Not that I really ever notice them, but discovered just today that adding any special character (: ; ^ etc) at an end of any yahoo news url gets rid of all ads on the page. Neat.

Observe a normal url:
The Pride of CT Goes to Prison

Same url wtih a ; at the end:
The Price of CT Goes to Prison

Probably won't last.. but good to know for copy-pasting news items for now.

Someone is attempting to sell property on ebay in Pennsylvania.. which is good and fine, except they chose to link to an image from my website that is decidedly not Pennsylvania.. I know, because it's one my photographs of the beautiful Lake Minnewaska in upstate NY.

Which probably means that the other images in the auction are also from someplace else... way to misrepresent the property to people.

Thanks to mod_rewrite, the auction is now also displaying a lovely beach front view.

Reporting it to ebay fraud is probably a good idea though (and I shall).

Edit: In case ebay takes the auction down (I did email them and if nothing else, I hold copyright to that image) I took a screenshot of the modified auction.. it's cute.

Edit^2: It appears neither ebay nor the seller care.. so thanks to some photoshopping courtesy of Steve we now have a better image.

Whenever you leave your email address out in public view you should expect to get email. The nice kind, the "help me out" ones and some strange ones.. I've yet to figure out how to classify this one other than "really funny one":

	From: 	  nasrin_ofogh@yahoo.co.uk
	Subject:  I have a question!
	Date: 	   March 15, 2005 12:51:20 AM EST
	To: 	    me

U r not a communist?! So what the hell r u? A fucking Christian?! That motherfucker, son of bitch, already dead, cocksucker (The great animal: Pop) I was told he's Polish too. So what basically u Polish people do is fool people with your bullshit while still not able to speak like a human!! And don't u even fucking think that your photos are special. They are just average. Some of them even less than average. What Germans did to u in WWII and what Soviets did to u after WWII was very good I wish they have finished all of u, u moron! Bye the way, I know many street whores here who are Polish. Is that what all u do in a period of your life?! How does that feel? How long did u use to do that? Did u earn good money!? N

I'm still laughing..

A Google Search inspired by NPR.

I was testing a new blog-spam detection script this morning and generated the same kind of hits a spammer would do on my blog, tested the script, all great, turned the script on, left for work.

Came home from work, sat down to check my email and noticed I can't get to my server. Checked traceroute.. times out at the gateway.. hmm.. odd.. Other people can get to it, how strange.. Logged in on a console, everything is working and people are using it. Yep, sure enough, I banned my own bloody IP using my spammer detection script. Hey, at least I know it works well.

Thank god for a remote console..

Whenever you publish an email address on the Internet with an inviting caption like "send us your feedback" you will get all sorts of weirdness. We're used to that at dslreports and occasionally publish news articles pointing out some of the weirder stuff.. but this is the first one that actually made me want to blog it myself. Well, it is rather urgent:

Left as 'site feedback' on dslreports.com:

I was trying to back out of the garage and these shaw people just blocked the entrance, I asked them kindly to move and they were being nasty and said "I'm up here and blah blah blah - anyways I'm lazy to everything packed and get down then get up there again" their liscence plate is 2315 XE, please tell them not to do that next time or towing will be a result! *this is a warning*

A degree from a bogus university.

This google search is entertaining.

I have to wonder about this guy.. his other PHD is probably quite real.

If I had a penny for every time someone asked me to remove a post that contained their domain registration information, well, I'd have gone out to dinner tonight instead of cooking (veggie shepherd's pie, yumm). It appears that many people are capable of say, running web-hosting companies but the idea of their domain registration information being public record escapes them.

Yes, Virginia, domain registration information are considered public records.

What does it mean? It means it can indeed be posted in a public forum without your prior permission, and no, you cannot threaten me with your imaginary lawyer. It just doesn't work that way. Check out this site to see what else is a public record, some of it may be quite surprising.

What can be done with a public record? This epic.org page has some chilling information.

But you all already know that you say? God, I wish.. here's a paraphrased exchanged from today.. not verbatim, since he'll probably try to sue me for posting that and actually have a case.

[Background: He posted an advertisement about his webhosting company which is perfectly within the forum rules and predictably, the forum inhabitants tore lots of holes in the offering which is also within the forum rules. Hey, you want a free ad? You'll get scrutinized, that's life]

He:Remove my private information or I'll sue.

Me:It's public record. but since I feel bad for you and based on your company and posting style you're still in high school, I'll remove it to be nice. [I'm really a pretty nice person about these things if you ask nicely]

He:People don't know how to use whois, so it's private! My lawyer says I have a case!

Me:yawn public, yawn, not private

He:Check the HIPPA (sic) Laws!

Me: *bunch of links explaining the fine art of differentiating medical information from domain registration records*

He:It's like copyright! I can copyright it then I can sue, my lawyer says so!

Me: Tell your lawyer to ask for a refund at his law school.

He:Stop intimidating me with your covert language! [no, really, I kid you not]

How can you get that kind of information removed? Ask me nicely and leave your imaginary lawyers at home.

Scientific name: Blogus-trollus
Physical Characteristics: Since the common blog troll is a very elusive species and tends to emulate homo sapiens when confronted in Real Life (the habitat of homo sapiens) it has thus escaped proper description. It is said that its head is covered with green warts and its body largely resembles a cone.

Color: Yellow-green, orange, red, black, white, purple and variations there-of.

Habitat: The common blog troll can be found nosing around any weblog that allows the posting of comments.

Belongs to the common troll group.

The Common Blog Troll is a recently discovered species, most likely evolved from the Common Usenet Troll or perhaps its close cousin, the Common Forum Troll. Its primary source of nourishment is a response to its excrement, which is left in the form of a comment on any weblog which allows comments. Its best not to feed the troll, otherwise it might make itself at home and litter said blog with ever growing piles of excrement. Once the pest moves into a weblog the best way to eradicate it is by the use of "IP Ban" which comes free with many forms of weblog -- if yours does not possess such feature you can always enlist the help of a local system administrator.

It should be noted that even an IP ban is not entirely effective in removing the most persistent of trolls - as the more intelligent ones have the ability of using different IP addresses. In that case only vigillance, patience and time will get rid of the pest completely.

On a website that uses only text ads (you can turn off) and only to unregistered users, put a tiny, little, unobtrusive icon pointing to firefox.

No kidding..

1..
2..
3..
4..
5.. (probably more will show up later).

Makes me want to put up a big, blinking, purple, flash, scrolling ad for something obnoxious instead.

You see an ad for one of those music-compilation CDs and the music packed into it is something you still consider 'new music'.

Reading things like "A Girl's Guide to Geek Guys" and "The Guy's Guide to Geek Girls" (linked to by Jeremy who should know better) makes me cringe. I've got all the angles covered here: I'm a girl, I'm a geek and er, okay, I'm not a guy -- but I know many geek guys. What are you people thinking when you write these things?

Let's clear some things up.

• The Star Trek thing.

  Star Trek is not a geek thing. Not all geeks like Star Trek, heck, most geeks I know never watch it. Would you people stop equating geeks with Star Trek freaks? Who the hell is Ivanova? The first guy to buy me a Star Trek mousepad as a cute gift would wear it as a collar in about fifteen seconds or less.

• Branded tshirts.

  So people think geeks wear tshirts with brand names because they're proudly displaying their loyalty? That's cute and funny at the same time. T-shirts at conferences are free, t-shirts at conferences come emblazoned with logos and brand-names, ergo, geeks often wear tshirts with brand names because they're free. Unlike the rest of you gap-labled yuppies, we don't pay to advertise corporations.

  Unless you count my Free Software Foundation tshirt, I paid for that, but that was really more of a donation than a purchase. Sort of like the emacs manual, yah, i'll ever read that!

• Geeks can fix things.

  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha -- that's all I'm going to say on the issue.

• Geeks have no social life.

  Let's define "social life" :

  social: Pronunciation: 'sO-sh&l Function: adjective 1 : involving allies or confederates <the Social War between the Athenians and their allies> 2 a : marked by or passed in pleasant companionship with one's friends or associates <leads a very full social life>

  life: Pronunciation: 'lIf
  Function: noun
  1 a : the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body
  

  In other words, alive and spending time with allies and friends. I think we covered that one with conventions and IRC quite well, thank you very much. The common misconception here seems to be that getting drunk and rowdy in a bar is somehow more desirable than an intellectual discussion over a gaggle of laptops. We do the former as well, you just don't think of us as geeks when you see it -- the laptops are usually missing, that's why.

I think it's clear where this is going? Geeks come in all shapes and sizes, but damnit, they don't all like Star Trek!

There's a local deli I like to visit for those days when I crave a hot lunch and do not feel like patronizing the lovely selection of chains available to me here in suburban hell. This is a bit of an eclectic place, they sell hot meals, hand-crafted jewelry and assorted "nobody needs this stuff" arts & crafts.

Today I noticed something that caught my eye.. next to the door, available for sale (sadly, no price tag) was a wooden stump, - obviously to be used as a door-stop . This fine article had a piece of a chopped-off branch sticking out on one side and the carving of (what appears to be) the face of Jesus (some peoples Lord and Savior) on the other side.

I think I'll purchase it on my next visit (provided the price is under $10).. how many people can say they use Jesus as a door stop?

Next time you reboot your remote server in a datacenter accross the country remember things like a months-ago-scheduled fsck (for that next reboot) before you panic over how long it takes the server to come back online.

That's a bad title, it really should be "stupid cron mistakes" or "when idiots set up cron jobs, tonight on Fox!" or maybe "I'm Polish, but really, I'm not blonde".

Last week I set up a cron job to email our VP of engineering with some information on the first of every month. I've done cron jobs hundreds, nah, thousands of times, how hard can this be? It wasn't.. really.. piece of cake..

* * 1 * * mail important_boss_person@tickets.com

No problem.. that is, until this morning as I get an email requesting the damn flood of emails stop. Thank god the first wasn't on a weekend..

--- Added later ---

I've been asked by the less-cron-literate to explain what in the world is funny about this. It's like this, see.. in the cron world, there are 5 basic ways to describe when a job should fire off.. They live on one line, in the form of numbers, separated by a space.

Let's pretend these things below are numbers not the friendly, descriptive words they realy are.

Minute Hour Day-of-Month Month Day-of-Week

That's the most simplistic view, there are some very complicated and confusing ways of using all this, but for the purposes of illustrating my blonded-ness (is that a word?) this will suffice. For a wildcard (at any possible-value for this column) you'd use, of course an asterisk (*). So say, if I want something to run on the 1st of every month, at a quarter after 3, i would do something like...

15 3 1 * * Run-little-cron-run

As opposed, to say, if I wanted something to run every minute of every hour on the first of the month.. then i would use, eh, you see it above.

Apparently the current value of a gmail invite is around $20.

Darn and I gave mine away for free..

I can only imagine the only reason anyone is paying for a free service is to get a decent username? They won't allow less than six chars though.. so I couldn't get "kasia".. bastards.

This is very amusing, a query from a tech support person working in India about SBC on our very own dslreports.

You have to see the humour in that.. really.

Someone, somewhere has my email address on their computer and also a lovely selection of a windows virus du-jour. That same person also has the subscription address to this particular Google-related blog. You put those three things together and what do you get?

A virus sent to that subscription address with my e-mail address as a return.. and in return a 'subscription confirmation' email in my inbox.

Amusing.

Karl: God is a narcoleptic.

Karl has some valid points. Karl is also pretty funny. Karl has a German name.

Personally, I think god sucks, and if he exists he really hates me. I wanted to go for a run today, woke up at an ungodly hour of 5:45, put on my ungodly running clothes, went outside and saw ungodly snow falling from the ungodly sky. Went back to my ungodly bed and slept for another ungodly hour. Cut the crap already. Goddamnit.

Now I'm ungodly tired and don't feel like going to the gym to run on the ungodly and boring treadmill. See what you're doing to me god? Do you see? I'm getting ungodly out of shape here.

People often complain that most good .com domains are taken. That is just not true, just this morning I found a whole list of really good names that nobody registered yet..

NudeOreillyAuthors.com
FixComputersForSex.com
GeekSexExchange.com
NudePerlCoders.com
NakedJava.com
SexyProgrammers.com

Although I'm sure as people read this entry and realize these fine names aren't taken they will get snatched up pretty quickly. Pity, LiveNudeGeeks.com appears to be taken.

.. states that a closed door and a cat exert a gravitational force of attraction at each other. Due to this force an action of closing a door will produce a reaction of a cat scratching at it. The location of the cat in reference to the door (side a or b) is not relevant.

Jeremy, Derek and I running the New York Marathon together. Me dressed in shorts, pantyhose and an evening-wear blouse.

No, I did not smoke anything before bed.

They even NUL-terminated the string.

[via Matt]

As of posting this entry, this still worked..

[kasia@cygnus ~]$ traceroute bell.ca

traceroute to bell.ca (198.235.69.11), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets

1 gw (66.198.51.97)
0.374 ms 0.302 ms 0.254 ms
<snip>

6 bells-network-has-lots-of-security-holes-to-exploit.bell-nexxia. (206.108.110.177)
22.558 ms 22.508 ms 22.507 ms

7 bells-network-has-lots-of-security-holes-to-exploit.bell-nexxia. (206.108.101.65)
22.542 ms 22.527 ms 22.482 ms

<snip>

[spotted on dslreports.com]

I believe I may have just acquired a winner for the 'dumbest thing you've ever done as root' collection.

I was busy cleaning out some unnecessary files from my home directory on one of our linux servers and noticed I have a nice collection of files owned by root in there.. most dating back a year or so.. hence most likely from an old project that's been deader than a doornail for a while now. Naturally, I decided to clean those out. Now being a conscientious (hah, that's a laugh, read on) unix user, instead of just doing it as root, I decided to change ownership and delete them as my own user.

Naturally.

sudo /bin/tcsh
cd /home/ktrapszo
chown -R ktrapszo:ktrapszo .*

Spotted it yet? Well.. I didn't. Not until there was an email from a confused unix admin that is.. "All files in /home are owned by ktrapszo.."

D'oh.. that looks familiar!

Thankfully, it took all of ten minutes to fix.. Thankfully the unix admins didn't see the huge red blush at the realization of my stupidity. Thankfully it wasn't /.. Thankfully our cvs repository isn't in /home.

I am truly a dumbass sometimes.

Spotted on one of those lighted-traffic-boards on the highway on the way to work this morning:

Yankee's suck RedSox Rule

On 91 South.. around exit for route 68.

This is something I meant to blog for a while, since discussing it with a co-worker (who has a nearly-teenage daughter) over a lunch and some general silliness.

One can measure the maturity of the human female by which character in the movie she is attracted to..

• Pre-teen girls are drawn to the boyish appearance of Frodo. An adult woman attracted to him is probably in need of therapy. Badly.
• Teenage girls (and men worldwide) are attracted to Legolas. Girls to the long blond hair and boyish good looks, men just want to look that cool when mounting a horse.
• Adult, grown women, of course, Aaragorn. He's full of raw sexuality and ragged masculinity. If your teenage daughter is attracted to him, buy a very large lock for her bedroom door.
• Older women, of course, the wisened and yet brave and never-fearing Gandalf. The ones who can still remember what sex is like probably prefer Aragorn though.

Star wars had a similar thing, except the selection wasn't quite as good. There was Luke for the kiddies and Han Solo for the adults.. Chewbacca? Nah..

It went something like this.. (variable names changed to protect the innocent)

public List getWhatever(int id) throws NotFoundException
{

    return (List) thisList;
}

Just like that.. stupid casts and all.. *banging head on wall*

A french language forum linked to me and I ran the pertinent post through babelfish.. results were rather amusing..

Attract its glance by the interlaced binary ones of satin and lace. Unroll a page HTML slowly delicately coded. Become the one evening hacktrice thanks to our secrecies of seduction. And do the cries of nail varnish you know? 8)

Anyone who speaks French.. was that even close? Heh.

I would say this is the best game review I read to date.. of course I don't read many.

I'll agree with most of it, except I don't like the lack of control sometimes..

so true.. so true..

My friend from the two previous entries (1, 2) saw the light..

Ok im sorry, you win. I acted like a moron and I will admit it. Please accept my apology I shouldn't have acted that way towards you about dslr username.

Take care.

Thank you, that shows some level of maturity and ability to learn. Apology accepted.

The ever clever, personable and bright hero of my previous entry decided to complain to my web-hosting provider.. Apparently my entry is abuse!

I have a feeling this lovely young fellow might keep providing me with amusement for a while..

From: admin@**nyc.com
To: support list at peakwebhosting
Subject: Abuse
Date: 11 Jul 2003 06:06:57 -0700

I'm writing regarding following article on http://unix-girl.com domain name:
http://www.unix-girl.com/blog/archives/001001.html#001001”.
The e-mails were edited and now our website had to be locked because of numerous port scans and ddos attacks.
This is direct flaming of ** Network NYC, not only it makes our company look bad it also forwards attacks to our main site affecting customers and staff members.

Thank you.

Reply:

From: Tech Support at peakwebhosting
To: abuse@**nyc.com
Subject: Re: Abuse
Date: 11 Jul 2003 07:35:18 -0700

We've reviewed the content you referenced, but there's not really anything we can do. We don't monitor the content of our customer websites unless it's clearly illegal: hers isn't even close to qualifying on that grounds. It's certainly an embarrasment - as it would be if one of our staff wrote something like that - but this is something you'll need to take up with Ms. Trapszo. Feel free to post in her weblog if you feel you have an alternate view.

But a number of our staff have met Kasia, and she's neither fat, ugly, nor an idiot.

Now, see, that's a good webhosting company.. standing by your errr, customers :) Thanks guys! (peakwebhosting.com).

Running a website with many regular users is fun.. sometimes too much fun. Particularly when one of those users threatens to hack said website (it actually happens fairly often.. but not always with such hilarious results (not the hacking mind you, the threats)).

Little background first..

Users are able to 'remove' their account by using a 'remove me' button.. which essentially disables the account from further use.. it's not actually deleted to preserve posts and history (although I could be persuaded to hit the magic button and nuke the whole thing given it doesn't disrupt much).

This particular user has done as much.. Disabled his account, which was a 'premium' account ($10 purchase and they're given $10 in 'points' that can be used for site tools.. support the site and all that happy stuff).. I'm actually half certain that in this case the premium status was donated by someone else anyway but I don't feel like digging through a large database just to prove such minor point.

So he removed his account.. on his own.. probably to be a drama queen, that's always been popular. Now he has a new account but decided he wants the old one back. We said "no". Too many people have done as much.. disabled an account just to create drama and then want it back.. Enough is enough and we put a stop to that..

This e-mail exchange ensues.. you probably don't want to read further.. but if you do.. go on!

From: admin@**nyc.com

ME BEING AN ASS? That fuck face is too lazy to give me old account back I keep asking him for weeks now that little bitch wont even give me refund and IM BEING AN ASS? [this is about another site admin able to restore accounts]

To: admin@**nyc.com
He's not too lazy.. we've made a policy of not returning accounts to members as it leads to 'dramacides' and constant problems.

You terminated your account now live with the choice.

And fuck-face should be hyphenated.

From: admin@**nyc.com
No you all will pay tomorrow I will own dslr

To: admin@**nyc.com
Whatever.. like you're the first 15 year old to threaten us.

From: admin@**nyc.com
Whatever I will own you for my $10 thieves

To: admin@**nyc.com
You're cheap.. a hacker for hire for mere $10?

What are you going to do make us use windows? Seriously.. we're not complete idiots...

X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165

I don't feel very threatened.

From: admin@**nyc.com
[root@nick root]# uptime
22:36:36 up 40 days, 1:40, 4 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
[root@nyc root]# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root)
groups=0(root),1(bin),2(daemon),3(sys),4(adm),6(disk),10(wheel)
[root@nyc root]#

I got rh and slack too booya! And over 10 .PL 100Mbps owned WINNT machines.

To: admin@**nyc.com
Nice load average.. 40 days? Am I supposed to be impressed? ..

[root@geddy /root]# uptime
10:29pm up 164 days, 17:45, 15 users, load average: 0.08, 0.08, 0.08

+497 days.. older kernels maxed out at that..

.. solaris..

# uptime
10:45pm up 204 day(s), 21:34, 20 users, load average: 0.29, 0.25,
0.26

Note real load averages.. and user count.. as in boxes in real use.. Seriously, take some advice, if you're trying to impress someone, particularly someone who has been a unix sysadmin professionally for years (like, say, me) don't show off your redhat box. That's just sad.

From: admin@**nyc.com
*flexes*
Imfao my system passed that kernel limit like 3 times now.. ha ha on you. And its not about uptime sweetie you just said i have no *nix you dumb bitch. "who has been a unix sysadmin professionally for years (like say, me) don't show off your redhat box." Omg should i bow down to you? Get some knee pads and start working.

To: admin@**nyc.com
Really? 3 times? So huh.. which redhat version is it that you're running again? Those older kernels have horrible security issues..

I didn't say you didn't have access to unix.. I made fun of you using outlook. Not quite the same but I see it's a sensitive topic?

From: admin@**nyc.com
Fat bitch

How do you explain that FAT ASS BUTTER FACE of yours?!.

I use windows because i need it for design okie? You stupid bitch. I run slackware 8. I dont give a fuck you owe me $10.

To: admin@**nyc.com
4 years of uptime on slackware 8? You either got the developers beat on the release or you're really bad at math..

I don't owe you $10.. you closed your account of your own volition (http://www.m-w.com/ in case you need to look up the big words).

.. but if your business is doing so poorly (based on your load average I'd say it is) I'll give you the 10 toolpoints.. see, because I'm a nice person.. well, that and all fat people are jolly.

From: admin@**nyc.com
Did i hurt your feelings :\ AWWW.. SHUT THE FUCK UP

From: admin@**nyc.com
Its not about $10 its about my account date and principle. I saw many people who dolalrcided "to try it" to be back on same account there even fucking thread about it on dslra dn one guy just did it for fun. But when I need to get it back NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO im too fucking fat to type restore account command my fingers press 2 keys and its really hard omg omg. Oh and stfu thats my free server for people who cant afford to buy hosting you stupid bitch atleast im not a greedy fuck like whole DSLR is fuckign money eaters

To: admin@**nyc.com
Oh, stop flattering me so.. gosh.. you're making me blush!

It had to stop somewhere.. well, gee, guess you should have been nicer to us mods huh?

You can't even get a decent amount of load when giving away hosting for free? Now that's sad :)

Good luck kiddo

From: admin@**nyc.com
I was ncie to FATTY but that fat fuck is a shit head. ANd fuck you fat bitch.
[Once again, he means another site admin]

To: admin@**nyc.com
Isn't it past your bedtime?

G'night, I'll wait for the hacking tomorrow.

From: admin@**nyc.com
FAt people like to sleep ?! Oh no? You dont have to go to work in the morning cuz you got my money i forgot fuciking theives!

From: admin@**nyc.com
THIEVES!

[The one's below are from today..]

From: admin@**nyc.com
Slut

To: admin@**nyc.com
Hey, shouldn't you be 'owning' dslr by now? I cancelled my evening plans just for the occasion!

you disappoint me.

From: admin@**nyc.com
I decided not to own dslr because im afraid you going to sue me for every penny i got so youc an eat more junk food.

From: admin@**nyc.com
Fat fucks

[I decided to end it there :) ]

This scientology handbook from 1976 will explain how you can be the hero and fix all that is wrong in our society..

They even tell you how to deal with drug addiction..

What you can tell those on drugs will interest them -- that through proper vitamins and learning Scientology training drills to bring up their confront (sic) and communication level, they are able to come off drugs without having harsh withdrawal symptoms or suffering inhumane treatment.

Vitamins! That's what I was missing!

Spotted on his weblog...

Our father, who art in Redmond
Microsoft be thy name
Thy monopoly come, thy will be done
throughout the earth as it is in the US.
Give us this day, our daily license activation key
And forgive us our bug reports
as we forgive our system crashes
And lead us not into competition
But deliver us from innovation
For thine is the Control, and the Power and the Greed
Forever. Amen.

original on slashdot.

My inbox is just full of wonderful e-mail and high-quality advice lately. This here is a fine example of the advice given to me by some of my readers..

Hi Kasia or whatever ur name is,dont u think it'd be way cooler if you wrote about things that people can relate to,like boyfriend stuff?if you havent got a boyfriend then im sorry

It is thanks to this type of quality advice and touching insight into my readers minds that I can continue to bring you top-of-the-line blogging fun! Boredom.. err.. whatever.. Coming up tomorrow: "Like, omg! My bf got us eminem tickets! Totally!".. and other adventures in brain-dead-land.

Hey, how come nobody tells Jeremy to write about his boyfriend?

This is just too funny! It may be worth the $60 a month it would cost me to get HBO just to watch Ali G.

YOUNG MAN: Isn't there a real danger that someone give a message over the radio to one of them fighter pilots, saying, `Bomb Ira——' and the geezer doesn't heard it properly and bombs Iran instead of Iraq?

Who says the British have no sense of humour.

Cell phone, that is.

[via: wired]

Good!

I wonder what Verizon will say when they see that?

Spotted by Justin in a local Brooklyn paper.

A new winner..

"Want to get together and compare google rankings?"

Prior winner was: "We should go grab a drink and discuss egrep!"

Sadly, I'm not making these up..

*hic*

I know, I know, linking to jokes, but this is just too funny.. love the pictures.

Instant Girlfriend kit.

Guardian Unlimited:

Ignoring the fact that George Bush declined Saddam Hussein's challenge to a televised debate, Tim Dowling exclusively reveals what could have happened had they met

1. Listen to clearchannel stations
2. Knit a sweater for your favorite grandson
3. Play Scrabble
4. Have evil thoughts
5. Hunt for dinner
6. Drop your cell phone on the floor while attempting to answer it.. flail your arm wildly attempting to retrieve it without actually stopping the car and end up pushing your seat all the way back by grabbing something that seemed to be a cell phone but wasn't. Then stomp your legs around like a wild boar in a potato field as you discover you can no longer reach the brake pedal.
7. Stepping on your cell phone as you tumble down hill and grab at the hand-brake in panic isn't a winner either.

It was a local, empty road, thankfully.. amazingly, the cell phone, car and idiot driver survived intact. Those little Motorolas are sturdy.

Nothing?

It will launch in ah.. eh..negative time...

Time warp or whoever left last just forgot to turn off the lights?

(found elsewhere)

They're multiplying.. What's this now.. number four?. Should I start asking for commission?

Refs:
One
Two
Three

There are very few things less pleasant than driving through a winter snow storm in the dark.. Today I learned what they are.. intimately.

As I was driving home, through showers of white, cold, horrible stuff falling from the sky I got a flat tire. Flat tire in a snow storm? Yes, it can happen, I'm living proof. Easy, you say, just call road assistance, right? Wrong.. they claim a delay of two+ hours due to all the tow trucks being out rescuing span out SUVs from snow dunes.. Alright, I thought I would just change it myself.. I've never changed my own flat tire before, but how hard could it be? A few bolts to unscrew, a spare to put on.. piece of cake.

Sure, changing a flat is probably easy if you're not stuck in a snow storm in the middle of central CT being passed by speeding SUVs and old grannies wavering from one side of the road to the other. It being a death trap aside.. route 15 in CT has no breakdown lane.. fun.

Then a plow track passed me by.. going around 50 miles per hour.. plowing and sanding..

Being covered from head to toe in snow, sand and rock salt is not pleasant, fun or enjoyable. Although the service-type-person at the garage I went to fix my flat at (who wants to drive around on a donut in snow?) found it very amusing. I don't.. my winter coat is ruined -- road salt leaves stains.

This week over yet? Should I be concerned my right eye is now in pain from the salt?

If this continues Chris will have to start giving volume discounts to whoever buys the unix-girl ones.. On the other hand he might be starting to get sick of sashimi by now :)

Refs:
One
Two

Okay, who's the wise guy responsible for the new rent-a-chest advertisment for my site?

Mere $20 not bad.. As I told Scott I spend more money on less amusing things on daily basis.

Here's hoping Chris gets some decent sashimi with the proceeds! God knows you can't get that in CT (decent sashimi that is.. I think you can get plenty of geeky chests here).

I do have a local copy...

swoon.

Sure, Mark is great.. but there's only so much I want to dive into..

. . Porn! Full frontal nudity, baby. Need I say more? New pictures daily! . .

Can I pay $40 a year to assure this won't happen? Please? $80? I'll give up my laptop! Final offer!

A practical guide:

A real wanker considers his time infinitely more valuable than his reader's. (You are a real wanker, aren't you?) Accordingly, don't hesitate to conserve keystrokes. Address your reader as 'u'; 'you' is time-consuming and obsolete. Never 'see' something if you can 'c' it instead. Refer to groups as 'ppl' rather than 'people'. Don't put a task off until 'later', do it 'l8r'. Tell your critics to 'stfu' instead of asking them to 'shut the fuck up'. If your reader has the time to actually read the drivel you post, they surely have the time to decode your dribbling shorthand.

Good one.. [via: Mark]

Read this very amusing story about adventures in the use of public transportation.

There's something about Chicago I'll bet anything you didn't know. It's not in any guidebook. And that is the fact that Chicago's citizens feel compelled to show me their genitalia on public transportation. It's true, and it's happened to me multiple times. They ride the train, they see me board, and they reach into their collective pants.

[via brandt]

Why you shouldn't buy kids teddy bears...
(view only if you like sick jokes)

You never know about those bears!

[I'd credit someone but not sure who..]

New CERT advisory this morning:

During an NMAP audit of the AOS 5.1.1 code that runs on the Alcatel OmniSwitch 7700/7800 LAN switches, it was determined a telnet server was listening on TCP port number 6778. This was used during development to access the Wind River Vx-Works operating system. Due to an oversight, this access was not removed prior to product release.

*doh*

I've had Poland Spring water delivery for years. Recently, I decided it's not worth the hassle (I always forget to put out the empties and change my delivery order to something more sane than four bottles a month while using two) and I could use the space in the basement for something more interesting than empty water bottles. So I canceled my delivery and just now (about five months later) ran out of the stockpile of water I built up over the months.

Most of my friends seem to use and like the Brita filters. Why not, I went ahead (to my local, unfriendly Target) and purchased the large dispenser kind. The instructions to use the thing are dirt simple. Any idiot could do it. An idiot could, but apparently I cannot.

They tell you to throw out the first batch of water. Great, I can do that. Apparently I can, all over my kitchen floor completely missing the sink. (I'm talented that way).

Half hour later, after I mopped the floor, dried and consoled one of the cats and threw out a brand new roll of paper towels (which managed to absorb about a gallon of water, hey those bounty towels really do absorb!) I filled the dispenser with water, once again, put it in the refrigerator and happily went on with my life.

Half hour later, came to the kitchen to get some water... my refrigerator.. flooded. How? I forgot to turn off the bloody little spigot that looks to be off when it's really on and it flooded my cage-free-hen eggs, my baby carrots and a couple of cucumbers.

Sometimes I wonder how I managed to stay alive as long as I have. This kind of things happens to me all the time.

The water tastes fine.

One must feel sorry for the victims of this scam.. but I can't help but laugh..

The average blue whale produces over 400 gallons of sperm when it ejaculates, but only 10% of that actually makes it into his mate.

[Don't ask me where I found this one]

This is probably the funniest satire website I've seen in a long time.. I thought the testimonials were hilarious.. then I read the letters..

Find out what google says about you!

This is fun... I'm learning all these new things about myself!

kasia is actually drinking beer
kasia is installed
kasia is makes top ten bitches again for 2001
kasia is a recognized expert in the complex field of non
kasia is a simple program that allows you to play with another person online
kasia is a valuable resource to executives and managers and she brings experience to each assignment to achieve results
kasia is another fan of long
kasia is willing to do light housework

[via: Reflective Surface]

Take that Microsoft.

Linux wins a google fight, my life is now complete :)

No comment necessary.

[via: scriptingnews]

Cannot even use a real person to fake an ad.. don't they have enough money to pay someone off?

They took the page down.. but I grabbed a screenshot from google's cache to preserve it for posterity..

Stock photo they used is here.

The "editor's note" at the end is a nice touch..

Editor's Note: Now that we've successfully converted our writer to a Windows PC, we will be working on getting her to try a Pocket PC. Stay tuned for more developments!

[via: slashdot]

Update:
Yahoo news

An employee at a public relations company hired by Microsoft, Valerie G. Mallinson of Shoreline, Wash., later acknowledged she was Microsoft's mysterious convert. The Associated Press tracked Mallinson by examining personal data hidden within documents that Microsoft had published with its controversial ad.

How ironic that the horrible lack of privacy thanks to MS software is what made it easy to find her :)