User:Traal

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My Userboxes

This user is a software engineer.

This user lives in the state of Arizona.

en	This user is a native speaker of English.

ja-3

この利用者は流暢に日本語を話すことができます。

en-me-1

This led knoweth sumhwet of Englyssh.

Ix	This user is not able satisfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven.

Template:User ix-hrung

My name is Traal, after that other Traal. I've had this handle since roughly 1990 on Phoenix-area Galacticomm BBSes.

1 Userboxes I've Created
2 Arizona
3 How to Choose a Country to which to Immigrate
4 Keyboard
5 My Politics
6 List of new zip codes
- 6.1 Postal Bulletin 22154 - May 12, 2005
7 Favorite Software Development Topics
8 Video games I'm looking forward to
9 References

[edit] Userboxes I've Created

Feel free to add the following userbox to your own user page:

Code

Result

Ix	This user is not able satisfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven.

Originally it was the global userbox {{user ix-hrung}}, but it got deleted 10 minutes after I created it because nobody was using it at the time except me. (Go figure.) Once enough people are using it, the global one can be reinstated.

[edit] Arizona

Arizona is famous for:

The Grand Canyon is in northern Arizona.
The Hoover Dam is on the Arizona-Nevada border.
Pluto was discovered at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff.
Meteor Crater is near Winslow, east of Flagstaff
The AH-64 Apache attack helicopter is built in Mesa's Boeing plant next to Falcon Field.
The Navajo Nation, the largest Native American tribe in North America and famous for the Navajo Code Talkers of WWII is mostly in Arizona.
Joe Arpaio is sheriff of Maricopa County.
Thunderbird - The Garvin School of International Management
Phoenix is headquarters of:
- Apollo Group, Inc., the parent company of the University of Phoenix, the nation's largest private university.
- Best Western
- PetSmart
- U-Haul
- more...
Scottsdale is headquarters of:
Tempe is headquarters of:
- US Airways
Arizona's largest employers are Wal-Mart, Honeywell, Banner Health, Raytheon, Intel, Albertsons, Bashas, Wells Fargo, Kroger, and Target.
Arizona's chief exports are cotton, citrus, beef, copper, and high-tech. And snowbirds in the spring.

Semiconductor fabs and R&D locations in Arizona

Freescale (Chandler, Phoenix, Tempe)
Intel (Chandler)
Marvell Technology Group (Chandler)
Microchip Technology (Chandler, Tempe)
Motorola (Chandler, Tempe)

Other things I like about Arizona

The weather (in the fall, winter, and spring)
No riots. Just demonstrations.

Arizona is infamous for:

The heat (in the summer)
The illegal immigration controversy
Hit-and-runs (see the map here)
Road rage^[1]
Really bad public transportation
Poor standardized test scores^[2]
Urban sprawl (almost as bad as Los Angeles) and the urban heat island effect
Phoenix's brown cloud, a layer of pollution containing smog and dust, which frequently violates EPA air pollution standards
Tap water. Phoenix came in dead last in Men's Health Magazine's March 2007 ratings of the water in 100 cities^[3]. I can't stand the taste, so I drink only RO or bottled water as even carbon filtering isn't good enough. And the tap water is cold in the winter and warm in the summer.
High incidence of auto thefts.[1]

Things to do in Phoenix

Bondurant Racing School, with 1-day events available at Phoenix International Raceway and Firebird International Raceway, starting at $250
Fighter Combat AZ - do a mock dogfight in a real plane against a friend
Warbird Rides Arizona Wing CAF - ride in a B-17, for $425
A number of companies offer balloon rides in the Phoenix area
Waterworld Safari (formerly Waterworld, USA) in Phoenix, Big Surf in Tempe, and Golfland SunSplash in Mesa
McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale
Hike up one of the Phoenix Mountains (Camelback/Piestewa Peak/North Mountain/Shaw Butte), Peralta Trail in the Superstition Mountains (for a view of Weaver's Needle), South Mountain, or Pinnacle Peak

[edit] How to Choose a Country to which to Immigrate

If quality of life is important, check the List of countries by Human Development Index
If freedom is important, you might check the Index of Economic Freedom
If income equality is important, check the List of countries by income equality
If minimizing your impact on the environment is important, pick a country on the List of Kyoto Protocol signatories
To avoid violent crime, check the List of countries by murder rate
Meanwhile, try to pick a country that welcomes foreigners

[edit] Keyboard

These days, computer keyboards need the following additional keys/buttons:

Multiple select (on Windows, the CTRL key is used for multiple select; in MacOS, the apple/⌘ button is used)
Block select (because SHIFT isn't self-explanatory)
Copy (Windows is CTRL-C; MacOS is ⌘-C)
Paste (Windows is CTRL-P; MacOS is ⌘-P)
(optional) Cut (Windows is CTRL-X; MacOS is ⌘-X)
Degree sign (°)
Sleep
Lock workstation (Windows-L)
Minimize current window
Go to next/previous window (Alt-Tab and Alt-Shift-Tab)
Go to the next/previous field in a form (to replace Tab/Shift Tab)
Left and right double and single quotes
Something to make entering latin characters easy
Several reprogrammable buttons for things like the euro symbol
Mdash (—)

Some keys can be removed:

Only one of ENTER or RETURN are needed
Pipe (|) - this can be moved to one of the reprogrammable keys
Carot (^) - who uses this, other than programmers?
Curly braces ({ and })
Scroll lock
SysRq
Prnt Scrn

[edit] My Politics

I advocate:

States' rights (move more power from the federal government back to the individual states)

Consensus over compromise

Currency reform:
- Eliminate the penny and nickel
- Replace the quarter with a 20¢ coin
- Round all transactions to the nearest 10¢ ($0.1)
- Eliminate the dollar bill
- Make the half dollar coin smaller
- Replace the $2 bill with a coin
- Make the rest of the paper money easy for the blind to distinguish

Government finance reform:
- True cost economics
- Make fees collected by the government proportional to the cost to the government.
- Eliminate subsidies.
- Make tariffs on an item proportional to how many of that item are imported into the country as a ratio of the total number consumed, and make tariffs adjust themselves periodically, automatically.
- Eliminate protectionistic policies, except where absolutely necessary.
- Eliminate the "throwing money at the problem" style of disaster relief (like the handling of Hurricane Katrina).
- Eliminate financing of local projects. Help the states plan and finance interstate roads themselves.

Immigration reform:
- First, streamline the green card approval process.
- Neither expel nor grant green cards to all current illegal immigrants. It would take too many resources to do either one. Require that all illegal aliens register with the INS, and either participate in a guest worker program, apply for a green card, or leave the country.
- Illegal immigrant kids who have spent so much time in the U.S. that they have been culturally assimilated and would feel alien in their home countries should be granted citizenship or permanent residency.
- Scale back the H-1B visa program. Instead, prioritize technology workers for green cards if we need to.

Welfare and social security reform:
- Abolish the minimum wage.
- Stop giving away money to the poor and to disaster victims. Instead, provide life's necessities (housing, clothing, food, medical care, mailing address, telephone, internet access) directly in boarding school style housing. People under this program would pay a percentage of any money they make to the program.
- Abolish the social security retirement benefits, but keep the disability benefits. People who haven't saved properly can move into the boarding school welfare program (see above).

Election reform:
- Eliminate plurality election methods.
- For electronic voting machines, require a paper trail that can be used to verify a vote after the fact.
- Replace manual districting with algorithmic districting.

Smart growth

Education reform:
- Screen kids better for things like autism, and sort kids into classes based on how they learn best. Teach these kids how to deal with their unique issues. Like they do for dyslexia.
- Test kids for perfect pitch and other aptitudes.
- Provide mandatory classes on topics like Robert Cialdini's Six Weapons of Influence, the book How to Think About Weird Things (ISBN 007287953X), The 48 Laws of Power, thought reform, and logical fallacies.
- Pay teachers based on their performance (how much their students improve)

Labor reform:
- Union-busting by turning employees into contractors (and not renewing contracts of bad employees). However, I respect the right of people to form unions.