Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Extensive Vocabulary
November 30, 2011

We’ve been suffocated by Abby’s 5th grade homework assignments so far this year. There have been many days when her homework takes her from when she gets home to well past her bedtime to complete. As a result, Berta and I have been helping her - more directly - to cope with the overwhelming onslaught of busywork.

More than a few times while helping Abby to complete her homework, I’ve pulled some arcane word out of my back pocket and suggested that she write it into her responses, only to be reprimanded by Berta for producing language that Abby wouldn’t use in completing her assignments on her own. I suppose that’s fine, but as a result I’ve not been using the “big words” in daily routine.

iPhone iOS5 upgrade "unknown error" 3200
October 12, 2011

This is just a quick update among all of the other insanity that is going on around here, regarding my iPhone 4 upgrade to iOS5. I tried to perform the upgrade several times, even after rebooting and removing other USB devices (which have caused these problems during upgrades before), but I kept getting this error:

As it turns out, the solution is quite simple, and is in fact shown on the Apple support site that appears if you click the “More information” button. But you’re not going to like it.

Brick
October 02, 2011

While traveling in Australia, the data roaming plan that I added to my account simply stopped working. This became annoying since there isn’t ubiquitous wifi in Australia like in the States, and I really wanted to keep up with things at home (like, my family) while I was out and about.

The following is the conversation I had with the representative in trying to get my iPhone to connect to the internet via 3g

Bored with the Internet
September 14, 2011

Sometime late last night, I became bored with the internet. It finally occurred to me simply that nothing new is happening, and even if it was, it’s all happening inside the computer. And basically, who cares?

Prior to last night, it seemed like the internet was a never ending source of new things. But the reality is that the new things are made out in the real world, and simply reported on via the internet. Moreover, the tings that can be new on the internet - new tools and websites - simply make it easier to manage what’s online, or our lives entwined there, and serve no real purpose outside of the internet where someone hadn’t figured out how to solve these problems years ago.

Dungeonmorph Dice
September 12, 2011

I recently won a contest to receive a prototype Dungeonmorph Die from the kickstarter campaign that I backed a few months ago. I had written about Kickstarter before, so I’ll focus solely on the die I received from the project.

The Dungeonmorph Dice are six-sided dice that display a small, square portion of a dungeon on each side. The sides are numbered, so they can be used as regular six-sided dice, but their primary purpose is to be used to create random dungeons. You simply roll a handful of these dice, assemble them together (all of the flat edges will join), and you have a random dungeon waiting to be explored.