Stuff I wrote yesterday

Big Squid
Someone had a video emailed to them today of a giant squid. I remember hearing about a huge squid found rotting on a beach in a far away land. By the time any one of science got to it, the corps had deteriorated to badly to be of much use. I cannot find the video. I'll have to ask Chris about it. This is about the best I found. It is pretty big and bright red. I suppose they turn red when they are threatened. I would love to see a reporter videoing some stupid story about the port authority at the docks and a squid the size of a buss jets out of the water and starts eating a taxi.

Experience
So a thought popped into my head while I was at work today. What if I had the majority of experiences I currently have at the age of 37.9, only I had them by the age of 17.9. What would be different in my life?  Could most of the things I've gone through have happened by 18? I couldn't help myself. I thought about family, work, loves, and a million other things. The result was, I could have done most of it by 18 without much slopping over the sides. I'm not sure what to think about that.

Boil it down (Kind of on the same note as above)
I just closed my email folder for the year. It is approximately 20 megabytes on the drive. I compressed it using BZ2 down to 1.5 megabytes. I thought about it for a moment. That is the accumulated knowledge I've gained since I started this job back in the beginning of February. 20 megabytes seems low when I sop and think about all the crap in there. The fact that it compresses down to one fifteenth it's original size kind of makes me thing there is a bunch of redundant stuff in there. That just doesn't feel like a lot of stuff.
I remember in Johnny Pneumonic, the scene where he tells his capacity. I thought how small that number would seem by the time this kind of technology has come along.
There was some research place talking about the data they had collected on a bunch of instruments. They complained that it was several terabyte of compressed information. I wonder how much of that data is really worth keeping. Surely it is only being collected in order to examine as a whole and then make some decision. Some executive is going to glance at a bottom line and just bark an order to an underling. It will all boil down to a gut feeling at that time.
Rate of change. Rate of acceleration of change. Rate of acceleration of the acceleration of change. It all sounds like the kind of numbers people try to run against the stock market. When really the stock market is just what a bunch of people think. The right people.
Maybe I've just filtered my 1.5 megabytes well. I've managed to boil it down to what is really needed. Perhaps there is more to the formula than what feels right at that moment.