Journal Sloppy's Journal: Deep Freeze 3
I have a problem that I'm working on. I think the solution is to get out
more and meet more people. I'm doing this in a variety of ways (I'll tell
you a lot more about one of them below) but one of them is that I'm using
one of those "social networking" websites,
MySpace. MySpace is technically lame,
very unreliable, down a lot, and full of many idiotic users. But some of
the people I've met in the local metal scene are on there, and they pulled
me in, and it actually has helped to keep my in touch with them, so.. I use MySpace. It's popular too, for some reason, and you
know what Metcalfe said about the value of networks. Anyway, I joined a
local MySpace group that looked like a very heterogeneous mix of various
types of people, and they meet often, so on Thursday night I went to a
coffee house and
That's when I noticed how different this was, than a bar. I spend a lot of time in bars. The bars around here are long, narrow buildings, typically with not enough chairs for everyone to sit. As a result, you get around and mix. It's hard not to (unfortunately, I sometimes still find a way not to, which is one of the things I'm trying to fix about myself).
But at this coffee place, there were plenty of places to sit, and I just can't get up and chug coffee-after-coffee (it'll drive me crazy -- I'm at a point in my life where I just can't mainline caffeine like I used to). So we sat, and the layout was pretty static. I ended up pretty much only chatting with a small sub-group of this supposedly diverse mix of people.
Just my fucking luck: I ended up sitting near IT workers!! D'oh!!! Two
of 'em were pure support people, and one was a hybrid programmer/support/misc.
This almost counts as not meeting new people.
Holy crap. You'd think some bean-counter would say, "Enough's enough!" You don't even have to be a "computer dude" to know that getting away from Microsoft's suckage would have a upside. You just have to see how much money is being wasted on a uniquely-Microsoft problem.
Oh yeah, and from the way bonuses are awarded, it sounds like the support people are basically rewarded for "solving" more problems, and penalized for making problems really go away. And you wonder why the world is fucked up.
*sigh* Anyway... that was Thursday night. Did I unconsciously gravitate to
the IT people, or was it just bad luck? I don't know. Next time, I'll make
sure to sit next to a girl. Girls don't work in IT, right?
Friday morning, I hit I-25 for Colorado Springs. About 400 miles later, I checked into my hotel and rested a while, then headed to a local bar called Navajo Hogan Roadhouse for what promised to be a metal show. Neat place! But the bands turned out to be lame death metal, metalcore, more (but much better) death metal, and then utter crap. If you're not into metal, you'll see the word "metal" in all those descriptions and think I was pretty happy. No, not really. But it wasn't too bad, and what else was I going to do that night? A little headbanging, but nothing really passionate. That would come 24 hours later...
On Saturday morning, I checked out "Garden of the Gods" on the western side of Colorado Springs, and every time I saw a sign with those words, I sang them like Chris Boltendahl (Grave Digger) singing the "Twilight of the Gods" chorus from Rheingold. Nobody looked at me funny, though.
Then I headed north to Palmer Lake to a coffee place called Speedtrap. Off the I-25 exit, the road has a speed limit of 50 or 55 MPH, and then suddenly changes to 30 MPH, turns, and there Speedtrap is. When I left the place later, sure enough, there was a cop with flashing lights who had pulled someone over. But there can be pedestrians around here, and the turn really does reduce visibility, so I don't think the speed limit reduction is really unjustified. (I would find out about the real speed trap, the next day.)
Why did I go to Speedtrap? This is where you nerds ought to perk up your
ears, because the purpose of this was
Now, these are pgp nerds, so you think I would be as unexcited about meeting
them as my previously-mentioned meeting of IT workers. Bah, shows what
you know. Anyone can get a job running virus scanners, but
the people who are into building a pgp-based distributed authentication
infrastructure, tend to be more
In this case, I met an MIT alumnus who works at HP, and another guy who is
working on a dual-masters program in business and theology. (Weird, huh?)
The second guy even brought us both a souvenir-pack, which included a
SimplyMEPIS Linux CD (I haven't checked that out yet) but also some
Anyway, fellow geeks, this is what I wanna point out to you: even if you don't see the value in building a cryptographically-based distributed authentication system (upon which email encryption is just one potential application), biglumber is a way to meet nerdy instant-friends when you travel to somewhere, and maybe have some interesting conversations with some strangers when you're away from home.
You know you want to. Generate that key if you don't have it yet, and then join in the fun.
But the best was yet to come. I left Palmer Lake and hit I-25 north again for Denver. Then onto a suburb that looks like an endless shopping mall, called Westminster. Checked into hotel again, scouted the area, rested, and then had dinner at an Indian joint named "Yak and Yeti." Yummie Chicken Tikka Masala and Lamb Vindaloo, then onto Pink E's Black Den for DEEP FREEZE METALFEST IV!
This was a rockin' night. Even the worst of the openers was better than the best band I had seen in Colorado Springs the previous night, and to top it all off, I saw Flotsam and Jetsam for the first time in over 5 years, and Jag Panzer for the first time ever. And I got to meet yet another nerd there, a fellow metalhead, for a keysigning meeting, thus combining my nerdliness with my metalheadedness. It also give me someone to chat with and drink with between sets. That is a good thing when you've travelling alone.
At the end of Jag Panzer's set, the finally played a song from my favorite album of theirs, and it seemed like Harry forgot the words to the chorus of King At Any Price. At the time, I thought this was because he was high, as he had made some kind of bong reference at the beginning of the show, so I shouted "This is your brain on drugs!" But later they said he was just very ill. Ok, whatever. Anyway, except for the totally fucked up King At Any Price, it was a good set.
But Flotsam was even better. I'm probably a bit biased here.. Flotsam and Jetsam is one of my absolute favorite bands in the world, maybe the #1 spot depending on mood, but always at least in the top 5. Constant headbanging and singing along, hair flying, covered in sweat, surrounded by true metalheads, belly full of faux-Indian food and Mexican beer -- oh, it was a glorious thing! Quite simply, this is why I live. It'll be years before I top this one. I love my local bands back in Albuquerque, but this was really special.
A few notes on the return trip on Sunday. I had noticed one of my tires was low, so I filled it with air at a gas station. But since I wasn't sure how fast it was leaking, I decided to overfill it a little, to give me more time. Then I got the idea: I wasn't really in a hurry to get back home, so why not perform a little mileage experiment? I overfilled all my tires to 40 psi, and drove at 65 MPH. (I briefly entertained the idea of driving TMP into a fit and imagined his resulting caustic rant melting various internet backbones, but then I thought "what are the chances he's on this stretch of road?" so I changed back into the right lane.) Got 43 mpg. That's consistent with earlier experiments. (I can get 50 MPG at 55 MPH.) And that's not a hybrid or TDI or anything like that. Just ol' fashioned Otto, made in Japan.
As I approached the Palmer Lake exit (161) going south, I considered stopping by there again, to drink another "Entrapmint" (the minty coffee drink that I had the previous day). But then one of those "Speeding Fines Doubled" signs came up, without even the pretense of road construction to justify it. Purely arbitrary. Then the I-25 speed limit dropped from 75 MPH to 55 MPH. For no reason. Arbitrary. Then, over the hill, was the pig and his radar gun.
I usually call cops "cops" instead of the pejorative term "pig." But now that I see the true namesake of Speedtrap, and the road signs that serve no safety-related purpose and exist solely to generate revenue, I say this pig is aptly labelled. Disrespect is my intent. I hate you. And I'm speaking as someone who didn't even get caught speeding and get a ticket. Imagine how your victims feel. Pig, when you pull some sucker over, you probably justify your despicable behavior by telling yourself that they wouldn't have gotten pulled over if only they "respected the law." Well, Pig, you and this speed trap are reason no one respects the law these days. Because the road signs and law do not exist in good faith. Fuck you, Palmer Lake pigs. As you can guess, I changed my mind about doing business in that community, and drove right by the exit. I can only hope the local businesses some day learn what impression us tourists are getting.
Send a letter (Score:2)
keysigning? (Score:2)
Re:keysigning? (Score:1)
The stuff about reading fingerprints out loud and forming a line, is intended as a suggestion for large meetings (e.g. when a hundred people meet at a Usenix conference or something like that). I personally have never been at a meeting with more than about 8 people, so I've never done that stuff.
At small meetings, really all you do is arrange when-and-where, and then bring photo id (the more you have, the b