The Boston Diaries

Wednesday, August 08, 2001

Short-term networking

What we are seeing now is the same debate we had back in the months leading up to that day in Marina del Rey. It's the same tradeoff being considered. Should we optimize today's applications and patterns of usage by building functions into the network? Or should we find ways to optimize today's applications by building as little as possible into the core of the network?

Via CamWorld, THE END OF THE END-TO-END ARGUMENT

A smart network will only hinder later innovations.

I never worked fast food for a reason …

Worse than the rat, worse than the dead frog, worse than eating a sandwich of yesterday morning coffee mold with chewed burger buddies and ranch sauce, I have seen office politics in a job lower on the food chain than a fried gopher. I have worked 45 hours a week at age 16 and my yearly pay remained far below the poverty line. I have seen my counterparts work 4 jobs, 90 to 100 hours a week, just for a roof over their heads and the chance to feed their children the same greasy undercooked leftovers that they can take home at the end of the night. I have seen the district manager walk into the store three times a week for 3 years and not once did he ask for my name. I flipped the fries. I made the hamburgers. I fried the chicken. I prepared the salads. I set up the shake machine. I cooked the eggs. I washed the floors. I cleaned shit off of the toilets. I made $5.09 an hour.

Via CamWorld, the Disgruntled Ex-Burger King Employee page

Any more of these anti-corporation links and people might just get the idea that I'm … oh … I don't know … un-American or something.

But you know what?

I don't care.

Nor do I care to work as a wage slave. I'd rather be poor and have my time to myself than to be rich and answer to 16 hour days and the bottom line.

And now I'm never using JavaScript …

I'm turning off JavaScript (or whatever it's being called these days) simply because I'm getting annoyed with all the pop-up and pop-down ads (pop-down ads are those that hide below the current window) and more and more sites are using. I'm getting annoyed with sites that force the window to be a certain fixed size. I'm sorry, I'm not running at 640x480 or 800x600. I'm running at some oddball screen size I like!

So what else is new?

Rob, my roommate, parked his 1972 Cadilac herse this morning and by the afternoon, it had the infamous orange towing sticker they use around here when they don't like the look of a vehicle.

The vehicle is no longer is commercial use—yet the Condo Commandos around here claim that it is. After all, what else is a herse used for but a commercial enterprise?

Rob called the Condo Commando in charge. All he got was “The Board is on my back. Get it out of here. You want to get lawyers involved? Go for it.” The Board is backed by the financial status of 400 units, ours included! Golden Rule (“He who has the gold, makes the rules.”) wins.

No one here is happy about it though.

“It's a novelization, based on a film, which in turn is based on a novel … ”

“Almost everything is nailed down,” the agent said. “We're just dickering over the novelization rights.”
“The what?” Setlowe said.
“The right to turn the film into a novel,” the agent said. “It's already a novel,” Setlowe said. “Remember that's what you're selling—a novel.”
“Oh,” the agent said.

Via Slant-Six, Lost in Translation