Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   nerds always vs. jocks
Sunday, November 14 2010
I had more work to do on the hydronic panel today: cleaning it up, vaccuuming up debris, and then repainting the new spliced-in copper and surrounded back plate. I also made some largely-cosmetic improvements to the top of the panel, where the undulating regularity of the galvanized steel backplate is replaced with a narrow and unsettlingly-uneven strip of black-painted aluminum. The top strip is where the panel's light and temperature sensors are located (though only temperature is used), and I added another temperature sensor at the location of the pipe repair (which provided easy access via the hole I'd drilled through the panel for the new tap at that location, a hole whose extra diameter had to be filled with spray foam.
Later in the afternoon, I tackled the problem of how to remove the other of the two broken panes of solar panel glass. There are four panes in total, and they all basically lie next to each other in a row like sleeping piglets, held down mostly by silicone caulk and a little hardware. The pane I'd removed yesterday had been easy to extract, since it was on the end, and I could get a knife under the glass on three of its four sides, allowing me to hinge it up and cut the fourth side. But the pane I wanted to remove today was between two other panes, and there wasn't enough room to get a knife beneath the glass on either of the two longest sides. I tried making a knife with an L-shaped bend in it from an old reciprocating saw blade, but this didn't work very well. In the end, though, I discovered I could easily cut the caulk on these long sides by snaking in a long strip of stiff steel from one end of the glass, like using a slim jim to jimmy open a car. (Once I had the glass mostly loose, I didn't actually remove it; I left it in place to protect the panel until the replacement comes next week.)

This evening Gretchen and I drove out to the Hudson Valley Mall to watch The Social Network. First we got a drink and fries at the Rolling Rock (the surprisingly-pleasant mall-based bar next door), where a number of youngish women dressed in football jerseys had come to watch Sunday Night Football and drink light beer. There was also a sad-looking lumberjack drinking a stiff drink by himself.
As for the film (which we watched in a nearly-empty theatre), it bears mentioning that I basically work in the same line of business as Mark Zuckerberg, the wunderkind who helped found Facebook (and the main character of the The Social Network). So if anyone should have appreciated this film, it should have been me. But even though occasional technical bones were thrown to nerds like me in the audience, the plot, though presented concisely, seemed to drag. This is, I guess, is what should be expected of a film about the genesis of a company that doesn't really produce anything. Still, the movie's problems seemed deeper than that. In some ways it reminded me of a slightly-subtler 80s-style "nerds vs. jocks" movie. Zuckerberg, the main nerd, was cartoonish in his nerdiness, and his rivals (the Winklevoss brothers) were only a little less so in their jockishness. And then there was the cartoonish depiction of Harvard University, portrayed as some sort of fusty old temple of American aristocracy. The most interesting parts of the film seemed to revolve around either the party playboy Sean Parker, or the various women who parade through (all of whom are depicted as debauched sluts).
After the movie, Gretchen and I went back to Rolling Rock for dinner. I had a veggie burger and Gretchen ordered pasta (though she had to order it special, as the vegan pasta plate had disappeared from the menu). Inevitably we talked about the The Social Network, and I found all Gretchen's comparisons between Zuckerberg and myself offensive. (Perhaps she was feeling a subconsciously ripped-off that she was ended up with the downsides of a vaguely Zuckerbergesque husband without getting the billionaire-before-25 upsides.) To me, Zuckerberg seemed like a damaged human being, devoid of any sense of humor, empathy, or human warmth. As for the fact that he had once blogged hurtful things (which seemed to be his biggest similarity to me), the blog post in question seemed completely asinine. "You've blogged things as bad about me as what he blogged," Gretchen insisted, but I had my doubts. And I hate the word "blog." Blaag!


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?101114

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