User:Sethpeck

Hi everyone. Sometime I will add more details here. Or you can just find out more here.

Yes, that's a shameless plug for visiting my blog. Notice that the dates of entries are in the Holocene Era and not in the Common Era.

Deep Thoughts

Random nonsense.

2012-02-10

Whenever in idle conversation someone says, "I'm great! Things couldn't be better!", I feel sorry for them: partly because it means that whatever they do now, it's all downhill from here; and partly because when there is so much poverty, war and death in their world, their vision of "perfect" must be pretty mediocre.

I've had good days, and I'm sure I'll have more, but I can't think of or imagine a time when an amazingly perfect day can't be made better by something else, like ice cream, or world peace, or a bootleg YouTube video of a lingerie pillow fight between T-X, Sil, Seven of Nine and Caprica Six. -- Seth Peck (talk) 22:25, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

2012-02-15

Divorce finalized today. Have a bottle of 1999 Perrier Jouet Fleur de Champagne, the same year and label we used to celebrate the engagement, sitting on my wine rack. Asked the ex if she wanted to commemorate the moment. She said "It's possible", which was very different than what I expected.

2012-02-21

Just finished Book 2 of "The Walking Dead" as well as "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier".

2012-02-24

My Mirage died yesterday, today I picked up a 2007 VW Jetta Wolfsburg. It is good to be driving a stick-shift again. Thinking about installing the subwoofer that I salvaged from my Sonata (totalled about a month ago). Just finished book 3 of "The Walking Dead".

2012-02-26

A Sonnet for an Old Friend
Seth Peck feat. Will.i.am Shakespeare

So fair and foul a day I've not seen
That 'tis requir'd of me to write
For seven years it has only been
Since first you made my commute light
And allow'd me to travel to places unknown
And provided respite from rainy hikes
But your engine has died, its spirit a-flown
Now only memory, to be garnered "Likes"
A pick-and-pull shall be your new home
Thy limbs and organs shall new life give
A Mirage you were born; a mirage you become
In other carriages will thy surety live
I might shed tears for thee, on the morrow
'Tis true: parting is such sweet sorrow

2012-02-27

Just finished The Walking Dead #3. I'm also currently reading Lady Chatterly's Lover but it's been slow going, as I typically fall asleep mid-chapter. Discovered that the aux jacks in the Jetta aren't working properly, or at least I have no idea how to get them to work—a Google search tells me that my solution is to "contact the dealership".

Signature Soup

In my career I have worked at two different high-end restaurants as a manager, both under the same boss (which is not a coincidence—he left the first to open the second and brought me along). I'm sure I have dozens of other stories about him, but this one will be probably the least offensive/libelous.

At the first restaurant, we offered two soups every day: French Onion and the Soup of the Day. If you've never worked in a really nice restaurant (that is, one without plastic menus), you should know that the SotD is always one of two things:

1. A reason for one of the chef's to experiment with flavors in order to complement other dishes or the spirit of the particular season; or
2. A way to sell off leftovers and scraps to people willing to pay for it.

Option (2) is not to say that it's always a bad thing...for example, a live lobster that didn't get sold but was going to expire (that is, die) could be chopped up and turned into lobster bisque if there is no other item on the menu that would call for lobster bits. Selling off leftovers, surplus items or making due with scarce supplies are how some dishes become great, such as the Cobb salad, buffalo wings, and the Bloody Mary.

Anyway, managers and staff usually have a small cup of soup so that they can taste it before serving it (if they haven't had it before). Managers and chefs will also routinely check some soups to make sure they don't "break" (which is where any oils in the soup separate from the rest of the broth, causing an inconsistent mouthfeel and visual appearance). One day, after tasting a soup, my boss makes a face of slight disgust and says "You know what we need? We need a signature soup." The sous chef and myself just kind of looked at him, brows furled, without saying anything.

...and what was French Onion?

The story got shared with other managers, who made similar reactions. Thus, today when I posted what was to the effect of, "You know what we need? We need a page on RationalWiki Predictions", this story popped into my head. (...and what is this?)

When he started his own restaurant, he and his executive chef did agree on their own signature soup...and what did they choose? Champagne Brie. Yuck.

-- Seth Peck (talk) 21:25, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

2012-03-05

Took a trip to Indiana for hot live-action fantasy fun, passing through the tornado-producing storm twice (once in Missouri, and again in Indiana when it caught up to me) but avoiding the problems in Henryville by nature of my destination. Had a good weekend, saw friends, got back last night around midnight (1085 miles in 16 hours, including construction zones and gas stops...not bad, all things considered).

Heard about Rush Limbaugh while I was gone. I wonder if he is willfully ignorant or a malicious perpetrator of the conspiratorial effort to turn America into Idiocracy.

Driving through certain parts of Kansas, Missouri and Indiana rangled my ire, with their Jesus Saves, anti-porn and anti-abortion billboards. The stranglehold of religion Christianity in these red states is absolutely abhorrant. By comparison, the billboards I see in Colorado are for this organization, which are not only more interesting to look at—they are actually helpful messages.

It is also interesting to note that of all the states I travelled through, the reddest states had the highest gas prices. Gas in southern Indiana was $3.99⁹...compare that to $3.19⁹ in south Denver.

2012-03-09

"What the hell is wrong with the world today?" I can't believe people actually lack the brains to ask that question. Like the things they do on a daily basis don't affect everyone else around them.

I think the most basic problem is lack of education funding. Every time a ballot measure looking to increase property taxes to schools goes up, I vote yes, but they don't always succeed. To me, THIS is what's wrong with the world today, or at the very least my county or district. And to hear people talk about it..."Don't raise my taxes!!!1!!one!" They'll vote NO on an increase of as little as $50 on their annual property tax bill. But at the same time, they'll dish out hundreds of dollars for Broncos tickets or pay $54.99 per fight to watch UFC while simultaneously complaining about how stupid their barista is for not getting their complicated pansy-ass coffee drink right on the first try—yes, the barista who's working the early morning shift to pay for school, which he will attend later, so he can do something else for the rest of his life besides making pansy-ass coffee drinks for tightwad assholes.

You hate stupid people? Me too. But there's only one way to reduce the number of stupid people in the world (that is, without killing them all): increase funding to education.

And if you're too dumb to realize this simple small step, you're living proof of the need for increased education funding.

2012-03-12

Just finished The Walking Dead, book 4 and started on book 5. Just as Shane dies on the television show (sorry for the spoiler—Carl actually kills him in book 1, before he became a zombie).

Getting ready for a trip out to Illinois this weekend for NERO, going to take a different route through different red states. Should be magical.

2012-03-13

The Walking Dead, both the books and the TV series, are set in Georgia. In addition, the TV show is made in Georgia, though they really could make it anywhere in the South if they wanted—bullet-squib/punch-dummy effects can be done anywhere, and the real L&F of the show is in the gross groaning zombie noises and the sounds of frogs, crickets and cicadas that make it sound like a hot, sweaty place to be.

I read something that said Georgia is 51st in the nation for job creation (out of the 50 states and DC). But isn't The Walking Dead creating tons of jobs for television show extras? Even better, given the fact that it's filmed in Georgia means:

• Extras don't need a lot of time in make-up or hair prep to look like ugly zombies
• Since unemployment is high, they don't need to go on special diets to look thin and emaciated
• Their wardrobe protocols can be simplified to "just bring what you haven't warshed in the laundry yet and we'll throw some red-dyed corn syrup on it"
• They don't need any voice training as their lines ("blarg, gasp, gag") are simple and added post-production
• They don't need to wreck a lot of cars to look post-apocalyptic, they just take the crappiest looking cars from the parking lot that the extras use

2012-03-14 Update

The Raw Story speculates that the Newt Gingrich campaign might be "the walking dead". I think it's safe to say that many people would like to see Norman Reedus (from The Walking Dead) shoot Gingrich with a crossbow arrow to the knee head, but require that he use the "And shepherds we shall be..." prayer from The Boondock Saints first. Newt needs to take his witchhunting elsewhere

2012-03-14

Happy Birthday to Albert Einstein. I hope your corpse isn't too bruised and twisted from all the rolling over it does every time a creationist or a denialist says something.

2012-03-15

ts;dw

2012-03-19

Just got back from a roadtrip to Peoria, IL. Driving through Nebraska and Iowa is slightly less boring than driving through Kansas and Missouri, but not by much. Less "red state"-y, to be certain. Central Iowa is full of wind turbines, which, while reminding me of this, makes me feel good about the future of the nation. I also saw many turbine convoys (one oversized truck bed with a turbine blade or shaft piece, led and followed by caution cars) headed from Iowa (west toward Wyoming or east toward Illinois). Good stuff.

Asteroid

This weekend my parents finally sent me a scan of the naming certificate from the Jarnac Observatory for celestial discovery 2005 EV₄₃, aka minor planet 117586, IAU "TwilaTho", by David Levy, Wendee Levy and Tom Glinos.

2012-03-22

Happy Future Birthday to a great hero/fictional character.

I visited this town last Friday (2012-03-16) as a detour on my trip to Peoria. I posted the picture of myself at the momument on Facebook, which got tons of likes/shares/comments. Here was my caption:

Typical Seth-style funny/awesome statement: If you don't LIKE, SHARE, or COMMENT on this, you will be unfriended (srsly!?!?)

Typical Seth-style ideological diatribe: Bethlehem? Mecca? Egypt? Those places are too far away, too expensive to get to, too dangerous for Westerners and are testaments to characters of dubious moral value. You visit the birthplaces of your favorite fictional character, and I'll visit the birthplaces of mine.

Atypical Seth-style self-disclosure: I teared up a little when I saw this.

2012-03-26

I was reading about the lunar effect when this came to mind.

I actually tried to study this once. I used to work for a behavioral health management company, in Risk Management, as a data entry clerk for incident/accident/death reports (that is, when a client [e.g., a person with severe mental illness receiving regular treatment at an outpatient care or assisted living facility] misbehaved, got involved in an altercation, was abused, ran away, died, or something else bad, a report was generated). I had to read some seriously fucked up shit but most of it was "client A took something that belonged to client B and wouldn't give it back". I had heard of the lunar effect before, and was skeptical. So I ran a query against the database where I made entries (it was an internal application, so not very well locked-down) to see what it looked like.

As any regular contributor here would expect, I found a complete absense of correlation of the number of incident reports on any given day in respect to lunar phases. On some full-moon days, the expected correlation was actually opposite (e.g., incident reports were less than those received on preceding and anteceding days)

I did, however, see one correlation that I did not think to consider (since my education spent almost no time on psychology or sociology): incident reports increased on holidays or as the present approached holidays, then dropped off afterwards.

2012-03-30

Change comes from within. Also, vending machines.

I posted this on Facebook as an image and it got a lot of interesting likes, shares and comments:

“”According to the many worlds hypothesis (sometimes called the multiverse hypothesis), for every possible range of outcomes to a decision or random event, there is an alternate parallel universe. Because of the multitude of random events and decisions that occur every day, there are an infinite number of alternate universes. If you ever feel down, or wonder how things can get worse, it might help to remember that there are an infinite number of alternate parallel universes where, at this very moment... ...you and I are doing it.

2012-04-04

Today is my parents' 42nd anniversary. I guess it's fair to say they beat the spread.

2012-04-05

Eating bananas for the first time in several months in an effort to be healthy. Good thing God designed them to be the perfect fruit, pull-tabs and all.

2012-04-06

I remarked today on Facebook that I have gotten into the rather uncharitable habit of flipping off and honking angrily at drivers whose cars have Ron Paul bumper stickers.

One friend asked: "Why's that?"

I replied, "I don't understand your question."

He tried to clarify, to which my response was the line from Mostly Harmless:

“” "You know they've reintroduced the death penalty for insurance company directors?" "Really?" said Arthur. "No I didn't. For what offence?" Trillian frowned. "What do you mean, offence?" "I see."

2012-04-09

So I come back from the weekend devoted to not being online for too long and...oh look, updates to the Chicken Coop, because some idiots decided to come back after not contributing much of anything at all (not that they did much of that when they were here the first time) and make silly vandalism updates. I shall be passive-aggressive about this by not engaging in the debate but whining about it here. The fact that we have to have a long-ass discussion and vote to stop the efforts of a few limpdicks who decide that posting pictures of Goatse on a little-known wiki is their definition of ultimate sabotage...well, it's a little fucking sad. Just ban them already. Just because CP likes to do instant bans for no fucking reason doesn't mean we shouldn't do an instant ban for a good fucking reason. Just because someone bothered to sign up for an account and post a multitude of talk page updates doesn't mean they're a valued contributor. God dammit, grow some fucking balls, people...literally or figuratively.

2012-04-25

Just rewatched the 2009 Star Trek movie, where it only just dawned on me that the song that the young Jim Kirk is listening to while driving his stepdad's convertible is Beastie Boys' "Sabotage"...as in this.

2012-04-27

I think Leviticus 20:13 is spot-on correct: a man should never tell lies to another man, and a man should never believe another man's lies. Lying to women is okay though. Both of these are tenets of the Bro Code.

2012-06-27

Today I'm really hoping the Colorado Springs fires burn through the Focus on the Family center as well as the other megachurches that plague the area.

2012-08-13

I was in Chicago over the weekend for my cousin's wedding, which was a Baptist ceremony in a church complete with communion through intinction (where the bread is dipped in the wine). For those that didn't want to partake in Eucharist, they offered grapes, which is a Mennonite tradition (having to do with the groom's side of the family, my guess).

I always refuse communion, not because I'm not ready to accept Christ as my savior, but because they never tell me which part of Jesus' flesh the bread is supposed to be. It wouldn't be so bad if it was part of his liver or kidney, but with my luck it'd probably be scrotal sack, the frenulum or the "taint".

2012-11-07

Sorry, I would add more to this update, but after last night's election results, I'm having an ALL DAY HAPPY DANCE!!!!!