Sweden!

Or, Another Real Conversation That Really Happened

MRS. CONTAINER: ... I'm just trying to get you to be human.

ME: ... As opposed to what?

MRS. C: A huge geek.

ME: Oh. I thought maybe I could be an awsome robot from the future.

MRS. C: No. You cannot be an awsome robot from the future.

ME: What about Sweden? Can I be an awsome robot from Sweden? Sweden is like the future.

MRS. C: Well... okay. You can be an awsome robot from Sweden.

ME: Hrm. Actually, now that I think about it... Information about Sweden takes time to get to us, right?

MRS. C: Right...

ME: So the Sweden we know is actually Sweden from the past.

MRS. C: . . .

ME: And since it would take me time to go to Sweden, when I arrived I'd be in Sweden from the future.

MRS. C: Okay, time to go to work. Make sure you have your cell phone, pager, laptop, badge, wallet, and lunch.

ME: Lunch... from the future.

Too Big To... Wait, What?

Or, I know I know but still

So I hear that GM is now gonna be mostly owned by the UAW and the Federal Government. Which, I figure, means that the Federal Government will continue to prop it up for years to come. This got me thinking.

First, it got me thinking, how does this happen? How does a company that employs so many people, that comprises such a large fraction of the nation's economy, suck so badly that it's about to fail?

Bench duck is suspicious.

I know, I know. If I were to ask my go-to econ guy George, I'm sure he'd have all kinds of explanations about how big companies can fail just as easily as small ones. But still... Really? Really? Is this really how it's supposed to be? Big company, big payroll, big business... failing?

Which brings me to the second thing it got me thinking: Is this really the kind of company I want to own? Is it really the kind of company I want the government to own on my behalf, with my money? I mean, I'm pretty sure it's not even the kind of company I'd want to work for.

The third thing I was thinking was... about this whole "too big to fail" thing. How does that work, exactly? I know, I know. If they fail, they take down too much of the economy with them. But still. It kinda seems like a lame excuse, if you ask me.

"Too big to fail." It's weak. Weaksauce. You know what I want to hear? "Too awsome to fail." "Too busy eating the competition's lunch to fail." "Too successful to fail." I mean, if I'm gonna own some companies, I want to own the ones that aren't, you know, failing. I dunno. That's just me, I guess.

Finally, it got me thinking about how whenever there's a big union strike, like at Boeing or wherever, I always wonder if, since Labor seems to think it knows better than Management how to run a company, why they even bother having Management at all? Why work for Boeing, if Boeing doesn't know how to run an airplane company? Why not take those union dues, buy your own factory, and manufacture your own airplanes? You know?

Anyway, now that the UAW pension fund owns 55% of General Motors, I guess I'm kinda getting to satisfy my curiosity: does Labor really know better than Management, or not? I just wish they'd try out this little experiment without using my money for it.

My economic prediction: continued growth in the Thumbs Futures market, over the next several quarters.

Thumbs!

Or, A Real Conversation That Really Happened

Sometimes my frustration levels get so high I start exaggerating for comedic value. So no, I don't seriously think the people responsible for the current economic crisis should cut off their thumbs and mail them to me. But if I did...

MRS. CONTAINER: Yeah, I'm seeing a severe shortage of thumbs in the future.

ME: Right, because I'm going to have them all.

MRS. C: No, I meant you're going to have a thumb shortage, on account of I don't think wrongdoers are actually going to send you their thumbs.

ME: Well, they should. In fact, in the future, there's going to be a massive thumb shortage, because I'll be stockpiling them all.

MRS. C: . . .

ME: In fact, I'm going to harvest so many thumbs, that in the future the human race will evolve to not even have thumbs, just to avoid the hassle of getting their thumbs harvested by my thumb-bots.

MRS. C: . . .

ME [making pinching motions with my thumb and forefinger]: That's what I'm going to call my little crab-robots that go around snipping thumbs.

MRS. C [making pinching motions]: Ironic that they'll need thumbs to do it.

ME: But not opposable thumbs. More like mandibles. Only, at the end of their arms. So really, handibles. That's what I'll call them. Handibles.

MRS. C: Handibles.

ME: Totally. My most popular model will be the Lecter 3000.

Okay, parts of this conversation have been exaggerated for comedic value. But get it? Handibles! Lecter! I feel better already!

Why Crows?

Or, What is the Deal With Crows?

Our go-to reference on crows.

It all started a couple years ago, at our local drive-through coffee joint.

Drive-through coffee, by the way, is one of civilization's great little achievements.

Anyway, our local drive-through coffee joint shares a parking lot with a fast-food restaurant, a 24 hour convenience store, and a few other similar establishments. Every morning we'd be down there, getting our coffee, chatting with the proprietors... and after a while, I began to notice the crows.

Like often happens once I get around to noticing stuff, I began to wonder, what is the deal with all these crows? I mean, think about it: They're scavenging the dumpster for hamburger wrappers and sipping dirty, oily water from parking lot puddles. Hardly a healthy diet. Yet there's tons of crows, and they all seem plump and glossy. So clearly this lifestyle must be working out for them in some way.

The more I thought about it, the more interesting crows seemed. I began to notice them more and more. And more and more, I began to appreciate all their little antics and shenanigans. In the air, black silhouettes against the sky, they seemed striking and iconic. Strutting about on the ground, they seemed comical. I'd see them perched on streetlights, sidling up to each other, cleaning their beaks, flicking their wing and tail feathers. Throwing their whole bodies into their hoarse calls.

We started watching crows whenever we could. We'd scan parking lots, cheer them on (quietly, from a respectful distance) as they worked at extracting ranch dressing from a single-serving plastic fast food container. We'd see them walking up and down the sidewalk, looking for bugs in the grass border, or scanning the gutter for who-knows-what crow delicacy. We'd see them harassing hawks along the freeway, or playing tag with each other around an office building. We'd mourn the tragic loss of any small animal struck by a car and dead in the road, and at the same time celebrate the good fortune of whatever crow might happen across such a feast (it turns out we are ruthless in our appreciation of crows).

We started to notice the vast flocks of crows that would fly south every morning, and north again every evening ("crowmmuting", we call it). We realized they must be sleeping in a communal roost overnight. One evening we followed them at dusk to the parking lot behind a shopping mall in North County. As the sun set, the trees in the lot filled with thousands of crows. A hundred different caws filled the air, all overlapping in one huge chorus. Then, as night came on, the trees began to empty, and the crows all moved northwards, across the creek, and into the park.

In additiont to some tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and picnic areas, the park boasted a fairly dense wooded area, which is where these thousands of crows spend every night. At least a couple times a month, we'll get up before dawn, drive down there, and walk the trails while the crows wake up. They'll fill the air with their noise. First by ones and twos, then by the hundreds, they'll rise up out of the woods, and scatter to the four corners of the county, intent on their crow business.

Incidentally, this is how we ended up buying the robot. We discovered that our cheap little pocket camera flatly sucked at taking pictures of crows. Especially moving crows. Especially in poor lighting conditions. So we asked around, did some research, and got a camera that can actually do the job. We just went "crowing" on Saturday. I'll try to upload some of our pictures this week.

Container Spotting: Ships at Sea Edition.

Cosco ship in Puget Sound, from the beach at Edmonds.

Yang Ming ship in Puget Sound, from a vantage point in downtown Edmonds.

It turns out the robot is really useful for getting details on things that are really far away. To the naked eye, these two ships were hazy smudges in the distance.

Crowspotting: Seattle

Went to Seattle recently. Found some crows on the beach. These guys were seriously unconcerned about people, and let me get incredibly close to them while they crowed about doing crow stuff. I think the robot did a pretty good job recording them.

In Dreams

Last night I dreamed that a high-ranking British civil servant lost his hat on the way to work one morning.

Not any particular real-world high-ranking British civil servant; I don't even think I know any. I imagine they exist, though, and apparently they've populated my dream world.

Anyway, as this civil servant walked the streets of London, his hat was snatched from his head by a fairy. Faerie? He didn't know it was fairy, though, because it was disguised as a very short man. As fairies often are.

Seriously. "A very short man." I woke up from this dream, and that's the best way to describe the impression I had of this fellow. Not a midget. Not a child. Not a shorter than average man. A very short man.

Anyway, the civil servant chased this very short man through the streets of London, trying to retrieve his hat. Eventually he lost track of the hat thief, gave up, and set off towards his office. Then, immediately outside his office, he saw in front of him the same very short man, walking down the street, wearing his hat. He rushed up and snatched his hat off the very short man's head. But the very short man snatched it back, and disappeared once again.

Now very frustrated, the civil servant went straight to the nearest magistrate, and brought charges against the very short man. However, once the magistrate had heard all the details of the case, he refused to take any action, because the very short man doing very important and very secret work for the crown, and must not be interfered with in any way.

At this point, the very short man and his very short wife entered the magistrate's office and returned the civil servant's hat to him. Then they went out to the street, climbed into their limousine, and as the limousine drove off they tunneled through the limousine back to fairyland, where they both returned to their true fairy forms. This part of the dream was animated by the guy who animated MTV's Liquid Television.

Because apparently, in my dreams, MTV's Liquid Television was all animated by one guy.

UPDATE: T-Rex on Dreams

T-Rex on dreams.

More here.

HasturCom Patent of the Week

Introduction
Deep in the bowels of HasturCom's R'lyeh campus, the Elder Things have tiled a twisty passage with myterious signs and sigils. Each tile commemorates one of HasturCom's many original patents. Whenever the terms of my servitude bend my path towards that eldritch citadel, I always take a minute to walk that brazen corridor, and attempt to grok the fullness of one such patent.

A Method For Reducing Latency in Voice Communications Over Data Networks
The beauty of transmitting analog information over digital media is that you don't always need all the information.

There's often a delay--"latency"--between when you speak into your mouthpiece and your interlocutor hears your words in their earpiece. This patent describes one solution to this problem:

First, it is understood that the analog information--your spoken voice--is converted into digital information. This digital information is organized into "frames", and each frame is transmitted across the network to whoever it is you're talking to. At the far end, the frames of digital information are converted back into an analog stream, which that person hears as a reasonable facsimile of your original speech.

If, however, the network detects latency, it reduces this delay by periodically "dropping" a frame. This results in less data for the network to transmit, and thus speeds up the process. The person listening to your speech doesn't notice the missing frames, because the conversion from digital to analog masks the gaps in the stream (which are individually so brief that they fall below the human threshold for detection).

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, somebody needed to patent that? Apparently so.

Dream Catalog

Part n in an occasional series

So I've started having a new kind of dream recently.

Hrm.

I should probably warn you, this is about my dreams. It's not like, you know, they're not safe for work (NSFW) or anything. But still. They're kinda personal. They might be too much information (TMI) for you to handle.

I don't know. I'm just saying. Dreams are weird. Maybe you're weird about dreams.

If you're weird about other people's dreams, you should probably stop reading here.

While you're making up your mind, here's a crow eating peanuts.

Anyway, dreams. I has them.

The Comic Book Store
In this dream, I'm wandering around a comic book store. Probably because I wandered around a lot of comic book stores when I was a callow youth. The employees are usually dream-images of actual people from actual comic book stores I actually wandered around during my waking life, and the titles were usually vaguely familiar approximations of real-world titles. But the comic book stores themselves, while utterly banal, were totally unlike any real-life comic book store that I've ever actually been in.

That's one of the things that fascinates me about dreams. I'm not just re-creating places I've actually been to and dimly remember. Instead, my mind is imagining totally different rooms, wallpapers, carpets, furniture, etc. It's kinda neat.


I'm not sure what the deal is, with the comic book store dream. There's not much of a sense of urgency. I'm just wandering around, looking for... I dunno, a comic book, I guess. I never actually find one, though. Never take one off the shelf, or bring it up to the cash register, or anything like that. Sometimes there are other people in the store with me, but I don't really interact with them. The end.

Wandering Around the City
Sometimes I dream that I'm wandering around the city. Well, wandering around a city, anyway. Like the comic book store, it's a dream-city, not any real city I've ever been to. It's always a different city (a different part of the same city?) each time I have this dream. Also like the comic book store, there's no sense of urgency, and nothing ever really happens.


Flying
Yes, I have the flying dream. Doesn't everybody? Mine often takes the form of first running, then jumping, then making longer and higher jumps, and then finally steering in the air. Pretty fun. Another version is where I'm spreading my arms out and gliding up into the air. Often my legs hang down awkwardly. This kind of flying is hard to sustain, for some reason, but sometimes I can get pretty high up there.


Interpersonal Conflict
Sometimes, I dream a fight with someone--usually a family member. These dreams are very emotionally charged. I usually wake up feeling angry and frustrated. Once when I woke up from one of these, I actually called the person I'd dreamed I was fighting with, just so I could get some closure and go back to sleep. They were very cool and understanding about it. Lately the usual "sparring partner" in this dream has been replaced by somebody else. It's all very weird.


The House
This is the new one. It's happened three times, now. The first time, it was some other guy's house, still under construction. The second time, my family had just moved into a new house. The third, last night, they'd done some remodeling while I was out.

These dreams tend to have a sense of urgency about them. I'm trying to come to terms with the changes, or get organized, or whatever, but the more I get into it, the more complicated and messy things get. At first there'll be a normal amount of furniture in the room, but the more I try to move the furniture around, the more furniture there is. The more I try to clear away clutter, the more clutter there is. The more I try to find my way around, the bigger and mazier the house gets. The point is, I'm trying to do something, and stuff keeps getting in the way. The harder I try, the more stuff there is.


Sometimes there'll be elements from one of the other dreams in this one, too. Like, it'll start out as Wandering Around the City, and then I'll go into The House. Or I'll be in The House, and end up in an Interpersonal Conflict.

Conclusion
This isn't a dream type. This is just the conclusion to this entry.

In conclusion: Dreams are weird.

Revchem Plastics

Speaking of robots, I got this shot the other day. Actually, I get a lot of shots from the inside of a moving vehicle, while Mrs. Container drives. One advantage to this approach is that you're constantly getting new subjects. Well, you are if you're like me, and think that the Revchem Plastics truck (or a shipping container) is a proper photography subject. On the other hand, there's a huge disadvantage in that everything goes by pretty quick. This is another reason I like our camerabot so much. Look at that image!

Anyway, Revchem Plastics. I had no idea they existed, and I have no idea what they do. Make plastics, apparently. Or buy them, and then re-sell them. Who knows? I tried to visit their website, but apparently it's down. If you have better luck, please let me know.

I especially like all the logos of the industrial chemistry companies they put on the truck: 3M, Hexcel, Silmar... It's like a who's who of all those quiet little companies you never think about that make this modern world go 'round.

Bunnies

It's not all shipping containers, robots, and Lovecraftian docudramas here at Chez Container. Sometimes it's about bunnies.

These guys came out onto the lawn just as I was leaving the office for the day. Apparently they live (or at least hang out) in the hedge on the left side of the image. You can see a little bit of the sidewalk on the right. Just out of frame beyond the sidewalk is the parking lot. Mrs. Container had to wait in the car while I took several shots of this scene. They all turned out pretty well. I can't take the credit, though: The camera really did all the work. Robots are awsome.

Hrm.

I guess it kinda is all robots here.

Container Spotting: TTNU9096418

This is a standard 40-foot long shipping container. It was parked on a side street in an industrial zone near Kearny Mesa. Incidentally, it is mounted on a Maersk Sealand chassis. This kind of thing, one shipper's container on another shipper's chassis, is not unusual. There are even companies that just own chasses, and lease them out to shippers.

TTNU9096418 is a valid container number.

Sometimes It Takes A Dinosaur

In which a comical T-Rex accurately expresses my feelings about robots.

No, seriously.