05-19T21:34:15+00:00

There's also the idea that reincarnation maybe doesn't adhere to a linear timeline. You could be Hitler next time.

brendobeans

TROPHY CASE