I was quoted in a Wall Street Journal story:
Spammers also scour lists of email addresses for names that sound native to certain countries, analysts say. Kasia Trapszo, a programmer in New Britain, Conn., says she believes the 20 to 30 Russian spam messages she receives each week are due to her Polish last name, which "sounds Russian."
Is there some secret cabal composed of VW Beetle owners whose secret sign is to stick fake flowers behind the steering column? I believe I've seen about 30 examples of this in the last couple of years and every single one was a new beetle..
Some time in the next millions of years
Man, I hate fear mongering in the news..
I don't watch tv.. well, nearly at all. I used to watch the daily show before Comcast decided to re-arrange tv channels and I lost Comedy Central but gained a whole lot of news channels.
I'm currently reading a book about young people not following the news so I thought it would be interesting to watch some tv news just to see what it's like these days.. Conclusion? Scary, scary, scary, scary.
What in the world has happened to our news? Over a couple of hours of news this is what I was exposed to:
1. A scare story about avian flu. Now anyone who is a little educated about recent events already knows all about avian flu (if you don't, October National Geographic had an excellent article about it). This news story wasn't really news though.. more of a "aaaah, we're all going to die! Panic now!" kind of story. Apparently they gauged the preparedness of hospitals and emergency centers by calling them with symptoms of such diseases as bubonic plague and smallpox and then panicking based on nobody being able to recognize the disease. Frankly, I'd be panicking if anyone diagnosed such an unlikely disease over the phone.. but why be logical.
2. A show whose sole purpose appears to be to judge and convict (on air only, of course) a man arrested for suspected murder of a young girl. "Instead of 18th birthday celebration she's being buried!"... And of course the entire program is focused on essentially hanging this young man before he even gets a trial.. because he was unemployed and a "shady character".. My favorite quote from this one was..
Some "panel member": He claims to be bi-polar..
Host (interrupting mid-sentence) yells something about collecting government money for a non-disease.
Did I mention they were talking about why he should or should not be executed?
After watching tv news for a couple hours.. I'm glad most young people don't.
It seems Information Week is having an exceedingly slow news week.. either that or they decided to start boosting their traffic with scare-nonsense stories.
Login page not displayed via SSL! Gee.. who in the world cares? Then again this thread in a "security" related forum is full of panicking users already..
Encrypting a page that contains absolutely no sensitive information is a waste of CPU cycles..
I'm sure I missed some.. All that and people volunteer for more!.
Want some anonymity online? Check out Tor.
I'm not doing anything wrong so have nothing to fear! Right! (No, I'm not moving into the woods and writing manifestos.. yet...)
I don't think I've ever recommended movie in my blog before.. but this one is just too good to miss. Really, it has everything: aliens, zombies, rock'n roll, love stories and a sound moral! Wild Zero may just be the greatest movie ever made..
Connecticut is a weird state..
Traveling is fun but damn, it's good to be home. Flying on Friday before 4th of July is apparently a really bad idea.. My plane spent forty minutes on the runway in Philadelphia waiting for our turn.. I mean.. really.. 40 minutes! Insane.
I was a little disappointed with the quality of technical sessions at JavaOne this year.. granted some were great.. but others (the JXTA session on Thursday comes to mind) seemed to be more of an overview or an advertisement than a technical session.
Perhaps a few ideas for next JavaOne:
I do love going to conferences even if I don't do it particularly often..
Someone asked this question in a dslr forum.. the site obviously just showed up (Nothing shows in google when searching for the name) but all the warning signs are there:
There.. now there should be a google results when searching for "edirectclub.com".
Do take care.
Someone spent a lot of time making these slides look, er, I guess spiffy is the word? Not sure what they were going for.. but readability is not it.
They're unusable, unreadable and largely useless. I'd much rather see black and white simple slides.. heck, just text would do. It would be more useful.
As you travel through space faster your travel through time decreases.. and vice versa, right? Wouldn't that mean a body in freefall (therefore not traveling through space) is traveling through time at fullest possible speed.. therefore should age faster?
1. It is far too easy to accidentally open every highlighted email in a separate little window using Apple Mail.
2. Quitting the app seems like a good idea to get rid of the 100s of windows (34 to be exact) but it doesn't work, they just open back up when going back to Mail (eating up CPU cycles and filling up RAM).
3. There appears to be no way to close all windows (or I just can't find it) or an option to not remember which bloody windows were opened when Apple Mail is quit.
grrrr
*click* *click* *click* x 34
I like daylight saving time.. it saves daylight! Well, I like the longer days anyway. At least it raises the possibility of going for a run in the park after work (naturally, not the actuality of it). What I don't like is the switch -- it throws my inner clock out of whack, and frankly, I'm not a morning person.
If daylight saving time gives us more hours of daylight in the 'live-able' hours of the day therefore saving electricity, sanity and calories.. why the bloody hell don't we just stay on it? Why switch (by which I mean switch-back to non-DST)? Let Arizona and those other backwater states stay in their timewarp and the rest of us can enjoy nice evenings full of sunlight.
We live in strange times. A school shooting overshadowed on the news by a case of a woman who is brain dead and should be allowed to die. One would have to live under a rock to escape reading and hearing about this one.. The only real news story here is that our government just made a really bad precedent by intervening in this case. I suppose state rights are for mere decoration and grandstanding takes precedence to constitution.
There is another news worthy item hidden in this messy story. One Dr William Hammesfahr. News stories like this one have been popping up left and right each inevitably quoting the "world renowned, Nobel Prize nominee in medicine". That made me wonder, how can it be that a neurologist of such standing as to be nominated for a Nobel Prize (no small achievement) is all but ignored by not only courts but also his own colleagues? This question let to a google search and in about 15 minutes, me, a programmer with too much time on her hands, was able to discredit the good doctor. Why is the news media even quoting this person?
You too can follow the bread crumbs and see the credibility behind the opinions.
Doctor Hammesfahr has a website, his own neurological institute and an impressive list of services. What he doesn't have is even one published peer-reviewed article in a medical journal. How does one receive a Nobel Prize nomination without ever being published? Good question! One doesn't.
According to the Nobel Prize FAQ the nominees are kept secret for 50 years. That means the nominees don't know they're nominated. So how did our doctor find out? He has a letter to prove it! From the Nobel committee? Well.. no.. from his local congressman to the Nobel Committee recommending Hammesfahr's nomination for the "Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine". No, there is no such thing as a Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine.
Feeling sick yet? All those journalists quoting the doctor (who's doing the talk show circuit right now) and referring to his Nobel Prize nomination are really referring to a letter from a Florida congressman who can't even distinguish between the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize for achievement in the field of Medicine. And all it took was a 15 minute google search. Way to go "journalists".
In case you're still wondering if a letter like that has any validity as a nomination.. it doesn't. Here is a list of people who can nominate someone for the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine. A congressman is not on the list. This "nomination" means about as much as if I sent a letter to the same committe recommending Steve Friedl for the Nobel Peace Prize in Windows Reinstalling.
A co-worker and I were reminiscing about schools. We both went to state schools in CT: he to UConn, I to CCSU. The favorite topic of discussion about one's school days is of course, the really funky, weird, annoying, bad or just plain rude and obnoxious professors we had. I had one of those.. the obnoxious and rude kind. He either hated me or just my hair color - at any rate, he loved to pick on me in class and downgrade my work for any non-programming related reason possible. Although to be fair, he did that last one to everyone, but as far as I know, I'm the only one whose hair color he ridiculed in front of the whole class. Just one of those really nit-picky people with something to prove to all those young and fresh CS students. Back to my co-worker.. he mentioned a quirky, weird English professor he had at UConn who would climb on top of a table and disperse inspiration in a loud voice..
"Someone watched 'The dead poets society' one time too many!" - I said.
"Oh yah, heh" - giggle from the co-worker..
"Wait" - he added - "I think that *was* him in that movie"
Well, what do you know.. Sam Pickering, an English Professor at UConn was the inspiration for Robin William's character.
I suppose this goes to prove... one person's inspiration is another person's "weird English teacher"!
Ever wonder just how many radio stations clearchannel owns in your area? I was almost right about CT, guessed 4 or 5, it's in reality 5:
List of words I used to think I made up but turned out to be in wide-use:
When I was about five years old I made up this terrific word game. It was fun, imaginative and occupied my mind for hours. One day, feeling particularly generous towards my (normally hated) older brother I decided to share it with him. You simply took the last letter of the first word that came to you mind and had to think up a word that started with it.. then took the last letter of that word, and so on. I bet he's still laughing at me for thinking I made up a game everyone else in the world already knew. Life is so rough sometimes.
I had a fascinating lesson about the electronic payment processing between banks today. I, as probably most do, have always assumed this happens in (or nearly) real time between banks. It couldn't be further from the truth.
The process is done by central clearing facilities (currently it's The Fed (Federal Reserve) and another processor whose name I can't recall right now) using the ACH Network.
Not only is this done through an intermediary, it's a batch processing system governed by strict timing rules.
So what happens when you send money electronically using your bank to another bank?
If you're a programmer or a system architect your first question is probably "so what happens when the receiving bank never recieves a notice that someone wants money from one of their clients but the Fed thinks it sent the debit?" That's where the processor is most useful to the banks, they handle reconciliation and balancing.
This system was designed in 1974 and this is our modern electronic payment processing system. How is it better than checks? You can process debits and credits, that's about it!
Note, there is nothing stopping the banks from going directly between each other for these transactions, but it becomes costly when you consider that each relationship between two banks would need to involve accounting settlements to make sure there were no mistakes in fund transfers and everyone received and paid the money they should have. Currently, the processer (the Fed) does this for the banks.
As noted here I took a drive down to NYC on Saturday to deliver a relative to Staten Island (she really had to be there for Sunday morning). Forecast claimed it would start snowing in NYC around 3pm, well, the forecast was wrong as this image is the entrance to the Verezzano bridge leaving Brooklyn well before 3pm and as evidence shows the snow is thick, heavy, on the ground and the bridge nearly unpassable. Kudos to the NY transit authority for closing the (covered) lower level and leaving the upper level opened during a heavy blizzard! Way to go guys, how many cars did you end up towing from there? For the record, it took nearly two hours to cross the bridge thanks to almost every non-four-wheel-drive getting stuck in deep snow going uphill.
Picture taken through a drity windshield with my camera phone in crummy lighting. But I liked the sign -- it seemed oddly appropriate.
I asked myself today what would he say about Iraq? None of us can know that, but while reading his speeches, I ran across "Beyond Vietnam" from April 1967.
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
Amen
Only in Connecticut (well, that I know of) could you experience something like this..
It's 12:10 am, you're sitting on your couch in your comfortable, warm living room, there is a dusting of snow outside and light snow still coming down.
Suddenly, you hear intermitten police siren-beeps and vague loud-speaker anouncements.. there are blue-and-red lights bouncing off your walls..
No! Don't panic! It's not zee germans coming!
It's just a parking ban and they're (loudly, I should note) anouncing that all cars parked on the street will be towed.
There is about one inch of snow on the ground..
My street gets about 10 cars passing it a day and it's all people who live here..
It's after midnight on a weeknight.
*sigh*.. only in CT will a police siren wake you up at 12am to move your car so they can plow that entire inch of light snow.
(I park in my driveway, doesn't apply to me)
This story opens up an interesting question. Are you still protected by privacy laws after you die and should you be?
On one hand you have the family who lost their son and only wish to have all that remains of his memory, on the other a man's legitimate assumption of privacy, dead or alive. To me, the answer is pretty clear. Had he wanted his family to have these emails, he would have either made the password known or sent the emails to them.
There is a second angle to this story that is not mentioned in the article. The soldier is dead, but what of the people he corresponded with? Do they lose a right to privacy once the recipient dies? Of course, yet another angle is can anyone legitimately claim email is private in the first place.
Before siding with the family, I think everyone should think of their most embarrassing email and then imagine their mom reading it. Yah, I thought so. Go Yahoo.
So it appears our big brothers in Washington have been able to track every color print on certain laser printers for quite some time now.
That's right folks! This is not in communist China, but here in good ol' US of A. The government makes secret deals with printer manufacturers without public disclosure.
According to experts, several printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those machines produce. Governments, including the United States, already use the hidden markings to track counterfeiters.
Hmm... right, counterfeiters, because after all, historically a government has never abused its power! Let's not forget this is not just the US government we're talking about here, these printers are sold worldwide.
What a horrible precedent and invasion of privacy. Thanks Xerox and Canon, you officially stink for handing over the privacy of your customers. Who exactly pays for your companies to stay in business?
So what else is going on that we have yet to hear about? Special encoding in cell phones to track key words? Let me guess.. to fight the terrorists.
.. and the best point:
Hartford's Bradley Airport now has free wireless available to all travellers (well, I guess technically anyone, they provide you the username and password on the login page).
It doesn't completely suck either, it's SNET (local SBC spawn) dsl.
Finally, something I can be happy about when flying out of Hartford!
(On the way to California in case someone's wondering what the hell I'm doing here).
.. and now I also have a power socket (the art of finding power sockets is to look for the geeks with laptops hiding in corners).
Source: Natural Resources Defense Council
JANUARY 20, 2001
White House freezes all rules set at end of Clinton term–including tougher ones for raw sewage
JANUARY 20, 2001
Bush proposes opening Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling
FEBRUARY 12, 2001
Energy Department puts off enforcing new efficiency standards for air conditioners
FEBRUARY 15, 2001
EPA delays new rule protecting wetlands from mining and development
MARCH 7, 2001
Fish and Wildlife Service withdraws report calling for protection of endangered salmonids
MARCH 9, 2001
Bush appoints oil and mining lobbyist as deputy secretary of Interior
MARCH 13, 2001
Bush reneges on campaign promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions
MARCH 16, 2001
Bush administration refuses to defend in court rule protecting 58 million acres of wild forest
MARCH 20, 2001
Bush withdraws proposed stricter limits on arsenic in drinking water
MARCH 28, 2001
Bush administration rejects Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change
APRIL 9, 2001
Bush budget proposal cuts $500 million from EPA
MAY 10, 2001
Bush administration refuses to name industry participants in Cheney energy task force
MAY 12, 2001
Bureau of Land Management allows continued grazing on endangered-tortoise land in California
MAY 17, 2001
Bush releases energy plan heavily favoring fossil fuels and nukes
MAY 17, 2001
Forest Service reduces citizen and scientific participation in decision-making
MAY 22, 2001
EPA officially suspends stricter limits for arsenic in drinking water
JUNE 19, 2001
States and others sue Energy Department over air-conditioner rules (see FEBRUARY 12, 2001)
JUNE 21, 2001
Timber lobbyist Mark Rey appointed to key post in Forest Service
JULY 2, 2001
Oil drilling off Florida coast proposed by Bush administration
JULY 23, 2001
Bush budget proposes cutting 270 EPA inspector jobs
AUGUST 2, 2001
Army Corps of Engineers kills plan to protect Missouri River wildlife by changing stream flows
AUGUST 8, 2001
Army Corps of Engineers weakens wetlands protections by slackening permit requirements
AUGUST 12, 2001
National forests opened to roadbuilding and logging by Forest Service rule changes
AUGUST 14, 2001
EPA delays tougher rules for toxic power-plant emissions
AUGUST 17, 2001
Federal judge's decision to ban drilling off California's coast appealed by administration
AUGUST 27, 2001
Cattle still grazing on tortoise habitat in California, despite BLM agreement to move them
AUGUST 28, 2001
Bush administration proposes missile-defense test installation in Pacific; environmentalists sue
AUGUST 28, 2001
Bush administration reconsiders ban on recycling radioactive metals into consumer products
SEPTEMBER 13, 2001
EPA lies about Manhattan hazards after 9/11, calls area safe despite extreme toxic pollution
SEPTEMBER 20, 2001
Forest Service proposes further reduction in citizen participation in policymaking
OCTOBER 25, 2001
Interior Department weakens environmental rules for mining operations
OCTOBER 31, 2001
Arsenic flip-flop: Under public pressure, EPA adopts higher standard after all (see MAY 22, 2001)
NOVEMBER 2, 2001
Army Corps of Engineers retreats from policy of "no net loss" of wetlands
NOVEMBER 5, 2001
Bush signs bill to boost spending for national forests, but with harmful logging riders
NOVEMBER 29, 2001
Minnesota's Voyageurs National Park reopens winter lakes to snowmobiles
DECEMBER 3, 2001
Army Corps of Engineers decides not to decommission Snake River dams in Pacific Northwest
DECEMBER 14, 2001
Administration announces weaker standards for nuclear waste storage at Nevada's Yucca Mountain
DECEMBER 14, 2001
Forest Service announces more roadbuilding on undeveloped forestlands
JANUARY 9, 2002
Administration backs hydrogen-car research, but most hydrogen to come from fossil fuels
JANUARY 10, 2002
Study shows big drop in enforcement of environmental laws under Bush
JANUARY 10, 2002
Bush administration fights in court for new oil drilling off California coast
JANUARY 14, 2002
Report shows Interior secretary squelched her own agency's criticism of weaker wetlands rules
JANUARY 14, 2002
Wetlands protections weakened nationwide in flip-flop from Bush campaign promise
JANUARY 14, 2002
Park Service okays more oil drilling in Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve
JANUARY 21, 2002
BLM preliminarily approves gas drilling in Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, Montana
JANUARY 22, 2002
Forest Service sues to overturn ban on salvage logging in Montana's Bitterroot National Forest
JANUARY 28, 2002
Bush supports Cheney's refusal to release secret energy-task-force records
FEBRUARY 4, 2002
Bush slashes environmental-education spending
FEBRUARY 4, 2002
Bush budget proposes cutting $1 billion from environmental spending
FEBRUARY 4, 2002
Bush budget proposes $404 million to support timber sales in national forests
FEBRUARY 11, 2002
Environmentalists sue Park Service for allowing motorized vehicles in Georgia wilderness
FEBRUARY 14, 2002
Bush gives power plants ten more years to cut mercury and sulfur dioxide emissions
FEBRUARY 14, 2002
White House unveils global-warming plan that lets C02 emissions continue at present rate
FEBRUARY 15, 2002
Bush endorses plan to store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain
FEBRUARY 15, 2002
Forest Service approves mining exploration in Missouri's Mark Twain National Forest
FEBRUARY 16, 2002
Bush administration asks court to delay endangered-species protection in California
FEBRUARY 19, 2002
Phaseout of snowmobiles in national parks delayed
FEBRUARY 22, 2002
BLM proposes to let states allow vehicles in previously off-limits federal lands
FEBRUARY 23, 2002
Bush's budget asks that taxpayers pay for Superfund cleanups instead of polluters
FEBRUARY 27, 2002
Top EPA official resigns to protest Bush's effort to weaken rules for polluting industries
FEBRUARY 27, 2002
Federal judge orders Bush administration to release Cheney's secret energy-task-force records
MARCH 12, 2002
Bush administration belatedly complies with court order to protect desert tortoise
MARCH 18, 2002
EPA exempts large category of power plants from lawsuits for Clean Air Act violations
MARCH 25, 2002
Discovery that White House misspent $135,612 of clean-energy funds to print its energy plan
MARCH 29, 2002
Pentagon seeks exemption from environmental laws
APRIL 1, 2002
Deadline passes for administration to set first new fuel-economy standards since 1996
APRIL 11, 2002
Army Corps of Engineers approves mining limestone in 5,400 acres of Florida's everglades
APRIL 14, 2002
White House kills program that funded environmental research for graduate students
APRIL 22, 2002
EPA citizen-watchdog resigns in protest, charging that agency |officials muzzled him
MAY 3, 2002
New EPA rules allow mining operations to dump waste in waterways
MAY 13, 2002
Administration asks judge not to limit waste-dumping from mountaintop mines
MAY 13, 2002
Bush signs farm bill that pays big subsidies to polluting agricultural operations
MAY 21, 2002
Ban on mining in and around Oregon's Siskiyou National Forest ends
MAY 23, 2002
Energy Department cuts air-conditioner efficiency standards
MAY 24, 2002
Bush-Putin summit produces nuclear treaty that puts no long-term limit on nuclear weapons
MAY 24, 2002
Bush administration drops plan |for contractors to put environmental protection into projects
JUNE 3, 2002
Oil drilling leases on more than 500,000 acres in Alaska signed by Interior Department
JUNE 7, 2002
Interior secretary rejects proposal to limit offshore oil drilling in California
JUNE 13, 2002
Missouri River restoration halted indefinitely by Army Corps of Engineers
JUNE 13, 2002
EPA proposes weakening clean-air rules for 17,000 power plants
JUNE 13, 2002
Judge halts Bush administration move to end habitat protection on 500,000 acres in California
JUNE 17, 2002
Judge rejects Army Corps of Engineers plan to allow mine-waste dumping
JUNE 24, 2002
EPA abandons plan to clean up storm-water pollution
JUNE 25, 2002
Bush administration blames wildfires on environmentalists
JUNE 25, 2002
Snowmobiling allowed to continue in national parks, though with some restrictions
JUNE 25, 2002
EPA ombudsman testifies Bush administration pressured him to halt study of radiation standards
JULY 1, 2002
Bush administration cuts funding for toxic cleanups to half of that requested by EPA
JULY 2, 2002
Bush administration rescinds 4 million acres of protection for endangered California frog
JULY 10, 2002
Judge orders administration to protect 400,000 Calif. acres for endangered Alameda whipsnake
JULY 15, 2002
Navy given permit to use low-frequency sonar, a known threat to whales
JULY 17, 2002
Bush administration opposes Senate bill to require 10 percent renewable energy by 2020
JULY 22, 2002
Bush's State Department says it will withhold $34 million from UN family-planning program
JULY 25, 2002
Another top EPA official quits in protest
JULY 26, 2002
Bush administration backs congressional proposal to exempt companies from disclosing hazards
AUGUST 7, 2002
EPA proposes weakened water-cleanups; asks for "voluntary" efforts
AUGUST 15, 2002
Conservatives praise Bush for skipping United Nations summit on sustainable development
AUGUST 22, 2002
Interior Department claims new power plant won't harm air at Mammoth Cave National Park, Ky.
AUGUST 22, 2002
Bush calls for increased logging in name of fire prevention
AUGUST 27, 2002
U.S. opposes targets for renewable energy use at World Summit on Sustainable Development
AUGUST 29, 2002
Interior Department approves billion-dollar plan to store water under Mojave Desert
AUGUST 30, 2002
Foe of ecological restoration Allan Fitzsimmons named head of federal wildfire prevention
SEPTEMBER 3, 2002
White House asks exemption from Freedom of Information Act in energy-task-force suit
SEPTEMBER 4, 2002
Federal officials reject call to add white marlin to endangered list
SEPTEMBER 9, 2002
States' EPA air-quality inspections shown to have dropped by 34 percent
SEPTEMBER 13, 2002
EPA weakens proposed anti-pollution standards for off-road vehicles
SEPTEMBER 15, 2002
EPA deletes global-warming section from pollution report
SEPTEMBER 17, 2002
Bush replacing most scientists on chemical-hazard panel with those tied to chemical industry
SEPTEMBER 18, 2002
Bush executive order cuts citizen involvement in review of road and airport projects
SEPTEMBER 21, 2002
Killing of 34,000 salmonids results from federal diversion of Klamath River water in Oregon
SEPTEMBER 27, 2002
Interior secretary okays gold mining on sacred Indian site in California
SEPTEMBER 30, 2002
New EPA water-quality report shows U.S. waters are getting dirtier
OCTOBER 1, 2002
Fish and Wildlife Service reverses order to increase Missouri River flow to protect species
OCTOBER 3, 2002
Conservationists urge White House to release $36.5 million in conservation funds for farmlands
OCTOBER 4, 2002
Bureau of Land Management approves largest oil and gas drilling exploration ever in Utah
OCTOBER 8, 2002
EPA water administrator says war on terror leaves little money for water cleanup
OCTOBER 8, 2002
Bush stacks panel on lead poisoning with people tied to the lead industry
OCTOBER 8, 2002
Federal workers reveal memo from EPA chief encouraging them to support president when off-duty
OCTOBER 9, 2002
Bush administration sides with auto industry in suit against California's emission rules
OCTOBER 10, 2002
Administration failed to assess vulnerability of chemical facilities to terrorists, GAO says
OCTOBER 15 2002
Superfund cleanups drop to 42 per year from average of 76 under Clinton, report shows
OCTOBER 16, 2002
Judge finds Forest Service violates Endangered Species Act by not protecting spotted-owl habitat
OCTOBER 17, 2002
Bush administration told by federal judge to release energy documents in Sierra Club lawsuit
OCTOBER 31, 2002
EPA halts funding at seven Superfund sites
NOVEMBER 1, 2002
Bush administration threatens withdrawal from historic UN population accord
NOVEMBER 5, 2002
Polluters paid 64 percent less in fines under Bush than in last two Clinton years, report shows
NOVEMBER 11, 2002
Bush administration supports renewed elephant-ivory trade
NOVEMBER 12, 2002
National Park Service proposal would allow 1,100 snowmobiles a day in Yellowstone, Grand Teton
NOVEMBER 21, 2002
Natural-gas drilling at Padre Island National Seashore in Texas approved
NOVEMBER 22, 2002
EPA proceeds with weakening Clean Air Act rules for power plants
NOVEMBER 27, 2002
Forest Service proposes rule changes to increase logging, grazing, mining on 192 million acres
DECEMBER 2, 2002
Bush administration plan for oil drilling off California coast ruled illegal by federal judges
DECEMBER 4, 2002
Bush administration asks for five more years of study before acting on global warming
DECEMBER 12, 2002
Federal court rules against administration, upholds roadless rule for 58.5 million acres
DECEMBER 12, 2002
White House proposes tiny increase in automobile fuel economy: 1.5 mpg in five years
DECEMBER 13, 2002
Federal judge blocks Army Corps of Engineers' Snake River dredging plan in Pacific Northwest
DECEMBER 16, 2002
EPA's new factory-farm rule favors big agribusiness polluters
DECEMBER 18, 2002
White House budget office values elderly lives 63 percent less in environmental cost-benefit analysis
DECEMBER 20, 2002
Federal judge blocks Interior Department from permitting oil exploration in eastern Utah
DECEMBER 30, 2002
EPA proposes two-year exemption of oil and gas industry from storm-water pollution rules
JANUARY 6, 2003
Bureau of Land Management rule change gives states leeway for new roads in wildlands
JANUARY 10, 2003
Bush budget requests $6.4 billion for Energy Department's nuclear weapons activity
JANUARY 10, 2003
Bush administration proposes pulling federal safeguards from 20 percent of U.S. wetlands
JANUARY 13, 2003
Pentagon plans to ask for exemption from environmental laws on millions of acres
JANUARY 16, 2003
Environmental personnel scratched from USAID policy bureau
JANUARY 17, 2003
Interior Department proposes oil exploration on up to 9 million acres of Alaska's North Slope
JANUARY 19, 2003
Pentagon continues lobbying for exemptions from environmental laws
JANUARY 21, 2003
EPA refuses to ban weed-killer atrazine, a possible carcinogen
JANUARY 22, 2003
EPA retains unsafe limits for toxic perchlorates
JANUARY 24, 2003
Manatees get federal protection, thanks to lawsuit settlement
JANUARY 27, 2003
Bush administration proposes privatizing thousands of National Park Service jobs
JANUARY 27, 2003
California's giant sequoia threatened by Forest Service proposal to resume logging nearby
JANUARY 29, 2003
Bush administration wins court ruling that legalizes mountaintop-removal mining permits
JANUARY 30, 2003
Bureau of Land Management proposes rollback of Clinton-era restrictions on grazing
JANUARY 30, 2003
Exemptions to phaseout of ozone-destroying methyl bromide planned by Bush administration
FEBRUARY 11, 2003
EPA drafts new rules to relax toxic-air-pollution standards
FEBRUARY 20, 2003
National Park Service finalizes rules allowing snowmobiles in national parks
FEBRUARY 25, 2003
National Academy of Sciences panel strongly criticizes Bush's global-warming plan
FEBRUARY 27, 2003
Bush's "Clear Skies" plan allows much more pollution than if Clean Air Act were enforced, critics charge
FEBRUARY 27, 2003
Transportation Department speeds up environmentally harmful road projects
FEBRUARY 28, 2003
Oil drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge his "greatest wish," says high-ranking Interior official
FEBRUARY 28, 2003
Wilderness protection for millions of acres in Alaska's Tongass forest rejected by Forest Service
MARCH 4, 2003
National Park Service slaughters 231 Yellowstone bison
MARCH 7, 2003
Paul Wolfowitz tells military leaders to find reasons to exempt military from environmental rules
MARCH 10, 2003
EPA exempts oil and gas industry from President Clinton's tighter water-pollution rules
MARCH 13, 2003
EPA withdraws another Clinton-era water-pollution cleanup rule
MARCH 13, 2003
EPA official testifies in Congress in favor of exempting military from environmental laws
MARCH 18, 2003
EPA allows sludge dumping in Potomac River to continue for seven more years
MARCH 18, 2003
Fish and Wildlife proposes removing protections from endangered wolves
MARCH 18, 2003
Federal judge orders Interior Department to continue protecting manatees
MARCH 18, 2003
GAO again criticizes Bush administration for failing to reduce security risks at chemical plants
MARCH 25, 2003
Park Service adopts plan for Yellowstone/Teton allowing1,100 snowmobiles a day
APRIL 1, 2003
Bush administration drops court battle to allow California offshore drilling
APRIL 1, 2003
Bush administration barely raises SUV gas mileage requirements, to 1.5 mpg more by 2007
APRIL 3, 2003
Bureau of Reclamation again diverts water from Klamath River, where salmonid kill occurred
APRIL 4, 2003
New U.S.—Mexico pollution treaty signed, but lacks funding
APRIL 7, 2003
Bush administration asks UN to remove Yellowstone from endangered world heritage status
APRIL 8, 2003
Protection plan for 76-mile stretch of California coast abandoned by National Park Service
APRIL 9, 2003
Interior Department paves way for new roads on federal lands in Utah
APRIL 10, 2003
U.S. Fish and Wildlife signs off on plan to reopen Imperial Sand Dunes to off-road vehicles
APRIL 20, 2003
Toxic cleanups still lagging: 41 percent fewer Superfund sites cleaned up by EPA, report says
APRIL 21, 2003
Sharp criticism of Bush administration air-pollution policies by independent panel
APRIL 24, 2003
White House unveils pro-industry chemical security bill
APRIL 28, 2003
White House bans EPA from discussing perchlorate pollution
MAY 2, 2003
Vehicle fuel economy drops to 22-year low of 20.8 mpg, says EPA report
MAY 2, 2003
Permits for cross-border power lines from Mexican power plants illegal, says federal judge
MAY 5, 2003
Navy's use of sonar causes "stampede"–and possibly death–of marine mammals in Puget Sound
MAY 7, 2003
EPA drops "senior death discount" calculation (see DECEMBER 18, 2002)
MAY 13, 2003
Fish and Wildlife Service signs off on mining in Montana's Cabinet Mountains Wilderness
MAY 14, 2003
White House's $247 billion transportation plan slashes environmental protection
MAY 14, 2003
EPA proposes easing, delaying smog-control rules
MAY 21, 2003
Christine Todd Whitman, embattled EPA chief, resigns
MAY 30, 2003
Park Service opens Maryland and Virginia's Assateague Island National Seashore to Jet Skis
MAY 30, 2003
Forest-fire plan eliminates environmental review of logging projects under 1,000 acres
JUNE 2, 2003
Energy Department announces$2 billion to $4 billion plan to build new "mini" nukes
JUNE 3, 2003
Energy Department funds study on how to ease effects of global warming for Alaska oil drillers
JUNE 5, 2003
Forest Service plan would triple logging limits in California's Sierra Nevada
JUNE 9, 2003
USDA reverses Clinton ban on most logging and roadbuilding on 58.5 million acres
JUNE 20, 2003
Defense Department reneges on plan to test for perchlorate pollution at U.S. bases
JUNE 23, 2003
Bush administration again deletes references to dangers of global warming from EPA report
JUNE 27, 2003
Federal judge halts timber sale in Montana's Kootenai National Forest
JULY 1, 2003
Autopsies link Navy sonar to porpoise deaths, environmentalists charge
JULY 8, 2003
Federal court rejects Cheney's argument for keeping energy-task-force records secret
JULY 12, 2003
EPA refuses to regulate perchlorate and other drinking-water contaminants
JULY 17, 2003
Energy Department lobbies Congress for law to get around court ruling on nuke waste
JULY 17, 2003
Federal judge rules administration must redo water plan for Oregon/California Klamath River
JULY 22, 2003
Army Corps of Engineers ruled in contempt for defying order to change Missouri River flows
JULY 24, 2003
Bush administration softens demand for outsourcing of federal jobs, including at national parks
AUGUST 8, 2003
Bush administration settlement of timber suit could double logging in Northwest
AUGUST 11, 2003
Bush taps anti-environmental Utah governor Mike Leavitt to head EPA
AUGUST 26, 2003
New EPA rules ignore mercury pollution from chlorine plant
AUGUST 27, 2003
EPA excludes 17,000 facilities from upgrading pollution controls when installing new equipment
AUGUST 29, 2003
U.S. court rules against EPA's loopholes in mountaintop-removal-mining regulations
SEPTEMBER 2, 2003
EPA weakens ban on selling polluted sites by reinterpreting law
SEPTEMBER 2, 2003
EPA refuses to regulate ballast-water discharges from ships
SEPTEMBER 4, 2003
EPA finds 274 violations of laws for dumping mountaintop-mining debris
SEPTEMBER 22, 2003
White House's own study concludes benefits of environmental regulations far outweigh costs
SEPTEMBER 23, 2003
Forest Service estimates $2 million lost in timber sale from Alaska's Tongass
SEPTEMBER 24, 2003
White House recommendations would undermine public participation in environmental planning
SEPTEMBER 25, 2003
EPA proposes deal that would let polluting factory farms avoid prosecution
OCTOBER 1, 2003
Bush fails to renew energy-conservation program that saved government $300 million a year
OCTOBER 6, 2003
EPA rules that farmers can't sue pesticide makers if chemicals fail to meet stated claims
OCTOBER 10, 2003
Interior Department overturns limits on acreage where gold mines can dump waste
OCTOBER 10, 2003
Judge orders Interior Department to stop stalling on owl habitat protection
OCTOBER 10, 2003
EPA proposal to allow warmer waters behind Oregon dams threatens salmonids
OCTOBER 10, 2003
EPA inspector general criticizes agency for lax enforcement
OCTOBER 13, 2003
Bush administration proposes lifting ban on importing endangered species
OCTOBER 13, 2003
$18.6 million Forest Service study says outsourcing its jobs would rarely be cost-effective
OCTOBER 17, 2003
EPA announces it will not regulate dioxins in sewage sludge dumped on land
OCTOBER 31, 2003
EPA declines to restrict use of pesticide atrazine
NOVEMBER 4, 2003
Superfund cleanups lag for third straight year
NOVEMBER 4, 2003
Environmentalists criticize revised everglades-recovery plan for failing to ensure natural water flow
NOVEMBER 13, 2003
Park Service workers charge that Bush policies will "destroy the grand legacy of our national parks"
NOVEMBER 14, 2003
Bush administration loses bid to increase ozone-depleting methyl bromide
NOVEMBER 18, 2003
Administration admits blame for kill of 34,000 salmonids in Klamath River (see SEPTEMBER 21, 2002)
NOVEMBER 18, 2003
EPA proposes looser regulations on dumping low-level radioactive waste in landfills
DECEMBER 3, 2003
Bush signs "Healthy Forests" bill: more logging, less species protection on millions of acres
DECEMBER 4, 2003
EPA seeks to reclassify mercury as "nontoxic"
DECEMBER 5, 2003
Bureau of Land Management proposes weakening rules for grazing livestock on federal land
DECEMBER 9, 2003
Federal violation notices to polluters down almost 60 percent; almost 30 percent fewer fines
DECEMBER 16, 2003
White House abandons plans to weaken Clean Water Act protections for wetlands
DECEMBER 17, 2003
Defense Department urged to protect endangered tortoise during robot race
DECEMBER 17, 2003
Federal judge overturns administration decision not to protect orcas in Puget Sound
DECEMBER 19, 2003
Forest Service opens grizzly bear habitat to snowmobiles in Montana's Flathead National Forest
DECEMBER 23, 2003
Forest Service continues to allow logging in Tongass, world's largest temperate rainforest
DECEMBER 24, 2003
Federal court blocks EPA plan to weaken Clean Air Act by exempting power plants from review
JANUARY 1, 2004
Only 50 companies agree to Bush administration's voluntary plan to cut global-warming emissions
JANUARY 8, 2004
$175 million Superfund shortfall prevents cleanups at 11 sites, slows down others
JANUARY 7, 2004
White House proposes overturning ban on mining near streams
JANUARY 9, 2004
Pentagon to seek more environmental exemptions
JANUARY 9, 2004
Forest Service limits citizens' right to challenge logging plans by appeal or in court
JANUARY 13, 2004
Federal court overturns Bush administration's weakening of energy efficiency for air conditioners
JANUARY, 21 2004
Interior secretary asks to triple number of gas-drilling permits in Wyoming
JANUARY 22, 2004
EPA scales back monitoring of smokestack pollution
JANUARY 22, 2004
Interior Department opens 9 million acres on Alaska's North Slope to oil drilling
JANUARY 23, 2004
Forest Service plans to boost logging on up to 3.2 million acres of Appalachian forests
JANUARY 27, 2004
White House says EPA doesn't have to study pesticide effects on imperiled wildlife
JANUARY 29, 2004
Bush administration proposes letting contractors police federal nuclear-plant safety
JANUARY 30, 2004
Parts of EPA's mercury-pollution plan lifted verbatim from industry memos
FEBRUARY 2, 2004
Bush budget proposes $10 million cut in funds for endangered species
FEBRUARY 5, 2004
EPA admits twice as many children (630,000) in danger from mercury exposure
FEBRUARY 6, 2004
Clean Air Act changes undermining enforcement, says former EPA official
FEBRUARY 9, 2004
Energy development allowed inside Colorado and Utah's Dinosaur National Monument
FEBRUARY 11, 2004
Forest Service plan allows mining, drilling in Alabama's national forests
FEBRUARY 13, 2004
EPA no longer to require "worst case scenarios" from industry
FEBRUARY 15, 2004
Forest Service allows poisoning of prairie dogs in four states
FEBRUARY 16, 2004
White House ignores threat from gasoline additive MTBE
FEBRUARY 18, 2004
U.S. Navy plans to dredge endangered turtle habitat in Key West
FEBRUARY 18, 2004
20 Nobel Prize—winning scientists say administration distorts science for political gain
FEBRUARY 24, 2004
Federal mine-safety official demoted after questioning mine accident investigation
FEBRUARY 27, 2004
Missouri River management plan ignores fish protections
MARCH 3, 2004
Administration proposes to relax rules on killing wolves in Idaho and Montana
MARCH 9, 2004
358 conservation scientists urge administration to halt plan to import endangered species
MARCH 10, 2004
Forest Service hires PR firm to promote Sierra Nevada plan that would triple logging
MARCH 11, 2004
EPA inspector general says agency's rosy drinking-water assessments used false data
MARCH 12, 2004
Forest Service relents: no snowmobiles in grizzly habitat in Montana's Flathead National Forest
MARCH 15, 2004
Court rules BLM illegally opened Montana area to off-road vehicles
MARCH 16, 2004
EPA approves plan to inject toxic waste underground in Michigan wells
MARCH 19, 2004
FDA warnings on mercury in tuna not strong enough, scientists charge
MARCH 24, 2004
NRDC sues Bush administration for withholding records on perchlorate in drinking water
MARCH 25, 2004
BLM suspends plans for energy development at Dinosaur National Monument, Colo. and Utah
MARCH 26, 2004
Delay in phaseout of dangerous methyl bromide pesticide negotiated by United States
MARCH 30, 2004
Federal court orders Bush administration to release forest-planning documents
MARCH 31, 2004
Federal judge orders Energy Department to release more Cheney energy-task-force records
MARCH 31, 2004
EPA prosecution of environmental crimes even weaker under new administrator
APRIL 1, 2004
Bush administration worked behind scenes to weaken European Union chemical safety rules
APRIL 1, 2004
Mining whistleblower accuses Bush administration of cover-up in huge coal-sludge spill
APRIL 2, 2004
Bush administration sells 155 acres in Colorado to Phelps Dodge Corporation for $875
APRIL 6, 2004
EPA weakens safety rules for rat poison at industry's behest
APRIL 7, 2004
White House downplays effects of mercury from coal-fired power plants
APRIL 8, 2004
Interior secretary allows aerial hunting of Alaska wolves to continue
APRIL 9, 2004
Interior Department blocks release of data on oil drilling to Environmental Working Group
APRIL 11, 2004
Bush administration budget asks for $35 million cut in lead-poisoning prevention
APRIL 13, 2004
Administration spending more on nuclear weapons research than in Cold War, report says
APRIL 15, 2004
Fish and Wildlife Service rejects protection for Yellowstone trumpeter swans
APRIL 19, 2004
39 state attorneys general urge denial of Pentagon's request for environmental exemptions
APRIL 20, 2004
Yellowstone Park employees advised to wear hearing protection from snowmobile noise
APRIL 22, 2004
National Council of Churches strongly criticizes Bush's air-pollution policies
APRIL 28, 2004
USDA weakens organic-food standards, allowing hormones, feed raised with pesticides
APRIL 28, 2004
Interior Department limits designations of critical habitat for endangered species
APRIL 29, 2004
Report shows that more than half of all Americans live in areas with hazardous levels of smog
MAY 3, 2004
Power companies have raised $6.6 million for Bush, Republicans, report says
MAY 12, 2004
Scientists say Yucca Mountain nuclear facility could leak far sooner than Energy Department claims
MAY 21, 2004
Whistle-blowing federal biologist quits over politicized decision-making
MAY 21, 2004
EPA officials with timber ties weaken toxic formaldehyde standards for plywood industry
MAY 26, 2004
USDA backs down, keeps organic-food standards (see APRIL 28, 2004)
MAY 27, 2004
U.S. Army retracts order to cut some environmental-protection practices
MAY 28, 2004
Army Corps lets sewers, ditches "mitigate" loss of streams to mountaintop-removal mining
MAY 28, 2004
A dozen major national parks hit by cutbacks to visitor services and staffing
JUNE 1, 2004
Federal court rejects EPA's proposed snowmobile standards
JUNE 1, 2004
Administration delays greater protection for marbled murrelet to benefit timber industry
JUNE 2, 2004
Exemption of military from migratory-bird-protection rules proposed by administration
JUNE 2, 2004
New EPA rules allow more fine-particle pollution from 1,000 industrial plants
JUNE 3, 2004
Bush's 2005 budget zeroes out funding for research on abrupt climate change
JUNE 7, 2004
Bush wins ruling to allow Mexican trucks into U.S. without meeting clean-air standards
JUNE 8, 2004
Reduction in Snake and Columbia River water releases, harming Northwest salmon, announced
JUNE 15, 2004
Administration's pro-oil, pro-nuke energy proposal stalled in Congress
JUNE 24, 2004
Supreme Court ruling allows Cheney to keep energy-task-force secrets until after election
JULY 8, 2004
Bush team pushes one of biggest timber sales in U.S. history under guise of fire protection
JULY 12, 2004
Administration proposes forcing states to pay 2.5 times more for public transit than for roads
JULY 12, 2004
Administration to eliminate Clinton-era roadless rule, ending protections for 58.5 million acres
JULY 16, 2004
Fish and Wildlife Service to end protection for eastern wolves and abandon reintroduction plans
JULY 16, 2004
Bush refuses to release $34 million for international family planning appropriated by Congress
[via: karl who posted it elsewhere]
Since election is coming up, might as well dip into the subject some more..
This is just about the most slimy, disgusting thing ever, but it does explain many things (mainly memes) that have been flying about the net, doesn't it?
It's sad for this country that elections are decided not by educated voters but by slithering pundits who attempt to sway the public opinion with dirty tactics and a false representation of what the voters truly think.
I suppose they don't believe their candidate can win on his own merits . How can anyone vote for Bush when his own guard and party has no faith in him?
... everyone else is blogging it, I won't bother...
It is interesting to read the different view points on the debate from both sides.
"Kerry clearly won!"
"Bush totally kicked Kerry's butt"
Makes me wonder what the definition of "win" actually is?
Today our office is moving from the big, spacious and more-than-half empty building we've been occupying in Wallingford for five years (me, only the last three-and-a-half) to a much smaller, compact and cheaper suite in Meriden.
I'm going to miss my big desk, window and well, space. I'm definitely going to miss space. The cubicles (no more office for me!) are less than 7x7.. and the unfortunate choice of furniture fills them quite completely. I'll be lucky if I don't bruise my knees when rotating in my chair. I think the addition of a keyboard tray will make me sit in a hallway. I'll find out tomorrow.
Perhaps it won't be as bad as it seemed from the floor plan.. but.. I'm not holding my breath.
My area was assigned the number 13 for the move.
I've never been what one may call a "sports fan" , I wouldn't even qualify as an occasional admirer of the finer points of contouring ones body to achieve some impossible timing in some irrational sport, but it's hard to not hear about the Olympics. Even my friend Matt, a programmer of unquestionable geek-quality brought up the Olympics in a conversation earlier today. He did, however, have the right idea. "The Olympics should be in the nude!". And why not, I say.
We took the Olympics back to its place of birth, good old Greece, why not go a step further and take them back to the roots? In the buff, all the way. Forget the silly swimming trunks, clingy costumes and running singlets (it's not like they cover much anyway). Slather the athletes in oil until the glisten and let them shine in a whole new way. After all, if there is anyone who deserves to prance around in the nude in front of thousands of people and camera lights, it's the athletes with their sculpted muscles, tight skin and fine physiques. It would be the ultimate spectator sport -- forget nude beaches with hairy old men and cellulite-covered women -- bring on the olive oil and summer athletes!
Even I would watch the Olympics then, heck, I'd subscribe to cable.
Although, maybe raise the entry age to 18 first.
For those unfamiliar with it, craigslist is a quirky, eclectic and fantastic online community for well, just about anything. I was recently happy to discover they now have a Hartford edition (although it is rather slow in growth.. unless you count the casual encounters section.. but that's a whole other animal) and was looking forward to the Hartford classified section growing in volume. It seems that today Ebay bought a 25% stake in craigslist. What will that mean? I think we can say goodbye to the largely uncensored, quirky community and welcome Yet Another Boring Classifieds Site.
I can hear the accountants and lawyers gnashing their teeth on new posting rules already. How sad.
Craig's post about it.
1. Fewer mosquito bites - you can now outpace them.
2. You no longer scare all the wildlife within a mile radius with your heavy foot pounding.
3. You seriously consider getting a running partner.
4. You feel you earned the right to have sweat stains in embarrassing areas on shorts and now wear them with pride (as opposed to attempting to hide under a long shirt).
5. You finish your run with stretching not curling up into a fetal position and twitching.
6. You can focus on things other than pain and torture mid-run. (Hey, they should have dragon-fly chasing as an olympic event).
7. There are things in the woods that actually smell worse than you for once.
8. That inviting, lush, green meadow? You recognize it for the foul, moss-covered swamp it really is.
9. That tortured heap of twitching mass wrapped around the water fountain at the end of the trail is for once, someone else.
10. The idea of riding your bike (not car) to the trails next time sounds inviting.
Every single time I wanted to purchase some music.. it's not available on iTunes...
There's a song from the "Lost in Translation" soundtrack that i really wanted.. honestly, it's easier to just download it from a sharing service... this is about the third time in a row I wanted a song and couldn't find it short of "sharing".
I have credit cards, I have an iPod, where's the damn music I want? Record companies, are you even listening or too busy suing?
I have four invitations left, so for those who want them just post your name and use a real email address (I don't display them).
(Btw, brilliant marketing scheme for gmail, Google.. )
The previews made it look like a good movie to see in a theater.. Not for the story mind you, I didn't expect much there (and I was right), just the special effects. Special effects were very good.. convincing enough to make me wrap my sweater around and dread going out into the expectant snow outside..
There is one word that truly does not describe this movie: subtle. Don't get me wrong, I like a movie with a strong environmental message just as much as the next tree hugger.. but damn.. lighten up on hammering the point in. They give you the moral within about five minutes into the movie.. then they whack you over the head.. then kick you while you're whimpering and bludgeon you to death with the message. Then, as you lie there bleeding and gasping for (clean) air.. they deliver the message a few more times with what feels like a couple Ford Expeditions falling on top of your head.
Special effects were cool though and the wolves in Manhattan midst new ice age were a particularly nice touch.
Reading Jeremy's entry about the Orkut newsletter reminded me Orkut exists. I haven't logged into the site in ages -- it fell into the same category as other social networks "I've proven my social worthiness by being linked to a whole bunch of people many of whom I never met, now what?".
This resulted in a discovery of over a 100 unread orkut messages (I'm not stupid enough to have them e-mailed). That resulted in a couple of things..
1. I wasted 15 minutes and removed everyone who was a 'friend' and sent a 'friends-of-friends' message. Fuck you, spam your own goddamn friends.
2. I set my orkut settings to not even show me 'friends of friends' messages. Chrrrrist-on-a-lolly-pop. Don't these people have lives? Who the hell needs an Orkut community for abandoned-former-orphans-who-enjoy-caligraphy-while-pooping?
Maybe I should just remove my Orkut account and be done with it, it's not like I'll login again for another few months.
And their damn newsletter didn't recommend me any new friends. Bastards.
Did you notice? Gas prices went up! Right... hard not to notice, that's all everyone is talking about. I'm getting quite tired of it.
Yes, gas is over $2.0 a gallon.. big freaking deal. We've been paying the lowest gas prices for years.. about time we start paying a bit more realistic one and maybe, just maybe reconsider the over-consumption of gasoline in this country. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a decent public transportation system that doesn't stop 2miles outside a metropolis and more transportation of goods by methods like trains rather than costly trucks?
Don't like paying so much for gas? Buy a small, fuel-efficient car, share a commute to work, use your bicycle.. but for Allah's sake, stop whining about the price as you fill up your 15-miles-to-the-gallon behemoth. And when November arrives don't forget who cut the funding for alternative fuel research. If you think that not buying gas on one particular day of the year will 'stick it' to the oil companies.. you've the brain reflexes of a pot smoking snail. Not *using* gas on a day a year might.. buying? No.. you'll have to fill up sooner or later, do you think anyone cares that it's not going to be tomorrow?
It's sad to read articles like this one with quotes like..
TORONTO (Reuters) - A man who used a cellphone to take nude pictures of his girlfriend and then posted them on the Internet has been jailed for distributing child pornography in what officials say is Canada's first criminal conviction involving camera phones. . . "He was obviously very adept at computers and he would have had a bright future ahead of him had he not chosen to use his talent this way."
I thought the press was a bit better about this by now, I mean this is 2004, not 1995. Ability to post pictures on the Internet doesn't exactly require knowledge of computers, heck my mom can do it.
This is obviously one of the symptoms of the computerstupiditis that occurs in a large portion of adult population. In short, they sit in front of a computer screen and their IQ suddenly drops by half or more. Other symptoms include hiring a 9 year old neighbor to fix their dsl problems and opening executable attachments from strangers under the promise of pretty butterflies on their screen.
They failed to deliver a package to me since it was misaddressed -- instead sent me a postcard (credit to my mailman for delivering it to me despite the wrong street address on it).
"You can pick up your package at the local terminal"
Great! I'll do that.. except the address they provided is a P.O. Box..
uhm, yah. Thanks.
While I was making dinner tonight I remembered Jeremy's entry about cooking... and pre-packaged foods.. and realized that what I was making at the moment is not only quite tasty and healthy but also impossibly easy and quick to make so why not share it with the geek world? You'll thank me later.
Broccoli and garlic pasta:
Boil some pasta (angel hair works best for this) -- if you throw in a bit of olive oil in the water, the pasta won't stick, but for this recipe it doesn't matter anyway.
Chop up some garlic cloves - to taste, I use a lot. Easiest way to do it: smash the cloves with a mallet (all of them) and using a chef's knife, just chop them into teeny pieces.
Wash some broccoli and cut it into smaller pieces (frozen broccoli works just as well, but I'm picky).
In a skillet, heat some olive oil, add the garlic & broccoli, saute until broccoli is desired softness, toss it with the pasta, season to taste. Garlic salt & parsley works best, if you like spicy foods, some red pepper flakes.
Serve it with freshly-grated parmesan on top (unless you're Jeremy, then just eat).
For more ease, use minced garlic from a jar, but that's not quite as tasty. Same recipe can be used with variations, zucchini, onions, peppers..
Weather extremes are fun. Left San Jose in 80 degree weather this morning to land in a snow storm in Hartford. Without a coat, of course, just a light jacket.
Now I'll have to catch up on a lot of things, but since my body is now adjusted to California time, it's suddenly really easy to stay up late.
For starters, I have some pictures from a glider ride (actually, two) with Jeremy which was a lot of fun. I also discovered I really need a gps thingy, no real reason, just because it's really cool. Not to mention I lost my Fry's virginity, met some cool people and discovered Napa Valley shuts down at 5pm. On a Saturday.
Why do vacations go by so fast?
Why does every online community in existence need extensive birthday greetings for every member.. in every forum.. on every list.. in every group..
Then every day you see (threads|emails|posts) of
"Happy Birthday X!"
And if the same person is a member of multiple groups, every group needs its separate
"Happy Birthday X!"
With every one of those (threads|emails|posts) full of happy-birthday-themed pictures that you know everyone is just automatically reposting every time they see a thread, email, post titled "Happy Birthday".
If you refuse to participate in this you're labeled "anti-social"..
If I know someone and by some sheer luck remember their birthday, I'll wish it to them in private without the entire universe needing to see it. Really.. And if I don't remember? Then it's just me being my usual forgetful self. I hardly ever remember my own birthday. That doesn't mean I don't wish them a happy birthday, I do, I wish them a happy birthday, a happy unbirthday, a happy whatever-day. I want everyone to be happy, really, I do. I'm just tired of this entire production of requisite birthday greetings.
Let's get this over with wholesale:
You (yes, you who are reading this) were born on some day in some year! Marvelous! Happy event that!
(Yes, I know, don't read them, but I can say the same about this entry).
Sorry, our ISP is having an issue.. they're working on it. I am aware, please stop paging me, IM'ing and e-mailing me, thank you :)
I have nothing against people believing in their favorite deity or practicing their religion under one, clear, simple condition. Please leave me out of it.
We use the term "bible" to describe our site.. Anyone who ever visited the computer books aisle can probably attest that it's a very commonly used term when referring to "a publication preeminent especially in authoritativeness or wide readership"... In fact that's the definition of "a bible" if anyone cares to look it up. That's not to be confused with what many refer to as "the bible". This is the connection to the main topic of this rant.. which is "religious nuts".
We get a ton of nutty feedback, we get a ton of good feedback and sometimes we even get useful feedback.. but imploring us to "find god" and scaring us with fire and brimstone over the use of the term "bible" is a little out there.. but apparently we're all going straight to hell. Which begs for the question.. why would an almighty, all knowing and all understanding god give a damn (no pun intended) over the use of a term in the English language? If we called ourselves "biblia" (Polish) would we still be going to hell? Is every librarian (biblioteka, again, Polish) going to hell? Interesting.. a connection.. bliblia.. biblioteka.. anyone who knows a bit of Latin will recognize this one.. So it's pretty obvious, bible is not a religious term, it's just another Christian appropriation (see major holidays).
As I said above.. I have nothing against Christianity or any other religion (I have a ton of problems with the Roman Catholic church but that's a whole other rant).. but I do have problems with anyone who tries to tell me how to live my life because he feels he's saving my soul. Thanks, but I'd rather burn in hell than spend an eternity among holy nut-cases. Bring on the fire and brimstone it's so cold today that it sounds pretty damn (pun intended) nice.
It's cold in the bowels of Connecticut lately, actually, it's very cold. Three degrees right now (that's not Celsius) and wind-chill of a negative value.I don't like cold weather, technically I don't like hot weather either, but I definitely do not like cold weather. In fact it's so cold I'm sitting under a warm blanket with a warm powerbook in my lap, surrounded by warm cats and refuse to stick my nose outside the nicely-heated indoors. Why bother? I can complain about cold inside.
I was talking with Karl earlier and we both concluded that we hate people who live in the warm climates.. Not all of them, just the ones who make sure we know it's warm where they are while we're freezing our asses off on the eastern seaboard. Here, imagine a big, ascii middle finger.
My server was moved to a different powercircuit and since it was turned back on in the middle of the night while I was sleeping (I know, I was sleeping at night, amazing!) I didn't verify that all is up and running until this morning.. so of course I discovered that several vital services were not in fact in startup..
mysql, apache, spamd *sigh* fixed it now, but in the meantime I was bouncing e-mail all night and site was down.
If you sent me e-mail and it bounced, send it again? Thanks in bunches.
It's a truly wonderful, if somewhat depressing movie. Spectacular cinematography, great acting and a passionate story. No matter what one may think of Polanski as a person, he is a truly gifted director. I do believe that his personal story (he lived through the Krakow Ghetto) has much to do with how well this movie was made.
I grew up in a small Warsaw suburb and went to a Warsaw high school, so I've always seen it as much my home as Piastow (the town I grew up in) was.. In Poland, we all grew up on stories of the Holocaust. I think every Pole has a family story about those who perished in WWII. It would be hard not to, with so many gone. So this movie hits very close to home, even though i am not Jewish.
I loved that it portrayed people without the usual division into roles. There are bad Jews and good Jews, bad Poles and good Poles and amazingly, for a Holocaust movie, even a good Nazi. It all comes down to a struggle for survival when caught in assigned roles none of us get to choose. Shindler's List was well made but it missed that by a mile. It fell into the usual division of "bad" and "good". I was quite upset with how it portrayed Poles as anti-semitic nazi-slaves. Horribly historically inaccurate and very undeserving to those who risked and gave their lives to help. Like with any people caught in extraordinary circumstances.. some live up to their humanity and some don't. It's never black and white.
There was just one part of the story I didn't like, the German officer most likely died without ever knowing that Szpilman did try to help. That's depressing, but such is life and this was a true story after all.
<rant>
I'm just tired, cranky and have a cold, don't mind me.
Poland, being a predominantly Roman Catholic country, does not celebrate Halloween -- just all saints day. It's a tradition (really, not sure when it started) to visit your dead and light candles and leave flowers on graves.
Much to my mom's chagrin I'm an atheist but I like the tradition of lighting candles, so, like every year, I visited the cemetery tonight and did just that. I wish I had a better camera or just better photography skills to accurately reflect how beautiful the cemetery looks at night all lit up with candle lights.. I suppose this will have to do until next year and maybe a better camera. Picture.
Finally, of course this is the week from hell so even Friday couldn't possibly have gone without something happening..
This time, a tire.. on my way home from work to give out candy to the neighborhood heathens. Thankfully, some good soul took pity on my desperate attempts to loosen the lug nuts(? is that right?) and helped me out.. He said it's the first time he helped an elf change a tire. I'm Legolas for the day.. we did "Lord of the Rings" theme as a group (the geeky engineers, of course). I like the pointy ears, I may keep those, but the blonde wig had to go.. it looked more like "Legolas the porn years" than the LOTR kind.
So right now I'm sitting on my doorstep, giving out candy to the occasional witch and monster and utilizing my wonderful wireless. It seems we get much fewer kids than we used to, so it's a bit boring to just sit here waiting. Must wonder, what else could possibly go wrong this week? Will a vampire-dressed 5 year old mug me for my powerbook? Of course, there's always tomorrow too..
<Two minute break>
Cute, minature white ninjas. And why is one of my neighbors playing the musak version of "Lean on me" loudly on his doorstep? Not exactly Halloween music..
A common trait among software engineers (really, most engineers) is our logical thinking. It takes a logical mind to enjoy writing software and become proficient at it, half the battle of problem solving is just that.. logic.. Given this trait, my dreams forever amuse me.
I tend to dream very vividly and also tend to remember most of my dreams. It's really a great feature of being me, I know most people don't share this. What is also great is the dreams right before waking up.. You know.. after you've hit the snooze button 20 times already and incorporated the alarm sounds into the plot? Those dreams. I had one of those today.. and it amused me to no end remembering it in the shower..
It went something like this...
I went to a toy store don't remember why, probably Halloween-related given it's the candy-grabbing time of year again. As it turned out, the clerk taking care of me at the store was an author of one of the weblogs I read on regular basis.. someone I've never actually met before or remembered seeing a picture of. I'm sure I must have though, since after checking the person's website this morning it turned out I dreamt the facial features and general look quite correctly. Obviously, there was a conversation involved.. went something very close to this:
Dreaming Kasia: "Why are you working at a toy store, aren't you a programmer?
Dream-blogger: "I had legal problems due to some hacking and I'm not allowed to use a computer anymore".
DK: "Oh, I see, how do you write your weblog then?"
DB: "On my mac, that's okay to use".
This made perfect sense to the dreaming, subconscious mind... but the conscious, close to waking mind was screaming "NO, wait a minute! This makes zero sense!".
Even when sleeping, my logical mind emerges and mocks up a perfectly nice dream. You can see how this can be amusing when remembering later. Okay, maybe just to me, but I thought I'd share regardless.
This week has certainly been fascinating. Monday, I did something braindead on a work machine, yesterday I started a flame war.. I wonder what today will bring?
In other news, Connecticut appears to be under a deluge.. personally, I'm packing all this rain in boxes and shipping it out to California, they could use it.
Looks like Jeremy has SARS.
As I was updating a user's account with an e-mail address today (don't ask) I felt I've seen it before. That's unusual, since it's not a user I normally interact with or really ever remember seeing before.. checked the history and sure enough. This is the second time this year that I've helped with his e-mail address. Same e-mail address.
Last time was back in March.
So, essentially. Back in March I saw an e-mail address for about a minute (that's about as long as it takes to paste it into an SQL statement) and now, seven months later I remembered it perfectly.
Seven months later remembered something I only glanced at very briefly. I remembered *that* but I don't remember where I put my car keys the night before!
Apparently my brain is wired to remember the most inconsequential of things and forget the important stuff. Can I use this as an excuse at work? "I forgot to show up today, sorry.. I was writing a letter to the boy who sat next to me on the second day of kindergarden. He moved to Italy few months later, but I still remember his address and he owes me a lollipop from the field trip we took to Museum of general stupidity on Pratt street in Warsaw."
Woke up this morning to a light covering of snow on my car.. damnit, it's only October!
My quads hurt, my calves hurt, my feet hurt (blisters) and my hamstrings hurt.
I've also been eating lots of beans (protein to rebuild all those muscles) so you can image what other side effects I'm having.. attractive, isn't it? :)
How in the world do people run a full marathon and survive it? Maybe I'll find out next year. I think I need a nice massage.
Anyone who tries to question the decision of running 13.1 miles on a Saturday morning instead of catching up on sleep can stop now. I already know it's stupid.. but hey, I got a t-shirt out of it.
It was actually a beautiful day to run, dry, little windy, 70s and the sun was out the whole time. I'm so glad I wore my sun glasses.. I swear that course was designed to make sure sun is always shining on the runner's faces. Maybe for better photo ops?
The Cliff's Notes version:
I ran, finished under 3 hours (barely, don't laugh yet), got nasty blisters on both feet and well, finished. That's the important part.
The longer version:
The good news.. my knee didn't hurt and the first 8 miles felt fantastic.. I could have ran a lot longer and faster (I was pacing myself).
The bad news.. the blisters (around mile 9 or so) were really, really painful (technically, still are). I wore coolmax socks in hopes of preventing blisters. Obviously, that didn't work very well. So the next 2 miles or so.. I probably did more walking than running.. but then, as hordes of runners passed me by, I decided to grin and bear and ran the last 2 miles.. not as fast as I would have liked to.. but hey, not many people can run fast with what feels like needles being stuck in their feet. Anyway, I finished and that was my ultimate goal. To see if I can actually do this.
It's actually quite amazing I ran it at all. See, I signed up for this over six months ago.. I had a training schedule in mind and was pretty damn excited about running a decent race. Then I trained.. and I trained.. and I trained some more.. Of course, (this is *me* after all) not even halfway through my training program -- I injured my knee. Badly. Ran a 9 mile-long run in a park.. and it's a route that's nothing but hills.. I guess I wasn't quite ready for that. Or at least my knee wasn't. Over two weeks of zero running (try running when even walking is painful!).. and I had to cut down on my weekly mileage considerably.. Not to mention my average pace plummeted by nearly 2 minutes a mile.. since running a bit faster brought on knee pain.
So why did I run anyway? Good question.
I intended to either cancel my registration or downgrade to a 5K (that I could run even with an achy knee).. but.. well.. at first I was hoping the knee pain would go away and I could get back into training. That didn't happen.. the training I did do wasn't really sufficient (longest run 6 miles and forget about speed work). Then I was just hoping something would prevent the race from happening (yah, I know, that's realistic) so I would have an excuse.. well.. that didn't happen. Then this last week.. not to go into details, but I've had better weeks.. hell.. I don't think I've had many worse weeks.. and well, that kind of took my mind off of it.. until this morning.
I picked up my buddy (he ran it too and finished 3 minutes before me-- his excuse was cramps, I didn't get those, thankfully).. went to the start line.. all a bit in a daze.. gun went off.. people started running.. and well, what the hell, at that point might as well do this thing. So I did.
So see, yes, under 3 hours is a damn lousy time.. but all things considered, I'm amazed I even ran this thing.
Next year: I'll try for the full marathon and this time, maybe, I'll actually train for it.
It's that time again.. my netflix queue has dwindled to mere five selections and I felt the burning need to add to it. This led to a realization (of course!).. every time I look through "new releases" or "recommendations" on netflix I tend to steer a second browser window into imdb.. to read about the movie there.
It's not just the ratings (although I do look at those, if a movie is a 4 I probably won't rent it (imdb 4, not netflix 4 in case you're confused)) the movie descriptions on imdb tend to be more detailed and accurate.. Netflix appears to have the "back of the video box" description style.. Not quite useful when deciding how to waste a few hours of my life with mindless entertainment.
I can't possibly be the only person doing this (I know I'm weird, but I'm not that unique) and it seems rather unlikely that netflix and imdb both are not aware of this.. so what's next.. Amazon buying out Netflix? Hey, you never know..
Sandals in 50 degree weather -- not a good idea.
Sitting at my desk drinking my morning coffee and watching the sheets of rain fall outside the window while I wait for a CVS update to finish. It's really quite fascinating - the water patterns formed by the wind.. of course the drive to work itself wasn't quite so pretty or interesting...
It's a feeling I have often.. watching something like this, wishing I had my camera on hand -- more often than one would imagine -- but the realization always comes quick: I don't think I can duplicate this in a photograph.. wasted effort? Perhaps. I wish I had whatever it takes to present what I see to others in a way that I see it. Invariably, there's something missing when I try.
A depressing thought on a fall morning.
Despite my oh, so obvious lack of blog'ing recently I have had quite the exciting week. Let's enumerate the exciting happenigs of the late.
I managed to slice off a bit of the tip of my left index finger. How? Cutting a sandwich in half with a kitchen knife. That's right, I've managed to survive for 30 years without injuring myself this way.. until now. Better late than never? Maybe not for this particular case. Typinf id fn eith missing fingrs!
I took yesterday off from work to visit a doctor about my now-infected-finger and (since I needed a break from keyboards and atmpts at tryping) went mountain biking at Lake Minnewaska in the Catskills (that's upstate New York). That was a blast.
My PC decided to crash and burn.
I'm getting my new 15" superdrive powebook tomorrow.
Had to do 1001010101010 ssh patches.
Have to patch sendmail
Verisign is a bunch of assholes.
I learned how to type without using a left index finger.
I'll have to unlearn it when it heals.
And how was your week? I promise to never use smilies in blog entries again!
 These are great! Fun for the whole family.
|
As spotted by one of our mods.. this spywareinfo.com article uses materials taken from dslreports forums without acknowledgment or for that matter, permission.
Now, we all know that pretty much anything posted on a public forum becomes de facto public domain.. however, if you're going to stick a copyright notice on something you've taken from elsewhere.. please make sure you credit the original authors.. Asking permission might be nice too!
Their copyright notice:
This article is located at http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/direcway/. © 2001-2003 Mike Healan. If copied in its entirety to message boards, blogs, and newsgroups, this notice must be included with it. Please see our terms of use for more information.
Original materials posted here and here.
Well, Mike Healan, you can't copyright something that doesn't belong you. I'm sure you're just learning about this whole web-publishing dealy.. but how about acknowledging those users whose screenshots you used? Hmm?
It's finally out on DVD.. I've been waiting to buy it for a long, long time.. and, ironically enough, picked it up at Walmart today (of all places.. hey, LOTR too).
It's such a depressing documentary.. not just the violence, but our society in general.. and now before everyone jumps out with evidence how Moore staged some of the material. Save it.. I've heard it all, doesn't change the fact that we are a society living in fear.
My particular fear right now is of the SUV-driving (hey, gotta get those kids to school over the rocky, paved roads of suburbia -- can't have them walking a whole mile!) neighbors. But that's not new.. I'm just more depressed about it now.
Manson has it right.. scare the crap out of them then sell them an Acura.
With a car alarm.
A gun-rack?
.. or Karl rants some more about lazy, unemployed IT workers.
Rant on, Karl, it's very true.
From the 'lazy entry' department:
.. and no, no new powerbook yet.. waiting on the news.
Well, the three-oh one anyway. As of today I have lived for three whole decades. I should feel like an adult by now.. I don't. So to celebrate my 30th birthday I bought myself a playstation and spent several hours playing gran turismo 3. Not as much fun as gt4.. but I guess I'll have to wait for that one. It's the network-able version.. so anyone want to race me online once it's out? I should warn you.. I was 3rd in the contest at E3!!! (out of 4)
Thanks to everyone for their birthday wishes.. One year ago.. I was whining about being 29 heh.
I would offer my laptop, my desktop, my digital camera and my mp3 player for one non-humid day. Really.
The woman behind it died. It's odd, never met her, of course, but now those voicemail menus will never sound the same knowing she's gone.
Nevermind.. got an apology so will just leave the skeletons listed :)
The most embarassing thing you'll find on me is this 5 year old windows-related post. .. well, okay, maybe the reply too.
Oh, fine, I'll be honest this race result is pretty damn embarassing as well.
I don't normally blog about non-geek current news events.. but Brandt is right on about this issue.
the point is that the way all rape cases are handled by the press are abhorent. but because most people have to have that fucking rolling bar running across the bottom of the screen during sportscenter and fox news in an attempt to be "informed" (although anyone who watches fox news (aka the Two Minutes Hate) has to be one of the least informed people on earth) this is the way cases like this are going to be handled.and that's sick.
Until our society stops treating sex as something dirty and shameful.. I'm afraid this is going to be it.
I'm a bit out of it these days.. so instead of original content I'll let others speak for me.. a nice little selection from my blogroll
Anyone else notice how quickly you get to know the first names of the people whose blogs you read?
My father whom I last saw when I was 15 died last night in Poland.
I have a half sister, I never met her all I know is her first name, date of birth and where she was born.. Her father died too yet I doubt she'll know if I can't find her.
ACLU policy white paper:
The Internet as we have known it is going to change -- the only question is how. There’s a fight going on over that question, and at stake is nothing less than the Internet’s potential as a medium for free expression, civic involvement and economic innovation.
[via: dslr]
Considering that I am in Connecticut (but no job leads sorry, and I'm sort of attached to mine) I thought a link to this posting might be a good idea.. I do have some readers from this hellhole of a state.
Find Ron a job - get a game system to waste your time with.. or just give him your job and play games all day, whichever.
[via: Dan]
Maybe that's not such a great idea..
Went for a drive tonight and got stuck at a traffic light behind one of those big SUVs with a built-in tv... and apparently a built-in DVD player.. either that or a subscription to a satellite porno channel.. that's right.. they were watching porno..
I couldn't miss it, dark, screen clear as day..
I can imagine the questions they must have caused along their road trip "what's that man doing mommie?".
People either don't think others can view their screen or have a really disgusting idea of what is entertainment... Which begs for the question.. is what they were doing legal? If it wasn't.. what would it fall under? *They* weren't naked and having sex.. the actors on the screen were.. and technically they were inside a private vehicle, so not in the middle of a church yard setup with a big screen either..
Guess it's time to arm our cars with dark glasses for children for those inopportune moments.. or work on creative answers.
"Yoga, honey.. it's yoga".
The Pentagon is developing an urban surveillance system that would use computers and thousands of cameras to track, record and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a foreign city.
If news says "developing" that probably means it's already in place.. ain't our government grand.
Received this from my bank..
Dear Online Bill Pay Customer:We have received notification that your payee, Associates BankCard MasterCard / Visa ( 1) no longer accepts electronic payments. We have made the necessary changes to how Associates BankCard MasterCard / Visa ( 1) is set up in your payee details to ensure that your future payments are made without interruption.
Why in the world would anyone stop accepting electronic payments? I would think that aside from the initial costs of setting it up it's a much more efficient way of accepting payments than envelopes filled with hand-scribbled checks.. but what do I know.
Here, in the northeast of the continental US we typically experience four seasons.. There's the cold winter, the hot and humid summer and the lovely warm and sunny spring and fall.
It appears that this year someone gave us a horrible, snowy, cold winter that lasted for six months and dumped us straight into hot and humid summer.. What is the deal here? Where are those lovely days of sunny, 70-some degree weather that we expect in spring?
This year's weather can be summed up with: snow, more snow, cold, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, hot-hot-hot.
I want out... right after I file for beatification of whoever invented the AC. Bless you.
By Karl...
Or you could alienate your customers, sue the living shit out of everyone, piss off consumer rights groups everywhere.....and paint yourselves into a corner as some kind of fat, un-yielding modern day Skeksis....pretending to hold the moral high ground when everyone on the planet knows that you're totally full of shit and riding a sinking ship.
.. or you could use the money twelve year olds spent on over-priced Brittney CDs and buy yourself a senator or two. ..
Matt pointed me to this Popular Science article.. Ice cream made with liquid nitrogen!
The result, literally 30 seconds later, was a half-gallon of the best ice cream I'd ever tasted. The secret is in the rapid freezing. When cream is frozen by liquid nitrogen at –196°C, the ice crystals that give bad ice cream its grainy texture have no chance to form. Instead you get microcrystalline ice cream that is supremely smooth, creamy and light in texture. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out.
Hmm.. where can I get some of that secret ingredient..
I've been running for a few months.. well, technically it's jogging since I can't quite run faster than a ten minute mile (yet) but.. it's great exercise and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. This morning I ran my very first 5K race.. The Hartford run/walk for the arts. Here's the problem with running a race for the first time.. everyone keeps saying how most people overtire themselves in the first couple miles and barely finish.. so I wanted to do the smart thing and pace myself.. well.. I did.. right through the finish line and finished in 35 minutes.. that's an average of just over an 11 minute mile.. I've had better times training.. few months ago..
At least this time will be easy to beat in my next race.. Maybe I'll actually compete! Of course considering all the top runners had times of 15-16 minutes.. it's not like it's realistic for me to win :)
The great beer debate.. of course I have to add my idea of what a good beer is..
Bass Ale -- cooled down to about 50 degrees... actually, that's probably the best temperature for most beers.
My mom used to buy this Polish porter (this was in Poland) and boil it with honey.. I never got to taste it though, being a small child and all.. of course these days my mom actually buys Miller lite so I wouldn't exactly go by her taste in beers.
My favorite beers -- in a particular order:
Bass, Guiness, Zywiec, Sam's summer ale.
I wouldn't be a girl if I didn't mention Pete's Strawberry Blonde.. it tastes like strawberries.
What an odd entry to write while waiting for a compile at work..
These have been popping up in my log for several days now every half hour or so..
194.236.55.xxx - - [10/Jun/2003:05:10:09 -0700] "GET /blog/index.rdf HTTP/1.1" 304194.236.55.xxx- - [10/Jun/2003:05:10:09 -0700] "If-None-Match: \"4d00a7-54e3-3ee53ba4\"" 400
For mere $39K it's a great deal!
I can understand seti, folding.. and the other random distributed computing projects.. but this .. was this started as a joke? Please someone say 'yes'..
(Yes, I do know this isn't distributed computing, but the whole competition thing is related)
Why is it that bad days, rotten news, bad things always seem to happen in herds and always when the weather is particularly gloomy, crappy and miserable.
It's enough to make one lose one's sense of humor. Oh, well, there it went.
In the spirit of my last entry I've been regressing in my maturity level and trying to get in touch with my inner teenager.. The result? This is what my belly looked like this morning this is what it looks like now.
Now, this wasn't a rush decision at all.. I've been thinking about doing something for ages.. Ideally I would like a tattoo, but since I'm a terrible, horrible wuss I settled for a little piercing instead. I did quite a bit of research online before making an appointment and one thing that scared me were the many pictures I've seen of heavy bruising around the area and blood.. so I asked my piercer (is that the proper term? I forgot to ask that..) and his response was essentially this..
"There should never be bruising from a piercing if done by a professional, little bleeding is fine, but not profusely at all".
In other words, before you get anything pierced, do your research and find a good professional!
I've received extensive verbal instructions plus a couple of leaflets on how to care for my new holes.. and for jewelry changes (this one is just a starter ring, I'll replace it with something cute and flowery once it's healed sufficiently for that -- 6-8 weeks) I should visit him and he'll do them at no charge.
Pain wasn't *nearly* as bad as I expected (a friend pierced hers before I so I got to see the whole procedure first).. everything was newly opened and sterilized in front of me and each step explained carefully. It felt just like getting a shot.. except over with a lot quicker!
The tshirt is cool, I know :) It's from Wales and credit goes to Lynne!
My 30th birthday is coming up (way, way too quickly for my taste to be honest) and that terrifies me a little.. Thirty years is a really long time to be alive. I easily recall when 20 seemed like old age and these days I can remember what happened that many years ago! That's right, I'm afraid of growing old.. I use anti-wrinkle cream and won't leave the house without sunscreen -- erm, that's right, I don't want skin cancer.
I'm not the only one afraid of my own mortality, it seems our society as a whole has grown to hate aging. Magazines, movies, music videos -- youth sells and aging actors are only useful for viagra commercials.. "look at those poor suckers" -- and that's okay. I don't exactly look up to mass media for inspiration or life lessons so it doesn't bother me all that much.. There is something that bothers me a lot more about our society and that is the staggering amount of "retirement communities" popping up everywhere.. It's not just 'retirement homes' it's retirement communities with barber shops, hair salons, restaurants, bars, bingo centers, catholic services and anything else a person may need right on the spot. It seems we are very enamored with the idea of locking our older generation away in an enclosed community and forgetting they exist.. That saddens and frightens me..
I don't want to be old and forgotten and I'm pretty sure my mom does not either.. I refuse to allow that to happen.. Fine, my later years may not be as much fun if I have to drive my aging mother to the hair salon -- but heck at least I'll be with her while she's around. Even if it does mean listening to that story about me being on a diet at the age of 3 for the thousandth time..
We all read and use forums in one way or another.. sometimes to only research an answer, sometimes to ask a question, communicate with friends or cultivate inner psychosis by moderating the content. Personally, I think all moderators are either masochists or in early stages of mental illness. Not that there aren't exceptions.. of course there are. Some moderators are in late stages of mental illness.
Forums are incredibly useful sometimes. Ask a question -- get a quick answer without the noise, spam and chatter of Usenet.. Unfortunately some really simple rules seem to escape many forum participants.. It's really quite easy. One wants an answer and some good soul wants to help. Wonderful.. here are easy to follow instructions on how to facilitate such exchange in the most inefficient manner possible..
Here are some fine examples:
HELP ME!!!!
Need Help NOW!@!@!@@@!!!!
I HAVE A QUESTION!
Note the fine use of extra !!! It shows emotion! How can anyone by-pass a post with such a title!?!?!?!?!!! Extra points for using ALL CAPS.. IT MAKES THE TOPIC JUMP RIGHT OUT!!!!
Here's an example:
My computer froze. I was working and then it froze. Nothing, like it just stopped. How do I fix this?
Hah, let them try and deduce finer details about you out of this one!
What's worse than being a moderator? Whining about forum posts in your weblog..
Nope, I didn't disappear and die - just back in from California.. I have some entries to post.. will do that later.
I still hate flying.
Four months have passed but it still seems to me like I just came back from the west coast. I wonder if that's at all related to my general hatred of flying. No matter, tomorrow I'm off again -- this time to the lower parts of the west coast.. in other words LA.
Flying out of JFK this time around so when I get stuck for six hours again (and with my general luck I'm sure I will) it will be more entertaining than the glimpse of hell that is Bradley International Airport.
It's just been such a bad last few days I haven't felt like writing anything.. not even a blog entry...
Appears to me that nothing is going well in my life lately.
Pardon the bitching.
The big, steep hill on my usual 5K course.. I managed to run up it today without having to walk after just to get my heart rate back to normal levels... No, really, it's very steep..
Didn't have a heart attack either.
Yay me.
Has the service simply gotten too popular?
I love netflix, really, I do. DVDs delivered to my door, no late fees and the movie selection is really very good.. but lately it's been one problem after another.
One of my movies was lost while returning and one never arrived here.. that hasn't really been a problem (yet) since they just marked one returned and sent me a replacement for the other.. except I can't help but wonder if they will decide to suspend my account if this happens again? Perhaps sending DVDs out in big, bright red envelopes that can be spotted a mile away isn't such a great idea after all?
Another problem.. out of the 25 movies in my current queue two are of the "very long wait" status and have been for the last 4 months.. (yes, that's a very long wait indeed). Three are "long wait" and one of those has also been in my queue for more than four months.. Four are "short wait" but (speaking from experience) it will probably turn to "long wait" or "very long wait" soon enough..
Maybe it's time to buy more copies? Perhaps put a limit on how long one can keep a movie if others are waiting.. (one month is more than enough, really). The idea of "no limit on how long you can have it" is wonderful, but frankly if someone needs a movie for more than a couple of months they ought to just buy it.
I have a feeling if netflix doesn't make some changes soon they will start losing customers and I would hate that since it really is a great service.
Now it finally does feel like spring.. 60s today and more days like this one on the horizon. For the first time this year the 4 mile loop in the park didn't feel cold in places (there are lakes.. and it gets windy.. ).
Everyone else makes new year's resolutions, I'm making a spring one.. need to start waking up earlier and running in the park before work.. I can't run at the gym anymore.. it's too booring.
And with first days of spring come the first annoyances at the park!
- People in groups who take up the entire trail whether they need it or not and runners have to run on the rocks and dead leaves on the side barely avoiding breaking legs in the process.
- Bikers who are too chicken to go on a *real* biking trail and instead zoom at way-too-high speeds on the walking/running trails.. dudes, there are *real* trails where you'll never see families with kids.. go speed there. (They're in the same park, really, I bike there all the time).
- Friends who see you running and get offended that you won't stop to chat.. want to chat, give me a call.. don't interrupt my exercise..
I'm sure I'll have a longer list after my run tomorrow..
Since the GOP wants the patriot act to be permanent it may be a good time to give this a read.. EFF Analysis Of The Provisions Of The USA PATRIOT Act.
[Thanks to Karl for the link]
It seems I've been too busy to post lately.. work has been keeping me quite busy and on top of that I think I'm addicted to Zelda (Wind Waker). The project at work that I have been working on for the last few months went live yesterday.. so anyone who wants to buy Giants tickets (that's the baseball team from San Fran) try this.
I must also be insane as I let a friend talk me into a 4 mile race in a couple of weeks in central park in NYC.
Happy April Fools day.
Today at the gym as I was doing my rounds on the wimpy weight-lifting stack-based machines (heh, stack based!) a relatively young guy (looked to be in mid 30s, not that much older than I) had what appears to be a heart attack while running on the treadmill.. He seemed to be in pretty decent shape.. probably just pushed a little to hard.
That scares me as this is something I tend to do.. This isn't just running, pretty much everything I set my mind to I tend to go to the extremes.. Hey well, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing until everyone thinks I'm psychotic! Not like I'm in such a great shape myself and while I have been working at it hard I still can't really run an 8K race next month that a friend keeps bugging me to enter.. no way.. I'll probably have my own heart attack as I drag myself to the finish line bleeding over fallen bodies of lesser runners (I'm not a quitter, damnit).
What's the point of eating healthy, exercising regularly, being in good shape when it's so very easy to just push yourself too hard one day and boom.. they're taking you away on a stretcher as fat-laden gym members watch and wonder.. Then again, what's the alternative...
Life sucks sometimes.
Your record keeping practices suck.. as do your accounting practices.. then again, maybe this is a shrewd way of getting out of that terrible fiscal crisis?
What am I talking about? Today as I came home I was greeting by a letter in my mailbox addressed from the Department of Revenue Services (CT version of IRS).. never a good sign.. well, it wasn't this time either.
According to their records I paid no taxes for the year of 2000 and owe them $554.87 plus interest and penalties for a total of $743.56. Interesting how that happened considering I have a copy of my 2000 tax return that claims I was owed a $39 refund.
So tomorrow I get to call them and try to straighten this out (I wonder if copies of W2s and a return which clearly show I paid taxes will be enough?). Like I don't have enough problems keeping my own accounting straight, now I have to do it for the state of Connecticut too.
I am interested to know though.. if they have no record of me paying the tax.. do they have a record of them paying me back the balance they owed? ($39) I wonder if I can get that plus penalties and interest back.. yah.. okay, you can stop laughing now, it wasn't *that* funny. How did they come to the conclusion I earned income and owe taxes? Must be the copy of W2s employers are required to send to the state.. the very same W2s that show tax was withheld and in fact I overpaid.. hmm.. funny how they didn't spot that figure.
One of my kitties goes completely insane for immitation crab meat and the other won't even touch it. The one that won't touch it will eat pretty much anything else under the sun.. while the one who loves it is the pickiest eater on earth.
It seems some news sites really ought to pay more attention to what kind of advertisements they display with which story.. I don't think the advertisers featured on this story would be particularly pleased with their placement.
Hm, considering this must be an issue for all news sites, I would think there's already an application out there that matches appropriate advertising with appropriate content. If not, someone really ought to write one!
I don't understand how can anyone cheer a war. People are dying.. when you die it no longer matters which side you were on and everyone has someone who loves them.
Funerals are indeed for the living. I don't like this one.
It's Sunday and the weather is finally above 40 degrees and supposed to be above 40 today! Time to run in the park, I'll attempt to do a nice 5K trail in my local park but it may be just an attempt as I've only been running the treadmill at the gym at 1% incline and the trail in the park has hills. Big ones.
My Internet disconnection put me way behind on geek-type news and I need to start catching up on all my reading. One main thing to mention, I suppose is Scott's Feedster. Well done! What a great idea. Even better, what a great example search term :)
AT&T/Comcast: Nightmare still continues nearly a week later over something that is 99% certain to be their issue (no signal on the cable at all).
Verizon: Issue resolved over a 2 hour phone call with 2 different technicians.
AT&T/Comcast: A service rep actually yelled at me today when I suggested that I don't believe someone will call me back.. 6th such promise after the first five calls where not returned. (I was right, they didn't call back, but I suppose it could have been spite at this point.. and no, I wasn't rude to him at all).
Verizon: Very nice and polite and called *me* back when I got disconnected after a phone battery died.
AT&T/Comcast: Nearly a week later issue not resolved.
Verizon: Not only was issue resolved, the same technician called me today to make sure service is still working and I'm happy.
I don't normally pimp corporations.. but damn if Verizon's customer service doesn't just shine compared to AT&T/Comcast. Then again, in comparison to those bastards the guy on the corner selling pot probably has world's greatest service.
I think it's time I make a new category.. "rants and bitching".. well maybe tomorrow.
I had an appointment with a tech today, between 11-1pm. The tech did show up, in his nice truck with freshly painted "Comcast" lettering over where AT&T used to be and TCI before that. Showed up, never bothered to leave the truck, ring the doorbell or any of the usual things one would expect of a service person. Then left and as I found out later was nice enough to close my ticket for me as well. That's right, without fixing a damn thing.
Called customer service (who else?). They seemed concerned (hah, funny) about my problems and said the tech claimed nobody was home. How nice of them to hire obviously psychic techs since he never bothered to check if someone was home. Hm, perhaps he was afraid of the gang of 5 year olds running on my street because that's the scariest thing in my neighborhood as far as I can tell. Well, either that or my neighbor's chihuaua. That dog can be quite loud. So, back to customer service.. they said they would have someone from the local market dispatch call me back within two hours. (Hey, at the very least I'm really learning all this cool cable-internet-lingo).
Two hours later, no call back. Hah! Bet you didn't expect that result, well I didn't, I still had faith. Of course I called them again.. this time I got to talk with a very-important sounding supervisor. I got a very apologetic "no really, they will call you back in 30-45 minutes, please don't call us back before then" -- they learned to love me by now.
An hour later, of course, no phone call. More customer service calls, more supervisors, more promises.. and a result of.. "we can get a tech out on the 13th".
Uhm, no. I am not waiting until the 13th to have my Internet access restored, especially considering what I suspect the reason for the disconnect is. My lack of subscription to cable tv and an overzealous technician. So, so far the result is: they will try to get a tech out tomorrow morning. I'm not holding my breath.
In the meantime, I subscribed to Verizon's express network.. 110K connection on my cell phone which is connected to my laptop. It's pretty nice! Well, was while it was working which it is not anymore. It stopped for no particular reason and I'm currently on the phone with Verizon's tech support (some really nice guy from California has been on this with me for the last hour or so.. but it's still not bloody working (he laughed at my lame jokes, he must be nice (hey, I'm nesting parens!))) and trying to get it to work. Sigh.
I'm cursed.
Well, if nothing else I learned how to get into the setup menu on my phone using the Verizon (maybe it's Motorola, dunno) secret access code. Lots of nifty options there to play with but considering my recent luck with all things electronic I think I'll restrain myself from doing so.
My cable modem went down yesterday morning (right around that great, big snowstorm).. cable tv is out as well so it's a bigger outage than some blown card somewhere.
As of this posting it's still down.. and since customer service claims it should be up I'm not sure they even realize they're having a problem. As it stands a technician is supposed to come out to my home on Monday, of course they may have cancelled that by now considering they think it's fixed and won't listen to reason. Yah, cable tv is still out as well.
Not having web access at home sucks.. especially since I have to work tomorrow and it seems I'll have to come to the office.. (where I am right now).
Bah.
Reading Jeremy's entry about his book-writing struggles made me think about my own problems with blocks.. be it writer's or programmer's (yes, we have those too).
Jeremy discovered he works well away from a keyboard.. I think that may be true of many people in general we just don't often give ourselves a chance to try it. After all, anything written by hand needs to be typed.. seems like more work, why bother? Then there is the convenience of a laptop computer.. when I didn't have one it was all I wanted.. a dream come true.. and it really is great. I can sit outside a coffee shop (well, once it gets warm again) and write, write, write.. data going straight onto my hard drive.. clickety-clack packaged complete with a spell check. It's great.. except.. I often find myself lacking in inspiration and what I miss then.. is the editing.
One thing I cannot do on a computer but can on a piece of paper is completely and utterly destroy what I've written with a stroke of a pen. There is just something great and inspriing in madly crossing out letters.. It has to be a pen.. pencils are wimpy and just don't make much of an impression.. but a pen.. swoosh goes a paragraph.. off with a word.. there goes a letter. This just can't be duplicated on a computer with clean and sanitized deletion. Little editing and before you know it your'e inspired again..
I have noticed recently that majority of my friends are going through major changes these days. Getting divorced, married, having children.. I think I can count maybe one or two friends who are not doing one of those listed... That's a little frightening.
Is it something specific to this age group? Care-free 20s over.. time for reflection on the meaning of life? (speaking of which, I liked "About Schmidt" quite a bit, great movie).
I'm debating whether it's just fear.. Turning 30, while to some may sound laughable, to me is a big change and I have an idea it's the same for most of my friends. This is it. The crossroads. If you don't have children yet and want them.. you better start on that pregnancy quickly... so there you have.. everyone wanting to get married in the hurry in the fear of becoming old and childless.
So this is what I've been doing lately.. reflecting on life and working.. and of course I got my promo disk of Zelda. Should be back to regular-geeky blogging tomorrow.
It's snowing again! I can't take it anymore.
Have we annoyed some weather-providing god? What kind of sacrifice would make it go away.. would a toasted motherboard do?
First, take a look at these pictures.. These girls look like they haven't had a decent meal in the last ten years. I could have sworn just two years ago the Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue featured models with at least 5% body fat..
What scares me is that this is what is being broadcast as the standard for beauty. When I hear ten year olds talk of dieting (skinny ten year olds) and then view pictures like this reviled as 'feminine' and 'beautiful' I want to take all fashion designers and fashion magazine editors and drop them into a bucket full of bacon grease. Thanks guys (designers and editors), you're responsible for thousands of young girls starving themselves in a downward spiral of self-beating hell just to look like an escapee from a concentration camp.
Can any men tell me they actually find this attractive? Forget the makeup and suggestive posing.. look at their arms.
The US is a country that believes passionately in freedom, ingenuity and free enterprise. It has produced only two dozen kinds of cheese (some of which are excellent copies of French and British cheeses). However, if you walk into any American supermarket, you will see that the US has produced more than 50 kinds of peanut butter. They all taste the same but they have radically different labels.France is a country that is overtaxed and over-administered by a suffocating bureaucracy. It has somehow managed to create 176 (or 258 or 1,000) different kinds of cheese, all of which are subtly different from one another. A lait cru (raw milk) camembert, eaten at just the right moment (when there is only a thin layer of dry cheese in the centre) is one of the great achievements of humanity. Ditto roquefort; and St-Nectaire; and cantal; and chaource; and so on and on (and on).
According to the Wall Street Journal book of political and economic orthodoxy, the American Way produces enterprise, variety and choice. The French Way produces stultification. Cheese defies that ideology. No wonder that cheese-eating is a term of insult for American right-wingers.
If we are being offered a choice between a cheese-eating civilisation and a peanut-butter-eating civilisation, I am with the cheese-eaters. Post-September 11, US politics and even US journalism seems to be going the way of peanut butter. There is room for endless freedom of choice between labels. The contents of the ideas are not allowed to vary.
[Thanks dave]
Being snowed in on a Monday is not one of them.. Since I was sharing this elsewhere and had to think about it for more than five minutes I thought I should at the very least make a blog entry of it..
In no particular order..
Am I the only one who finds these forwards horribly annoying?
"When I was a kid life was so great! Now it sucks! We have to wear seatbelts now!"
Yah, life was terrific, just great and now it bloody sucks.. Yes, doctors no longer make house calls but you don't have to die from pneumonia either.
Things changed.. women can vote, races are less segregated and if a woman is raped she doesn't have to move out of town shamed.
Times change, move along now and stop listening to the media so much.. times aren't as bad as they make them out to be.
So it is, and on to random things straight from under my hair..
It snowed today.. quite a bit, morning commute was hell (why did I even bother leaving home? I must be insane, I could have just worked from home). Three spun-out SUVs spotted on the way to work. Hah. Just because you have four-wheel-drive doesn't mean you're above the laws of physics.. no traction means no traction. Why can't people remember that?
Work is busier than busy -- I'll be working all weekend. Delivery in about 3 weeks and I don't even want to think about the shape of the code.. oh, and of course with fewer coders (the recent layoffs) it will be all the more fun.
On the bright side of things.. I ordered my new rackmount server today.. it should be ready sometime next week and Jeremy, the really nice guy that he is, will deliver it to the datacenter for me.. where it will be hosted by a friend's hosting company. Friends rule.
I have one question. What the hell happened to Red Hot Chili Peppers? They used to be a bit hip, a little different and a somewhat cool band.. now it's all random-mainstream-love-sick-crap. Yuck.
The company I work for laid off more people today. All in development and QA. This stinks.. as one of my office-mates is gone and there's only two of us left in the office now. (I think about 20 people in the building total).
It sucks.. half the development staff is gone.
This is the third round of layoffs since I've worked here (two years this month) but the first one targeted specifically at engineering.
or "what everyone thinks is the law isn't".
I have had occasion to travel a good deal in the last several months, and on those trips I decided to research and test this issue about the necessity for producing identification. I have talked with agents, and their supervisors, of several major airlines in cities across America, and have gradually pieced together a rather complete picture of the real legal situation regarding our right to travel.
[via: Jeremy]
Others say it better than I.
Reading old newspaper ads can be a traumatizing experience.
Check out this lysol ad.
Nevermind what a bad idea a douche is.. but with *lysol* ?? For marital bliss??
- kasia, who is now curled up in a fetal position.. twitching.
Dave - "Smokers Only":
You learn things in your late 20s that you can't imagine in your early 20s. And the early 30s have their lessons, as do the mid 30s and the late 30s (oh boy!) and then the early 40s. And some of the learning is pegged to other people's experiences. Like when one of your parents dies. Or a child goes to college. Or things out of your control (bypass surgery).
Eh, what does an old fart like that know anyway..
Where am I? Saturday Jan 18 2003 12-ish (eastern time) somewhere above upstate New York
There are very few people who can seriously enjoy being in Connecticut when it's not the pretty foliage season. It's not the foliage season - it's January -- which in our teeny state translates to cold, bitter, bone-chilling, tooth-cracking cold.
My flight this morning was scheduled to depart at 6:01am[0], so like a good little citizen of post-nine-eleven[1] America I arrived at the airport a full hour before scheduled take off. I assumed that since it's such an early flight on a Saturday the airport would be near empty. Wrong assumption. Thankfully I was pulled out of the ticketing line[2] so I could get through security in time to board my flight. Survived security - for once no personal searches[3] and the only inconvenience was taking out my laptop. Fine, no problem, I can live with that.
Let me summarize before I go on. This means I dragged myself out of my warm, fuzzy, cat-covered bed at an ungodly hour of 3:45am. Took a shower, dressed, put on makeup[4] and drove to the airport to make this six am flight. Excuse me, six-oh-one am flight.
Flight boarded as scheduled and I became the proud occupant of my favorite airplane seat - by the window. As plane taxied to the runway I prepared myself for the inevitable attack of nausea that usually accompanies take-offs and landings, well, at least for me it's usual. Engines whined, plane sped up.. and.. that's it. Stopped, turned around, back to sitting by the runway.
No, not on the runway -- by the runway.
The captain spoke: Some teeny sensor malfunction, they'll find out if we even have to go back to the gate for this and we'll be off.. Ten minutes tops!
Okay, that's not so bad, I have an hour to catch my connecting flight to San Jose, so ten minutes is not a problem. That's what I thought at the time anyway, unfortunately, ten minutes does indeed become a problem when it multiplies, strains and takes on a life of its own.
Ten minutes later:
Captain speaks: "Okie dokie, folks, we will just taxi back to the gate and replace that funky censor. That'll be just ten more minutes."
Two times ten minutes later:
Captain's voice: "Sorry folks, that didn't work, we now need to do some more maintenance, it'll be another ten minutes"
Three times ten minutes later, we now have our own little ten-minute family:
Captain booms: "Oops, heh-heh, well that didn't work either, it'll just be another ten minutes".
See the pattern yet? We're now up to four sets of ten minutes each.
Captain whines: "Well, gee, folks, don't know how to tell you this, but it'll be just a few more minutes".
Aha! Must have ran out of ten minute units we're down to the ambiguous 'few' unit[5].
Two hours later:
Captain pleads: "Oh, well, heh-heh, hm, yes, well, we'll be now asking you to depart the airplane as we try to fix this pesky little problem. This is for your convenience folks, so you can get yourself some breakfast".
He obviously never spent much time at the Bradley International Airport near Hartford Connecticut concourse B. There is one place you can buy food here.. and I use the term 'food' very loosely. Greasy hot dogs, foil-wrapped ancient muffins and lousy coffee. I settled for a cup of coffee.
At this point I realized I would miss my connecting flight[6] and made arrangements for a different one.
Summary: I have lousy coffee, a boarding pass for a flight several hours away out of Chicago to which I'm not sure when I'll get and I'm stuck at BDL in CT.
This is where I get to my point (I did open whining about Connecticut). There are many airports in this great country of ours in which one can be stuck for hours and happily spend the time shopping, eating, drinking and being merry. Bradley[7] is not one of them. The only vaguely entertaining thing to do here is watch other travelers' frustration with being delayed, missing connections and overall inconvenience. Spending four hours at this particular airport is truly cruel and unusual punishment. I've been to school detention[8] that was more fun and entertaining than this. There was the possibility that the plane has actually crashed and I went to hell.. but I dismissed that idea when I realized my cell phone still worked. If it was hell I wouldn't have digital service.
So as I sit here on the next flight out of Hartford to Chicago (11:37) I can't help but wonder just how many ten minute increments were produced between 6am and now? Yes, yes, easy mathematical equation but this was meant to be something more philosophical than that. At some point the ten minute increments which appear so short and easy take on a life of their own and become hours.. long, boring, horrible hours. I could probably come up with something more deep and thoughtful than that if it wasn't for the horrible noise coming from the engines - my near neighbors - in my aisle seat in the back of an overcrowded MD-80.
Maybe I was wrong.. maybe this is hell after all..
[edit: at the time I was writing this I have yet to find out my new connecting flight had a 2 hour delay.. how's that for a lousy day?]
[0] - can anyone explain to me why would a flight be scheduled for a minute after an hour? Why not 2 minutes? 30 seconds?
[1] - Isn't it frightening that this has become a word?
[2] - What is the point of buying electronic tickets if you still have to stand in line with all the un-ticketed passengers to get your concourse-door-opening boarding pass? Sure, it saves paper. Ok.
[3] - I knew wearing a baggy sweater over my clothes would help with that one *snicker*
[4] - To cover-up those lovely dark circles under my eyes from getting an unhealthy doze of merely three hours of sleep third night in a row. Did I mention I have problems sleeping on airplanes?
[5] - Every time I type 'unit' it comes out as 'unix' and I have to fix it.. even did it for this footnote!
[6] - Unless I can get to Chicago in an hour.. I drive fast, but not *that* fast!
[7] - Bradley International Airport near Hartford, Connecticut -- didn't I cover this part already?
[8] - It's been a while, but I still vividly remember sitting in a classroom full of bored students attempting to do homework. It's boring.
I'm back in Connecticut and freezing my behind off in the lovely cold spell we've been having. Sixty degree difference from one day to the other and off by three hours.. ah, the magic of flying accross a continent.
I wrote a couple of entries on the plane (one on the way there the other on the way back) and will be posting them as soon as I find my bloody pcmcia network card.. It's *somewhere* in my suitcase I just can't remember where. Probably snuggly nested among my dirty laundry.
I miss California already.. *sniff*
I've been super-uber busy with work and other work.. and tomorrow I'm flying to California -- back Thursday morning.
In the meantime I'm about a week behind on personal email (I owe several people replies - so sorry).
Probably won't be blogging much in the upcoming few days.
I'm flying to Northern California on Saturday (6am flight, yikes) and coming back Wednesday night. I may have an hour or two of time I have nothing scheduled for (yet) so anyone wanting to say hello, drop me a note and I'll see what I can do. Of course if you're a stalker, insane or otherwise dangerous -- please don't bother. I'm flexible on the insane part.
During my stay I'll be staying in lovely Palo Alto and probably using my laptop so much it will feel just like home. But warmer. And no snow.
The only dilemma I have is my luggage. My suitcase has a built-in combination lock (my carry-on suitcase is too small for four days -- really) and I'm afraid someone will spin the teeny wheels, lock it and then after they mark my curling iron as a potential bomb it will be destroyed for a search.. after that of course the entire contents of the suitcase (with my luck it will be on the return trip and will include dirty underwear) will be spilled all over the baggage area conveyor belt for all to admire. I think I'll put tape over the teeny wheels.. or write the combination on the suitcase.. right next to "Please, help yourself to anything inside".
I hate flying.
As usual, I missed the renewal date on one of the domains I own (it expired the 7th) and some good soul renewed it for me.. but nobody I know has owned up to it so far.
So, whoever the nice person is, thank you!
Warning: Rant ahead
It's a term I hear (I suppose technically, read) in discussions quite often. "Life is too short, child", "Don't worry about it, child".. ad nauseum..
It's patronizing, infuriating and unfortunately used quite too often. I wonder if this has anything to do with my gender.. are men ever referred to as 'children' in discussions?
The worst part is.. half the time the person using the term does not mean it in the way it comes across -- equal to a pat on a head and a lollipop in an outstretched hand.
I'm nearly thirty years old (eight months away, to be accurate) and I am not a child. I agree, I may act like one now and then and I may even sound like one occasionally but unless you happen to be a 54 year old Polish woman with facial features strikingly like my own, please do not call me that.
Just got home in one piece and I thought it's appropriate to celebrate that..
Happy New Year. Really, it is.. *hic* (no, I did not drive)
SNET is no longer blacklisted, thank you Derek and Brandon from SNET for resolving this issue.
Topic of the day: New year's resolutions.
I don't have any.
One must wonder why I don't, after all it's been a tradition of a sort for people to come up with all these resolutions to be fulfilled through the new year.
Actually, that's not completely accurate.. I do have one resolution and that is to make no resolutions! I do know that is a bit of an oxymoron, but if gnu can mean not unix then I can make a resolution to make no resolutions.
It may appear to be a little odd to have such an opposition to new year's resolutions but there is logical thought behind this. As an engineer, there is logical thought behind everything I do. Except the things that are illogical.. there's no logical thought involved there at all. Like every classic procrastinator (and I'm truly the definition of the word) I never follow up on any resolutions I make, so making them only needlessly depresses me and puts stress on my already fully stressed life (who isn't stressed these days?). Catch anything in that previous sentence? I just wrote I never follow up on any resolutions I make which may include this resolution to make no resolutions.
On further thought.. never-mind all that.
I'm making a resolution to stop posting blithering idiocy like this one :)
I stocked up on new books, bought plenty of gifts and still have some Amazon money (tm) leftover.
Anyone didn't get the book they really wanted for giftmas and would like it now? Let me know.. and I'll see what I can do about it.. I think it's a better way to spend my money than buying this self-help manual.
Amazon wishlists are a cool idea.. I've used quite a few to complete my holiday shopping.. so point me at one of yours and maybe I'll get you your book :)
--------------
Edit: a book went out to one person that posted in this entry today.. and my 'amazon money' balance is now down to $5.54 so I'll just leave the rest for future books I need.
Thank <insert your favorite deity>.
I've received many really nice gifts, made too much food, ate too much food, played too many video games and lost at most to a nine year old. At least I won at scrabble.
I was snowed in this morning as my street didn't get plowed until afternoon.. that's the uh, benefit of living in a small neighborhood.. we're probably the last on the list of streets to get plowed.
In other news, I seem to have picked up a hm, what word shall I use.. troll? I suppose that's a bit accurate.. who likes to leave rude comments in my weblog directed at other people who have left comments. Lovely.. I've been using the 'delete' option quite a bit.. I may just automate it to simplify my life. Maybe if this person would stick to one ip.. that would make it easier? Hint, hint..
"Two towers" was quite good.. New Zealand looks incredibly beautiful.. and while the movie may not be the earth shattering experience for me that it is for some.. I did enjoy watching it very much. Christmas tree is up and here's a picture of it for you.. well, a part of it.. It's a fake (in case it's not very obvious), I can't quite stomach cutting down a tree that took years to grow just to throw it out two weeks later. Plastic for me, thank you. It's really rather difficult to take a decent picture of a decorated tree. With flash, it all looks fake and plastic and can't see the pretty lights, without flash it's either too dark or too grainy and cannot really see much other than dim colors and lights. Hence I opted for flash and cutting out a part that looks semi-interesting. The picture of the whole tree looks pretty crummy. |
.. from all that cooking, cleaning and general holiday anoyances.. so going to see the "Two Towers" today.. I'm probably the last remaining geek who hasn't seen it yet.
In other news..
"In balancing the rights of the public domain against commercial interests, I say that public officials need to favor the public domain," Eric Eldred
Government wants help spying on us:
In a set of preliminary guidelines released in September, the White House said high-tech companies that keep an eye on the Internet should combine their efforts and work with the government to better defend against computer viruses, worms and other cyberattacks.
Suuuure.. we all know how that will end..
That translates into laundry, cleaning, cooking, baking, running around like crazy.
All this so we can have a big, family dinner on Christmas eve (Poles have the 'big dinner' on the eve as opposed to Christmas day, we also get our gifts after the dinner not next morning). On the bright side, Christmas eve is a lenten day so for once I can cook all-veggie dishes and not listen to a litany of complaints about the lack of meat on the table.
What I make ever year:
Time permitting I'll probably make other things.. plus the staples.. potatos and such.. and then there are the numerous fish dishes my mom always makes..
I've had AT&T cable Internet for over a year (since @home days). They've raised the price this year.. They raised it again for customers who have their own equipment.. and today I received a letter anouncing another raise.
This one because I do not subscribe to cable tv.
I don't watch tv.. I don't want to.. I will *not* pay for something I do not use... but apparently now I don't have a choice, because my cable modem bill is going up from $45 a month to $60 a month. If I subscribe to basic cable it will be $55 a month for *both*.
This is not the right way to treat your customers AT&T.
All I've been doing lately is work, work, work and then some more work.. This morning I've actually sat down with a cup of coffee and started catching up on some of my reading.. work be damned, I need to relax for an hour or two.
Bits and pieces:
Jeremy writes:
It's a rare engineer who can see both sides of the coin: the technology and its application toward achieving a company's business goals.
However, there's a stranger breed that I've encountered: the engineer who has somehow forgotten how to look at things from a traditional software engineer's perspective. This odd creature has little trouble explaining how his work supports the company's broader goals. Yet he has difficultly communicating with the more common engineers--those who mainly see technology.
Wild guess... but maybe they're the recently created MIS majors? In my world, an engineer should focus on technology.. that's what makes him/her an engineer, otherwise they're just tech-savvy business people.
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RIP DirectTV dsl
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Tony Bowden:
No wonder, then, that developers are attracted to XP, It values what developers consider to be important. It also taps into the pride in work that most developers share.
I was subjected once to some XP.. thankfuly it was briefly.. Maybe I'm just too much of a loner, but working in pairs made me want to strangle the developer I was paired up with.. and we normally get along famously! He's a great coder.. yet I hated coding with him, go figure.
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In other news..
Weblogic still sucks and I'm still coughing.
True to my procrastinating self, I waited until this past weekend to purchase my very own copy of the new Peter Gabriel album.. Being even more so a procrastinator I didn't really listen to it until today at work when co-worker chatter forced me to apply the soothing device known as headphones to my ears.
I'm in love with this album. To say it's terrific is probably an understatement. I suppose cannot expect anything but the best since it took him merely ten years to record it..
Peter Gabriel has always been near the top of the list of my favorite musicians and once again I've been reassured as to why.. He's one of the very few artists with integrity, honesty in his sound and the talent to back it up.
I'm particulary drawn to "Growing up" despite the rather heavy techno undertones (maybe it's just me..)..
my ghost likes to travel so far in the unknown
my ghost likes to travel so deep into your space
Did I mention I really like this album?
Holiday season is coming and I'm nearly done with my giftmas shopping. Thankfully, most of it was online so it was relatively painless and lacking in crowds and screaming kids. Money spent on DVDs, books and Old Navy clothes (thankfuly no nine year olds read this as far as I know..) not withstanding, I intend to spend about $110 more. On myself.
This probably sounds awfully out of character.. but what I really want for Christmas is a Pasta roller for my kitchenaid. It would make cooking soo much easier for me.. and since I don't want to drop heavy hints and wait until Christmas day for it, I'll go buy one this weekend.
This way my holiday cooking will be that much easier.
The most frequent question I tend to be asked via e-mail is how is my name pronounced.
It's kah-shia, sort off.. really hard to explain actually.. and that's just the first name. Trying to explain how to pronounce my last name will put everyone to sleep.. So as a service to humanity and to save myself from answering the same question over and over again, I'm posting a recording of my work voicemail message. I suppose I could just post the number and have everyone call, but I have this annoying aversion to receiving phone calls from strangers mid attempting to work..
What you can hear in here (mp3) (it's probably hard to understand for most due to my accent and fast speech - I do talk this fast all the time, sorry).. is me pronouncing my first and last name..
Oh yah, don't leave a message.. it's just an mp3 not my voicemail.
Edit: I'm an idiot and screwed up the mp3.. it should work now, sorry.
I'm so out of shape it's not funny. Went to the gym today for the first time in roughly three weeks (missed all that workout time due to being sick and on a tight work schedule besides that).
I ran a mile.. barely.. and now I'm exhausted.. None of that lovely exhiliration as endorphins kick in - didn't run nearly long enough for those, sadly. To make matters worse.. I think my muscles will hurt tomorrow!
How frustrating.. takes months to get in shape and barely few weeks to fall back into stagnation.
What once used to be just on usenet has sprang up on every other website over the last few years. Forums.
Easy to have your own forums these days. Plenty of free software, online support, technical documents. Download some software, throw into a server, stir and add users.
It's hard to even grasp the idea of just how many online communities there must exist these days.. and every single one thinks it's unique in its membership and closeness. I'm sure they all are unique.. after all we're all unique as human beings go.. so we all form unique communities.
What is not unique to any particular forum is dramas. This article at the Register is what brought up today's topic. This is something I've seen several times now.. a user's brother/sister/mother/significant other/dog posts in a forum that the user has died.. few months later turns out it was a joke/hoax/whatever you want to call it.
The online world has finally brought us something every teenager wanted at some point. Who has not thought, in a moment of teenage angst and hormone driven self-pity, "I'll kill myself, that'll show them!".. Of course the major flaw in this plan is that if you do commit such act you cannot be around to watch the results.. The crying, the pain, the guilty feelings "Oh, look what we've done, what we've driven him/her to".
Internet to the rescue! Once again, the virtual reality has provided us with something true reality cannot.. Well, at least I think reality cannot.. for all I know ghosts of suicides past are hanging around my desk right now with disapproving looks on their faces (hm, can ghosts have faces?).
Steve has once coined a perfect term for this behaviour.. dramacide.
This brings me to my good deed for the day, mainly this declaration:
I do solemnly swear and declare, that if I ever decide to kill myself (online or in reality) I will not commit dramacide.. I will quietly go and none of my cats will come back to post about it.
You're welcome.
Nearly back in the world of the living. Today I woke up with almost normal temperature (37.8, that's a huge improvement from the nearly daily 39+ I've been waking up with for the last week and a half) and my headache was almost bearable.. (meaning I could function without waiting for medication to kick in).
That means I'm almost well. Wonderful.
This has been a doozy.. I caught the flu and instead of staying in bed like any normal, sane person would I decided to work and function anyway.. Bad idea. Caught a secondary infection and a nasty one at that. I think the last time I had fever in the 40s was when I had kidney problems as a kid.. long, long time ago. The red teeny dots in random places on my body weren't very attractive either (petechiae - due to increased viral count in blood).
Well, that will teach me to not take better care when sick.. Almost back to normal functioning, I'm working from home (falling behind at work would only create more stress which doesn't help in getting well) and slowly getting caught up on email and stuff.
Just very sick. I apologize for the lack of updates. I should be getting better soon and catching up with reading, email and the world in general.. right now I'm just focused on getting better.
I have a nasty cold right now. Actually it's the flu.. my back is killing me, I'm coughing up my lungs (or at least it feels that way) and I'm running around 38 degree (that's Celsius, I never did switch to F) fever most of the day. It sucks. Alternative? Take medication, so I did..
It made my back pain go away.. it made my fever drop to a more respectable 37.something degrees, didn't make my cough go away but I do think it's a bit better. Unfortunately, together with the fever my IQ points must have dropped. Significantly.
On my way to work (deadline, can't take time off) I almost missed the turn off because I had to think whether it's the right road or not. Nearly missed my driveway on the way home as I didn't recognize the house I've lived in for years..
Code took me about three times as long to complete as usual.. I don't normally have to stop and squeeze my temples to figure out simple things. I already posted one rant today and nearly completed and posted another one... that's just bad form, I know better.
I think I've concluded I'd rather suffer the symptoms of the flu (achy back, here I come) than be half-retarded all day long.
I must wonder, I know strong migraine medication does this to me (unfortunately I do know that one all too well) but it never occured to me that flu medication would have such a strong effect on my ability to think clearly. Of course, normally I just take a sick day when i'm down with something this bad..so I probably just never noticed it before.
I apologize if my entries for the day are not clear or even coherent... blame it on the meds.
This rings quite true..
"There is no more feminism," [..]. Game Over. But it took me a day or two to name the new game. It's "girlism" -- women want to be sexy girls and use all the tricks girls use. Crying, flirting, begging, winking, stomping their feet when they don't get their way, general trotting around showing off their long legs and whatever else they decide to show off thereby distracting and derailing men.
It's about power -- girl power we've always had but forgot about combined with all the stuff we've learned in the workplace. Needless to say, if you're a man and you call us on it, we deny it. The new double double standard. We learned how to stop playing fair.
.. and I'm way too sick to write anything witty, interesting or even remotely amusing.. best I could do is whine and there's enough of that in way too many weblogs as is..
Go read something else.
Louisiana's 197-year- old sodomy law does not discriminate against gays and lesbians, a state appeals court ruled. The state Supreme Court ruled that the law against oral and anal sex does not violate the right to privacy...
That's right, the state can tell you what kind of sex you can have in your own home with a consenting adult partner.
In a country where 12 year olds sing along to sexually explicit songs sang by half-naked vixens.. sigh.
Thanks to some lovely ice storms that hit Connecticut Saturday night I have been without power since about 4am last night. (I can tell the time thanks to my line monitoring, finally found use for it!).
Not having power really sucks.. I'll be busy tonight throwing out spoiled food and making sure all my electronic equipment still works.. at least I know my computers work.. and my router..
Few more minutes and it should be warmer than 30 degrees in here as well.. go figure I have gas heat but it doesn't work without electricity. My cats are two little balls of fur snuggled together under a blanket.
I should buy a gas power generator so I can make noise at 4am just like my neighbors.
Together, we boycott Christmas Shopping, Christmas decorations, Christmas cards, and every variety of Christmas Crap. We refuse to support the Holiday Industry. We show our love for friends and family by giving our time and care, not by purchasing consumer goods. We maintain the integrity of giving by giving spontaneously and from our hearts, rather than during a specified season.
Sure, great concept, but you try to explain to a little kid that he/she's the only one on the block not getting gifts due to principles. Sadly, this probably will not create much difference..
Christmas merchandise this year clocked in early October in the department stores.
[via: Lynne]
Overdue car rentals:
The following pictures were taken at easyCar sites of customers who came to pick up cars that had been rented. The cars that they took away are now all at least 15 days overdue and the photographs displayed relate to cars that became overdue after October 1st 2002.
Hm, not sure it will help them get the cars back.. but might make a potential thief think twice.
[via: Tony Bowden]
It's Sunday, perfect day to post a completely useless irrelevant entry that no one will read because it's random and boring.
What did I learn this weekend..
1. Don't stop at a red light with the window down. Apparently it's now a hip new way to pick up women. Requirements: driving a seedy looking bmw and predictable pick up lines. Examples: "You have pretty eyes.", "I don't see a ring on the left hand, what's on the right". Expected result: a vaguely amused out-of-towner who will later post it as an anecdote in her weblog.
2. Neil Gaiman's Sandman series is very addicting. Thanks a lot Tom for making me addicted to comic books, like I wasn't geeky enough yet.
3. Lots of people hate Microsoft, many of them start websites like this one.
Just came back from a Rush concert at the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville. It's been a good night.. my concert tickets were free (work), valet parking was free (I think the first time ever I didn't have to pay extra for concert parking) and on top of that I won $56 on the slot machines. My first time gambling.. ever.. probably the last since there's no way I can keep winning and I hate losing.
Not often do you go out on a Friday night and come home with more money than you left with.. Neat. Bed time.
It's Spiderella The Spider Queen and her evil minion, The Black Pussycat.
(Copy this image and die a gruesome and torturous death with no internet access and only the use of windows 95 for eternity plus I'll kick your butt)
Stupid SBC The connection where my main mail server lives is down.. So I've had no e-mail since sometime around 3am.. and I don't know when it will come back..
Hence, If you e-mailed me during this time, don't expect a reply soon.. (hopefully I will get it once the server is back up though).
If it's an emergency, use my work e-mail address [firstinitial][lastname]@tickets.com -- should be easy to figure out :)
-------
Update:
Turns out SNET (the local SBC spawn) had a scheduled maintenance last night and my friend who owns the said connection didn't reset his router until recently and my mail is working now. I apologize for calling SBC "stupid" undeservingly (this time, they have deserved it at other times.. ). I'll clean out my inbox later (there are about a hundred messages there.. ).
Geddy's side. Those are my seats for the upcoming Rush concert at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, CT. I had much better seats for the opening night show in Hartford, but heck, these are free.
Why is it that Rush fans are inevitably geeks or musicians.. (or combination of the two) it's odd.
Tonight seemed like a good night for a movie I've seen already and since Brazil was at hand.. that is what I watched.. Either my perception of movies has changed with age or this movie has changed or my reality has changed.. one of these, because it seemed very different from the last time I watched it.. years ago..
What once seemed ridiculously funny no longer was.. buried under paperwork now has meaning.. and a new threat has emerged...
Happiness.. we're all in it together
Great movie, well ahead of its time.
To be honest, I never really did. Ever since the day I first discovered the university bookstore which happily overcharges for every teeny thing it sells (powerbar? That'll be $3, thank you) is actually a spawn of B&N.
Yesterday, as I was driving home with my newly purchased wireless network stuff I saw a B&N sign.. "cool a bookstore" I thought, as I was planning to get a mod perl book.
I should have known better. This wasn't a bookstore, this was B&N hell, books included.
Not only does their computer book selection suck (they didn't have the one I wanted..) but the whole store has the warm feel of a emergency ward waiting room. To make matters worse, as I fondly remembered my local Border's coffee shop (it's a great little hang out) I thought "at least I'll grab a coffee". Right. The B&N coffee shop turned out to be a Starbucks complete with snotty personnel who turn their noses on anyone ordering a plain, black coffee.
Latte my ass.
It's been raining for two days. It's raining today. Forecast for tomorrow? More rain.
I can't even go to the coffee shop and work outside on my laptop.. sigh
Bits and pieces..
Krzysztof says.. people are starving at the buffet of life.. well.. old and tired soliloquies aside I think this is the wrong audience for this.
Dave hates AIM for MAC.. It's not better for linux..
The senat once again is trying to screw small internet broadcasters, so what else is new?
David Johnson finds blogging difficult. When in doubt, just make an entry full of links to other blogs :)
Finally (if anyone is still reading this) Derek thinks asking friends to help with a move is lame.. but isn't it more fun (and free exercise!) to move heavy items with a bunch of good friends and then spend the evening in an empty new apartment drinking beer, eating pizza and laughing at each other? Some of the best times I've had where moves.
There is a new attraction in central Connecticut. It opened last Saturday, but the level of attention has yet to decline.
At any given hour of a day, if you drive by it, there is a crowd of cars attempting to enter the parking lot. A police officer is on hand directing the traffic flow (who is paying for that?). Line of cars blocking the right lane of the adjacent highway for a mile, sometimes longer.
Drivers sitting in their cars, some smoking cigarettes, some looking impatiently through the windshield.. most are lone drivers.
There are orange traffic cones blocking off the right turn lane prior to the entrance.. and the place is mobbed.. line of people out the door.
What is this phenomenal attraction?
A newly opened Krispy Kreme Donut Shop. I kid you not.
I want out of Connecticut. Now.
I was just sharing what I had for supper with someone and it occurred to me I really should share it in my blog.
Lady-bug socks and teddy-bear sheets aside, I'm a pretty weird person.. Particularly when I'm preparing a meal out of whatever is leftover in the food storage appliance commonly referred to as a refrigerator after a week of no grocery shopping.
Tonight's menu..
- leftover tofu cut in irregular strips, tossed in picante sauce (I like it really hot)
- leftover, store-made cole slaw that still looks vaguely edible
- last survivor from a package of wheat pita bread bought sometime in the beginning of the week.
Put it all together and what do you get? A yummy pita sandwich that needs to be chased with lots of seltzer water..
I commute to work every day (except for sickdays, of course *cough* *cough*) and it's about 30 miles one way. That's a long drive. It seems even longer when it spent driving down (..a long desert highway.. (bleah, wrong song)) a boring, uneventful route in central Connecticut. Quite possibly world's most boring drive.
Normally, I pretty much just space out, turn on some awful music (one of my friends calls it "your rave music", it's really not.. but okay) and happilly drown out the existence of anybody else while I roll down the road to get to the traffic lights that will lead me to work. I usually run the red light for a left turn at this point, since it's a useless wait and cops (hi officer) aren't normally present.
Today, for some bizzarre reason I was awake enough to pay attention to my surroundings while driving. No, really, I was. I am now frightened. I noticed something that has escaped me before.. I mean I did realize people these days prefer to buy the bigger cars.. you know.. SUVs, minivans, trucks, tanks, missile silos on wheels that kind of thing.. but this is frightening. My little mazda is apparently the smallest car left on roads today. At least in Connecticut. At least on highway 91 South between routes 9 and 68. At least in my closest vicinity.
As I was looking around me in panic all I could see where these huge vehicles, all seemingly set on attacking and devouring my little car. I could just picture their grilles filled with bearings rumbling "gas.. give me gas". It reminded me of that horrible movie based on a Stephen King story (aren't they all horrible when they're made for tv?). The one where vehicles rebel and attack their owners at a gas station. I don't recall the title.. but that's what it felt like all of a sudden, except instead of just the vehicles rebelling, it was the owners that drove them into a frightening highway commute squalor.
I'm scared to drive back home.
Today I got my new laptop. It's not exactly new, since it's used.. but it's a nice little laptop and just perfect for my needs. Dell Latitude, 400mhz, 128MB RAM, 6GB hard drive.. what more do I need. Oh yes, 128MB more RAM that is on its way from Dell to me as I type this ($33, not bad at all).
So of course, here I am home.. downloading new RedHat so I can dual boot this little thing (I'll finally be able to upgrade my desktop and put gentoo on it) as right now it's running Windows 2K (yuck, but at least it *has* an operating system.. and sometimes even unix girls use windows) when I hear a *poof* sound... Never a good thing..
My PC's power supply blew.. just like that.. It's all about timing..
Take a look at this image.
My first explanation is pretty obvious.. it's caused by the gradual changes in the colours and contrast in surrounding squares.
A friend suggested the checkerboard pattern is also at fault here..
To quote:
Our minds want to see the perfect idea of a checkerboard (alternate DIFFERENT colors) hinted at by the picture, so we are "not seeing" the filters applied to the picture like shadows or graduation of contrast that make the intensity the same as it hits our eyeball. The sense of a border is much stronger than the sense of absolute color values.
That explanation also makes perfect sense, in reality probably a combination of both.
Neat.
Let's not beat around the bush, we're bright people. We, being programmers, sys-admins, other assorted computer geeks. It's nothing to be ashamed off.. so some of us are a bit socially-inept, reclusive or elitist.. so what? Somehow I doubt anyone but people like this read my blog..
Anyway, do you ever get the feeling that everybody expects 100% brilliance 100% of the time from you?
Well.. I'm getting tired of that. For once I want to be the one constantly asking questions and not listening to the answers.
This is my plan, from now on, once a month I will be dumb. One day a month of complete and utter stupidity from me. This should even out the playing field a bit, don't you think?
So tomorrow don't expect brilliance or humour from me.. instead, this is what you'll get:
1. At least 5 questions I should have known the answer to in my first year CS class.
2. Approximately 10-20 issues to which an answer can be found via a 2 minute google search.
3. 3 classes that are checked in but don't compile.
4. Three to Four hundred lines of untested code.
5. I'll ask you to install my sound card, modem and some other computer device.
6. I will be forwarding every single joke I see even if I've already seen it 400 times. It's that funny.
7. That Disney email? I'll believe it tomorrow..
8. I'll eat my lunch inside and leave the dishes in the sink for my co-workers to deal with.
9. I'll spend half my day talking on the phone. Loudly. In Polish.
10. I will disable my anti-virus software and execute every single attachment.
11. I'll work on my sun box as root.
This should keep me busy enough to result in zero productivity for the day.
I think we should all do that. Everyone who can sympathize with this issue, I call on you, be stupid for a day. For what purpose? Who cares, but it should at least make you feel a bit better next time you're expected to give a brilliant answer in under 5 minutes to a question you have no time to research.
(Yes, I am cranky today)
I've been battling a nasty cold for two days now.. Maybe if I actually stayed in bed for longer than 5 hours I may get better..
In the meantime I'm creating a mountain of used tissues, popping cold medication and coughing out colonies of virii. I think I may have selfishly infected half my co-workers yesterday as I went in to work thinking it was just a little one.. it's not.
Today, I'm staying home and working on getting better.. it's a promise. Hot tea with lemon and honey, coming up.
.. either that or sadistic men.
After spending last night dancing and walking on heels (a wedding, don't ask) I can barely walk today.. my feet hurt, my ankles hurt and my calves hurt from being forced into an awkward position all night.
Never again. . Christ I'm 5'8", I don't need the superficial height adjustment..
This is my excuse for no blog updates this weekend.. wedding and recovery.
Jeremy complains about the changes in the every day usage of the English language we have seen with the growth of the Internet. All those phrases like ur, ru, lapses in punctuation.. everything in lower case (okay, I'm guilty of that one myself) etc.. etc..
Yes! My [insert your favourite deity] is that annoying! I've seen some of my very intelligent and otherwise wonderful friends lapse into this teenagish (is that a word?) and infuriating habit.. Makes me want to reach out, grab their cell phones, blackberries, palm pilots and other assorted keyboardless devices and throw them into the nearest west-nile-virus-mosquito infested swamp.
I blame those devices. Anyone who has ever attempted to have a meaningful text-based conversation via a cell phone will agree with me here.. After all, it takes fewer key-pushes to type out 'ur' than 'you are'.
I'd like to also add 'LOL' is just not funny and too reminiscent of early 90s AOL chat rooms. If you'd like to express emotion.. use the language our forefathers developed! (okay, *your* forefathers, mine developed Polish). "Oh, that was funny" takes more typing, but it'll sit better with me at least. I'm a fast typist, I suppose that makes it easier for me to type out a whole sentence instead of a silly acronym.. but the first time someone catches me using LOL, ROTFL or a similar atrocity, please smack me. I'll thank you later when sanity returns.
Of course, those complaints are not enough to finish off this little rant. A friend of mine, who is otherwise very intelligent and sane called something 'gay' the other day. 'That is soo gay'.
*bang* *bang* *bang* <--- the sound of me banging my head on my desk.
Terrific Aerial Photo by Thom Van Os.
That's it.. Next year, I'm there!
Spent about four hours outside a coffee shop in Middletown writing a draft of an article for Linux Magazine. It was raining.. and I don't have a laptop (yet), so the pages (written in pencil) are now drying.. I'll type it up later.
I also made tuna salad.
.. and on a Tracy Chapman kick today.
[this unusually (for me) personal entry brought to you by the vast quantities of caffeine I consumed today]
[.. excuse me while I whine.. ]
... is a vast cultural wasteland. I only know one person that admits to enjoying this state, my boss.
Nearest Japanese restaurant to me is a half hour drive and it's really not all that great.. even if it is supposed to be the best in Connecticut. Granted, there's one decent Thai place in Middletown, pretty good Malaysian and Indian restaurants (one of each) in New Haven...
Rest? Chains, starbucks and Dunkin Donuts.
Weather? Hot and humid in the summer cold in winter.
Friends? Most have moved out.. (most to California, go figure).
Why am I still here? Gives me something to complain about.
</whiney mode>
Yumm.. Need to make some very soon..
From this Yahoo! article found via Jeremy..
Here in New York, corporations are planning to celebrate the second Wednesday in September with an array of gleefully gauche gestures. According to managing consultant Andrea Eisenberg, many companies plan to allow employees to come to work late(perhaps since only employees who arrived before 9 a.m. died in the attacks) and will display the American flag (never mind that many corporations have moved their HQ to Caribbean tax havens). Also look for "a personal statement by the CEO or office head, delivered in person" (hey--they can announce the latest round of layoffs at the same time!). One business "is naming conference rooms after employees who were lost on 9-11."
If it follows anything like I've seen elsewhere nearly a year ago.. the heart-warming letter from the CEO will have a paragraph on how *we* too can help fight terrorists.. How you ask? By being the best employees we can and being productive and selling, selling, selling more of whatever it is we sell!
Let's all be joyous Americans and wave our little flags and light up candles in memory while our freedoms are taken away from us in the name of national security.
Yes, putting up a flag on an SUV while spying on our neighbors who look suspiciously like Arabs is the way to remember the victims.
Cynical much? Not at all..
I'm sitting at my desk drinking coffee. That's not the sad part.
The sad part is my deep thought for the day so far was how easy it is to make geek terminology sound dirty..
"I want to recompile your kernel.."
"Boot me up, baby"
"That's a nice set of objects you have there.. can I optimize them?"
Somebody shoot me..
I remember seeing it as a child on Polish tv. This is probably back in 88 or 89, so I was around 14.. I don't remember it having much of an impact on me at all at that age. Recently I rented it from netflix and have been watching it over the last few days.. What a difference age makes.. these movies are terrific. Depressing, but very descriptive of human nature.
Decalogue in English.. think the ten commandments. Definitely worth watching.
People used to ogle each other.. now they just google each other's names..
Few years ago, if one was interested in the member of the opposite sex, one would hm, stare? Ask for a phone number? Ask friends? Follow around the campus? One of those..
These days.. everyone just uses google.. "Oh, she used NT few years ago.. ewww... I don't want any of that!" (well, I did.. so?).
This is the second time I ran into someone whining and complaining about software engineers calling themselves that. This person claims in California there is a law that states you may not use the title "engineer" unless you are state licensed.
I could only find one law that referenced something like this and it states that you may not call yourself a 'consulting' 'professional' or 'registered' engineer unless you're state-licensed and only applies to mechanical, electrical and civil engineering professions.
Now if it were true that a title of 'engineer' is only limited to licensed engineers, wouldn't 75% of Silly-con Valley be breaking this law right now?
Why do people have such a chip on their shoulders about this.. it's just a title.. who cares? I'd rather have the title of "Java Goddess" than "Software Engineer" anyway.... now if only I could convince my boss to go along..
The company I work for laid off eleven employees today. It was a surprise (probably shouldn't have been, signs were there.. hindsight is 20/20). Looks like some of the employees weren't exactly the cream of the crop, so perhaps this isn't a completely bad thing...
Incompetent or not, it's still unnerving to watch your coworkers pack-up their desks under watch and get escorted out the door. Turns out their access accounts were turned off during our company lunch at noon and they were told right after lunch.
Made it through this round.. wonder how the next will go? If it happens...
Really... it does.
I don't feel a day over 12. I don't act it either, so why should my driver's license (the one with a realy bad picture, I mean *really*) say that I'm 29 now!
I don't want to turn 30.
*sob*
Steve's (who graciously provides me with hosting space) birthday, go send him some birthday spam.. he loves it.
Happy Birthday Steve, damn you're old!
Today's profound observation:
The more I stare out the window, the less code I write.. hmm...
Don't drink and post kids!
I've received the most interesting e-mail message tonight.. The actual message content was just a very illuminating "fuck u".. Generated by Microsoft Outlook.. I cannot quite figure out who this person is or why they would send me this particular message? Have the rumours of my love-life spread as far as what appears to be Portugal? Honestly,.. I am not *this* desperate for some male-female relationships.. Thanks for the offer.. whoever you are..
Anyway.. here's the whole lovely thing, headers and all.. (I took the liberty of dumbing HTML down to simple text)
Return-Path: <avitor@sapo.pt>
Received: from sapo.pt (mail2.ptm.pt [194.65.79.73])
by geddy.pslashg.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id g6S29Ur31338
for <kasia@pslashg.org>; Sat, 27 Jul 2002 22:09:30 -0400
Received: (qmail 4192 invoked by uid 0); 28 Jul 2002 02:15:57 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO 0) (avitor@sapo.pt@[213.13.8.145]) (envelope-sender <avitor@sapo.pt>)
by mail2.ptm.pt (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP
for <kasia@pslashg.org>; 28 Jul 2002 02:15:57 -0000
Message-ID: <000b01c235dc$8dbac4e0$91080dd5@0>
From: "vitor alves" <avitor@sapo.pt>
To: <kasia@pslashg.org>
Subject:
Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2002 02:52:19 +0100
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0005_01C235E1.CA19D700"
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
------=_NextPart_000_0005_01C235E1.CA19D700
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
fuck u
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I was bored today and created a Yahoo profile.
Today is Sys Admin appreciation day. Did you hug your sysadmin today? I used to be one before I sold my talents to the dark side and became a programmer, so I know sysadmins just adore hugging and general touching from their users. Go do it now!
Jeffrey published the thank you notes from his book on his website. I'm mentioned somewhere down the middle with a whole bunch of other people that were probably 10 times the help I was. It's shameless self-promotion on my part.. I just think it's really cool :)
I'm thinking of adding the ability to create footnotes (see the brace style entry below for example of what I want to do) with some easy codes in Movable Type, I love footnotes! I don't use perl often enough, this should be a good exercise.
.. and signed up for Yahoo IM, ah well, those who know me, it's the same nick as I have on aim, those who don't know me phhhhlbbbttt (or ask, I may just give it to you).
"We'll make great pets"
Not the most profound of statements but makes sense to me a the moment.
http://www.sk.com/news/newsletter/current/essay.asp
That is just annoying..
RIAA.. bah..
The holiday may be stupid but the hearts are fun 
