I hate to do this, but I've been getting a lot of weird friend requests lately. I have a new general policy, and I hate policies -- I had a few before, and they're always bumpy, but here goes . . . As a general rule, before I accept your invitation, you need to be/have the following: You need to be at least an assassin, have a salute and write something meaningful (like more than "Hi") in your request.
Or . . . write me a persuasive message as to why you think you should be exempted from this rule.
I am known as Ernie, Ernie Cordell, variations on that theme, ernie.cordell where they allow the 'dot' or 'period' in a handle, moniker, John Hancock, or whatever somebody might choose to call a 'screen name' or user name. If they do not allow the 'dot,' I use a hyphen or underscore, and if they are punctuation Nazis, I just run it together into one word. If they also limit the number or characters (or seemed to do so in the ancient past when I started surfing websites), I go with ecordell and occasionally cordelle (though I prefer first-initial followed by last name so that people don't start getting my last name wrong). On MySpace, I also call myself serve_bottle just because I thought I was funny that day.
Leave me a Snapvine Voice Message: I only have a few.
Leave me a message: Get Snapvine for yourself, and if I ever find my phone, I'll leave one for you.
My mind is entirely prepossessed with the design of information systems to the point that I seldom seem to finish coding one before I start specifying the next. Not finishing any products that could be brought to market limits my profitability, but then I never claimed to be a sales wizard. I find the incantations frightfully dry.
I have blogs all over the place, and while none of them have impressed me, some of them gain readership for some bewildering reason: Someone on this very site told me that she came to see whether the hype about my writing was true.
I like to write programs and I'm starting to gain an appreciation for C++ although I think an understanding of the machines themselves makes for a better foundation in programming than does a knowledge of any language. Understanding one's own goals comes before all else, though, because you can't really solve a problem if you don't really know what it is.
The application that I'm inclined towards is the generation of natural language from a learning algorithm, particularly one that correlates that language with other forms of "experience" (my word for continuously recorded sensor information). For this reason (and a few others) I have an interest in Neurology as it relates to cognition, and most particularly in Behavioral Neuroendocrinology. It interests me that cerebral mechanisms were once thought to form from electrical (ionic) interchanges, but the lines have recently blurred between neurotransmitters and hormones. I find the macromolecular synaptic mechanisms fascinating.
But once in a while I like to get a slice of real life. I guess that's why I'm here (Not at my presently undisclosed location but "here" as in "at fubar.").
Video Games:
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(last updated:December 13, 2007 @ 5:44 am)
I don't play video games. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
During ancient history when pound signs were the nemesis of enterprise, I played a little space invaders with a dear friend and colleague who visited a local watering hole with me, but those days are gone, along with those few lunar landers I tried and crashed.
The reason I don't play video games is that I reduce my brain to the vegetable level in order to refrigerate it by watching television. The reason that I need to refrigerate my brain at the vegetable level is that the other part of the time I spend overheating it in front of a terminal, monitor, screen or display panel.
One of the major products of the products division of my former company (I was in a consulting division) was a simulator. One of the major services we provided with that product was simulations: Using a simulator is not my idea of a good time -- I like to build them, but I don't like high-level tools. I like doing it at the programming language level. I'm not a purist -- I don't have to do it at assembly/machine-language level. The "C" programming language will do just fine. Years ago I used to do it with FORTRAN (IV, mostly). I was most proficient in Pascal. Lately I've done a lot in C++, but I've yet to really take advantage of a lot of the advanced features.
I have a long list of priorities when it comes to things to do while sitting at a computer, and video games isn't one of them, sorry. I've never felt a need to "kill" time -- we only get so much of it, so I prefer being present in the current reality (or in my own non-robotic fantasy). I've never been bored, so I don't even understand the concept. Personally I have a suspicion that at best, boredom is a sign of a poor imagination, and at worst, it is probably a symptom of laziness. I say that if you are ever bored to the point that you need to stare at a screen for hours on end, you either have a stimulation problem or you're not doing enough to insure your own survival. But that's just me.
Find your own style.
Music:
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(last updated:December 13, 2007 @ 5:51 am)
I can't separate what I like from what I dislike by a pattern in rhythm, melody, harmony, syncopation, movement, vocal, instrumental or any other pile of meaningless criteria. I like what I like. I do consider "rap" a performance art, though, rather than a style of music, and as such, I don't like memorized or re-performed "rap" -- it must be generated in the moment or it is just bad poetry recited to unrehearsed instrumental accompaniment. I guess that makes me an eclectic -- just don't take me to court on it.
(Simply♥§l 
(pull my finger)
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