Activist judges

I was just reading an article about activist judges, and something in it I found quite fascinating. Here is a chart of how often a justice votes to overturn a law passed by congress:

Thomas 65.63 %
Kennedy 64.06 %
Scalia 56.25 %
Rehnquist 46.88 %
O'Connor 46.77 %
Souter 42.19 %
Stevens 39.34 %
Ginsburg 39.06 %
Breyer 28.13 %

You'll notice that the ones most likely to overturn congress are also the ones considered the most conservative (and vice versa). Also, the ones most likely to agree with congress are the Jews, which is interesting too.

Why is this? Please someone explain this to me.

I was just re-reading my last two posts...

And I realized that it came off as though I don't like children. Don't get me wrong, I love children and plan to have some of my own one day. It's just that my girlfriend is a teacher, and I've come to realize that most parents rely on everyone else to take care of their children, and that bugs me.

Daylight savings time sucks

It is now 5:45pm here in California, and its dark outside. Actually, its been dark for a while. Stupid time change. Now the sun comes up one hour early. How does this help me? I don't get up with the sun. I get up when the alarm rings at 7:45am, whatever time it is. Now all I get is one less hour of sun at the end of the day, when I want it the most.

They say that the only reason we aren't on permanent daylight time is because if we were, then the schoolchildren would have to go to school in the dark in December and January. Well you know what? Those kids need to learn to face their fears and walk to school in the dark so that I can have some freakin' sun when I leave work. Yeah.

ps. When I spell checked this post, blogger wanted me to change "freakin'" to "foreskin". Nice.

Halloween at work

Today is Halloween, and I work at a high tech company in the Silicon Valley. You would think that people would be dressed up. I'll admit, I didn't put much effort into my costume, but at least I put on a wizard hat.

Today in the afternoon they had a little Halloween party, where some people brought their kids, but they also had margaritas and daiquiris for the adults. At one point one of the small (unattended) children started pouring themselves some daiquiri. I then began to have a debate with myself as to whether or not I had a moral responsibility to stop the child. My debate ended prematurely when someone else decided they had a moral responsibility to stop the child.

I think the saddest part of the whole thing was that the person who took 3rd place in the costume contest had the following costume: devil horns and a red tail. I think she put them on 2 seconds before the party.

I miss living in tract housing with my parents, where I had a whole house to decorate and hundreds of kids teeth to rot.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Because she's Chinese

I was just discussing Halloween costumes with a friend of mine. She told me that she was going to be a ninja, so I asked what exactly she was going to wear. Her response was, "Some brown pants and a flowy top." I asked her how people would know she is a ninja. Her response: "Well, I'll make fists once in a while, and since I'm Chinese, I look the part, so they'll know."

Some things just aren't meant to be seen

I was in the bathroom at work today, and saw something that was just too funny not to share (it's really not gross). First, a quick aside. For those that don't know, a Blackberry is like a hybrid cell phone and PDA. At work they make us carry them so we can answer emails no matter where we are.

Anyway, I was in the bathroom, doing my thing, when this guy walks in. He pulls himself up to the urinal next to me, starts doing his thing, and then takes out his blackberry and starts checking his email. While standing at the urnial.

Please someone tell me that this is wrong, and our society is not so warped that one feels it is necessary to check one's email whilst peeing.

I'm a moron

I was on my way out of work today, and I opened my trunk to put my backback in. I saw some chips that I had left in there, and thought, "Gee, I'm kind hungry. I think I'll grab a few." So I broke rule number one, and set the keys down in the trunk. Well, you can guess what happened. I closed the trunk with my keys and backpack inside. And you know where the spare key is? In the backpack! I just hope I have the other spare at home, and that it too isn't in the trunk...

My life is Office Space, again.

I don't know why, but somehow I have a knack for picking great companies that turn to shit. The first company I worked for was a software company in the Bay Area. It suffices to say that the company grew too fast and although started out on the right path, it quickly went the wrong way. We had layoffs and all that good stuff.

Now, I work for a larger Internet company. I won't say which one, but I can pretty much be certain you've heard of it (yes, even you foreign readers). The company itself seems to be just fine, but my particular corner of the office is becoming more Office Space every day.

For example, I now have three bosses. When I screw up, I have three people bugging me about it.

I have to file a weekly report with two of the three bosses (a report with identical content but a different format, making it so I have to do it twice each week). At one point I titled it "TPS Report", but they got mad, so I stopped doing that.

It is really true that I do about 20 minutes of actual, real work each day. I do the absolute minimum necessary to keep my job, and it's not because of laziness. It's because I have more management experience than my manager, and it shows.

I have heard someone say, "Looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays," and they claim they have never seen the movie (I don't buy that for one second. No one says that for real, do they?).

The best part of work was that I sat next to the HR staff, which was filled only with attractive people of both genders. It was nice to sit near attractive people, because just for a second I felt like I was not the uber-geek. Then they moved my cubicle to a different building, so I don't even get that one bright spot. I do have a window now, but it just faces the window of another building.

Did I mention that our cubes are not cubes, but actually make a honeycomb pattern on the map, to remind us that we are just drones in the hive.

At least they pay me a lot...

The perfect ego sport

I just figured out why Football (American Style) is the perfect sport for the egocentric athlete to play. Go with me on this. In most other team sports, say Soccer (non-American style Football), every player has a lot of talent, but they must be willing to forgo showing off all the time by passing the ball or whatever, lest they be labeled a "ball hog". But in Football, not only is this show off behavior encouraged, it is part of the game. There is one guy on the field who HAS to be a ball hog -- the quarterback. This dude gets the ball EVERY TIME. And then he gets to throw it to whomever he wants to. And you know who he throws it to most? The guy that that is the biggest show off about being able to run down the field and break tackles. Everyone else on the field is pretty much just filler to distract the other team from these show offs.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm just saying that the sport caters to the modern egotistical athelete, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Teenagers are funny

Recently, a survey of internet-using teenagers was taken asking them about their online habbits. The first question asked where they would buy a cell phone, and the most common answer was they would go to their providers' website.

The second question was "where would you buy a CD player." The most common answer? "What's a CD player?" followed closely by "Why would I want a CD player?".

Style guide

I was reading a style guide for writing techincal specs, and the author pointed out something that I had never noticed before. He said that people are afraid of reading large blocks of text (that I knew). Then he said that people are so afraid of it that magazines will sometimes take a quote from the article you are reading, and put the quote in a huge box right in the middle of the page in a big colorful font, just so you don't think that you are reading a big block of text. After reading that, I thought, "Holy crap, he's right! I've been duped this whole time!".

"Holy crap, he's right! I've been duped this whole time!"