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Seen, Heard, Said

Things I’ve seen, heard, or was told by someone. Item in this category usually originate from the Internet.

This Is The Story of a Girl

This is pretty sick and twisted. The end will surprise you.

Here’s the recap:

From blog.wired.com:

Megan Meier, who had trouble controlling her weight and was self-conscious about it, was thrilled when a 16-year-old hottie calling himself Josh Evans approached her online one day and asked to be added to her MySpace friends list. The two became fast friends, though they never met in person. Then one day Evans turned on Meier and began sending her hateful messages. His negative comments grew in intensity and left Megan feeling deeply wounded. Already prone to depression and low self-esteem, she took the attacks on her worth to heart and hung hanged herself.

Okay, sad and tragic. Girl meets boy, girl falls in love with boy, and perhaps in series of events somewhat similar to Romeo and Juliet, girl takes her own life. Here’s where things get down right creepy.

From stcharlesjournal.stltoday.com:

Six weeks after Megan died, on a Saturday morning, a neighbor down the street, a different neighbor, one they didn’t know well, called and insisted that they meet that morning at a counselor’s office in northern O’Fallon.
…
She told the Meiers that Josh Evans was created by adults, a family on their block. These adults, she told the Meiers, were the parents of Megan’s former girlfriend, the one with whom she had a falling out.
…
According to Tina, Megan had gone on vacations with this family. They knew how she struggled with depression, that she took medication.

Like I said, the end would be surprising. Interestingly enough, no criminal charges are going to be filed. The St. Charles Journal decided not to publish the names of the persons involved for safety reasons, however some bloggers have been able to out at least one of the people involved based on information within the article. You should really read the entire article because it is well written.

Thanks to Amanda for the original heads on up this.

The Nerd Handbook

I’m a nerd. You should all know that by now and if you don’t, well, now you do. I happened to stumble across The Nerd Handbook. It’s a short blog post, just over 2500 words. It seems to be targeted at nerd’s significant other, however, I think there are valuable insights for everyone, such as:

From www.randsinrepose.com:

Understand your nerd’s relation to the computer. It’s clichéd, but a nerd is defined by his computer, and you need to understand why.

First, a majority of the folks on the planet either have no idea how a computer works or they look at it and think “it’s magic”. Nerds know how a computer works. They intimately know how a computer works. When you ask a nerd, “When I click this, it takes awhile for the thing to show up. Do you know what’s wrong?” they know what’s wrong. A nerd has a mental model of the hardware and the software in his head. While the rest of the world sees magic, your nerd knows how the magic works, he knows the magic is a long series of ones and zeros moving across your screen with impressive speed, and he knows how to make those bits move faster.

There’s more great stuff. I promise. Read it all and let me know what you think in the comments.

via Scobleizer.com

Anatomy of a Windstorm: Washington State Ferry System in Action

Andrea, a displaced Seattleite like me who also goes to Mines, forwarded this to me. I was able to trace the photos back to a gentleman named Ross Fotheringham:
From snowest.com:

On Thursday October 18th Western Washington was hit with a 50+ MPH wind storm. Here are my pictures of the event. After work I made my way down to the Mukilteo Lighthouse Park where I witness the Mukilteo to Clinton ferry taking a pounding. These Issaquah 130 Class ferries are over 300 feet long and 78 feet wide and weight in at 2477 tons (4,954,000 lbs) unloaded…… I’ll start with some Rock & Roll.
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ross_fotheringham_1.jpg
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ross_fotheringham_2.jpg
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ross_fotheringham_3.jpg

There are a bunch more pictures that are definitely worth checking out on Ross Fotheringham’s site.

Information R/evolution

This is an amazing video that helps show the issues we (as people) have with organizing things in a natively non-physical world. It’s made by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University:
Information R/evolution

Wesch has a some other great videos worth watching on YouTube: MWesch’s Videos

via TechCruch

The Money Party

From www.smirkingchimp.com:

It is not about Republicans versus Democrats. Right now, the Republicans do a better job taking money than the Democrats. But The Money Party is an equal opportunity employer. They have no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests. Democrats are as welcome as Republicans to this party.

Late at night, when I can’t get to sleep, I start thinking about ways that our country could be better. I think that elections would be better if all candidates had a government supplied, fixed campaign money pot. In order to run for a position, you’d have to get a certain amount of signatures. Yes, there are flaws with this system (mainly “non-affiliated” support groups), but I think it would be a good start.

via Wil Wheaton’s Link Blog

Boeing Surplus to Close

The Seattle Times reports that Boeing Surplus is going to be closing their doors come December 21st:

From seattletimes.nwsource.com:

Boeing instead plans to sell its surplus items in bulk to wholesale buyers over the Internet and through a more traditional contracting process with business partners, said spokesman Dean Tougas. Boeing will develop a Web site over the next few months to support its online plans, he said.

The store’s final day will be Dec. 21.

For 35 years it has sold just about anything that Boeing no longer uses, except aircraft parts. Boeing employees and retirees enjoy discounts of up to 20 percent.

Seeing that I worked at the Kent Space Center the last two summers, it was really just a short 8 minute drive to the surplus store. I’d sometimes stop by on my way home, seeing that I’m already down there and such.

It was really just fun to walk around. It would take me at least an hour, and that was if I was going fast.

Bruce Lane has started a website, SaveBoeingSurplus.com, to try and save the surplus store.

Photo Credit: The Boeing Surplus website

θmg = ωtF

Unit checks are a great thing, as evidenced by this little goodie brought to my attention on Facebook:

\theta m g = \omega t f

And the unit check:

\mathbf{rad} \times \mathbf{kg} \times \frac{\mathbf{m}}{\mathbf{sec^2}} = \frac{\mathbf{rad}}{\mathbf{sec}} \times \mathbf{sec} \times \frac{\mathbf{kg} \times \mathbf{m}}{\mathbf{sec^2}}

Yup. It works.