Unreal

Sunday, September 17, 2000

We decided to try something different at the weekly Quakefest my friend Greg hosts (at his company, shhhhh). He had upgraded the video system on several of the PCs and they could run Unreal Tournament.

Wow. The graphics are gorgeous and the gameplay is much nicer than Quake. Or rather, it's a bit more realistic. I will miss the Cataclysm Device though.

But wouldn't you know it, just when I get comfortable with a game, it's off to a new one.

Life goes on.

I don't do windows

There is a downside to using computers—people expect you to know everything about them, especially the ones they use.

The knock on the door proved to me one of my neighbors, a woman in her late 40s/early 50s taking care of her elderly mother. She wanted to know if I had a copy of Windows 98 she could borrow (shhhh). I don't but my roommate Rob does. He was currently using the CD but he would lend it to her once he was finished.

About an hour later he was finished. We were on our way to Shane's house for a bit of Half-Life and I decided to drop off the CD to my neighbor. I would meet up with them later.

I had intended to drop off the CD.

I ended up being stuck for an hour trying to troubleshoot a Windows problem and not wanting to install Windows 98 on a 16M 486 that was barely running Windows 95.

“Should I install Windows 98?” she would ask.

“It's really up to you,” I said. “If you really want to, it's up to you.”

“Funny,” she said. “Everybody I talked to said the same thing.” She peered closer. “Nobody wants the responsibility if it fails, right?”

“Yup. And I don't even use Windows.” Not that she believed me for a minute. I use computers. I have computers. Therefore I know Windows.

Sigh.

I never did end up at Shane's house.

Is there anybody in there?

I knew I wouldn't be making it to Shane's so I decided to call to let them know.

“Hello?”

“Is this Shane?” I said.

“No, this is Glen. Who is this?”

“This is Sean. Tell Shane I can't make it.”

“Hold on, I'll get him,” Glen said, and put the phone down. I heard him walk into another room and mention to someone that I was on the phone. A minute goes by. I can hear several people over there talking and moving about. Another minute.

“Hey!” I yell. “Pick up the phone!” I can still hear several people talking. “Yo! Hey! Shane?” I hear shouting over there, seems like they're deep into Half-Life. After a few minutes I simply hang up, figuring they'll figure it out.

The Watcher

I ended up seeing “The Watcher” with Mark, Kelly and JeffK. Interesting premise, and refreshing to see Keanu Reeves play a bad guy for a change, but overall, I didn't really care all that much for the film—it was your standard Hollywood fare.

Monday, September 17, 2001

Holding

I received a notice in snail mail today that my second mortgage payment didn't arrive. This is getting annoying. So I called up the friendly 1-800 number they provided.

“Please press one … ” the oh so chipper recording said. “Please press two to …. Please press three for …. Please press four to talk to a represenative.”

Beep.

“Please press one to talk to a represenative.” Pause. Wait a second, didn't I just select this option?

Beep. “Please stay on the line. A represenative will be with you shortly.” Light heavy metal started playing. Waiting. Waiting. I get a beep, notifying that I have a another call coming in. Nice! I thought. The second I click over, the friendly represenative will be available, find me not on the line, and I'll have to do this all over again! I click over.

“Hello?” I said.

“Oh, sorry, wrong number!” The person hung up.

Oh, that was short, I thought. I clicked back over. Industrial Barbara Streisand was now playing. I thought the lacked conviction for her cover of “Closer” myself. But her cover of Napalm Death's “Conservative SXXthead” was spot on. Another click. Oh no, not another call!

“Hello?”

“Hello?!”

“Hello, yes. I'm calling to offer you a Dillards credit card and—”

“I'm not interested!” Time was running out. Any second now a represenative could hop on the line and I'd be screwed.

“But sir, the rates on this card are very low and—”

“I'm sorry,” I said, the anxiety rising in my voice. “But I'm not interested!”

“Okay, thank you. If you have any questions or … ” Yada yada yada. Once she finished rattling off the ending pitch, I switched back over. Luckily, they had now moved on to Trent Reznor covering “Memories” from Cats so I still hadn't missed the represenative.

Finally, just as I was giving up all hope of a represenative ever taking my call, one got on the line. I was able to check that indeed, they had actually received my last check and to ignore the notice.

I'm glad that was cleared up.

Funny, but only if you know RFC-822

I'm trying to reach some people at a particular ISP, and since I haven't heard from them in some time, sent email to noc@XXXXXXXXXXXXXX, postmaster@XXXXXXXXXXXXXX and root@XXXXXXXXXXXXXX just to make sure that maybe, just maybe, someone there would notice.

I just got this back:


   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
postmaster@XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to mail.XXXXXXXXXXXXXX.:
>>> RCPT To:<postmaster@XXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
<<< 550 <postmaster@XXXXXXXXXXXXXX>... User unknown
550 postmaster@XXXXXXXXXXXXXX... User unknown

Um … RFC-822 has this to say about postmaster:


     6.3.  RESERVED ADDRESS

          It often is necessary to send mail to a site, without  know-
     ing  any  of its valid addresses.  For example, there may be mail
     system dysfunctions, or a user may wish to find  out  a  person's
     correct address, at that site.

          This standard specifies a single, reserved  mailbox  address
     (local-part)  which  is  to  be valid at each site.  Mail sent to
     that address is to be routed to  a  person  responsible  for  the
     site's mail system or to a person with responsibility for general
     site operation.  The name of the reserved local-part address is:

                                Postmaster

     so that "Postmaster@domain" is required to be valid.

     Note:  This reserved local-part must be  matched  without  sensi-
            tivity to alphabetic case, so that "POSTMASTER", "postmas-
            ter", and even "poStmASteR" is to be accepted.

§6.3 of RFC-822

It's a requirement that postamster exist as a valid email address for any domain accepting email. So the ISP in question is violating an RFC. Tsk tsk tsk.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

A low key day

Today is The Younger's birthday and it's been a low key type of day. I didn't go all out and make a cake like I did last year (we celebrated his birthday early last year because he was flying out to visit his dad). I did, however, make Sweet-n-Sour Chicken for dinner, which is one of the few meals I make that The Kids like.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Mea culpa

Today felt like a Day Ten. Went to bed around 5:30 am (which is my usual bedtime) only to get a call at 10:30 am from Smirk about a problem, and had to drive to Boca Raton to get it resolved (normally, I get to work from home).

Looking back at it, I've had worse days. It wasn't like I was dealing with obsolete computers from Hell, or on a business trip from Hell, or even dealing with Russian hackers from Hell breaking into a server during a hurricane. Nope, nothing quite as bad as any of that.

But it was my fault for getting that call after five hours of sleep at the ungodly hour of 10:30 am, and because it was my fault, that made it all the worse. To make me feel even lower, the issue itself was resolved rather quickly (instead of being handled on Friday, when I said I would handle it—sigh).

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Reason #13 I hate PHP

I'm making sure that the various branches of “Project: Leaflet” are consistent when I notice that configuration.php, which allows one to change various settings, is not displaying at all. There are no errors, just a blank webpage. Usually, I just run the page at the command line to see what might be up:

[spc]XXXXXXXXX:~/projects/nlm/htdocs/nlm>php configuration.php 
Content-type: text/html
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.9

[spc]XXXXXXXXX:~/projects/nlm/htdocs/nlm>

Okay, nothing there. Let's see if there's an option to PHP to tell me more:

[spc]XXXXXXXXX:~/projects/nlm/htdocs/nlm>php -h
Usage: php [-q] [-h] [-s] [-v] [-i] [-f <file>] 
       php <file> [args...]
  -a               Run interactively
  -C               Do not chdir to the script's directory
  -c <path>|<file> Look for php.ini file in this directory
  -n               No php.ini file will be used
  -d foo[=bar]     Define INI entry foo with value 'bar'
  -e               Generate extended information for debugger/profiler
  -f <file>        Parse <file>.  Implies '-q'
  -h               This help
  -i               PHP information
  -l               Syntax check only (lint)
  -m               Show compiled in modules
  -q               Quiet-mode.  Suppress HTTP Header output.
  -s               Display colour syntax highlighted source.
  -v               Version number
  -w               Display source with stripped comments and whitespace.
  -z <file>        Load Zend extension <file>.

Hmm … that “lint” option seems promising. Let's try that.

[spc]XXXXXXXXX:~/projects/nlm/htdocs/nlm>php -l configuration.php 
Errors parsing configuration.php
[spc]XXXXXXXXX:~/projects/nlm/htdocs/nlm>

Well, that was spectacularly informative. Why even bother with the option if you aren't going to give any useful information?

Sigh.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Made from the heart of a fallen star and forged in the fires of a master smith is a knife that can even impress Anthony Bourdain

When it comes to chef, author, and professional foodie Anthony Bourdain, you never know quite what to expect, but you can bet your lucky stars it will make you feel inferior in every way. His latest blasé dive into cool, titled Raw Craft With Anthony Bourdain, is a collaboration with the The Balvenie Distillery that aims to dig up some of he world’s best-kept craftsmen (and women). In the latest episode, he heads to a workshop in Olympia, Washington to meld two of our favorite things: food and space rocks.

Knife maker extraordinaire Bob Kramer is one of just 122 recognized master bladesmiths in the U.S. His creations can fetch astronomical (no pun intended) prices at auction, in part because of the incredible detail that goes into making them, and because they’re made of meteorite. “When you think about it, they represent man’s first encounter with a solid chunk of iron – these star stones,” he says.

Via Instapundit, Anthony Bourdain Melts a Meteorite to Make a Beautiful Blade | Nerdist

It's not so much Anthony Bourdain melting a meteorite than it is watching Anthony Bourdain watching Bob Kramer melt a meteorite to form an ingot of steel from which he makes a custom, one of a kind, chef's knife that, ~~if you have to ask, you can't afford. You (and I) are probably not worthy of even holding, much less using, this chef's knife~~ is much cheaper than I expected! I was easily expecting the price to be at least twice that amount, so it's a relative “cheaper” not an absolute “cheaper.” I was also not expecting it be to for sale through the Intarwebs. Go figure!

Wednesday, September 17, 2025

To think that my previous pair of glasses lasted nearly twenty years, and yet my current pair almost two

So there I was, sitting in the Compute Room at Chez Boca cleaning my glasses. I was holding them in my left hand, and I had finished cleaning the left lens and had started cleaning the right lens when …

SNAP—

I now had a literal pair of glasses. The bridge on my glasses had snapped cleanly in half.

Well, gosh darn it, I thought to myself. What I said out loud, though, was “XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!”

I did my best tape job, and then Bunny drove us (because I wasn't about to drive with a pair of glasses that might fall apart at any second) to the store where I had purchased my glasses.

Of course they don't sell those frames any more. They still sell Flexon frames, just not the ones I have. And because they can't just take the existing lenses and recut them for new glasses (because I now have progressive lenses) it'll take a bit over a week for the new glasses to be ready.

Aaaaaaaaaahhh!

In the meantime, it was suggested I try going to a jewelry store to see if they could temporarily solder the two halves together, because the clear tape clearly wasn't cutting it.

So then Bunny and I went to a nearby jewelry store, and while they didn't have the equipment to do that, they did suggest we head out to International Jewelers Exchange out in West Boca. It's a large, flea-market like jewelry store with multiple merchants inside, some of which do repairs.

West Boca and the International Jewelers Exchange it is!

Asking around, we found Mike, who also does eye glass repairs. When he saw the glasses, he had bad news for us. “That's titanium—my equipment doesn't get hot enough to properly repair it,” he said. “You can try the laser and welding store upstairs, they might have the proper equipment.”

So we trudged upstairs to the laster and welding store and asked. “Sorry, no,” that guy said. “I mean, we can try soldering titanium, but any slight pressure and ‘POP!’ it will fail. Our equipment just isn't hot enough to properly handie it.”

Well, I thought, gosh darn it. This time, I managed not to say “XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX” out loud.

So now I'm back home at Chez Boca. The 3M micropore tape and a small segment of a toothpick for structural support appears to be working, although my glasses are now a bit floppy. But it's holding, and it should be fine until next week.

“XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!”

The Boston Diaries